seraphim are dragons

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s.  The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.  

As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.  

It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.  

Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.  

The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.

They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.   

Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.  

Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.  

Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent.  (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)  

It worked!  

Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.  

However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them.  (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)

she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)

His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)

the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)

"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")

eyeshells aoolia zeelool lakoh vooglam lens alter

like, eyeshells in particular has a startlingly vast collection of asymmetric glasses:

(this isn't even all of them)

and also this steampunk nonsense that I love so fucking much and cannot justify spending any money on:

while aoolia has...tbh a lot of the frames the other sites have, but more expensive, but also, a collection of the gayest people you've ever seen:

though tbh not nearly as gay as whatever lens alter has going on:

and vooglam has uhhh...whatever this is!

huh.

(I can't vouch for any of these companies ofc, though I think I'll get something from at least one of them. ideally not the slime glasses, but hey!)

but honestly the absolute best thing I found in all of this is this site that makes vintage fashion, and which happened to have:

these replica victorian railway glasses like the bisexual guy in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter had, AND WHICH

you can even buy with prescription lenses, jesus fucking christ you have no idea how hard it is to not immediately drop $180 on this shit, I'm having to physically restrain myself, I want them so fucking bad

and hey, if you don't need prescription lenses, y'know what else you can buy from this site?

the glasses from national treasure 😭😭

"Okay," says the human, dangling upside down, suspended by a group of tentacles. "I got it."

"Right," says the voice, which comes from everywhere and nowhere. "Now consider a cat. The cat thinks you're kind of like a cat, but you're so big, he has some problems understanding that all of your body is really you."

"Am I the-"

"Yes. Now listen. Especially under the blanket, the cat doesn't really know where your body begins and ends. He sees your feet, and decides to attack them. He's only play-fighting, but his claws are real sharp, so it hurts. What would you do?"

"Well," says the human, gently spinning in the tentacle's grasp, "I'd try to tuck my feet under the blanket."

"Ah, but then it's even worse," claims the voice, triumphantly, "because now your cat sees Blanket Monsters and attacks them twice as hard."

"So you have to grab the cat."

"It's either that or burrito her," says the voice, squeezing the human in the grip of its tentacles. "And since in this metaphor the blanket represents the fabric of reality as you know it, I don't think you'd find it very pleasant."

"Fair enough," says the human, blood beginning to pool in her head. "Can you please put me down, now? I promise I won't attack you again."

graystoke hated feet and frequently attacked them.

Because you can't recruit people to willingly jump out of mid-flight passenger planes for science, you redesign the study to engineer a scenario where the risk to the control group is minimsed. The plane is landed.

And then, because you've removed the main reason to use a parachute, you find that parachutes have "no effect" on mortality or injury.

The constraints of performing an ethical RCT guarantee this result. A result that we obviously know is dangerously wrong to extrapolate to the real-life uses of parachutes.

Now here's the thing: The people insisting that "evidence-based medicine" says we need RCTs of trans healthcare know this is what they're doing. It's extremely well established that you can abuse these "standards" to engineer incorrect results.

It's like if we called cars "spaceships" because a car salesman once lied about their product being capable of space travel

Sure! The rock is hollow and covers a small container of oil. There's a hole bored through his hand, leg, ass, and the rock with a wick that dangles into the oil container and feeds fuel into the flame. The wick is in a little glass tube to help regulate burn.

this is actually my favorite notification on this post because genuinely do you know how hard it is to sculpt a butt that is like. proportional but also if it's too flat you can tell that there's major muscles missing under the skin but also it needs to not be too caked or it gets weird, and it is actually a major anatomical landmark and if you mess it up the whole legs are off.

barely even visible

but im proud of it.