FUCK cynicism, embrace sincerity

amelia | american | d&d | gothic horror | letterboxd: https://boxd.it/kI3RV

[micahdotgov]

slimy to the moon

[randomcanfly]

LET ME WORM AMONG THE STARS

[memento-meliora]

forced to say “it’s okay!” Instead of throwing a fucking chair at their head

[wateredwizard]

Why does your post have lingerie on

[memento-meliora]

God forbid a bitch be feeling herself while mentally ill in this economy 😢

[those-fucking-feratu]

organizing my jewelry with my mom and explaining the difference between gay earrings and whimsical earrings while she nods like i’m a philosopher >>>>

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

The Buff-Tip Moth: this moth's unique resting position all0ws it to mimic a broken birch twig, and the buff-colored patches on its head and forewings even resemble freshly-snapped wood

Phalera bucephala, otherwise known as the buff-tip moth, is a remarkable mimic that can easily disguise itself as a twig. This moth has a unique resting position that makes its body seem narrower and more cylindrical, and its wings are covered in silver patterns that resemble tree bark, while the buff-colored patches on its head and forewings mimic the appearance of freshly-snapped wood.

Above: three actual twigs and one buff-tip moth

This type of camouflage is also known as a "protective resemblance" -- a form of mimesis in which an animal can avoid being preyed upon by mimicking an unremarkable or inedible aspect of its environment. Many other moths are able to disguise themselves in similar ways, often mimicking dead leaves, twigs, moss, and/or tree bark.

Above: more photos of Phalera bucephala

The buff-tip moth is particularly adept at disguising itself, however, and the fact that it so strongly resembles such a specific object (not just a dead leaf or a piece of foliage, but a broken twig from a silver birch tree, in particular) makes this disguise seem even more impressive and unique.

Above: the photo at the top shows a buff-tip moth in its resting position, while the photo at the bottom shows the same species with its wings unfurled

It also tends to look like there's a weird little smiley face in the setae surrounding the moth's head, which is arguably even more striking, but for some reason none of my sources seem to mention that weirdness.

Above: the weird little smiley face on the back of the moth's head

This species is distributed throughout the British Isles, mainland Europe, and parts of Asia, with its range extending into Eastern Siberia.

Sources & More Info:

Wildlife Insights: Buff-Tip Moth Identification Guide

Butterfly Conservation: Buff-Tip

Wildlife Insights: Phalera bucephala

The Wildlife Trusts: The Buff-Tip Moth

Moth Identification: Phalera busephala

Encyclopedia of Life: Global Map of Known Occurrences for Phalera busephala

Insecta: Phalera bucephala

Lepidoptera and their Ecology: Phalera busephaloides and Phalera busephala

Journal of Ecology and Evolution: Strong Foraging Preferences for Ribes alpinum in the Polyphagous Caterpillars of the Buff-Tip Moth

Dickinson County Conservation Board: Protective Resemblance and Other Forms of Mimesis and Mimicry

[duskdragonxiii]

Why is pet play always dogs anyway

[duskdragonxiii]

Youre a dirty little goldfish arent you. daddys gonna clean your tank out so good so you have to wait in the sink until im done.

[quasarkisses]

Apparently because you have no idea how to care for anything but a dog

[duskdragonxiii]

Daddy is not known for his animal husbandry

[antigoneprogone]

[romcommunist]

elm trees my only friend

[romcommunist]

every tree grabbed my ass and beat me senseless. so much so that my allergist scribbled more trees! and yet the lovely elm cradled and comforted me

[headspace-hotel]

[lickingandsuckingchristmascoins]

[teaboot]

the four horsemen if the apocalypse was chill

[andremichaux]

Out of all the human stuff I've been able to experience in this neighborhood, nachos number one. Easy. Really? Yeah. I mean, salty, crunchy, cheesy, little bit of a kick. Name one better thing humans have created. The Sistine Chapel? Pfft. Paint on a ceiling. I mean, it's fine, but can you eat it at the movies? Touché.

THE GOOD PLACE | 4.04, "Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy"

[pangur-and-grim]

it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.

[ms-demeanor]

I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.

Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)

Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.

[ms-demeanor]

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.

[chazzaroo47]

As someone with corn based issues my sickness levels are a recession indicator.

I can tell when companies are cost cutting because they start using corn sugar or maize starch as a bulking sweetener and it makes me incredibly fucking ill. Are they kind enough to put a "new recipe" label on it? Sometimes! Only fucking sometimes. A bunch of times I discover it when my stomach is trying to exist my body in aggressive, stabby maneuvers. It sucks.

And people will literally laugh at it and pretend it's no problem that they don't know why every yoghurt in the shop has cornflour in it rather than real fruit. Or their meat is all preserved with corn to make it look good for longer.

People have no idea what is in their food unless they have to have.

And even that can end up down weird pipelines of "crunchy mums" and conspiracies about plastic rice. It's so tiring man.

[vaspider]

Oh man, I fucking hate the "unlabeled new recipe" bullshit. I am so grateful that my wife is ever-vigilant and realized that our old go-to brand of molé sauce no longer had the tiny text reading "gluten-free" where she was used to seeing it on the front of the jar, because they'd changed their recipe and put wheat flour in it.

She literally clocked the change in the label — it wasn't marked as changed, she just noticed that the "gf" label was gone — and that was enough for her to flip the jar over and check.

I gotta say that the most infuriating recipe change I've had to deal with was when a company started using "barley syrup" instead of their previous HFCS, which is how I suddenly started sweating and whimpering from drinking frozen lemonade.

"Lemonade is always gluten-free, it's stupid for them to label that shit!"

lmao ok bud

Anyway, solidarity. This shit sucks.

[deweydecimalchickens]

The other thing you get is when people are all "ha ha ha my peanuts said 'may contain nuts' isn't this wacky and stupid"

Peanuts are not tree nuts. They are legumes. It's a different allergy. "May contain nuts" in UK labelling law refers to tree nuts. Someone can be fine with peanuts but die because their peanuts were cross-contaminated with cashews or whatever.

See also fish, crustaceans and molluscs. Three different allergies. Yes your crab does need to warn for fish and molluscs, if there's potential cross-contamination. When you say "shellfish", are you referring to crustaceans or molluscs? It matters.

[corrya]

I think about this like once a day

[vaspider]

I have heard a variant on it that I really like: "You cannot hate yourself into someone you can love."

[smhmyheaddude]

well how can i refuse if it came straight from an orc

[kosmogrl]

[starsandaces24]

the beauty of early 2000s shows is that they just... stuck to the bit. You watch this show to see a neurodiverent man solve crime with his best friend, you will get that for 8 seasons. We said this show would be about an ex-spy and his employer who built an AI and the people they save. They will do it even when they admit in the show it makes no sense because that's what you signed up for. Leverage commited so much that they got a modern version that still does the same thing instead of being 6 episode seasons about one big con.

I miss "filler" episodes, but they aren't filler because that's what you signed up for! that's why you watch the show! to see them do the thing you started watching the show for!

[visenyaism]

Honestly fuck AI for making me have to go on and on defending the dignity of toil like I’m some kind of protestant

[transandrosis]

I cannot express enough that *you don't need to do that*.

If your reason for hating AI is that you believe people should work hard "like you're some kind of protestant," I don't trust you. There are ways to be critical of AI that don't involve throwing your fellow humans under the bus.

[sodomit]

AI didn't make you defend toil, you already had these views and values to begin with, you just had a higher bar for expressing them than an average protestant.

[visenyaism]

It is my job to build resilience and endurance skills related to literacy and writing in adolescents many of whom have been conditioned by AI to believe everything should be easy and that challenges should be avoided at all costs. My values are that without struggle and practice and doing your own hard work your brain does not develop the critical reading and civics skills necessary to be a free thinking adult in society. lock me up and send me away

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

being an adult = saying things like "i have dnd tonight so i HAVE to take a nap this afternoon or i WILL be cranky"

[mealreminders]

Remember to eat so you have the energy and strength to fight the patriarchy and fascism.

[blossposs]

this is so true. also get some exercise if you can, even a small amount will help you feel more energetic in general.