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[zooophagous]

I have been a sheep caretaker for like two days and already I'm like. Wow. I get it.

I get why these were some of the earliest mammals to ever be domesticated. They look up to humans with this sort of dumb but all at once innocent and pure and trusting expression. They're happy to see you. They follow you around. They like to be rubbed under their chins. Maybe its just some latent Scottish highland shepherd DNA I still have in me but I look at my sheep charges and suddenly I see why the love of God for humanity is so often described as a shepherd and his sheep. I'd fight a wolf for these guys. I'd go way the Hell out of my way for them. I'd carry their young for miles on my own back.

[upward-bound]

nearly 80k reblogs and how many of you eat lamb

[zooophagous]

The ancient shepherds I'm referencing also ate lamb lol

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

my notifications are once again devolving into a spirited debate about the ethics of actions that could potentially make someone uncomfortable, and at risk of sounding like someone about to get a lot of irate anons I think we're frankly giving way too to much moral weight to hypothetical discomfort

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

the thing about discomfort is that it's an extremely nebulous category that can be triggered by virtually anything and that's far too broad a category to have any inherent moral quality to it. like. my mom was mad uncomfortable when I stopped shaving. that didn't mean I was doing violence against my mom it just meant she needed to get over herself. many such cases it must be said.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

there's not a single example I could give that's better than this

[cloverchameleon]

[cryptotheism]

I think someone just shot Charlie Kirk

[dragongirlsweetie]

can we not spread rumours before the facts have been settled please

[cryptotheism]

Sorry

[raccoonmilf]

Fun fact: due to the ongoing financial support from the people of tumblr, critically endangered pygmy raccoons being rehabbed in Cozumel are now able to get vaccines for deadly diseases like distemper and rabies before they are released.

[leebrontide]

The funniest and most enduring legacy of dashcon.

[raccoonmilf]

To contribute to the critically endangered pygmy raccoon fund, you can donate:

On the website

On Venmo

On PayPal (make a note that this is a donation for pygmy raccoon conservation)

[prokopetz]

I know this is due to my particular constellation of interests, but for me the funniest thing about the "everything in a given century happened simultaneously" view of history being applied to the 1900s is bumping into increasing numbers of people who are genuinely unclear on whether Dungeons & Dragons pre-dates or post-dates The Lord of the Rings.

[appendingfic]

tolkien had to call them hobbits to avoid running afoul of Hasbro's trademark of the word 'halfling'

[prokopetz]

Strictly speaking, "ultimate" means "last", not "best". It's often figuratively employed in the latter sense to suggest that the thing so described is the final word on the subject, after which nothing more need be said, but if we're being real technical, describing a game or movie that was so bad it killed its entire franchise as the "ultimate" is in fact correct.

[prokopetz]

@ffoxer replied:

Now I'm thinking about the prefix "pen," which as far as I can think I may have only ever seen in "penultimate"

It's Latin for "nearly" or "almost", and it does pop up in a few other English words. "Penultimate", "penumbra" and "peninsula" are the only ones I can think of that you'd even remotely expect to encounter in everyday speech, though; the rest are all medical or mathematical jargon.

[prokopetz]

#so peninsula means what? #almost island? #lmao (via @actualanxiousswampwitch)

That is the actual etymology of the word "peninsula", yes.

[lovrboyx]

The Last Unicorn really said “There will be times when you can’t find other people like you and there will be times where you'll wonder if you're really the only person experiencing the world as you are and others will even try to take advantage of you through commodification and exploitation to the point where it starts to dilute your own sense of self and will make you question if you were ever you to begin with but it’s important for to resist the urge to assimilate and find community because there will always be people like you who will understand and have experienced these same things and the only way to combat a dark world who wants to smother your light is to FIGHT FIGHT RAGE AGAINST THE RED BULL DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT OCEAN.”

And I just think there’s something beautifully and inextricably queer about that

[prokopetz]

Tabletop RPG where taking damage in combat is represented by physically setting the target's character sheet on fire. Different damage types specify different parts of the sheet where the fire must be set (e.g., top-right corner, etc.), and the amount of damage is the number of seconds the player has to wait before stamping it out. Any physically destroyed traits are disabled until they fill out a new sheet.

[prokopetz]

@scattered-storyteller replied:

Are there any rpgs that play with destroying parts of your character sheet permanently other than Ten Candles that you know of? Ones that are designed to actually be played, that is

Sure, lots of them. One of my personal favourites is Annie Rush's The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men, a 1:1 scale miniatures game that uses an actual gingerbread man as your minifig, and the living space in which the game is played as the terrain. Character creation consists of baking and decorating your gingerbread man, with what resources and abilities are available to you determined by your choice of decorations; damage and resource expenditure are then modelled by breaking off parts of your gingerbread man.

[prokopetz]

(I'd also like to highlight Shreyas and Elizabeth Sampat's Mist-Robed Gate. Escalation in conflict resolution involves something called the "Knife Ritual", in which the state of an actual, physical knife lying on the table is manipulated: covered, uncovered, etc. The penultimate stage of escalation entails snatching up the knife and stabbing it through your opponent's character sheet to stick into the table below; arguably this doesn't fit the brief, as it's the act of stabbing itself which is mechanised, with the particulars of how the character sheet is damaged being irrelevant, but I thought this blog's followership would appreciate it!)

[prokopetz]

Whenever I talk about what the Internet was like in the mid 1990s I invariably get a bunch of folks responding "yes, I too remember the 90s", then proceeding to describe the Internet circa 2005 – and like, it makes sense that this would happen, because relatively few people were actually online in the 1990s, but it's striking how many folks just straight up misremember the mid 2000s as "the 90s".

[prokopetz]

There's probably a line to be drawn between this phenomenon and the surprising number of people who think of Shrek as the quintessential 90s movie in spite of the fact that it came out in 2001.

[cryptotheism]

Contrast this to the work of the ever-influential Church curmudgeon St. Augustine. Who, in City of God XVIII, decries Hermes Trismegistus and his followers as arch-idolaters. In Augustine’s view, It was the wiley Ancestors of the Hermetics who created statues ensouled with demons masquerading as pagan gods. It is this communion with demonically-haunted statues that serves as the source of their tainted pagan wisdom. This is an obvious reference to actual Egyptian religious practices regarding the worship of ensouled statues. Augustine also says that Hermes Trismegistus taught his philosophy in Egypt after Moses, but before the Greeks. It is notable that even to Augustine, the Hermetics were part of an ancient lineage. The mythological ancient-ness of Hermes Trismegistus is essential to their lasting influence. It is common for intellectual traditions –esoteric or otherwise– to claim their presence extends deep into the bedrock of history, that their tradition is the oldest, most ancient, and most venerable. The figure of Trismegistus personifies this claim. What written tradition can be more venerable than the invention of writing itself?

The Corpus Hermeticum in Context, today on Patreon

[kedreeva]

There's something so good about the wild type.

[maimonideznuts]

The fact that geese manage to actually scare so many people is such an interesting example of the predator instinct to avoid a confident animal.

Because we are predators, and Geese are prey animals with hollow bones, no teeth, and no claws. What they do have are wings to make them look bigger and a fuck off attitude. That attitude works on most people apparently.

Just "I'm gonna getcha" and as a species we fall for it almost every time.

[gremlinwithakeyboard]

Yeah they don't have teeth but they do have serrated edges on their bills that can act like teeth. They also apparently have spines on their tongue.

Do Geese Have Teeth? (All You Need To Know)

Read about Do Geese Have Teeth? (All You Need To Know) on Birdfact.

An In-Depth Look At Goose Mouths - Berry Patch Farms

Geese are amazing waterfowl known for their unique mouths that have fascinated people for ages. If you're short on time, here's a quick answ

Probably still not much of a threat to adults, but they do have some tools to Get You with.

[kedreeva]

They do hit with their wings (which can really bruise), and they do absolutely have nails on those feet and they can cause damage with them.

But it's still funny that people are scared of them, because like... They're just not that big.

And "serrated" break is a bit of an exaggeration. It's ridged, there are bumps along the sides but they're made for grinding water plant stems, not chewing meat or anything. They have a pretty good pinch pressure, but of all the birds I've been bitten by, geese aren't high on the list of a threat.

But humans, as predators, want to avoid being hurt *at all.* Because an injury means not being able to hunt and not being able to hunt means potentially starving to death.

But geese are so so so easy to not get hurt by, and that's why it's funny.

[cryptotheism]

This comes from a cursory reading on Wikipedia, but I'm wondering how Arianism is considered the most challenging Christian doctrine when some scholars were implying that Christ was just adopted or chosen, which to me seems even more daring

The Orthodox line was that God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, exist as a Trinity.

Arianism rejects this, saying that God created Christ, and therefore Christ is separate from God.

The heresy you're talking about here, adoptionism, also counts as Arianism in the eyes of the Nicene church. A lot of heresies at the time also include Arianism, so the most efficient way for the church to attack all of them was to attack Arianism.

This is an oversimplification that glosses over all the various internal and governmental controversies that were wrapped up in the council of Nicea. (How much power should bishops have? How should bishops be organized? Etc.)

Like, among other things, Arianism represented potential challenge to the power of the Church. If God can create a Christ, what's to stop him from doing it again? Let's say that 100 years down the line, someone shows up at the church doors claiming to be another Christ? If you're the church, you cant leave that theological door open.

[orpheuslament]

terrifying when you watch a movie or a show or whatever & youre like that was fun but it felt a little redundant they didnt need to hammer the point home that much & then you go online & theres thousands of people going that was so weird i did not get it what did that mean google.com ending explained please?

[mothsbythelamplight]

It's easy to forget that media literacy IS a skill. Like, its not something that you just have or you don't, you absolutely can improve your ability to pick up on metaphors and literary devices etc if you actually care to, it just takes practice (ie: watching things through a critical lense and stretching that muscle).

Along the same line of thinking I don't think people who lack media literacy are stupid. Even people with high media literacy tend to forget it's a such valuable skill, but if it wasn't valuable and wasn't something that takes practice and effort there wouldn't be so many literary breakdowns and explanation videos and reviews that get into authorial intent.

More people WANT to understand the deeper intent behind art, but a lot of people never bother to try stretching that muscle because they're convinced that they're just stupid and can't interact with media in that particular way, that that's the job for the brainy reviewers and critics.

All it takes is a little nudge and some encouragement sometimes; There was a time in our lives where none of us knew what a metaphor was. Ultimately if it's someone you care about who "misses the point" of something you like, you COULD be upset that they're "not smart enough" for it or whatever, or you could break down exactly why the point is what it is, and encourage them to look for those literary devices in other things they watch.

Everyone's gotta start somewhere.

[uncleromeo]

if you don't do anything else today,

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.

[yujateaandpi]

Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.

Cybertruck. It was a cybertruck.

[64mpg]

ok you know what mommy’s sick and tired of your poor reading comprehension