only the most hinged of behavior here @solarisetlesetoiles - Tumblr Blog

high ambient background football levels reminded me to actually finish this Personal Lore That Caused My Books comic

I feel like it hardly matters anymore, but Flock isn't the only unsecured intrusive data selling crime inventing AI hallucinating automated license plate reading mass surveillance camera operators. Axon and Motorola and Amazon and ALPR and CCTV and security cameras should be equally rejected. All surveillance must go.

cipheramnesia

There is no such thing as benign surveillance.

cipheramnesia

You are never monitored for your safety.

hometoursandotherstuff

crazy-pages

Sometimes you try to write one research paper and your subjects inform you that you will be writing an entirely different one.

aromanticaardvark

[image description: image of an Aardvark with grey, yellow and white in the background. Text says “Parents say they just want you to be happy and get married” at the top and “Oxymoron” at the bottom.]

heartless-aro

Here’s an old aro meme from 2011, which was before the rise of the “Ace Discourse” around 2015 (which may have started out as backlash in response to The Trevor Project deciding to include asexual people around that time). This meme format uses an aardvark to represent aromantic people. At the time, axolotls were often used in similar memes to represent asexuals, so the aromantic aardvark was chosen as the aromantic equivalent of the asexual axolotl. Aardvarks were considered to be somewhat of a mascot for the aromantic community for some time, though they have become less popular as a symbol in recent years.

nillthirteen

This reads like a museum guide showing one of the most prestigious pieces in an exhibit

partywithponies

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

partywithponies

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

titsay

derinthescarletpescatarian

Just saw somebody refer to highly disposable collectibles (labubus, funko pops, stuff like that) as "landfillcore" and I'm stealing that.

bananonbinary

#Beanie babies were at least nice toys (via @tallgreenlady)

okay this has actually led me down the rabbit hole of the beanie baby environmental impact, and apparently the big problem is that they used to be stuffed with PVC pellets. the science in all that is REALLY over my head, but from what i can tell from wikipedia and some googling around, that's actually a suuuper nasty plastic to have your little kid potentially gnawing on. like, "may release noxious chemicals and give them lifelong respiration problems" nasty.

granted, the worst case scenario there is mostly from burning them, but you'll never guess what people commonly did after they became landfillcore.

thecolorofthegame

The problem really isn't even the product itself, it's that we treat ravenously buying things like it's just a hobby, when in truth, it's also falling for propaganda and a failure to reduce consumption.

These companies are convincing people to buy as much useless, plastic crap as possible, crap that can't be reused (because it isn't useful in the first place) and won't be recycled (not that recycling them would even do much).

There's nothing wrong with buying things you enjoy; the problem is that the person with a room full of 3000 unopened Funko Pops isn't enjoying the figurines, they're enjoying buying and owning. It's buying things for the sake of buying things, literally the opposite of reducing.

elodieunderglass

I know it’s tangential and I should probably properly write up and post my half-joking Breyer horse manifesto, but as a collection hobby it has a lot of reasons to be smug - in addition to being technically made of “green” materials (cellulose acetate is derived from plants, not petroleum), even battered/broken/played-with-and-loved-to-death Breyers retain decent resale value to the painting side of the hobby. Even dismembered PIECES of the horses can be sold onwards to sculptors.

lichfucker

y'all are so lucky I decided to just block this motherfucker instead of going off at 4:30 am because people are misusing alt text again

lichfucker

alt text is not the place for paratextual jokes. alt text is not the place for soliloquies and asides and confessions. alt text is not the place for secret tangential conversations between author and reader. alt text is not the place for easter eggs. alt text is not the place for paragraph-long existential rambles that include lines like "did you come to the transcript looking for answers? I don't have any answers" and "I've lost the thread of what's happening in [the image I'm supposed to be describing]."

alt text is an accessibility tool. use it like one.

[plain text: alt text is an accessibility tool. use it like one.]

marshmellowtea

he's beautiful i literally need to put him under extreme psychological stress. i need to put him in extreme physical pain. i need him curling up in someone's arms for the feelings of safety and comfort he hasn't received in ages

wolfythewitch

Backed into a corner

wolfythewitch

It’s not available on the acggoods catalog but this was the plan ehe

frontmansdefender

somethingusefulfromflorida

Big and small henchmen for the villain in one of those secret-life-of-mice movies from the 80s

wickedsnack

great-and-small

I saw an otter briefly hop on top of a babirusa at the zoo and when the stranger standing next to me heard my camera shutter click he turned to me with this look of immense relief, put his hand to his chest, and said in a dead serious tone “oh thank christ someone caught that on film”

great-and-small

Not the best photo but here it is for posterity

aelijoh

I wanted to draw them

gallusrostromegalus

Upstairs Kevin Is Actually For Real The World's Most Perfect Betta Fish

So for those of you not familiar with my recent descent into fishkeeping, about 2 months ago a friend of mine who does Hazardous Waste cleanup (specifically cleaning up hazardous places like meth labs) called me up and asked:

"You have fish, right?"

"...Why?" I asked, having become aware that the Fish Distribution System is even more aggressive than the cat one.

"I found a fish in the back of an abandoned trap house. Alive." She clarified.

I could feel my fate settling upon my soul.

"...Send me a pic so I can ID the species and I'll see what I can do."

She sent me a picture of a small purplish squiggle in six inches of fetid green muck. But when I arrived to collect the sludge creature he turned out to look like this:

He's difficult to photograph in focus, but he's a deep wine-dark creature with an iridescent blue sheen. The red patches on his fins mirror where the fins of a Plakat/wild Betta splendens would be, and the rest of his fins are a ghostly shimmering white. This fish was in six inches of toxic green shit.

Naturally, he needed the finest tank I could put together that afternoon.

I think I did alright.

He's so fucking cute. He always swims up to watch when anyone approaches. I've got him trained to do a little dance when I feed him. He likes watching me doing anything in front of his tank.

That's all actually pretty typical of Bettas- they're very intelligent and curious creatures and like learning, which is more than I can say for some of my relatives.

Where Upstairs Kevin (so named because his tank is in my upstairs bathroom) really shines is that a lot of Bettas are... Not sociable. They often eat shrimp, attack other fish in their tank (or get stressed out of they can't commit enough violence to maintain their personal space) or constantly harass and nip the snails in their tanks. Most Bettas are genuinely happier being alone.

Kevin fucking loves his snail (Bluebert) and will shimmy as fast as he can over whenever Bluebert falls off something (it's fine, this is a normal way for mystery snails to get from one place to another).

When I had my Nego D'Aguas in the holding tank, I had to put three of the smallest ones in with him because they were being harassed in the small tank, and he was a perfect gentleman with them. He was trying very hard to shoal with them, but they're very zippy. He was visibly upset (lethargic, dulled colors) when I moved them back to the big tank.

Today was the real acid test: I'm going to move him from his 5 gallon to the 10 gallon so I can use the 5 as a hospital/spare plants tank, and I needed to know if I could have shrimp in with him. Even Betta that are cool with other fish can still see a shrimp and decide they're at the buffet. Unfortunately, there's no real way to know without putting shrimp in with the Betta.

So earlier today, I got half a dozen super-discounted Rilli shrimp (LFS has a massive overstock of them for some reason) and added them to his 5 gallon. There are a bunch of hiding places for shrimp in there and if he was aggressive with them I'd move him to the 10 gallon immediately (I don't want to do that just yet because I need to move the furniture around in there a bit).

Friends.

The shrimp are fully swimming in the open and Kevin is just following them around, curious, but only curious. No gill-flaring, no posturing, no lunges or snapping. Some of them are red, a color that normally triggers aggression in Bettas, and he's just. Hanging out, watching them eat biofilm off the moss. One of them accidentally landed on his head and stayed there for 3 seconds and he only went "???" Until it took off again.

My beautiful and perfect and son who is so kind and gentle with his tiny friends.

drtrinitysantos

sdxfcgvzdxfcgvhzdxfcgvhbjnkmlcgvhbjnk science

dizzyhslightlyvoided

#the reason that lab safety regulations are the way they are is because literally all chemists are like this #as in 100% of them #no exceptions (via @prokopetz)

copperbadge

My grandfather got the GI bill after the war and decided to become a chemist. He was a year into his degree when he spilled something on himself in the lab. The way he told it, he watched whatever it was start to dissolve the leather apron he was wearing, thought about what it might be doing to his lungs, and after calmly removing the apron, became an architect instead. I think chemists are Like That because the sane ones all self-selected out of the pool.