Context.

leitmotifs never get old to me like holy shit dude there’s this melody that corresponds to this one guy and if you hear the melody it means the guy is there. holy shit. and sometimes it refers to ideas too not just guys. has anyone heard about this

Sometimes something fucked up happens to the guy and their melody gets fucked up too. Sometimes the thing that fucked them up also has its own melody and when the first melody gets fucked up the second melody gets mixed in

no fucking way dude. are you serious

Gonna scream oh my Gd

Rating the Accuracy of Animal Names:

(I keep updating this list so check back later)

Marine Iguana: 1/10. They don’t allow lizards in the military

Honey Badger: 1/10. It’s not even made out of honey

Horny toad: 0/10. First of all, this is a lizard. Second of all, I couldn’t find one that was willing to have sex with me so they must not actually be all that horny

Crabeater seal: 1/10. They don’t even eat crabs. Felt uncomfortable asking about the other kind but I’d guess probably not those either

Comb jellyfish: 4/10. Doesn’t even have hair

Hammerhead shark: 10/10. Stop killing hammerhead sharks to make hammers

Paper nautilus: 1/10. Paper would get too soggy

Red Panda: 2/10. Not a panda. More orange than red

Jellyfish: 0/10. Not even a fish, but if it were, jelly would be one of the worst things to be made out of

Electric eel: 5/10. Not an eel. Shocking, I know

Blue footed booby: 2/10. My disappointment is immeasurable. Turns out this lying sack of shit is a just a stupid BIRD

Spiny lumpsucker: 8/10. Apparently this fish is named because it has spines AND a suction cup, not because it sucks on spiny lumps

Pleasing fungus beetle: 2/10. Why would fungus be pleased by a beetle eating it? It just worked so hard to grow

Chicken turtle: 1/10. This is just a regular turtle, there are no chickens involved

Red lipped batfish: 8/10. Not a bat. Does have red lips. Also looks incredibly sexy with that makeup on

Aye aye: 10/10. Does in fact, have two eyes

Blobfish: 10/10 out of water, 1/10 in water. The blobfish gets a bad rap, it only looks like a blob because some dickhead pulled it out of its natural habitat at the bottom of the fucking ocean. You’d look pretty weird if you switched places with them too

Dik dik: 5/10 if male, 0/10 if female. This one’s pretty self explanatory

Mountain chicken: 0/10. THIS IS A FUCKING FROG. STOP NAMING ANIMALS AFTER CHICKENS!

Peacock: 0/10. It pees out of a cloaca, not a cock. Technically it doesn’t even pee either

Monarch butterfly 1/10. They aren’t even one of the species of insects that has a queen, let alone understands the concept of monarchism

Cockatiel: 0/10. They do not have teal cocks

Monkey slug caterpillars: 1/10. These are neither slugs nor monkeys, nor are they some kind of fucked up monkey/slug hybrid. Terrible name all around, the only part they got right was caterpillar

Robin: 5/10. It’s a shame this bird has to resort to thievery but we all have to put worms on the table somehow

Alligator snapping turtle: 1/10. This is not an alligator, nor does it even have the fingers to snap with

Ground squirrel: 5/10. Please don’t grind squirrels

Axolotl: 0/10. Doesn’t ask a lot. Doesn’t ask anything at all

Sea robin: 7/10 This is what happens when the land robin goes pro. This creepy fuck evolved little fingers just to steal things. Is this where fish fingers come from?

Tasmanian devil: 8/10. Much like the christian devil, cool name and way more chill than most people give them credit for. Statistically speaking, they’re far from the deadliest player on the board, but they do have the strongest bite force and won’t hesitate to use it if provoked

Water deer: 7/10. No. This is a meat deer

Star nosed mole: 7/10. Name is somewhat misleading, nose merely star shaped, and not a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace

Paddlefish: 3/10. Too narrow to effectively be used as a paddle

Shoebill stork: 1/10. Not made of real shoes. Doesn’t pay bills either

Great white shark: 8/10. I’m inclined to agree for the most part but who came up with the name, David Duke?

Bioko drill: 0/10. At least the hammerhead shark looks like a hammer, this stupid monkey doesn’t even remotely resemble a drill

Hippo Tang: 0/10. That’s a fish, and hippos don’t even drink Tang

Bluejay: 3/10. Not actually blue, it’s just a trick of the light. I bet their real name probably isn’t even Jay either

Satanic Nightjar: 4/10. Should be called “slightly evil looking bird” instead

Tarantula hawk wasp: 1/10. Not a tarantula. Not a hawk. Starting to question if it’s even a wasp

Goblin shark: 10/10? Ever seen their jaw move? They sure are gobblin’

Nudibranch: 5/10. The nude part is accurate but it’s a sea slug, not a tree branch. Not even sure how you could possibly make that mistake

Mongoose: 0/10. No mon, it’s not a goose

Bison: 7/10. I just googled it, bison have more gay sex than straight sex so calling them bi is actually pretty accurate. Points removed because there are bidaughters too

Ram: 10/10. They sure do!

Mandrill: 2/10. They could probably be taught to use drills but I couldn’t find any research on this

Silver fox: 1/10. Silver is way too heavy of an element for an animal to be made of

Mayfly: 9/10 Yeah, they might

Fin whale: 10/10. Yep, whales have fins. Glad we cleared that up

Macaroni penguin: 1/10. They don’t eat macaroni

Horseshoe crab: 0/10. Not a crab. Doesn’t wear horseshoes either

Fangtooth: 10/10. Objectively I have to give it a 10 but this is the stupidest fucking name on the whole list. What’s next, knucklefist? Titboob?

Milkfish 1/10. If I go to your house and you offer me fish milk I’m fucking leaving

Little penguin: 10/10. Telling it exactly like it is

Spider monkey: 1/10. Was expecting a monkey with 8 limbs. Let down once again

Glass frog: 2/10. Not actually made out of glass

Hummingbird: 1/10. They can’t even hum

Centipede: 3-35.4/10. Depends on the species, very few actually have 100 legs

Millipede: 0.8-8/10. They have 800 legs at the most

Sockeye salmon: 1/10. Socks would make terrible eyes

Furry lobster: 10/10, 11/10 if that’s a fursuit

Flying fish: 4/10. Merely glides

Sailfish: 3/10. Doesn’t actually know how to sail

Blanket octopus: 2/10. Octopuses make terrible blankets

Cane Toad: 2/10. Can walk just fine without a cane

Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.

I think any inanimate thing you regularly care for becomes a little alive.

If tools are just temporary extensions of the self, how much do you need to modify a foreign body until it isn't foreign anymore?

A bunch of women just saw you spill your subjectivity. At the club.

hey, wanna know something cool?

a little over a century ago, the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton lost the ship Endurance when attempting to make a land crossing of the antarctic.

soon after, the ship would be crushed by the surrounding ice as it shifted, and it would sink about 10,000 feet to the sea floor.

BUT THEN

2 years ago, national geographic was able to locate the HMS endurance and found it in an incredibly well preserved state!

the leader of the expedition, Mensun Bound, said "This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation."

fotherMUCKER

I'm gonna link to the animations in case y'all either don't remember or have never heard of some of these.

A quick note: these were made in the 2000s. Comedy is subjective, there's some strong examples of dark and/or "lolz teh random" humor in these. Maybe some cultural blindness, too. That said, enjoy a time capsule of stuff made before/during the birth of Youtube, now hosted on Youtube.

Kenya

Salad Fingers, episode 2

End of Ze World

Schfifty Five

The Hamster Dance

Badgers

"Rejected" by Don Hertzfeldt

Charlie the Unicorn

The Llama Song

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

enough reclaiming slurs, I think in 2023 we should reclaim nascar. they banned the confederate flag on all properties & their stance on lgbtq+ isn’t just performative bc in 2013 they fined a driver 10k for using a homophobic slur, condemned indiana in a statement for an anti lgbt law, and partnered w carolina’s lgbt+ chamber of conference in 2022. nascar was founded by anti-cop moonshiners/bootleggers who drove suped-up fords to out-run the police. #yaaascar

HELP

To this day, my favorite argument I ever had was with my Nascar-loving family about how a thin blue line flag on a Nascar is antithetical to the core tenets of Nascar. There is no organization more rooted in ACAB than Nascar. Literally, the only reason it exists was that a bunch of moonshining families had to build cars that could outrun the cops while on supply runs during the Prohibition Era. The goal was to make the car look like a regular vehicle so they could pick up supplies or drop off illegal alcohol without arousing suspicion. But if the cops were on you all you had to do was put the pedal to the metal and that little truck could outrun them with no problems. And of course, families would be in competition over who made the best alcohol, and whose car was fastest. So, they would have races on the weekends. When prohibition was lifted, the races continued. And that is why we have Nascar. It really frustrates me how people look at American car culture and scoff at it. Formula One racing is more exciting and more dynamic to watch, but the history of it is not as interesting: a bunch of rich assholes who made specialized cars for racing. And to this day, it is still a rich man's sport. Whereas Nascar was about a bunch of so-called hicks in the backwoods who used some basic hand tools and trial and error to make a junker into a racecar.

when I was a kid for some reason I thought Lola Bunny's last name was "Rabbit" and that she was actually Jessica and Roger's daughter. And the reason she wasn't in the original Loony Tunes is just that she wasn't born yet

I mean can you blame me. Look them and look at her. She's got a good blend of both of their features.

this is the only good head canon I've ever had tbh

okay but this makes bugs bunny her leonardo dicaprio

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