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Irony: (noun) tasting or feeling much like Iron

@wordscansavetheworld

INFP book nerd/ hufflepuff/ she/ her/ straight ally/ baking magician/ lover of ducks/ sock enthusiast/ reader of many a good book. I usually just post stuff that makes me happy, so if you like books, psychology, feminism, fandoms, and/or random stuff, we should get along just fine.
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nicostiel
“Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”

Hayao Miyazaki

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allydsgn

how do you NOT reblog free textbook sites????

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If giraffes were predators they would look both hilarious and terrifying while sneaking up on their prey

I’m afraid you’ve missed the predatory giraffes by about 66 million years mate.

These guys are Azhdarchid pterosaurs, and they were some of the strangest reptiles to ever exist. They were perfectly capable of flight, but their physiology suggests that they may have spent a significant portion of their lives hunting on the ground. 

The largest of them could reach over 5 metres tall while standing, and had a 10-metre wingspan. They varied greatly in body type, from the tall, spindly forms of Quetzalcoatlus and Arambourgiania (images 4 and 1-2 respectively) to the heavy brute strength of Hatzegopteryz, a species that may have used its head to bludgeon its prey (images 2 and 3).

There has never been another flying animal before or since to have reached such incredible sizes, nor any predator so intimidatingly tall. Well, not any that we know of yet.

All of these illustrations are by Mark Witton, a palaeontologist and artist who specialises in pterosaurs. This is his blog about palaeontology and the science of reconstructing extinct species. You can find out more about each of these images here, here and here.

(Oh, and by the way … these are NOT dinosaurs)

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*phone rings* “hello” “hi! is your refrigerator running” “yes it is” “mine is as well! can’t wait to see your fridge at the race tomorrow”

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Here it is: how I got Horrible Histories banned from my school.

Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.

Imagine a little girl, a 4’9” fifth grader with dimples and twinkling blue eyes. Oh, look, she’s going to the school library. Perhaps she’s going to rent Little Women, or read On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder!

Five minutes later, she exits the library holding a large stack of books called “Horrible Histories.”

And she’s thumbing through one called “Angry Aztecs.”

Record scratch. Freeze frame.

Yup, that’s me! The only history geek in a fifty mile radius. Living in Bumhicksville, Nowhere (name changed, but very accurate) is pretty terrible, and going to school at Caucasian Christian School of Goodness (again, a name change, but an apt description) is even worse. I snapped a bit while I was attending, due to the lack of permissible self-expression, but horrible histories were my guiding light.

Flash forward six months.

Our teacher wants us to do a history project about an ancient civilization. Since our curriculum is Eurocentricism.JPEG, most kids pick the Greeks or Romans (and completely skip over all of the good stuff, like orgies and gladiator fights) in their presentations.

I choose my favorite ancient civilization:

The Aztecs.

My teachers knew I’d been reading Horrible Histories, but what they didn’t know was that I’d also been avidly reading all about Aztec mythology. I walk up to the front of the class, pull on a turquoise skull mask, and raise my arms to the sky.

My teacher goes sheet white.

I give my presentation and skip nothing. Nothing. Every detail of the sacrifices, every dirty, disgusting part.

It all culminates when I point to the calendar.

“It’s May!” I shout, my little girl voice rising an octave. My teacher looks like she’s about to phone the police. “The Aztecs called May Toxcatl.”

No one moves or breathed. I continue blithely.

“Toxcatl was a month dedicated to the worship of the god of the night, Tezcatlipoca.” I’m still going. Everyone is afraid. Marie, one of my classmates, looks like she’s about to cry.

“They’d dress a brave warrior as the god all year, and at the end-“ I pull the red streamers out from behind my display, shouting: “They’d sacrifice him!”

The kids shriek as the streamers of “blood” roll out across the floor.

The principal walked in, hearing the commotion, just in time for me to really get into character and shout “BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF THE NIGHT!”

And that’s how Horrible Histories and all mentions of the Aztecs were banned from my school.

A fucking hero

“BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF NIGHT”

tiny little ones are amazing and also terrifying

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