Being Fluid

My journey to explore my gender expression and it's relation to my life. Married w/ kids, 30 something... Interests: Physics, engineering, politics, philosophy, economics, Family and RPGs (GURPS, FATE, etc)

[programmerhumour]

what numbering system is this?

[omegafluid]

Idk but a agree with the math...

[sirfrogsworth]

Only 90s kids will get how amazing this is. 

Did I do that right? I don’t normally gatekeep. 

Or would it be 80s kids? Like, born in the 80s but old enough in the 90s to appreciate Pinky and the Brain. 

[joseph-lavode]

@dr-archeville @thefingerfuckingfemalefury

[dr-archeville]

So this showed up on my dash as “…Pinky and the Brain.  @ dr-archeville @thefingerfuckingfemalefury”

and my brain decided to…

They’re Fury and The Dok Yes Fury and The Dok One is a Gremlin The other’s an Ock

They’re tumblr-dwelling geeks Their meme game’s not weak Don’t worry They’re Fury and The Dok, Dok, Dok, Dok Dok, Dok, Dok, Dok Dok

Before each night is through Their agenda’ll be shown By the setting of the moon Tumblr’ll be overthrown

They’re Fury and The Dok Yes Fury and The Dok Their dusk endeavo[u]r Is really quite clever

To prove their geeky cred They’ll take over the web Don’t worry They’re Fury and The Dok, Dok, Dok, Dok Dok , Dok , Dok , Dok

Pun!

*ahem*

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Never change you adorable dork :D

[bob-belcher]

Martin Freeman reveals his and Andy Serkis’ nickname on the set of Black Panther

[decembersoul]

Libraries with a sense of humour.

[gluten-free-pussy]

Can animals actually dance to music? Is that a thing because every time my friend puts on music her bird goes nuts and starts swaying and chirping along

[thehotgirlproject]

If there is no music my bird will start clicking to encourage me to make a beat for them to dance to

[glamourcat28]

Mine does that too! She’ll make a knocking/hammering noise and start headbanging because she wants me to put on music or clap for her.

[fluffenchops]

Oh I have some science for y'all, lemme get to my PC!

[fluffenchops]

Okay science time!

Short answer: Some animals appreciate music, some don’t. Some can dance, most do not. It’s dependent on certain types of intelligence.

Long answer…

Birds do like music, they understand rhythm, and they can truly dance! Birds are incredibly intelligent animals, not because of the size of their brains, but the density of neurons means they pack a lot of smarts into a very small braincase. Birds also have some specializations in their intelligence that other animals do not that can make them more likely to dance!

Birds are vocal animals! They learn vocalizations (and in some species even names, called signature contact calls, that they use to identify and find individuals) from their flock, and use sound to navigate their social environment. This means that birds, namely songbirds and parrots, have adapted to have large portions of their brains dedicated to processing sound. They spend a lot of time and energy hearing, paying attention to, processing, mimicking, and thinking about sounds that they hear because their survival depends on it! Now what does that have to do with dancing? A lot, but perhaps not as much as the next thing:

How animals communicate with each other and form social connections. Many birds live in flocks. Their ability to survive, thrive, and reproduce depends on their interactions with other birds. Now sound plays a huge role in socialization, but so does body language! Parrots especially have very complex social lives and subtle nuances to interacting with each other, and they have evolved very elaborate ways to communicate with each other using body language, both behaviorally and physically!

They have brightly colored eyes and control over their pupil size:

Macaws blush;

And cockatoos, arguably some of the best dancers in the parrot family, love to raise their crests, spread their wings, and bob and duck and do all sorts of dance-y things naturally to communicate!

Perhaps most remarkably, black palm cockatoos actually create their own music, using rocks and sticks as drumsticks to bang rhythmically on trees! All with absolutely zero training or human intervention.

Birds don’t perfectly match up with the beat when dancing to music. Actually, their rhythm-keeping skills are about on par with human toddlers. But they do do their best to get into the beat. It just feels good to dance when you’ve got a brain complex enough to process music!

But what about other animals? Dogs dance, right? And horses?

… Not exactly. Almost every single example of other species of animals dancing are either trained behaviors, or coincidence. Except for one other animal. Can you guess what it is?

Well,

It’s elephants! And they fulfill all the characteristics of dancing animals. Complex brains? Check. Auditory intelligence? Check. Highly social? Check!

This isn’t all to say that other animals don’t enjoy music– many animals enjoy listening to certain kinds of music for all sorts of reasons. But so far, only birds, elephants, and humans are proven dancers.

My science may not be 100% spot on– I encourage you to do your own research and debunk anything I got wrong or add something I missed!

Happy dancing!

[literalbirdperson]

^ Thank you, this was a great read!

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them

[specsthespectraldragon]

2000 pounds of Good Boy

[thecuckoohaslanded]

you get me

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here

[thecuckoohaslanded]

More tags on this ridiculous post:

[cn123017-deactivated20181204]

Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia.  His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently.  Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually.  But for now, Cassius holds the title:

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah!  (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)

[sometimesihavequestions-deactiv]

@theonewhocheeps

[theonewhocheeps]

Holy fuck

[simon-newman]

As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

*Crocodile Dundee voice*  Mate, that’s not Gustave:

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind:

[muchymozzarella]

Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.

[tyrantisterror]

Every time I see this post there’s more crocodiles.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

[ridiculouslyphotogenicsinosauru]

That above image of the Deinosuchus skull is outdated. It was an early estimate of what the skull might have looked like based on scant fossil remains (if you look closely, you’ll see parts of the skull that are darker than the rest. That’s the real bone, the rest is a plaster reconstruction) and a poor understanding of the animal’s evolutionary relationships (that skull is based on the Cuban Crocodile, whereas Deinosuchus was more closely related to alligators).

Many years and a lot of better fossil material later, this is a better example of a Deinosuchus skull, specifically D. rugosus (from Schwimmer, 2002)

And a more generic, non-species-specific Deinosuchus skull for scale, courtesy of Gaston Design:

(You know you can buy this from them? I mean it’s crazy expensive, of course, but still!)

Also, to dispel any potential rumours, according to palaeontologist Mark Witton, common length estimates of 10 metres for D. rugosus are inaccurate, with a more likely size being no more than 8 metres, which is still FUCKING big. However! There is a second, if much rarer species, Deinosuchus riograndensis, which could have reached 9 metres, and that would have been a sight to behold. Also, the common rumour that Deinosuchus preyed on dinosaurs is not… entirely true. There is evidence that it occasionally ate dinosaurs (though whether that was through active predation or scavenging is unknown), there is far more evidence to suggest it mainly hunted sea turtles, given that many fossils of Cretaceous turtles have been found with Deinosuchus-like bite marks, not to mention that Deinosuchus’s exceptional bite force is far more suited to getting through the bony shells of turtles than the hollow, relatively delicate bones of dinosaurs, which would not require such… excess.

One more thing, Deinosuchus riograndensis, in all its 9-metre glory, is not the largest known crocodilian. That title belongs to the aforementioned giant caiman, Purussaurus brasiliensis, at 10 goddamn metres long.

(Credit to randomdinos over at DeviantArt for this one)

Jesus.

[programmerhumour]

That’s true you know

[omegafluid]

That last one, fml...

[programmerhumour]

Relatable

[programmerhumour]

The sense of achievement is real

[programmerhumour]

My friends AND I were unsure if to post this OR to NOT post it

[programmerhumour]

Too true

[programmerhumour]

The best gift outsourcing could ever give you

[programmerhumour]

Genius level 0x7FFFFFFF

[hell0-there-lady]

The reality of Instagram Modeling

[medic981]

This is important.

[daintydiarist]

Bless this post

[emthetimelady]

I really need stuff like this

[boomgoestheriptire]

I love all the slouching photos

[thegrapeandthefig]

That’s what modelling is just about. Thinking that there are no tips and tricks into modelling is what’s wrong. Have you ever tried getting a thigh gap for a picture? Just slightly spread your feet and push your ass backwards. It’s not a normal position, but seen from front it looks normal. But BAM thigh gap appeared!

[jesseengland]

The video camera is plugged into the VCR, allowing it to record itself being poked and prodded.

GIF’d version of Vide-Uhhh! (2005)

[twistrambles]

I will forever consider this one of the coolest but oddly creepiest things.

[catchymemes]

Chance of a lifetime for an epic trick

The passenger steamer SS Warrimoo was quietly knifing its way through the waters of the mid-Pacific on its way from Vancouver to Australia. The navigator had just finished working out a star fix and brought Captain John DS. Phillips, the result. The Warrimoo’s position was LAT 0º 31’ N and LONG 179 30’ W. The date was 31 December 1899.

“Know what this means?” First Mate Payton broke in, “We’re only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line”. Captain Phillips was prankish enough to take full advantage of the opportunity for achieving the navigational freak of a lifetime.

He called his navigators to the bridge to check & double check the ship’s position. He changed course slightly so as to bear directly on his mark. Then he adjusted the engine speed.

The calm weather & clear night worked in his favor. At mid-night the SS Warrimoo lay on the Equator at exactly the point where it crossed the International Date Line! The consequences of this bizarre position were many:

The forward part (bow) of the ship was in the Southern Hemisphere & in the middle of summer.

The rear (stern) was in the Northern Hemisphere & in the middle of winter.

The date in the aft part of the ship was 31 December 1899.

In the bow (forward) part it was 1 January 1900.

—

This ship was therefore not only in:

Two different days,

Two different months,

Two different years,

Two different seasons

But in two different centuries - all at the same time!

[opticallyaddicted]

Luo Li Rong’s Bold, Graceful Figurative Sculptures

Luo Li Rong’s figurative sculptures evoke movement and intrigue, whether it’s the artist’s feminine, graceful figures or her otherworldly creatures. The China-born, Belgium-based artist has received several high honors, including commissions for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. A statement talks about the varied influences of the sculptor.

“In Belgium she remains true to her principles,” Art Center HOres says. “She continues with her work and concentrates on the techniques of the sculptors of Europe from the Renaissance, Baroque and other periods. Her sculptures dazzle the viewer with their beauty, craftsmanship and above all femininity.”

The artist is a graduate of the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Hi-Fructose

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[elodieunderglass]

Because I feel like it’s going to come up a lot: readers may recognize the sculpture of the woman with the flute. Images of the statue were mistakenly seized upon by men on Twitter, who believed that it was the creation of a white man, and thus, they stated, it was evidence of how nobody but white men can make art. This was a magnificent trainwreck that gave onlookers much joy, as, obviously the artist is Luo Li Rong.  (A brief recap here: https://www.someecards.com/news/so-that-happened/ivan-throne-twitter-alt-right-sculpture-luo-li-rong/ but it’s also been viral on Twitter and Tumblr for a year.)

HOWEVER, Luo Li Rong’s art is clearly much bigger and more important than those silly comments by pissants, and her work speaks for itself. There is so much to appreciate in her use of things like gesture and texture. It’s so nice to see these beautiful and interesting examples, and to really get to grips with admiring the way she dresses/accessorizes, which is also important and deserves our time.

BUT ALSO: omg those faceless furred entities with colorful arms and legs. Fuck me. Those are what is getting me. I am fuckin RESONATING with the very first one. It genuinely looks like a living being made of improbable materials IN ADDITION to being a rare and valuable #horrible thing with arms. Good art. Good Art