Shifting Frames of Reference

Future you will thank you for not pinning your ability to enjoy and get any sense of achievement on having the base energy levels of a teenager.

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And then went to gloat over his acquisition and opened up the towels. Which had absorbed enough of the oil the metal was stored in to prevent it from reacting with any spare oxygen in the air.

So it started to react and my teacher's friend freaked out and realized he was going to get caught and get in trouble. And in a panic, he ran to the bathroom and flushed it down a toilet. A brilliant strategy, is it not, for disposing of a chemical that reacts somewhat to air, but whose characteristic interaction with water is generally described as "violent"?

pro wasp propaganda to

spite my phobia

It started with someone listing "places with uncanny energy," like gas stations on a road trip, empty movie theaters, etc.

Then someone reblogged it and said those are called "liminal spaces," defining liminal as in-between, neither one thing nor another.

Tomorrow (July 4th, 2026) is the 10 year anniversary of the-crepes-of-wrath's comment, which:

Predates the 2020 spike in interest by four years

Predates the original backrooms post, and the the creation of r/liminalspaces by three years

Predates the earliest mention that KnowYourMeme attributes to Twitter by two years

I'm pretty sure this is the moment the term "liminal spaces" was attached to this sort of imagery, and it's TEN YEARS OLD TOMORROW!

Source

One year later…

Trigger warning for graphic descriptions of injured and dead wildlife.

When a fireworks display occurs near a wild bird roost, the birds simultaneously explode into the night skies in utter panic, which can lead to huge numbers of deaths, usually because these birds either smash their skulls or break their necks as the result of flying into trees, fences, billboards, houses and other solid objects that they cannot see in the gloom and ensuing chaos.

Many of the startled birds who take flight fly at much higher altitudes and for much longer durations than they’re used to to escape the noise, which is energetically costly and physiologically stressful.

Small birds and bats can be knocked from the air and killed by the sonic shock. In 2010, 40 dead sparrows were discovered dead under a roost in a nature reserve after a local fireworks display. The manager of the reserve witnessed a tawny owl fluttering and convulsing on the ground after a particularly loud explosion. It died shortly after.

In Arkansas in 2010, some 5,000 red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, common grackles and brown-headed cowbirds suffered blunt-force trauma after colliding with cars, trees and buildings, an ornithologist from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission would tell National Geographic.

In 2008, federal officials showed that seabirds in the northern California town of Gualala abandoned their nests after a fireworks show, leaving their eggs vulnerable to predators.

Each year in Austin, Texas, the Congress Bridge bats can be seen fleeing the fireworks display en masse on weather radar, and emergences from their roost diminish noticeably in the days following the Fourth.

In 2018, the Galapagos banned the sale and use of pyrotechnics. According to the BBC, conservationists said that fireworks caused elevated heart rates, trembling and anxiety in many animals. 

The threat to wildlife doesn’t stop at startling lights and sounds; fireworks also have the potential of starting wildfires, directly affecting wildlife and destroying essential habitat. Litter from firecrackers, bottle rockets and other explosives can be choking hazards for wildlife and may be toxic if ingested.

So what do you do if you want to watch fireworks responsibly? Experts say municipalities are more likely to be aware of these dangers than private consumers. Their best advice is to stick to the shows put on by professionals and local governments, which tend to follow guidelines put forth by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among others, about animal safety.

The National Audubon Society offers similar guidelines: “Commercial fireworks are concentrated in one location, rather than in several locations at once, which is what often happens in neighborhoods. This allows birds to take off and land again in a ‘safer’ location rather than continuing to flee noises coming at them from all directions.”