im having feelings about the uffington white horse again

so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.

people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.

we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.

the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?

this is why God hates us

I give up. Someone just kill me

I love this man!

It’s Solidarity Forever Saturday! Reblog this if you like dancing anime girls or if you want the violent overthrow of the capitalist class!

The reviews are in!

Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

Let’s talk about the astounding similarities between cats and autistic people, and how we should make them the official autism mascot instead of that godawful puzzle piece

Oh man, now you’ve got me going!

Firstly, cats stim. They purr, swish their tails and knead their paws against pillows, blankets, and other soft things. Many cats actively seek out sensory experiences, like listening to birds singing, lying in a sunbeam, rolling against the grass, etc.

Cats have sensory sensitivities— many of them dislike walking on certain flooring, touching certain textures, and certain smells or sounds may make them anxious. Their fur is very sensitive, they can sense the lightest touch, or speck of lint, or dust and their skin will quiver until they can lick or rub it off. When they become overstimulated cats retreat into a small, dark place to recover.

Cats love routine. Many cats know the exact time that their owners wake up in the morning and will wake them. A cat with a routine is a happy cat— they love to have their meals or soft food on a schedule and will learn their owner’s schedule. Cats will become anxious when the schedule is disrupted or if their owner doesn’t follow their usual routine.

In the same vein cats are very wary and/or anxious when it comes to the introduction of new things or people into their environment. Cats require time and patience to get used to anything or anyone newly introduced. Cats also feel anxious when existing furniture is rearranged or when a new smell (like an air freshener) is introduced into the home.

Cats often have “special interests”, a particular activity or thing that they love and can spend hours enjoying. It could be playing with a particular toy, chewing on something, listening to the radio, or watching the clothes in the washing machine. My cat Kitty has a certain ball that she fixates on and will happily enjoy and obsess over for hours.

Finally, cats have a very distinct and subtle body language. The difference is particularly evident when compared with the exuberant, unsubtle dog. The slightest twitch of a tail or turn of the ears, the frequency and timing of blinks, and the positioning of the tail in relation to the body are all little movements that can express much. To the untrained eye it may appear as if a cat is bored, aloof, or unaware of its surroundings. But once you learn to recognize cat body language and understand cat communication, you’ll be amazed at the depth of emotion and how expressive your cat really is.

Yes, I think that cats have a lot in common with autistic people. And that’s wonderful!

also can I add to this:

cats like to show their affection just by sharing the same space. a cat will generally want to be in the same space as you, even if you’re not really interacting and are half way across the room. still hanging out! 

they don’t always want to be touched, and can be easily overstimulated by physical affection.

they don’t like to make eye contact.

their body language is often misinterpreted- and then they are blamed for it, or have negative motivations ascribed to it. a cat following you around is stalking you instead of wanting to hang out. a cat that doesn’t want to make eye contact with you is ignoring you instead of being polite. a cat that lashes out because it’s over stimulated, or you ignored their body language telling you to leave them alone is suddenly an asshole who hurt you for no reason.

I had this book as a child and I’m glad to see the comparison is so widely recognized too

I KEEP SAYING ALL CATS ARE AUTISTIC IM SO HAPPY THIS POST EXISTS PLEASE SOMEONE ARTISTIC MAKE A CAT WITH THE NEURODIVERGENT SYMBOL ON IT FOR AUTISM MASCOT :D

The book above has been updated to better align with the current understanding of autism as well!!

hi, wanted to clarify something about United States stamps that may not be well known to those abroad: “forever stamps” (aka US stamps labelled with “FOREVER” instead of a monetary amount) were introduced in 2007 and the purpose of these stamps is that they can always be used to send 1 standard letter, no matter the current postal rate.

so uh, if you see “USA - FOREVER” on a stamp, it’s not a nationalist statement like i’ve just seen some folks say, it’s just. a forever stamp.

Gotta add, we’ve got KiwiStamps here which fulfil the same purpose.

*facepalm* Yeah, before Forever Stamps were a thing, you’d get a book of stamps at whatever the current rate was, and then if the postage rate went up next year, your stamps wouldn’t be worth enough to mail a letter. So if postage was 40 cents when you bought your stamps, and the next year it’s 42 cents, and you want to mail a letter, you’d have to either go to the post office to buy a 2-cent stamp (inconvenient) or use two stamps (which means you’re “over-paying” for postage by 38 cents - which can add up if you have to do it a lot). Forever stamps made things a lot simpler, and it’s REALLY not a nationalist thing.

especially re: eating up savings:

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

This is gonna sound fucked up but i love tight grapes. You know what I mean when the grape is nice and tight and ur incisors pierce thru them like needles popping a balloon

surface tension is literally the most important quality of a grape end of discussion

vegan vampire subreddit topic.

THE MALARIA VACCINE GOT APPROVED BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TODAY OH MY GOD THIS IS LITERALLY ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF RESEARCH.

*THIS* IS WHAT BEING HUMAN IS ABOUT.

Guys they mean today as in TODAY today!! October 7th, 2021!!

“The vaccine… is not just a first for malaria — it is the first developed for any parasitic disease. Parasites are much more complex than viruses or bacteria, and the quest for a malaria vaccine has been underway for 100 years.” (NYT)

A friend of mine posted this and tagged my old instagram account, asking me to share it. I figured sharing it here where I actually have a following, would be far better.

Please remember that just because the government is giving into pressure and greed, that doesn’t mean that any of this is getting any better, in a lot of ways it’s getting worse. And even if you yourself aren’t being as heavily affected anymore, there are people and communities that are.

Stay safe Darling ones, and help others remain safe too.

Funny how that works

I am so pleased at how many notes are some version of “I don’t fear the science, I fear the corporations who control it” because that is EXACTLY the attitude you should have. GMOs can save us. Monsanto will kill us.

what people fear about GMO- ‘theyre gonna make frankencarrots that crave human flesh and cause diarrhea ’ what GMO actually is- ‘we made rice crop that is both drought resistant and flood resistant which will prevent about 20% of major famine disasters, also it now makes vitamin A because vitamin A deficiency in poverty stricken areas is a major killer of kids as most vitamin A rich foods dont grow there’ what people SHOULD be upset about- ‘i made all crops sterile so all farmers have to buy the seed from me in perpetuity and i will sue anyone who tries to go back to crops that produce their own seed’

^^^ THIS

SO MUCH THIS

he was in the fridge!!!

ovbiously this person has done so much research and cares about their tortoise so much but…. the mf idea of having a live tortoise in a TUPPERWARE?! IN MY FRIDGE?? WITH ME FOOD? ahahahaha

the concept of opening someone else’s fridge only to find a WHOLE ASS TORTOISE in there… idk if I’d ever recover

@esperantoauthor when the food doesn’t come to Tesla, Tesla comes to the food

Reminds me of when I accidentally stumbled across this photo for the first time…

mutuals put me in your fridge

Back in 2015, I went over to a classmate’s house for group project work late in the fall, and in the middle of working on the presentation, offered to grab sodas for people but they were out of pepsi and Andrew whose house we were at said “Oh, there’s more in the basement fridge.”

So I go down to the basement, which is well-lit and finished and indeed there are more pepsi but also in the fridge is a massive tortise. This animal was the dimensions of a desktop computer and probably outweighed a labrador. It’s not moving, and is set in the middle of a plastic tray so it’s apparently supposed to be there. I go back upstairs.

“Hey Andrew.” I say, nonchalantly. “So is the tortise in the fridge down there for soup or what?”

“The what?” says the other member of the group project. I don’t remember her name, just that she always wore her hair in pigtails with butterfly clips that were based on real butterflies and she had at least a dozen species.

“Oh! No, that’s Andrew Too.” he says. “His species hibernates so he stays in the fridge for the holidays.”

“You named your tortise after you?” I ask.

“No, uh- Well, my grandfather got him in Egypt or somewhere while he was on leave during the war and He was named Andrew, so he thought it would be funny to name him ‘Andrew Too’. …Then Mom named me after him so Gandpa left me Andrew Too in his will. He’s pretty cool when he’s awake. Lets us dress him up for summer holidays, doesn’t bark.”

“Oh!” Said Butterflies. “My dad served in the Gulf War too! What unit was he in?”

“Oh no, Grandpa was with the Royal Air Force in World War Two. Andrew Too is going to be 70 this year! We’re going to make him a carrot cake!”

“is that for soup?”

“No, that’s my uncle”

are you telling me americans have stores that open up SPECIFICALLY for halloween and just. dont exist any other time of the year. you people are insane

Imagine an empty storefront. Some business that closed years ago. The building stands empty, unused for literal months. And then boom. Fall comes around and there’s a Spirit Halloween. There’s no escape.

what the fuck 😁

Yeah this is a thing

Are you serious

Yes and they are divine gifts of beauty and cheap plastic lawn decorations.

… I honestly assumed that the existence of Halloween stores was just a running joke in American TV shows.

No they’re very real

Can confirm this phenomenon also occurs in Canada

It’s fun

Oh, it’s a blast.

Wait, so during non-halloween they are just empty? Like, they don’t switch between seasonal decorations (like christmas, easter, etc), they just…close and wait for next year???

Yeah, it’s not a permanent store. A company will rent an empty building for the 2-3 months before halloween, sell halloween stuff, and then clean everything up and disappear until the following year. And they’ll usually set up in different buildings from year to year. They just find any good-sized empty store space that will give them a cheap, short-term lease.

It’s so temporary that the halloween stores don’t even have a real sign, they just hang up a banner outside:

So you’re telling me that every year for a month or two the Spirit of Halloween possesses a dead building then disappears?

Yes, yes it does. Side note I need a skeleton flamingo now…

LPT: Don't throw your junk mail away. Use it to to help the USPS instead!

Next time you get a credit card offer in the mail, or a junk piece of mail that includes a prepaid envelope or postcard, don't throw it away! Send the envelope back with a blank sheet of paper inside, or don't fill the postcard out, but still send it back. The company that sent it to you had to pay the USPS for postage on each one they get back. This is a way to support the USPS by doing very little, and sticking it to the annoying companies that want all of your money.

In the 90s we would send companies “hate mail” by stuffing prepaid envelopes with things like ‘blanks’ (flat heavy metal pieces), a roofing shingle) and layers of other competitors’ mail or junk news. This is because the company would have to pay more upon recieving the junk mail. It eats into them. It actually somewhat reduced our junk mail returnables, I think.  Send that mail y’all. 

Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like ”hey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually aren’t true stripes? They’re called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.”

and another one is like ”wait so you’re saying humans don’t have stripes.”

”actually they do, but the stripes are invisible. There’s genetic code that’d give them stripes but they’re just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.”

”I swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today I’m beating your ass.”

The human in the room looks up and goes “Wait I have stripes?”

“what do you mean cats can see them, but I can’t?”

what do you fucking mean cats can see them

I WENT THROUGH THE SAME THOUGHT PROCESS

MY CAT THINKS I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!?

NO NO ITS NOT “IT THINKS I HAVE THEM”

BECAUSE WE DO APPARENTLY

SO ITS ACTUALLY A VERY DISTRESSED “MY CAT THINKS I KNOW I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!”

AND I THINK THATS A BIT WORSE TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST

MY CAT KNEW I HAD STRIPES BEFORE I DID?!?!?!?!?!?

I DIDNT THINK OF THAT

WELL I DID AND NOW I CANT UNTHINK IT

@beenovel @messiambrandybuck these are the variants

WHAT

apparently there’s a disease where they become visable, and these are the most common kind??

Ngl it looks cool but???? I’m still in shock tbh

so I dug around a bit because the cats thing was ??? and:

- these stripes are visible under ultraviolet light

- cats, dogs, and a few other animals might see in ultraviolet light

- ergo, it can be assumed that if you can see ultraviolet, then you can maybe spot these stripes

so if the alien species can see in ultraviolet, the exchange would be more:

alien: so… do the stripe patterns on humans mean anything?

human: oh [explains stretch marks]

alien: no, not those, the stripes on your arms?

human: … what stripes on my arms?

alien: you mean you CAN’T see them???

human: NO?????? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN

@simonalkenmayer

What do you have to say about this? 😆

I’ve replied to this before.

Yes, I see them. I just assumed that people didn’t like talking about them, and that that’s why makeup existed.

Cats can see them too?

Hmm. Explains a lot.