Cold southern gales blasting across Slope Point - located on the southernmost tip of New Zealand’s South Island - has given rise to this unique natural phenomenon: the trees here, being persistently battered by powerful winds coming in from the open ocean, have a permanently wind-swept appearance to them.

(Artist | Source)

(via @chrisoels )

The Very Hungry Rust Monster is a mini-comic I made a few years back. I’ve seen it floating around Tumblr without attribution recently, so I’ve uploaded a higher-resolution version, properly credited.

can you infodump to me? (i love you) is this overwhelming? (i love you) is this the right texture? (i love you) is it ok to touch you? (i love you) do you want the subtitles on? (i love you) do you want to go somewhere less noisy? (i love you)

reblog this to place a small, rotund ceramic animal in the palm of the person you reblogged it from

i’m enjoying the tags

This is relevant once again. I apologize if you are a real human getting blocked/reported.

Toad Words

            Frogs fall out of my mouth when I talk. Toads, too.

            It used to be a problem.

            There was an incident when I was young and cross and fed up with parental expectations. My sister, who is the Good One, has gold fall from her lips, and since I could not be her, I had to go a different way.

            So I got frogs. It happens.

            “You’ll grow into it,” the fairy godmother said. “Some curses have cloth-of-gold linings.” She considered this, and her finger drifted to her lower lip, the way it did when she was forgetting things. “Mind you, some curses just grind you down and leave you broken. Some blessings do that too, though. Hmm. What was I saying?”

            I spent a lot of time not talking. I got a slate and wrote things down. It was hard at first, but I hated to drop the frogs in the middle of the road. They got hit by cars, or dried out, miles away from their damp little homes.

            Toads were easier. Toads are tough. After awhile, I learned to feel when a word was a toad and not a frog. I could roll the word around on my tongue and get the flavor before I spoke it. Toad words were drier. Desiccated is a toad word. So is crisp and crisis and obligation. So are elegant and matchstick.

            Frog words were a bit more varied. Murky. Purple. Swinging. Jazz.

I practiced in the field behind the house, speaking words over and over, sending small creatures hopping into the evening.  I learned to speak some words as either toads or frogs. It’s all in the delivery.

            Love is a frog word, if spoken earnestly, and a toad word if spoken sarcastically. Frogs are not good at sarcasm.

            Toads are masters of it.

            I learned one day that the amphibians are going extinct all over the world, that some of them are vanishing. You go to ponds that should be full of frogs and find them silent. There are a hundred things responsible—fungus and pesticides and acid rain.

            When I heard this, I cried “What!?” so loudly that an adult African bullfrog fell from my lips and I had to catch it. It weighed as much as a small cat. I took it to the pet store and spun them a lie in writing about my cousin going off to college and leaving the frog behind.

            I brooded about frogs for weeks after that, and then eventually, I decided to do something about it.

            I cannot fix the things that kill them. It would take an army of fairy godmothers, and mine retired long ago. Now she goes on long cruises and spreads her wings out across the deck chairs.

            But I can make more.

            I had to get a field guide at first. It was a long process. Say a word and catch it, check the field marks. Most words turn to bronze frogs if I am not paying attention.

            Poison arrow frogs make my lips go numb. I can only do a few of those a day. I go through a lot of chapstick.  

            It is a holding action I am fighting, nothing more. I go to vernal pools and whisper sonnets that turn into wood frogs. I say the words squeak and squill and spring peepers skitter away into the trees. They begin singing almost the moment they emerge.

            I read long legal documents to a growing audience of Fowler’s toads, who blink their goggling eyes up at me. (I wish I could do salamanders. I would read Clive Barker novels aloud and seed the streams with efts and hellbenders. I would fly to Mexico and read love poems in another language to restore the axolotl. Alas, it’s frogs and toads and nothing more. We make do.)

            The woods behind my house are full of singing. The neighbors either learn to love it or move away.

            My sister—the one who speaks gold and diamonds—funds my travels. She speaks less than I do, but for me and my amphibian friends, she will vomit rubies and sapphires. I am grateful.

            I am practicing reading modernist revolutionary poetry aloud. My accent is atrocious. Still, a day will come when the Panamanian golden frog will tumble from my lips, and I will catch it and hold it, and whatever word I spoke, I’ll say again and again, until I stand at the center of a sea of yellow skins, and make from my curse at last a cloth of gold.

Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…

pictured: nerd to nerd friendship

Plants what now

okay so apparently we just discovered that plants emit clicking sounds too high pitched for us to hear, and are noisy when they're stressed but quiet when content

There needs to be more research done into this, and as of now we can't say why the sounds happen but. WHAT.

I knew they could hear noises but apparently they MAKE noises too

Cats knocking over houseplants just got a lot more vindictive

SHUT UPPPP

I don't want a romantic partner I want friends who will go dumpster diving with me, I want neighbors who will knock on my door and ask for butter because they forgot to buy some and it's sunday. I want book shelves in public spaces, food banks and shared tool sheds and community gardens. I want to trade home grown tomatoes for a couple of eggs with my neighbor and I want to bring food over to my friends house when I've cooked too much. I want bicycle only streets and I want people to go on spontaneous walks with. I want people to ask me for help when they need it and I want to be able to ask for help in return. I want community as a safety net. I want people to stop focusing on the vague concept of the one, who will Cure All Isolation and Loneliness. I want every single person to be able to find support and comfort around them, regardless of their relationship status.

Whether or not you still want a romantic partner is besides the point by the way. Of course you can want both, I would even expect most people to want both. The point is that society sells us romance as a fix for the lack of community. The point is people saying "you'll find someone someday" instead of saying "let's make an effort now". I don't want a romantic partner to fix a problem that goes much deeper than what they could fix. Also I'm aromantic.

daniel radcliffe calling out j.k. rowling on her bullshit is big dick energy

One thing I have not seen mentioned in light of this statement, perhaps because it's just well known or perhaps because it's been forgotten, is that Radcliffe has dealt with this before. About 10 years ago his friendship with a trans musician named Our Lady J became known to the tabloids. They immediately published sensational articles calling her a transvestite and a drag queen (she was not), and speculating about the nature of their relationship. He responded to insinuating questions by simply being aggressively positive about what a great musician and good friend she was. They did at least one interview together for a queer magazine. This at a time when trans people were even more marginalized than now, and when he as an actor was finishing Harry Potter and under a lot of pressure to ~manage his image~ as he transitioned to an adult career.

TL;DR - Radcliffe has a record of not just saying nice things, but supporting trans people in his life.

i love you air dried hair i love you no makeup i love you comfortable clothes made out of soft fabrics i love you short nails

something i've noticed. people seem to think the most nature-y nature is forests. so forests are always prioritized for conservation, and planting trees is synonymous with ecological activism. my state was largely prairies and wetlands before colonization. those ecosystems are important too. trees aren't the end-all be-all of environmentalism. plant native grasses. protect your wetlands.

deserts also!!! it sucks so bad that people think of desert as 'wasteland' just because it's not suited for western european style ag development, they're beautiful and delicate and valuable ecosystems and, i think it's good to point out that humans have been living willingly in them for thousands of years

socks used to cheat on civil service exams, Qing Dynasty China

I feel like you should get an automatic pass if you've put this much effort into cheating

Tweet 1 source | Tweet 2 source

Our pride is #unbreakable. Happy Pride Month!

“We heard youse are behind on your payments to Fat Tony.”

I ALMOST SPIT MY ROOTBEER

“Think you’re all aesthetic, huh? A real instagram Wiseguy!  You want something to blog about? We’ll give ya something to blog about!”

the nature of tumblr is such that every few years it will independently invent goodfeathers

big egg

Weirdly anti-millennial articles have scraped the bottom of the barrel so hard that they are now two feet down into the topsoil

its so wild like “this generation with no fucking money is learning to prioritize essentials” and all these chucklefucks can write is advertisements for these companies

at least our jeans won’t tear at the seams after two washes

FUCK FABRIC SOFTENER IT’S UTTERLY POINTLESS

AND FUCK DRYER SHEETS LITERALLY NOBODY EVER HAS ENOUGH OF A PROBLEM WITH STATIC TO WARRANT PAYING OUT THE ASS FOR THAT SHIT

DO YOU WANT CLEAN CLOTHES? YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO BUY FUCKING DETERGENT JUST MAKE YOUR OWN* IT’S SO GODDAMN EASY AND 80X CHEAPER

FUCK THE ENTIRE LAUNDRY INDUSTRY *Fuck The Entire Laundry Industry Recipe

1 cup Washing Soda (not Baking Soda. Different things.)

1 cup Borax (not Boric Acid. Also a different thing.)

½ cup - 1 cup grated bar soap (you can use literally anything. I often use Ivory because it’s easy to get and I find it works well, a lot of people like Fels-Naptha, which is an actual laundry bar. Some people use Dr. Bronner’s. Really does not fucking matter.) After grating your soap, combine all ingredients. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Use maybe a ¼ cup per load.

^^^ I’ve done this for years now and it works as well as any store bought detergent

WHAT Thank you, tumblr user awfullydull! Your URL does no justice to the good advice you give!

Also you can MAKE your own washing soda very VERY cheaply.

Step one: acquire $5 bag of baking soda from Costco.

Step two: lay that motherfucking baking soda out on a baking tray.

Step three: bake the baking soda on a tray in an oven at 400° for 1 hour (to make the moisture evaporate, leaving washing soda)

Step four: revel in how easy and cheap it is to make your own washing soda, and maybe take a moment to be angry that the industry upcharges the fuck out of something that is so easy to make.

I see some of y'all complaining about static and/or wanting nice smelling laundry. Go to a craft store, find 100% wool yarn balls. If it doesn’t come in a ball, ask an employee to make it into a tight ball for you. Wash in the washing machine to make it felted. Remove from washer, add a few drops of essential oil to the ball, allow to seep in. Dry with clothing. Doesn’t need to be rewashed ever, and if it stops smelling, add few more drops of essential oil. Bam, reusable dryer sheets.

I love this post so much it’s filled with helpful advice, hatred, saving money, and fucking the system all in one

FUUUUUUUCK THE SY-YSTEM

this 50′s hungarian comic strip I’d never heard of until now is so damn cute for something that also gets so horny

It helps that the writer was trying to create something he hoped would appeal to women as much as men.

Yeah and I think where it really succeeds vs. modern anime wifey fantasy shit is that Jucika really is just a character super comfortable with being sexual, likes looking sexy and even has no shame in using it to get her way:

….But at the same time, she doesn’t tolerate being objectified against her wishes:

….And the comic takes her side in both cases, whereas I’ve seen countless modern narratives in which this same character would have only been framed as like a Slutty ™ Bitch ™ or full blown villain.

One of the things I also really like about this comic, besides what’s already been stated, is that the humor isn’t always about her being sexy. Sometimes it’s just about other goofy things in her life!

oh yes many of them are experienes just anybody can relate to

but then there’s also the time she just….built a functional AI?

she just didn’t predict how the robot rebellion would really manifest

I love how there isn’t a single dialogue bubble, yet you can fully understand what’s happening.

Always reblog Jucika.

A reminder that sell-buy dates or best-used-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.

I love that a food bank is providing this info as they are experts in stretching food budgets and knowledgable in shelf-stable food items