Xuebing Du
Monterey Bay Aquarium
h
almost home
macklin celebrini has autism
Janaina Medeiros
dirt enthusiast
Origami Around
we're not kids anymore.
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Cosimo Galluzzi
One Nice Bug Per Day
blake kathryn
JVL
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
JBB: An Artblog!
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
NASA
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seen from Italy
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@sweaters-for-gays
I was going to rewatch 1931 Dracula again tonight and just as I turned it on a BAT started flying around at my window and wouldn’t go away and I’ve never seen a bat at my house before and let me tell you I’ve been so gay touched starved this quarantine I was about ready to risk letting a wild bat in my room if it meant it could possibly be one tall, Sexy vampire
Ah rabies
But what if the bat was from my secret gay vampire admirer
The Middle
Imagine if people applied the “outdoor cat” logic to dogs too. We’d have a bunch of dogs running outside freely, collecting parasites and diseases, getting hit by cars, harassing/killing any smaller animals and breeding like crazy. And when you told someone that they probably shouldn’t let their dog outside without a leash because it’s not exactly safe, they’d just be like “oh well you know he’s happier that way and all that stuff is just a normal part of a dog’s life lol what can ya do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”.
Honest to God, this is what living in the rural South is like.
Our neighbors have a dog that literally roams the neighborhood. She has been hit by cars twice. She’s been infested with mange. She shits in every yard but her own. The difference is that… like, most people would agree these people are shitty, irresponsible pet owners for allowing their dog to do this. We have leash laws, etc., for dogs, and if it was anywhere but Kentucky where animal welfare laws are shit, law enforcement would probably come make them keep their dog confined to their own property. If she bites someone, they’d sure as fuck be liable. But everyone jumps up in defense if it’s a cat living the exact same life because “oh he’s got freedom, he’s happy, he’s not as ‘domesticated’ as a dog!”
Can I then apply dog logic to cats? Because something I’ve noticed is that cats don’t get socialized… like at all. The whole “Asshole cat” stigma? It’s because said cat was never socialized and desensitized to things!
When I got Holly, I socialized her the same way I would have socialized a puppy. She got to meet a bunch of new people, she got taught how harnesses and leashes work, and she got exposed to a TON of ‘uncomfortable’ situations. Car rides? Exposure. Going with me to Petshmo? Exposure. Being around a large group of people? EXPOSURE!
Wanna know the result? I now have a cat that’s perfectly comfortable going on walks, going on car rides, and actually prefers her leash to being in a carrier! She loves people, and she’s friendly and not shy or defensive even if the person approaching her is a total stranger. She likes going places, even the vets office, because those aren’t terrifying experiences to her anymore because she got used to a lot of the stimuli as a 5 month old kitten (which is how old she was when I adopted her from the shelter). Every person who meets her remarks about how friendly and confident she is. That’s directly a result of how I socialized her as a kitten.
My other two cats weren’t socialized this way and they’re skittish around other people, don’t really like going anywhere other than “home,” and would rather die than be on a leash. They fight going into their carriers (Holly sleeps in hers like it’s a bed), and going to the vet is a terrifying experience for them (I only take them places that I absolutely HAVE to).
Socialize your cats! It’s not as common as socializing dogs, but it’s really important to do, your cats will be way more confident and adaptable.
I was explaining Pangur to my mom
ostensibly
my entire concept of how stocks work is the same thing as the tim & eric skit where they just sold prices
Landscape Language Moraine (noun) – rocky debris left behind by a glacier Glaciers are rivers of ice, and like all rivers, they transport sediment and rocky debris. This rocky debris piles up on the margins of glaciers to form moraines. A terminal moraine is left behind at the front of the glacier as the terminus retreats, while lateral moraines form along the sides of glaciers. Can you spot these different types of moraines in this photo of Emmons Glacier? Moraines also provide evidence of where glaciers used to exist. The large steep lateral moraines on the right side of the photo were not created by the current Emmons Glacier but by a much larger ice age glacier. This ancient glacier was 40 miles long and nearly 1,000 feet thick near the location of the present-day White River Campground!
______ NPS Photo of Emmons Glacier from the Emmons Vista Trail at Sunrise, 9/27/17. Description: The lower half of a glacier partly covered in rocky debris and bordered by ridges of debris. A river leaves the terminus of the glacier and winds through a forested valley next to a blue lake. ~kl
girl help there is not enough enrichment in my enclosure
Randomroll for @witchy-queer, story for Jacint below!
✨i do commissions!| If you fancy tipping✨
Jacint was a people person. Minotaur. It couldn’t be helped, he was raised in a tavern, owned by his loving but ever presently busy parents, what else could he grow to love? Well, besides ale, i suppose. The tavern was filled everyday with new patrons and old, goblins and giants and orcs, that called the sprawling and odd shaped tavern their Local in the deep Verredain mountains. The tavern was warm, filled with food and flowed with drink and such things only lead to happy customers who will happily regale a tale or two of their own travels to the excitable little calf Jacint. They would sit him on their table or comfortably their lap (or on the floor if the story teller happened to be smaller than the growing boy), and tell him anything and everything.
Keep reading
Some very sweet elephant behaviours I read about in Carl Safina’s Beyond Words:
a young elephant kneeling down in front of their car in a playful way and throwing zebra bones at the researchers, trying to get them to play with him
an 8-month-old elephant trying and failing to pick up some grass with her trunk (the author: “it reminds me of someone learning to use chopsticks”) and whose mother then pulled a sheaf of grass and ate it while making sure her daughter was watching the demonstration
baby elephants suck their trunk for comfort (as we all know!!) but also like to swing and whirl it around as they try to figure out what it can do and how to use it, and sometimes accidentally step on their trunk and trip over it
“often, babies reach with their trunks into the mouths of family members, taking a bit of what they’re eating”
all the female elephants in a family rushing over to help when someone’s baby trips and falls, while making comforting vocalisations
an enormous adult male elephant walking up to a family group and making an exaggerated display of nonchalance, with his trunk casually draped over his tusk, to show the other elephants that he’s not scary
researchers messing with an elephant family by collecting a bit of urine when the elephant walking at the back of the group stopped to pee, then driving some distance to leave the urine ahead of them. “When they encountered fresh urine from an elephant they knew was behind them, they seemed truly baffled, as though thinking, “Wait a minute—how’d she pass us? She’s back behind us!”
mothers instructing their babies to switch to the other side of their body and walk in their shade when the day is very hot
an elephant child trying to climb all over a bigger male teenager who was lying down for a nap, receiving a kick in response, and running back to its mother in alarm—then the teenager followed and lay down flat beside them as if to apologise and invite the child to climb onto him again
elephant children throwing tantrums when they are being weaned and their mother blocks them from nursing (“He got so upset, pushing her, poking her and tusking her, […] it was like, ‘Ooh, I hate you!”)
researchers followed a family that included a baby who was born disabled, with twisted forelegs that he couldn’t straighten. The entire elephant family (from the adults to the baby’s 8-year-old sister) nurtured him, patiently helping him up every time he fell over, “slowing their pace to his disabilities, continually turning to watch his progress, waiting as he caught up from behind” until (after a few days) the little one managed to straighten his legs and learn to walk normally
a researcher once saw an elephant pluck up some grass and place it in the mouth of another elephant whose trunk was badly injured. Also adults are sometimes seen carrying sick baby elephants on their tusks
a researcher saw a baby elephant who was wary of going into the water, wrap her trunk around her mother’s tusk as her mother patiently entered the river with her, like a child nervously grabbing her mother’s arm
“little elephants show lots of concentration while working to master such tasks as picking up sticks. A youngster might twirl and twirl its trunk around a single blade of grass, finally grasp it, drop it and have a hard time getting it back, then simply place the grass blade atop its head”
i’m makin some silly little stickers for my storenvy woo
Rasputin in Popular Culture: Supernaturally vigorous man refuses to die.
Rasputin in Reality: A bunch of nerds who think they know how murder works because they read a book repeatedly fail to kill a man who’s too drunk to realise he’s being murdered.
Rasputin in my Heart: Russia’s greatest love machine.
sleepy coffee break at resident services ☕️
NeZha (2019)
NeZha (2019)
In light of the new Raya and the Last Dragon trailer, I’d like to bring this back.
Look at this. This is the caliber of art we could have gotten, but no. Pretty backwards how the small animation studios such as Cartoon Saloon, SPA, and countless others are the ones taking risks and putting their fucking all into the movies and TV shows they create, meanwhile the biggest film company in history; the one with the most ability to do something great, is not.
Look up there again, and now look at what we got. Two years later!
I’m not going to sit here and pretend like it’s the worst character design of all time, but it is obviously very sanded down and ‘Elsa-fied’ for marketability and… It’s just boring. It looks like something you’d see in a barbie playset rather than in a movie with a multimillion dollar budget run by one of the biggest companies on Earth.
Disney as a corporation does enough horrible shit as is, but on top of that they are clearly making art for money’s sake, and not for art’s sake, despite already having won the game a hundred times over.
It’s honestly a slap in the face how much they clearly didn’t try here. I’m not faulting the artists and animators who worked on this movie, but rather the execs and bigwigs up the ladder who obviously melted it down to the perfect, focus tested stuffed animal——
Oh look it’s already happened
There does appear to be a “this isn’t even my final form” type deal happening with her, which looks a biiiit better? But it’s still got that disney googly eyed doll thing going on, and fuck—the face. Again; not the worst ever—a little better than the primary design—but it’s still not great.
And saying “muhh it’s for kids why are you melting down over the pretty dragon you’re way too spun up about this,” no. Stop. This is the kind of shit that can change an entire industry. That can affect many real people and their careers. Hell, it could affect my career in the future.
And the excuse of being made for kids also holds no water. Kids aren’t stupid; there is some damn outstanding children’s media out there that doesn’t rely on being as watered down and pandering as possible—that takes itself seriously and commits to telling not just a targeted, appealing story, but a quality one with a true vision.
Kind of like, oh—what Disney used to fucking excel at.
There is a difference between something being made for kids and something being marketed to them.
And yes, Disney has always marketed the everliving shit out of everything they make, but for God’s sake it feels like now the order of operations is backwards. As if their recent movies have the marketability woven into their structure from the start rather than simply being strong enough to… Be something people want to financially support.
This Illumination-style trend of being as safe and widely-pandering as possible at the cost of artistry, risk, and pioneering is a disease that’s permeated big animation studios. And no one is a bigger perpetrator of this than the Mouse, who—ironically—is the one with infinite resources to do whatever the hell they want.
And this is what they did instead, all in the name of filling their own pockets even more. I hate this corporation and I hate this stupid cotton candy Joan Rivers dragon.
Maybe I’ll be wrong; please let me be wrong! this movie could come out and be great and I want that. But this character design, the generic-looking plot, and the subpar and lmao #relatable trailer are seriously making me doubt it’ll be anything more than another super safe cash cow.
Support small studios. Screw Disney. What a disappointment.
I am so mad at everything about this dragons’ design. What the hell compelled these people to give it Elsa’s face??? I am disturbed and upset at this human faced, bastardization of a dragon that clearly takes influence from Chinese/Japanese dragons. Just because the face mold is easy to make toys and money, does not mean you should when you could do so much better than this. What the HELL Disney.
ADDITION! the fact that the inspiration for this dragon is clearly of Chinese/Japanese influence is already SO FUCKED UP, especially since this was a movie advertised to have the “first Southeast Asian Disney Princess” and to have “been based on Southeast Asian culture.” Not only is lumping together all VARIOUS AND DIFFERING CULTURES TOGETHER PROBLEMATIC (as it perpetuates the stereotype that somehow all countries in Asia have the same culture, which, fun fact, IS NOT TRUE), it also seems like they’re just taking a shallow level of understanding from these cultures for the ✨aesthetic✨. When I first saw the teaser, as a Southeast Asian I felt NOTHING. NOTHING FEELS FAMILIAR TO ME. They could’ve just pinpointed the exact country but NOOO. Trust me, SEA people are extremely disappointed with whatever is happening to Raya and the Last Dragon. Oh, and imagine putting out a movie with “SEA rep”, but there is no Disney plus in most of the SEA countries. Are we not supposed to be the target audience??? Or at least SEA kids who are looking for rep, to see a character and go: hey, that’s just like me!
I said it before and I’ll say it again. This is just another Southeast Asian aesthetic movie for white people.
Today is Holocaust Remberance Day so remember to continue to challenge antisemitic biases that yourself and society hold, make Jewish and Roma people feel safe and uplifted, and include us in your activism.
I made a really bad, timely meme
