The Captain's Log

@captainmoony

Unlike ocean mermaids who have plenty of room to grow their hair, freshwater mermaids prefer shorter styles similar to humans; because of their close proximity to the surface, “freshies” may also be seen wearing hats to block out sunlight and peek out from the water like alligators.

Additionally, due to their small size in even smaller environments like lakes and rivers, freshwater mermaids prefer human speech for communication over the whale-like humming used by their ocean relatives to speak. 

Abyssal mermaid, humming: [Hello cousin…!] River mermaid, tipping their seashell cowboy hat: HOWDY

@captainmoony

Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War. 

Look at her. 

I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century. 

And quite possibly a mutant. 

She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).

She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“

She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across. 

On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die. 

She’s swum over 50,000 miles. 

And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me. 

Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.

Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.

Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.

A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.

There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.

Dude HOLY FUCK she’s a badass.

@captainmoony check out this badass woman

turns out you can get an all-woman crew for free and the women have unique sea shanties so now my ship is powered by pure concentrated lesbianism

@dhurkedatz

so i looked up the lyrics to the shanty they’re singing because i’m lovin it and someone provided

@captainmoony

Aw, yeah, that’s the good shit.

weirdly, or maybe not-weirdly, photos like this fill me with hope.

Because no matter how much we stamp our feet and insist on being All-Important, maybe we’re actually not so much, and after we take ourselves off the game board in a huff of indignation, Life will barely notice we were there. 

We may have irreversibly changed the world, but when we are gone the nature will come to cover us up.

Two year old idea I finally got done. :’) I’d planned it for May, because mermay, but work got in the way, and then I hoped to do it in June but nope. Ah well, at least it’s done.

You can get the making of resources and hi-res JPEG through my Patreon!

@captainmoony

Can i get a step by step on how to do this?

So far for me it’s been something like:

1. Become aware of how and when you tearing yourself down.

2. Now that you can catch yourself doing it. Offer counters to the negative self talk. A really useful thing I read was to talk to yourself almost the way you would child. Gentle and patient. Even when they fuck up.

3. Take time to celebrate your small accomplishments. You’ve been attacking yourself for every little mistake. Apply that same fervor to the positive things in your life. Did the dishes even though you didn’t want to? Fuck yeah! Got up and took shower? YES!!! You are taking positive steps to feeling better. Celebrate it.

4. Make lists of things you’re good at/ like about yourself. The first time I did this the only two things in my list we’re that I liked my hair and I had good friends. It was start.

5. Don’t beat yourself up if you screw up steps 1-4. It’s counter productive. When I catch myself calling my self stupid for some mistake or other my response now is,“We don’t talk to ourselves like that anymore. What’s something constructive that could actually help solve the problem.”

Most of the time that seems to work. Not always. But more and more Everytime.

I hope any of that made sense.

oh my goodness there are instructions!!

The greater grison (Galictis vittata), is a species of mustelid native to Southern Mexico, Central America, and South America. The greater grison is a slender animal with short legs, a long neck, and a short, bushy tail. They have a head-body length ranging from 18 to 24 inches. Adults weigh between 3.3 and 8.4 lbs in the wild, but may become larger when reared in captivity.

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@captainmoony

Wendi Chen  -  http://wendichen.tumblr.com  -  https://twitter.com/wendichen  -  https://www.instagram.com/wendichen  -  https://www.pinterest.es/wendichen  -  https://www.facebook.com/WendiChenArt

I may have been too busy for MerMay but you can bet I’m not skipping MerJuly

MASAKI(10/24千葉しぼり展示会さんはTwitterを使っています: “夜中にこっそり完成です！水上の部分にディテール加えて手書きのタイトル書き込んで台座に接着しました〜 #水没ジオラマ http://t.co/083K8YDje0” https://twitter.com/MasakiSe/status/631863542375841792/photo/1

by Brittney Lee (etsy)

Reblog the 500,000 dollar written check from Seto Kaiba and money will come your way.

Pls