every moment of every day i am thinking about this tiktok

Lumpfish come in a variety of shapes and colors.

[He scoops up the fish, it spits water and he turns it toward the camera]

This one is stumpy and green. Very beautiful, very powerful.

[He picks up another fish and turns it toward the camera]

This is what a normal lumpfish looks like. It is more elongated, but still a vibrant blue color. Very beautiful, very powerful.

[He picks up another fish and turns it toward the camera]

This is one of the stumpiest ones we have. Its hump is very high. It is very stumpy, but yet very beautiful, and very powerful.

[He pans over a lot of fish, all looking up at the camera]

My fish army is ever growing, and soon I will over throw the world. Very beautiful, very powerful.

because of this tiktok, i frequently murmur "very beautiful, very powerful" at myself, and i cannot recommend it enough.

PSA: *Beware* AI-generated fungi guudebooks!!

…Not a phrase I imagined myself typing today. But, via @heyMAKWA on Twitter:

“i'm not going to link any of them here, for a variety of reasons, but please be aware of what is probably the deadliest AI scam i've ever heard of:

“plant and fungi foraging guide books. the authors are invented, their credentials are invented, and their species IDs will kill you”

…So please be careful if you run across anything of this kind.

NOOOOO

Why would you hide that in the notes

I want an ice maker and enough room in the freezer for a pizza and that is IT.

I want the dumbest fridge you got. Gimme the orange tabby of refrigeration. I want my fridge to pull the wrong lever and turn my enemies into llamas instead of killing them. I want the following features: keeps things cold, has compartment that keeps things colder, a door that opens and shuts.

"Here at Stupid Jeff's Dumb Appliance Warehouse we sell the dumbest fucking appliances. Check out this fridge. This fridge won't ask you about your day, this dumb fucking fridge doesn't know what an Elon Musk is and won't fucking tell you what bullshit that dumb monkey is slapping into his phone today when you try to get some fucking milk. We took out all those "smart" electronics and in their place we put a loaded Glock 9mm that is put right up to that light that turns on when you open the door, which is the smartest thing in this fucking stupid fridge and let me tell you that fucker is on thin goddamn ice, if it gets too smart and tries to turn on before you open that door, the Glock will blow it to hell. Speaking of ice, this stupid fridge makes it. It makes ice, it keeps things cold, it comes with shelves. It's sturdy enough that when your ex comes back to your place looking for their stuff that they think they left behind like nine months ago and they know that you don't have it, but they wanted an excuse to come start a fight with you and throw a chair at your head but miss you and hit your fridge MICHAEL, this fridge will keep trucking because it gives zero shits and it only lives to keep things cold. Come to Stupid Jeff's Dumb Appliance Warehouse, if you ask us if we have an app, we break your kneecaps."

I hate those posts that are like "crab bucket mentality ignores that crabs don't Choose to be in buckets, they're put there, and it's stupid to blame the crabs when it's the system that trapped them in there that's the problem"

because yeah, there Are systems beyond our control and sometimes understanding that put us in awful situations that we can't always escape. we get hurt because we don't have the power to undo those systems by ourselves.

but the whole point is that people who are put in situations that they can't control often lash out at people who aren't responsible for their pain to Get that sense of control. you can't undo capitalism, you can't stop nazism, you can't dismantle the government. but you Can start harassment campaigns online. you Can bully and ostracize and demonize other people who are hurt by the systems you're punishing them for.

this happens Constantly, people hating other minority groups and justifying it by painting them as the cause of their problems or as being leeches that are drawing power away from the people who Actually deserve help from this awful system.

so people put others down in an attempt to raise themselves up not realizing that we're all in the same bucket. it doesn't do anything but hurt people, and inevitably yourself too.

and the very important thing to understand about this, is that it's ultimately a choice. you can't always control the impulse to feel this way, but you can choose to be Aware of it, you can choose not to act on it.

you can't change the systems by yourself, but you can make Choices that will prevent people from getting hurt. being trapped in an awful system doesn't change that it's your choice to be kind or not.

"Machine, turn back now. The layers of this palace are not for your kind."

Gabriel The Judge Of Hell & Insignificant Fuck V1

“Machine, turn back now.

The layers of this palace

are not for your kind.”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

You should be allowed to buy a hot, rotisserie chicken from the grocery store with EBT. You should be allowed to buy toothpaste and toilet paper. You should be allowed to buy otc medications. EBT should be expanded to include all basic necessities and be increased to match.

Here's the fact check!

News18 saw this very tweet and found the sources.

So basically, a guy actually did taste plutonium! It was a chemist named Donald Mastick in 1944. The vial exploded and he got some in his mouth. He got his stomach pumped and survived!

His breath tested as radioactive for the rest of his life, which incidentally was until age 87. He wasn't allowed to work in a lab ever again, so he got a PhD in Physics.

Now here's the kicker. Guy said plutonium tasted metallic. Of course, it seems to have been dissolved in acid at the time, so I guess we might not know what it tastes like on its own. That's just my speculation, though.

So where did the "tastes like candy" bit come from?

Look closely at the vial in the picture. That's not actual plutonium. It's Nuclear Energy Powder, Plutonium flavor--a product intended for human consumption.

I once had a vicious argument with another disabled blogger about whether elderly people whose disabilities were caused by natural aging should be considered "truly" disabled and included in disability spaces. Their argument was that, as people who became disabled later in life, elderly disabled people spent a lifetime benefiting from and contributing to ableism and therefore their experiences weren't comparable to those of people who were born disabled or became disabled earlier.

I'm talking about this not just because the argument itself is absolutely absurd, but also because it's cruel, to suggest that benefiting from privilege at some point and then losing it later means that you don't deserve any kind of support or community. You've got young people so disconnected from the elderly and the realities of aging that the idea of sharing experiences with elderly people is offensive to them, where they can argue that certain groups of people should be completely abandoned and essentially left to die and not see a problem in that attitude at all.

So I got called into jury duty…

And I was put in the seat instantly, of course. I said, “your honor, I can’t be a juror on a two week trial, I have opera rehearsal.” And she said, “opera huh, well, sing something for us.”

And I did. In a federal court of law, in front of the judge, 75 jurors, the lawyers and the fucking DEFENDANT, I sang o mio babbino caro.

And the judge excused me.

@districtswiftie13

YO I DIDNT EMBARRASS MYSELF IN FEDERAL COURT SO YALL CAN DOUBT ME.

I know a lot of opera singers, and singing a full-on aria in a court room with only a hint of provocation is EXACTLY what they would do.

I know a lot of judges, and demanding an impromptu opera solo on a whim is also something they would do.

(And also one of the main reasons you can be excused from jury duty is economic hardship–basically, it would cause you unreasonable financial damage. If you’re a professional singer, a two week gap in your rehearsal schedule could do that for sure.)

As a muso, I absolutely believe this. I’ve got my accordion out of my carry-on and played a tune when airport security couldn’t recognise its weird mass of levers. Singers and musicians are just Like That.

Accurate.

My friend got stopped at the Canadian border coming back into the US. Border patrol took one look at his tattoed, ear-gagued, mutton chop wearing, hipster self, and said “I don’t believe you’re an opera singer. Sing something for me.” His wife immediately put down her knitting and plugged her ears, because Matt’s a contrabasso, and he does NOT sing quietly. Every other booth along the border stop had a head poking out of it within twenty seconds. And they let them pass without further contest.

The unwillingness of some people to believe that literally anything remotely interesting happens in other people’s lives is truly astounding.

Can we all please just take a moment to appreciate that OP’s url is literally @melodramaticsoprano and yet she still was doubted?  

The trick isn’t getting musicians to start, it’s getting them to stop.

I just saw someone say the words "jokingly gaslight" this might be a good time to reintroduce the internet to the terms "lying" or perhaps "pranking" or even just "joking" on it's own

Okay, say it with me guys…

If you are giving someone wrong information in the hopes that they'll believe that it's true, then that's lying.

If you are giving someone wrong information under the assumption that they'll ultimately realise that it's false, and that they will find this funny, then that's joking.

If you are giving someone wrong information in the hopes that they'll believe that it's true and that their response will be funny, then that's a prank.

If you are giving someone wrong information in the hopes that they will notice the differences between your presentation of reality and their perception of it, and come to doubt their ability to judge what is and is not real, then that's gaslighting.

now dont leave this in the tags

If you are giving someone wrong information and you assume they will know it is wrong, in hopes that they will play along, then that’s a bit.

It's Tuesday!! Y'all know what that means!

Random Animal!

You get: Moon Crab

the Lesbian and Asexual pride flags colour picked from the top image of a moon crab! :)

moon crab? more like enby crab (also colorpicked from the top image

the moon crab is a nonbinary asexual lesbian

“Abolish Golf”

Sticker spotted in Chicago, Illinois.

A typical golf course uses 200 million gallons of water a year. There are over 16,300 golf courses in the United States.

That's nuts.

Ngl I hate golf and I'm all for this. They put a golf course in our public park at the expense of hundreds of centuries-old live oak trees. Half of the walk around the park you're just looking at an empty golf course. Like 2 people want to play golf. So annoying.

Golf was a game developed in Scotland, where it rains up to 250 days of the year, and where the courses use very hard-wearing grass. The sand in the bunkers is because it used to be played on the coast - these traditional courses are called "Links" courses. The top Links course in Scotland, Royal Dornoch, uses no mains water at all. They have their own rainwater collection system.

It wasn't originally intended to be played in the middle of a desert on lush green turf that takes thousands of gallons of water a day to maintain. Unless you can keep the course alive using only rainwater collection, it shouldn't exist.

Im earnestly anti-golf. this isn’t even a bit. I’m 100% serious about this I think golf is wasteful and tbh I’m anti-lawn too. Fuck lawns. Bees could have been living there.

I love the x-men so much because that's just what leftist infighting is like! that's literally all it is! xavier is a sellout and they all hate him but he's the only one with any money. everyone complains about "they keep switching sides and dating each other it's so fucking confusing" like my dudes have you never been a part of any socialist organisation, ever. then people will go "magneto is so strong how has he not killed a bunch of teenagers" HE DOESN'T WANT TO KILL THEM! this started in a goddam basement over coffee he does not want to hurt them he just wants them to shut up and listen and will fling cars to do so

Magneto one drink in: I love Charles but hes such a kiss ass we don’t need to be FRIENDS we just need mutual aid communities and to be left alone

Professor X one drink in: what the fuck is his self sustaining mutant community going to do for all the mutants born to human parents, which is MOST OF THEM, he’s so gay he’s forgotten how babies are made and I want to kiss his stupid face

A big thing to remember is that reproductive rights aren't just about fertility and getting pregnant and giving birth, they also apply after birth! Having a safe clean planet to raise your kids is a reproductive right, for example.

I think courts (and spouses) viciously stealing away trans people's children when they come out is pretty high on the list of worries for all trans people. There's also adoption issues involving trans people that affects all trans people and therefore affect trans women.

Another one I think that is relevant is a trans person's right to breastfeed their child!!! People get super fucking weird about trans women doing induced lactation, and they get super weird about trans men breastfeeding and being pregnant in general.

Cis people can't handle trans people reproducing I hate them for it!

"no children are being forced to take hrt or have surgeries that change the appearance of their genitals" intersex children are, actually

"everyone was assigned a gender at birth" there are intersex people who were not assigned a gender at birth

"trans women are amab trans people and trans men are afab trans people" there are intersex people who were assigned male at birth and later transitioned medically and socially to male, and intersex people who were assigned female at birth and later transitioned medically and socially to female

"assigned gender at birth is a 1:1 predictor of tma vs tme experience" there are intersex people who were assigned female at birth and experienced violence for being a woman with a penis + testes + secondary sex characteristics like facial hair + having a testosterone-dominant hormone profile, and had to transition medically and socially to be socially and medically recognized as women as adults

"bodies born with sex variations are medically nonbinary" no, they are intersex, and intersex people can be a binary gender if they want to be

"nonbinary people who want non-cisnormative sex variations are mentally ill/diseased for wanting a disordered body" no, bodies with sex variations are not disordered, and it harms intersex people for them to be seen as disordered regardless of if the body in question was born that way or created through surgery

"cis women don't experience transphobic body policing/will never understand how it feels to have your womanhood constantly in question and subject to violence over things you can't change" intersexism overlaps heavily with transphobia and an intersex woman can both identify as cis and have a penis, testes, be testosterone-dominant, etc, and have visible signs of those traits. an intersex woman can also have been amab or be currently legally designated as male by the government and still identify as cis.

stop saying intersexist shit in your trans discourse thanks

well see it can do the work of the colon, the semicolon, or the parenthesis with more speed and less formality than any of these, plus you can use it to capture the stream-of-consciousness effect of a comma splice with much less loss of clarity. sort of an all-purpose punctuation for the casual yet elaborate written construct.

I believe in the em-dash because the em-dash believes in me

Shout out to people with breathing related disabilities because this shit sucks

People who need inhalers and nebulizers. People who use ox tanks. People who can’t stand or walk too much because it makes breathing harder. People who have given up important parts of their life because of their breathing issues. People who need assistance and caregivers. Especially huge shoutout to people whose breathing problems don’t have any treatments and/or are getting worse with time

In my experience, we are often left out of the disabled community, either implicitly or explicitly. Needing assistance with chores and errands is so common for disabled people yet when it’s a lung or airway issue that causes us to need that assistance, we’re left out of the convo. Conditions like cystic fibrosis, COPD, lung cancer, VCD, asthma, anaphylaxis, and more can all be seriously disabling. We deserve a voice

Anyways, big hugs for people with breathing issues that want one. We deserve more love <3