A Developing Series of Spectacular Crashes

Hello world. I'm that one-with-the-face-but-whose-also-got-the-other-non-face-bits-attached-as-well. At least that's what my friends call me. There are some who call me Tom, though I tend to prefer it when people get creative. I love math, philosophy, evocative word choice, summer thunder storms and good-natured arguments

[bunjywunjy]

I was wondering, I know phoenix is a mythical creature but is it herbivore or a carnivore or perhaps an omnivore like if it's real what do you think it'll eat but if I look at the beak and claws it's similar to an eagle I think?

great news, phoenixes aren't actually mythical creatures at all!

in fact, here's one right now:

that's right, the myth of the phoenix was very likely started by this actual real bird, in Africa! right on the border of Tanzania and Kenya, actually.

riiight about... HERE.

this is Lake Natron.

Lake Natron is an alkaline salt lake of volcanic origin, where the water is as caustic as pure ammonia and can be hotter than a sauna at 140 F!

what lives here? not much. just the extremophile bacteria that gives the water and salt flats their pink tint, really.

oh, and these guys.

that's right, if you're a Lesser Flamingo, this volcanic hellscape is home sweet home! they live in the lake year-round, feeding on the bacteria that they painstakingly filter out of the near-boiling waters with their hooked beaks.

and at some point, some traveling humans presumably noticed a flock of giant pink birds taking flight from a poisonous and hard-to-reach bright-red hellscape, with billowing clouds of steam that might have looked like smoke from a distance, and took word to the nearest settlement. and from there the tale passed on through the old world, eventually growing into the legend of the bird that sets itself alight to be reborn that we know and love today!

so, yeah! phoenixes eat cyanobacteria.

surprise?

[normal-horoscopes]

Divine Hierarchy of Being

[markadoo]

If you injure yourself saving a mosquito’s life, you will form a mosquito-shaped scar called a “skeeter’s blessing” that makes makes all mosquitoes leave you alone. WHO scientists attempted to develop a prevention course using the blessings, but it didn’t work since their motives were impure. 

[fuckyeahchinesegarden]

Floating bridge in Shi-zi-guan, Hubei Province, China.

[parkchanwoohoo]

Just learned that an obsolete term for a female jester is "joculatrix" and we NEED to bring it back

[freakspotting]

[ur-stepdad]

this is so fucking funny

imagine getting banished from your homeland for running a con and when you go to get a prophecy about what to do next the priestess is like

[femmenietzsche]

That relatable feel when the edge of your opponent’s katana is such that you don’t notice the upper third of your skull being removed until it plops onto the ground several seconds later

[ranma-official]

when you start explaining to your opponent than the “absurdly sharp katana” trope is not just physically incoherent, but historically inaccurate, owing primarily to a combination of propaganda and backwards justifications for the anachronistic use of swords in combat, and get at least three quarters through it before your diagonal upper half slowly slides down

[everythingfox]

“This bear dug a sitting pit to watch her favorite duckies”

(via)

[cornmuffin]

[punkypoodle]

[retroactivebakeries]

“Q: Do I have to kill the snake? A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots of students choose to wrestle the snake. Some construct decoys and elaborate traps to confuse and then ensnare the snake. One student brought a flute and played a song to lull the snake to sleep. Then he threw the snake out a window. Q: Does everyone fight the same snake? A: No. You will fight one of the many snakes that are kept on campus by the facilities department. Q: Are the snakes big? A: We have lots of different snakes. The quality of your work determines which snake you will fight. The better your thesis is, the smaller the snake will be. Q: Does my thesis adviser pick the snake? A: No. Your adviser just tells the guy who picks the snakes how good your thesis was. Q: What does it mean if I get a small snake that is also very strong? A: Snake-picking is not an exact science. The size of the snake is the main factor. The snake may be very strong, or it may be very weak. It may be of Asian, African, or South American origin. It may constrict its victims and then swallow them whole, or it may use venom to blind and/or paralyze its prey. You shouldn’t read too much into these other characteristics. Although if you get a poisonous snake, it often means that there was a problem with the formatting of your bibliography. Q: When and where do I fight the snake? Does the school have some kind of pit or arena for snake fights? A: You fight the snake in the room you have reserved for your defense. The fight generally starts after you have finished answering questions about your thesis. However, the snake will be lurking in the room the whole time and it can strike at any point. If the snake attacks prematurely it’s obviously better to defeat it and get back to the rest of your defense as quickly as possible. Q: Would someone who wrote a bad thesis and defeated a large snake get the same grade as someone who wrote a good thesis and defeated a small snake? A: Yes. Q: So then couldn’t you just fight a snake in lieu of actually writing a thesis? A: Technically, yes. But in that case the snake would be very big. Very big, indeed. Q: Could the snake kill me? A: That almost never happens. But if you’re worried, just make sure that you write a good thesis. Q: Why do I have to do this? A: Snake fighting is one of the great traditions of higher education. It may seem somewhat antiquated and silly, like the robes we wear at graduation, but fighting a snake is an important part of the history and culture of every reputable university. Almost everyone with an advanced degree has gone through this process. Notable figures such as John Foster Dulles, Philip Roth, and Doris Kearns Goodwin (to name but a few) have all had to defeat at least one snake in single combat. Q: This whole snake thing is just a metaphor, right? A: I assure you, the snakes are very real.”

— “The Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defense” by Luke Burns (via inevitablerecursion)

[notlikingbestgirl]

Out of Touch

[hustlerose]

Out of Touch Thursday

[arbyscurlyfries666-deactivated2]

OUT OF TOUCH THURSDAY

[snuv]

but im out of my head when you’re not around…

[morkitten]

[ampervadasz]

[hellenhighwater]

Lucifer, Angel Of Light, Attended By Demons, 2022. 

[bittylildragon]

ok the video was great, and then THAT CAPTION XD

[memewhore]

[malecus]

We haven’t done it to very many species, and the ones we did it to were of very low-order species such as plants and fungi.  Ethics forbids us from doing it to anything much more complex than that, so instead we taught some chimpanzees to do it in exchange for a variety of differing treats.  Getting simians to perform tasks of varying complexity for varying rewards IS ethical, getting a grant for it is orders of magnitude easier, and most great apes don’t have such developed ethical standards.  So long as we publish the results of their sieve-grinding as a sub-topic of the “work for treats” papers, we can more efficiently gather data while avoiding ethical conundrums.

[krystal-prisms]

Oh my goodness

[zwoelffarben]

Help. My (37F) morally dubious experiment chimpanzee’s (14F, 18F, 22M, 23F, 36F, 36M) have formed an ethics board.

[enriquemzn262]

[probablyasocialecologist]

COVID supply chain crisis shows what's really at the heart of the economy — healthy humans

Australians are getting a stark reminder about how value is actually created in an economy, and how supply chains truly work, writes Jim Stanford.

Ask chief executives where value comes from and they will credit their own smart decisions that inflate shareholder wealth. Ask logistics experts how supply chains work and they will wax eloquent about ports, terminals and trucks. Politicians, meanwhile, highlight nebulous intangibles like “investor confidence” — enhanced, presumably, by their own steady hands on the tiller.

The reality of value-added production and supply is much more human than all of this. It is people who are the driving force behind production, distribution and supply.

Labour — human beings getting out of bed and going to work, using their brains and brawn to produce actual goods and services — is the only thing that adds value to the “free gifts” we harvest from nature. It’s the only thing that puts food on supermarket shelves, cares for sick people and teaches our children.

Even the technology used to enhance workers’ productivity — or sometimes even replace them — is ultimately the culmination of other human beings doing their jobs. The glorious complexity of the whole economy boils down to human beings, using raw materials extracted and tools built by other human beings, working to produce goods and services.

[normal-horoscopes]

"Some monastic orders resisted the adoption of this system of decimal notation with zero, claiming particularly the zero was a device of the Devil. Among those who refused it was the Cistercian Order whose mystic and gnostic philosophy was the inspiration and foundation for the construction of the Gothic cathedrals, the cosmic temples of the Piscean Age. But the merchants adopted the Arabic numerals and zero because they gave a mechanical ease to calculating operations and the recording of quantities. It was then through the mercantile impulse that zero took root."

-- Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry philosophy and practice

[normal-horoscopes]

"What do you mean you have a symbol for zero? Sounds like devil demon shit to me. No thank you sir."

[aliiiiiiice]

sorry guys, the plinko is blocked