triops are one of my all-time fave little guys

promise me you'll stay on this site for 10 more years okay?

happy birthday

today i rescued a bee with 1 antenna

the bottle cap of water was too tall so the meal was served on a flower petal

(look closely and the tiny tongue can be seen !)

The EU is doing a big survey for LGBTQ people who live in the EU about how it is for them right now. That's the kind of survey that's used for official reports and for laws so it's super important that it has as many people taking it as possible. You can take it in every EU language. (You can change the language in the top right corner) Share it with your friends!

https://www.lgbtiqsurvey.eu/lgbtiq

for the record I think wind turbines are beautiful and are not a stain on any landscape and the sounds they make are beautiful and whenever I see one I am filled with love for human innovation and hope for the future of clean energy and if they needed to be built close to my house I would go YAYY ^_^ WAHOO ^_^ WIND TURBINE!!

they are like angels to me

with twitter’s situation being what it is I’m a bit uncertain about what the future holds for my account there (which had about 28k followers that I painstakingly gathered over the course of many many years. that’s a lot of audience to potentially lose for someone who relies entirely on their socials for their job).

so here’s a bit of self promo 😭 I’m Marty, an italian lesbian living in the UK. You might’ve seen some of my stuff around. I make gay comics, TTRPG illos, and more often than not I’m available for commissions (not now but soon enough I’ll have to reopen again 💝)

I’ve been too busy with work but I want to go back to posting more when I can!! If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I make, it would mean the world to me if you could boost this.

Thank you so much for your support over the years and let’s keep going!! 💜

Random worldbuilding:

You're walking through an otherwise completely ordinary modern city, but there are countless varying flags hung on the walls of the buildings - on peoples' balconies, windows, rows of little tilted flagpoles on the walls of apartment buildings, one per apartment apparently - each one having a flag. No two flags appear to be the same. You hear yelling from the window of one apartment somewhere above, and turn around just in time to see a couple unfurl yet another flag, hanging it from their own respective pole.

Your local guide remarks that they must have just moved in. Most people lay claim to the apartment as soon as they get the keys and the contract has been signed, and only throw a housewarming party and celebrate moving in a month later, once the apartment has been successfully "claimed". By the look on your face, your host concludes that you have no idea what they're talking about, or what it has to do with the flags.

Your host begins explaining: several centuries ago the land was devastated by a deadly plague - many houses, homesteads, even whole villages were wiped out, the buildings left standing empty. And survivors with nothing to stay for in the places where they were born were roaming about, trying to find a new place to live. To solve both problems, a decree was made: If a wandering party finds an abandoned homestead and raises their own flag on top of the building and manages to stay there for a whole month without the house's original owner showing up to protest, the one who hoisted the flag is now the lawful resident.

So historically this decree made countless of people who were formerly serfs into not only free citizens but landowners with family names and their own flags. Many had a wry sense of humour about theirs, and some of the now oldest and proudest family flags depict things like a broken plough or a pig in a crown - one of them is abstract and seemingly modern, famously born as the ancestors of that particular family had nothing else to use for a flag than one foremother's patterned scarf.

And while these days there's far more laws and regulations on the old traditions of claiming a house, the tradition of flag-raising and keeping an official housewarming party only a month after the move have remained. Many young couples moving in together don't just choose which one's family flag to use, but getting your own, unique mutual flag commissioned for you is a fairly common wedding gift. Immigrants coming from somewhere else who have adopted the house flag traditions have made their own designs, using elements of their own old homeland like historical symbols, colours, and birds that are not native here.

You pass by a flag with a figure that looks conspicuously like Garfield, and your host confirms that yeah, while there is a registry of flags and you can't make a flag that's exactly the same as that of someone else, the flags are explicitly excempt of regular copyright law. This decree was set after someone jokingly included a Mickey on theirs, the government sided with them, and Disney came to the conclusion that going into actual, literal war with a small nation with a trained army would be bad for PR.

South African Giant Ground Gecko (Chondrodactylus angulifer), family Gekkonidae, from South Africa

photograph by Reptiles4all

My first large ink work form earlier this year, its Dolores Dei from Disco Elysium.

Since you all apparently liked my slogan for Pride in Revachol

Wait, Hexapoda is part of Crustacea?

... I don't think I ever knew that?

They're not, though? Both are part Pancrustacea, but neither is a part of the other.

Below the poll is a series of animal images labeled A through J. A is the least close to the birds we have today; J is the closest. If you encountered these animals in the wild, which would you call birds? If you pick a higher up option, then that means you consider all the below ones birds as well - so if you pick A, then BCDEFGHIJ are all birds. If you pick J, only J is a bird.

A:

B:

C:

D:

E:

F:

G:

H:

I:

J:

PLEASE REBLOG THIS SO IT CAN LEAVE PALAEOBLR. I NEED PEOPLE WHO DON'T RECOGNIZE THESE ANIMALS ON SIGHT TO VOTE.

I apologize to all of y'all with vision impairments for whom this poll is inaccessible. Alas, this is an experiment, and I cannot name the taxa. Thank you.

All alt text includes artist attribution; I did not make these pictures myself.

aroace gecko

you know what? I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but I am actually still very upset that we never got to see John Boyega give an impassioned speech to an army of hostile stormtroopers, and partway through the speech just one trooper lays her blaster down and takes her helmet off, and by the end Finn has won them over and they all take their helmets off as the music swells, which signifies their change of allegiance and also reminds us the audience that underneath all those indistinguishable white helmets are people with faces and personalities and hopes and dreams and connections to the Force, people who will be led by one of their own as they rise up in rebellion against the fascist empire that treated them like interchangeable cannon fodder.

we should have had that in a movie! and we didn’t! and I’m still mad about it!

started thinking about the john williams musical crescendo that would play over a long pan across ranks of troopers as they throw their helmets down and turn their bare faces up towards the light, full of joy and determination, and now I’m mad AGAIN

Have Finn’s speech be broadcast across the galaxy, and we see stormtroopers everywhere throwing down their arms and armor, abandoning their officers in a reversal of the Order 66 montage from RotS.

!!! YES !!!

Monk and Robot

A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

please read these books. like right now, request them from your library, order them from your local indie, borrow them from a friend. they're swift and bright and breathtaking. they brought me, for a little while, to a world so quiet and gentle it's almost impossible to imagine--and even in this softest future, being human still comes with pains and sorrows, existential and mundane. these books comforted me the way Dex the tea monk comforts everyone who comes to them for a tailored brew and a cathartic conversation; these books comforted me the way the robot Mosscap comforts Dex in a moment of crisis. these books comforted me the way Dex and Mosscap comfort each other, because even when we think we need for nothing, we're still struggling with the need to understand ourselves, and to be understood.

as you might imagine, i cried a lot. i want to mail a copy of these to every person with the political or financial or positional power to make significant change in the ways we treat our environment. i want to become a disciple of Allalae, the god of small comforts. i want to tuck these books into bed with me and rest.

the deets

how i read it: i read both of these from the library via Libby, but i'm adding them to my definitely-buying list. i regret not buying both the last time i was in a bookstore, i want them in my hands more fiercely than most other books right now.

try this if you: want to imagine a better post-apocalypse, long for beautiful books where not a lot happens (this is what i said to my best friend, right before she told me to read these), enjoy thinking about the human condition, or are tired.

a line i really liked: read: a line that made me weep lavishly

And in these next 50 years you will eat so many delicious meals, laugh so many times with so many people you love, shout and scream and sing and cry and smile so hard your face hurts. And you will see such beautiful sunsets and feel fresh cold air on your face and feel warm and safe wrapped up in your favourite winter coat.

I wrap this blessing around you like a shroud, so that no ill can find you, and every warmth is held close