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Minutes from the Glorious Revolution

@pineapplesquid / pineapplesquid.tumblr.com

I'm a biology professor who likes science, sewing, music, feminism, and fandoms.

one of my favorite stupid things to do in fanfic is to throw two characters together who literally never interact. and then give them an entire, fleshed-out relationship dynamic that exists nowhere but my own head. yes they’ve literally never spoken. yes their relationship is important to me. hope this helps.

so this one has breached containment a bit but like, in a fun way. i love reading the tags and having no idea who you’re talking about but reveling in our shared experience of silly fanfics. or, sometimes, KNOWING who you’re talking about and going “dang that is niche love that”. please continue to tag this with every fictional character dynamic that never happened that you’ve gotten invested in I love them. also please continue calling out your friends I love that too

“You know what day it is, Ping?” said Colon.
“Er…25th of May, Sarge.”
“And you know what that means, Ping?”
“Er…”
“It means,” said Nobby, “that anyone important enough to ask where we’re going—”
“—knows where we’ve gone,” said Fred Colon.
The door slammed behind them.

— Sir Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

thinkin about a baby of my acquaintance & how when her parents are hanging out & chatting, she'll almost fully participate in the conversation--politely watching who's talking, saying something approx the same length & tone of what her parents are saying, occasionally using a questioning cadence & looking at someone specific for an answer, laughing when they laugh--doing everything except actually using any recognizable language

this baby also once tipped me a granola bar at work. she'd been watching everyone in line very closely & when it was her parent's turn, at exactly the right point in the transaction for a tip, she pickpocketed her mom's granola bar & shoved it in the tip har

As someone who’s living with a middle school social studies teacher, all the posts along the lines of “why did we never learn about this historical event in school” just make me go “because your teacher was supposed to cover all of US history in one year, and they didn’t get to the Revolutionary War until Halloween because they were urged to slow down the progression of the lessons because a more senior teacher was running behind, and they didn’t get to the Civil War until Valentine’s Day because the school kept scheduling every special event during social studies because there’s no end-of-grade testing for that subject, and they didn’t get to WWI until May because they were sick for a few days and the substitute couldn’t do much more than babysit, and now they’re having to do the entire Cold War in two days, so that’s why you didn’t hear about the lesbian inventor of the circus peanut. They would have loved to tell you about the lesbian inventor of the circus peanut!”

thinking about how peoples blorbos tend to be men on here (makes sense with the trends in fandom of men being prioritised etc etc) SO please reblog and tag your female blorbo(s). this is NOT the post to be like “[male character] becuz he’s a woman to me” i Will come to your house and bite you. anyway i’ll go first mine are susie and julie from dbd and carly jones from house of wax 🖤

Reblog if you answer! I must know 👀

hot with tea in it

or plain out of the tap because Boston tap water is Best Water Ever

When tap water was new, just before the First Gilded Age, there was a HUUUUUGE political fight between the rich people, who wanted to treat it like cable, and the poor people, who wanted to treat it like air.

Fortunately for all of us, the poor people won.

finals

im actually speechless

I actually did this for math finals

For my English essay we were allowed a sheet of notes so I literally spent a week developing THE perfect essay and then summarising each paragraph into one line of shorthand in tiny writing 100%, A*

in US Government last year our teacher said we could have one notecard to use as a cheat sheet and gave us a whole packet (meaning like 10 pages) of things that would be on our test. he said, and i quote, “there is no way to fit everything youre going to need on there so you better study”  i fit every last piece of info on that card and didnt study at all i got an a

moral of the story: dont tell me what i can and cannot do

before my midterm in Modern Physics, my teacher told us a story about how one kid kept switching glasses during an exam. he walked over and the kid had red glasses and blue glasses and kept switching between them because he wrote his notecard in red and blue ink. he made a 3d note card.

y’all do realize, that with the intense effort it takes to plan and create these sheets, that you’re studying, right? you’re totally studying. love, a TA.

The best way to study even if you can’t bring a cheat sheet is to make a cheat sheet and write everything you would write on one if you could have one. It’s an awesome method!

‘but what you’re doing here is studying. its still studying, that exact thing you didnt want to do before…?’

‘yeah but see this is powered by hubris and spite, so like… it’s better’

‘yeah but see this is

powered by hubris and spite,

so like… it’s better’

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

pelcan Mouth perfec t size for put baby in to n\ap! inside very Soft and Comfort baby sleep soundly put baby in Pelican Mouth. Put Baby In Pelican Mouth. no problems ever in peliccan mouth because good Shape and Support for baby neck weak of big baby head. Apelican Mouth yes a place for a baby put baby in pelican mouth can trust pelican for giveing good love to baby. friend pelican

Some good news for this blog’s namesake!

In summary:

  • Snail Kites have had a dramatic population crash since 2000
  • A large invasive snail was introduced in 2004 and quickly outcompeted the Snail Kite’s primary food source, the apple snail
  • You can imagine what conservation biologists predicted… Bad news for the Snail Kite, right?
  • But since 2007, populations are on the rise!
  • The population underwent rapid directional selection (in just a few generations) for larger beaks and are happily eating the invasive snail.
  • An interesting case of an invasive species benefiting an endangered one.
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These guys were mentioned in a book I had on endangered animals as a kid, so this is really fucking cool to me!!! Way to go snail kites! 💙