The one line that kept running through my head during that scene.

Something so profoundly fucked up between the inverse ratio of shrinking middle class and ever increasing aggression of advertisement

In which we're all Truman

#this is how it feels to be on tiktok#every video is secretly an ad somehow and theyre so good at hiding it u don't find out until the wnd#end*

This post has way too many notes and they've been clogging up my notifs for a month, but these are the first ones I've seen that Get It. Thank you. This is exactly it.

I wasn't talking about the absurdity of companies trying to advertise cars or vacations that no one can afford, like everyone in the notes seems to think. There are plenty of people who can afford them. Fewer than there used to be, but corporations aren't starving.

I was talking about the invasive way advertisers have taken over every modicum of available space and how it's no longer possible to turn anywhere without advertising being pushed on you, despite the fact that most people don't have the kind of expendable income that these companies are trying to extract from them. The less money the average person has to throw around, the more aggressively they're hounded to hand it over. Where people used to be able to afford a new car and a vacation and still throw expendable income around, they now save up for one or another big purchase (those who can afford one, and that population has significantly dwindled). People limit their other spending, and in response companies descend on our consciousness, on every last bit of space they can squeeze their presence into, like pigeons onto a handful of seeds thrown on the ground.

You have to sit through advertisements to watch something on youtube only to realize the video is, itself, an ad in disguise. You can't pump gas without a little screen blaring at you wanting you to buy things. Billboards and bus benches weren't enough, they have to be energy gobbling screens now so five companies can sell you shit while you wait instead of just one. Every available surface is screaming at you to BUY THE THING. Where you used to be able to play a game on your phone, now you can't get through more than a round of any without having to sit through ads to keep playing. Ads that are pushing other games to you that have more ads. Games based on making working class jobs look fun. Be a barista and fulfill every order or the customers will be angry! Lolololol! Work at a hotel and don't fail, making the demanding customer angry is failing don't fail! Hahahahahahahaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaa it's fun! Run a farm and make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make more money to buy more things to grow and sell and and and! Even in your free time you should be thinking about your place in the market economy! Or worse, they're ads for predatory games, whether they're "play our game and win real money!" bullshit or "doctors want you to play this to avoid alzheimer's [if you're old play this game where we'll exploit your confusion about technology to sell you more things.]"

Every free moment you have, every free surface you come across is another opportunity to sell you something. We aren't able to get a break from it in our free time in our own home unless we constantly take steps and make effort to, like installing ad blockers - which youtube and other websites are constantly working against - but those don't even work on your phone or tablet. And the closer to home the advertisement, the more it targets you specifically, because your personal devices, that should be your personal, intimate, private property and space, are exploited to collect data on you to wrench every last cent from your wallet. They want to get to know you, not because they're curious about you, but because they want your money. They don't just see you as a wallet with thumbs, they do so unabashedly and brazenly and aggressively.

This post wasn't about the content of what's being advertised to us. It was about the relentless, instrusive aggression with which advertising invades our privacy and personal space and every inch of public space. We are exposed to hundreds of images daily, none of which are art or even remotely creative or inspiring, but instead demand our attention and our money while ignoring that both have been stripped bare by the mere need to exist from one day to the next.

This post was about the insidious way advertising has embedded itself into culture and consciousness, so much so that in a post trying to call this out, most people's immediate reaction is, "yes, the problem is that I can't afford the thing being advertised" and not "why can't I go three seconds without being advertised to" in the first place. That advertisers continue to pour money into new ways to insert themselves into the average person's life when it's absolutely fucking pointless.

what pride flag is this (wrong answers only)

My grandpa posted this presumably to be transphobic or something but ngl it kinda slays. Get it vader

I think one of my favorite DnD Things is when random rolls become retroactive Lore/Quirks for the character. Not even as a DM ruling, I mean something the whole table adopts organically, whether seriously or as a running joke.

(Yes this is an invitation to reply or tell me in the tags if you've had any canon-altering rolls like this I love PC stories)

eXCUSE ME???????????????????????

I love semantic drift

wheezing okay just so everyone knows. I too love semantic drift but that’s not what’s happening here. This is in fact a deliberate joke about semantic drift. this is not a scene from a 1940s film noir this is a scene from the 1995 sitcom The Nanny. This is on purpose!!

I made the first page so long ago but hey, I finished.

Part two

also! Prada has blue sweats.

blue prada-

vector ass lookin mfer

He gets that vector ass from Pilates

dc comics heritage post

IMPORTANT!!!

that is all

an erotic poem:

leg so hot

hot hot leg

leg so hot u fry an eg

i had the urge to search for this and bring it back

i feel like i just discovered a fossil

apparently this has lived rent free in my brain for ELEVEN YEARS!?

I literally can’t make sunny-side-up eggs without chanting this, god

Move aside swagless boutta get a new Wizard’s Staff that comes loaded with spells like “open locked doors” and “dismantle car”

You pass peer review

Evil lich:

Enter my evil tomb! It is the root of fear! The the orgin of terror! The home of phobia!

Hero:

Okay you CANNOT call it that

Evil lich:

I can do whatever I want Richard, you're just scared of change! A... metamorphobe? No, a transphobe!

Hero:

You're just doing this on purpose now

Evil lich:

With this power I will be able to destroy the God Xenog and take his place. I call it... XenogEnder!

Hero:

I'm never going on an adventure again

Evil lich:

You've decimated my Home of Phobia. No matter; I still have my research base. It is named after its lead scientist, Alexander Wight, who rescued me from the lava pits after the last time you defeated me.

It is my Wight Saviour Complex!

Hero:

Surely. You must know.

Henchman:

I've been trying to tell him!

Evil Lich:

Well, you may of defeated my armies! But you will not survive my ultimate laser spell! I cast

RAY-SCHISM

Hero:

I refuse to die by the fucking racism beam thanks

evil lich:

with my ascent to power, i shall form a new religion based on the brother of cain! i shall call it...

ABELISM!

hero:

listen man, we need to have a talk about your naming habits

Doofenshmirtz

Reblog for larger sample size whatever

no no let em cook, what do i get if i choose one of them

Athena gives you a really cool sword and armor.

Hera offers you a life long and happy

Aphrodite offers you the most beautiful woman in the world. She does not specify if this woman is married or not

oh fuck yeah i love women i vote aphrodite

Uh oh, she's married to the King of Sparta and now all of her former suitors are after you and they all brought a minimum of 600 soldiers.

thank the gods for these really sturdy walls i think everything will go so well for the neighborhood

Big horse.

Ooooooo~! gimme gimme gimme

astarion is cheating

Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views

Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:

That is not what a happy gator looks like.

That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.

Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.

Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)

So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!

Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.

How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!

Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.

For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?

Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.

By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.

Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:

There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.

In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.

It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)

Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator

So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.

Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)

Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.

As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.

Why Should I Listen To You?

Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?

Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!

But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.

Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:

Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.

A good writeup on crocodilian body language, with sources. @kaijutegu knows her shit and is my go-to resource for reptilian behavior questions.

To everyone losing their mind over this picture of the Dior artisans making Natalie Portman’s golden globes dress:

This is basically a visual representation of what couture means. Every one of those heavily detailed/embroidered/beaded couture gowns you see during haute couture fashion week is made this way. In order to be considered couture they have to be, but that’s a separate post.

I feel like the work is more visible here because of the effect of the pattern, but pretty much every couture gown is made with this absolutely insane level of work and detail

Also, Dior did tag the textile house they worked with: Chanakya International and Chanakya School of Craft. They’ve done the textile work for several Dior collections as well as Armani

For those (like me) who hadn't seen the aforementioned dress

Goodmorning to everyone in the world and of course I love you

hold on let me google something

what the fuck

happy Boston Molasses Flood to all who celebrate

Favorite genre of image ever

My friend just started playing BG3 and he made this character I'm-

And yes, he's a Bard.