by thieu_riemen

weirdest tabletop experience i ever had

anyway if you wished Invisible Sun was weirder you may enjoy Disparateum by Rathayibacter

no cruel jokes or pranks this April 1st we should instead celebrate the better April 1 holiday

What is the better April first holiday and what does this saucy little scamp have to do with it

I can't find an article in English but essentially in France it is a common children's prank to on April Fool's put little paper fish on people's backs and it's called "poisson d'Avril" (April Fish). when i was in school in our french classes we would hide paper fish around the school as well and i took great joy in wedging mine in deeply impractical places that im honestly not sure were ever found. looking at it now, my French teachers had billed it as a Whole Separate Holiday but it actually seems more to be like a cultural in-joke/France-Specific April Fool's Prank lol whoops

regardless I like it better than some of the more mean spirited stuff I've seen associated with American April Fool's day

can't be mad at someone just taping one of these lil guys to your back right !

i love this thank you

snoopy and miffy told me they are a femme4butch couple in real life

This is a super cute idea and I wanted to take a crack at it, too.

Chilean Miku 🇨🇱

"Stuck in the timeloop as a punishment" is cool and all, but stuck in the timeloop voluntarily though? Oh, brother. Stuck in the timeloop cause you just can't move on. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know that it's not real and whatever should've happen already did. Stuck in the timeloop even if doesn't makes you happy. You just can't bear the thought of not being able to see them ever again. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know you should move on. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know they would want you to move on.

But maybe just a little while longer.

tbh no april fools gag tumblr ever pulls will ever be as good as the lizard election of 2016 staff put more effort into that than the rest of this website combined and it shows

for those of you who werent here in 2016 on april fools that year the entire fucking website was transformed and there was an election for a position that wasnt even ever specified and the candidates were four lizards (or three lizards and a salamander as a scandal would later prove) and it was called decision2016

each lizard had their own 3d models and tumblr blog and campaign and there was also a tumblr blog dedicated to reporting on the election and they made like whole ass news broadcasts with a guy in front of a green screen

you could vote for your favorite candidate and there was a built-in function that let you make and post a campaign poster

in case anyone was wondering the winner of the election was mop. relatable and reliable. #Mop Could

lest we forget

This was absolutely the biggest April Fools effort I ever witnessed while on staff. I already posted about this in an ask but here’s more of the shit that went down behind the scenes.

- Like all April Fools, this was done entirely through volunteer work on Staff. No one was forced to work on April Fools, it’s always employee-initiated and driven, even if it needs approval from leadership.

- The prank almost didn’t go through because leadership felt that the lizards weren’t relatable enough, so the compromise was to give them hats.

- The video updates on the Decision 2016 blog were greenscreen Fiverr actors that were all recorded months? Weeks? in advance? I wasn’t on creative so I don’t know all the deets about how those were made.

- As mentioned in my post, the victory speech by Mop was one of our designers screaming as loud as she could in a closet near the end of the day. The full audio was never posted but staff kept passing around the scream on slack and laughing about it for months afterwards

- There was a “war room” dedicated to advancing the election narrative as votes came in, posting updates in real time and also pushing changes to code as necessary (for bug fixes and what not)

- The votes were real and the “election” was decided by real users, even if the graphics and whatnot were exaggerated for comical effect. Mop won because Mop won. Democracy at work

- Someone brought in their own lizard to celebrate the proceedings. It was a bearded dragon

- This was the culmination of what was probably the most cohesive and imaginative (and largest) creative team Tumblr ever had. Unfortunately almost all of them are now long gone, and Tumblr Creative is now just a skeleton crew compared to their peak

- Wretched Tooth Doesn’t Like To Talk About Himself

- People drew porn of the lizards and posted it on Tumblr. Staff saw it and were sending it to each other on the company Slack. We thought it was great. I mean, terrifying, but great

- This picture of David Karp is my favorite photo of David Karp I have on my phone

FOR PARENTS OF YOUNG KIDS IN THE US!

Someone over on bluesky posted this and I figured I'd better repost it here. It's the pre-RFK 2025 vaccination schedule for babies and young children, ya know, just in case it mysteriously disappears. Save this and give it to your child's pediatrician; tell them this is the schedule you want your child on.

needed to hear this myself today :,)

Pro-lifers are wild. I just saw this on Reddit and it is actually insane to me that somebody thinks like this??

WHAT. BABIES?? WHERE IS THE BABY?? THERE IS NO BABY! IT'S LITERALLY JUST CELLS!

And the first comment:

AGAIN. WHAT HUMAN LIFE? THERE IS NO HUMAN HERE!

It's because they fundamentally misunderstand IVF, and human embryos and have a mistrust of science in general.

They imagine that we all have perfect eggs and perfect sperm and that joining them creates perfect embryos with a strong (almost certain) chance of becoming a baby. But that's oversimplified. Human reproduction is actually pretty inefficient with often a lot of loss on the way.

So as your resident infertile pro choice tumblr lady doctor (there may be more of us) here is a quick summary of why IVF needs a lot of embryos.

Sperm are Weak

You know what the normal sperm morphology is? If over 4% of sperm are shaped normally - it's THAT common for sperm to be poorly functional and abnormal in some way. Despite that we can do well even with mostly abnormal sperm if it is motile enough to get to the egg and there are enough of them. But abnormality is extremely common. IVF helps get around that by putting the sperm and egg in the same place. If we don't have much sperm, they may even inject the sperms genetic information directly into the egg in a process called ICSI.

Eggs Don't Last Long

When eggs are collected, they are a single cell thst can only live a very short time - about a day, unless they are fertilised or frozen. The aim of stimulating prior to egg collection, is to collect multiple eggs at the same time because a lot of them will not successfully turn into embryos, or will turn into embryos that are highly abnormal and will never become babies. And the procedure is gruelling and expensive so it would never make practical sense to do it one egg at a time. Sometimes you can even do an ER and no eggs are collected- they are very small and the specialist is collecting the fluid inside the mature follicles hoping that the egg comes with it. The collection happens via a needle inserted into the ovary...through the vagina. So it's fiddly and technically difficult.

For many couples, even if they retrieve something like 10-15 eggs, which would be very good for an egg retrieval, they may only get a few embryos after fertilisation - the rest of those eggs just die.

Embryo Attrition is a Big Thing

Not all eggs fertilise until embryos, as stated. Nut also, not all embryos are equal. Embryologists have spent the past 50+ years staging them and working out which ones are developing well, and which ones are dying. They grow them for either 3 or 5 days in the most perfect conditions that they can, and then give embryos a grading and carefully choose which ones are most likely to continue to develop and produce a viable pregnancy. Of their few embryos, it is very possible that most or even all of them may be genetically abnormal or struggling to develop. There are many pages explaining why not all embryos can be successfully implanted. A lot of them just do not develop properly, and never will. This is extremely sad for the people going through IVF because they may need to try to implant embryos multiple times to get one successful pregnancy.

Miscarriages are a Thing

There's a reason why early miscarriages are extremely common Tommy's the pregnancyloss charity put it at 1 in 4 women or pregnant people- we now think it is usually down to chromosomal abnormalities in either the egg or sperm (or both). It is not normally something that can be prevented. Many embryos never make it to us even knowing we are pregnant because they are miscarried really early.

I highly recommend the Tommy's website for non-religious independent, research based and compassionate support for people interested in learning about pregnancy loss, by the way. It's UK based but the science is sound regardless. I also recommend that US folks intetested in fertility check out the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast - it's run by pro choice fertility doctors, at least 2 of which have undergone IVF themselves.

Incidentally, couples doing IVF can still miscarry, which is another reason they may need more than one cycle.

There's also a reason why, even if we time penetrative vaginal intercourse or insemination perfectly, there's only something like a 30% chance of pregnancy (stats differ but most put it around there) - not 100%. Even if we get eggs and sperm together at the right time, they will probably not hit it off or it may not stick. Human reproduction is inefficient and fallible.

This is still true of IVF - perhaps even more so because those of us facing fertility issues may be more likely to have undiagnosed or rare genetic issues that may be affecting our eggs or sperm.

It Takes More Than Once (usually!)

Going back to embryo grading, fertility teams will always recommend implanting the best embryos first, because those are most likely to survive.

Couples or individuals undergoing IVF desperately want a successful pregnancy with a living child at the end of it, and their fertility team want to make that happen for them. If one embryo transfer doesn't work, then next cycle they use the next best embryo...and so on. Until there are either embryos left that are extremely unlikely to implant, or no embryos left at all. Nobody is in a rush to have to extract more eggs or to waste embryos. But some embryos may never be used, because they simply will not work. If a couple wanted to use them, they'd probably be allowed to try, but it would be almost certainly futile.

IVF is kinda like the uterus, but we are pickier abd more in control

IVF is not any more barbaric than what people consider to be "normal" and "natural" unassisted conception- because what happens is exactly the same. Gametes get together and either develop well into embryos...or stall and miscarry. It's just that with IVF you do some of the development inside the lab so that you do not implant the embryos that you can see are essentially already miscarrying or about to miscarry. So you get to save the couple the heartache of trying to implant those particular embryos and waiting for weeks to see it fail. We also control the gestational parent's hormones much more closely, which may help start the pregnancy if their infertility was due to a hormonal issue.

If a couple have lots of embryos left afterwards, they are able to donate them to other couples of they want to, or they can store them for future use. Sometimes labs ask consent to use the failing embryos which cannot develop so they can practice their technique to become better at IVF or do research on them.

But it is far more common for couples to run out of embryos and need to do further retrieval, or to stop after they have run out of embryos, because IVF is costly and highly invasive. Only 2/3 of couples have a pregnancy within 6 attempts- whilst this data is old it goes to show that not everyone ends up with a baby. These days they tell couples that 3 or 4 cycles may be needed. The success rate for IVF varies a lot depending on the age of the eggs and other variables but is something like 30% each cycle on average.

We don't do multiples (usually)

Incidentally and to address that first person's concerns, they almost never implant more than one embryo at a time any more - at least not in the UK. Because multiple pregnancy (twins) carries a much higher risk alto the birthing parent and the pregnancy.

Interestingly, IUI exists- for some couples it may instead be fine to try inserting cleaned and sometimes selected sperm directly into the uterus at the exact right time around ovulation. However the success rate of this can be lower and it isn't suitable or useful for all couples with fertility issues.

I note that they are worried about implanting embryos after conception...but what do they think is different between IVF and just having sex to conceive? In both cases you are putting gametes together and hoping they stick.

It's just that in one scenario you're doing that all in the dark and leaving it up to sheer luck, and potentially having more miscarriages along the way. And with using assistive reproductiolvr technologies you are trying to remove some of the issues along the way to make a healthy pregnancy more likely. There's still a lot of luck.

Let's talk Religion

I don't think we should be examining IVF from a religious lens at all. But..if we do. I'd say this: If God exists, why wouldn't he work via IVF too? He gave us the science and the tools. If he didn't want these kids to be born, why would he let them survive? He made our reproduction to be complicated and imperfect. But he has also given us medicine and scientists and doctors. We allow ourselves to use modern medicine to give us long and healthy lives, why would IVF be the only exception? We give people with diabetes insulin. We give people prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs and medication that keeps them alive. Infertility is a physical disability that affects people's right to a family life and is potentually devastating for those people.

And why would people who see themselves as "pro life" rather that these poor infertile couples or individuals piss away month after month failing to conceive (wasting all those sperm and eggs) for years rather than try something that is more likely to lead to a living child? Don't they want peole to have kids?

not to talk about flow again, but the thing is, a lot of people talk about independent film making and its importance etc, but it's hard to get more independent than flow this year

not only because it was made with a free and open source software anyone can use, not only because it beat competitors from major studios with an average of 3% of the budget they had, not only because it represented a country that had never won an oscar before, not only because it didn't have any star power involved, not only because it didn't come from a filmmaker with past history, not only because it was made by a small team...

but also because it's an animated movie

animators often get the short end of the stick in the entertainment industry and, for the past years, it was starting to look as if the only way to make an animated project happen was to sell your soul to a major studio and see your work transformed into what they need and how they want it marketed

especially for movies from outside the US, from non-English speaking countries, where insanely talented animators tend to be used as freelance cheap labor for major US studios or have to adapt as much as possible to fit into their market in order to find work

passion projects for animation seemed to only be reserved to the shorts category, or needed to be as high brow as humanly possible to be perceived as "high art" to be valued and, even in the spaces of the industry dedicated to the genre, the way in which awards are distributed are a poor reflection of the vast work animators do

it's major for this film to win awards, let alone the oscar, an award which is notably judged badly for animation and often prefers the marketable easy way out of voting rather than genuine interest

this movie used a resource that is open to anyone and, with good storytelling, made an oscar winning film

in a world in which art is constantly being attacked by capitalist greed, I'm happy that a movie with heart and little resources could do something like this, whether or not people care about the oscars anymore

GO WATCH FROW GO WATHC FLOW GO WATCH FLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How Far From London Can You Get By Train In 12 Hours

Slime mold looking for more nutrients

Slime mold escaping London in 12 hours

I am London Slime Mold and I confirm I love to escape to Europe for nutrients.

I’m gonna be at Anime Expo. Table M 13. Come say hello!

'Republicans graduating from law schools' have invalidated the Constitution, due process, and habeas corpus all to not offend First Felon and his highly illegal and morally devoid policies.

This is human trafficking. All a projection.

people who use the queue function fill a necessary role in the tumblr ecosystem. they keep posts alive. if u miss a post bc ur entire mutualcule was reblogging it from each other in a 30min span and u were offline, the queue mutual provides u an opportunity to see that post again in 1-8 business days. they put posts in stasis in little cryogenic freezers for u to discover and enjoy later. everyone thank their queue mutuals right now

lmao the fact that it ended up posting on 1st April is honestly delighting me

I love queueing things. I want my followers and mutual to be showered with things I think are cool even when I'm not here. Posts don't die on tumblr, they just ping from blog to blog, every now and then.

★ 【おおね】 「 おめでとー 」 ⊳ sakura (ccs) // bday: apr. 1 ✔ republished w/permission