Someone holds me safe and warm, horses prance through a silver storm Figures dancing gracefully across my memory ANASTASIA (1997)

[Tweet by @ kate_mckean:

When I sign an email "Yours" it's not a term of endearment--it means this email is now yours I'm done with it get it away from me.]

Also! I recently asked heir #2 what he wanted for his birthday. And he proceeded to describe a toy that I'm 99% sure he just made up on the spot. But he remembers what he requested, and even though I did not promise I would get it, he still might be expecting me to bring him a toy that might not exist.

So uh. Does anyone know of any cheetah toys that have moving legs and can also roar?

Oh my god it didn't even occur to me that cheetahs don't roar. Goddammit.

I wish I knew which part of the whole thing is most important to him. Is it more important to have a cheetah toy, a toy whose "legs move like this [demonstrates] and goes so fast", or a toy that roars?

We're going to have to just wing it.

i keep thinking about the number of parrots and mimicking birds that say love you! as part of their vocabulary. how often they must hear that in order to learn it as a song.

when i was a child and learning how to train dogs, we were warned against using puppy too much around the dog - it might get confused and think the word puppy was a name. we were supposed to use mostly command words - keep it simple and clear.

but when my dog is in the middle of a nightmare, i say i love you to him, and he calms down. i say i love you! and he starts wiggling, delighted. when i first rescued him, i love you got no reaction. he understood i love you! before he understood what stairs are. the first thing i ever trained him to understand, maybe, before even his name: i love you.

my sister used to say i love you! and her cat would come running. he knew his name, too, but her voice saying i love you was enough.

there's some debate about how many words our pets understand. maybe they understand the tone more than the actual word. science almost always seems to be coming out with new exciting information about just how much animals can learn and understand language. it often more seems that the only true barrier is that we don't understand them when they answer back.

goblin doesn't know it yet, but for the last 3 days, i've been telling him about the new bed i bought him. i had to save for a while in order to afford it - but it's specifically for big dogs like him, and (supposedly) won't flatten out after 6 months. it was twice as expensive as my own mattress, and i'm way-too-excited to give it to him. i keep reading him the stats - it says it'll help any joint pain! and one more sleep until it comes! he wiggles in joy at the tone in my voice, this thing i know i'm not really communicating, but something he seems to understand-anyway.

as of 7:30 AM today, the new bed is on the way. goblin is asleep on my couch, happily snoring. the truck is two towns over. i keep refreshing the delivery updates.

something about telling these creatures in our lives i love you, even knowing they can't understand exactly. even knowing each word in that phrase holds a concept maybe-outside of real communication's possibilities - to understand "i/you", to understand love, to understand holding love and passing it through you into something else. knowing, really, we've probably trained them with this phrase comes petting. and then saying it, over and over and over through the little lonely hours of our day.

hoping, with repetition and action and practice: we'll find a way to tell them anyway.

[ID: Dr. Frizzle (@Swilua) on Twitter, posting on June 14, 2022, across multiple tweets.

I want to tell a story about pride flags.

A couple years ago, I was presenting at a conference in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. My wife and I drove south from Maryland to get there. When we crossed the border from Maryland into Virginia, we started to notice people were staring at us.

We started to get our gas really quickly. We got in and out of the car as fast as we could. I tweeted about it at the time. “I guess Virginia isn’t for gay lovers,” I said. But it got a lot worse.

It was dark when we got into North Carolina. We had to stop at a Target to grab something before we got to our hotel. In the parking lot, a group of men approached us.

There was something scary about them. One of them said something about dykes. They started to follow us. “You shouldn’t touch me,” my wife said. “Stay three feet away.” I moved away from her.

They got closer and we walked faster. I looked behind me once, and then kept my eyes on the ground. I had never been in fear for my physical safety as a queer person before, but I was afraid that night.

We got into the store and immediately went to the most populated section we could. The men gave us an angry look as they walked by, but the walked on. I was shaking.

When we got to our hotel room and shut the door, I started to cry. And then we fell asleep. The next, we had to eat dinner. It was dark. We had to walk somewhere to find a restaurant. The streets were crowded. No one was happy to see visibly queer people.

And then we found a place with a giant pride flag draped in the doorway. We went inside, immediately felt safe enough to order food. To hold hands as we ate.

People say things about straight pride. They ask why we need a trans flag when the rainbow flag is supposed to be all-includive. They frame it as a question of identity. “Why shouldn’t we celebrate straight people too?” they ask. But #Pride isn’t a simple question of identity.

To us, on that dark night in rural North Carolina, the pride flag was a sign of safety: we would not be in (literal) physical danger in a space. And we knew it because they hung a sign that said that to us.

Being queer is wonderful. But it’s not always safe to be queer. Explicit symbols of safety mean a lot more to us than simple questions of identity. They mean we have the right to be alive. The right to love. The right to exist.

We need the trans flags. We need the rainbow flags. We need them all. We are proud of who we are. But more importantly, we just want to be able to live and not be afraid. That’s not something you can understand if you’ve never been afraid to just exist.

queer people experience the highest levels of violence of any demographic of people. trans women of color are the most likely of any group to be murdered. when this isn’t true anymore, we can talk about straight pride. but for now, it is the reality we live in.

Happy Flag Day everyone.

The last image is a GIF of a waving blue-pink-white-pink-blue trans flag.]

thinking about the scene where merry pledges his service to theoden and then immediately says “youre my father figure now. btw.” and theoden is like “☝🏻temporarily”

theoden watching this plucky young guy say theodens his new dad and then proceed to demonstrate a complete disregard for theoden’s opinion that he should not go to war: hey i know who you would get along with

theoden lying underneath his dead horse watching the witch king of angmar get fucking obliterated: ok yes perhaps i should have foreseen this when i introduced them. thats on me.

butch teddy bear... if you even care...

alex newell and j. harrison ghee make history as first nonbinary acting winners at the tony awards

I realize it’s just because they’re trying to introduce the audience to the concept of Pokemon and everything but nothing will ever be funnier to me than prof oak being like “these are creatures called Pokemon, they live in all sorts of environments!” like imagine if you met a biology professor and they were like ‘I’ve been studying these intriguing creatures called “animals’

I maintain that Pokemon starts to make a lot more sense when you stop thinking of the Professors as biologists and start thinking of them as children’s science communicators, which, in a world where children as young as 10 are expected to make their way in a world populated by superpowered fauna almost entirely alone, stands as an important and laudable career. “There are 150 animals” becomes the in-universe equivalent of “There are three states of matter.” There’s too much information in this field to dump on a grade-schooler all at once, so Professor Oak is here to mete out animal facts as they become relevant in an easy-to-understand way.

That being said, I would love to see what kind of shit the real Pokemon biologists are on. I’m just imagining some disheveled, overcaffienated researcher writing a grant proposal for their study on why certain wingull seem to evolve into pelipper faster when they hatched in the winter or something. There’s bird shit on their glasses. They haven’t left the lighthouse in months. This is their life’s work. Ash Ketchum doesn’t need to know about real Pokémon biology.

It's a CHANDELIER with fuckin' BIRDHOUSES

i think it's fine to put moby dick in the scifi section. fantasy as well. and horror. nonfiction. what other sections are there. put it there too

HALLE BAILEY — performs “Part of Your World” at Disneyland