@shellbelllll - Tumblr Blog

extremely funny to me that harley quinns real name is apparently harleen quinzel, a name that sounds less real that harley quinn. they should do that with more comic characters. batman real name batthew manning. daredevil real name darius devilson. doctor strange real name. well okay that one doesnt count.

haunting-kind-of-high

I have some very good news for you about Black Bolt's real name

redstonedust

NOW THATS WHAT IM TALKIN ABOUT

ladyshinga

serps-up

so happy and free

reachartwork

this is going to be a silly reblog but i have kind of a fixation on animal qualia and the idea of an animal's umwelt, so i ended up wondering whether pudding was actually "enjoying" this.

which meant i went and read about snail brains.

here's the bad news, at least by human standards:

snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.

pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.

snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."

so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.

and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."

if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.

pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.

i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.

snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?

so maybe the point isn't "this is sad because he can't enjoy it," but "this is a reminder that minds come in radically different shapes, and value doesn't have to be rich to be real."

userfish

my ducks? in a row. the elephant? addressed. my goose? cooked. my eggs? in several baskets. the bigger fish? fried.

creez-un-compte

Your monkeys ?

thereisalesbianintheforest

those aren’t mine.

dankxsinatra

thesapphictwink

There's a scene in very early 60's Doctor Who where a character falls into a swamp, I think, and they throw not a rag doll, but a card board cut out of the actor. 10/10 they don't make 'em like this no more

As per my last clay tablet,

lurking-latinist

CCing Ibbi-Ilabrat on this one just to make sure we’re all on the same page!

ariaste

“The sesame is visibly dying” makes me lose it every time. My sesame #mysesame

polpotpie

What if water didn't have surface tension and whenever you spilled some, the whole floor of your entire apartment was covered in a 2 micrometer deep puddle

teaboot

you've taught me to count blessings I didn't know were mine

visenyaism

Honestly fuck AI for making me have to go on and on defending the dignity of toil like I’m some kind of protestant

going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi

getting lost in boston is fun because I turned around on a street corner three times and some guy yelled "hey stupid! the bus is that way!" very helpful interaction and accurate insult, 10/10 no notes

going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi

one time I walked around a building a couple times looking for a bathroom and this guy went "this bitch thinks she's on a merrygoround, where the fuck are you tryna go? bathroom? one floor down to the right behind the door that says bathroom."

mentohol-blog

My very first time in Boston. I was absolutely miserable, trying to drag my giant suitcase up a lengthy set of stairs in the pouring rain. This guy who had already reached the top looked back at me with the most pure expression of disgust I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes, marched back down the stairs, grabbed my suitcase, carried it to the top, left it there for me, and walked away without ever saying a word. I think about him often.

just7frogsinapeoplesuit

For the people in the notes going "why is Boston like this": a) the insults are a way to show you have no ulterior motives when helping someone (and don't need to be thanked or repaid), and b) Boston was settled by the Irish