i love living in western washington. i can literally just get on the ferry

post canceled i missed the fucking boat. it left without me

no it’s true. washington just has a blue filter over it irl

To be fair, sometimes it's a blueish grey.

Big Red. Northern Cardinal. 6:20 pm. 55° F. April 27, 2024. Darien, CT. (@dkct25)

thinking about aus for ocs is so funny. like i already put this guy in a situation but what if i put them in another totally different one

The Swamp.

The Trump Republican Party is not trying to win an election. They are spending all their money and putting all their energy into stealing it through violence and corruption. Watch what they do, not what they say.

in guarani there's a standard greeting that literally translates to "are you happy" (ndevy'apa) and the natural reply is "i'm happy" (avy'a) and as americans learning the language we were so distressed like "but what if we're not happy....." and our teachers were like "that's so not the fucking point"

we kept trying to think of any other way to reply but our teachers kept trying to get it into our brains that it's an idiomatic greeting, it literally is not the time or place to traumadump, and as usamerican english speakers we are not some special exception for saying "what's up" with the reply being "not much" instead of "the ceiling"

but anyway while i was working in paraguay -- the country with the largest population of guarani speakers -- i got sent an article by some friends back home like "look! they're saying that paraguay is the happiest country in the world!"

and the methodology was "we went around and asked paraguayans if they're happy and recorded their responses" and i was like. oh. of course you did. and of course you got a 100% positive response rate.

@official-linguistics-post

official linguistics post

Standard greeting bias

Star Trek: The Next Generation // S03E17: Sins of the Father

I hate Memory Alpha being on Fandom now but here's the joke for those of you who aren't total Trek nerds.

ah.

Keep in mind these things were advertised heavily as being able to drive through reasonably deep water as a standard feature.

It does this even in the wading mode if you attempt to do so.

So much water gets pooled into the frame you can hear it sloshing around.

Tesla “vehicles” are about as reliable as the machinations of a cartoon coyote.

I genuinely don't understand how you fuck up the automobile so fucking bad. We've had close to a century of knowing that all of this "innovation" is stuff that doesn't work.

Because they deliberately and specifically avoided all that stuff we learned the hard way because it was "old fashioned thinking." Like steering wheel design. There were a lot of steering wheel designs before we settled on the ubiquitous one we all use, and quite a few of the designers of those earlier ones have biographies that end with "died during field testing."

Musk ignored ALL of that accumulated knowledge, thinking he was very clever, and built a car-shaped object.

I started reading this post feeling like "do not wash in direct sunlight" sounds like it should get filed alongside "do not feed after midnight" and other warnings about the husbandry of mythological monsters, and then it turns out that putting water on it (in direct sunlight) will kill it, not precisely like but still having very much in common with the Wicked Witch of the West.

What a time to be alive.

Do we know yet if a few weeks of rain does the same thing?

“Unhinged” by garyhellerphotograph / Etsy

apparently one whale years ago was observed doing this for hours and now more and more whales in the area are seen copying it so we think it’s a whole new behavior and it seems to be a response to shrinking food sources.

Instead of expending any energy actively hunting, the whale just holds its mouth open wherever fish are being hunted by birds. To escape the birds, the fish try to hide in the whale’s mouth because it’s a darker area that looks like shelter. …They’re turning into giant, sea-mammal pitcher plants.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mms.12557?referrer_access_token=bXLTS5BeSw_vlIKHkM0bYIta6bR2k8jH0KrdpFOxC654HjreJ8D19K86UreR5JPsSRb0CuGhiJSV1L1ht-N1Gf_K_1a9MREFzQGU9oJDNctsKDin_HXcYEdsLg3EbcTl

Yeah little creatures love to hide so a number of predators have taken advantage of that and what’s EXTRA fucked up is that another example includes a starfish:

the Ambush Star, pretending to be a shrimp gazebo

THE GAZEBO HUNGERS…

[ID: 1: a gif that shows a whale in the sea swiming in a vertical position, turning around with its mouth open and birds flying above it. 2:an orange starfish standing on the tips of its arms, creating a small dark space below itself. \end ID]

The fastest way to shut down my "freelance life means I have to constantly be working" thoughts is to remind myself that if I was a boss holding a worker to the standards I hold myself to, their union would hunt me for sport and nobody would blame them.

Not me immediately screenshotting this and posting it to the OPP freelance writers chat I'm in

So Fox News ran a story about how they think libraries are turning into drug-infested sex dens and I am shocked, shocked that I was never offered any drugs during my 15+ years working in libraries.

Where do they think the sex is happening?? Every single aisle is lit in that horrible LED lighting. The teens don't even make out here anymore.

As a state certified librarian I can assure you that you just have to go into your local library and ask if they're participating in the new Fox News Hysteria program smh. If they're not, you'll just have to renew your library card and use the fun and valuable resources they're offering right now, such as wifi hotspots, museum passes, dvd lending, mid level adult erotica, ebook lending, and printing! 😔

Speaking as someone who did catch several people having sex in the library during my tenure as a circulation assistant, I'd recommend university libraries.

The odds of sex and drugs in the library are not high, but they are never zero.

Speaking as someone who works in a university library, if I catch people in my library having sex because "Copperbadge said it was ok," you and I are going to be having a talk.

You know what, that's fair. Don't get caught, guys!

I was so trying not to add that my first year in my high school library job, the first behavior issue I ever addressed was...a regrettably intimate incident happening in full view of an entire special ed class at the computers. I walked over to check out why there was giggling, went full on NOPE NOT MY CIRCUS NOR MONKEYS and speedwalked to get an admin.

But i assure you, that's not why the pearl-clutchers want to tag ME a groomer. Two straight kids in a corner, no worries. Two copies of Heartstopper? School board meetings and one ultrareligious lady in tears over the Children.

IM ACTUALLY LAUGHNG SO HARD

[Image description: A photo titled “60-Year-Old Girl” and captioned “My wife looked like a 60-year-old woman as a child”. The girl in the photo has short, curly hair, small earrings, large glasses, and does look like an old woman. The same photo is posted several times, with the following captions:

Gets allowance, and social security

Loses baby teeth, gets dentures

Graduates from elementary school, retires

B-i-n-g-o, b-i-n-g-o, b-i-n-g-o, and bingo night is Thursday

Orders from the kids menu, gets senior discout

Gets a dollhouse for her birthday, covers all the furniture in plastic

Falls off the swing, breaks hip

Sent to principal’s office, fired

Keeps her Halloween candy in a glass dish on the table

My E-Z bake oven is giving me hot flashes

/End ID]

Tell me about a turn of phrase that introduced you to the power of language, especially if it comes from a source that most people disregard.

I'll start: one of the first times I really fell in love with a line from a song was when I heard "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight" on the radio.

The chorus goes:

I have been obsessed with the line "there's a warm wind blowing the stars around" since I was something like 6 years old. It's so beautifully economic in its word use, isn't it? You know that the night is clear and beautiful, it's windy but warm, it's a perfect night for being outside and looking at the sky. In eight words, even as a small child, I had a perfect mental image of what that night looks like.

The other one that always comes to mind is the Muppet Christmas Carol song "It Feels Like Christmas," for one line only:

The "s" sound in summer, soul, and December all fall on the beat. It is a perfect example of using consonance (as opposed to alliteration, which would require those sounds to all be at the start of the word) in lyrics or poetry, and is one of the first times I really remember that concept sticking in my mind. (I use consonance very heavily in my poetry, so that's, like, formative.)

Tell me about the language that showed you what language can do - and for my sanity, please make it cool stuff and not like "and that's how I learned how shitty propaganda works," bc while that is in fact part of how language works, this is Tunglr dot com and I'd prefer to have a nice time today. Thanks.

My edition of 'language that showed me what language can do' was 'I Am The Horrible Goose That Lives In The Town' by Daniel Lavery, the written piece about Untitled Goose Game.

It's such a glorious piece.

Look at that. That is someone having infinite fun with words, and creating something incredibly evocative.

I could talk about all the books and poems that built glorious palaces out of words, the ones I've read and explored since I was small, but there are so many, and I'd rather be showing you this fairground house of mirrors to get lost in and giggle at the way everything reflects back and forth.

I say "I invented my body and it was the best idea" all the time. So good.

"If you stacked a David Bowie on top of another David Bowie and added four more for arms and legs, you wouldn't get something that looked exactly like John Watson, but people who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. He was tall and he gangled."

I was twelve. I didn't know who David Bowie was. I Did know my uncle was six three and built like a brick house, but I Knew this guy was even taller and somehow the size of a rake. The sheer Awkwardness of this man's build conveyed in possibly the silliest way. Sure, he looks like some kind of human stick bug, but he's awkward and probably perfectly nice.

Do you mean like me, or like that people in general should do that?

There should definitely be more kinky romance in the world.

I'M WORKING ON IT GEEZ

:D

Also, theres not a clean line between the reasons people do kink and the reasons people do things that are not normally considered kink. Going on roller coasters isn't considered kinky, but the "it's scary but in a fun/exciting" way is a common motivation for kink stuff. Getting a massage isn't considered kinky, but "it hurts and then I feel better and also more in my body after" is a common motivation for kink stuff. People dress up at Halloween or to put on a play for self expression reasons and to experiment with pretending to be someone else, just like kink.

I have no idea why some people like spicy food or horror movies, but I've also heard those used as comparisons for "why would you like something that is normally considered unpleasant?"

And getting someone to degrade you because you asked them to or top you while you act like a brat, is a hell of a lot more ethical than being an online troll. Sometimes people like "negative" attention.

This is a great addition.