River's Adventures in Hiking, Writing, and Life

Early thirties perpetually exhausted queer millennial . Interfaith-raised Jew in progress. Mostly shitposts, semi-regular Judaism reblogs, and a dash of fandom nonsense. AO3: RiverXSong ffn: Phantomofthekitty

[river-running-wild]

Changed url back to an old one because tbh there’s not much Doctor Who on this blog anymore but my name is still River so

[homunculus-argument]

A book with a first person narrator what describes everything with oddly specific clarifications and denials, coming completely unprompted.

"I poured myself a bowl of cereal that had no cockroaches in it."

"Her hair - which was real human hair, growing naturally from her own scalp - was brown."

"I walked to my car which I legally owned and whose rightful ownership had never been under question or dispute."

"Their dog was barking in a way that is entirely normal for a regular, full-blooded dog, and could not be mistaken for the vocalisations of a half-wolf, a jackal, or perhaps a hyena."

"My mother - who has never been convicted or imprisoned for manslaughter - emerged from the kitchen."

[animentality]

[funnytwittertweets]

[drag-on-dra-goon]

[utopians]

"sex scenes have no narrative purpose" is such a funny take on so many levels. people will really believe that the whole human experience is valuable to portray artistically except sex, which of course has never held emotional weight or significance for anybody

[utopians]

"what's the purpose of sex scenes in media??" well you see sometimes people have sex. sometimes it can be important even

[robogirldick]

yeah ok but i dont wanna watch straight sex scene number 1231234837582 in the middle of some movie thats clearly not fucking high art or anything, like please, tell me how the sex scene made jason X a deeper movie ill wait

[utopians]

you genuinely think that "the sex scene in Jason X, the movie about jason from Friday the 13th killing people in space, is bad" is a rebuttal to this point? like genuinely? genuinely? like you think that's the kind of sex scene I was talking about in the original post? you think when I'm talking about the artistic merit of sex scenes in movies you think I'm talking about the bit with the dominatrix in Jason X (2001) dir. James Isaac, the movie where Jason from Friday the 13th gets put in cryosleep and wakes up in the future on a spaceship where he starts killing people in outer space? you genuinely think this is the kind of movie and scene I'm referring to when I'm arguing for the potential artistic value of a type of scene? Jason X? Jason X? the one with Jason on a spaceship? you think that "well Jason X, the movie about Jason on a spaceship killing people in space, is bad" is a rebuttal to my point? Jason X? Jason X? J

[itswalky]

wow i finally spotted this out in the wild, rather than being a screencap posted somewhere else

[river-running-wild]

My girlfriend just added a tablespoon of vanilla extract instead of a teaspoon to a single serve cake recipe and accidentally turned herself into a tumblr meme

[river-running-wild]

GF, upon mixing the batter: “Ah, shit. That’s WAY too much vanilla, I’ve fucked it up.”

[river-running-wild]

My girlfriend just added a tablespoon of vanilla extract instead of a teaspoon to a single serve cake recipe and accidentally turned herself into a tumblr meme

[seattlefactsijustmadeup]

The Chihuly glass garden has been purchased by Spirit Halloween.

[seattlefactsijustmadeup]

Marysville has also been purchased by Spirit Halloween.

[seattlefactsijustmadeup]

Eastern Washington has just been purchased by Spirit Halloween. If you’re looking for wigs or prosthetic makeup, check a building in Spokane.

[seattlefactsijustmadeup]

The Chihuly glass garden has been purchased by Spirit Halloween.

[harmalite]

CLADISTICS ruined my life

[aquaticpaleo]

yall joke but this is actually a serious conundrun with cladistic-based classification

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

The choice is this: 

Birds are reptiles 

Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT 

That’s it, that’s the choice 

[shadybacon]

What if Bird and reptiles are two different things that came from the same thing

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Nope 

Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds) 

So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles 

birds are dinosaurs though, full stop. we’ve already defined what a dinosaur is and it includes birds. but reptiles isn’t really defined so much as thrown against a wall angrily. 

[shadybacon]

But don’t turtles and alligators have more in common with modern reptiles than modern birds have in common with modern reptiles? I’m not trying to contradict, I’m trying to understand. Mammals and reptiles have a common ancestor as well, but we do not make them the same group.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

It’s not about having things in common. It’s about common ancestry, which is how we classify animals in light of extinct species, which defy trait-based classification. 

And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals. 

So, either we decide that Tuatara Lizards and Snakes are the only reptiles, or we include birds as reptiles. Or we just decide reptiles are no longer a thing. 

[anais-ninja-bitch]

don’t throw reptiles against the wall? please? some of them are small and delicate. you could hurt them.

[virovac]

Basically, unless we’re maybe talking massive horizontal gene transfer, everything is still part of the group that came before it. 

You are technically a fish.

[haltraveler]

IIRC the fish thing is so frustrating that scientists have decided fish is just not real cladistic grouping at all

[aethersea]

hey could we go back please to the bit where the closest relative of Birds is Crocodiles? bc I am alarmed

[haltraveler]

Well, technically they’re equally-closely related to crocodiles, alligators, gharials and tomistomas. As archosaurs, they’re all descended from small reptiles that looked something like this 

The two main groups of archosaurs are the Pseudosuchia, or crocodile-line archosaurs, and the Ornithodira, or bird-line archosaurs. Both groups were massively diverse in prehistory, with the Pseudosuchia dominating most land-based niches in the Triassic, and the Ornithodira, especially the dinosaurs, doing the same during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. However, most of them have been wiped out due to the Triassic and Cretaceous mass extinctions, leaving them each with only one surviving clade: Aves, the true birds, and Crocodylia, the semiaquatic, ambush predators like crocs and gators. 

[alexaloraetheris]

This entire post sums up everything we’re not allowed to mention in our Vertebrata classes because the last time someone started that argument they had to break up a fistfight.

[knitordeath]

I’m just hung up on the humans evolving from fish comment.

Like, we evolved from tiny tree-climbing squirrels. To the best of our knowledge.

[theclockworkjudas]

…which evolved from tiny tree-climbing reptiles

…which evolved from amphibians

…which evolved from fish.

[invisible-goats]

*runs in ten minutes late with a plucked chicken* BEHOLD A LIZARD

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

you could have left the feathers on this time tbh

[dee-the-red-witch]

It was already plucked. They just STOLE IT from philosophy 101.

[generouslyandrogynousdragon]

Every turn on this post has been a left, but somehow it hasn’t hit itself, and instead just spiralled outwards like some Ancient Greco-Roman floor design, enveloping taxonomy Tumblr in chaos.

[emi--rose]

May I recommend the book “why fish don’t exist” by Lulu Miller

[the-haiku-bot]

May I recommend

the book “why fish don’t exist”

by Lulu Miller

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

[weird-ecologies]

[daughter-of-sapph0]

[river-running-wild]

I didn't realise getting an ID would be so complicated

[adrakichai]

my online child describing amphibians:

[shanti-ashant-hai]

no no, theyve got a point

[a-really-hot-caterpillar]

Reblog for the bi rights frog

[mistressemmedi]

SOMEONE'S ACTUALLY IN A FURSUIT AT MET

[mistressemmedi]

HELLPPPPPPP

[mistressemmedi]

It's Jared Leto 💀

[mickstart]

[genderqueeradrien]

you can replace all your daily tasks with 24 hours of the hyperfixation. But watch out

[penicillium-pusher]

whenever they put Spock in all black it’s like. slut.

[penicillium-pusher]

whore.

[heatwa-ves]

there's still a week left for the funniest possible thing to happen (charles dying before the coronation) like to charge reblog to cast or whatever