Turtle Central

He/they. Aroace. Aspiring librarian. Mostly reblogging various fandoms, authors, and pretty pictures I happen to enjoy. You might find me rambling about media or posting fanfiction on here once in a while, too. Support your local library!

[oldbutchdanielmolloy]

omg you people can do anything

[birdandmoon]

What to do if you find a baby bunny.

Patreon | Mailing list

[siena-sevenwits]

Hey everyone, looks like the “cat summoned for jury duty” was ai generated - even has the ai symbol at the top. Thanks for the heads up, @cannot-all-throw-inkpots . My apologies- I did not realize when I shared it.

[theriu]

Aww dangit. Guess that makes sense, but it was so believable because I can 100% see that kind of goofup happening

[theriu]

Some positive news: There really WAS a cat summoned for jury duty back in 2010. Turns out the error was quickly corrected and the cat did NOT actually have to travel to the courthouse. But at least we can enjoy the fact that a papereork glitch did once try to give a cat jury duty XD

[pangur-and-grim]

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

[pangur-and-grim]

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

[pangur-and-grim]

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

[bells-lettres]

local matchmaker losing it over yet another unrealistic demand from the clientele 🤣🤣

Translation by me. :))

[elodieunderglass]

“Even a slightly increased possibility of summoning rain is still an ability to summon rain” is such a good point

[turtlebot113]

I mean honestly, as someone who's worked in customer service, this sounds like the kind of situation where you just have to nod, say "I'll do my best", and proceed to completely ignore this lady's third requirement. If all she's looking for is a vague "higher likelihood of rain" when she's with this guy, then that's pretty much impossible to truly prove or disprove, so you can just let her imagination fill in the gaps.

If it happens to rain on her first date with him, great, she'll probably be convinced. If it doesn't, just remind her she never asked for a 100% chance of rain, and keep repeating that until it does rain. Cognitive bias is a wonderful thing sometimes!

[neversarcastic]

Dear necromancers, why would you bother summoning human corpses when dinosaurs are an option

[ladypalerider-deactivated201503]

there is an entire movie series dedicated to explaining why we do not reanimate dinosaurs

[dragon-in-a-fez]

are you suggesting necromancers were behind jurassic park

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Everyone acting like the Dinosaurs were the Problem in Jurassic Park seems to have forgotten that all of their problems traced back to the fact that their entire IT Network was a single-point-of-failure system, a single underpaid SysAdmin who intentionally sabotaged the park for profit.

PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES

[ttenaciousneatfinds]

The only reason the system had a single point of failure was cost cutting. This was never going to end well because the man running it did not actually care about doing things the right way.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Yea exactly. I guess most folks didn’t read Michael Crichton’s entire bibliography like I did, so the fact that literally every plot of his can be boiled down to “Private Enterprise cannot be trusted to operate in secret without Public Oversight” got glossed over in favor of sexy Jeff Goldblum’s “Life uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Finds A Way”

Given how popular neoliberal deregulation has been since the USSR collapsed, that shouldn’t keep surprising me. And yet.

[burnazog]

So it’s fine to resurrect dinosaur skeletons if i pay my crypt acolytes a union wage got it

[feyosha]

Finally! Someone capable of listening!

[bathroomcube]

[comixextra]

[roach-works]

it’s what they would have wanted

[iobotomypop]

happy moonwalk day

[dajo42]

5001 being divisible by 3 doesnt feel right

[dajo42]

[shinyhappygoth]

Shortcuts to determine if an integer is divisible by:

This is a given.

If the last digit is divisible by 2 (a.k.a. even), then so is the whole number.

If the sum of the digits is divisible by 3, then so is the whole number. The recursivity of this means that if the sum has multiple digits, you can add them up again until you get a single digit and see if it's 3, 6, or 9.

Like the rule for 2, but check if the last two digits are divisible by 4.

If it ends in 5 or 0.

If the rules for both 2 and 3 apply.

No shortcut. Alas.

Like the rules for 2 and 4, but check if the last three digits are divisible by 8. (Yes, this pattern keeps going for 16, 32, etc.)

Like the rule for 3, but the sum of the digits (or the sum of the sum of the digits, etc.) must be 9.

If it ends in 0.

[k25ff]

There are actually several rules for 7 (there's a bunch of rules for all of these, in fact). Here's a simple one:

"Subtract twice the last digit from the rest, check if it gives a multiple of 7. Repeat until it's a small enough multiple for you to recognise."

Example:

92911: 9291 - 2 = 9289

-> 9289: 928 - 18 = 910

-> 910: 91 - 0 = 91

-> 91: 9 - 2 = 7

Therefore 92911 is a multiple of 7 (13,273 x 7)

[evilwizard]

attention acolytes! in order to maximize shareholder value, i will be turning all of you into gold statues, frozen in twisted spasms of pain for all eternity, in a great and lifeless mausoleum. we expect to eke out a marginal gain in Q3

[brainscrems]

And how does this increase shareholder value O Great and Powerful Dark One?

[nerathul]

Obviously we can add the statues to our assets while also cutting down on employee expenses.

[brainscrems]

I see! This sounds like a sustainable business practice and I have no further questions.

[evilwizard]

yes! im so good at Company

[only-cat-memes]

[femcassidy]

i want you all to know that there is an artist (carmen papalia) who, after he started using a white cane, assembled a 12 foot long white cane and began using it in downtown vancouver. the length of the cane made it functionally useless as a device and the only purpose it served was making him an obstacle for sighted people. dare i say… 2019 goals

[femcassidy]

therapist to sighted patient: long cane isnt real and it cant hurt you

carmen papalia:

[id: a dimly lit photo of carmen papalia using his 12 foot “long cane” piece. he walks casually behind it. the cane takes up the majority of both the photograph and the sidewalk.]

[thevioletsunflower]

Okay I went to a conference where this guy was a keynote and he’s so fucking cool. He’s done a ton of art around disability rights. The twelve-foot cane is really cool, but here are some of my other favourites:

From the series on replacing his cane, this is one where he replaced his cane with a megaphone and would stand at intersections repeating “I can’t see” until somebody would stop and help him cross the street

Another cane replacement, this time replacing it with a high school marching band who would change the music depending on if there was something in the way or not.

A museum intervention where he got people at the MET to go through the museum with their eyes closed and experiencing touching things he’d gotten permission to touch (the floor in this image) and just exploring a visual art museum blind.

The Blind Field Shuffle, in which he has dozens of people form a conga line behind him with their eyes closed and leads them on a blind tour of the city - literally the blind leading the blind.

Wish I could find a better photo, but this is a museum gallery he curated where the works are almost at floor height, making them accessible to children, little people, and people in wheelchairs, but requiring abled people to bend down or sit on the floor in order to see them properly.

In short, this man is amazing and I love his work.

[captainlordauditor]

……okay, that last one is my absolute favorite

[eroscestlavie]

I took part in the blind field shuffle when he was in buffalo and it was incredible

[catasters]

[warl0ck-arts]

Perfection.

[audhdspacewizard]

"I wish I had something that could store energy and also absorb vibrations."

The faithful and compressable spring:

[baygeethefirst]

Squoosh

[redavexat]

A collection, for a well loved garf

A bonus picture for anyone who wants it

[intothestacks]

This reminds me of well-loved books; most people think that a beat up book is a sad thing, but it all depends on the way that it's beat up, as you can tell whether it got that way from being mistreated vs read so many times.

I always encourage my students to let me know if they come across a damaged book so I can fix it if possible ("You won't get in trouble for it, I just need to know so I can fix it before it gets worse"). The books they bring me are usually the really popular ones that have started disintegrating from overuse, and I always explain that things like falling pages start happening when a book has been read a lot, it's normal, and means the book has lived a good life.

[lostinhistory]

[fouroclockwren]

YES OMG BRÜNNHILDE

[official-library-posts]

official library post

[wearethekat]

May Book Reviews: A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz

I received a free copy from Tor Books via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date October 6th, 2026.

I've read some of Newitz's work before and I've always loved books set in alien cultures, so I was happy to get a chance to read this new release. In A Wall is Also a Road, Gardenpath is an alien slime mold studying for their graduate degree in a distant part of the galaxy. Their controversial thesis threatens the scientific orthodoxy—and a key piece of their data is the city of Pompeii on our own Earth.

Overall, I found this to be a light and charming novel. Gardenpath's people have a culture similar to ours—after all, they have universities and tenure—but their body language is convincingly alien slime mold based. There's lots of extruded appendages and flattening out. The alien culture is a good medium ground for a sendup of university culture where a student goes against prevailing orthodoxy to prove life is possible on Earth. Also, genuine props to Newitz for taking a sincere shot at the slime mold sex scenes. I won't name names, but many respected scifi authors have chickened out at this critical point. Glad to see an author with convictions.

On the worldbuilding side, the scenes set in Pompeii are strongly written, and it's clear that Newitz has done their research. It's a nice touch that Murtis, the human Gardenpath is closest to, was a real courtesan who did actually exist in the period. A lot of the Roman cultural nuances go right over Gardenpath's head, but that just serves to accentuate the alienness of their POV. Gardenpath in general is naive and rulebound, which keeps the story relatively light. A different perspective character might fixate more on the nuances of a corrupt university engaging in war profiteering. But while Gardenpath engages with these elements of the plot, their primary focus is always their research and their degree.

I don't think this story would have worked for me if it featured a human time traveller, but grounding the plot in strength of the alien POV worked well. Overall, A Wall is Also a Road is a light and very readable story in the line of John Wiswell's sweet stories from a monstrous perspective.

[targetedknowledge]

[0v9]

deeply unserious animal

[inwardhardar]

That thing is straight-up a BUG

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Why do you have this thing

[your-dewey-decimal-number-is]

599.312

armadillo

[makingtrouble]

It's my cat's birthday (anniversary of me getting him) so I told him the story of his life while petting him real good

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

[makingtrouble]

Actually I've decided this is a poem