24 | Any pronouns | My interest in Sanders Sides subsided years ago but I can't be bothered to change my header, profile pic or username; so although I look like a Sanders Sides blog, I'm on tumblr to mostly lurk and sometimes reblog random things that catch my fancy | PP by @darkmagic-sweetheart, header by @the-pastel-peach
imagine how big you THINK a moose is. now double it. now divide it by three. now add ten. now multiply it by 400. now rotate it clockwise 90 degrees. now convert it to png. mp3. pdf. now call your mom. now take a nap.
many people ask 'how do i know my art is good enough to start a comic'. this is a very common mistake. you do not make a comic to make good art you make comics because its fun and looked yummy
thanks to compilation efforts, three posts regarding the gneep gnorp population are able to be read together in a single post, and they are now the most documented species out of all creatures on earth
āIf you love cooking with garlic, you know it does a lot of good in recipes by helping build flavor ā but its strong odor can linger for hours, especially on our hands. Weāve all been in the situation where after preparing a wonderful meal, weāre left with the stench of garlic on our fingers ā yuck! There are a few tricks people often recommend to eliminate the smell: lemon juice or vinegar, rubbing your hands with salt, or even using toothpaste! But those donāt work ā all they do is mask the garlic smell. So what does really work? Stainless steel.ā
STRONGLY recommend jerking off a stainless steel spoon or just getting one of those gimmicky stainless steel āsoapā bars rather than using your expensive and hard to replace plumbing hardware - the stainless steel does get the stinky sulfur compounds off your hands, yes, but they have to go somewhere, and where they go is onto the steel. And stainless steel is not actually corrosion proof if you keep putting sulfur compounds on it frequently long term!
- local friendly chemist with considerable experience in What Things Can Eat What Grades of Stainless Steel (for spacecraft purposes mainly; donāt rub copper chloride on your taps either).
both 30 years old, born on the same day at precisely the same millisecond, but she was born in the state of Arizona which does not observe daylight savings time so one could possibly make the (weak) argument that she's an hour older. problematic age gap?
alright alright how about this other chick. she was born orbiting a black hole and due to relativistic effects currently unexplained by established models we are both 14 million years younger than eachother. help me with the ethics of this
Image ID: a picture of a newspaper article that reads;
āAs a biologist, I have been asked by many, many people; āwhy do we need mosquitos?ā and āWhy canāt we just kill all the ticks?ā. People may argue that they serve no purpose in the ecosystem, and nothing would really be affected if we got rid of them. After all, these animals are just nuisances, right? Everything would be better off if there were no parasites to bother them.
This is, of course, an untrue claim. Parasites play many roles in the ecosystem and their presence is absolutely necessary. For instance, letās look at mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes are remarkable animals. There are many thousands of species, and only a few drink blood. Mosquitoes of all species subsist primarily on nectar, just like bees. This makes them critical pollinators. Of the few species that drink blood, only the females are interested in doing so, and they only do so to secure vital proteins for incubating their eggs. The males will continue to only feed on nectar for their whole lives.
But, besides being pollinators, what makes mosquitoes really incredible is their larvae. These larvae are aquatic and capable of surviving in extremely hostile conditions and in very small volumes of water. A mosquito will happily lay her eggs in an otherwise barren muddy puddle, and thousands of babies will thrive there, filter-feeding on microscopic organisms. This, in turn, provides food for other animals. Other aquatic insects as well as larval amphibians subsist largely on mosquitoes. Some insects will seek to lay their eggs in areas that mosquito eggs or larvae already exist, because it is a guaranteed food source.
This sudden abundance of life will attract predators of those animals, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, an entire thriving ecosystem has sprung up around this muddy puddle that otherwise would have supported little to no life, all thanks to these hardy larvae. In this way, mosquitoes are the foundation of many food-webs and allow life to colonize new, formerly inhospitable places.
However, defending the ecological importance of any animal is ultimately an exhausting task for biologists. The idea that animals must serve a purpose, must benefit humans in some way, is a fundamentally flawed way to view the natural world.
Every living organism that exists is a result of billions of years of evolution, all interwoven in a delicate balance with each other. If any of these pieces are removed, things will begin to collapse around it. We cannot sort animals into the categories of āusefulā or ānot usefulā, because animals do not exist to be useful to us. They all have a place in the world, and we donāt get to pick and choose which species deserve to live without sending catastrophic ripple effects throughout the surrounding web of the ecosystem.
Whether we like it or not, parasites are part of the world and we have to coexist with them. Our focus should be on prevention of diseases associated with these parasites, by deterring them from biting, vaccinations against the bacteria they may carry, and affordable treatment if infections do occur, rather than figuring out a way to remove them from the planet entirely. Nothing in an ecosystem exists in isolation. Everything is deeply interwoven, and every species is necessary. The moment we allow ourselves to debate which species could be driven to extinction without consequence is the moment we will begin unravel the world around us, and, ultimately, humans will feel those ripples too.ā
There is a picture of a mosquito in the bottom corner. End ID.
"grace. grace! grace give attention. rocky perform human ritual of escape closet now. statement."
"come again?"
"i learn more from thinking machine. human gender preference. attraction to same gender, means word 'gay.' all eridian same gender." rocky stands straight up. "rocky come out to grace now. all rocky plural gay, statement."
"...wow, that's... rock, i'm not sure it makes much sense to apply human ideas of sexual orientation to a monogendered species."
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize thereās nothing in there. Not metaphoricallyāthe armor is literally empty. It doesnāt appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body mightāve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what heāll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy whoās got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didnāt say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. Iām not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. Weāre pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures Iād put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so Iām not sure why I asked.
Thereās not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs Iāve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though Iāve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where itās barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, Iāll never understand. But itās a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. Itās like heās watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. Iām careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. Thereās no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like heās looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. Thereās nothing there. I ask him whatās wrong, and again he points. Itās the most emotion Iāve ever seen from him, and itās barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When Iām finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesnāt put it on right away. I ask him if somethingās still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I canāt add anything else. Even if he could ask, thereās no room left.
Next time he comes back, thereās nothing wrong with his armorāhe lets me check to make sure. I ask him what heās doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. Itās in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but Iāll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but Iām not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. Itās candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. Itās flavored with cinnamon. Iām surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but itās my own fault so I canāt complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him Iāll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave itās dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where heās going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when Iāve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesnāt move to leave.
I ask if heās going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know heās not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him Iām grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him Iāve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him itās a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone elseās empty armor with trinkets. Iām not sure if thatās really why he does it. I tell him I donāt have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. Iām not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe itās nothing at all.
ā
I didnāt edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
