in too deep, already

Hi everyone! I’m a smol bean who mostly posts random stuff and random thoughts.

[bsd-bibliophile]

As long as one is capable of believing that one is qualified to receive the love of others, one feels that life is worth living, and the world is a wonderful place. But even if one should discover that one no longer has the necessary qualifications to be loved by others, one must continue to live on. Even if one is not ‘qualified to be loved,’ one is eternally ‘qualified to love.’ To seek only the joy of being adored is to surrender to savagery and ignorance.

Dazai Osamu, “Lanterns of Romance” from Blue Bamboo and Other Stories

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.



[modernvintage]

First quote from the linked article. Found it poetic.

[mezimraky]

the entire article is very poetic!

[tilthat]

TIL “Yankee Doodle” was written by the British to mock americans. “Doodle” is thought to come from the German “dödel”, meaning “fool” or “simpleton” and “macaroni,” a flamboyantly stylish type of dress, painting the Yankees as morons who thought placing a feather in one’s cap made them a “dandy.”

via reddit.com

[toastpotent-deactivated20250619]

so you’re telling me that “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni” would be like saying “wrote a G on his belt and called it gucci”

[beggars-opera]

that’s…a pretty good analogy actually

[ti-bae-rius]

US moron came to town

Hunting for some coochie

Wrote a G up on his belt

And this bitch called it Gucci

[ti-bae-rius]

Seeing my notifications get flooded with this every July 4th is the only thing I respect about America

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[emaiiyaru]

two types of customers

[emaiiyaru]

a couple ventis 🍃

[emaiiyaru]

the wind is still singing

[emaiiyaru]

sacrificial

[emaiiyaru]

obligatory steal your boyfriend’s hoodie

[emaiiyaru]

[emaiiyaru]

[arizona-green-tea-absolutist]

Men will date a convicted embezzler and say "all women are gold diggers"

[arizona-green-tea-absolutist]

Women will date a homeless musician and say "men don't wash their ass"

[cherryflavourscumbag]

palaeontologists will date a fossil and say “i’d hazard a guess at late Cenozoic period”

[majestictortoise]

geologists will date the zircon in a felsic gneiss complex by determining the ratio of uranium to lead in the crystalline structure and say "at 4.031 ±0.003 billion years these are definitely among the oldest rocks on earth but the uncertainty of the neodymium isotope fractionation age estimates of the gabbros in the nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt make it hard to say for sure if they are the oldest."

[mikkeneko]

weather historians will find a collection of all recorded temperatures to date

[chocolatepot]

Fashion historians will date a dress in two seconds flat and then struggle for five minutes to explain exactly why their reasoning

[specialagentartemis]

Archaeologists will date a site by finding a single sherd of Tonto Polychrome and say “well as we all know Tonto Polychrome was only made between 1350 and 1450”

[keatxu]

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

[omikronsoul]

Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.

[justletmeremember]

op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.

[jollysunflora]

#there is so much abandonware just...out there being used and carefully maintained#because nothing quite replicates the functionality

[elodieunderglass]

amazing research experiences

Me: I have a character who grew up on a racehorse stud farm in County Meath. I have locked myself into his child-POV for a large portion of this, which is a colossal pain, and I need a name for one of the fields, and -

The Meath Field Names Project: you have no idea how much we have your back

Me: ...You're kidding.

The Meath Field Names Project: would you like a holy well or perhaps a famine field. would you like a realistic name for a field by the river or perhaps a mass field. did croppies ever go past it? There are 104 fields in County Meath with "horse" in the name.

Me: I ... don't suppose you have anything for... a field that borders a neighbouring farm? The Meath Field Names Project: "The Mearing." Me: ...good heavens.

[elodieunderglass]

Me: why, oh, why, did I state that Killie had to grow up on the Mad At You Islands? You're not allowed to write about the Mad At You Islands when you're not FROM the Mad At You Islands. that's why they're so mad

The Mad At You Islands: don't worry we're already mad at you Me: SHUT UP

Me: normally I read books about it, but the problem with the Mad At You Islands is that they are so very specific about counties that are sometimes 100 miles long. I mean, I can sort of get away with some things because Killie has a posh English mother, but... Me: GOD WHY DID I GIVE HIM A POSH ENGLISH MOTHER?? WHEN HE WAS ALMOST NECESSARILY BORN BEFORE THE CEASEFIRE?? what was I thinking. The Mad At Me Islands are going to be SO mad at me.

Me: I'll read books about it, at least. Not that I expect them to help. The Amazing World of Reading: here's a book set in child-POV in the late eighties from a small child growing up in rural County Meath

Me: You're KIDDING me

Frogs for Watchdogs: Nice to meet you, I'm a great little book! But if you're leaning on me for emotional support, there is a slight complication in the fact that the child has a posh English mother.

Me: well. you'll never believe this. but. that's fine.

[dajo42]

i was a kid asking questions like "when you say to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10 do you mean relative to what i have experienced before or what i could theoretically experience in the future because what if i say 8 and then later i get twenty billion papercuts and i realise relative to that this pain is a 1" and they would reply "just focus on what you know, you literally had your foot ran over by a ford focus" and id say "well exactly but it could have been both feet which i know would surely be worse" and it still took years to diagnose me as autistic

[snazzy-hats-and-adhd]

"Is a 1 to 10 pain scale intuitive?" needs to be evaluated as an autism diagnosis question.

[themarydragon]

OKAY PSA FROM A NURSE

Pain scale is how this exact pain is impacting your life right now. We don't care about your history or your imagination, we're talking about THIS pain, at THIS time.

The way I typically explain it to my neurodivergent clan:

0 no pain. Straight vibing

2 there is pain if and only if I think about it (ugh I think I have a headache coming on)

4 pain exists, but I can ignore it (headache but I can still work but ew)

6 pain is difficult to ignore but distractions help somewhat (maybe I should go home this headache is really bad and I'm pretty miserable)

8 pain is distracting me from other things, it is severe and keeps stealing my breath/attention/ability to exist (migraine has you laying in darkness wishing you could do anything else)

10 There is nothing but pain. I cannot focus on your questions. Even one tiny spark from any other nerves will render me unconscious. I am probably screaming and/or fighting to breathe.

There is nothing past 10. Consciousness is impossible past ten, you have blacked out from pain. The odd numbers are for nuance.

[egophiliac]

Lilia's general armor has heels. Thoughts?

look, just because you're a military commander in the fantasy-1600s and your kingdom's ongoing war means you're regularly getting into violent, desperate skirmishes doesn't mean you can't be

[giuliadrawsstuff]

You are loved.

Reference here

[levantra]

tags courtesy of @mayasaura (in case anyone was wondering about the story behind the photo)