That's Fascinating

Cameron, 34, he/him, queer trans & nonbinary, i like cute cartoons, walking through a quiet forest, and playing Flight Rising

[eternally-intermittent]

Interview: STAR TREK's Alexander Siddig celebrates Arab-American Heritage Month

The Beat caught up with Alexander Siddig of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for a conversation on Arab-American Heritage Month.

SIDDIG: A lot of gay men at that time, and maybe even gay women, kinda responded to the Bashir character. I think that was because of (Garashir), and maybe the bravery of not only that, but also an implicitly Muslim character being potentially gay, potentially bi, potentially gay if they’d explored that route. That is something Garak brought with him to the party, a bottle of implied homosexuality…

LLOYD [interviewer]: So were you aware in the 90s that it was homoerotically charged and on board with that? SIDDIG: I was aware of it in the back of my mind, yes, absolutely, and encouraged it. At my first meeting with Garak I became visibly flustered. That was entirely my choice. It wasn’t written into the script. So I set off in that direction right from the get-go. And Andy (Andrew Robinson) obviously loved it, and that character became a series-long character because of that first scene…

LLOYD: That’s really cool. We’ve heard a lot of times about how Andy and Garak were on board from the start but I don’t know that I’ve heard before that you were on board from the start. SIDDIG: I subconsciously keep that door open with just about every character that I play, and I always keep it as ambiguous as possible. One of my first roles was in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia with Ralph Fiennes and I played Feisal and again, not in the script, but that was charged with homoerotica and implied homosexuality. I’d just come fresh off that project. And I’ve done it numerous times since, characters that are written straight I just make sure are not quite straight. That’s just one of my things, probably because I’m not quite straight myself and that’s probably perfect.

[humanconditionpoetry]

I did not know that….but this cool nevertheless as someone who also comes from Arab origins!

[aldergroves]

anyway recently i've discovered that pimple patches (hydrocolloid plasters) help stop mosquito bites from itching, which is a vital discovery for me, whose blood has always apparently been mosquito aphrodisiac. so do thake this information & do with it what you will

[kaijutegu]

I got a new hat at the lizard show. They had a lesbian lizard shirt that I was also considering, but I am more of a hat wearer. The lovely ladies who made this hat don't seem to have it online, but I'm linking to them anyways because they're my favorites.

[kaijutegu]

YOU CAN GET THIS ON A SHIRT

Parthenogenesis: Just Girls being Girls Tee

Also the Lesbian Lizard shirt I considered:

Lesbian Lizards | Creature Farm Originals Comfort Colors Tee

[kaijutegu]

Parthenogenesis Pink & White Trucker Hat

Parthenogenesis Pink & White Trucker Hat

The hat is up!!! Get it so we can match and be besties!!!

[ceeejus]

kibby

[herpsandbirds]

The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas could lose 715 acres to SpaceX under a federal land exchange proposal.

Congress created this wildlife refuge in 1979 to protect its diverse wildlife, including rare species like ocelots, aplomado falcons, and migratory birds such as piping plovers, red knots, green jays and Altamira orioles. The refuge protects some of the best habitat in the United States for the endangered ocelot and is one of the last remaining expanses of public lands in south Texas. SpaceX’s rocket launch activities have already been impacting nearby habitat and destroying shorebird nests, and wildlife can’t afford this lopsided deal.

The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to stop this harmful land giveaway, and we need your support.

Give Now to Save the Wild

Join the fight to protect wildlife and wild places with a gift to the Center for Biological Diversity.

[trangoldin]

source

[prokopetz]

You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.

[prokopetz]

Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?

[buggyhuman]

Three cueing. Once you learn about it, a whole lot of very frustrating online discourse with US Americans makes so much sense 😭

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have

[woodsfae]

If you were taught to read with the three cueing method, and now struggle to read fluently, you can still learn to read properly!

-> Phonics For Adults <-

If you're a teenager, you can still use this resource.

[havinghorns]

Some more quilts, these all by Pamela Studstill

[justsomeectoplasm]

[yummy-tummy-time]

I made a collage for the first time in years and I'm very happy with it

[prokopetz]

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

[calloutnevvegas]

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

[revretch]

….. Didn’t know most of that

[iamthekaijuking]

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

[revretch]

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

[bogleech]

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

[assuming-dinosaur]

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

[is-the-post-reliable]

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’

[adaginy]

… @todaysbird ??

[todaysbird]

yeah they’re just like that

[juney-blues]

information that is also important

[mens-rights-activia]

[ostdrossel]

These are all Baltimore Orioles, and I love how varied they can look. It's males, females, young and old, and I think they look glorious in every iteration. On top of that, they make the coolest sounds too. They are a perfect summer bird, they just delight on pure sight. That rhymes, and what rhymes is good, as Pumuckl used to say, a cartoon figure from my childhood. Happy weekend, world!

[jumpscart]

Sometimes you will be a lesbian to your parents and a straight man to your partners parents and a gay man to your partner and a woman to your grandparents and out to your friends and stealth to your classmates and a nice young lady to the cashier at the coffee shop and then people on your computer will ask you to choose which of these identities you ACTUALLY are and which you are Appropriating The Oppression Of because don’t you know they contract each other. You can only be one thing solidly forever

[mousidy]

Enter the Wyrm, my roguelike with 50+ unique platforming abilities (and counting!) is in open alpha! You can play early development builds for free right now! Explore a giant worm and learn a unique moveset every run!

New builds are uploaded in the Wyrm Discord, where you can discuss the game and give feedback! (Alternatively, just click here for the Itch page!)

I've been working on Wyrm since mid 2021. If you'd like to support the game's continued development, I have a ko-fi!

[targetedknowledge]

[achillesinhighheels]

not now bro i’m accepting things i cannot change