Monterey Bay Aquarium
Three Goblin Art
oozey mess
trying on a metaphor
NASA
occasionally subtle
titsay
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
AnasAbdin
#extradirty
Cosmic Funnies
Keni
almost home
Acquired Stardust
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Discoholic 🪩
pixel skylines
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Mike Driver
art blog(derogatory)
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Spain
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Denmark
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from South Africa
seen from United States
seen from Morocco
@thewritehag
It's my birthday today!
To celebrate, I'm working and will be moving tomorrow, then I promised myself a single edible gummy to enjoy after the initial unpacking tomorrow afternoon/evening.
To help me afford cake, my venmo is @hollygeez
Love and deranged,
--Me
the new york times is now charging money for my favorite chocolate cake recipe so i bought a subscription and screenshotted it and canceled my subscription and now it's here for you for free
i do a mixture of red wine and fresh squeezed navel orange juice for the liquid, plus the zest of one large orange. now you make the cake
At a playdate, the playdatee’s younger sibling is telling me about local man-eating tigers and I am asking supportive questions because that’s how you a) support conversational skills development and b) tease truly magnificent weirdo stories out of the babble of social lies. The playdatee comes by and in typical older sibling fashion says
“Hey, he’s lying. In case you didn’t know.”
“She knows” says my child, “she just pretends to believe people who are lying to be nice. CLASSIC my mom.”
Young man you are only six years old come back here and explain how you know that. I mean don’t I have to get this conversation about a tiger eating someone’s head at the trampoline park back on track but I WILL be circling back.
What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more 🕺💃
a lot of my autism masking is just making myself more palatable for other people and my therapist said "does spock make himself 'more palatable' for others?" and had me promise to keep unmasking like:
so happy and free
this is going to be a silly reblog but i have kind of a fixation on animal qualia and the idea of an animal's umwelt, so i ended up wondering whether pudding was actually "enjoying" this.
which meant i went and read about snail brains.
here's the bad news, at least by human standards:
snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.
pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.
snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."
so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.
and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.
snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."
if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.
pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.
i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.
snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?
so maybe the point isn't "this is sad because he can't enjoy it," but "this is a reminder that minds come in radically different shapes, and value doesn't have to be rich to be real."
#I never like when people say “this creature doesn't perceive the world like we do so it can't experience worthwhile things” #so I was very glad to see this post not go in that direction #pudding is content in their own way #I will always remember that snail I encouraged onto a leaf to bring to a better spot in our garden (it was on the parasol before) #and when I set it down between some plants in the shade; I used my plant mister to make some fake rain for it #since it had been a hot; dry day #that snail extended it's little snail body as far out of its shell as it could #and began wriggling in the rain in what I can only call a dance #swaying back and forth in it #it was so cute #and maybe it didn't feel like we would have #but I think it appreciated the rain
tags via @ratstuckinamarble
quick! before you delete that original post you made that you didn't realize had misinformation or something in it: turn off the reblogs first! if you delete the post without turning off rbs then it's just gonna keep spreading without your knowledge or any way to stop it. follow for more tips to avoid further tumblr Classic Blunders.
my other favorite pro tip: you can block people who send you anons only if you don't answer the ask. in your inbox, you can click the three little dots on the ask and block the sender from there (which also makes the message immediately disappear), though they won't show up in your blocked list to retain their anonymity. it's some kind of test of moral fortitude, like you can only banish this fool if you decline the chance to get the last word, but you can easily have your cake and eat it too by screenshotting the ask or copying the text or something first.
third pro tip: blocking here serves to make it so the person you block can't interact with you, it doesn't hide the person you blocked from your view, so if you want to do that then you should add their url to your filtered post content. not filtered tags, filtered post content.
was outside earlier and a bird Came Up, squatted down, fluttered it’s wings at me and opened its mouth like a hatchling begging for food (it was a grown female) so I went and checked the seed cube in the feeder and the thing was completely covered in mold. this is one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. how did she know im the one in charge of the birdseed. How Did She Know To Pantomime Hunger At Me. Hello.
i have spent my afternoon confusedly getting dressed, driving to the store, purchasing a new seed block, driving home, washing the cage, and getting the feeder set back up. i don’t take this much care for my Own nutrition. ive been bullied into a grocery store run by a tufted titmouse. i feel so loved
It’s Pride Month Eve, so leave out some milk for Freddie Mercury and his cats.
Time for the annual Pride Month reblog of Freddie Mercury and his fabulous cats!
Pride prints are back in stock but leaving soon! 🐹🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Happy Pride!
Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
I woke up out of a dead sleep to make this and then immediately passed back out
I raise u
Trainer Alex wants to battle!
I add
please consider
A new challenger enters the stage
how about…
I present:
Fuck you
Good news that we deserve 😌
for people who can’t watch the video: THE AMYGDALA CHANGES TRADITIONALLY FOUND IN MOTHERS SHOW UP IN ALL PRIMARY CAREGIVERS REGARDLESS OF SEX
Changes in this part of the brain were previously used to previously used to argue that women are the ideal primary caretakers of children in all cases. And apparently, it’s false. The reason they found these changes in women was that women were already the primary caretaker in almost all cases, not because there’s something inherent to women that makes them better parents.
this is big news for SAHF and single dads!
This is also big news for adoptive parents and queer couples! Many people try to argue that adoptive parents aren't real parents because of biology and blah blah blah. Bigots will also argue this case against queer people. So, to all my traditionalists: it's not science! It's bigotry and sexist!
The first few months of being a parent are a sensitive period.
This is why paid parental leave for all parents regardless of gender is so crucial. All parents need and deserve time to bond with their children. When only one parent is given parental leave, that parent is naturally going to have more time to develop a bond to that child than the parent who immediately goes back to work. This will, inevitably, create a lifelong imbalance in who does most, or all, of the childcare. Equal paid parental leave regardless of gender benefits all parents and all children.
