Monterey Bay Aquarium
if i look back, i am lost
Discoholic 🪩
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
pixel skylines
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
sheepfilms
Love Begins
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
RMH
Show & Tell
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dirt enthusiast
Kiana Khansmith
Misplaced Lens Cap
JVL
Janaina Medeiros
AnasAbdin
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@stxrdusty
my fav relationship ship dynamic is where it doesn't matter if you call it platonic or romantic or queerplatonic because they always act the same in every type of relationship. and the way they act? fucking weird.
via @endless-natterings
@bamsara
Hey the US government is proposing to get rid of the Endangered Species Act. Please go comment.
(yes this entirely for corporate profit)
Cut and paste the docket number to put in your response if you remember. You can comment anonymously if you want.
The Oregon Zoo has some sample arguments you can make.
We have until December 22nd!
I don't usually add on to stuff like this, but this is really really important to me.
Since OP didn't explain what's actually changing (lots of things) here's a simple explanation of one of the Big Ones.
One of the biggest changes is a proposal to remove the ESA’s Threatened Species Blanket Rule (FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029). The Blanket Rule is extremely important because it automatically extends the same protections given to endangered species to all newly listed threatened species, quickly providing prohibitions on harming, killing or trading the species. If the Blanket Rule is rescinded, species-specific rules would have to be enacted, imposing additional procedural delays and uncertainty at the most critical time for the species' survival. And with more and more species in danger each year, that’s a risk that we as a country cannot afford to take.
Also, @why-animals-do-the-thing / @animalphotorefs this seems like something that your reach might help with, and that's relevant to your blog(s).
If you run into issues, try turning off your VPN if you have one, in case it's getting annoyed that you're not "in the U.S.".
If you need a template, I'm putting one I got sent at work under the cut. (But check out the Oregon Zoo link, too! Or better yet, write your own! Unique and individual comments catch more attention than copy-pasted ones!)
Thanks for the tag, I definitely want to jump in here because the most helpful thing any individual can do is write your own comment.
I’m going to give you a little bit of information about the process that’s happening here, why it’s happening, and how you can best contribute to protecting the Endangered Species Act. You can skip it by scrolling to the red text, but you’ll be best set up to comment and help if you know some things about what’s happening first, so please stick with me. I promise to be as simple and jargon free as possible.
First, and to catch people's attention as they scroll, here's two red wolf sisters: a species the ESA actively preserving. This is who we're doing this for.
To clarify one thing: they’re not trying to totally repeal the ESA, the entire law, they’re looking to roll back regulations implementing it/enforcing it to what was being used in 2019. This is still bad! Very bad! But a thing that’s important when dealing with legislation/regulation is precision in the language we use.
Okay, so here’s what you need to know. This is part of what is known as the “notice-and-comment” rule making process, which is federally mandated. This happens with the implementation of regulations to enact new laws, or changes to the interpretation of laws. Laws like the ESA, once passed, are delegated to various federal agencies and departments to enact and make happen, and they do that by deciding what regulations need to exist to fulfill the text and intent of the law. This change to the ESA is happening because one of the earliest executive orders from this administration “directed all departments and agencies to immediately review agency actions to identify those actions that potentially impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider suspending, revising, or rescinding agency actions identified as unduly burdensome that conflict with this national objective.” So, as @sweetfirebird said, literally go figure out what laws and regs and protections they can interpret differently, put on hold, or trash for the energy sector. Fucking gross.
This “notice-and-comment” process is the process with which all these federal agencies go about exploring changing regulations. It’s a formal process that is specifically designed to allow stakeholders to have input on what happens. Good news: in the ESA, the public is literally a stakeholder! It’s written into the law that any “person” (basically an individual or a group of individuals) can sue the government for a violation of the law. This is actually historically the prime enforcement mechanism of the ESA. Which means you, as an American on tumblr reading this, have absolutely valid standing to go tell the feds to knock this shit off. And with the way the “notice-and-comment” process works, they actually have to take your argument into account. (Yes, even though we know this admin is a piece of shit and dgaf). Here’s why.
A “notice and comment” process has four major steps.
Agency issues a notice of proposed rulemaking. That’s what you’re looking at in the first link @sweetbirdfire shared. They have to describe what the rule they want to make/change is and explain the legal authority for the rule.
The public must be given an opportunity to participate in a written comment period. That’s what you’re being asked to do - submit a comment before the comment period is over on the 22nd.
The agency must “consider all relevant, timely-submitted comments. If it decides to issue a final rule, the agency develops the regulatory text along with a preamble explaining the rule’s basis and responding to all significant issues raised in the comments.”
Final rule is published.
Okay, so why did I jump to a direct quote from federal documents in the third bullet point? Because that’s the really important shit. When federal agencies move forward with rulemaking after a public comment period, they are required to consider and response to all significant issues raised. And that is why you should write your own comment if you can.
It’s really common for organizations encouraging people to leave public comment to ask people to send in form letters. It’s easy, it takes no time or real work, it shows a lot of general public support on the issue, and they can quote the comment numbers when they’re lobbying.
But! What I’ve been told by serious professional people who work with regulatory agencies is that all those form letters only have the functional weight of a single comment during the “notice-and-comment” process. If 100 people only bring up the same significant set of issues, that requires far less time and work for the agency to respond to than even 20 people writing in with their individual concerns. I’ve seen follow-ups on comment periods where they actually count how many people raised issues on a single topic or concern - but the form letters only counted as one “comment” because they were the exact same thing.
And while the political agency head probably wants to fast-track this process of changing the regs to let the feds tear up whatever the fuck they want, a “notice-and-comment period” is a really good way to gum up those gears. There are still people in lower-level positions who do this daily work and I expect that they’re opposed to this and will go through the whole process like they’re been trained to. Under normal administrations, an overwhelming number of concerns raised during comment periods have stalled the creation/change of specific regulations for a decade. This is a process that works best when as many people as possible participate, and it’s detrimental to our interests as invested members of the public that that isn’t more widely known or the process understood.
So! What does that mean you should do here?
Write your own comment if you have the time/spoons.
Literally, write it in your own words, rather than using the form letters provided. If you make it a “different comment” it has to be considered separately and your concerns on the topic will be given more weight. Even if you just stick to the topics the Oregon Zoo offered: to be clear, they’re really good ones.
But, you’ll have even more impact if you can tie it to specific concerns for you. It takes a little more work so I don’t expect everyone to do this, but if you have some specialized or local knowledge that can be relevant, this is a great time to drop that in. Tie the concern to endangered or threatened species in your specific community, or an ecosystem that you know companies might want to pillage.
Your comment doesn’t have to be super well written or perfectly edited. It can be in language about as casual as you’d use in a tumblr post (with punctuation, though). This isn’t something you’re turning in for a grade - it’s raising your hand to say hey, I object! You’re not a major advocacy group or professional org, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to tell them how you feel. That being said. Public comments are public record. You can submit them anonymously but don’t include identifying information.
Here’s a link directly to the comment portal. While the site has a text box embedded in the page, you can also submit a document/file containing your comment.
https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039-0001
Comments close at 11:59 PM EST (4:59 GMT) on December 22nd. We have less than five days to get more comments in. I’m really not kidding when I say every unique, individual comment makes an impact. Let’s do this.
Images from @animalphotorefs
Found a guide from protectdemocracy.org on how to write an effective public comment (these images are edited slightly for readability; go to the actual guide for more resources):
Public comments are not a voting process and simply expressing disagreement is not effective.
I personally disagree that you should write as informally you would a tumblr post. I would not trust that the regulators reading these comments have such principles about the importance of listening to people's concerns regardless of how informal or uneducated they sound.
Honestly, I would treat this as you would a graded assignment, because they are not obligation make any decisions simply because people comment that they don't want a rule made. You need to convince them that there are significant concerns, and you should be imagining the person you are convincing is an old white cis male politician who regularly complains that kids these days don't know cursive. That is the kind of person likely deciding if your comment is relevant to the regulation and brings up significant enough concerns.
But you could write out your thoughts in informal language, and then use Grammarly or something similar to help polish it into a more formal comment. Following the suggestions in that guide should help give you a basic structure for what your comment should look like.
Unique comments are most effective; copy-pasted ones are not. This is a process which requires intellectual labor and there's no getting around that, but there's nothing wrong with getting help.
Very good additions!
I framed it as “this doesn’t have to be a graded assignment” because I didn’t want it to sound super formal and hard after going into a ton of detailed federal processes. It doesn’t have to be scary was really my point. Like, I’ve read a lot of federal comments for various zoo-related laws, and I’ve seen some of the stakeholders submit pretty casual comments. Is it ideal? Not really. But I know everyone is stressed as hell all the time these days and the idea of doing a bunch of intellectual labor on a foreign topic with real world consequences can be really intimidating.
@genderkoolaid provided some great resources on writing a good comment, and I really like the idea of using online (non-genAI) services to get help with polishing. If you have the labor to put into a really polished comment, so that. But if something more informal is all you can do, do that instead of nothing.
lesbian heated rivalry wouldn’t be in hockey because there are already many out queer women in hockey due to the fact that hockey is viewed as a men’s sport. the whole reason hockey is captivating for mlm is because it is a toxically masculine sport and the idea of having out queer men in that sport is surprising (requiring them to stay closeted/have situationships/etc), whereas it is not nearly as surprising for queer women. therefore, lesbian heated rivalry would actually occur in a setting like ballet, gymnastics, or some other stereotypically feminine sport (that has toxic feminine standards) where queer women are not as visible. in this essay i will
Thinking about it, and I’d like to forward the idea that prejudice against single people (aromantics, asexuals, and also just… anyone who does not have a romantic partner) follows dynamics less like anti-queer bigotry and more akin to anti-fat bigotry.
Fatness, like singlehood, is seen at large as a state of failure. Everybody is supposed to want to be [thin / partnered], and if you are not, that is a personal failure on your part, and you are pathetic and mock-worthy. The popular idea is that of course everybody wants to be [thin / partnered], and everybody is striving towards the goal, and anybody who is not [thin / partnered] is either temporarily inconvenienced on their way to correctness, or has something fundamentally wrong with them. And because [fatness / singlehood] is something that is treated as fixable, if you have not fixed it, then there is something wrong with you—and thus discriminating against you is acceptable, because your [fatness / singlehood] is based on your own bad choices.
The world is, in some cases quite literally, not built for fat or single people. If you are fat or single, the world is much more difficult or expensive to live in, because it is structurally designed for the assumption that you are thin or that you have a partner. The normative Person, after all, is thin and romantically partnered. If you are not thin or not romantically partnered, there is something fundamentally less human about you.
[Fatness / singlehood] is something embarrassing, something worth mocking others over, something that reflects your fundamental unworthiness. Every fictional hero is thin, every fictional happy ending ends with romance. Everyone in your life is either quietly or not-so-quietly worried about you.
And all this is fine and acceptable. Because in the general perception, [fatness / singlehood] is not a real axis of bigotry. It’s a choice! You could just become a different person and stop being [fat / single]! You deserve the mockery, the derision, the attempts to fix you, the world not accommodating you, because you could just become a better person and stop being [fat / single] at any point. So it’s your own fault people treat you badly, really.
This is a really interesting lens I haven’t heard before! I do think it’s important to mention that ace/aro people also do get a lot of anti-queer bigotry too.
People calling us pedophiles, saying our discourse isn’t appropriate for the workplace/public life, that we’re trying to sexualize children, etc etc etc
So I think a more correct discussion is the ways that asexuality manages to hold both these spaces, that of failure, but also perverseness
Undeniably! And that’s why I framed this specifically around singlehood, not asexuality or aromanticism as queer identities. They’re obviously related and overlap a lot, but the discrimination dynamics work differently to my observation, which is what I was interested in.
Anyone of any orientation can be single, and subject to this kind of discrimination; ace and aro people can have partners, and once they have partners generally not subject to this sort of discrimination for being single.
People have pointed out that that anti-LGBTQ bigotry is also very often framed as “disapproval” of “a lifestyle choice” but I see that as having a different tenor: bigotry for something you’re perceived as spitefully and maliciously choosing to actively do, rather than lazily lacking moral fiber and being a failure to live up to normality.
The anti-ace and anti-aro bigotry you describe is more along the lines of other anti-queer bigotries: you’re a deviant, you’re a freak, you’re a sexual menace, you’re brainwashed, you’re butting in where you don’t belong, there is something deep inside your body or soul that’s wrong and needs to be fixed. And obviously both can be going at once! Which is a distinction—or maybe a spectrum of arguments—that I’m making here: fatphobia and anti-single discrimination work on the “you have the choice and could just stop any time” model, but it’s about stepping up and joining normal people, rather than stopping your active sin of being a deviant on purpose. Failure rather than deviancy.
And I think the distinction is worthwhile, because people who reject the “deviancy” style of bigotry are still liable to fall into the “failure” style of bigotry.
Discord forcing users to upload IDs and then having their service provider for this get hacked and leaking those IDs is incredible, they should be sued into the ground for this
By the way, because they know they can get sued from stuff like this, they're making it so that you can't sue them. Make sure to opt out of forced arbitration with Discord so that you can sue them:
💬 367 🔁 27277 ❤️ 29662 · discord's new terms of service DO have a mandatory arbitration clause for the United States and Canada, you have
https://www.tumblr.com/steamos-official/796229383707852800
They're giving the option to opt out until Oct 29 of 2025 (2025-10-29).
one hill i will absolutely die on is that imperial measurements are OBJECTIVELY better for casual home crafting purposes. they are better for cooking, they are better for baking, and they are better for sewing, and anybody who can't accept that has a fetish for wasting their own time
do you know why feet are 12 inches instead of 10?
it’s because 12 can be divided evenly by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while 10 can only be divided evenly by 2 and 5. being able to easily split a quantity into thirds and quarters is so fucking useful for household purposes! 12 can be split into eighths using only one decimal, 10 needs two decimals. this makes a meaningful difference in how easy they are to work with!
the smallest unit of distance a human can reliably eyeball and the smallest unit that makes a meaningful difference to most household uses are both in between 1 millimeter and 1 centimeter, and meters are so big that they’re completely useless around the house- meaning you’re stuck with 3 digit numbers of centimeters, when you could have a 1 digit number of feet.
baking with grams might be more precise, but measuring volumetrically means you can just scoop and level and call it a day- weighing takes WAY longer. and you can divide ‘3 cups’ in half much quicker and easier than you can divide ‘347 grams’
just about every numerical system on earth is based on a multiple of 5, because humans have five fingers, which makes it easy to count. base 10 is the DEFAULT. so why would anyone invent and use non-decimal measurements, when they were already used to decimal math? there had to be a reason, otherwise it wouldn’t have caught on and been used for ONE THOUSAND YEARS
and that reason is utility. convenience. practicality. memorizing the difference between cups and pints and quarts seems difficult at first, but the payoff is that every unit can be described in small, easy-to-conceptualize numbers, and those units scale progressively, not exponentially
the utility of having units that fall between ‘bug sized’ (cm) and ‘dog sized’ (m) should be self-evident. the utility of being able to simplify units into easier numbers (‘72 inches’ -> ‘6 feet’ instead of ‘167 centimeters’ -> ‘1.67 meters’) cannot be overstated! it’s obvious!
I LOVE IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS AND YOU SHOULD TOO
so what you're saying is we should have different units for different things
metric = science, engineering
imperial = cooking, sewing, height and length of human things
When should differner large distance measurements be used? A mile and a kilometer are very different in length. 1 mile (5280ft) can be divided by 60 and I can see how that could be useful for measuring travel time.
And I've heard several arguments for why F/C are better for human use. Primarily that Fahrenheit adds more steps of difference between numbers than Celsius. And the significant looking values coincide with human experience (90-100+ is bad for humans, as is <32) rather than the chemical water. I'd argue that both units should always be shown depending on what someone might want to do with the information. F for human experience of the heat and C to provide knowledge on the energetic state of water.
We need to do what we can to protect the Internet Archive. Here is a petition that you can sign.
Defend the Internet Archive
This petition alone might not be enough, but everything we can throw at this counts.
This is current- it was posted on 8/25/2025
My blog wouldn't exist without the internet archive.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR DONATIONS ON CHANGE.ORG DO NOT GO TO THE SUBJECT OF THE CAMPAIGN
That means that when you donate, it goes to change.org.
If you want to donate to the internet archive's legal fund (and help with operation costs), then you can click here to go their donation page
there's a secret good sequel series that lives only in brain where finn and rey are force-sensitive foils to each other and they still spend movie #2 entirely apart but it's because they're exploring parallel and at time opposite relationships with the force and their place in the universe
and in my secret good version. okay hear me out. the han-leia kid is a hot lady. okay. are we following. and she DOES abandon luke's new jedi, not by falling and murdering people, but by stealing the millennium falcon and running off to escape responsibility and swaggers around with incredible han solo "loser pretending to be cool" energy. and then. she accidentally picks up two force sensitive teens on jakku and she's like. are you KIDDING me
listen my OC would be so good. she's introduced in like a space bar and you're just like "oh okay, the han solo character is a lady in this movie, okay"
but THEN some sort of shit hits the fan and you get that sexy, sexy lightsaber reveal. DO YOU SEE MY VISION
Something I love about Dance Gavin Dance is how it’s one of the rare bands where the lead singer is the least important member LOL that’s how they’ve gotten away with having so many different lead singers bc like if you HAD to name a “frontman” it’d probably be Jon but as more of a meat puppet being Weekend At Bernie’s’ed around by Will who is the real brain behind the whole “Dance Gavin Dance” operation .
Trump and Republicans in Congress canceled funding for the organization earlier this year as a means of targeting PBS and NPR.
It's also important to note that PBS-funded programs are trying their best to stay afloat despite this! If this news angers you and you have the financial ability to donate, PLEASE throw some money at your local public broadcasting station! If you don't have a local PBS, consider Oregon Public Broadcasting, which has been in continuous operation for over 100 years (first radio, then TV).
Help preserve independent journalism and community programming across America by adopting a public media station. Congress has voted to resc
^ this site will show you your local station as well as stations that have lost 50% or more of their total revenue
That post about death note being "everyone's first anime" (untrue statement) made me curious and now I want to gather data for science
Can you reblog this and tell me where are you from and what was your starter anime?
THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS
Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.
This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.
THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.
If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.
CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.
Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.
The Senate’s spending package could offer up nearly 300 million acres of public lands for sale—a vast area that includes nearly 100,000 mile
I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.
the fucking budget bill of hell passed the house that removes HRT from medicare, general medicare spending cuts, student financial aid cuts, and oh yeah lets the teump regime ignore court orders even harder and lets for even harder executive overreach. they did this shit at motherfucking 2 am so people wouldn’t notice too
it passed house like i said but still needs to pass senate.
tell your senators to invoke byrd rule which is a goddamn real thing apparently
call your goddamn senators i swear to god
and if you’re in DC there’s a protest going on as we speak
go do your civic duty you piece of shit
he’ll cry and it’ll be all your fault for not calling and protesting
do you guys know about the internet roadtrip? right now somewhere between 500 and 900 people are collectively 'driving' a car on google street view trying to make it to canada. it's fun i recommend it
also the car goes hilariously SLOW. they've gone about 35 miles over the past 12 hours. this is gonna be a longass roadtrip
the internet road trip car has a radio that gets like 5 local stations. everyone in the car has gotten really into WBOR, a college station in maine. (we're still in maine. we're going to be in maine for days) they've decided to take the car to the station but in order to make sure they arrive during the day while the djs are on air, they're killing time by driving around backroads on islands
big news, i just tuned in and the car has made it to brunswick maine, estimated to arrive at WBOR hq in 30 mins. the radio was playing an early round of applause
the dj is playing traditional french music from the 60s right now and is following the progress of the car which is taking a scenic route to see the sights of brunswick
we are HERe we are triumphantly honking while french music plays on the radio
WBOR is rickrolling us
reblog and put in the tags the earliest songs you remember actively liking as a child (asking adults to play them for you, learning the lyrics, being excited when they came on the radio etc.)
