Everything que me gusta

We know vaccines painful, and by comparing horses at rest with horses getting vaccinated, we've been able to determine how they express pain visually. By looking at horses with disorders like colic, broken bones, wounds, and so on, we can determine their facial expressions during more severe pain.

At zookeeper school we were drilled through the pain faces of the most common lab animals and livestock. Nowadays I believe this has become a routine lesson in all animal related fields, but the general public still doesn't know that this is a thing that exists.

Here are all the pain face/grimace scales I've been able to find. Please study them if you interact with any of these animals on a regular basis:

YOU DO IT ON ONE OF THESE! OBVIOUSLY!!!

and that brown end? the hard bit? pencil sharpener. or sharpened with a blade. are you following me? now, attach six of those to a harpy.

I do not like this style. I will never like this style. ... My biggest criticism is that I merely dislike this [art project]. Make me hate it. Make me furious over how much fun you're having with this thing I hate.

As preamble: i am one of the proud 27% who voted “good” on the first poll (didn’t see the second in time to vote). And, in fact, I found the imagery of “claws like sharpened bananas” so provocative i just had to give sharpening a banana a go (plus i remembered i threw some ripe bananas in the freezer like five months ago and thought hey, might as well! bananas, i’m sorry i failed to use you in smoothies as intended; i hope you find peace knowing you were donated to science instead. Rest In Peels.)

For my first attempt, I decided to take the easiest though least faithful-to-the-vision route first: sharpening the banana stem.

I was delighted to discover that a banana stem does fit into a pencil sharpener, so i got grinding.

And grinding.

And grinding.

Things were looking promising at first, but i rotated that thing in the sharpener for over three minutes and after a certain point, it just stopped getting sharper. I guess it became too narrow for the sharpener to like, reach?

(Pictured: the moment my wife asked me what the fuck i was doing to that banana)

But luckily my wife appeared around this time and, after expressing extreme bemusement, she acquiesced to applying her whittling skills to the task. I bestowed upon her a second frozen banana and she got to work.

What a champ.

And…it actually worked!! That bad boy was SHARP!

Like, not “draw blood easily” sharp. But yeah, if claws looking like this ^ were to shoot towards me, i’d be at least mildly afraid. That’s not nothin’ — right? right?

(I’m so good at photoshop)

But at this point i had to admit to myself the thing i’d known all along. Sharpening solely the stem wasn’t actually @pangur-and-grim’s vision.

So i tried, i really tried to sharpen the entire outer part of the banana with a knife sharpener + knife! Maybe it’s because the frozen bananas had thawed too much at this point but. it didn’t go…all that great

Then it was time for my final attempt.

I peeled one of those half-thawed nanners and shaped its soft body (which was the consistency of melty ice cream) with a combination of the knife sharpener and my bare fingers into what i hoped would be a fine point — once it re-froze.

One of them i “sharpened” the tip of; the other i tried to kinda sharpen the side of? By making a very thin ridge all along it. Because if they’re going to be claws they shouldn’t just poke people; they need to slice

Anyway that was an hour ago so i just checked on them and…

tragically, they are not sharp.

BUT i flattened them a little thinner to see if that helps, and now i’ll be patient for once in my life and wait to check on them till morning. Maybe being fully frozen will help

So yeah! The good news is you CAN sharpen a banana stem and that’s gotta count for something. The bad news is that sharpening the actual body of the banana has proven much more challenging.

if i never reblog with an update, it’ll mean I failed, no sharp peeled bananas to present. If i do update….

Well. You’ll get a photo of a razor-sharp banana.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

1. Lots of people have one but you don't really think about it until they start talking about making waffles and you're like "oh shit they have a waffle maker"

2. Messy as fuck and you know what as far as I see it why even bother when you have pancakes, you don't need to bother with all those fluids and crevices with pancakes

3. WHY DOES EVERYONE AT THE WEDDING THINK YOU NEED ONE

4. Theoretically implied fun with whipped cream until it melts and starts soaking into shit

5. If you don't prep ur surfaces ur gonna have a bad time

6. It's fun in the kitchen but only on like special occasions cause again it's a pain in the ass to clean

1) Figured this out.

"Only have one road"???

But no, you are absolutely not imagining things- USAmerican media is SUCH a huge export that it saturates global media and makes it difficult to AVOID learning about your political system and your country.

Shows like Law and Order or NCIS, for example, or X-Files to an extent- we've all seen these shows so we've all heard "first amendment rights" or "the declaration of independence" or "Miranda rights". We all know to "call 911" or "contact the FBI" or that we have "the right to remain silent".

But in Canada, for example, we don't have a "declaration" with "amendments". We have The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and if you get arrested here, you are told that "You are being charged with X crime, you have the right to retain and instruct counsel in private without delay, if you cannot afford a lawyer you have the right to contact legal aid for assistance free if charge, you cannot be compelled to speak in answer to the charge but be advised that anything you do say may be used against you in court, confirm if you understand, confirm if you wish to excersise your right to legal aid, do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge".

But in the UK you have to call 999, not 911. In Canada, you have the right to freedom of association, freedom of movement, and freedom of speech, but no "right to bear arms". And in Australia, a cybersex criminals account can be hijacked by law enforcement to track down other predators, and this isn't permitted in Canada OR the USA.

These are just examples, but it spreads further- EVERYONE in Canada knows about Trump and has opinions on your political system, but plenty of teens have no idea who our Prime Minister is.

Hell, *I* watch American news for coverage of global events, but through there I've also picked up on American immigration policy and climate crises.

It's such a huge thing that non-English speaking countries learn English to enjoy English media and read English books and perform international business- and in Canada, we actually have it written in law that a certain percentage of TV and Radio HAS to be Canadian, so that our citizens don't get fully absorbed by American culture and talking points and lose identity and focus on our own country's issues.

It's a big deal, and most USAmericans don't seem to notice.... which is why it seems to sort of get taken for granted that any english-speaking part of the internet is USAmerican.

Even though, you know.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-

"Klauen wie angespitzte Bananen schossen auf mich zu."

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.