I’ve had a tumblr for 4 years what the fuck am I doing with my life 

chuckles darkly

Andor Appreciation Day 2 - Everyone Has Their Own Rebellion

@andorappreciation

happy earth day. don’t forget that someone else’s outdoor cat is your indoor cat

A few years ago I picked up a cat at an apartment across town because tenants said the owner had threatened to shoot her. They’d been feeding this cat for five or six months. She’d just shown up one day, friendly as can be, and never left. I asked if anybody had tried finding an owner - they said no, but that she did have a collar on when she first showed up. They just assumed she was some outdoor cat or abandoned. The first thing I did the next morning was take her to the shelter to scan for a microchip, which she had. Her owner was so happy when we contacted her. Her cat had escaped while moving and she’d looked for her for months before resigning herself to the reality that her cat was probably dead. If those tenants had seen a friendly cat show up and immediately taken her to the shelter, it would have saved this person months of heartache, and this poor cat months of fear, ear mites, ticks, and fleas.

This is why I hate outdoor cats. Yes, they cause environmental damage. Yes, they’re going to be killed by cars or coyotes or assholes. But on a completely selfish level, I know that because of people’s normalization of outdoor cats if my indoor, microchipped cats ever got out there’s a good chance I’d never see them again. People see a loose dog running around and they assume it’s lost. They try to catch it or call the dog warden. People see a cat running around and they ignore it. Maybe they feed it for months and never even think that that cat might have someone out there worried sick.

So yeah, if I see an outdoor cat I will catch it and make sure it’s not chipped, and, in accordance to my local laws (make sure you check yours), I will feed that cat for three days, making it my (soon to be indoor) cat.

It does! You should check for a chip and/or collar (most vets will screen a cat for a microchip without any fee) to be sure they aren’t a missing cat, but other than that…If your cat never goes in your house, wears no identification, and isn’t cared for, it isn’t your cat.

the humble worm

little german boy revisits the cave of blüntsmoken! Happy 4/20 ;)

Trans Rights petitions in the UK

Following the ridiculous and inhumane news out of the UK yesterday, two out of the top 3 petitions on the UK parliament petition site relate to trans rights:

Let me point you in the right direction!

1. Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services

2. Allow transgender people to self-identify their legal gender

Who can sign?

1. Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services

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2. Allow transgender people to self-identify their legal gender

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Who can sign?

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And these two petitions are dominating the competition, this is from the front page of the petitions site showing the most popular petitions right now:

The self-definition one is getting a signature every 4 seconds.

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It is worth bearing in mind that over 6 million people signed the UK parliament petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU (about 9% of the UK population), and we still left the EU. 100,000 signatures gets you a debate in parliament, but it's not the kind where anyone can make a law, it just raises the profile of the issue in parliament itself.

Having said that, the EU petition was a very, very big issue and they might have listened if it approached half the population. The bar is probably lower with trans rights petitions for taking-it-seriously. If these petitions could get a few million signatures it would probably prompt a significant change in law.

If anyone can do this it's Tumblr, we all know it. Get on it, lovely queers. <3 If you're in the UK, sign and share. If you have followers who are in the UK, boost the signal and reblog. And it makes a huge difference if you share the links on other platforms too.

We've reached 65k on petition #1 here, and 90k on petition #2!

100k is the number that matters tho, to get it debated in parliament, so keep sharing!

66k and 93k respectively!

Both of these petitions are so important, UK people please sign and everybody share them both!

Yelling

⊹˙⋆ Little menace on a wheel ⋆˙⊹

some papal facts:

the papal conclusion:

the next conclave is going to be called 2 con 2 clave and they have to elect 2 popes

well yeah. someone has to pilot this thing

100 year old Galapagos tortoise with a few weeks old Galapagos baby posing for a new family photo, and its own baby photo from 100 years ago.

love that for 100 years people have looked at these beasts and thought “heehee what if the big one wore the little one like a hat”

1-hour drawing vs. 5-hour drawing

(Aka a lesson in not getting bogged down on details)

Uhhhhhhhh that seems bad

HELLO

There shouldn’t have been doubts before. Now there’s absolutely no excuse.

does this on your dash

Crag eat goat meat tonight

PSA

WHAT IS HAPPENING: Ice War WHERE IS IT HAPPENING: On Europa, a Gallilean moon of Jupiter WHO ARE THE COMBATANTS: Unclear WHY ARE THE FIGHTING: Also unclear

I feel like "trump wants to throw away literal dinosaur fossils" would really turn heads if we actually had a functional opposition party in this country to get messages out, but I guess I'll just have to get a paint pen and write it on my car. fine, I'll do it.

Trump and friends are trying to get rid of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Science, USA Federal agency). Everyone is on leave/in admin limbo while the DOGE kids do whatever and lock people out of their emails. Already-awarded federal grants (that's how I get paid) for museums and libraries are now being terminated early via executive order. Museums are already closing (to be fair it has been bad for decades) and a lot of large and delicate fossil material will need new homes with space and funding, which almost no one has. It's bad. I don't know what to do except to keep working and occasionally scream into the internet.

Not trying to be a bummer, but this is pretty much the only thing anyone at my job can think about right now. I can only speak for museums, but specimens need periodical tending or they will decay or get lost. Grant funding is how we do everything: it's how temporary workers get paid, how we get access to subscription-based software, and it's how we buy new label paper for cripes' sake. We are still fighting, but everyone is honestly loopy with stress all the time now. People should know what they are destroying.

Genuinely hope "JD Vance killed the pope" becomes a legit, widespread rumor. I hope the whitehouse has to make a statement, thus only adding fuel to the fire about it.

100% of popes that JD Vance has met with died hours later. Its just numbers and statistics

why was this so sweet, what did he expect people to say, "no mr. brian may from the band queen, you do NOT have permission to play the sea shanty, put down the guitar and go back to the astrophysics" like,,,, what a silly goose

Just. He’s got his glasses hanging on a cord, his soft blanket, crazy grandpa hair, polite grandpa voice, and then he just fucking shreds, sitting on the sofa. Legend.

god I could be so wealthy if I had no ethics. that's so fucking frustrating. I'm living paycheck to paycheck because I'm not grifting vulnerable idiots on TikTok. I feel like I have the ability to very easily scam people. I could make a killing with AI. but god. I have morals and ethics and so I get to be poor as shit. I hate this fucking world

I could have made a killing as a psychic, but noooo I have to feel bad about lying to people ugh

I think abt this all the time because the thing is, evil rich people truly believe that they’re geniuses who have discovered a way to make money that the rest of us dummies haven’t…but the truth is that they are just willing to do evil shit that everyone else would prefer to not to because we have standards

When I attended my graduate school job fair, Raytheon (unprompted, hearing me say my degree at the next table) offered me $230,000/yr to come work for them. That was their opening offer after hearing nothing more than my degree, in a city with a very low cost of living. The only catch was that the job was working on vision systems for missiles. (i.e. those 'targeted' missiles which kill a ton of civilians as collateral or intentional damage)

I ended up taking an $85,000/yr job as an optical research scientist at Corning instead.

It is an odd feeling, having a price put on your soul. I'd be a millionaire with a house by my mid-30s if I'd accepted that. And the offer is still open, in fact I'd have an even more generous one waiting for me with the skills I have now.

In all seriousness, if you have the right skillset, you can actually sell your soul. This very week. You will live in comfort and moderate luxury for all your days. Two of my family members did that work decades ago, until they couldn't stomach it any longer, and it set up the rest of their lives.

But I promise you, it's not worth it. It's been almost 50 years for one of them and it still haunts him. He says the worst part was the way they (him included) talked about human lives as things. Numbers on a spreadsheet, sterile corporate jargon in meetings. A lifetime later and you can still see it in his eyes when he talks about it.

You can't take it back, treating humans like things.