My books are my life.

I love those "asking cosplayers at a con what their day job is" videos because it's always like

*muffled voice issuing from a huge suit of armor* im a cybersecurity specialist

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

i need to (remembers that suicide jokes only hurt yourself and those around you) fag it up

I just think people who clean public spaces should make no less than $100,000 a year

BEGGING people to be normal about tall trans women and short trans men. y'all can't see a tall trans woman without being like "omg step on me mommy" "i want her to rail me" etc or you see a short trans man and automatically assume he's submissive or a cute bottom bitch or something. so many tall trans women are submissive and so many short trans men are dominant and fetishizing their height is weird and uncomfortable, not to mention something so many trans people are incredibly dysphoric about .

y'all are just reinventing gender stereotypes and acting like it's cute or sexy. sometimes a tall trans woman wants to be treated delicately and wants to be a pillow princess, and there are so many short trans men (me included) who want to ram someone with their huge strap.

"I cant draw" then do it bad who gives a fuck.....

Partake in the joy of creation just for the fun of it. Just for a laff.

Me @everyone in the notes

all the leaves are brown (alllllll the leaaaaves are brown)

and the sky is gay

(and the sky is gay)

E.R. Comics, Ryan Pequin

one time my friend had surgery on her hip/knee and we went to visit her in the hospital and she was like “hey guys, check out what i have! it’s this cool button that, when I press it, it gives me more morphine!” and sure enough she had a little tube with one end attached to her IV or whatever and one end with a button on it, and every time she pushed the button it gave her morphine

and she just kept pressing it and pressing it and giggling and getting loopier and loopier, so we went to ask a nurse if that was OK or if she was just going to overdose herself

and the nurse said that the morphine button is on a self timer limit and she had already maxed it out and won’t be able to get more for a few more hours, but she can just press the button as many times as she wants and thanks to her already being on the max dose of morphine she was just placebo effect-ing herself into the fucking stratosphere

it was a great image, my friend over there high as balls like I HAVE UNLIMITED MORPHINE POWER!!!! *press press press press* and the nurse like “nah that button isn’t doing shit but she’s having fun”

[Image Description: a four panel comic by R. Pequin, titled “E.R. Comics”. In the first panel, a patient with a beard is laying in a hospital bed, hand over their stomach as it shows lines of distress. A masked nurse with a ponytail and holding a chart approaches. In the second panel, the nurse asks the patient, “How’s the morphine treating you over here?”. In the third panel, the patient kisses their fingers with an “Mm”, and in the fourth panel they finish the chef’s kiss with a “Mwah” . The nurse says “Very good.” End I.D.]

it is both interpersonally valuable and politically necessary to decouple transfeminine beauty from thinness, and to investigate the roots of these sentiments and what larger phenomena animate them.

sorry I can word this like an "actual tumblr post"

every time you make a joke about Lanky Trans Girl Stereotype and her Waifish Boyish Frame an angel loses her wings and a beautiful fat trans woman you know trusts you less.

"We call it vff," said the alien. "It's - it's hard to describe to a species without vffsense. Imagine trying to describe light to a species that never evolved eyes. But there are forms of life that are only perceptible with vffsense, and they've visited Earth and fed on life as long as it's existed here."

There was a pause.

Then the human said, "That's the worst thing you've ever said."

"Don't worry about it."

"I think I have to, now."

"No, because - well - you have a species of spider which pretends to be an ant, correct? It's not capable of understanding the fact that it's mimicking an ant, but it instinctually mimics an ant in order to deter predators."

"Sure?"

"Humans produce a vff to mimic varths, predators only perceptible through vffsense. The organisms that would like to feed on you are terrified of varths, and so they leave you alone. You aren't aware you do it, you don't have the capacity to understand you're doing it, but you evolved to instinctually do it to deter predators you can't see."

There was a pause.

Then the human said in a very soft and thoughtful voice, "And are there varths on Earth?"

"Yes," said the alien. "Everywhere. But don't worry about it."

"I think I have to, now."

"Well, varths can also sense vff, of course, but to a varth you putting off varth like vff isn't particularly frightening."

"Not frightening, ok. So do they feed on us?"

"No."

"So if not feeding then something... else?"

"Yes. Quite a lot of something else actually."

"What do you mean a lot of something else?"

"Well, you know ostriches?"

"Yeah?"

"When you humans keep ostriches, sometimes you accidentally exhibit features and behaviors that... appeal to an ostrich more than a member of their own species."

"So you're saying varth find us-"

"Incconsivably sexy, desirable to the point they abandon their own home planet and species with some regularity. It's actually quite fascinating, humans are to varth as cats are to catnip."

"Wow that's a lot to take in... you sure know a lot of animal metaphors. You could be a zoologist."

"I am a zoologist"

"Oh?"

"That's why I'm here, talking to you."

"Ah."

Shinjuku Boys (1995). Tatsu, a transgender man, jokes with his barber about his changing appearance, and his newly masculine features.

trans_irl

The DREAM

I distinctly remember the first time my dad called me my right name. I was sixteen, I’d gotten my driver’s license not too long ago, and now that I was driving, my dad gave me a credit card so I could get gas, or food if I was staying late at school due to marching band. He was very clear, this card was for food and gas only. Only gas and food. Just those two categories of product. He would be checking the bill. I had no desire to buy anything else with this card.

However. Often when getting food after marching practice, or on our scant breaks, I’d drive my friends to burger king or little ceasers or starbucks or whatever, and sometimes not all of my friends could afford the food they wanted. And well…food is food. I have a big appetite, and as long as I didn’t go crazy overboard and order catering for the whole band, a few extra burgers and shakes wouldn’t stand out on a monthly bill. So I bought my friends food. 

I did this for several months, and sometime during that came out to my parents. They both thought it was a phase, and that I would grow out of it. Since they’re not terrible people their approach to me having ‘a boy phase’ was to let me do my thing and wait for me to change my mind. I didn’t change my mind, and eventually they understood that, but that’s a whole other post. The point is my dad didn’t discourage me from transitioning, but avoided talking about it with me. He stopped calling me his daughter, but replaced it with child rather than son, that kind of thing.  

But back to the credit card. Eventually I started feeling guilty. TECHNICALLY I was obeying the rule ‘food and gas only’, but I knew I was bending it. I nervously admitted to him one day that sometimes…on occasion…once in a while… I’d buy a friend food. I waited solemnly for his judgement. He walked over to me, put his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes sternly and said,

“Zackary, we are Italian. If you let your friends go hungry….” (and here he decided to shake me just for a little emphasis) “I will disown you.” 

And that’s when I knew he’d come around. Trans? Fine okay sure, give it a shot. Stingy? Get the fuck out. 

body paintings by Karen Turner

Anybody want to play hangman with me? Here's the word: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

e!

You actually fell into my trap.

_ e _ e_ _ e _ _ e _ _ e _ _

No k!

H

_ e _ e _ h e _ _ e _ _ e _ _

Levelheadedness.

How the fuck

So basically, Dolly the sheep was an accident. They were trying to clone sheep cells, and they ended up unintentally generating an embryo, which turned out to be viable, hence we got Dolly.

The method they used proved unsuccessful in primates, and the risk of cloning primates (and thus humans) outweighs the benefits (because there really aren't any real benefits, scientifically speaking), so they don't do it.

Where it's most likely to be used is in agriculture, cloning livestock embryos.

What they use cloning for is stem cells. Cloning adult cells to create stem cells means they don't need embryonic stem cells, which is probably the most important thing that came from cloning research in the past 25 years.

The reason it was so important was that it proved that you didn't need an embryonic cell to clone live animals. The nucleus of an adult cell contains all the DNA you need to clone, because Dolly was cloned from an adult cell, which was previously unheard of. Now they know that adults cells can be reprogrammed back to an embryonic stage, and was a major breakthrough for stem cell research.

So basically, we don't hear about cloning anymore because they aren't doing anything that is so exciting it will capture the world's interest, like Dolly did. But it was a major scientific breakthrough that is still very important.

One of my favourite cloned animals is Kurt, a Przewalski's Horse who was cloned from the preserved samples from a horse that died in the 90's so that he can hopefully introduce some additional genetic diversity into the Przewalski's Horse population. Oh hey there's actually two clones of this one horse now, the second one is Ollie who was born last year. Kurt is now about four years old. Last I checked he was at the San Diego Zoo.

We don't tend to clone animals that are more common because we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it's called sheep.

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times