Scylar Ray

Scylar. Kansas. Literally obsessed with everything. 

[thematicparallel]

ceramic mugs by tim kowalczyk

[knottybliss]

*softly* holy shitballs

[starsong-dragonheart]

@vintagegenderpunk

[devpalmer]

military recruiter: so what got you guys interested in the marine corps

enormous horde of hagfish, ispods and bottom-feeding crustaceans: oh. uh. is that how you pronounce it

[devpalmer]

whale fall side of tumblr you understand me

[charlilil]

I wanted to do more fantasy high as memes and somehow landed on the bad kids as satire articles

[animentality]

[stabbyhobbit]

my friend you can't just leave this in the tags

[averagefairy]

old people really need to learn how to text accurately to the mood they’re trying to represent like my boss texted me wondering when my semester is over so she can start scheduling me more hours and i was like my finals are done the 15th! And she texts back “Yay for you….” how the fuck am i supposed to interpret that besides passive aggressive

[runawaymarbles]

Someone needs to do a linguistic study on people over 50 and how they use the ellipsis. It’s FASCINATING. I never know the mood they’re trying to convey.

[feynites]

I actually thought for a long time that texting just made my mother cranky. But then I watched my sister send her a funny text, and my mother was laughing her ass off. But her actual texted response?

“Ha… right.”

Like, she had actual goddamn tears in her eyes, and that was what she considered an appropriate reply to the joke.I just marvelled for a minute like ‘what the actual hell?’ and eventually asked my mom a few questions. I didn’t want to make her feel defensive or self-conscious or anything, it just kind of blew my mind, and I wanted to know what she was thinking.

Turns out that she’s using the ellipsis the same way I would use a dash, and also to create ‘more space between words’ because it ‘just looks better to her’. Also, that I tend to perceive an ellipsis as an innate ‘downswing’, sort of like the opposite of the upswing you get when you ask a question, but she doesn’t. And that she never uses exclamation marks, because all her teachers basically drilled it into her that exclamation marks were horrible things that made you sound stupid and/or aggressive.

So whereas I might sent a response that looked something like:

“Yay! That sounds great - where are we meeting?”

My mother, whilst meaning the exact same thing, would go:

‘Yay. That sounds great… where are we meeting?”

And when I look at both of those texts, mine reads like ‘happy/approval’ to my eye, whereas my mother’s looks flat. Positive phrasing delivered in a completely flat tone of voice is almost always sarcastic when spoken aloud, so written down, it looks sarcastic or passive-aggressive.

On the reverse, my mother thinks my texts look, in her words, ‘ditzy’ and ‘loud’. She actually expressed confusion, because she knows I write and she thinks that I write well when I’m constructing prose, and she, apparently, could never understand why I ‘wrote like an airhead who never learned proper English’ in all my texts. It led to an interesting discussion on conversational text. Texting and text-based chatting are, relatively, still pretty new, and my mother’s generation by and large didn’t grow up writing things down in real-time conversations. The closest equivalent would be passing notes in class, and that almost never went on for as long as a text conversation might. But letters had been largely supplanted by telephones at that point, so ‘conversational writing’ was not a thing she had to master. 

So whereas people around my age or younger tend to text like we’re scripting our own dialogue and need to convey the right intonations, my mom writes her texts like she’s expecting her Eighth grade English teacher to come and mark them in red pen. She has learned that proper punctuation and mistakes are more acceptable, but when she considers putting effort into how she’s writing, it’s always the lines of making it more formal or technically correct, and not along the lines of ‘how would this sound if you said it out loud?’

[adora-korra]

the linguistics of written languages in quick conversational format will never not be interesting to me like it’s fascinating how we’ve all just silently learned what an ellipsis or exclamation mark implies and it’s totally different in different communities or generations or whatever

[curlicuecal]

We had a running joke about how many times our grad PI’s emails scared us because they were uncharacteristically terse. (You’d get like “We need to talk about your paper.” and then the actual talk would be “It’s great!”)

And he heard us talking one day and started adding smiley emojis to his emails, and honestly it really helped

[veronicasanders]

Can we also have a support group for all of the people who’ve had to do the “Please do not send me a text that says ‘call me.’ unless someone is dead. If no one is dead, you need to delete the period and add a lighthearted emoji” workshop with their boomer parents? Because I know about 10 people who’ve had that exact conversation.

Texts from my mom look like this now:

Call me! 👻

call me 🥑 🥭

Call me. (No one’s dead I just want to talk.)

CALL ME! 🎏🐹🌴💅🏼🎷🌺👒

[tiptoe39]

Book rec if you are interested in this kind of language stuff: Gretchen McCullough’s book BECAUSE INTERNET. It goes into these topics in detail along with a bunch of others and is really fascinating.

[naamahdarling]

Thank fuck for Tumblr and my 21yo friend who keep me from sounding like the old lady I am.

[annlarimer]

My sister is ten years older than me and reading her texts sends my anxiety through the roof. “Ha ha… Long time no see…was gonna have the police do a welfare check!” JFC.

[taraljc]

holy shit there’s two of you? It’s really hard for me to picture more than one larimer at a time

[annlarimer]

There were five of us, nearly six. I’m the youngest. Try to imagine a clown car where all the clowns have 140+ IQs, undiagnosed depression, various mystical bents, each is fascinated by a different set of weird objects/ideas, and we get into loud arguments about honking shoes that lead to unending grudges.

Now imagine two more generations wandering around out there, including at least two indie bands.

[taraljc]

Annie, you just described the entire internet.

[longlivethedeathofroe-deactivat]

The right to life

[is-the-owl-video-cute-deactivat]

If you ever feel like you’ve lost meaning in your life, just remember there’s a guy posting SpongeBob forced-birther memes on tumblr.

[thepro-lifemovement]

You say in your tags you can easily debunk this. Go on. Debunk it, then.

[is-the-owl-video-cute-deactivat]

You don’t have a right to life in the US. Never have, unlikely you ever will.

If food and housing cost money, you have no right to life. If lifesaving medicine costs enough that you have the threat of bankruptcy from one accident or illness, you have no right to life. If people are able to purchase assault rifles and other military weaponry without any real regulation, you do not have a right to life.

And you know, if you’re forced to carry a pregnancy to term even if it’s likely to kill you and/or the fetus, you don’t actually have a right to life.

Here, play a game with me:

That’s right, it’s another exciting game of PARASITE or HUMAN BABY!!

Since you believe conception is what marks the formation of a human baby, I’m sure this will be easy for you, after all a human baby looks a lot different than a parasitic worm.

For extra credit, which of these embryos is human!:

Any of them? All of them? Can you tell human baby from a dolphin?

Point being, it’s disingenuous to treat a fetus the same as a baby, they aren’t the same thing, one turns into the other sure, but if you aren’t sobbing every time someone ejaculates into the toilet or gets a period because half a baby just died, you really shouldn’t feign tears over an abortion.

That’s all irrelevant though because the core issue is that if the government can deny you a procedure that can save or benefit your life in any way, there is no precedent to stop them from doing that about anything else. Got a heart condition? Cancer? Well, the government can just say you legally cannot get that surgery to give you a much higher chance of survival. Out of our hands, if you get raped at the ripe old age of 10 and taking that pregnancy to term will likely kill you or at best case horrifically disfigure your body forever, force you out of school, and cause you excruciating pain, that’s all too bad because some sperm bumped into an egg and that now has more rights than you do.

You don’t get to say “yeah if someone breaks into your home you should shoot them” and in the same breath say “if something invades your body and starts growing inside of it, you have to let it, tapeworm rights!” Because that’s insane.

At the end of the day though, the forced birther movement only exists as a way to control women's bodies and treats pregnancy as a “punishment” for lascivious activities. Oh, you don’t want to have a baby? But you had sex? Well that will teach you not to do things I don’t like, person whose condom broke and birth control pill failed!

None of you actually care about children because if you did you would be lobbying towards more socialized accommodation for childcare, including government issued stipends for people on maternal AND paternal leave so they can spend time with their newborn and raise their child together. Contraception options to be both free and readily available to everyone. Detailed sex education made available and mandatory curriculum for every student by the age of 12. Free baby formula and diapers. And so on.

You know, instead of screeching that people reach for the clothes hanger since they can’t afford to feed a child. “Oh but adoption!” the foster care system in the USA is one of the most overpopulated systems in the country, and it’s rife with abuse and children being underdeveloped because they didn’t have enough meaningful connections with caretakers in their formative years.

Putting a child up for adoption also doesn’t change the high risk of death for the person being forced to carry that pregnancy to term. This country has a noticeably higher maternal mortality rate from childbirth than other developed countries, and many can’t afford to even give birth in a hospital to begin with.

The easiest way to limit abortions is to increase sex education and expand access to products which limit the chances of pregnancy, as well as expanding the access of financial aide for parents.

Banning abortion does not decrease the number of abortions it decreases the number of safe abortions and you can’t call yourself pro-life if you don’t care about teens accidentally or purposefully killing themselves trying to induce abortion.

[the-library-alcove]

Also, half of all pregnancies end in a natural miscarriage, often before the parent knows that they're pregnant. If there was actually a belief that life begins at conception, then preventing such a horrible death rate would be the first focus of pro-birthers. But it isn't. Furthermore, where's the support for post-birth life? The childcare, the education, the ability to go to the mall without rolling the dice that today will be another day without a white supremacist with a gun showing up?

[vaspider]

I had 12 miscarriages and 1 live birth. My multiple D&Cs during miscarriages meant I'm still alive. Women in forced-birth states have died, have had to travel hundreds of miles for essential emergency care...

I wanted to be pregnant. Most of those were genuine attempts. They could have killed me.

🤷🏻‍♂️

[canadianwheatpirates]

Annoyed that the chronic pain seminar was like "the best way to get stuff done is to try and work at a consistent slow pace regardless of you pain level" and then only gave an example of someone keeping a consistent pace when they were in less pain than expected. Howmst the fuck am I supposed to keep working steadily when I'm in too much pain to concentrate, good sir?

Also I'm struggling to reconcile "opioids don't work bc they work on the peripheral nervous system rather than the central one" with "do exercise so that your body generates its natural opioids" like bro, you do actually need to explain why exogenous ones are different to endogenous ones in this case because you just said the whole drug class doesn't work

[canadianwheatpirates]

“Try and make your work and exercise routines consistent, don’t avoid doing them just because you’re in pain” ma’am if I go out on my bike while I’m in heavy pain the distraction of it will get me hit by a car

[househunting]

$995,000/6 br/6600 sq ft

Weatherford, TX

built in 1897

[symbrock]

i'm losing my shit at this the delivery is absolutely flawless

[yourdadsghoulfriend]

this has better acting than most movies

[teaboot]

Do you ever suddenly remember something you wholeheartedly believed as a child that just makes your skin shrivel up like a prune

[teaboot]

When I was 4, I (a white kid) asked an adult why my best friend (who was Korean) had different eyes from me, and they straight up told me that it was because she was from Asia, and because Asia was very hot, it was also very dusty, so people who were from Asia developed smaller eyes so they wouldn’t get so much sand in them.

And because I believed this wise and worldly adult, I went the next nine or so years fully believing that different ethnic traits were entirely determined by the geography you grew up in.

Which means that until I was about thirteen, I fully believed that my skin was white because I was Canadian, and whenever it snowed, I’d need to blend in to hide from predators

[teaboot]

Other things I believed:

1. All humans were supposed to be brown, anyone who was white came from somewhere cold, because otherwise we’d stand out in the snow

2. Only white people got pimples and body hair because we were the only ones in razor and face wash commercials

3. Air was made of the same stuff as water because both were clear, tasteless, and vital for life

4. If you ate nothing but meat all the time, your teeth would become sharp and pointy like a shark

5. God could hear all my thoughts unless I focused really hard on going ‘LALALALALALALA’ in my head

6. If I made eye contact with a mirror, something living inside the mirror would look back and would see me, too

7. People born in other places had different accents because like how everyone has a different face, everyone also had a different mouth, so of you were from Scotland, your Scottish accent was just, like. The shape of your teeth or something

8. All liquids were just something + water. Like, bleach was made out of something toxic mixed with water.

9. Every chicken coop needed a rooster. No idea what purpose the rooster served, it just had to be there.

10. If I ate enough bone marrow I’d turn into a dog (I liked chewing open chicken bones for some reason, Idk)

11. In order to wear fake nails, women would have to pull their real nails out first

12. Everyone on the planet was attracted to men and women in exact equal amounts- they were just only allowed to date or marry someone of a different gender because idk adults made up dumb rules all the time, like keeping your elbows off the table and not wearing hats in restaurants.

13. Goldfish were psychic and could read your mind

14. The memorial stone behind my elementary school was actually a grave and there was a dead woman buried under it who made the pipes rattle in the girl’s washroom

15. If the monsters in the dark parts of the house made eye contact with me they’d own part of my soul

16. Cats could talk, they just didn’t want to.

17. Boys were naturally faster, bigger, and stronger than girls, but it was because they were also dumber and needed the advantage to survive

[midwestgender]

ppl don’t understand adhd/autistic cleaning processes. we think so far ahead it’s like,,, impossible to do shit. you want me to vaccuum my bedroom floor? okay. we need to pick up all the stuff thats on it first, though. and where are we going to put the stuff? well, theres a couple categories of Stuff- Clothes, Random Items, and Trash. Trash is easy, we just throw it away. Clothes have to be sorted into Clean, Not Clean- and then the not clean ones have to go in the laundry bag, but theres so many so i might have to start a load now- ugh, distracted. lets go back to the clean clothes. well, these go in my drawer but- my drawer is really disorganized, so i’ll have to organize the clothes first so that theyll fit and look neat. by the time i’m done with that, i’ve spent an hour and a half trying to do stuff in my room. i finally turn to random items, most of which can find a home on my desk, but others i dont really know what to do with. plus, my desk is dirty. so i have to organize my desk, figure out where everything goes, and the stuff that doesn’t have a place can go in… a box, i guess. (not like i don’t have three other boxes full of random stuff in my closet)  so i put all the items back up but now i have this box full of stuff i dont know if i need so i have to go through it, sorting it into donate and dont donate piles. i might as well throw in some clothes to, so i dig through my clothes drawer and get the clothes i dont want, throw them in there too. okay, back to the random items- the ones i dont want to donate are still here, so i have to put them somewhere. i dont have anywhere to put them- maybe i should get a shelf? i start googling shelves, figuring out which ones would be best for my room, debating prices, learning about installation, and eventually im like ‘well, already on my computer’ and i decide im going to ‘check’ social media and end up lost in it for an hour or so. you walk back in, and theres stuff all over the floor, albeit in bags and boxes, and it still hasnt been vacuumed. its been five hours since i started. how does it take five hours to clean your room? it just does. 

[victorious]

Reblog this and money will be entering your life this week

[kadywicker]

okay i’m curious bc my parents were relatively young having me but idk what age difference is “normal” between parents and kids as i’ve met people with plenty of variations. so if you want, reblog this and tag (don’t comment) how old your parents were when they had you. my mom was 25 and my dad was 21. 

[baptizm-deactivated20200524]

GUYS READ ALL OF THIS PLEASE PLEASE PL--

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[pug-life01]

[bigfootin]

Bermuda Triangle: Ship Reappears 90 Years After Going Missing

Havana| The Cuban Coast Guard announced this morning, that they had intercepted an unmanned ship heading for the island, which is presumed to be the SS Cotopaxi, a tramp steamer which vanished in December 1925 and has since been connected to the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. The Cuban authorities

The Cuban authorities spotted the ship for the first time on May 16, near a restricted military zone, west of Havana. They made many unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the crew and finally mobilized three patrol boats to intercept it.

When they reached it, they were surprised to find that the ship was actually a nearly 100-year old steamer identified as the Cotopaxi, a name famously associated with the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.

[miyamorana]

NOT NOW BERMUDA TRIANGLE

[catsbeaversandducks]

This speech-language pathologist taught her dog 29 words, and he can even form full sentences.

Video by Christina Hunger

[trustmeimanengiqueer]

[jenniferrpovey]

Dogs actually do have a language center in their brains. They process language just the same way we do, just not as well.

They do understand our words. This is not true of all domesticated animals (horses, for example, can only manage to distinguish a relatively small number of spoken commands…but boy do they know what you’re really saying).

They don’t understand “just your tone of voice” as a lot of people think.

As of 2016 the record vocabulary for a dog demonstrating understanding of words is over 1,000.

So if you give them a way to talk back, they’re going to use it.

The development of language skills is probably a side effect of domestication and of being kept in close contact with humans. A dog that was a better hunting partner would be kept and bred and over time they developed a better understanding of language.

In other words, dogs are pretty dang smart because we need them to understand us.

And also that is a very good boy.

[sandersstudies]

^ Would like to agree and make one amendment - very good GIRL. This is Stella the dog!

Check out the owner Christina’s Instagram: one of the first things I saw was a video where the dog started barking and, when prompted by the owner, said “outside, look look look look look look look, come outside.” Which is basically exactly how one would expect a dog to speak. 

The owner described bringing an unknown package into the house, and the dog ran away to push the buttons for “help no no help help” which is also about what I expect goes on in a scared pup’s mind.

In another video, the dog tried to push a button, and the button wasn’t working. The dog paused and then pushed the buttons for “No. Help.” 

In yet another (which the owner seemed impressed by), Stella said “come eat come play.” The owner asked the dog which she wanted to do, to eat or to play? And the dog clarified “come eat.” After eating, then the dog tried to instigate play. So the dog may have been able to understand a short spoken question, and how “questions and answers” work, and also understands sequences, even if she can’t express them (”I want to eat, THEN I want to play”)

Stella can even recount short-term memories, like when her family returned from the beach for dinner and she said “water good, no eat, play”

By the way, the owner uses the buttons as well, which probably really helps reinforce their meaning. She uses them to say things like “Stella all done eat” or “Stella and Christina go outside, bye!”

Wanna know my favorite part? Stella sometimes pushes the buttons for “Stella good” when she’s done a good job. Stella IS good! :D She also makes phrases using “love you,” like “Christina, love you, come play!”

[1dietcokeinacan]

“3 Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks”