just realized that there were definitely celebrities who got infected in the last of us which is hilarious to think about. imagine getting attacked by a zombie and your last thought before you die is "is that fucking justin timberlake?"
Love me a fic that starts with the unresolved sexual tension already thicker than a bowl of oatmeal. I want my ship pining, yearning, and most definitely fantasizing.
I want their minds to wander to how hot the other person is, mid-sentence. I want them barely functioning because of all the hormones swimming through their brains. I want normally smart people who are downright dumb when faced with the smallest bit of barely revealed skin on the other person's body.
By the time they actually realize they're both in this state of tortured sexual desire, I want them to be at their wit's end and ready to flee the country in order to find the slightest scrap of control because there is absolutely zero control left when theyre in the same room together. They need to be scratching at the walls of their souls, they're so desperate for each other.
And when they do finally realize the fact that they're in this on-fire boat together? I want them to have incredibly hot, wildly cathartic (and not necessarily at-all realistic) sex that leaves them both exhausted, happy, and fully satisfied.
Unresolved sexual tension that gets completely fucking resolved, my beloved.
Monday Morning
Today's Seal Is: A Little Shy...Will You Hear It Out?...
let’s hear it for the world’s smallest whale (the vaquita) you guys!!
Italian Villa in Moonlight (Georg Emil Libert, 1868)
Brünnhilde. Library of Congress, 1936.
Today's Seals Are: Atmospheric
The fact that Microsoft Word has to be a subscription is upsetting. I already paid for it why do I have to pay again
Yes please be mad about it, genuinely- You used to be able to purchase a single disk to install it and use it forever after that initial purchase of one key. It sickens me to see all this stuff which used to be a one time purchase be shunted under a subscription now.
"Why is pirating going back up?!"
This. This is why. People don't mind paying a high price for software if it's only the once, or every 4-5 years.
But having to pay a high price regularly? Especially in the cases where you lose access to your own work if you don't?
That's why people are pirating software.
It’s possible to buy a non-subscription version of Word; Microsoft just intentionally makes it very difficult to find (and also expensive).
However, I know a guy who knows a guy website: MS Office Pro for $50. If the link starts going to a Page Not Found, just search the site; they usually have some form of this sale available.
Worth noting: while $50 is still more money than $yo-ho-ho, that money is a great way to make VERY clear to Microsoft that we DO want one-time-purchase products, not subscriptions.
My laptop just died. If it can't be fixed and I need to replace it, this post is gonna be a real life saver, because my family has been sharing an old version of Word that came with a limited number of lifetime licenses, and we're fresh out.
Get LibreOffice. It's fully compatible with MS Office, but it's free and open source. You're welcome. :-)
local woman who claimed she will "cross that bridge when she comes to it" arrives at said bridge
Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.
The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.
Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks. Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that? In the computer core, or the communications hub? You just lose power. And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.
If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.
It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost. Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.
Most fleets give you something, of course. For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass. I looked at the vial.
“It’s too soon,” Traav said.
Kvala gestured negation, shakily. She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now. Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive. “You know we’re losing the war.”
They couldn’t deny that. “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”
“Doesn’t it? The Chreee have better technology. Better resources. And they have their warrior code. They don’t care if they die.”
“We can’t give up!” Traav protested. They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told. “Any heartbeat now—”
There was a clunk. Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.
“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.
Kvala exchanged glances with me. The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors. What was the point, after all?
The Aushkune did.
There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here. They were supposed to hide in nebulas.
But if there were—
If there were, we were too late. The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—
Footsteps.
Bipedal. The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.
And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it. My first thought was, robot? That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . . But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.
Who wore suits?
“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala. “Urgent treatment. Evacuation.”
“Who are you?” Kvala struggled upright.
Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners. “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain. Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.
“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?” Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.
“Not Chreee,” the sound system said. “You Man. Soil Starship Nichols.” The being hesitated. “Rescue Chreee as well. On ship. Will separate.”
“You what?” I said faintly. Who would do that?
“Oath,” the being explained.
“What kind of oath? To what deity?”
The shoulders of the being moved up and down. “Several different. Also none. For me, none. Just—oath.”
I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was. I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.
The being scanned me. “Have water,” it said. “Recommend.”
Raithari have fast metabolisms. I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.
“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”
“Raithari to Raithar. Chreee to Chreeeholm.”
“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.
The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad. Sometimes lie.”
We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?
“And you—what?” I asked. “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”
The being seemed to consider this. “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.
Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense. Did it worship soil? But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .
Madness.
On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it. So why not embrace madness and see what happened?
“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.
“Yes. Soil Starship Nichols.”
I followed the being in the suit.
Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.
I love how this shows the weirdness both of language and of culture. Excellent writing!
"Soil Starship Nichols"
This is what took me a moment.
Earth Starship [Nichelle] Nichols
genuinely evil that we didn’t get to see this play out onscreen
@cassierobinsons important part of the post that should not be lost
necklace carpet sharks are SO silly and beautiful and it is of upmost importance that you all look at them
Today's Seal Is: Caterpillar
Attacks u attacks u
Me in the, the uhhhh, if im being honest
Let! That! Baby! Eat!!!!!!
Perfect tags
This is one of my favorite videos of all time and I will always reblog it when I see it
Every accusation is a confession.
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.
There are limitations to the benefits of being a marine biologist
Did you guys know that the most recent version of sharks have fins that are kinda leg like and they like to walk up onto land?
no way i must have missed an update!
The Epaulette shark is only about 9 million years old as a species, making it the most recent branch in the shark family. And it is slowly but surely evolving into a land animal
You know what to do boys
“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
— Donna Tartt
