quadrad's ramblings

Ideas and story bits

[celinethefeline]

[transmascmarypoppins]

why is this post completely broken in every way imaginable

[cecilsrandomeverything]

Broken notes… deactivated account… removed image….

Finally, we have them all.

[spacefinch]

In addition: OP’s name is just… gone. No “[insert username]-deactivated[insert a bunch of numbers]” as is the standard for deactivated blogs.

Just the world “deactivated.” Look upon their post, ye mighty, and despair.

[chatblancofficial]

It’ll be almost impossible to find this post unless it wanders across your dash.

[huewrite]

It wandered across mine. I shall help it travel forward.

[gossamermouse]

this is not a place of honor

[jackviator]

[dinosaurana]

Oh hey post of Ozymandius, good to see you again standing on your feet in a desert where no one remembers you

[marisatomay]

Happy Pride

[noartnowritingsorry]

Oh no…

[autistic-speedbump]

[zelda-heritage-posts]

Zelda Heritage Post

[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

[fluoritegalaxy]

Like to charge, reblog to cast.

[youcanstillwhistle]

I think the "pre" and "post" parts in "preposterous" should cancel each other out but everyone else seems to find my idea completely erous

[the-big-mood]

These two giant turtles have been fighting each other for more than 120 years.

According to the zoo, one turtle stole the other’s food 120 years ago, and since that day they became enemies.

There hasn’t been a single day where they don’t fight for 2–3 minutes😂

[the-haiku-bot]

There hasn’t been a

single day where they don’t fight

for 2–3 minutes😂

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[eebie]

The apple they fed to snow white wasnt poision at all it was just a red delicious

[thememedaddy]

[qillermeme]

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them

[specsthespectraldragon]

2000 pounds of Good Boy

[thecuckoohaslanded]

you get me

[thecuckoohaslanded]

I honestly expected like 5 notes, what HAPPENED here

[thecuckoohaslanded]

More tags on this ridiculous post:

[cn123017-deactivated20181204]

Wait, thats the 2nd biggest crocodile? Then what does the biggest one look like?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

That would be Cassius, a very old Saltwater crocodile who is estimated to be around 114 years old and lives at Marineland Melanesia in Green Island, Australia.  His official measurement is 5.48 meters, which makes him the largest in captivity currently.  Because Utan is only slightly smaller and much younger, (only in his 50s), he will likely break Cassius’ record eventually.  But for now, Cassius holds the title:

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Also, to prevent credit from getting buried on a separate reblog, I have been informed that the above image of the crocodile with the cartoon eyes and halo was made by @rashkah!  (And it is wonderful and I would like to thank him for its existence, because it perfectly captures my feelings about terrifying giant primordial reptiles.)

[sometimesihavequestions-deactiv]

@theonewhocheeps

[theonewhocheeps]

Holy fuck

[simon-newman]

As far as Brutus is concerned I was led to believe that he lost that arm when relatively young.

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

[thecuckoohaslanded]

*Crocodile Dundee voice*  Mate, that’s not Gustave:

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind:

[muchymozzarella]

Lolong! It means Gramps or Grandpa, because he’s a relic of an ancient world where crocs more massive than he was walked the earth. His body is on display somewhere right now though I forgot where.

[tyrantisterror]

Every time I see this post there’s more crocodiles.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

[madsciencepottery]

You have been visited by the twocumber. May you receive twofold luck in the coming days

[what-even-is-thiss]

Hello internet user whose entire concept of feminism comes from tiktok. In front of you are three ancient myths about women. You have five minutes to figure out which one of them was made up in the 1970s. If you choose wrong, you will be ripped to pieces by Maenads.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Okay since everyone wants the test, instead of giving you three myths here’s several myths. One of them is a real Greek myth with sources of it from ancient times and the rest of them are fake. One of the misconceptions was specifically invented in the 70s.

1. In every version of the myth, Medusa is born a human and Athena turns her into a monster

2. Hestia, goddess of the hearth and family, willingly gave up her place as the 12th Olympian to make room for Dionysus

3. Persephone chose Hades and wandered into the underworld of her own free will

4. Pandora didn’t know what was in her jar and unleashed evils on humanity by accident

5. During the voyage of the Argonauts the huntress Atalanta beat the hero Peleus the father of Achilles in a wrestling match

6. King Midas of Phrygia decided to give up his golden touch after turning his daughter to gold

7. Aphrodite was widely worshipped as a war goddess in Greece

[what-even-is-thiss]

lmao I promise you that only one of these is real.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Hiding the answers under a cut in case you wanna guess on your own.

#5 is the real one. You can find a reference to Atalanta wrestling Peleus at funeral games while on the journey of the Argo in The Library by Pseudo-Apollodorus.

This is an artistic depiction of the event from a piece of pottery currently being held in Staatlishe Museum Berlin.

The one invented in the 1970s was the one about Persephone going down to the underworld herself. This was invented by Charlene Spretnak in her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece and is often spread falsely as a real myth without crediting her.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Explanations for all of them, again under a cut.

Ovid invented the version where Medusa was originally a woman and Ovid hated most of the gods on principle. Also, he was Roman. The earliest versions of gorgon myths depict her and her sisters as being born as monsters.

There's no reference in ancient mythology to Hestia giving up her spot. In some regions she was one of the 12 Olympians, and in others Dionysus was on the list instead. The idea that she stepped down was invented by modern writers who like to have coherent logic in their stories.

Explained above. A bit of creative writing.

Pandora according to Hesiod was the first woman and perfectly aware of what was in her jar. She was created as part of the punishment for mankind. Human women didn't exist before Pandora according to Hesiod. But because Hesiod was misogynistic even by ancient Greek standards, writers and artists after the ancient Greek religion died out re-characterized her as stupid and curious rather than evil.

5. As explained above, real.

6. This version was invented by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the original myth, Midas just got hungry. No Daughter involved.

7. Aphrodite was worshiped as a war goddess mostly in Sparta and sort of Rome as Venus. Most Greeks weren't comfortable culturally with the idea of a goddess of love also being a goddess of war so in most of Greece she was just a goddess of love.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Guys this post isn't about neo-pagans and a lot of you are reading this as me hating new retellings or something. I have nothing against any of these stories. I just get frustrated when people "well actually" me about the "original" version of a myth when they have no sources for what they're saying. These stories not being exactly the way you thought they were doesn't have to mean anything. It's fine.

[untitledgoosegay]

In general: never trust a claim about a myth's real or original form/interpretation. With stories 2000 years old, or older, which were largely transmitted orally, there will always be countless versions specific to both places and times. Stories evolve! The ones for which we have attested written sources represent barely a fraction of the ones which actually existed and the commentaries written on them!

There is no secret true version of a myth. All we can do is analyze the versions of the myths we have according to their context.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"oldest known version" = correct

"original version" = incorrect, bad, do not say this

also don't assume that the oldest known version is the One True Version either

[sekai-no-koi]

Also why did OP start off with such a condescending line. like what does knowing the oldest versions of myths have to do with tik tok OR feminism 😑

[what-even-is-thiss]

Hello I’m right here and I can see what you’re saying. When I wrote this I’d been getting a lot of “um actually” messages that were from people who know way less about Greek mythology than I do who were spreading misinformation based on stuff made up by feminist retellings and from astrology websites and this entire exercise was mostly me venting my frustrations about people being so wildly uninformed about something I know a lot about.

I’ve had to reiterate multiple times that I’ve got no issue with the existence of retellings. What I’ve got an issue with is people claiming something was part of Ancient Greek religion when it very much wasn’t and I have an issue with people not giving credit to writers, being a writer myself. Charline Spretnak’s retellings she made for her at the time young daughters have been spread around as “the true version” of different myths without crediting her. Even in published works. I personally can’t enjoy “the totally real less sexist” versions of stories when you’re stealing a modern woman’s work without crediting her and ignoring the real culture of a real people who existed at the same time.

Ancient Greece was incredibly sexist. I understand the urge a lot of people have to soften that a bit in their minds but that doesn’t change anything about what actually happened. And now I feel like I have to defend myself for being frustrated about this when all I wanted to do over a year and a half ago was like vent some frustration and spread some knowledge that maybe 200 people would see. You never know which one of your rants will end up on the front page news when it comes to the internet. Or when. Somehow this post is blowing up again and finding every possible interpretation of my intentions under the sun while pretending I’m not here.

[depsidase]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[liberalsarecool]

You are a leach. Main St America was destroyed by Amazon. Competitors were systematically crushed. You bought the Washington Post and destroyed it for better billionaire PR.

[republicansaretheproblem]