EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP SCIENTISTS AT THE SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE HAVE FOOTAGE OF A LIVE COLOSSAL SQUID FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑

for context, scientists have know about these mfs for like a HUNDRED YEARS but only now have they actually seen one ALIVE !!

And it's not even an adult!!! It's a baby! they found a non-colossal colossal squid!

I'm old enough that , when I was a kid, the books available to me on cryptids and monsters still listed giant squid (Architeuthis dux) and colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) as dubious -- not the species' existence itself, but the notion that they could get anywhere near as big as sailors said. The first complete adult colossal squid specimen was collected in 1981, a year before I was born, but small-town libraries being what they are, I ended up reading a lot of books from the 70s.

And sure, the 200-foot-long Kraken that can capsize a ship isn't a thing. But these fellows can, in fact, get pretty damn big. And I never really believed in Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil or Nessie, but I believed in giant squid. And I was right!

(Sailors were also right about rogue waves. "I swear to god it was 50 feet tall and came out of nowhere" yeah yeah, whatever, you were drunk and fucked up -- no! That shit actually happens! And then we had to reassess several centuries' worth of unexplained ship disappearances, because "the ocean just kind of ate it" suddenly became an actual explanation.)

GIVEAWAY: SUPPORTING REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT IN THE NAME OF SPITE

A college football podcast I enjoy runs a charitable drive every year for New American Pathways, a Georgia refugee resettlement charity one of the hosts used to work for. Since all their listeners are sports fans, they came up with a fun gimmick:

Donate money in the name of your favorite team, to compete with other teams.

Naturally this gets a lot of action! People donate to show fans of their hated rivals that they're the BEST, they donate specific numbers to commemorate notable game scores or player jersey numbers, they talk so much shit, it's fun.

There are also some fictional schools that have developed into their own entities, and this is where my pitch comes in. Because in addition to silly things like Night Ham University and Make Spencer Eat Cheese, we have...

PROTECT TRANS KIDS UNIVERSITY

(art by Matt Souva)

Our beloved PTKU Blue Sharks came in FOURTH PLACE last year, raising $46,626 for refugee resettlement! The grand total was over a million dollars!

Now, of course, New American Pathways has had basically all its federal funding cut, and there's no prospect of its being restored any time soon. And it's more important than ever to show the world that we believe in protecting trans kids.

I know times are tough and apt to get tougher. Which is why I'm adding an incentive.

If you send me a donation receipt (personal info redacted) in the name of Protect Trans Kids University between now and Friday, April 18th at midnight EDT, I will enter you into a drawing for YOUR VERY OWN BLAHAJ THAT I WILL BUY AND SEND TO YOU.

Questions:

Is there an FAQ about what all this is? Yes, it is here.

Do I have to donate to PTKU? Yes, because I want them to beat Michigan this year. Of course you can donate to whatever you want, but I won't enter you into the drawing. I figure like 80% of you have zero sports interest so it should be fine.

What if IKEA US doesn't ship to my location? IKEA shipping is weird. If I can't figure out how to get a shark to you directly, I will send you the appropriate amount of money for you to buy one from an IKEA in your country. You will need to have Venmo, Paypal, or CashApp for this option.

What if I don't want to give you my address? Same thing, we'll work it out. Is there a minimum donation amount? I think the website minimum is a dollar. There is no minimum for the drawing.

When will the drawing take place? Saturday 4/19.

Where should I send the receipt? cumaeansibyl@gmail.com.

Any more questions, send me an ask.

GO FORTH AND DONATE Y'ALL

if you can't donate please reblog!

PTKU IS IN SECOND PLACE, Y'ALL

University of Michigan has won -- and won by an absurd amount -- for the past several years, because they got both big-money donors and just a whole lot of extremely online left/liberal fans. And I want them to go down.

I've only had one entrant so far! Your odds are EXCEEDINGLY good!

i love this because it's like. why did paleolithic peoples paint the hunt. perhaps to celebrate and honour brave deeds that kept the community alive. perhaps to bring luck for future hunts. perhaps to instruct those who came after how to slay the beast. perhaps to remind us we can: that the mammoth is not unkillable.

this graffiti, too, serves those purposes!

Kinda recontextualizes the hunt for mammoths though

Maybe it wasn't for food

Maybe mammoths are really fucking racist

where can I meet this guy’s wife

How do these loser redit men get these incredibly talented and fascinating women lmao

THIS MAN’S GIRLFRIEND MADE HER OWN LOOM TO WEAVE PERIOD ACCURATE FABRIC AND HER ASSHOLE BOYFRIEND DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO LEARN THE NAME OF THE CLOTHES SHE WAS MAKING WITH IT HOLY SHIT I AM LIVID

Ooh I hope she leaves his ass

everyone has already said that men need to do better which is true but I think women also need more support and encouragement in pursuing their passions

like I will bet you money this woman has been taught by her family and peers that the best she can expect from a man is grudging tolerance of her "weird hobby" or "obsession" and she needs to make sure not to "go overboard"

people asking in the notes how boring dudes manage to pull these bad bitches, THAT'S how. because someone convinced them that a boring dude who doesn't care about what they love is the best they'll get.

GIVEAWAY: SUPPORTING REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT IN THE NAME OF SPITE

A college football podcast I enjoy runs a charitable drive every year for New American Pathways, a Georgia refugee resettlement charity one of the hosts used to work for. Since all their listeners are sports fans, they came up with a fun gimmick:

Donate money in the name of your favorite team, to compete with other teams.

Naturally this gets a lot of action! People donate to show fans of their hated rivals that they're the BEST, they donate specific numbers to commemorate notable game scores or player jersey numbers, they talk so much shit, it's fun.

There are also some fictional schools that have developed into their own entities, and this is where my pitch comes in. Because in addition to silly things like Night Ham University and Make Spencer Eat Cheese, we have...

PROTECT TRANS KIDS UNIVERSITY

(art by Matt Souva)

Our beloved PTKU Blue Sharks came in FOURTH PLACE last year, raising $46,626 for refugee resettlement! The grand total was over a million dollars!

Now, of course, New American Pathways has had basically all its federal funding cut, and there's no prospect of its being restored any time soon. And it's more important than ever to show the world that we believe in protecting trans kids.

I know times are tough and apt to get tougher. Which is why I'm adding an incentive.

If you send me a donation receipt (personal info redacted) in the name of Protect Trans Kids University between now and Friday, April 18th at midnight EDT, I will enter you into a drawing for YOUR VERY OWN BLAHAJ THAT I WILL BUY AND SEND TO YOU.

Questions:

Is there an FAQ about what all this is? Yes, it is here.

Do I have to donate to PTKU? Yes, because I want them to beat Michigan this year. Of course you can donate to whatever you want, but I won't enter you into the drawing. I figure like 80% of you have zero sports interest so it should be fine.

What if IKEA US doesn't ship to my location? IKEA shipping is weird. If I can't figure out how to get a shark to you directly, I will send you the appropriate amount of money for you to buy one from an IKEA in your country. You will need to have Venmo, Paypal, or CashApp for this option.

What if I don't want to give you my address? Same thing, we'll work it out. Is there a minimum donation amount? I think the website minimum is a dollar. There is no minimum for the drawing.

When will the drawing take place? Saturday 4/19.

Where should I send the receipt? cumaeansibyl@gmail.com.

Any more questions, send me an ask.

GO FORTH AND DONATE Y'ALL

if you can't donate please reblog!

Please put in the tags if you have a show you've never seen filtered and say what it is

I’m not saying it’s right, but I understand (x)

I’m saying it’s right

I’m saying it’s right

I’m saying it’s right

I’m saying it’s right and more people need to do things similar

anything DOGE is working on right now should be full of security holes, I'm just saying

as a hater, it's important to keep in mind that true fandom is a long game. for example, yeah, it's fucking annoying when you genuinely enjoy a show or something for multiple reasons and it happens to have gay people (or people who could be read as gay) in it and so the fandom gets flooded with the kind of fans who are literally just here for the "Hot New Thing to Slash Ship" and therefore have bad opinions on everything because they think entirely in shallow fanfic tropes and are going to get mad every time something doesn't line up perfectly with their fanfics, but with time they will move on to the next "Hot New Thing to Slash Ship," and you'll realize your real enemy is and has always been That One Blogger who Sincerely Loves this Show as Much as You But Has the Worst Fucking Opinions on Planet Earth.

"lolcow" is ultimately a colloquial term describing a phenomena that actually precedes the internet (and well, most of history too) but I can't think of another shorthand with implications that are tacitly understood the same way when gesturing to the spectacle that the world makes around acceptable targets. you go on reddit and someone has crossposted a Courtroom Freakout video like that's some shit anyone should want to derive entertainment from. your mom's cohort watches Dumb Criminal Fail youtube compilations and nod their heads as the perpetrator of a failed robbery bleeds out on floor of a kfc like that's some shit anyone should want to see. your peers are heavily invested in the Worthless E-Drama Industrial Complex, where thousands of people are made collateral of all kinds of violence in the name of forwarding the narrative of the spectacle. and you can't ask any of these people why any of this behavior is normal to them unless you want to be accused of condoning immoral tendencies, compulsion to punish The Other already metastasized in their minds. it sucks how easy it is to kill your own interest in this shit but not anyone else's.

People straight up do not realize that part of the reason manufacturing is not returning to the United States in massive waves is because we have things like “OSHA” and “environmental laws” and “minimum wages.”

It’s not even just about fair wages. It’s literally about the fact that you can’t dump industrial waste in a river here anymore.

Our cheap goods are so cheap because South American and Asians environments are being destroyed so you can buy a $40 pair of shoes every 3 months.

Cutting granite countertops has lead to a rapid increase in silicosis in the lungs out in California. All the working men and women in my family have died from pulmonary fibrosis. They were carpet layers, Post office workers, floor tilers. Staying safe in manufacturing jobs is annoying but also very, very expensive. Real manufacturing factories belch smoke and dust and grime that causes asthma and birth defects in surrounding communities. Everyone wants their manufacturing jobs back until they realize their kids are living directly under the Asthma Plant.

There will come a time when the workers in these countries rise up and demand better and things will start to even out, but if you want to honestly “do your part,” you gotta stop buying cheap shit for no reason.

Not every event needs to be celebrate with a baseball cap or a coozie or a t shirt or a keychain. Not every wall in the house has to have a picture or a cute phrase on it. The knickknacks are killing people.

Yep!

Also if you want every wall of your house to have a picture or a cute phrase on it? DO THAT SHIT YOURSELF OR PAY A LOCAL ARTIST. You can make your very own Live, Laugh, Love sign I promise - you don't have to buy one from the dollar store.

When the current administration promises to "bring manufacturing jobs back," they are mostly lying, but also they plan to make US manufacturing cheaper by eliminating as many environmental and worker safety protections as Grok can find for them

me re-scrolling thru older convos w/ my friends becuase i remember how much i enjoyed talking to them about the subject

american maid cafe review

In 5-10 years we will see a major swing towards religiosity from a lot of people who seem like unlikely candidates now. I'm basing this off a marked increase in left-leaning individuals who are coping with the realities of the times by becoming obsessed with their own personal virtue, even if maintaining it requires inaction and withdrawal from the world at large. To them, it seems better than becoming a bad person by working with imperfect people and pursuing imperfect solutions; it's not ok to compromise yourself, even if you think it might be better for the community in the short or long term.

If you become convinced the world is too polluted, too compromised, too evil to be negotiated with, it's only natural that you will eventually be drawn in by the promise of spiritual realms or states where none of that matters anymore. It's tempting to submit to the narrative of a perfect savior who is coming to fix it all at once. It's not inherently bad to be religious, but if you're letting it fill a space in your brain where your own judgment should be, it's very dangerous.

We need to watch out for those close to us who are falling into this spiral and becoming vulnerable to predatory organizations and individuals. It's better to have both feet on the ground with the rest of humanity, even if it means you must get your hands dirty sometimes. Do not get bullied into self-monitoring so rigorously that you're afraid to act, or interact, or speak, or read, or have fun. Stop giving a shit about whether you're perceived as ideologically pristine yourself and focus on the well-being of your community and other people, whether on a small scale or a large one. It's the only thing that actually matters in the end.

I think we are already seeing some of this happening in a motley collection of spiritual practices -- astrology, crystals, tarot, witchtok. Mediums are becoming more popular in my area. What's mostly lacking at the moment is the messianic turn you describe, and also a penitential system -- at the moment most of the purists' self-flagellation remains secular. The framework is there for any number of charismatic individuals to take advantage, though. (I'm thinking of the emphasis in alt medicine on purges and cleanses and other forms of self-mortification, aimed at purification from your own overindulgence and from the contaminants of the world. It's not a big step from "toxins" to "sins.")

I suspect it will be any number of smaller movements rather than something unified; there's room enough on newage social media for a wide variety of grifters, predators, and true believers to develop appealing theologies. And according to their nature, the organizations they develop will range from "weird but harmless" to "death cult," with lots of room for straight up scams in between.

Thank you, OP! I am obsessed with this version of Crowley, who consistently denies responsibility for his actions, and I feel like neither the show nor we fans are really doing a lot to explore or analyze this aspect of his personality.

When I think about it from an ineffable husbands perspective I realize how infuriating it would be to be in a relationship with someone who refuses to be accountable for anything they've done. Yet as a character motif it is absolutely fascinating. Is this a sort of rebound effect of falling? Performative demonic behavior? Anxiety?

Crowley's not great at calculating the effect of his actions, canonically. this goes back to the Fall, which to be fair no one actually knew was a possibility until it happened, and also to the Fall of Man, where he knew it would be trouble but not what kind -- nor was he able to foresee everything it would lead to. and even when he does something that's properly demonic, something of which management approves, it's liable to land him with unwanted extra assignments like delivering the Antichrist.

you would think that over the years he would have learned to curb his impulsiveness and to put more effort into planning, but it seems he's good enough at fast-talking his way out of consequences that he hasn't really been forced to learn that lesson as thoroughly as he might have otherwise. and also, honestly, while some of the consequences are extremely predictable (you might want to use London's mobile network, dumbass) some of them are not. the supernatural authorities in this world are arbitrary and cruel, and a frank admission of wrongdoing with a promise to do better is not going to cut it. (you can imagine, for instance, the Starmaker offering a genuine apology to God, and afterward deciding he's not going to make that mistake again.)

in essence I think he's careless, that he doesn't think things through or pay attention to what's going on around him, and when you're careless, you end up screwing yourself over pretty regularly. so you get used to either apologizing a lot or doing everything you can to deflect responsibility.

Aziraphale's version of this is mostly rationalization rather than outright denial -- I did do that, but it was Good actually, for reasons -- which is going to be just as difficult a habit to break, I think. (Crowley thinks it's cute, mostly, but when it extends to Aziraphale insisting that Crowley is also Good, it starts to feel dangerous.)

"this is unbecoming of me" is genuinely a useful thing to have in your mental toolbox

Like. you probably shouldn't say it out loud, but if you hold yourself to any principles or standards, you should really really be able to recognize when you've failed to meet those principles

I think this is something genuinely okay to say out loud too. Like if you’ve made a social faux pas or said something a lil off color and you want to apologize without either using disingenuous therapyspeak or reverting to “I deserve to die” type over the top self hatred why not try it. I have definitely said this out loud before. Just “hey, sorry, I know I can do better”

some of the principles to which we commit ourselves are hard to stick to emotionally, and we often fail. at least I do -- especially when one of them is "no retribution masquerading as justice" and there are an awful lot of people in power doing some truly heinous things. I have to correct myself a lot when I start entertaining revenge fantasies.

@evilhole makes a good point about over-the-top self-hatred; even if you're only correcting yourself in your own head, it can be easy to fall into "oh, I'm a piece of shit, why am I such a terrible person" when that's not actually going to help you do better. (It's funny for me in this particular instance because I am punishing myself for not living up to my belief in not punishing people, and one of the reasons I hold that belief is because punishment doesn't work. I'm good at this!)