crabs are literally being forcefemmed by barnacles every day and no one ever talks about it

sacculina makes me go a little insane honestly and not even for strictly transgenderly reasons... its life cycle involves attaching itself to a crab, producing eggs in place of that crab's eggs, and using the female's natural "egg dispersal" technique to, well, disperse its own eggs; but what do they do if they attach to a male host? give up and die? of course not, they simply instigate a hormone cascade that fundamentally changes the crab forever. easy!

and this is just what being an arthropod is like most of the time. bugs get parasitized like CRAZY. theyre the worlds most hijackable machines and you better believe the biosphere is taking advantage of that fact

and, sure, you know what, its yuri. fuck it. theyre raising kids together. this is the ideal liberal family: barnacle mother, absentee barnacle father, and beautiful transgender crab mother

nobody is coming to save you. get up

i will but I have to complain a lot first okay

At the start of season 4 of the PJO series, when Annabeth and Percy plan to go see a movie together, either one of them or Percy's mom should casually refer to it as "that new Tristan McLean movie," which would add to the continuity of the series as a whole, act as a teaser for a Heroes of Olympus spinoff, and make the fans go absolutely wild.

Can I just talk about how much I love the campers in the PJO show? They've done such a beautiful job of showing their unhappiness with the camp and the gods.

(under the cut for anyone who hasn't watched the show yet)

every so often I remember that whales molt

I’m not sure why I feel this way, but imo this is the most cursed marine mammal fact I have ever heard

THAT’S RIGHT AND THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME SO I CAN INFLICT THIS ON EVERYONE AT 1AM!

Mammals normally shed their skin in small flakes all the time when their skin cells die off, but because whales are living in the ocean -AKA, Bacteria Stew- flaking off like that would cause microabrasions (really tiny cuts) that would mean the whale is continually fighting off infections.  So, when a whale needs to replace it’s dead skin cells, it preps it’s new skin underneath, then sheds all it’s dead skin cells at once, like a lizard:

but not having hands makes it hard to remove this gross film, so molting brings many whales clsoe to shore where they can roll around on rocky/sandy coastal seabeds to scratch it off.  Here’s a bunch of Beluga coming in for a mass scratch:

And THIS is what a chunk of Sperm Whale Molt looks like, floating in the water before it’s devoured by pelagic microfauna, because you take what calories you can get in the open ocean:

Nature is Amazing!

wish it still held in one big piece like a snake though. Wish you could be swimming in the ocean and you see a huge empty whale billowing like a balloon. like a latex glove a hundred feet long. imagine getting tangled in that. what if you died cause you got caught in an empty whale like it’s a big blanket

watching a video about this cargo ship that blew up in texas in the 40’s and it’s like . i know that with a lot of incidents especially older ones like this the reason that the safety standards were so shitty was because they literally did not know that these kinds of disasters COULD happen (and in many cases these disasters are what MADE the safety standards better) but sometimes you just learn about this shit and you think. how could all these people be so stupid

- cargo of the ship consisted of twine (flammable) peanuts (flammable, oily) and cotton (FLAMMABLE) from houston and POST WAR AMMUNITION (OH MY GOD) FROM CUBA

- additional cargo they were picking up in texas city was LOOSE BAGS OF AMMONIUM NITRATE that the dock workers described as being ANOMALOUSLY WARM UPON BEING LOADED INTO THE SHIP ??????

- small fire breaks out in cargo hold, instead of putting it out with water that could damage the cargo the captain decides to close all the hatches to try to make the cargo hold airtight and smother the fire (stupid but you can kind of understand how they got there)

- the heat of the trapped smoke in the cargo hold instead causes the aforementioned LOOSE BAGS OF AMMONIUM NITRATE to undergo a chemical reaction and turn into nitrous oxide, massively increasing the pressure inside of the airtight hold

- one of the hatch covers fails

- mfw all the pressure in the cargo hold is released at once causing an explosion that fucking levels everything in the port within 2000 feet

- mfw the shockwave shatters windows up to a hundred miles away

- mfw on-fire twine and peanuts and fucking grenades are raining down over texas city

- mfw some of the pieces of the ship got launched into the sky faster than the speed of sound

- mfw they found the ship’s anchor inside of a ten foot wide crater over a mile and a half away

- mfw this was one of the largest and most devastating non-nuclear explosions in world history

- mfw this could have been avoided if they’d just taken the L and put the fire out with water

also worth a mention: the SECOND boat that exploded in a very similar manner the next day which was an even more violent explosion, but less devastating because most of the port was. you know. already leveled and evacuated

someone running rescue and recovery after the FIRST boat exploded noticed that the second boat's cargo was on fire and reported it....and this just went. ignored. for several hours. until someone was like "oh shit better get this under control" and tried to move the boat to no avail and they just gave up and evacuated

next day it started raining glowing-hot metal boat chunks all over the city. AGAIN.

Today's problematic ships are the Grandcamp (first explosion) and High Flyer (second explosion).

Anne Sexton, from “Snow”, The Complete Poems

hope is a skill

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

favourite additions

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

i love everyone in this thread

and these are just from the past few days

i havent seen anyone else make this

Never give up hope.

Hope was the last thing to come out of Pandora’s box. After pestilence, after famine, after woe and after death, it shone forth into the human soul.

“In spite of all you have suffered and will suffer,” it whispered into the ears of the children of the world, “know that I am with you. Hold fast to that.”

Hope is what keeps us going in spite of the harshness that may be around us.

 Hope is what shows us that there is also a shimmering beauty to the world.

Never give up hope, for when times seem most hopeless,

that is when hope is most surely needed.

Changes, Jim Butcher (via lord-tathamet)

My character has just been taken in for questioning by officers of a secret government agency. Send them questions they are being forced to answer in the interrogation room.

As she drove she hummed. When she thought she had him good and confused, she drove him to the Berghoff, and walked him in the door. The narrow entryway wasn’t quite the giveaway, but she whipped the blindfold off dramatically as they came through the door. “Ta-da! I hope you like tonight’s dinner selection. I have no doubt that you’ll find the food better than the company.”

Sanya blinked and then gaped at the place around him. He was in awe of the dark wood paneling and the stained glass and his stomach rumbled loudly at the smell of cooking meat and beer. 

“Somehow, I doubt zhat.” He bent over again and kissed her on the cheek once more. “Zhank you.”

“I could, but what’s life without a little mystery? You coming or not?”

Sanya grinned up at Helga, then pushed himself to his feet. 

“For, my lowe? Of course.” He grabbed his jacket as he bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. 

She pushed him away. “No using the L-word, young man. Now I have to punish you.” She led him out to the car, waited until he got into the passenger seat. “Here’s your punishment.” She handed him a thick piece of cloth. When he didn’t move, she said, “Over your eyes, silly. You don’t get to see where we’re going.”

“Lesbians? I cannot say Lesbians?” He asked, confused. He tied the cloth around his eyes as a shit-eating grin spread across his face. 

She paused, then started speaking to him in Russian. “My little zaichik, if you so much as blink without my permission tonight, you will not get to see what is underneath this dress, except in pictures. And I promise you that you will be deeply disappointed that you didn’t get the live show.”

Sanya bit his lip to keep from grinning. As fun as it was to tease her, it did have consequences. 

“Yes, ma’am.” He said softly. 

She smiled, caressed his cheek, and reached down and gave him a squeeze where his pants bulged for good measure. “Such a good boy,” she crooned as she put the car into drive. “Just needs a little discipline.”

Sanya gasped and squirmed softly in his seat. He wanted to ask where they were going, but he knew better than to speak. 

“Well”, Michael replied, “When you have only one direction to go, all the hard choices are already made”. That those choices had led to them fighting a creature that could best be described as a ball of tentacles and slime was not something he appreciated, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. 

“Da, but you hawe to vonder how zhis came to be.” Sanya said, ducking behind a trashcan as a cinder block got thrown his way. He had her private theory, involving tulpas and the internet and very lonely people. 

“This is rather…disturbing”, Michael admitted as he hacked off the end of a tentacle that tried to snag his leg. The wet smack as it came off and hit the ground, twitching, was particularly gross. He sincerely hoped that someone up there was getting a good laugh out of this mess. 

“We hawe seen worse.” He said.