that's quite the feat, theodore!

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

You’re right and you should say it

My roommate and his girlfriend got in the shower together and they’re… Talking about politics?

I was expecting to hear “OH GOD, HARDER,” not “George Washington was entirely correct in his prediction of what distinct parties would do to politics as a whole.”

Nope nevermind, there it is, apparently political debate is just their form of foreplay

STOP REBLOGGING THIS HE HAS A TUMBLR

They fucking killed him

I just turned 43, but I have to say, trying to figure out what Skibidi Toilet was, made me feel much older.

It's basically a bunch of 14 year olds (and younger) who have had their first taste of surrealist content and because it is so novel to them, they can't get enough of it. And it has become extremely popular.

It has a perfect storm of features built in to appeal to that age group. First and foremost, their parents don't get it. It frustrates older people. But it isn't objectionable enough for parents to put their foot down and say they can't watch it for arbitrary moral conflicts. It's like Baby Shark for tweens.

And so these young people get to truly explore what weirdness is. How it makes them feel. And it gets to be... just theirs. They get to claim ownership of it and have this community surrealist experience together and then laugh at their parents because they're all, "Okay, but why is the head in a toilet?"

Kids are exploring the limits of their imagination and finding the wonders of surrealism... in the most infuriating-to-parents way possible.

At tale as old as time.

I'm betting there were some caveparents thousands of years ago looking at doodles on the cave walls and just shaking their head.

"Grok, my son... what the shit is this?"

The cycle continues.

Someone once told me that skibidi toilet was alpha’s badger badger badger mushroom and now I remember how delightful it was to confuse old people.

The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle that the USPS ordered is legit the most fucked up thing you'll ever see in your life.

Whoever did this should be hurt

NO YOU ARE ALL WRONG THIS IS INCREDIBLE

You're telling me the mail service is handing you this highly accessible Akira Toriyama-esque piece of gold and you're spitting in their faces?!?!

Not only that, they have more cargo space for mail, have a larger front front windshield so they'll be able to see better as they drive, and they're electric!

Plus, you know how old the previous trucks were? Half of em didn't have A/C.

I'm glad they're investing in the postal service, especially considering they've been trying to nerf it for years now and pushing us to use private delivery companies that are worse and for-profit.

In fact I want MORE cars that look like this! I hope every car in the future looks like this!

Why hate on this lil guy when Tesla is right there to hate on? My poor lil guy ;(

it really works! source: me

Remember calming cat? Remember when tumblr was this color? If you don’t that’s fine. I just feel old and alone.

You’re never alone. There is always calming cat.

I think cis people should also be their gender of choice. Like, if you're a man, you should get to really enjoy being a man- have fun with it! If you're a woman, take the parts of womanhood that really deeply make you happy. If being a little androgynous or ambiguous or hidden is the part that really makes you happy, you don't have to be trans for that. If you wanna lean really hard into being femme or masc- do it! You have one life in your body, do what makes you happy. Ditch the stuff you don't like.

My sinister queer agenda is I think that everyone should be the gender they like in the way they like it.

you ever listen to a playlist and all of the sudden a song that has incredible blorbo energy comes on you're you're just like this

i think some of you dont like narratives or stories or characters i think you just like fanfiction tropes

protagonists can and will be sexist, racist, insensitive, cruel, stupid, etc, especially towards the beginning of a story. these are called character flaws and they are a surprise tool that will lead to narrative fulfillment later

Thinking about Laika again

I finally found a brush I like on procreate!

PSA: if you describe your sexy demons as "smelling sulphurous/like brimstone," that's not just vague mystical words.

Those are real smells.

They smell like farts.

Please know this. I'm begging you.

Some alternatives that both smell dangerous and interesting but not necessarily bad:

* wood smoke

* ozone (sparingly -- this can be nasty. It's the smell electronics make when they break and emit blue smoke)

* salt

* metal

* salty + metallic = blood btw

* roasting meat / burning fat (think: cooking bacon)

I think it's a common misconception that domesticating animals is somewhat like enslaving them. It really is more of a symbiotic relationship. No wild animal would have willingly put up with early humans if they didn't get something out of it. Wolves wouldn't have stayed with us and become dogs if they weren't getting food and safety out of it. Many large herbivores that are now domesticated could and would have easily trampled their early human captors or broken their enclosures open if they didn't have a reason to stay. Sometimes individual animals still do if we don't give them what they need.

The animals that have stayed with us for thousands of years have evolved to cooperate with us better. Dogs have additional facial muscles around their eyes that wolves lack in order to mimic human facial expressions. Sheep grow their wool perpetually while their wild counterparts don't because a bigger fleece means they're more likely to be allowed to breed and be kept around. Domestic dairy cows produce much more milk than wild bovine species and domestic hens lay more eggs. Do you know how energy costly producing eggs or milk is for an animal? It's pretty intense! They wouldn't be able to do that if we hadn't given them the food and safety from predators and the elements to.

And we really need to show these animals respect and gratitude for what they give us by taking excellent care of them. They gave up a lot to be with us, often including the means to take care of themselves in the wild. That's a huge reason why I'm not against using animal products, but I hate factory farming. They are still living, breathing creatures with needs and feelings. They deserve a comfortable life and, when the time comes, a humane death.

Fun fact! Not only is everything here correct, it's the reason we haven't domesticated bears!

This is a bit to the left of my area of expertise, so bear with me (heh), but there had been attempts to domesticate brown bears several times in human history! Vikings were the first ones we have records of (that I know of) and also in the Roman empire, India and even the Victorians. There were absolutely a few generations of tame brown bears, from pets to zoo performers to hunters and war bears. They did have a chance of being domesticated like the wolves had been.

And all of that effort? Resulted in jack shit. Level of domestication remained zero. The bears got out of that domestication experiment with zero genes altered. There is several reasons for that, one of which being that they live too long and don't breed as fast, and also they are very individual animals as opposed to wolves, so they don't play well in groups, which is kinda necessary.

But the biggest reason? BEARS DON'T NEED HUMANS. There is absolutely no point in a bear's life cycle where it's survival would be immensely impacted for the better by human intervention. They can hunt and forage on their own, no help necessary. They have no trouble surviving harsh climates, so human houses weren't a temptation. They're solitary, so they didn't seek out companionship when alone. They occupy a similar dietary niche as humans so were more competition for resources that an opportunity for mutualism. They certainly didn't need protection.

So even though humans (being human) tried to domesticate bears, bears weren't really playing ball with that. They were just fine on their own, and saw no sufficient incentive to change themselves to fit into a relationship with humans. Sure there are some weirdoes who got fairy-napped as cubs and are happy living with humans, but their genes aren't useful enough to bring into the pool. They saw what happened to the wolves who got too close to the human fire and missionaries are mauled on sight.

The bears are bears, and bears they will stay.

@mediterranean-ground-cuckoo you have activated a sleeper agent I didn't know I had in my brain.

Because it's kinda already happened, but not really? The thing about cheetahs is that they are very, very endangered, part of the reason being that cheetah cub mortality rate is something like 80%, which is abnormally high even for wild animals. Cheetahs don't make dens where they can stash their cubs, so they have to sort of drag them around with them and hope predators mistake them for a badger and don't attack them (cheetah cubs have very fluffy fur on top of them as camouflage).

Add in the fact that tjey're basically horse software running on cat hardware? These guys are an anxious wreck, every single one of them. And if left on their own they will absolutely form a positive feedback loop of scaring each other half to death and be too stressed to breed.

Enter wildlife conservation scientists.

These guys really want cheetahs to stay around, and stay wild animals. They are very fucking careful to let cheetahs be wild animals while making sure they don't perish entirely to enviroment, starvation and predation, and that they preferably breed.

Cheetahs see humans staying back and keeping a respectful distance but helping whenever they need it. Everyone who knows cats knows this is basically a marriage proposal done right.

So humans want cheetahs to be proper wild animals. Cheetahs have tried being wild animals and said 'Fuck that shit! That's hard! Come pet me and keep me safe!'

Add in the fact that cheetah gene pool is so fucking limited they can basically all be each other's organ donors, you also gotta bolster their diversity, preferably with healthy cheetahs from zoos, and those are so used to humans some of them will just come up to you and demand to be petted. If it's one of those that was raised with helper dogs? That's basically an oversized housecat, or at least it really wants you to think it is.

And there is also a historical precedent for this! Fucking pharaos kept cheetahs as pets, and if taken young they can be tamed in, like, a year. Tame cheetahs were noble gifts in the Ming dynasty. The Mughals used them as hunting animals (though it might have been carcals or leopards).

Quite frankly, the only reason cheetahs HADN'T been domesticated so far is because getting them to breed in captivity is real fucking hard, and consistent sucesses were achieved only in the seventies. The males need to have their bromance packs (pardon, coalitions) and females need to have a large area to roam. Kinda hard to arrange without a whole lot of land.

So this is, in fact, the exact reverse of bears.