Fairytale Regurgitations

[todaysbird]

today’s bird is a bald eagle who isn’t too pleased with the people walking underneath their perch!

[humansofnewyork]

“Growing up I was very much in my own head, my own world. Instead of getting a babysitter my mom would just go to work and leave me at the house. We didn’t have a TV or anything. And when there’s no one to talk to, you just become your own friend. I’d look out the window and try to imagine myself doing things. Like: ‘What would it be like if I was standing on that roof? What sort of things would I see?’ But when you do that too much, at some point you get lost. I didn’t even feel alone. It’s hard to explain, because I haven’t experienced nothing else. But it’s like: you don’t feel lonely if there’s never nobody else there. And there was never nobody else there. Alone was my normal. It was my comfortable. So when we first started dating, I didn’t know what to do. Every time we were alone I would speak non-stop. Then I’d stop myself mid-sentence and be like, ‘Damn. I’m speaking a lot. I need to shut up.’ And she’d be like: ‘No, just keep telling me what you were telling me.’ I was just so excited. I felt like l a kid with a new toy. I’m not calling her a toy, that’s not what I mean. But that’s how I felt. Like I don’t know how this works, but I can’t believe I have it. I’m in love now. For so long I’d told myself: ‘This is never going to happen.’ But then it actually happened. It was like: ‘What do I do? Where do I go now?’ Every day has been something new. Monday feels like Saturday, because every day has meaning. I’m figuring out about her, and about myself, and about the world. Like, I didn’t know you could have fun in winter. There’s so many indoor activities you can do, just simple things. Like wearing matching pajamas on New Years. I never knew about that stuff. It can be so fulfilling. Sometimes you don’t even have to do anything. Just having somebody sitting next to you makes you feel nice inside. And that’s how it is now. That’s how my life is. She’s my comfortable. When she’s not with me, I wish that she was. I feel what it feels to be alone.”

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously :) (you can watch here in US or with US vpn :) <3)

Terry Pratchett: Neil once said, 'Your fans all look jolly. And my fans all look as if they're about to commit suicide. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get them to marry?'

[whetstonefires]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[supernormalstep]

chatting with people made me want to do some chrono trigger doodles.  Here they are!

[supernormalstep]

Redesign of Ozzie’s pals, Slash and Flea!

[supernormalstep]

Here’s all the party members in one,  I’ll put up a full line up of everyone when I’m finished!

[supernormalstep]

Chrono Trigger Zeal people! Dalton, Schala, Queen Zeal, and the Guru of Reason/Bethasar.

[mountcrynai]

honk if you're gay

[frnchedvanilla]

Zelda is taller. That’s all

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting

Tomorrow (June 3) at 1:30PM, I’m in Edinburgh for the Cymera Festival on a panel with Nina Allen and Ian McDonald.

Monday (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Fans of the Sopranos will remember the “bust out” as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business’s workers, customers and suppliers. When the mafia does this, we call it a bust out; when Wall Street does it, we call it “private equity.”

It used to be that we rarely heard about private equity, but then, as national chains and iconic companies started to vanish, this mysterious financial arrangement popped up with increasing frequency. When a finance bro’s presentation on why Olive Garden needed to be re-orged when viral, there was a lot off snickering about the decline of a tacky business whose value prop was unlimited carbs. But the bro was working for Starboard Value, a hedge fund that specialized in buhying out and killing off companies, pocketing billions while destroying profitable businesses.

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

Keep reading

[tinylongwing]

Hey all! I don't typically post my photos here but heck, I should. This is just a heads up that you won't see much from me for the next couple weeks as I go on my yearly fieldwork trip to Yosemite to train our summer bird banding crew in how to run their stations. These MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) stations are part of a long-term (30+ years!) monitoring project that has resulted in some amazing science, from teaching us about how climate change affects birds at different altitudes to setting new longevity records (we have a 20-year old woodpecker!).

All of this is done through The Institute for Bird Populations. Go check out the website and learn more about what we do for birds around the world!

[tinylongwing]

I heard you all like works in progress?

Again, I won't be able to post the finished pieces of this project for probably another year, but these little glimpses into the stages for some of the birds might help tide you over. This is, or will be, a Black Drongo - I'd say it's around 50% complete at this point.

[funnytwittertweets]

[toxicyurienthusiast]

love wins actually

[gallusrostromegalus]

This works as an answer to the metaphorical problem because the key is for the hedgehogs and prcupines to be a bit flexible about how they position themselves and keep thier spines pointed in such a fashion to minimize poking, just like how in human relationships you have to be a bit flexible and concious of your position relative to others, and to manage your sharp bits to minimize the harm you do to others.

[paperandpencilsandskips]

People are walking biomes if u think about it

[spyglassrealms]

To invading germs, you are a jungle full of hungry tigers. To your gut bacteria, you are a warm orchard of perpetual bounty. To your eyelash mites, you are a walking fortress and a mountaintop pasture. How many generations have you hosted? What do they name the wilderness of you?

— "Host" by @cryptonature, in his book Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

[bogleech]

Parasites and other symbiotes (*symbiosis is actually an umbrella term that includes parasites, before anyone asks) outnumber free living organisms in both species and individual numbers, meaning that the *norm* for life on earth is to live your whole life in or on another creature. Us larger independent beasts are technically special in having adapted to survive the harsh non-living world; to gut bacteria and mites and parasitic worms we're like planets keeping them safe from an immense deadly void.

[eternallybutthurt]

I haven’t stopped laughing at this

[jaimeedarling]

hmmm… there’s probably an INFINITELY more humane way to do this…

i get that they’re not killing them and they end up fine, but imagine the trauma of you, a mammal, going through a long ass tube, not knowing what’s going to happen to you, and you can’t breathe. 🤷‍♀️

[itsaruse]

They get misted with water throughout the thing, and it results in fewer injuries than the ‘ladder’ method. Also, it’s a fish. It never knows what’s going to happen to it at any point in time throughout its life.

[jackhawksmoor]

Also, I, a mammal, have paid 80 bucks to get into a water park to get the opportunity to feel like that fish, and that motherfucker gets in for free every day is fish day at the fish waterpark

[weaselle]

well the MOST humane thing would be to not build dams blocking salmon migration routes, nor create a society where there are only resources allocated to solving the problem at all because blocking the salmon endangers the profits of a segment of the food industry. 

Buuuut since we’re past that already, here are a couple of additional thoughts:

1 this IS the more humane alternative, which was invented to lower injury and death rates associated with previous techniques. When a better alternative is revealed it will probably replace this one. But this one is a pretty huge improvement over the other methods, one of which killed off something like 80% of the fish involved. A study of the above fish tube was conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in 2017 on the Columbia River and showed a much higher success rate. In that study, only one fish died (“due to a human error during the system setup”) and only 3 percent had signs of injury. So. The next best improvement might have to be “remove dam”

2 they are on their way to die. That is where we are helping them get to. That’s the end goal of the salmon’s migration. They on their way to mutate, start rotting alive, have an orgy, and die. That’s where the tube is taking them.

So like, it’s not going to be the weirdest thing they experience this month, is what i’m saying. 

[gilfmobile]

[mckitterick]

thank you for that, @hug-your-face

[tlirsgender]

The poll feature really took off because it taps into tumblr's favorite activity: being extremely opinionated about things that don't matter

[dragonprincessmew]