A Useless Cat @myopicscientist - Tumblr Blog

i have once again created a quiz for my current hyperfixation (discworld this time) and you may once again take it at your own risk

i have read only about ten discworld books so if your favourite guy is not an option just like wait a little bit and they probably will be o

#sybil ramkin #discworld #gnu terry pratchett

foldingfittedsheets

I wanted to do a little compilation of my pride buddies! You can find them on my Redbubble and Teepublic! If you like dragons, gryphons, unicorns or DnD you can find something cute in my pride collections!

If you have a question about a flag not shown please read this before commenting! I appreciate it.

#art #pride #queer

tannisroute

isn't it crazy that a woman being gender nonconforming literally just requires her to exist in her own body without making any changes whatsoever. why does the fact that i don't wear makeup and i don't shave and i don't wear a bra have to be some political act. why can't i just fucking exist

brawltogethernow

externally: Whoa. Well it doesn't sound like what your boyfriend did is ontologically evil actually, but what matters is it made you uncomfortable. Have you told him you're upset.

internally: IF YOU NEED TO ASK ME YOU NEED TO BREAK! UP!!!!!

#me w/my token straight friend rn #girl PLEASE leave him skdjfbsmdjhfjmsdn

its-always-sunny-in-city17

just finished the two towers

#amusing #art #fanart #lotr #tolkien

rhube

A wild ride:

This author has chosen to make their posts visible only to people who are signed in.

(I'm sorry, I don't have the spoons to alt-text all that, but if anyone wants to add in a reblog, have at.)

reverbraven

talvin-muircastle

A routine bus trip from New York City to D.C. took a harrowing turn for passengers last night (Monday) when the driver reportedly decided to

familiaralien

I feel like adding a little addition here because the OP got the funniest possible e-mail after this

#holy shit???#never complaining ab firstbus again #amusing

phorusrhacidae-lesbian

unfortunately the english were incapable of making it greenwich nicies time

#not convinced a real effort was made tbh #amusing

flagellant

Hey guys I made a pride flag for when your gender is nobody else's fucking business! Check it out!

flagellant

happy one year anniversary to this post getting marked as "potentially mature content" and then never leaving content review when i appealed. tumblr's own default loading graphic is considered by their own tos "potentially sexual" it seems.

@support you got any explanations for how this post got flagged? or why it never got reviewed? or what mature content might potentially be happening? believe me i am ALL ears

flagellant

it's 2026 and this post is officially no longer "potentially mature" and is just "mature". so: either tumblr's own default loading graphic is now confirmed to be explicitly sexual and pornographic

or the concept of a pride flag is considered to be inappropriate for 13 year olds.

happy pride 2026. here's a pride flag for when corporate interests of a site run by dogshit transphobes, handwringing pearlclutchers, and "powerless" "allies" tell you that pride and your gender is no one else's fucking business:

#hellsite (derogatory)

natalieironside

"'I don't know' isn't an answer" alright man then I'll just. Fuckin. Enter my philosophical mind-palace and check the fuckin akashic records. Real quick lemme just catch and cook and eat the Salmon of All Knowledge. Tell me ur question again so I can real quick climb to the highest branches of the Yggdrasil and lay it at the feet of Freda the all-wise Queen of Heaven. Dickhead.

#amusing

lemonscribs

Pride sharks! Happy pride month :D more super cute pride flags themed sharks coming soon 👀

#art #pride #queer

animenotaizai

Another meme idea hit me this morning

#aksjsjakaaksk NO #witch hat atelier #witch hat atelier spoilers

teashoesandhair

Absolutely honoured to include you all in my current research spiral, starting with this incredible poem about how electric lighting is Really Scary Actually:

Going to be referring to the dodgy bulb in my loft as a 'cold, unlovely, blinding star' from now on

mcgravin

Not to diminish how off-putting OP's dodgy bulb might be (and they presumably know all the following, if they're researching the topic), but I just want to point out that the poem was likely written circa 1880/81, given that Paddington Station was first lit with electric lamps on Christmas of 1880. At that time, proper incandescent bulbs were just barely leaving the laboratories and starting to hit the commercial market. As the article mentions, Paddington Station was lit with arc lights.

If you've never seen an arc lamp in action, you might not realize just how eerie and frightening they must have been to people who had only ever seen gas lamps previously. And if they found them frightening, it would have been for good reason, as arc lamps are significantly more dangerous than incandescent bulbs, since they could cause fires much more easily.

Where an incandescent bulb uses electricity to heat filament to the point of glowing, contained entirely in a glass enclosure, an arc lamp shoots a spark of high-voltage electricity across a small gap to produce light. In early arc lamps, this spark was often in open air. The light could be blindingly bright, and as the poem puts it "sickly blue" in color. The arcing electricity produced a disconcerting buzz or hissing sound, and poorly maintained arc lamps (the spark gap needed to be adjusted frequently, and the electrodes had to be replaced as they wore down) would flicker and gutter. Any damage to the lamp or its wires, or something electrically conductive touching it in the wrong spot, could cause a dangerous high-voltage short.

Here's a video of an 1889 model arc lamp that is presumably pretty similar to the model of lights in use at Paddington Station:

I'd take a dodgy bulb over that any day of the week.

teashoesandhair

OP put this in their original tags ;) but very cool to see it in action in the video! I agree, it makes a modern flickering attic bulb pale - quite literally - in comparison. Some of the newspapers from the 1880s report that people developed headaches from being in close proximity to such bright light, and one poor man apparently thought the world was ending when he first saw one. Some arc lamps installed in public spaces gave off a light which was measured at 4,000 candlepower, and they were only safe when installed in such a way that the light fell at a diffused angle. I cannot even imagine. It would be like if every public space was lit with industrial floodlights, but deeply unreliable ones which also kept trying to set things on fire.

#history #science!