Lurking

Still learning tumblr

[homunculus-argument]

I know that my sample size is comically small, but in my experience, the scariest drivers I've ridden with as a passenger - out of the experienced drivers, who have been behind the wheel for decades, and excluding people who just got their licence - have been full-time professional artists. Like I have ridden shotgun with exactly two fully grown adults who were memorable to me as being "holy shit!" experiences, and one of them was a sculptor and the other one was an opera singer. Neither one actually hit anyone or anything, but the sheer amount of close brushes they had and casually breezed through was more than any other car ride I've ever been on, combined.

The fact that I am now a full-time professional artist, and also the worst driver I know, supports my theory. I don't drive unless there's nobody else who possibly can, and I tell people that I can't drive - I have a licence, but that doesn't mean I can drive. I am merely legally allowed to do that.

[sunnypsychopath-blog]

Ambulance drivers are on the opposite side of this spectrum.

As my sample size is ewually comically small (2) I rode with a Firefighter/Nurse/Paramedic who spent years as the ambulance driver, and a friend who is neither of those but was an ambulance driver for 10 years.

Riding with either of them is the most relaxing and the most stressful of experiences at the same time.

It's extremely relaxing at the point when you get used to the fact that they treat road signs as mere suggestions combined with freakishly great reflexes developed at driving a giant chunk of metal past speed limits to save lives for years.

Before that point? It's oh-shit-handle worthy. Especially when another driver makes a mistake, and you can already see the crash in your mind's eye, but it never comes. If I was with any other driver, I know they wouldn't have reacted quick enough, it would at least be a minor collision. Instead they manouvre the hurling hunk of metal you're in with the grace of a ballerina.

Now, I trust them completely. I can sleep in the back of the car, mindful to have something soft wrapped around my head for the inevitable erratic manouvre, knowing I'm safe.

I trust them with my entire life.

[hazard-and-friends]

anyway today I learned that human children learn numbers greater than 3-4 by just instantly going "oh this is a number word, it is 1 greater than the previous number word", which does a lot to explain why small children are also obsessed with counting. nobody taught you to count to one hundred, you learned to count to about twenty and then independently went oh! these all go together!!!

but even with 5-10, we learn the words for those numbers REALLY fast. like REALLY really fast.

chimps don't. and chimps take just as long to learn 5 as they do 4 as they do 1. it doesn't get faster. it remains hard the whole time.

isn't that wild?

(source)

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Love when you're reading a fanfic or web serial and it's great and you want more like it but you've run out of stuff by that author, but then you see in the author's note "I've been reading X and it's really fantastic" and you're like "great! More stuff to red!" and check it out and it turns out that this author you love has absolutely dogshit taste.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

My theory as to why this happens btw is that writers see more beauty in what they cannot write than in what they can. Beginners will recommend stuff similar to what they're writing because that's what's inspiring them to start, but when people have their feet wet and know what they're doing then they're less likely to be fascinated by things similar to their own work unless the author they're reading is markedly and obviously more skilled at what they're trying to do. (The exception is if it's an author they got into before they started writing it, and nostalgia is involved.) Everyone who isn't just beginning thinks that the style of writing they do is trite and unremarkable, and is unlikely to be amazed enough by writers similar to them to recommend it to their readers, even though their readers obviously love writers similar to them (otherwise why are they here). So you read stuff you love by some writer and they're like "I am so obsessed with X!" and X is some nonsense slop you couldn't be less interested in because the stuff you are interested in is the stuff that the recommender, by definition, finds routine and not worth appreciating.

That's what I reckon, anyway.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#i am in the process of having the reverse happen to me#where im realizing an author i like maybe isnt as MatureTM as i thought they were originally#and im sitting here now like 'oh no am i the author op is talking about'

Listen, when I was a teenager I recommended Sword of Truth to multiple people.

[stealingpotatoes]

ok everyone hear me out,

[stealingpotatoes]

they're actually also the empire's no.1 defence against homophobia accusations from jedi during pride month <3

[iconuk01]

"The Source"

by Luo Li Rong

View this post on Instagram

[iconuk01]

Yes, this is Luo Yi Rong, who absolutely is the same sculptor from that astonishingly inept self-own by an idiot.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

His wife left him?? XD

[catchyvideos]

OP barstoolsports on TikTok

[byjove]

‘Nuclear Family Month’ is so funny as a concept. I have never seen a nuclear family worth celebrating.

[dragonessmiralis]

The Addams

[byjove]

Do Grandmama, Uncle Fester and the rotating cast of possibly existent cousins mean nothing to you? 😔

[gatheringbones]

tbh a lot of my advice boils down to “hey you know that terrible horrible looming thing you’re doing your best to avoid and distract and escape as much as possible but no matter what you do it just keeps looming and looming and ruining your life”

“just, fuckign, run straight at it screaming.”

[quasarkisses]

i needed this as a background

[spectrexviiii]

[venndaai]

have you guys heard about the greenland shark. some crazy shit happening there.

[venndaai]

they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you

[fluorescentbrains]

this post prompted me to refresh my memory on Greenland Shark Facts and this detail about how they feed goes so hard

just vacuuming up their unsuspecting prey. whole !

[muffinlance]

Good news good news good news! Recent research suggests the eye parasites do NOT blind them!

Eye-opening research: Greenland sharks maintain vision for centuries through DNA repair mechanism

Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk sits in her office, eyes fixed on the computer monitor in front of her. "You see it move its eye," says the UC Ir

I <3 you a normal amount Greenland sharks

[agnesmontague]

ive invented (note: dubious claim) something i call the bear diet which is mostly fruits and vegetables with fish as the main protein source and something like once a month you eat a few hyperprocessed foods of your liking because that is when you, the bear, raid a dumpster in the suburbs

[stellarskyes]

after the hyperprocessed foods, do you take tranquilizers to simulate getting captured by animal control and returned to the wild?

[agnesmontague]

i would settle for melatonin gummies but well. knock yourself out

[labelleizzy]

[eriyu]

[sibyllance]

Apparently someone got their car stuck on the light rail tracks at Mt. Baker. For those unfamiliar this is 35 feet up in the air

[officialboredom]

First test flight of a flying car by Mazda partially a success

[tuulikki]

I feel like the Arizona Utah license plate should take some place in our analysis of whatever in the goddam fuck we’re looking at here

[beardedmrbean]

[wizardshark]

99% of queer discourse stops right before they define the true difference between bisexual and pansexual!

[saspitite]

FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME

BISEXUALS GROW FROM THE GROUND

PANSEXUALS GROW FROM THE CEILING

[yujateaandpi]

Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.

Cybertruck. It was a cybertruck.

[useless-girls-world]

[scoobydoodean]

I’m dead serious when I say my favorite salmon dean moment is when Sam finds that horrible taxidermy animal with the costume on and holds it up for Dean to look at.

[scoobydoodean]

Forget dying in your brother's arms or whatever THIS is peak siblingism.