face your mortality, choose your requiem

what we really need to drill down on here is whether or not an octopus is intelligent enough to consent to a sexual encounter

and if not how can we change that

With other octopi, definitely. We already have evidence of that.

With humans? Uh … I'm not touching that question.

then science doesn't need you, coward

I believe octopi are already intelligent enough. The problem is how to communicate desire or lack thereof.

I also don't believe it would be ethical to engage in any kind of sexual activity with an octopus in captivity. In the wild, they can leave if they get uncomfortable. In an enclosed space of our creation, they may believe that going along with a human's advances is necessary for their survival, which completely kills any possibility of consent.

Thank you, God, this is the kind of conversation we need. Yes. Exactly. How do we communicate that, as a species, we are down, in a way that ensures they are capable of understanding what is being offered on an intellectual level and not purely as a matter of rote animal instinct, and the offer is made in a way that respects the octopus's autonomy and consent?

I don't even want to fuck an octopus I just look at all the art and literature our species has produced that involves octopi in intimate scenarios and think, you know, this is one species that might actually be smart enough for this to cross the line from bestiality (not great) to xenophilia (cool and understandable). How can we make this happen for the freaks

I think one of the biggest hurdles would be that our minds work in different ways. From what I know, octopi are not a communal species, so they may not have evolved to process language. They're obviously smart enough to understand concepts, but how do they structure their thoughts?

If there isn't an octopus language, or even really a culture for that matter, every human/octopus relationship would be basically starting from square one. There may be some species wide commonalities to start with, but every octopus would have its own "culture" of expectations and preferences we'd need to learn.

This is such a cool fucking point. I knew the Tumblr braintrust was the right place for this question

Maybe redraw later but for now....

Tristamp Vashwood

And also smol nico breakdancing

half the men yall call daddy can't even put air in a tire. yeah he can pull your hair but can he chop an onion? no he cannot.

I taught my friend how to chop an onion bc no one taught him how to cook (guy in a conservative Christian family). He was so excited to be cooking for the first time so I made him chop the onion bc I hate doing it. And suddenly he starts yelling “MY EYES ARE WATERING!!!! ITS ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!”. He was so fucking excited but I had to stop him bc he couldn’t see but was still chopping.

vampire who’s married to an archaeologist voice: my love, stop trying to carbon date me

*at the museum* my love, why is my cursed amulet in this display case

Ok, my archaeometrist ass has something to say!

First, an archaeologist wouldn’t carbon date something. It’s not his job. This kind of analysis belongs to the archaeometrist, thank you very much!

Next, using carbon dating on a vampire raise really interesting questions. Because, you see, you can only carbon date completely dead things. Basically, the body absorb Carbon 14 while it’s alive, and after death, this radioactive element slowly decompose (half of it every 5730 years). When you measure how much is left, you can know how long ago the person/plant/whatever died. Going back to the vampire. Officially, vampires are dead. But they feed on human blood, living humans. I’m not sure of the logistic of carbon 14 linking itself to a body, but I think it would false the result. The good news is, as vampire can talk, they would be able to confirm or not. Meaning that we would be able to create a template and see if drinking blood reset your quantity of carbon 14, or if you can still get the age of death of the vampire by removing whatever carbon 14 they ingest through blood. But I think it would depend of how much blood they had ingested since their passing, and a lot of other variables.

The other question is: how dead is a vampire? Do they still breathe? How do they interact with their environment? Would that be enough to keep their carbon 14 at “normal” level? If so, they would be considered alive by this dating technique. Wouldn’t that be an emotional journey for our poor vampire?

I’m actually really invested in this.

*dropping a garlic-free lasagne on the counter top* my love, we’ve talked about inviting archaeometrists to our dinner parties

Your mom finding her friend at a store is like unskippable cutscenes

The fucking worst is that as I get older i completly understand the interest to catch up an unreasonable long time because turns out adults just dont get enough time to hang with friends, so catch up next to the Aldi cheese aisle it is

you can see the increasing age of tumblr users, these posts are like tree rings.

i want 60 thousand votes by next thursday

almaost twre…

Good poll for the fanfic website. Cant wait to see the result

A lot of times, when people talk about mad scientists, they mean medical or biology or chemistry, sometimes you'll have a physicist or mathematician or even an engineer... But let's not forget about the hard working mad science geologists who help people scout out and build their "evil lair in a volcano" while furthering their own plot to rid the world of their competition by using their own egos against them. Meanwhile they're bending the secrets of the earth to their will, making new and strange crystalline mineral structures, and dialing in the frequency of their earthquake generators to only destroy what they're aiming at. They deserve attention too!

shoutout to the mad physicists

to the mad data scientists and the mad statisticians

the mad computer scientists and mathematicians

and the mad meteorologists

to the mad economists and the mad anthropologists

as well as the mad astronomers

There was once a linguist (his name escapes me) who, before she was even born, planned to experiment on his daughter by making sure no one ever told her what color the sky was.

Once she was old enough to hold a conversation with him, he asked her what color the sky was

She said it was white

I was part of a linguistics grad-student organization a few years back, and at one point one of the members had a baby. It seems that multiple other members, independently, sent congratulatory messages that also included stuff along the lines of “if you want to do any language experiments on your child, i’m happy to help / i have Ideas”. (They were probably joking.)

But yeah, i think a lot of linguists have a definite mad-scientist streak that’s only restrained by the fact that the field holds itself to really strict ethical guidelines. Which means if you actually did any mad linguistics you wouldn’t be able to publish it. And few academics are willing to risk their career just to satisfy personal curiosity.

you don’t get this shit from chemists

Thanks for the book rec!

My husband saw the Tumblr app icon on my phone and came at me all sad and confused about why I had Tinder on my phone.

At first I was offended because, I was like “What’s wrong with you! You don’t recognize the Tumblr logo?!” But then I realized that in the real world it is more likely for a person to be trying to cheat on their husband than spend their days on a weirdass website from the original days of the internet to read sci-fi fanfic, swoon over Garashir fanart, learn about obscure historical events, and make sure Neil Gaiman is still alive.

Lex. Superman did not break her heart. You did. And the fact you won't accept that means you are bound to do it again. Action Comics 333

And yet Lex does seem to genuinely love her. As much as he’s capable of the emotion.

anonymous reviewer: i don’t like the way you’ve written this character in this fic

me:

Sharing this for everyone who stumbles on this post!! Please be safe y'all, def use gloves, mask, and make sure to have good ventilation! Always check the ingredients of your cleaning products before using them together! Please share this so more folks are aware, they literally don't be teaching us important stuff like this to prepare for the Adult World™

I don't know why, but I like the idea of humans being to aliens, what cats are to humans...

Alien1: hey, when did you hire a human?

Alien 2: we didn't. They just wandered aboard one day, saying they wanted to "hitch a ride." Then they never left. I think they like it here.

Alien 1: the human distribution system has chosen.

Alien stares at the human, who has climbed up a very high shelving unit.

Alien: Human, get down before you hurt yourself.

The humans response is to climb higher.

Alien is secretly filming their human, who is spaced out and just staring at nothing.

Alien (whispering): I think the human is about to intercept the brain cell. (Laughter) don't worry human, if it tingles that means it's working.

i still can't stop thinking about this

Tam sketch🐺🏳️‍⚧️🐾

(she/her)

kinda thinking about how losers on a certain website years ago clutched pearls over this character because I made her open about her sexuality and attraction towards her wife and visibly transgender. I was young but very intimidated and scared so I tried to sanitize her for those people but in the end I worked around making her even more hornier and gayer and transgender because it's soooo important.

trans horny furry rep is important too and I'm not going to let losers take that away from me and others. Tam is forever.

Imagine the following show, if you will so humor me.

A group of criminals, coming together to do a job but them ending up as their own awkward little found family. Each one of them has their own unique background and skill set, drastically different from any of the others. They joined this venture for different reasons but the more time they spend around each other, the closer they get.

They're led by a man with a stick up his ass, plenty of sarcasm, and a tragic past. He plays the tough guy but he loves each of his felons dearly, although good luck getting him to admit it.

This odd group goes around doing jobs that basically give the middle finger to the elite and in charge. And what they do is very, very illegal.

They occasionally interact with a sort of villain played by Mark Shepherd and even meet up with the leaders (ex)wife multiple times. The two youngest members of the group are a slow burn couple and absolutely adorable, and the leader guy has this sexual tension going on with the brunette of the group that is just a constant will-they-won't-they subplot.

The show is serious and dramatic, but also has some good humor and witty one liners thrown in with some action. Definitely and explosion or two. The writing is superb and everything is well executed with great character development.

Oh, and there's an episode called The Train Job.

Now, if you've read this far, good luck trying to guess which of these two masterpiece shows I'm talking about 🙃

I know Penny is Italian, but have you considered she looks adorable in lederhosen/dirndl