The Nerd Box

Why cats smell good if they groom themselves with their nasty fishy breath tongue

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the only one stopping you from lurking around an ancient ruin, dressing like a disgraced nobleman, and duelling everyone who comes your way, is yourself. 

we are in a media literacy crisis

friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.

IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:

Adult literacy is low.

Child literacy is low.

Information literacy has shifted dramatically in the last decade, but reputable information sources like research journals and factual news reporting have been unable to keep pace.

We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.

It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.

So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.

You're correct:

Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.

It’s like this

Reversed version so you and your mutuals can bonk back and forth.

wait, hold on

if the universe were not so cruel the "Tailor Swift" would be a beautiful bird that elegantly sews its nest together

we need to assemble the world's greatest scholars to determine what makes a game "broken (derogatory)" or "poorly designed" vs. "janky (affectionate)"

the main factors I've identified are:

this post was inspired by an RPG I'm playing where you can jump off a cliff in search of treasure, which immediately kills you. for some reason this counts as an Ending rather than a game over

"falin isn't fat in canon (so stop unduly giving this series credit for fat representation in her case)": a very fair point! it *is* honestly a bit concerning that people are so conditioned by media to think stick-thin is the norm that they think medium-sized bodies are fat. and i've seen some very good points about how almost every character we see that has a heavier build is just like that because their race is naturally more stocky, and that almost no characters in this story are "overweight" by their race's standards. so while this story is much better than a lot of others with its body diversity, there are still some things that it could do better.

"falin isn't fat in canon (so stop drawing her fat)": your ignorance astounds me and your foolishness knows no bounds. i could fill libraries with the things you don't know on this subject. every time you bitch i give her another roll.

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”

This is especially funny because they aren’t even right. Foxes *ARE* dogs.

No they aren’t.

yes they are. because they are fluffye.

OK yes they are.

Dog

Dog

Different family, but same order as @pictures-of-dogs

No, they are the same family. They are the same kingdom, phylum, order and family. They separate at the genus.

They’re a dog.

yeah they’re fluffye

theyre literally not dogs theyre not even fluffy. can we get science tumblr over hear or what!?

checkmate athiests

fluffye

okay but they literally are dogs, for those who are confused

If foxes are dogs, then so are wolves, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, and several other extant and extinct species.

Behold! A dog.

of course it’s a dog you buffoon. it’s fluffye.

Why on earth would someone think “BUT IF THEY’RE DOGS SO AR -”

Like yes of course wolves are dogs, where have you been. Jackals are excellent doggies! So are coyotes. Why is this confusing.

I love that this is literally two completely different arguments running simultaneously.

That guy up there who said they’re not even fluffy was thinking of sharks

sharks are also dogs. ravenous water dogs, but still dogs

Sharks can NOT be dogs they are SMOOTH

Tags via @jenroses

sharks are smooth dogs

BEHOLD, a SHARK

BEHOLD, A DOG

i get so freaked out by like. pictures of really big rope

I’d like to say that’s normal but I’m a frayed knot

i’m so fucking annoyed at this, just for that you don’t get photos of the rope

i changed my mind, this is just too horrifying not to share

it’s called a Hawser and is the thick cable or rope used for towing/mooring a ship

in conclusion, i have nightmares beyond description

NO it would NOT be cool

well i fucken disagree

@scumrunner do you have any cursed facts about hawsers to share ?

As a fiber nerd, i am personally very enthusiastic about them….

Ohhohohoho DO I EVER. Meet the “snapback zone,” not an area with cool hats, but instead the unintuitive range at which a hawser can kill you if it breaks under tension.

What if we kissed in the snap-back zone? 😳 😳 😳

I don’t think you guys understand how much force this is, a tow rope used to move a 20 foot boat snaps under tension with enough force to dent metal, shatter glass and seriously injure anyone in its way. A Hawser on the other hand… Well I’ve seen a concrete pier with a chuck the size of a sedan ripped out of it by a line failure, and anecdotally, I’ve heard of a 2 ton heavy cargo forklift being skidded sideways, then knocked over. These lines snap with enough force to noticably dent the hull armor of navy ships.

This is a line designed to hold in place a moving object that can be easily in excess of 10000 tons. AND THEY CAN BREAK FROM THAT TENSION ALONE.

THESE THINGS ARE TERRIFYING RUBBER BANDS FROM HELL.

Nope Rope

My stepdad got hit by a broken chain from a tractor ripping a tree stump out of the ground and it broke his leg in one strike. From pulling just a treestump. These ropes pulling huge fuckoff ships will wipe out anything in their fucking path.

have some Thancred and Aryaille at the beach as a palate cleanser from everything awful going on with Viola

"why can't they just be friends" not in the homophobic way but in the "their platonic relationship in the source material is far more dynamic and complex than the sanitized personalities they gain as a result of shipping" way

"why can't they just be friends" not in the homophobic way but in the "this is a valuable exploration of intimacy and vulnerability that we’re conditioned to recognize only in romantic relationships but that can exist platonically as well" way

I just don’t get it. How can our society act so goddamned normal about seahorses. How can anybody so casually accept that that’s a fish???

This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.

They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.

This thing is one of the most successful hunters on the planet. Because their mouth is fused shut, except for the tip, they can create a powerful suction force in front of that one little opening in order to draw in prey. 

Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise. 

If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch. 

Behold: not just a fish, but a wildly successful predator! 

horsey

don’t forget their majestic cousins the sea dragons! these are the leafy and weedy sea dragons

and the newest seahorse family member, discovered in 2015, the ruby sea dragon ❤️

Yeah that’s when someone tried to straighten the seahorse back out and it still didn’t look right. The more they bent and mushed it in their hands to look like a fish again the worse they fucked it up until finally they just left it and walked off and hoped nobody would ask who did this

(I love them so much)

Oh, so it’s actually the ruby sea dragon on a string! Got it.

i doubt that someone hasn’t already brought them up in another reblog but anyways. don’t forget about pipefish! relatives of seahorses which are literally as physically close to a worm on a string as any real animal could get, imo