I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I, THE DRIVER BEHIND YOU AT THIS STOPLIGHT, HAVE DEDUCED THAT YOU COULD HAVE THREADED THAT LEFT TURN BETWEEN THOSE TWO CARS IF YOU FLOORED IT BEARING 92° SOUTH AND CAUGHT THE WIND.

HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK

enough about taylor swift already. reblog and tag the smallest, least known artist you listen to

Table with the partinioning of the TREE-WOOD-FOREST semantic domain.

Georgakopoulos, Thanasis & Stéphane Polis. 2018. The semantic map model: State of the art and future avenues for linguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(2). e12270. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12270.

"if you see someone shoplifting, no you didn't" no but like. i really didn't. i have never in my life seen someone shoplifting because i'm not watching anyone else in the grocery store..? how are y'all noticing things like that. my only goals are enter the store, survive, exit the store

I hate the “open floor plan” that everyone is obsessed with in houses now. I want nooks and crannies and bizarre floor plans. I don’t need to be able to see what someone is doing on the other side of the house. I want places to hide and lurk and dwell in the shadows. I am the beast who awaits in the labyrinth

I WANT A FOUR DAY WORK WEEK

I WANT A SIX HOUR WORK DAY

I WANT A $25 MINIMUM WAGE

I WANT A MINIMUM OF 20 PAID DAYS OFF PLUS PUBLIC HOLIDAYS OFF

I WANT AN AUTOMATED INCOME TAX SYSTEM THAT PUTS THE OWNESS ON THE GOVERNMENT TO DO THE LEG WORK AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU OWE

Fighting for my life trying to find a phone or tablet with a headphone jack. Fighting for my life trying to find a laptop with a cd rom. Fighting for my life trying to get more than one usb port or, god forbid, an hdmi. Fighting for my life trying to find any electronics that haven't been streamlined into flimsy chastity belts with the structural integrity of a sopping sheet of paper which require me to buy 3 extra devices (each with their own separate charging requirements) all because some silicon valley jackass somewhere decided holes were a bad thing.

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

This is the hot tumblr discourse that I’m here for.

Ok so I know this is fish not lichens (trust me, I'm a biologist) but this is the "problem" with folks giving things that aren't common a common name--it can create confusion and a lack of consistency when referring to the organism. But personally I am here for scientists doing that (like that's why we have the scientific name, so we can all know wtf you are actually referring to) and getting as wild as they want with it just to draw attention to organisms that generally don't receive enough attention. So go off, McAllister. Though yeah, I think "crotchfeeler" might not be in the best taste. Maybe "consensual crotchfeeler" would be preferable?

My favorite parasite Leucochloridium is referred to as "the green banded broodsac" around the internet but I'm fairly certain it was invented by a wiki editor. "Camel spider" is also a recent name I do believe! Not a single book called them that. And I had a LOT of books of arachnids.

Elasmotherium sibiricum being called the Siberian unicorn was an internet joke until Kostintsev et al. 2019 brought it into the scientific literature

Common paleontology L

Its homestuck day Its homestuck day Its homestuck day Its homestuck day Its-

slenderverse do you thing

Bitch what are we supposed to do

actually i'm not sure

I was divinely inspired to create this

our latest member

ooo my new boss! what is their name, i wonder..

uhhh what does the creator name it?

@lanago-miscellaneous

Oh geez

I'd call him Little Bossman but if you guys want a more slenderverse name, then I guess...Slendertwink. He's a little guy that uses his tentacles more literally than other slenderpeople, like moving around and doing business. He's also into bold fashion, hence the tie that is longer than his whole body.

[Video Description: An individual opens a rusty door in what appears to be an old stone wall, revealing a area so filled with fog one cannot see the walls, ceiling, floor, if they're even within range to be seen. Rising from out of and going off into the fog is a crisscrossing of worn metal walkways. A caption at the top of the video reads "Bro said he knew a spot" with a skull emoji. /End description]

Capulets vs Montagues

Two houses, utterly devoid of dignity