who's to say?

moment of unspeakable beauty today when one of my coworkers called another coworker "judas" for not splitting a can of white monster with her, and i got to watch the guy who sits next to me open a new google tab, type in "jeudis," and say quietly to himself "french thursday...?"

one week knowing the character VS 7 months being possessed by The Character thoughts (# 1 character fan)

Beatrix Potter

they killed palestinian journalist hussam shabat

aside from the fact that that's not how queer community works in the slightest, the reason why the "queer spaces are safe spaces for women" bullshit falls on its face is because some women are also men. what are you gonna do about it? cry? shit yourself? have an existential crisis over whether or not that person is "safe" based on their genders instead of just talking to them like a person? misgender them? label them as a threat?

some ""non-men"" are also men.

now what.

a world without trans people has never existed and never will

prints

NOT TO BRAG OR ANYTHING BUT JOHN FUCKING DARNIELLE MR. THE MOUNTAIN GOATS HIMSELF JUST SHARED THIS ON BSKY AND SAID IT WAS GREAT AND LOVELY WORK. WHAT IF I DIED

twitter finally recommending me good stuff

shes so true..

he is not a registered x-ray technician

Several documentaries publically treating Luigi Mangione as guilty before his trial even started got released over the past 2 months.

Here's the billion dollar companies behind them.

while this is a completely valid warning... i just want to take a second to remind everyone that you could literally say this about almost any movie, documentary or piece of media made since 2011. 90% of the United States media is controlled by 6 companies who create over 50% of the content.

and if you want to take it a step further because Vanguard and BlackRock were listed on the original graphic, their reach is lightyears beyond just media. BlackRock and/or Vanguard are among the three largest institutional investors for 505 out of 505 of the S&P 500. (100%). one or the other is the single largest institutional investor in 422 of these (84%). they, along with State Street, control about 23% of the votes of the S&P 500 single-class companies.

the truth is that virtually all corporate-backed media that you consume in 2025 from top to bottom is going to be subject to the oversight of the board of directors for one of these 6 mega billionaire-controlled companies. you should have that fact in mind basically at all times.

one of my trans friends added me to a discord channel called "egg group chat" and I was starting to get very introspective before I realised they're organising a group buy of eggs from a local farm

greg house stays in the closet so he can say faggot and have people get offended by it

"they're insects that only live in clean water!"

riko I have questions about your definition of "clean"

No she’s right, this is a thing in real world ecology too : )) certain orders of aquatic insect are famously useful as indicators of ecosystem health because they can only thrive in unpolluted water! For example, here’s the Maine Department of Health on aquatic plecoptera (stonefly) larvae.

fascinating! but I do have to ask - does "high quality, minimally polluted" imply "potable"?

Yes, the “EPT Index” (or the measured presence of three taxa of insects — ephemeroptera, plecoptera and tricoptera) is linked to WQI (water quality index, used to determine stability and public health) in general. For example, here’s a project where the former was used to assess the latter.

However, additional tests of specific pollutant indices are likely to be done by official agencies because this will give more information than just checking whether insects are present. But it’s a good quick and useful indicator.

neat!

In university, when we were studying sewage treatment and water purification, we were taught to use the presence of dragonflies as a sort of eyeball test in the later stages of purification to see that things are working properly. Obviously you also take samples and do proper tests, but if the dragonflies disappear from your "clean" waterway then you might have a PROBLEM problem and it's time to pull the brakes and retest everything to find out why. I live in Australia and we have some of the highest water quality standards in the world.

I thought that the insects were indicators of lack of pollution, not of water safety. Like if they disappear that's a HUGE problem, but just because they're thriving it doesn't mean that there's no giardia. (Giardia is one of the main reasons that I'm never going to drink untreated water. I have a filter for backcountry, I'm not going to pull the "we dipped the water from the middle of the lake" trick.)

The presence of insects does not necessarily indicate that water is safe to drink. In general, you should assume that any water in nature is unsafe to drink without boiling unless you don't have another option. (Your options will sometimes depend on where you live; many societies drink unboiled well or river water, but this is not advisable in areas with large human or farm animal populations for reasons of disease). Indicator species like these can be found in purified waterways, the water is clean but NOT sterile. It might be pumped to rivers or lakes or the ocean fairly shortly after this step but to go into the drinking water supply it needs to be further sterilised. It will be treated via heat, chemicals, filtration or all three, and tested for the presence of known local pathogens before being pumped into homes and soforth. (When I went to the USA a decade or so ago I found the water there absolutely fucking disgusting, because the places I went to sterilise their water with high concentrations of chlorine and leave it in there. I don't know how people can live on the stuff.)

The standards of quality will depend on where you live, and how good an indicator one of these species is for safety will vary depending on the water source; river water far away from humans and farms will be safer (although not really safe) than town runoff being purified, in terms of the likely presence of pathogens, even if indicator species are present at both. But these species are very helpful in places that lack the infrastructure to test or purify their water to our standards, as well as being a handy eyeball test for water purification efficacy. You have to work with what you have, and sometimes what you have isn't perfect.

Isn't there a city in Poland that equipped 6 clams with the ability to push a button when they closed and gave them control of the cities water supply because they're so good at detecting contamination?

they're working with what they have and what they have is clams

its crazy to me when people say they cant understand cat body language cause maybe its the ambigous neurodivergence in me but i find them easier to understand than people. they literally come with a rumble feature to let you know theyre happy. i wish i had that.

#samesies#my mom sent me a meme today#where it showed a cartoon dog with a bunch of expressions for how it felt#and then a cartoon cat but all the expressions were the same#and I’m like…skill issue#I can tell exactly how my cats feel and virtually never get scratched by them#because it’s so easy to just look at their ears and tail and know if they’re ok with what you’re doing or over stimulated or annoyed#seriously it boggles my mind that people consider cats unexpressive

I'm very bad with cat body language, but fortunately they are fairly assertive animals who will let you know what they want by their behaviour if their more subtle signals aren't being read properly. If they move away from me or bat/nip at me warningly (or, with less patient models who aren't being listened to, bite or scratch) then they want me to stop what I am doing immediately. If they want to be pet they will rub the body part they want pet on my hands. If they want my attention then they will stand between me and whatever I am paying attention to. Even if you're bad with subtlety, a cat will lose patience and get its message across pretty clearly. And when you get to know an individual cat, it becomes easier to read more subtle signals even if you're naturally bad at it, and the cat learns to read you.

I think it’s time I do everything I ever wanted