parotcardsroxy:

parotcardsroxy:

birds have truly mastered feathers like what do you Mean they can be shiny. how fucking cool is that

glossy ibis

european starling

greater blue eared starling

nicobar pigeon

purple martin

glowing puffleg

violet backed starling

+ special shoutout to rob garren and his purple poultry project. he is breeding his chickens to be very shiny and very purple

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

oh beautiful planet…oh planet of Creatures…oh planet of Life…

Gets on iNaturalist

Searches for insects

Sorts by faves

Starts crying because life on Earth is so much more wondrous than the mortal human mind has the capacity to hold or imagine

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy swagful symmetry?

there are thousands of bugs this cool and we haven’t even found them all…

chaumas-deactivated20230115:

bnprime:

lockdown-bard:

chaumas-deactivated20230115:

lord of the rings spent so much money making big horrible monster spiders and hideous lumpy cannibal orcs and giant wretched trolls and flaming demon giants and rotting ghost dementors and a guy with really bad teeth and yet the scariest most disturbing thing in the whole series was an old man eating tomatoes

The thing is monsters can never be as scary as humans being their worst possible version op

it’s because fear lives in the implication of the danger they can do.
the monsters can only kill you in terrible ways.

the fear of the old man eating tomatoes is the fear that, during a critical moment, the energies of a nation will be wasted utterly.

and also, a goblin or monster spider will not exist or be a danger to you in your regular real life.

it’s the wet tomato mouth sounds you guys

imaginationofacornflake:

crazykuroneko:

In response to Slate’s article on the possibility having non-heteromative team in figure skating (particularly, ice dance and pairs), Oniceperspective shared a glimpse of Gabriella Papadakis (FRA) and Madison Hubbell (USA) working on their same-sex program. You can see how they switch the leading figure between them.

You can see them trying out lifts in this video.

The rest is on Instagram here:

I’d watch more ice skating if this was in competition

knowledgetosorrow:

ofdinosanddais1:

Guys, they’re selling autism at walmart now

ALT

thisiswhereikeepdcthings:

nat-20s:

One off Superman story where Clark Kent gets classically abducted by aliens in the farm so said aliens can find out more information about human biology and Clark’s just like *sucks in air through his teeth* so about that….

Tags @inamindfarfaraway

sapphoandvanzetti:

isthescavengervideocute:

exquisite-peculiarity:

:

:

Infighting only helps our oppressors.

Infighting only helps our oppressors.

Infighting only helps our oppressors.

Infighting only helps our oppressors.

Infighting only helps our oppressors.

You don’t have to understand someone completely to respect them and fight for their right to exist.

!!!

a friend of mine has been saying “de-escalate all conflict that is not with the enemy.”

we have real, life-threatening forces to fight back against.

headspace-hotel:

uglymelon:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

Evil biology facts that fill me with Fear :)

hey, I heard y’all like evil biology facts like knowledge about horse blood types.

well! today I was researching alternative biochemistries extraterrestrial life could use and. man. I think Earth life is fucked up enough for me thanks

• biological dark matter. WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY BLOOD HAS DNA IN IT FROM NO KNOWN SOURCE. YOU CAN’T JUST SAY THAT COME BACK HERE
• One specific cave that has been sealed for 5.5 million years and has developed an ecosystem completely dependent on chemosynthetic bacteria.
• Was anybody going to tell me that bacteria have decided iron is yummy and are eating the Titanic, or was I supposed to just read that myself
• Terrible Berry (yes, that’s what the genus name means). This whole thing is so fucked up. These scientists were testing whether radiation could be used to kill pathogens in food, so they dosed a tin of meat with enough radiation to kill any known living organism (as one does) but guess what, it still fucking spoiled because of THIS BASTARD FUCKER.
• (seriously, why is it like this? WHY has a bacterium evolved to chill in radioactive waste like it’s a soothing Jacuzzi tub? What does it know that we don’t know?)
• (ANSWERS. I WANT ANSWERS, YOU CHERNOBYL ASS BITCH.)
• Cursed worm, which has no mouth or digestive system and depends entirely on five (5) different species of bacteria, which consume hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen monoxide, and carbon monoxide, for food. How do you, a worm, even…figure out how to do…all that?
• Bone worms. At least they like their bones already dead. I still could have gone without knowing this was a thing.
• “Oh, parasitic plant, that sounds c—WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING”
• I am like half convinced this is made up. Seriously, bacteria grow their own electrical wires and we just let them?

To clarify

Evil (affectionate and admiring)

They took the unkillable bacterium and put a Disney song inside of it.

“In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song “It’s a Small World” into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later.”

*opens worldbuilding notebook* *takes further notes*

take-a-dip-in-the-deadpool:

If you like frogs. Or possums. Or cool builds. Or happiness. This is the video for you.

bluebandedagate-reblogs:

delilahmidnight:

prismatic-bell:

unashamedly-enthusiastic:

microwaveexplosion:

This is why I dislike looking back on the past as if everything has been constantly improving to get us to where we are now

Our cement isn’t as strong as the Romans, our steel isn’t as strong as Damascus steel, we cannot replicate the beauty of a Stradivari violin, we’ve already lost some of the technology that flew Apollo and Gemini to space

And when I live out a suitcase I have to sift through a pile of stuff like a neanderthal

I hate to tell you this, but none of your examples are true.

Roman concrete lasts longer, but 1) we’ve already learned how to replicate AND IMPROVE it and the reason we don’t is 2) it’s not as strong as modern concrete. Modern alloys are stronger than Damascus steel. When blindfolded and asked to tell the difference between a Stradivarius and a modern violin, experts misidentified the modern violin as the Stradivarius a little over half the time. And while we have indeed lost some of the technology that first got us to the moon, that technology was cobbled together by hand and the fact it worked at all is nothing short of a marvel.

If you want to talk about how things aren’t always better in the present, consider:

—we’ve replaced thousands of forms of localized, “this will keep you cool in summer and warm in winter” architecture with standardized window-filled boxes that do neither of those things

—hundreds of varieties of very good apples have been lost or nearly lost because they were smaller/not as fast-growing/didn’t look as nice on the shelf as modern varietals

—basic life skills like cooking, sewing, and basic car maintenance are no longer taught in most schools

—ornamental ANYTHING has been widely eschewed in favor of “efficiency” and “resale value”

—while modern glass is stronger than medieval glass, we struggle to reproduce the vibrant colors of medieval glass because in a lot of places we don’t know what it was colored with

—fast fashion has given us more options Re: clothes, but it also means we’ve replaced natural, low-impact fibers like wool and linen with plastic, which is worse in basically every way

—the pyramids were built with such precision that in places where the outer capstones are still present, you can’t get a credit card between them. While we can theoretically do something like this in the modern day, it’s not considered worth the effort because it’s fucking HARD, and nobody has actually figured out how the Egyptians did it in the absence of automated tools

—art nouveau and Art Deco went out of fashion and I think those two tragedies speak for themselves

—we’re struggling to rebuild Notre Dame because over-harvesting of forests means we don’t have trees big enough to replace the roof beams

—we have very little idea what we lost in Africa due to colonialism and racism. We do know we lost entire literary traditions and we can only mourn and wonder about thousands of years’ worth of art

You can make the point on every front without relying on long-debunked legends.

jackhawksmoor: