Celepito

The screenshots above are his pinned tweet. Here's the link for anyone who needs alt text or wants to read more of what he has to say:

He left Gaza when he was 10, and has lived in the U.S. for more than a decade iirc. So his politics tend to be a little more conservative, in a way, than activists who have lived under Hamas's rule. Like Hamza Howidy, who just left Gaza last August and is an amazing superstar.

I'm so proud of him and his fellow activists for posting these pictures.

He's published essays about his experiences, but it's seemed like he was avoiding giving any names of other people involved - except for the one Hamas killed. And he's talked about still getting anonymous threats for speaking out against Hamas online, even months after he'd left the country.

(Before he left, it would only take 3-4 hours after a post for Hamas members to show up at his door.)

"That’s me in the green striped top, with the naughty smile, sitting next to my father and all my brothers. Those were happier, simpler times – both for me, a sweet, mischievous five-year-old without a care in the world, but also for Gaza.

"Though Israel was occupying the territory, with all the hardship and restrictions that entailed, Hamas had not yet come to power, which is when the real misery started – all the grief and agony and destruction they brought with them.

"Today, I’m 27. It’s my second birthday as an asylum seeker in Germany, my second birthday without my family and the friends I grew up with. I’m grateful for my new home and for all the new people I’ve met, but I long for my old home and my loved ones – especially on days like today.

"I recognize though that I’m one of the lucky ones. I have childhood friends who didn’t live to see their 27th birthday, whose lives were tragically cut short by this horrific war.

"I was never one of those kids who made a wish on their birthday. But today I’m going to change that. I wish that this war ends soon. That the hostages are freed. That Hamas’s brutal rule is ended. That the blockade is lifted. That Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank get their freedom; our own democratic state in which to determine the path of our lives.

"It’s a wish, but I don’t believe it’s wishful. It’s definitely not too much to ask."

Well, my birthday was the week before that, and I wish that people actually supported Palestinians enough to center and platform them.

For the Western "pro-Palestinian" movement to shape itself around boosting the work of peace and human rights activists in and from Palestine.

Started stitching the Milky Way in. Slowly making progress on it as I am hiding the travelling thread so the back will look nice.

Progress on the constellation quilt has come along quite a lot now. Finished the binding on the quilt over the weekend. I prefer to machine stitch the binding to the front then hand stitch the back side. It gives such a nice finish to the quilt. Took the time to measure it also and it ended up being 72" by 72" (183cm by 183cm).

Behold the stars of the constellations of the northern sky! I love how this quilt has turned out. It was a lot of fun to work on and the effect is so cool in person. Overall I would estimate it took about 90-100 hours to complete. Give or take 10 hours if you want to count the time I spent custom dying the fabric.

I made sure to get a nice photo of it in daylight. For once I also remembered to get a quilt label on it. The back really shows the difference in readability of the quilting on the ice dyed fabric compared to the solid front. Thank you everyone that has followed this. I am glad you all found joy in it.

The protagonist digs her heels in and says no, she never knew her biological father and by the way the demon explained the situation, evidently her father also doesn't know that he already has a daughter, so therefore the man who had made no contribution to her life after he bred and fled has no claim to her as something he could barter.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

A Jewish peasant girl turned moneylender, Miriam, ends up stuck married to the fae king of winter. The daughter of a duke gets stuck married to the emperor, who is possessed by a demon.

I don’t care if he’s sorry. I don’t care if he’s different. I don’t care if he helps little old ladies cross the street and kisses babies.

I can not trust someone like that to be in a position of authority over me. And the lengths people- including people that consider themselves social justice minded go to bend over backwards for this guy disgusts and disturbs me.

I absolutely do NOT believe a man who was in the MARINES couldn’t recognize a nazi symbol and just went along with getting it permanently put onto his body for shits and giggles.

most big herbivores are, frankly. if you have a pretty steady supply of food and don’t have to worry about missing a hunt and starving to death, you can afford to throw your weight around more and generally be more aggressive!

that’s why the most dangerous big animals in the world are almost all herbivores.

This is Camarasaurus lentus, around 15 ish meters and over 16 tonnes, for reference sake, the largest african elephant bull EVER recorded was 11 tonnes. pretty decent difference right?  Well, except one thing. This is a SMALL sauropod. Want to see a large one?

Yeah, you’re reading that right, 53 tonnes. Almost five times heavier than the largest recorded african elephant ever. And they get even larger.

This bastard was last estimated at 73 tonnes, the largest animal ever to walk the earth. And they didn’t just get big, they got l o n g, too

That right there, is BYU 9024, it (among with a few undescribed remains) shows an animal in the size range of 40+ meters, this one here clocks in at around 40, and the funny thing is? this is the *conservative* estimate, larger specimens are not unreasonable in the slightest. It’s not quite as heavy as the big south american bastard above it, but at 67 tonnes, its close.

Secondly, speed. We’ve all seen it, lumbering behemoths that were dumb as rocks and probably about as fast, with a tailwind, going downhill. Well…. Not really, the latest studies done as of Asier larramedi’s sauropod facts and figures book gives some… Horrifying estimates.

I’ll spare you the complete explanations, there will be a paper out soon that goes into greater depth, but I’d like to draw your attention to the speeds, specifically fo the animal called Giraffatitan. Most people are familiar with it in some way, shape or form, but to clear up what exactly Giraffatitan is. 

They’re not the small ones in the foreground, they’re the big ones in the back. 33 tonnes of pure muscle, moving at 25 kp/h. Again, to provide further reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUE304bqwQc  THIS is how fast that is. It’s a house running at you, forget a hippo charging you, this would be a tidal wave of flesh and hatred bearing down on you.

And finally, weapons.

Like someone earlier pointed out,  Apatosaurus should have absolutely trounced the indominus, because quite frankly at such a size anything you do will hurt. Kicks with the front or hind limbs will be utterly devastating to anything except another of their kind, but Apatosaurus had another thing going in its favour.

One thicc-ass neck. Pictured here with speculative keratin spikes on the bottom, whilst the spikes are speculation, the neck itself would have essentially functioned like a fleshy battering ram, capable of pulping ribcages and smashing anything that could have “preyed” upon them. But that’s not even the most terrifying thing, though this is not specific to Apatosaurus itself, but to all diplodocoids (Apatosaurus, Barosaurus, Diplodocus, etc.) Specifically, the tail. 

This is Diplodocus, as you can see, this animal is half tail, as you might also be able to see, the latter half of that tail tapers down to what can, in all essence be described as- a whip. A serrated whip, powered by some of the largest muscles in the largest animals that would have walked on earth. But it gets even MORE horrifying.

You see, there have been studies that have come to a conclusion, and though there are those that have doubted them, I personally have looked at the papers and found merit to the theories.

Well, I’ll not hold you in suspense any longer.

The tips of these tails, could have, and would have broken the sound barrier. Yup, you heard that right, and as soon as that fact begins to seep in, you’ll realize the horrifying implications. A diplodocoid whipping its tail, would blow out the eardrums of any animal close by and unfortunate enough to draw its ire, the sauropod itself would possibly not come out unscathed, but when you can literally give a would-be predator internal hemmorages by, what to them would be essentially like snapping a finger, the benefits begin to outweigh the risks involved. And that’s not even mentioning what would happen if it HIT anything, an impact at such velocity, with such mass driving it would be- quite frankly? Devastating beyond words. Flesh wouldn’t just tear, it wouldn’t just break skin or bones, flesh would MELT, bones would shatter, if not simply cease to be. And this is on a sufficiently sized animal such as Allosaurus or Torvosaurus. On a human? They would be ripped in half. So yeah, Sauropods get shafted in popular media to an extent that isn’t even possible, if you think hippo’s are scary, imagine something fourty times its size, faster than you, and able to kill you without even touching you. Sauropod are kaiju, plain and simple.

The babies were really cute though. This is andrew, and he’s a baby… the size of a horse. If you want to know just how tiny they began, this is probably a good reference.

you might not be a threat to an adult sauropod, but they may very well still decide to smear you and any other small maybe-predator in the area just in case you might get any ideas about snacking on their eggs or babies now or in the future.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid, can only infect cells expressing a certain protein called ACE2

ACE2 is expressed widely in nasal cavity epithelial cells but not in olfactory sensory neurons. 

Seo et al. (2021) studied potential nasal targets for SARS-CoV-2 using golden hamsters as a model organism (commonly used as a proxy for humans in virology studies)

They found ACE2 expression in the main olfactory bulb epithelium (MOE, your “normal” nose organ) as well as the vomeronasal organ (VNO)

Several cell types in the VNO were able to be infected and they also found significant inflammatory activity (macrophage activation, apoptotic cells, etc) 

The specifics of how covid actually causes dysosmia are not known for sure but epithelial damage by local inflammatory immune responses likely plays a role, especially because sensory neurons themselves are not affected (Bilinska, & Butowt, 2020). Therefore I would suggest a potential similar effect of VNO dysfunction as we see in the main olfactory bulb

From Seo et al.: “Considering the function of the VNO, infection and subsequent pathologic changes may affect the behavior of Syrian hamsters”

If it stands to reason that omegaverse individuals have functioning VNOs similar to members of the animal kingdom, then it is more than reasonable to conclude that covid may cause them to lose not only their main olfactory function, but also their VNO function as well

 References: (1) (2)

T has /been/ a controlled substance. “ROGD” was aimed at “mutilated girls”. Do none of you remember the Irreversible Damage book. That Joanne Rowling specifically got mad at gender-neutral language regarding menstruation and periods and said that people transition because of “the allure of escaping womanhood”.

Do all of you think erasure = safety? And that we only are “accidentally” and “less importantly” hurt?