rebeccaphilana

[lilmamabeyellin]

[itscoldinwonderland]

Different people respond better to different types of therapy, and most therapist will do multiple types of therapy with their patients.

CBT - Most common type of therapy because it works well for all mental health problems.

ACT - Especially helpful for treating anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, OCD, psychosis and substance abuse.

DBT - Specifically created for BPD. This type of therapy works really well for personality disorders, PTSD, eating disorders, substance abuse and impulsive control disorders.

Interpersonal therapy - Created to treat major depressive disorder but is now also used for other depressive and mood disorders.

There are lots of other types of therapy too (:

[tiiiiiired]

Gonna add my two cents as a research psychologist:

CBT does NOT work well if the individual has a history of being emotionally manipulated or gaslit, nor does it work well when the individual is working through traumas that have been used against them or disbelieved. CBT can feel like gaslighting, toxic positivity, denial of the seriousness of a situation, or emotional manipulation if not done very carefully. As such, it might be best to avoid it and find something else if you have a history of problems with the aforementioned experiences.

ACT also works REALLY WELL for individuals coping with sudden and "devastating" changes! It's often adapted for use by disability specific clinics to help newly diagnosed patients learn to cope with the limitations on their environments. People with disabilities (PWDs) tend to feel pressured to not express their disability related distress around non-PWDs and, as such, tend to see those feelings as shameful. There's a lot of "I should be more grateful" or "it's not as bad as it could be" feelings around disability as a result of this pressure and ACT is great for undoing them!

DBT is generally amazing for stress disorders and preventing stress disorder symptomatology in at risk populations. It teaches you stress tolerance skills and how best to avoid or diminish conflicts, allowing you to avoid the sorts of environmental triggers that commonly worsen stress disorder symptoms.

Interpersonal therapy is also great for neurodivergent folks, victims of childhood emotional abuse, and children of parents with untreated/unmanaged psychiatric disorders. Essentially, if you grew up with difficulty interacting effectively with and relating to others, interpersonal therapy can help you understand why and change those interactions in the future. Healthier relationships and social interactions are a great way to break the cycle of abuse for those of us raised by parents who were emotionally abusive and/or had untreated mental illnesses.

Since no one has mentioned it on this post, I'd like to add that most therapists these days practice a sort of integrative therapy. They'll take what they find most effective from each type of therapy for each individual problem, and piece together something a little more tailor made for their patients. This is part of why seeing an actual therapist is so important. Not every aspect of the aforementioned therapies will be relevant to every problem. Some aspects may even be harmful to handling some problems. The therapist is trained to pick out these things and adjust accordingly, unlike the average self help book or online resource. But knowing the types of therapies available and what you want to get from therapy is an immense part of finding a therapist that will suit your needs, so please research things carefully and think over what you need before selecting one!

Go to therapy, y'all!

[ithelpstodream]

“it’s just a parking lot”

exactly. there’s nothing there. not a statue. not a plaque. nothing.

[irishfino]

[drives over hitler’s death site]

[nichtschwert]

Bloody amazing.

And you know what’s right next to it?

That’s right, the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden, which translates to the Memorial for the murdered jews.

So if you wanna go have a look at the monument commemorating the victims of Hitler’s regime, you can park your car right on the spot he died and walk there.

Makes ya think, doesn’t it?

[bucketslutz]

Germany: *has a literal parking lot over Hitler’s death site and has the memorial for the murdered Jews right next to it*

America: *has statues and museums dedicated to people who believed slavery was so amazing and good they decided to make their own country and murder anyone who disagreed*

[imagesofperfection]

Women, the streets near the car park are named after:

Gertrud Kolmar - German Jewish poet murdered in Auschwitz

Hannah Arendt - famous German Jewish philosopher and author, her works on totalitarianism, authority and the nature of power, who fled Nazi Germany in 1933

Cora Berliner - German Jewish economist and social scientist murdered in Trostinets extermination camp

[withywindlesdaughter]

reblog this forever 

[garlic-slut]

It’s funny too cause people argue that you “can’t erase history” and that’s true. You can, however; choose how you commemorate it.

[bundibird]

☝️☝️☝️☝️📢📢📢📢

[madronasky]

This needs to be taught in school in the US

[dedhood]

ruth bader ginsburg lived 87 fucking long years, helped secure abortion rights, marriage equality, and immigration rights among loads of other things.

remember her legacy as both a supreme court justice, as an advocate and icon in equality movements, and as the woman who wouldn’t take no shit from donald trump, sticking through multiple battles with cancer to preserve our rights.

may her memory be a blessing. honor her legacy.

[bustedbernie]

[politishaun-deactivated20230409]

Okay. That was the one. That did it. Here come the tears.

[hachama]

This is the one that did me in:

“She was ours, she did her best, she stayed as long as she could.”

[alittledropofheaven]

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

She/her also personally fought against transwomen in prison seeking gender affirmation surgery…

[alex51324]

Here’s an article that gives more details on the story, and what Harris said about it.  The key points:

It was the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation that refused the surgery to the inmates.  When the inmates fought the policy in court, as Attorney General of California, it was Harris’s job to represent the Department.  Yes, she did it, but it wasn’t something she decided on her own to do.  (Also, not for nothing, the inmates won the case.)

Her characterization of the episode:   “On that issue I will tell you I vehemently disagree and in fact worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved,” Harris said.

A policy now exists for inmates to receive transition-related care in California prisons (although apparently the DoC isn’t doing a great job of holding up its end of the bargain*–quelle surprise).  

(*For the record, Harris finished her time as AG and became a Senator shortly after this agreement was reached, so it’s someone else’s job now to enforce it.) 

The thing to keep in mind here is that, as Attorney General, Kamala Harris couldn’t wave her hand and have everything in the entire California Department of Justice go exactly as she wanted it–and she won’t be able to as Vice President, either.  We currently have a president who thinks that’s how it works, and we’re damned lucky he’s wrong.  

She had (and will have to) work with large number of people who hold different views.  (Another article I read said that the California Department of Justice, which she ran as AG, employs about 4,800 people–that’s a lot of different views.)  If she had refused to back the Department of Corrections in their case, she would have alienated people whose cooperation she needed to be able to rely on.  (If she even had the option of not backing them and staying AG–I’m not sure how it works, exactly.)  Even people who agreed with her about the specific matter might have disapproved of her hanging her subordinates out to dry.  (Another thing our current president does constantly–notice how Harris isn’t saying that the person in her office who actually wrote these briefs is a bad guy that she barely knew.)

So here’s what actually happened when Kamala Harris “fought against transwomen in prison seeking gender affirmation surgery”:

The Department of Corrections had a policy denying gender-affirmation surgery to inmates.  

Two inmates fought that policy in court.

Harris defended that policy in court (or, more accurately, was the supervisor of the person who did so–but the legal documents went out under her signature, and she takes responsibility for their content).

Harris also worked to change the policy.  

If you’ve had a job, you’ve probably been in the position of having to carry out a policy that you don’t agree with.  Your choices are to quit your job in protest or stay and argue that the policy should change.  If you pick option B, you still have to follow the policy while you’re working to change it–again, just about the only person in the world who doesn’t know this is Donald J. Trump, because he’s never had a real job where he answered to anybody.  

What this incident shows is that Kamala Harris is accustomed to working in a system where she doesn’t always get her own way, and that she knows how to lose the battle to win the war.  As VP, she’s going to need those skills–especially if the Republicans keep the Senate, but even if the Democrats sweep everything in November, we’re notoriously bad at all pulling in the same direction.  We’ve had about enough of the “I’m taking my ball and going home” style of leadership.  

[armeleia]

This.

I get it, I really do - but Trump has literally stripped away rights from trans kids and fucked the careers of trans people in the military. Pence believes in conversion therapy.

We can remember and discuss these issues, but at the end of the day, Trump/Pence is the greater evil and we need to vote in a unified way to get them out of office because the second term would be so much worse. Don’t vote independent, just suck it up and recognize that we’re not gonna get a perfect candidate ever.

Voting Trump is a face full of glass shards, and a vote for an independent is a vote for Trump. This isn’t complicated.

[animatedamerican]

I had not seen this explanation, and I’m reblogging it because I probably have followers who haven’t either.

[dduane]

Same.

[silentauroriamthereal]

I don’t know who wrote this or why, but this writing is just *chef’s kiss*

**Editing to add: I now know that this was said by Lindy West in her book The Witches are Coming. Good to know! 

[loveismyrevolution]

This is gold!!!

[hellomrelevard]

And that is why the GOP doesn’t care about working class citizens getting stimulus checks, rent assistance, or eviction freezes.

[official-arnie-nutts]

yep.

[labelleizzy]

This is basic math I can't believe I missed this. GODDAMMIT YOU FUCKIN' FASCISTS

[bisexualbaker]

[Image transcript follows]

Eviction = No Address No Address = No Vote

Take all the time you need.

[Capslock translation: Goddammit you fuckin’ fascists!]

[yellowbloods-deactivated2021051]

you do NOT need a traditional residence to vote in america, just a way for someone to locate a place you can reliably be found, but you do need to provide an address where you can receive mail. you can list a homeless shelter, a friend's or relative's house, but not a P.O. box.

[ohnoitsmycircus]

☝️☝️☝️

[linguaphile]

Thing I’ve been mulling over for a while: some really good YA fantasy novels of my childhood (Young Wizards - no one who knows me is surprised by this) really emphatically gave me tools to understand and dismantle my own “white supremacist delusion,” as Sonya Renee Taylor puts it. The construction of the cosmos in these books formed my worldview at a really early age. They have helped me, decades later, to believe deeply and truly in both my own ability to support and uphold Evil in all of its guises, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘nice’ I may inherently see myself to be - and my own power to dismantle Evil in all its guises, within myself, as well as in the world beyond myself.

I was watching this IG live video where Taylor powerfully explains how important it is to shift from seeing whiteness as something intrinsically ours to possess rather than as the result of a dehumanizing system that we can - and in fact are ethically called upon to - uproot. I understand Taylor to be saying that I, as a person assigned power by whiteness, have a duty to continually identify and reject the delusions of whiteness starting with myself. 

There’s an image Taylor uses, in this video, of searching inside of yourself for the spaces where this toxic ideology of whiteness has taken hold - and to find and uproot it. And immediately I saw a climactic moment from High Wizardry, one where Dairine has a realization about how intimately entropy has its hold upon her:

She stopped, as the answer rushed into her mind from the manual. Where entropy is, it said, there its creator also is, either directly or indirectly…

I’m a product of this universe, after all, she had said to the mobiles. It’s in me too…

Her heart turned over inside her as she came to know her enemy. Not a Darth Vader, striding in with a blood-burning light-sabre, not something outside to battle and cast down, but inside. Inside herself. Where it had always been, hiding, growing, waiting until the darkness was complete and its own darkness not noticeable any more. Her Enemy was wearing her clothes, and her heart, and there was only one way to get rid of It…

She was terrified. Yet this was the great thing, the thing that mattered […]

I’d hazard a guess that many of us have a primary conditioning to see evil precisely as “something outside to battle and cast down.” I say this about evil in general; I think it’s probably extra true for the ways that white people approach the evil of white supremacist delusion. I see it a lot with the teenagers that I now teach: the actively anti-racist white kids who really want to march, to have hard conversations with other people, to change laws, to show up at city hall meetings…and who don’t understand that, while those are all good and important things to be doing, if they are all you are doing, they will not be enough. They are all ways of seeing the problem as “something outside to battle and cast down” instead of as something that is LITERALLY “wearing [your] clothes, and [your] heart.”

The good news - also from High Wizardry - is the possibility of full and complete liberation on the other side of the recognition, and the reckoning that follows. The snatches of it glimpsed within this life, the work of widening the ground… The belief (which Duane’s world offered me, and which my Christianity never did) that even the one who dreamed Evil into being can be liberated and redeemed from it…and that that, and no less, is the scope of the work. 

(YW also taught me, perhaps most importantly of all, that this work is collective and done best when part of an ever-widening family / network / team.)

[whitepeopletwitter]

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

^ SO MUCH TRUTH

[specialagentace]

No, but you can misinform. You can with-hold information like the lag time it takes for ballots to get in. You can avoid posting any information at all about how to do mail-in voting. You can discourage it. You can smear campaign it. And you can make it very inconvenient.

Guys listen - REGISTER and CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION FREQUENTLY

Please note that Absentee and Mail-in Voting are being impacted by COVID 19. Go HERE to do some reading about Early and Absentee Voting.

Every state’s rulings/ regulations on Mail-in Voting are different. Check HERE for what’s happening in  YOUR state.

Some states are sending out absentee / mail in ballots automatically. MOST aren’t.  You need to be registered and you have to REQUEST one and the stipulations for requesting one are different for each state. So check yours for the requirements.

If you are voting by mail-in ballot please be aware that the deadlines for getting those votes in are BEFORE NOVEMBER!!

Don’t sleep on this. It’s coming up faster than you think and I can GUARANTEE YOU that the conservative right-wing pro-dumpster-fire people are going to do whatever it takes to get as many votes in as possible.

The opposition VASTLY outnumbers them, but that only matters if we DO SOMETHING.

[yawpyawp]

PLEASE REMEMBER TO ALLOW TWO WEEKS TO MAIL IN YOUR BALLOT

THINK OF OCTOBER 20TH AS ELECTION DAY THIS YEAR!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Feathers: Nice and Warm

Fancier Feathers: Hella Sexy

Fanciest Feathers: Produce Kickass Lift

Microraptor:

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Look I know this is a shit post fuelled by staying up too late on my phone and an extended Gd-awful cold from hell but there are absolutely Tons of Large Weird Birds in the Cenozoic and it’s 100% possible to make an awesomebro-style documentary just about dead birds and people who have limited Cenozoic Bird coverage to just Gastornis and Terror Birds are

Cowards

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Alright it’s a new day and I’m still ridiculously ill so I’m back with some great candidates for your Awesomebroy Documentaray on Cenozoic Birds and how Freaking Weird They Are

I’m going to get terror birds out of the way

(by @quetzalcuetzpalin-art​) 

These guys were large, flightless predatory birds with small wings that lived from the end of the Paleocene to the beginning of the Pleistocene in South America (and later on in North America). You could literally pick any time to have these guys running around and wreaking havoc. You can EVEN HAVE THEM FEEDING ON OTHER BIRDS like this Strong!Rhea below

(by @thewoodparable​) 

But Terror Birds aren’t the only big weirdos. They have these close cousins, the Bathornithids - 

(By @paleoart​)

They are actually closely related to Terror Birds but they lived in North America from the Eocene to the Miocene, and they were also large, long-legged predators of other food. The main difference is basically range and the fact that they had longer wings - most of them were still flightless but some of them could still fly which is terrifying 

While I’ve got you here with Cariamiformes aka Seriemas and their weird-ass dead relatives we also have things like Strigogyps and Idiornis which were essentially like modern seriemas but smaller and all over the place during the Paleogene, and also mother-fucking qianshanornis that had a fucking SICKLE CLAW LIKE A DROMAOESAURID RAPTOR this was basically a PALEOCENE DROMAEOSAUR except a Neornithine bird 

this illustration by Apokryltaros doesn’t do it justice but I work with what I’ve got 

If Seriemas and their compendium of terrifying dead cousins don’t tickle your fancy just fucking wait I’ve got more 

The Gruiformes aka Crakes Cranes and Rails and shit were weirdly morphologically diverse back in the day and they did more than Wade in the Water

Eogrus and its relatives were essentially Crane Ostriches they also only had two toes and were probably built mainly for running they lived from the Eocene to the Pliocene in Eurasia and all I have to work with again is bad wikipedia illustrations but here it is the freaking weirdo 

By Tim Morris

But wait! There’s also the Adzebill!!!!! 

By Nobu Tamura

These were ALSO large flightless relatives of modern cranes and they were JUST in New Zealand from the Miocene to RECENT TIMES aka the Holocene and they had long pointy beaks so they could hunt for small animals like lizards and tuatara and OTHER BIRDS in their habitat and they WEREN’T the only large birds in New Zealand because New Zealand is essentially DINOSAUR LAND 2: THE FEATHERING cause it was isolated from mammals apart from bats until humans showed up and ruined everything so we have 

By Jack Wood

Haast’s Eagle, one of th elargest known flying birds that hunted

Freaking Moa, the large flightless ratites that basically were the Charismatic Megafaunal Herbivores of New Zealand and they lost their wings and looked so trippy but also so cool and they were HUNTED ON BY GIANT EAGLES

By John Megahan

I just. Have some. Some important. Questions. WHY THE FUCK HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS MAGICAL LAND IN A MAJOR DOCUMENTARY. There were also a bunch of really cool other birds in New Zealand that are pretty unique to New Zealand (and some of them are still around today like New Zealand Wrens and The Kakapo!) but I’m trying to stick to charismatic megafauna type shit for this list the whole point is that you can make an AWESOMEBROY documentary JUST ABOUT CENOZOIC BIRDS very easily anyway

Speaking of large flightless ratites we also have the Elephant Bird from Madagascar which I NEVER SEE TALKED ABOUT except for like the context of “largest bird” which for the record it might not be I don’t have a good skeleton of it but there were lots of different kinds of Elephant Birds in Madagascar and they were basically the large herbivores of the area doing their thing and There is ALSO Eremopezus which was a large flightless bird from the end of the Eocene so an EARLY ONE and we have NO IDEA what kind of ratites it was closely related to or even if it IS a ratite and it would have been a ridiculously large bird and STAY TUNED FOR MORE OF THAT MYSTERY

There are also, of course, ratites in the Cenozoic - such as the Emuary, which is literally just an early relative of both Emus and Cassowaries thats a cross between the two, lots of extinct Ostrich and Rhea relatives - like the Strong!Rhea above and of course various ostriches that spread all over the Eastern Hemisphere, and the Lithornithids!

By @thewoodparable​

LITHORNITHIDS 👏DESERVE 👏MORE 👏PRESS 👏 THEY 👏WERE 👏PERCHING 👏RATITE-COUSINS 👏THAT FLEW AND SORED 👏ALL OVER THE EARLY PALEOGENE 👏👏👏👏👏👏I’M VERY BITTER 

SPEAKING of Bitterns and their relatives (ha ha I’m hilarious) we DO HAVE dead shoebill relatives from Egypt called GOLIATHIA and there are also GIANT. IBISES. GIANT IBISES. FLIGHTLESS, GIANT IBISES. Called the Jamaican Ibis. 

THEY WOULD SWING THEIR CLUBS AROUND LIKE CLUBS IN ORDER TO FIGHT like WHAT THE HELL image taken from here http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/04/xenicibis-the-extinct-ibis-that-swung-its-wings-like-clubs/

And I hear you, by this point you might be saying “but like, the hallmark of any discussion of Cenozoic fauna is talking about the evolution of whales which is a Trip and there isn’t an analogous thing in birds is there” and I hear you. I hear. you. My counterpoint is: the evolution of PENGUINS

By Nobu Tamura

THEY WENT FROM FLIGHTED SMALL BIRDS TO LOON-LIKE-THINGS (note: penguins are NOT CLOSELY RELATED TO LOONS) to WEIRD LARGE BIRDS WITH LONG SHARP BEAKS GOOD FOR STABBING - 

By @quetzalcuetzpalin-art​ 

WE EVEN KNOW THE COLOR OF SOME OF THEM (by Apokryltaros) 

AND. THEY. GOT. FUCKING. H U G E (size comparison by Discott) 

They aren’t the only dead birds that got to look like that though. There were other very aquatic birds back in the day - like the relatives of modern Boobies from Japan, the Plotopterids - they lived rom the Eocene to the Miocene, they were huge, and they were the “Northern Hemisphere’s Penguins” 

By Nobu Tamura

And of course we can’t forget the Great Auk which is literally named Pinguinus and needs No Introduction

By Mike Pennington

Okay while we’re on the subject of large aquatic birds HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE SWIMMING FLAMINGOS 

By Ghedoghedo

THESE GUYS WERE BIG. THESE GUYS WERE LONG. THESE GUYS WERE FREAKY LOOKING. THESE GUYS HAD SHARP STABBY BEAKS. AND THEY LIVED FROM THE OLIGOCENE TO THE PLIOCENE AND ARE A WEALTH OF WEIRD FREAKINESS AND MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT I DON’T HAVE A RECONSTRUCTION FOR YOU. 

Oh wait while we’re talking about flamingos have I MENTIONED THE DUCKS THAT EVOLVED TO BE WEIRD FLAMINGO-MIMICS 

THIS IS TEVIORNIS (by @thewoodparable​) FROM THE CRETACEOUS BUT IN THE PALEOGENE THEY GOT EVEN WEIRDER AND SKINNIER AND FLAMINGO-Y-ER BUT WITH DUCK BILLS INSTEAD OF THE HOOK THINGS OF FLAMINGOS AND THEY MIGHT HAVE LIVED ALL THE WAY UNTIL THE OLIGOCENE - 

By @paleoart​

THIS IS WILARU ITS FROM AUSTRALIA AND IT WAS MORE TERRESTRIAL AND VERY STRONG/ROBUST IT WAS A BIG BOY 

Okay, okay. I know what you’re thinking. You heard me mention Ducks and you think I’m holding out on you. Fine. Fine. I have neglected to mention the only reasonably famous Cenozoic Bird. 

By @quetzalcuetzpalin-art​

Yes, there’s Gastornis. And while I probably would say “nope, we don’t need that, it’s been in everything,” I will acknowledge that to my knowledge it has never been represented as it was IN LIFE. We USED to think these weirdos were large predatory birds in their habitats like the Terror Birds would one day be. 

TURNS OUT WE WERE WRONG. 

Gastornis and its relatives were actually HERBIVORES. Giant, flightless, convergent-on-PARROTS-HERBIVORES. They would USE THEIR GIANT BEAKS TO BREAK OPEN FRUIT. THEY WERE WEIRD CASSOWARY-PARROT-DUCKS and SHOW THEM THEIR PROPER RESPECT. 

They also weren’t the only LARGE FLIGHTLESS DUCK THINGS 

By Nobu Tamura

DROMORNIS AND ITS RELATIVES may or may not be closely related to Gastornis we don’t actually know and they were Australian and Huge and they lived from the Oligocene to the Pleistocene and they were ALSO herbivores and they ALSO had tiny wings and they were ALSO huge and there were more of them than there were of Gastornis and they ALSO were probably like parrots in cracking open fruit and other things with their huge beaks and even though they were fairly robust they could still run fast using the power of BRUTE STRENGTH 

BRUTE STRENGTH RUNNING 

Also let us PLEASE not forget the gaggle of Quaternary-period Large Flightless Goose-like Ducks from Hawai’i because these guys were AWESOME, WEIRD and in a lot of ways very cute and worth mentioning. They also had fun names like Small-Billed Moa-Nalo, Ptaiochen - 

And Thambetochen - 

And my personal favorite, the Turtle-Jawed Moa-Nalo, which not only is adorable, but has an absolutely ridiculous genus name - Chelychelynechen

like

why 

All illustrations of these weirdos are by Apokryltaros

And in the realm of waterfowl, ALSO don’t forget that there was an Island off the coast of Italy with TINY ELEPHANTS but more importantly GIANT SWANS OF DOOM THAT WOULDN’T HAVE EATEN THEM BUT WOULD HAVE CHASED THEM AWAY BECAUSE, LIKE ALL SWANS, THEY WERE ASSHOLES 

By @paleoart​

Speaking of giant things that could fly, have I mentioned the Teratorns?

By @paleoart​

The teratorns were relatives of New World Vultures aka things like Condors; they lived in North and South America from the Oligocene to the Pleistocene (so you can absolutely have a Terror Bird eating the carcass of a Rhea while a Teratorn circles overhead looking for nibbles) and they were huge, soaring animals with impossibly large wingspans and we have tons of fossils of these guys including from the LA BREA TAR PITS so there’s THAT for charismatic localities 

By Nobu Tamura; TERATORNS 

By the way there are a lot of birds from La Brea not just Teratorns there are tuns of Eagles and Vultures (including Old World Vultures which were in the New World until humans got there basically so that’s an interesting Thought) and Ducks and Sea Birds and Giant Storks - 

By Ellen 

And pigeons and Caracaras and turkeys and songbirds and woodpeckers and grebes and egrets and cranes and owls - 

By Apokryltaros 

OH CRAP OWLS 

OWLS

O W L S you guys 

First off I find it very important to note that we actually have a halfway decent evolutionary sequence for owls 

By Ghedoghedo

but BEYOND THAT we have the RIDICULOUS STILT HOWLS that were the largest owls to ever exist and they were probably flightless and they lived in places like Cuba and they had long legs and were very strong and they probably could run around like maniacs and they were basically convergent on seriemas? I’d say? 

By  Apokryltaros 

Like what the fuck. What the. Fuck. Fucccck. Fuck. 

While I have you here with birds of prey hav eyou heard of the Flexiraptor? 

By Anne Musser, from https://australianmuseum.net.au/pengana-robertbolesi

The Flexiraptor, or Pengana, is basically a cross between a Secretary Bird and a Caracara (though it’s most closely related to thinks like Eagles and Hawks) from Australia in the Miocene (actually, it’s from Riversleigh, which has lots of other really good birds like early modern-ish parrots and passerines and stuff) and it had feet that were as flexible as like, human hands, which let them reach into holes and crevices to grab prey, which is freaking awesome, go Flexiraptor 

 Also, may I remind you that the earliest parrots were birds of prey

PARROTS OF PREY

By @thewoodparable

These birds were small but had parrot feet and beaks built for grabbing other animals and CRONCHing them. PARROTS OF PREY.

Finally. The thing you’ve all been waiting for. The birds that are a CRIME that I’ve never seen them in a single documentary thing and as far as I’m aware the only attempt to represent them in media has been in fucking Ark: Survival Evolved. 

The Pseudotoothed Birds. 

By Didier Descouens

ARGHHHHH WHY HAVE THESE NEVER BEEN SHOWN IN ANYTHING 

PSEUDOTOOTHED BIRDS WERE RIDICULOUSLY COMMON BIRDS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE CENOZOIC

THEY ONLY WENT EXTINCT RECENTLY 

THEIR MOUTHS LOOK LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A HORROR FILM 

By @thewoodparable

LIKE HOLY HELL

We have NO IDEA what these guys were related to, they were most definitely sea-birds though but they might be closely related to ducks or they might be closely related to modern seabirds we really just don’t know, and they were everywhere - North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, New Zzealand, EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE AND EVERYWHEN. they only went extinct 2.5 MILLION YEARS AGO. They also had RIDICULOUSLY LONG WINGS 

By Ryan Somma

THEY WERE ALSO SOME OF THE LARGEST FLYING BIRDS WE KNOW OF

FREAKING. HUGE. SOARING. MONSTROSITIES OF TERROR. 

By El Fosilmaníaco

Just. Just picture. You’re an early Hominid. On the beaches of Africa. Staring out at the sea. And you see a bird. That looks like a normal seagull or something. Just normal. And then you look closer. 

By Jaime A. Headden

AND YOU SEE THE DEMON SHARP PROJECTIONS OF THE BEAK THAT TO YOUR LESS MODERN BRAIN WOULD HAVE LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE TEETH 

YOU RUN

YOU FUCKING RUN 

For FUCKS sake. WHY. They used the teeth to snag fish but WHY. 

And, of course, there were lots of paleo environments with lots of different types of birds showing how they diversified and first evolved and what kinds of birds there are - the Messel Pit, Fur Formation, and Green River Formations all have LOTS of birds and are great windows into the Eocene Radiation of birds. 

And of COURSE there are a lot of SMALL BIRDS that are really interesting and show how birds diversified during the Cenozoic and they’re really cool but THE POINT OF THIS POST IS THAT THERE ARE A SHITTON OF 

CHARISMATIC AVIAN MEGAFAUNA 

and ANYONE WHO LIMITS THEMSELVES TO GASTORNIS AND TERROR BIRDS when talking about birds in the Cenozoic 

IS 

A

COWARD

thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

If I missed anything let me know because not only do these things not get the coverage they deserve in popular representation they also have fucking terrible online resources and thank g-d Gerald Mayr exists because without him we’d all be lost

[taggthewanderer]

I do actually remember watching one documentary that had the Haast’s eagle actually show up, the third episode of Monsters We Met. (It was also the first time I’d heard of them existing before.)

[epithanyrae]

@elodieunderglass

[elodieunderglass]

awww, I do love a good terror bird. Thanks for tagging me!

[silvercanuck]

How about we give you the funding to do the research, and you make a damn good documentary, please call it something good.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Honestly @craycatfish that’s my dream and I wish it could come true

[heliophile-oxon]

[opus72-deactivated20191003]

@ddooyoung

[ladybessyboo]

Hey friend. Do you need some cute dog pics in your life? Of course you do.

THEY’RE GOOD DOGS BRENT

h*ckin good dogs.

Co-created with @platinumvampyr. Made for CherryIce for @festivids 2017.

Password: 13/10

See notes, download a copy, & leave feedback @ AO3.

[caffeinatedcraziness]

For all American grad students who get tuition waivers.

This is extremely important for you to be aware of. Please spread the word.

Source: Twitter

[librariansofshield]

YIVO Announces Discovery of 170,000 Lost Jewish Documents Thought to Have Been Destroyed During the Holocaust | YIVO Institute for Jewish Research | The Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project

Rare and unpublished works represent the collective memory and cultural history of Eastern European and Russian Jews.

The new discovery is of particular note for its wealth of manuscripts, precious religious writings—in Hebrew and Yiddish—record books of shuls and yeshivas; mystical writings, and more. Additionally, the collection contains post-war and wartime materials, such as poetry written while in the Vilna Ghetto by Abraham Sutzkever. All other materials that have previously been found from this time period in Eastern Europe precede the outbreak of WWII.

[montanajade98]

But what about vampire history teachers. Vampires who read something from a text book then proceed to light the book on fire and throw it out the window because “No. that’s not even close to what really happened. Listen up nerds I’m about to teach you what really happened in France during the revolution”

[sapphosigns]

I need this as a series

[gefdreamsofthesea]

Vampires sharing the recipe for Greek fire.

Vampires speaking in dead languages.

Vampires being able to translate untranslatable scripts.

Vampires who react to straightwashing historical figures like “Are you kidding me everyone knew that man was queer!”

Vampires from cultures who were once antagonistic towards each other stubbornly maintaining a friendship that’s lasted longer than their civilizations.

Vampires who honour forgotten deities you won’t find in mythology books.

[radio-freedunmovin-deactivated2]

Also, vampires who secretly saved stuff from the Library of Alexandra.

[freyadragonlord]

A vampire show that does not revolve all around sex and eternal cursed love.

[northcentralpositronics-blog]

nerd vampire whose knowledge of current events is terrible but they can always remember everything that’s considered “history” so they have a super-detailed knowledge of everything up to about thirty years ago and then ?????

vampire who couldn’t tell you what caravaggio was known for but duelled with him at least three times and slept with him at least ten. “cara-who OH YOU MEAN MICHAEL yeah he was cool”

vampire who spent 100 years in a convent and is still so bitter that in all that time they never made her mother superior “GODDAMMIT I HAD SENIORITY! I HAD SENIORITY!” “okay so first off janet, that was six hundred years ago, but more importantly, maybe if you didn’t always start those complaints off with blasphemy…”

vampire professor who just sort of showed up at oxford when it was founded and is still there (and nobody’s noticed because he still never actually shows up to his lectures)

vampire politician who lifts all their campaign speeches wholesale from speeches given 200 years ago and just waits for someone to catch them out (nobody ever does they’re prime minister and their approval ratings are through the roof)

[northcentralpositronics-blog]

WAIT I HAVE MORE

queer vampire who constantly talks about the fashion for straightness and you need to be really careful because if you tell them straight is default they WILL scream at you for five days straight about what a modern concept heterosexuality is

vampire hoarder who has an entire town where they just kept having to buy new houses to keep their stuff in and some of it’s probably worth tens of millions by now but you’ll never find it in among the 1950s kitschy kitten sculptures and boxes of newspaper (the newspaper is a wonderful mix of yesterday’s guardian and daily courants from 1725)

vampire sailor from manderville’s time who just has so many stories and some of them might even be true

vampire bluestocking girl who took to the internet like a fish to water and spends her whole unlife engaging reddit antifeminists about women’s rights because that’s one fight she’s determined to see through. also with the advent of cheap dyes she literally wears blue socks every day and hopes one day someone gets the joke

vampire doctor who just gets SO CONFUSED about the literature because do you know how hard it is to keep up with medicine kevin? when i got my doctorate we thought leeches were good and then they were bad and now they’re good again? i was published in issue one of the lancet kevin that is 387 lancets kevin how the hell am i meant to remember which one’s current kevin why are they saying cannabis is good for pain like this is news??? (but also lives in a state of wonderment every day in hospital because wow look at all this stuff we can do now look at it kevin!)

entire coven of vampires constantly quibbling over manners because they’re all from different periods: “HATS OFF AT TABLE” “SCREW YOU LEONARD ONLY PEASANTS EAT BAREHEADED” “TABITHA THAT HASN’T BEEN GOOD MANNERS SINCE THE 1500S NOBODY HAS LICE ANY MORE” “IT ISN’T ABOUT LICE LEONARD IT’S ABOUT GOOD MANNERS YOU NEED TO HAVE GOOD MANNERS WHEN YOU HAVE PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER” “I SWEAR TO GOD TABITHA IF YOU MAKE THAT PUN ONE MORE TIME I WILL SHOVE YOUR STUPID HAT DOWN YOUR THROAT”

[bumbleandbumble]

vampire musicians who might not have been child prodigies but goddammit 500 years of practicing an instrument is bound to get you somewhere (also knowing the composer and being the first person to start playing a song doesn’t hurt either)

[moonsofavalon]

my favorite will always be vampires who know fuck-all about the standard major historical events because they were always somewhere else whenever big shit was going down:

“yeah i heard about the hundred years war but i was in northern african at the time so…”

“the roman empire fell??? how did the fucking roman empire fall??? i spend a fucking handful of decades in india and i come back to this???”

“russia needs to stop having revolutions, i can’t keep them all straight…”

“when did france become a democracy?? and america’s now it’s own country??? i’ve spent the last century in a forest in wallachia scaring small children so––wHat dO yOU meAn we’re calling it romania now??? when the fuck did it become romania???”

“WE HAD A WORLD WAR??? WE HAD TWO WORLD WARS???? well obviously ‘world’ is an exaggeration because i heard nothing about it while i was lost in the amazon rainforest for the last fifty years…”

“listen i spent most of the fourteenth century as a pirate in the south china sea so someone’s gonna had to clue me in on all this ‘black plague’ nonsense.”

[augustarambles]

Drunk history but the guests are vampires

[radioproxy]

!

[holeinthebottomofeverything]

[rlmjob]

welcome to my blog

[iminyournotis]

the sign looks like it’s walking towards me i feel threatened

[darthlenaplant]

Like this?

[morbidlyqueerious]

actually what the christ