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You know, the thing! The thingy thing!!!

@thethingything / thethingything.tumblr.com

Hi, we're the Ant System! We post about a variety of stuff, including chronic illness, LGBTQIA+ stuff, science, memes, and fandom stuff.
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Intro Post

(we accidentally deleted the old intro post so here's a new one)

hi, we're the Ant System/Ant Colony. we're a polyfragmented system with a relatively high alter count. we generally tag our posts with whoever posted them, but for the most part the blog is run by our hosts (🍬 & 🦋) and a few frequent fronters.

we also have a bunch of sideblogs (a lot of these are run by the system as a whole or by specific groups of alters):

some of us also have individual sideblogs:

  • @melliferous-coffins - 🍬's sideblog. it's mostly recipes, candy, slime gifs, and honey. be warned that there's a lot of honeycomb on there so it might not be great if you have trypophobia
  • @ranunculusandsunbeams - Sylvain's sideblog. mostly self care reminders, wholesome positivity stuff, and photos of flowers and fruit
  • @inthesupersargassosea - 🦋's sideblog. mostly stuff to do with space, aliens, UFOs, cryptids, etc.

and here are our Pronouns Pages:

and some other social media sites in case you want to find us elsewhere:

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reblogged
feral-bookwoom
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chronically-ill-and-feral

this is the picture I show any doctor when I have to go.

Anymore, when I get asked about my pain, I just hand the doctor my phone. I've been at a constant 8 on the chronic illness side of the picture for a year and a half now. I hate it but I thought this could be useful. I straight up got the off of Google so I am unsure who to credit for the original but I have been a great help to me so I wanted to share.

#chronic illness#disability#chronic pain#useful stuff#god we never get below a 3 on the normal scale and a 6 is in fact where we start to consider taking meds#during that migraine we had last month we hit something that was probably somewhere around a 13#except there was no way on earth we were going to A&E because literally any light or sound whatsoever was too much#and we could barely move or think and knew that spending any amount of time in an A&E waiting room would be unbearable#I genuinely can't convey how painful it was#but also we've been rating our pain using the descriptions on the normal scale which is handy#except it's like ''activities are limited by the pain'' and it's a pain level where we know most people's activities would be limited#but we're just used to pushing through so we end up rating it lower but we're also bad at judging what counts as ''limited activities''#because like I'm sure most people would consider their activities to be limited if they couldn't go outside but that's our norm#I've been rating dislocated ribs as a 4 because ''well I'm aware of it but I can do most of my daily activities''#but my daily activities are mostly things I do while sat down on my bed without going out anywhere or exerting too much#which would definitely be considered ''limited'' for most people#in hindsight it would make sense for it to actually be a 7 or 8 on the normal scale that I'm just rating way lower#because of what we're used to dealing with
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incognitopolls

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

#poll#food safety#it depends on a number of factors#what food is it? is it a ''use by'' or ''best before'' date? have I already opened the packaging? probably other factors I'm forgetting too#like I'll eat certain types of candy that have gone way past the expiration (usually ''best before'') date because I know it's safe#but there are other foods where I'll be a lot more wary about it#most foods are fine for some amount of time after the use by date but the amount of time varies#we're generally pretty cautious about it because we get ill easily#but we don't look that cautious from an outside perspective because a lot of foods are fine after they're ''expired''#meanwhile some stuff ends up going off way before the expiration date so it still being in date isn't a guarantee that it's safe to eat#and it's usually worth using other signs (like looking or smelling weird) to tell if it's gone bad regardless of the use by date on it
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reblogged
you-aremylittle-star
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erisolkat

the humble "like" is oft mocked despite what it does for us. "like, three people" is a vastly different statement from "three people". "and i was like 'what the fuck'" is vastly different from "and i said 'what the fuck'". i love you "like" and anyone who says you make people sound stupid will be killed on sight

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reblogged
a-bed-of-moss
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beyondthisdarkhouse

I love the subtle little local accents that aren't easy to pin down or explain to outsiders - like, do I have a distinctive accent? When I'm talking to people from a thousand kilometres away, I don't sound distinct to them. I've tried, but I can't switch from one accent or the other to demonstrate them.

And then one day my Youtube background noise played someone whose vowels itched in the back of my mind but didn't really ping me, until he had to recite the letters of a common acronym

at which point my head whipped around and I said, "That bastard's from [local AM radio station] broadcast range."

And he was! He's from my fucking city! I think my brother met him once!

Academics actually hotly (read: tepidly) debate whether my region has a distinct accent, which I understand, because like I said, it's incredibly subtle and it mostly comes out in informal settings or when falling into the singsong chant of reciting some memorized speech.

Our society delights in recording and analyzing and cataloguing knowledge, and that's actually a good thing on the whole. But every once in a while it's nice to know something Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary or Yelp doesn't.

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jackironsides

The Macquarie Dictionary, one of Australia's main dictionaries, said that there are roughly three Australian accents total. I'm not sure I agree with this, but it's true that there isn't a massive and clear difference in accents between towns or even states here in the way that, say, parts of Britain have.

That being said, I was about a year and a half into living in England when I overheard another Australian across the room, and IMMEDIATELY knew that the man came from money and went to a private or grammar school. I didn't even know that there was a grammar school accent, nor that I could recognise it, until I was in that party and it put my back up.

(I did wind up talking to him later and he was amiable enough, although he was studying economics, because of course he was.)

#linguistics#we found someone on youtube who makes ASMR videos where we kept being like ''something about this feels familiar...''#until we realised it was the guy's accent#he's definitely in the same county as us and could possibly be from the same town but we're not quite sure#but yeah that caught us off guard because it was like ''oh hey that guy's from here''
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we've got a cough and I swear to god if it turns out we've caught whatever our mum's got that she didn't go to the doctor's for until the other day despite thinking it was whooping cough I'm gonna lose my shit

#personal#thoughts#🍬 post#vent post#please I don't wanna get ill right before the City Nature Challenge#I'm hoping it's just because maybe I missed a dose of asthma meds because I'm pretty sure I did miss a dose#(I missed a couple of doses over the last few days and maybe also one earlier but I can't remember)#but once again I'm not naïve enough to go ''oh no I've not caught anything I just missed my meds and everything's fine''#I can't fucking deal with being ill again though. god I need a break from this shit#also we don't know if what our mum has is whooping cough because she's waiting for some test results to come back#but she left it 3 weeks before seeing a doctor for it
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feral-bookwoom
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miiilowo

tumblr is great because no matter how many followers i get it doesn't stop me from being really fucking annoying. other places i will perhaps think before i post. Not here. not here

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anomalocaris-here
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wizardarchetypes

marine biology is so scary because it’s such a small field. i was giving a talk on cetaceans and afterward a woman approached me with her husband and she said, “you did very well. [husband’s name] actually pioneered the research and published the first paper on that. We were very impressed by you.”

Which is such a scientific interpretation/public education win I will cherish forever but also for the rest of my life any time I give a talk I will be haunted by the knowledge that the world’s leading expert who literally discovered/invented the topic might be in the room,

which is like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do for stage fright. In fact I never used to experience stage fright but now I will.

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unashamedly-enthusiastic

There are limitations to the benefits of being a marine biologist

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reblogged
chronicillnessmemes
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mysidaesm

I'm so fucking productive. I got so much shit done today.

ⓘ Fact check: This user did the bare minimum for the first time in 3 months.

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lemmaeof

ⓘ Fact check: Be proud of yourself anyway bitch. Doing shit is hard.

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