Definitely a Mad Hatter with a Box @professor-cactus - Tumblr Blog

lvl 1: the plural of octopus is octopuses because the plural version of a word is the word with an s at the end

lvl 2: the plural version of octopus is octopi because if a word ends with "us" the plural version replaces the "us" with "i" e.g. cactus -> cacti and fungus -> fungi

lvl 3: actually, that rule is only for latin words. octopus is a greek word and the correct plural is octopuses or octopodes

lvl 4: actually, language is descriptive not prescriptive. since enough people over time have used octopi as the plural for octopus, it's a valid plural

lvl 5: the plural of octopus is octopeese, like geese

asteroidtroglodyte

Lvl 6: My Marine Biology professor told me it was technically “Octopods” to bring it in line with “Cephalopod,” but that if the class is falling asleep you can call them “Octopussies”

ruusverd

Pet peeve of the day is the way many fiber artists use "carpet wool" as a catchall derogatory term for any wool that is coarse and scratchy, with the implied meaning carpet wool=garbage wool. That is not what carpet wool is.

Carpet wool, as the name implies, is a term for the wool from sheep specifically, intentionally bred for centuries to produce wool that is ideal for carpets (historically meaning rugs or, less often, heavy outer blankets, not just carpet like the modern stretched kind stapled to the floor.)

The ideal fiber for an item that is going to be put on the floor and walked on needs to be durable and easy to clean, therefore each strand needs to be long, relatively thick (yes, that means coarse,) and not prone to easily felting.

What it DOESN'T need to be is particularly "soft." The long fibers will make a smooth enough surface to not irritate the soles of your feet and you're not generally going to be wearing a rug right against very sensitive skin all day where you can feel the prickly ends. "Carpet wool" breeds, also known as longwool breeds, have wool fibers that perfectly meet those criteria.

A rug made from wool from a hair sheep or some meat sheep that is coarse but also brittle and short is going to wear out and fall apart ao quickly it's not worth the effort to make it. Therefore, despite being coarse and "scratchy," it is NOT CARPET WOOL. Use that for stuffing pillows or compost it for fertilizer.

A fine, soft, Merino rug is also going to be a felted, pilled, worn-out mess in such a short time it's not going to be worth the effort to make. Save that for a beautiful lace scarf that's going to be directly against the skin of your neck all day. Judging by what's best for rugs, Merino is actually the "garbage" wool.

Anyway, humans spent millenia developing different fibers for different applications, and also words mean things and don't mean other things. Can we please stop calling Lincoln or Wensleydale wool "garbage" because it makes scratchy socks and can we also stop calling Katahdin or Dorper hair "carpet wool" please.

Also, the sheep that grow the wool are absolutely rocking the look.

Imagine telling these lovely Wensleydale ladies their hair isn't glam!

hands-off-my-dinosaur

log (😅) = 💧log 😄

grootficguy

“Every Pokemon is someone’s favourite” I’m making a spreadsheet to see if this is true. Reblog with your favourite Pokemon in the tags.

Here’s the spreadsheet in-progress

grootficguy

Ok, mother of GOD that's a lot of responses and I am but one man with Excel. I'll update these ASAP but also some rules:

A Pokemon only counts for itself, not its evolution line.

A Pokemon with multiple forms (like Zygarde) will only be counted for the specified form. A Pokemon with multiple appearances (like Spinda, Vivillon, Sylvally, etc.) count for all their appearances.

I'm literally doing this as a testament to my own depression that not everyone is lovable, so add that to the weight of this post's meaning.

#skitty #!

firstfullmoon

thinking about that illustration of solitude vs loneliness in which solitude is a dog peacefully holding its own leash & loneliness is a feral dog fighting against the restraint of the leash & feeling slightly insane

retrocausality

Jaakko Pallasvuo

theonion

In an effort to maintain stringent industry standards, salad suppliers nationwide pledged Monday to continue including just enough greens in bagged salad so that some will go bad if you’re single. “Whether it’s our 50/50 Mix or a simple chopped romaine, single customers can rest assured that they will always be left with a slimy, inedible clump of brown leaves at the bottom of the bag that wouldn’t be there if someone else were in their lives,” said Fresh Express CEO Marc Driver, adding that salad producers were united in ensuring that the refrigerators of partnerless consumers always contained a folded-over bag of soggy, spoiled vegetable matter that forces them to contemplate the possibility they’ll be alone forever.

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unpickled-olive-deactivated2025

all the food classification discourse is phenotype-based and no more sophisticated than ancient greek zoology.

"pizza is a flat bread with toppings baked on"?

let me guess: you define a man as a featherless biped, don't you plato?

no, we need the taxonomical model. food evolves and adapts and descends. it fills niches that cause it to diverge from its ancestors and converge with other, unrelated species. unlike most animals, food is capable of horizontal gene transfer, making taxonomical divisions less linear.

american pizza (Focaccius rotunda) is descended from an italian baked flatbread dish. deep dish pizza (F. r. patina) is a subspecies of american pizza which evolved in the american midwest. it is taxonomically unrelated to common species of casserole in the area (and casserole is not a taxonomic category but a polyphleytic grouping, much like fish and crabs)

unpickled-olive-deactivated2025

"sushi is a burrito" yeah and a bat is a bird.

unpickled-olive-deactivated2025

hotdog is actually genetically in the ramen clade for reasons scientists don't understand yet

tinyyellowflowers-blog

YES EXACTLY that’s why cheesecake and baklava are sister pastries, due to their descent from placenta.

rokosourobouros

...sorry, placenta?

tinyyellowflowers-blog

The organ is named after the cake!

Placenta cake - Wikipedia

harbinger-of-silly

All gays will go to hellsite

king-of-oreo

What if in hellsite but not gay

NO!

String identified: A ga g t t at t t t ga T tag g a Ag agag Acctac ! T tag g a Ag agag Acctac

Closest match: Psylliodes chrysocephala genome assembly, chromosome: 4 Common name: Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle

(image source)

graveexcitement

kebbopulos

pointnclick

does anyone else remember grass. the warmth of the sun

pointnclick

winter makes me feel like the guys at the of the lotr. do you remember the taste of strawberries mr. frodo

demiboydemon

For speed runners, this is canon.

leshermes

This image is not speedrun accurate. Link should be naked.

importantpics

cat-cosplay

"I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise. 'Don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee.' And I don't mean to."

daily-crabbys

This Friday's meme is: the perfect being

ospreyonthemoon

Have you seen fossilised crabs. They're hilarious they literally do just

Straight up they are just fully there. Shellfish are really fun like that, i have a shrimp fossil in my collection that's like. Yeah it's just 100% a shrimp, legs and antennae and all. When your skeleton is on the outside, it means your outside fossilises really well.

malibuklaus

galadriel1010

Sometimes you get a brief glimpse into the American worldview and decide that you don't want to know.

transcyberism

I cannot stress enough that this meme is entirely literal. there's no reference or subtext you don't know. these are simply the objectively most popular works of art from each denomination.