Sagovindars boning

22 | f | anti-racist, anti-imperialist, lgbt-friendly etc. Unfortunately not an Otyg fan page.

[txttletale]

efforts towards a "positive vision of masculinity" or whatever are so funny because what these guys are trying to figure out is literally "what's a way of being a good person that's Not For Girls™"

[prokopetz]

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

[calloutnevvegas]

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

[revretch]

….. Didn’t know most of that

[iamthekaijuking]

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

[revretch]

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

[bogleech]

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

[assuming-dinosaur]

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

[is-the-post-reliable]

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’

[adaginy]

… @todaysbird ??

[todaysbird]

yeah they’re just like that

[juney-blues]

information that is also important

[ozempicofficial]

[enba-and-luka]

[tami-taylors-hair]

I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

[lullabyofbirdlxnd]

... honey you just described a predator LOL

[tami-taylors-hair]

No, I said what I said. But thank you for providing an example of how this topic has become insufferable on the internet.

[lullabyofbirdlxnd]

i am honestly burningly curious about how a 40 year old man who fucks around with college grads is not a predator

[tami-taylors-hair]

"College grad" is not a developmental stage, nor is it what I would describe a 25 year old as. I was 4 years out of college at 25. My mother had two children at 25. You can be a fucking congressman at 25.

There's a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn't helpful.

This is going to be my final response to any attempt at discourse. You're welcome to continue amongst yourselves.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

also sometimes a 40 year old and a 25 year old just weirdly find each and it's a perfectly normal relationship - like all human relationships are complex and situational, it's so rarely an either/or thing let alone just one thing only

if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he's a loser

if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn't some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that's just a relationship with an age difference

being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like

predator and groomer - two words that need to go up on the "can't use till you learn their meaning" shelf

[draculasstrawhat]

Something I find really stressful is this seemingly endless creep of infantilisation and removal of autonomy from young people. Like, not to be all “in my dayyyy” about it, but… at 16, my friends and I were expected to be broadly responsible for our presence in the world. Most of us had jobs, we navigated public transport, looked after younger siblings. We were expected to make informed decisions about our future careers and our sexual partners. We were allowed to leave education and work full time (this was not necessarily good thing - I think increasing the school leaving age to 18 was broadly for the best). Most of us were smoking, or drinking, or both - again, not good things, but just facts - and many of us were sexually active. Many of the AFAB people I knew were on the pill. Legally, we could live independently, or get married with adult consent.

Legally (I live in the UK) we were not minors, although we inhabited an odd legal limbo until we turned 18, and we were certainly not “children”. Intellectually, socially, though, we were considered (young) adults, or at the most “older teenagers.” We were expected to read mostly adult books (rather than middle grade or YA), watch the news/read papers, watch mostly adult television.

And I do think we a bit under-protected, under-supported, and in some cases - neglected and financially exploited - and I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it did make us feel, I think, in charge of our own lives, capable and competent to make decisions.

At 16-17 my parents knew they could leave me alone overnight/for a couple of nights, and I wouldn’t starve or burn the house down. I felt comfortable getting cross country trains on my own, or booking and staying at a hotel (yes, with my boyfriend.)

Then there was this… creeping of sentiments that we were all Too Young to trouble our heads about certain things. A lot of it was good - more stringent licensing laws, raising the school leaving age, raising the minimum smoking age(!) - but some of the broader cultural stuff was… a bit patronising? Eg, the introduction of “New Adult” as a category of books aimed at 18-25 year olds, the way cartoons and books written for the 9-12 age group were being marketed as for the 12-15 age group, referring to late teens as “children,” etc etc.

Then, in 2008, there was the big financial crash and suddenly my generation were (broadly) robbed of all the usual markers of adulthood and success, meaning that we got ‘stuck’ in the lifestyles and modes our late teens/early 20s. And suddenly, all the emphasis shifted from social and legal protections for late teens/ younger adults, to legal restrictions on their freedoms/rights, and strange philosophical protections on the emotional states.

So, OF COURSE a 23 year old can’t buy a beer without carrying an ID card, and a 17 year old can’t have a crush on a 16 year old, but also, because you’re *children* you don’t need to live like adults. So the UK government got to save money by saying “18 isn’t a proper adult,” then “20 isn’t a proper adult,” and “25 isn’t a proper adult” because it meant they could refuse to give single occupancy housing benefit rates to people of those ages (I think they’ve raised it over 30 now.) Or by refusing to clamp down on exploitative temporary/zero hours contracts - because they’re just “temp jobs for young people!”, or by raising the retirement age because “60 is far too young to retire. You’re not a real adult until 35.”

And it means the discursive environment is such that you can claim that a 21 year old trans person is too young to make their own medical decisions, or a 15 year old is too young to consent to the contraceptive pill.

Meanwhile, they are not offering additional *protections* to these newly infantilised adults. 18 year olds are still encouraged to saddle themselves with enormous educational debt, or allowed to have credit cards, or expected to pay rent, or no longer receive child benefits. You still have to *work*. In fact, in the States, they’re looking to removed child employment restrictions - but that’s fine, because 20 year olds are being protected from making their own medical decisions, and adults get to say which books their teen kids are reading in school, and kids aren’t allowed to change their name or what they wear without parental consent.

We can see what these people are doing to the rights of children - so why are we being so complacent in expanding the definition of ‘child’?

Regardless - 25 is VERY CLEARLY an adult. At 25 I was married, had two kids, an overdraft, rent to pay, and experience of living in the world for 6 years. I had more in common with someone of 40 than I did with someone of 15. Hell, at*20* I had more in common with someone of 40 than someone of 15. Any sexual or relationship decisions you make at 25 are your own to make.

Of course there are likely to be power imbalances in a 15 year age gap - which is why most 25 year olds don’t date 40somethings - but not actually necessarily. And yeah, a 40 year old who only dates 20somethings is a skeeze - just like a 30 year old who routinely ingratiates themselves with rich 80 year olds is a skeeze.

But if any young people are reading this (doubt it)… your rights are much, much more important than your protections.

Yes, young people should be protected, but if someone claims they’re protecting you while denying you access to personal autonomy, financial stability, intellectual curiosity, or sexual self-determination because you’re “too young” to need, or understand those things… be very suspicious of their motives.

And if you’re legally an adult, ask yourself why you don’t feel comfortable defining yourself in those terms.

[traycakes]

This thread is from 2023, and now with the Cass report we have seen the real, tangible danger that comes from infantilizing adults in their 20s.

[kimbureh]

the long reply above mentiones this, but I want to emphasize this: many western societies have lost their "rituals of maturity". Young adults don't get to buy a house, starting a family is a lot of stress if all adults in the household have to work fulltime, and it's almost impossible to find a job above minimum wage that offers career options. All of which are things which previous generations enjoyed more broadly, and which were seen as steps into adulthood.

Only a few decades ago, 90% of the people in the region where I live owned their own houses. Granted, they were often shitty ones, but they were their own. Today, not even 50% own the place they live in.

We've removed the milestones of adulthood, it's no wonder we increasingly infantilize adults. And the worst is, this does nothing to prevent real predators from preying on under-protected people! With the removal of the milestones of adulthood, we also removed a lot of the safety net previous generations could rely on.

[fozmeadows]

All of these additions are absolutely spot on, but there's one more thing I want to add, and that is to point out how the "a 40yo dating a 25yo is inherently predatory" type of age gap discourse increasingly treats predation, not as a conscious, specific behaviour, but as an ambient effect of being in proximity to someone younger. Because if, as it's so frequently argued, it's impossible for people of different ages to have anything meaningful in common, such that there's no legitimate grounds even for friendship between (say) a 25yo and a 40yo, let alone something romantic or sexual, then what's being implied is that either that everyone is at all times only a single interaction away from natively turning predator, or that predation is somehow natural, automatic, reflexive - neither of which is true. But believing that it is is incredibly fucking dangerous. Because if there's no good or safe or reasonable way for someone older to interact with someone younger outside of a strict workplace or familial relationship (and sometimes not even then), then what we're doing is saying that it's inherently unsafe or wrong for younger people to learn from older people, or for older people to mentor them, or for (say) twentysomethings and fiftysomethings to exist in the same spaces as equal adults. We're saying that an eighteen-year-old should feel bad and weird about hanging out with a two-years-younger friend they've known since infancy because it's inappropriate for minors and legal adults to be friends. (I truly wish this was a hypothetical example, but no, it's not: I have legitimately seen multiple accounts of teenagers getting stressed out about exactly this type of thing because of this discourse.) And by acting as if the age gap power imbalance can only ever go one way, we're also completely ignoring the reality of things like elder abuse or older people being scammed or exploited by younger people.

But beyond all this, if you assume all older people are inherently dangerous to younger people, you're leaving yourself horrifically vulnerable, not only because you're not putting any effort into learning what actual predatory behaviour looks like, but because age gaps are not the only fucking vector for predation or abuse. If you can't distinguish between a safe adult/older person and a suspicious adult/older person or between trustworthy behaviour and manipulative behaviour because you've trained yourself to screen categories rather than actions, not only will you miss out on many cool friendships, but you'll be vulnerable to exploitation if and when someone, be they older or not, eventually sneaks past your guard, because you won't know to recognise what they're doing. Yes, there are absolutely times when an age gap is, in and of itself, a massive red flag, but if you can't distinguish between "45yo man marrying 18yo girl he's known since she was 12 the very moment she's legal" and, say, "35yo divorcee marrying 50yo widower she met at an art show," or "19yo dating a 17yo from the next school over after meeting at a mutual friend's party," or even "22yo has an extremely fun consensual one night stand with the 38yo they met at the bar," then you're going to be very poorly placed to recognise any abusive dynamics that don't perfectly align with the optics you've internalised as being indistinguishable from abuse, because the optics and the abuse are two different things. The one might indicate the presence of the other, but it doesn't guarantee it, and you can certainly have the abuse without the optics. And particularly in the context of conservatives increasingly insisting that just existing as a queer or trans person around children is an inherently predatory act, it makes me feel absolutely insane, how quickly so many people have conceded to the exact same type of logic (that an older person just existing around a younger person for non-familial, non-work reasons is inherently suspicious), argued for the exact same reasons (think of the children!) without stopping to question it at all.

[hempseeeeds]

Also, for the 25-40 age Gap specifically, it is VERY plausible for both of them to have their first/only child be three years old at that time, without being an absurdly young or absurdly old parent, and to get close to the only other Single among their kid's classmates' parents.

[myfootyrthroat]

To jump back several reblogs, one thing I find interesting is how class ties in to who gets to be a 25 year old child. A "college grad" at 25 is not being considered mature yet, but from experience a 25 year old who has to go straight into the workforce is usually just an adult.

[junglejim4322]

90% of age gaps don’t matter when you’re a grown adult as long as you don’t have a repeated pattern of dating people barely legal. I would date someone 30 years older than me if I liked them who gaf

[junglejim4322]

This entire conversation is somehow 90% people infantilizing themselves and 10% actually people talking about the issue of men who never grow out of dating 18/19 year olds. No it is not a big deal when a 25 year old dates a 35 year old please get a grip

[junglejim4322]

Honestly if you’re in your mid twenties infantilizing yourself on this level maybe you shouldn’t be dating anyone

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Chimes with a thought I've had for a while, actually; sleep deprivation might mean I explain this badly, but:

What a red flag actually means: something here is an indicator of a potential problem (but might be fine with a reasonable explanation)

What people have now decided it means: abuse

I've lost count of the number of times I've now had to read variants of "My partner takes all my money and gives me back an allowance because he says it's a man's job to control finances, but he's racking up gambling debts" being met with "Wow this man is a walking red flag" no Becky that is abuse. That is not an indicator. He is an abuser. Call the police. We have lost the concept of a proxy: a thing that indicates a more important thing. And it's relevant to this conversation because I'm actually going to go out on a limb here:

With the obvious exception of paedophilia, age gaps themselves aren't a problem at all - they are a proxy for the actual harmful phenomenon. Hea me out, let me explain

The reason we don't like age gaps is because of the implied power dynamic. If one partner, usually male, is older than other - particularly if the other is still quite young - the risk is that what we're seeing is a worldly wise predator who is exploiting the lack of life experience of a young beautiful woman by mentally abusing her until she's no longer young and pretty enough to satisfy, at which point he'll move on to the next. There have been enough examples of this in human history. It's unfortunately not an uncommon pattern. Genders can also be diverse in this scenario

We can't necessarily see that dynamic from the outside. But we CAN see an inherent element of it: the ages of the people involved. So age becomes a proxy for the abuse. And, hey, it's often correct.

But here's the thing: the ages themselves are not causing harm.

The power dynamic is. The abuse is.

Plenty of age gap relationships are loving, healthy and steadfast. Two people met and genuinely fell in love regardless of the outer packaging, and have a relationship with all the highs and lows and challenges and rewards as any more traditional pairing. This happens all the time

Is the age gap a red flag? Sure! It indicates a potential issue.

Is it inherently abusive? Absolutely fucking not.

OP is right - we need to stop focusing just on the numbers and twisting the facts to fit by infantilising the younger partners, and start focusing on the actual harms. The DiCaprio Pattern of only dating under 24s repeatedly is itself a proxy, too, actually - but a much stronger one than the simple presence of an age gap.

(Even so, in DiCaprio's case, until any of his former partners come forward and describe him as abusive, actually, even that is up in the air - my personal interpretation, given how strong a pattern it is, is that he's a loser who views women as trophies (consciously or not). If any have come forward and I don't know about it, of course, fair enough. But those women were adults capable of making their own decisions, even if they might later come to regret it. And regretting poor decisions is part of life! That's how it goes, particularly with relationships. As long as they weren't abused, there's no biggie. And just as he was looking for young-and-beautiful, there's no way they weren't, on some level, looking for rich-and-famous; it goes both ways.)

Also, another element of this: I think a lot of modern extreme puritan discourse on this is actually ironically down to the age of those taking part. Up until your late 20s, ten years is actually a huge span of time to you, because in your own life you were in a completely different developmental phase ten years ago (teenager), and a completely different phase again ten years before that (child). That skews your sense of what a ten-year gap means. Whereas once you're in your 30s and beyond, ten years is like. Yeah I was an adult ten years ago, and I still am now. That's two adults. Who cares.

(Anyway I am hoping and praying I explained that well enough, and also that Tumblr's famous reading comprehension skills are solid enough to follow)

[batshit-auspol]

As a holdover from when churches used to run schools, many states in Australia legislate that the local church can come into schools to teach religion classes for an hour each week.

These 'scripture teacher' roles generally do not require any formal education training, and can be filled by just about any random off the street, which means that for one class a week Australian students are subjected to some of the most unhinged people on earth teaching them all kinds of made up stuff with zero supervision.

Aussies: This is a free thread to reply with the stories of the funniest things your scripture teachers said or did when you were a kid.

[a-girl-with-sparkling-lies]

Ours always gave us Christian themed crosswords that she made herself, but she could never format them properly for some reasons so some boxes had two letters in them, and some had little doodles of flowers or crosses to fill gaps (????). She also told us candy canes were shaped that way because they are a J for Jesus (this is, shockingly, not true), and easter eggs are actually not eggs but a chocolate representation of the stone rolled in front of Jesus' tomb (this is also, SHOCKINGLY, not true)

[batshit-auspol]

This is exactly the kind of unhinged educational material we're talking about!

Also shoutout to this gold in the tags:

And we forgot, "having to sit in silence on your own for an hour" was up until recently the most common alternative if your parents opted you out of the dumpster fire:

Keep em coming!

[batshit-auspol]

Okay this has very much broken containment outside of Aussie tumblr, but we've read back through the *hundreds* of amazing replies and here are a handful of the most Batshit so far:

Pretty sure this one is a legit hate crime:

And the absolute pinacle:

[dzamie]

I am worried for the Christians.

[studentofetherium]

christian missionary work is a millennias-long social experiment to find out what the dumbest thing someone could possibly do is

[studentofetherium]

reading about foreigners detained in North Korea, and a solid 40% of them were just missionaries

[studentofetherium]

"it's my god-given right and duty to force my religion into these people, whether they want it or not" is an attitude which has led to many millions of atrocities over the millennia, but it's also led people to do things like travel to They Kill You Here Island (you'll never guess what happened)

[prokopetz]

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[lytefoot]

Previous tags pass peer review:

#the catholic church: *collects guys who are fond of a) studying b) chanting and c) jobs where you get to wear a big hat*#the guys: *immediately start being wizards*#the catholic church: *surprised marginalia cat face*

[brofligate]

I'm watching Pingu right now and wow how did I forget that Pingu once tried to recreate the Tower of Babel.

[brofligate]

Would love to hear the Vatican's opinions on this.

[sapper-in-the-wire-old]

they are animals, and thus free of sin. In fact, doctrinally, animals give glory to God merely by existing so. Pingu’s fine

[brofligate]

But by creating a tower tall enough to reach God's kingdom, would they achieve sin?

[oblivionofthewise-deactivated20]

"At one famous trial in Autun, France, in 1522, some rats were charged with feloniously eating and wantonly destroying the province's barley crop and so were ordered to appear in court. “ if rats can commit crimes, penguins can sin

[sapper-in-the-wire-old]

That’s French courts though. France is a perversion of every law, moral, or truth known to man or heaven.

[doggendoodle]

[chirmartir]

CH

[rederiswrites]

Okay two things

1) every time I see something like this, or photos of wild unrealistic landscapes that really exist, or spectacular architecture, whatever it is, I think again that when we write fantasy, we NERF REALITY. That is, here's some dude with a special interest and a brain that somehow lacks basic self preservation mechanisms, and he's out here looking like a super hero. Regular humans are capable of things we seem super human. Real landscapes are more fantastical than our fantasies. Reality is more fantastical than our fantasies.

2) how the fuck did he not kick out any windows that's the most impressive part of the whole video.

[jackhawksmoor]

this man is his own zombie apocalypse team, adding anyone else would just slow him down

[rj-abacura]

So as someone who used to teach parkour back in the day, this dude isn’t just talented. His technique is amazing.

It’s not just about not kicking out windows. Controlling how you land is about shock absorption, about minimizing the strain on your joints. It also makes you quieter when you move. A good landing should be as silent as possible, because loud landings hurt. That’s the foundation of everything else you do in parkour. So by the time you’re climbing buildings, if you’re breaking windows it means you don’t have enough control to land safely and it’s time to go back to your ground basics.

[heedra]

really losing my patience for any 'feminist' statement to the tune of 'we need feminism because women fill a fundamentally different and necessary role than men and will be better at doing x y or z'. like actually i think we need feminism because it is an unbearable death of the spirit by inches to exist in a world where you are not seen as a fully realized human being because of a single cultural determination, and because a world that enshrines such things creates systems that are fundamentally sick to the core

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[leidensygdom]

i spent 20 minutes to edit this meme which is great proof of how im feeling rn

[luna-azzurra]

If you're a new writer and you're asking yourself "is this too personal, is this too much, will people think this is weird" that feeling is the exact location of your actual voice. The stuff that makes you want to close the laptop is the stuff nobody else could write. The safe version is always worse. Always. I have never once read something and thought "this would have been better if it was a little less honest." go further. It's always go further.

[fairycosmos]

you literally have to unironically listen to some shit like party rock anthem so you don’t kill yourself

[shamebats]

The (European) sun is a deadly laser, stay safe everyone

[unfuckablebogtroll]

☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

It’s not the heat. It very literally is the sun.

[finarko]

worst heat i ever experienced was in... Siberia.