M.Maurysiek @mmaurysiek - Tumblr Blog

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to anyone requesting donations: don't bother with me. until I have food security myself, I won't be donating anything.

#i need to eat every day too #people who have that covered can donate instead

fastfashionalert

herpsandbirds

Ash-throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens), family Tyrannidae, order Passeriformes, OR, USA

photograph by Khanh Tran

#birds

drinksomefuckingwater

drink some fucking water

#maintenance of flesh

morbidmomma

Loki's Joy

Sigyn, adored by Loki. 😍

For the Logyn art tourney.

#norse mythology

poolsidescientist

Things I hope happen in season 2 of Blue Eye Samurai in Mizu's absence:

Akemi has her girlboss arc. She gets to use all the skills and knowledge she's gained to manipulate her way through the royal court and achieves the greatness she desires and is capable of. Her and Madame Kaji's dynamic is going to be fascinating. It would be cool if Takayoshi teaches her some archery too.

Taigen has an existential crisis. If he's still in the palace he can learn all about being a samurai beyond being a dojo student and that Mizu was indeed right that nothing comes from being a samurai but death and he is a simple man. I hope him and Ringo stay friends. He can find out Mizu is a woman but only after having a full sexuality crisis.

Ringo finds himself and finds people who love him. I predict he'll spend part of the season with Master Eiji and part in Edo with the other characters. Obviously he'll make new friends and hopefully deepens his connections in ways that show him he doesn't need to be useful to be loved. I also hope they give him a love interest.

#blue eye samurai

cassolotl

A poll for Firefox users

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have used the AI kill switch

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have turned off some AI features but not all

I use up-to-date Firefox and I have not turned off any AI features

I use up-to-date Firefox and didn't know you could turn off AI features

I use an older version of Firefox with no AI features

I don't use Firefox

Remaining time: 2 days 22 hours

cassolotl

For Firefox users who weren't aware of the AI kill switch, type about:preferences#ai into the address bar, and you should see this:

#internet safety #baby ai #polls

blackholesun321

Baby eridians, for a good portion of their lives, are soft-shelled, as Erid likes to call it. It takes a few molts (more than a few, but for abbreviation's sake) for their shells to entirely harden, absorbing minerals from around them and through their food to develop the shell on their exterior. If you need a comparison, consider how human bones fuse and we become less flexible as we get older.

But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.

It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.

That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.

But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.

But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.

But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)

All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!

So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)

Rocky dreads the ever-looming talk he’ll need to have with Grace about the fact that Erid may, in fact, possibly find him very, very adorable. And that this might hamper communication for a second while he explains no, that is not a tall baby and no you cannot squish it.

#project hail mary

headspace-hotel

Seems legit

headspace-hotel

we all hear about kudzu being introduced as "erosion control" in the South but I don't think contemporary people understand on a gut level what that means

these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"

It was Bad.

headspace-hotel

Invasive plants need to be understood as part of a much larger cycle of incredible violence against the land.

peat-moss-and-starlight

For context: erosion on that scale occurred as a result of our clear-cutting entire states. The land east of the Mississippi used to be covered in old-growth forest to an extent that we literally can’t imagine anymore, because most of us have never seen a forest over 100 years old. It turns out if you remove all vegetation from a landscape, you end up with a bunch of loose soil ready to move downstream. A fast-growing plant that covers everything in dense vegetation sounds like salvation when you’re surrounded by 40-foot deep gullies that get wider with every rainstorm.

#the usa #holy fuck they already had the wandering sands stage of farming malpractice

mothric

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

mothric

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)

#social skills

puttingherinhistory

Excuse me while I sound like a crotchety old geezer for a minute here

I've seen this attitude pushed more on social media that "kids and especially teenagers are naturally defiant and naturally want to upset and piss off adults and parents and teachers need to just accept this and deal with it" and tbh, I don't agree. I don't remember wanting to piss off or upset anyone on purpose for fun as a kid or teenager.

What I do remember is that when I was getting a budding sense of morality and justice I would stand up to misogyny / racism / homophobia or general cruelty from adults and/or peers and it would usually be dismissed as "oh she's just at an age where she wants to be rebellious for the sake of it, she just wants to defy adults for fun because she's at that age" and that logic was used to dismiss it.

Likewise the same logic was being applied to kids, I'm talking especially privilged kids like the white kids and the boys especially the cishet boys, with budding cruelty that was a result of unchecked privilege. Like boys being grossly misogynistic and homophobic, "oh he just wants to be rebellious and piss off adults, it's fine". Do you see the issue of brushing the behavior of marginalized kids who are developing a sense of justice with the same stroke of privileged kids being cruel and bigoted? Oh that they're both just being rebellious and trying to get a rise out of you and it's fine just ignore it don't try to actually address it or do anything about it?

I think kids and especially teens usually have more complicated reasons being their behavior than "oh it's hard wired into their biology that they just HAVE to be defiant for the sake of it at that age" and using that logic prevents adults from actually having to think about and address the root of their behavior.

It also lets adults off the hook from actually having to do something about dangerous behaviors kids and especially teens do, like binge drinking until they have to be hospitalized. "Yeah it's just normal and natural because they have to be rebellious and make stupid decisions at that age, it's just hard wired into their brains that they gotta" is just fucking lazy. When I was at that age I understood drinking until I blacked out and needed to be taken to the hospital was bad and should be avoided because adults in my life had taken the time to explain to me it was bad. I was actually capable of rationalizing "hmm, alcoholism and alcohol poisoning are bad and I should avoid those things" and being warned against it did not tempt me to go out and drink dangerous amounts. Why the fuck would it? That makes no god damn sense and is just a lazy excuse not to actually teach kids better in a way they can understand.

Also I mean sure, part of it is laziness, but I also think some adults are so scared of looking like the buzzkill killjoy to young people because they're afraid of aging and actually having to look like a grownup. A lot of this is our culture's worship of youth and demonization of aging, so a lot of people are really scared of looking "out of touch" from the youth and really want to look like the cool hip understanding adult.

But also part of this is privileged adults wanting to protect the behavior of privileged kids. Just rebranded "boys will be boys" if you will. Of course an adult man is going to say "oh come on he's just a teen, teens are gonna be stupid and want to break the rules" about a teenage boy behaving in a reckless and cruel way. Of course white adults are going to say this about white kids behaving in a reckless and cruel way. They got away with it when they were teens so of course they want the same for today's youth who share their privilege.

Anyway it's time to stop being lazy caregivers. Kids aren't a bunch of stupid animals that just have something hard wired into their brains telling them to break rules and be defiant with no deeper motivation to their behavior than some "rebellious defiant" hormone in their brain mindlessly controlling them. It's degrading to oversimplify their behavior like that, they are human beings after all. There are almost always going to be deeper reasons for their behavior, most often that they're an underprivileged kid with budding morality and justice, or that they have a privileged background that has resulted in their more reckless and cruel behavior going unchecked. If you're someone who is a guardian or caretaker over kids and teens you do actually have a responsibility to exam the deeper reasons behind their behavior and address it instead of just dismissing it at "oh well it's just their weird hormonal teen brains commanding them to break rules and be rebellious without any deeper reasoning, time to just ignore it and not take it seriously"

#social skills

what-even-is-thiss

I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

what-even-is-thiss

You ever been 30,000 words and hundreds of research hours into a project when you realize hey wait a minute. I don’t like this. This is bad.

fassina

Ok adding to this though that even though it is extremely relatable, this is a KNOWN thing with professional writing. 10k is often referred to as "having a pot boiling" or "having a stew" - it's the point where you often see an idea coming together and it's exciting! But THEN... 30k-50k is the point where that fun has to start coming together. In theatre, it's usually week 3 of a 5 week rehearsal period where you have to stop talking about the play and really get it all up on its feet and cohesive. In art, it's committing to what are going to be the final visible layers of colour and texture, in sculpture the moment where you're truly at the point of no return with carving out the shape.

It usually feels really bad. Because this is the point it becomes real craft. It's so, so difficult to really be able to identify if it's truly not going to be anything or you're just in the hardest part of the process, and really the only way to know is to... write through it. Write it badly. Or, if you really can't, put it in a drawer and come back to it after a few months of breathing space. Remember, you can fix so much in the edit, but you can't fix nothing!

(I say, fully looking at my latest draft of my book and considering throwing it in the bin. But my editor said exactly this to me, so I'm passing it along.)

tjalexandernyc

this is 100% true. I've written 6 complete novels at this point and every single time around the 40k mark I feel lost in the woods. Nothing seems to be working. I feel awful; I can't sleep. I keep going even though I'm convinced I'm going to fail. And then... It's like leaving a tunnel and getting back out in the sunshine. Stuff starts coalescing. Things that weren't working have obvious fixes. I "can write" again, except I was writing the whole time. It just felt hopeless in the moment. It's not. You just gotta get out of the woods.

ariaste

Ah yes the Slough of Desponds. Professional author with 13 books, and this is normal for me as well. (Checking for tension issues usually helps!)

sainamoonshine

Lmao I literally wrote a whole blog post abt it once.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/writing-advice-1-82451675

Get more from Marie Blanchet on Patreon

#writing advice

obaewankenope

Yoooo new shark info just dropped!

[image source]

So in the past, the deep-sea goblin shark hasn't really been studied all that much in its natural environment because, well, deep sea.

Buuuut!

Guess what's happened for the first time, y'all

The deep-sea goblin shark has been studied in its natural environment for the first time!!

Goblin sharks are, essentially, living fossils. They're the only extant (living) species of a lineage that goes back nearly 125 million years. Their origins are further back that some dinosaurs!!

They're not pretty and they're not friendly looking either but they're still adorable!

The problem with goblin sharks is that they've only really ever been studied after getting caught in deep sea fishing nets and lines so pretty much nothing is known about how they behave, interact, etc etc beyond physiological stuff. Which, honestly, sad af because it's meant we've mainly had to guess about them (educated guesses but still guesses all-the-same).

But times are a-changing now!

Side-note: their faces are so weird okay, I love them.

[image source]

Back in 2019 though, there was an expedition to investigate the deep-sea ecosystems around Jarvis Island which, btw, is a protected wildlife area about a thousand nautical miles south of Honolulu. The lead author of this study, Aaron Judah, examined a load of footage from the dive around Jarvis Island and confirmed that what the expedition members thought was a goblin shark was, indeed, a goblin shark.

Then, in 2024 another sighting was reported in the Tonga Trench (near Fiji in the southern Pacific) via a baited camera (they got to see it actually eating food!!!). So Judah looked at that footage in his study too!

The thing is tho... is that the Tonga Trench is the second deepest marine trench in the world. Second only to the Mariana Trench. And the goblin shark seen in the Tonga Trench at a depth of almost two thousand metres!

Prior to that sighting, it was believed that goblin sharks only dived to around 1300 metres at most! So this is monumental!!

So, not only was a goblin shark seen at a depth far greater than it was believed they dived to, but it was also viewed in its natural, alive state, existing and being alive and that's just- it's just amazing! And geographically, too! Now, we now know that the range of goblin sharks is larger than we previously thought.

This is honestly amazing and kinda world-changing just like the new footage of the Greenland shark. We now have new avenues of research and study into goblin sharks and how they exist and interact with deep-sea ecosystems and that's just beyond amazing.

With these sightings and the new information about goblin sharks, the species can be added to the list of recorded species in a protected area too!

And if you want to see video the sighting, here it is!

Or you can watch the YouTube video below instead

#sea #sharks

tzikeh

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

boyslit

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

eclipticasolaris

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

antisocialxconstruct

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

dovewithscales

I worked in retail for years. If this had happened while I was working retail, I would have been delighted and felt great solidarity with anyone who was wasting my employer's time and money and giving me busy work as an act of protest. In point of fact every moment the employee spends carting items back to the shelves is a moment not spent standing at a register.

resumbrarum

Side note: this also makes shopping almost completely inaccessible to people who can't afford smartphones. It's another small salvo in the war against the poor.

#the usa #social skills

derinthescarletpescatarian

You Are Not Immune To Pump Shanty

derinthescarletpescatarian

#listened to it#and i. it’s a shanty for space#why didn’t i listen sooner??

My friend, my companion, my dear member of the Lucky Ten Thousand:

Here is the rest of it.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#derin i didn’t know you liked the mechanisms?!???

Why do people keep saying this. They're good songs.

mechanismslorearchive

Ok! I'm going to take this post as an opportunity for everyone in the notes to learn about My Favorite Band Ever

What Are The Mechanisms?

The Mechanisms were a queer storytelling concept album cabaret band, or in short, a folk band that made 4 concept album.

They performed from the years 2010 - 2020 in character as immortal space pirates aboard the infamous starfaring vessel, The Starship Aurora, a warship stolen in a rigged game of Russian roulette from the now-deleted empire of Cyberia.

As they traveled, they spread stories they picked up in asteroid bars, ditties of the wars they fought in (and sometimes orchestrated) and importantly-- violence, violence, and more violence.

Unfortunately, over the last 300 years in the future ago, all members of the infamous band of pirates have shown up dead, following a two-day showing in January of 2020 called Death To The Mechanisms.

That is to say, they broke in up in 2020, and their personas all had silly endings. Such as being eaten by 300 octokittens.

or in short: The Mechanisms were founded by a very talented woman named Maki Yamazaki, and included talent such as Jonny Sims (you may know him from The Magnus Archives, or Slay The Princess), Morgan Wilkinson, Frank Voss, Ben Below, Jessica Law, Kofi Young, Rachel L Hughes, and several more anonymous members over the years.

Over the course of a decade, they completed 4 concept albums such as Once Upon A Time In Space, Ulysses Dies At Dawn, High Noon Over Camelot, and The Bifrost incident-- four space operas following high stakes stories, from Snow White and her bloody rebellion against the immortal King Cole, to Lyfrassir Edda, an inspector investigating the vanishing of the Ratatosk express - and the disappearance of the entire Asgardian Government with it.

They have two additional album of one off-songs, as well!

They are a queer band telling queer stories! If you like weird transgender concept albums listen to this band!

What Is Pump Shanty?

Pump Shanty is the 6th track off The Mechanisms' first album-- Once Upon A Time In Space! The version linked is the studio version, but I personally prefer this live version of the song. It's from a future recording they did for a radio show, and has all the proper vocalists as they added to their talent over the years!

Pump Shanty as a song follows Snow White after her attempted assassination by King Cole, after the king bombed her sisters wedding to Princess Cinders - Cinderella, and is the turning point in her character to becoming The General of the resistance.

As a song, Pump Shanty-- as with many of The Mechanisms Songs (and as is typical with the genre of filk*) borrow melodies and tunes from folk songs with similar names! Here are some examples of Pump Shanty as sung in its more traditional folk versions:

Pump Shanty - The Sheringham Shantymen (this version is the closest stylistically to the one the mechanisms play)

Pump Shanty - Rub and Shrub Shantymen

Pump Shanty - Storm Seeker

How do I get into The Mechanisms?

Fear not, by virtue of reading this post, you have already found the most comprehensive resource on how to Get Into This Band

This blog, The Mechanisms Lore Archive, is a fan-run archive blog to provide access and answer questions about the band. We have collected a google drive with all live shows, photos, merch records, relevant in-character posts across various social media.

But if you want a cursory, surface-level grasp as this band:

You can find their albums on youtube, spotify, apple music, and most importantly, Bandcamp! (and other places, I'm sure, but these seem the most commonly used)

For live shows, to find them all in one place, i recommend the videos folder in the archive, but there also exist playlists on youtube.

The optimal listening order is as the albums were released. And remember - these are concept albums, listening on shuffle will get you entirely lost very quickly!

*What is Filk?

wikipedia article

Filk is a genre of music that emerged in the 1950s and primarily gained its conventions through sci-fi and fantasy conventions. It refers to songs with a heavy emphasis on sci-fi or fantasy elements!

Filk songs are, very typically, parodies or retellings of common folk songs or popular music. If you are looking for fun sci-fi music. Filk is a great place to start! The Mechanisms are a Filk band.

---

In any case! If anyone here does decide to check them out, they're a very cool project-- these days, the various members are working on new projects. I'll be making a "so what are the band up to now" in the coming few weeks! Keep an eye on this blogs pinned post for that.

#the mechanisms