playing-the-biolin @playing-the-biolin - Tumblr Blog

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

iguanamouth

oh shit

throughshadow-to-the-edgeofnight

alanaisalive

As the OP of this post, I’m going to threaten that if this gets to one million notes by the 10 year anniversary on 1 June 2026, one year from today, I will get a lower back tattoo of the loch ness bear monster.

sugaldean

I know it feels like a lot but I really believe we can do it 20k notes per day isn’t that hard to do?

dragon-in-a-fez

under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.

dragon-in-a-fez

@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??

emotional-support-husband

As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.

dragon-in-a-fez

so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.

chekhovs-raygun

i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.

lizardlicks

this is one of those "no actually this regulation exists for a reason" laws much like work place safety and building fire codes (that Republicans keep trying to roll back) and is written in blood just like them as well. it's just not human blood this time, and the fact that people actually cared enough about long term future over short term profit to get it put in place is nothing short of astonishing. That it didn't get put in place in time to save several species is heart breaking.

hapalopus

And yes, it's still needed today, despite no one wearing hats. People will go to crazy lengths to acquire rare feathers

By Andrew Court In 2009, a college kid named Edwin Rist broke into the British Natural History museum…

pokearthive

TCG Illustration Contest: Flygon (2024)

Artist: marlowe613

Source: Illustration Contest

datadegroove-deactivated2026042

stop deactivating

datadegroove-deactivated2026042

i thought we all agreed we were here forever

kirishima-hates-terfs

this-is-trans-joy

everyone loves to hate terfs until they realise that it actually entails rejecting bioessentialism entirely and then suddenly you’re “taking things too seriously” and you “don’t have a sense of humour” like i’m sorry but saying protect the dolls doesn’t make you immune to terfism it has seeped into every corner of mainstream feminism and unless you’re actively searching it out and checking your own biases you will always be at risk of sharing a space with terfs

this-is-trans-joy

“Only women can—” nope. “But all men—” nah. “The divine femininity of—” gonna stop you right there. “Everyone born ama—” if you finish that sentence I’ll kill you. “Men don’t experience—” you’re wrong. “Gender isn’t real but sex is imm—” *loud incorrect buzzer*

It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.

twistcmyk

no, i do not have cameras in your home (yet)

savedtiktoksofcats

exuberantocean

That boy is going places.

corantus

locked the fuck in get my money up

skoomabong

syncarida

Also I have to spread this beautiful kakapo image (by Andrew Digby) I saw this evening on bluesky... her baby lint... protecting my mould spore...

shiphappen-s

I bet Grace's ejection from earth would become like an Eridian horror story. They forced him to sleep. They held him down and made him go to sleep so he would stop fighting. They kept him vulnerable and put him into a dangerous situation with other sleeping, vulnerable humans with no one to watch over them.

And 2 of them DIED! While they were asleep with no one to watch over them!!

Like they probably already thought Rocky's journey was the stuff of nightmares (alone for decades with no one to watch him sleep) but Grace's story would probably be so terrifying to them. Coupled by the relative ease with which he talks of it. He accidentally mentions it to his class and gets several concerned and angry messages from Eridian parents about him telling horror stories to their children instead of teaching Human Science lol

nanzyn

your world is dying. your husband presumably dies in space so now you're a widow and your world is still dying. then 50-ish years later your husband everyone assumed was dead pulls up in a random spaceship full of a highly volatile atmosphere with the solution to your impending apocalypse and none of the original crew from his mission and instead with a wet, blobby alien that he pack bonded with and almost died for and is now emotionally codependent on that now wont stop complaining about the temperature of the water in its enclosure. your name is adrian and you dont know how you got here

fanficmemes

Babygirl I know fandom history that you wouldn’t even care about

mikkeneko

i know fandom history that even I don’t care about

antlershade

well, i know about lump fish

cyber-seagull404

Good to see we’re all on the same page

noah-wyles

all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again