Grungy Gay Metalhead

in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure

similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.

now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.

additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”

so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?

my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.

if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.

and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:

Want an alternative for when you’re writing essays that have to remain in third person so you can’t say “you” and you’re talking about a hypothetical person, and traditionally you were taught to use “his or her” but that pisses you off because what about people who use other pronouns?

Not all teachers let you use they/them when referring to a single person if that person’s pronouns are unconfirmed, however you can actually use “one”, “one’s”, “oneself” etc

I made the pose with *looks up* JustSketchMe. Might come back & shade it later.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

Dildo Generator

Online 3D experiment by Ikaros Kappler which is described as a “Extrusion/Revolution Generator” ….

Created with three.js, you can alter the bezier curves and angle of the form, and is designed with 3D printing in mind (models can be exported and saved, as well as calculated weight in silicone).

I call this one the Megahorny

I was just scrolling and my friend asked why I was dying and i just had shown them this.

(i’m only surprised it finally happened in arizona; my money was on australia.) please rest assured this is very uncommon. hold on, I’m gonna take the opportunity to infodump about a special interest:

Spider x Scorpion Sex

ok so: spiders and spiders are occasionally observed mating in the wild. it makes a weird sort of sense: they are both arachnids with surprisingly similar mating rituals, so if two species have similar sizes and markings, a male performing a mating dance can end up attracting a cross-species partner. this happens particularly in times of lowered sexual competition, where for whatever reason there are fewer same-species partners to choose from. I guess if you’re horny enough, a strong healthy mate with the right number of legs (8) is all anyone can ask for. Personally, if i was a horny little spider looking to get some, I would still be concerned by the fact that scorpions eat spiders. But then again both groups include species that practice sexual cannibalism, so maybe that’s not such a turn off.

Unfortunately, spider/scorpion sex remains very much the exception to the norm. there just aren’t many areas where spiders and scorpions (of similar size, shape, and physical attributes) share territories, and have a sex ratio imbalanced enough to spur cross-species copulation.

Finally: when it does happen, spider/scorpion sex almost never results in offspring, for a couple of reasons:

a bunch of species aren’t genetically compatible, fertilization just isn’t possible

so far, the only documented instances of spider-scorpion offspring have come from unions of female spiders/male scorpions, so it’s probable that intercourse between male spiders/female scorpions just doesn’t result in viable eggs, for whatever reason.

side note: i’m actually really disappointed about this, bc it’s very possible we could have gotten two distinct types of hybrids per combined species, the way Ligers (female tiger/male lion) are distinct from Tigons (female lion/male tiger).

also spider-scorpion hybrids* are sterile (or at least the ones bred in captivity have been so far.) infertility is quite common among animal hybrids. it’s the reason mules (horse-donkey hybrids) can’t reproduce. the consequence is that itty bitty baby spider-scorpions probably aren’t going to grow up and start massive colonies families of their own, sadly.

(*here i need to make a correction to the original post: the correct term is “spider-scorpion hybrid” not “scorpion-spider hybrid”)

For all these reasons (rarity of naturally occurring spider/scorpion intercourse, the unlikelihood and infertility of resulting offspring, etc) almost all documented instances of spider-scorpion hybrids have been created in labs by artificial fertilization. (though it is funny to think about scientists sitting around a glass cage trying to encourage a reluctant scorpion to do a sexy little dance for his spider lady friend. you got this bro!)

Finally, it’s quite difficult to recognize a spider-scorpion in the wild, and even more difficult to verify its parentage without genetic testing. “Spider-Scorpion Hybrid” doesn’t refer to just one species or phenotype: appearances differs wildly based on parental species. And this is the most exciting thing about spider-scorpion hybrids: there’s no way to 100% predict what a new hybrid will look like before it hatches! Some have tails, some have pincers, some spin webs, and some do none of that but still manage to be terrifying!

And with over 45,000 known spider species and almost 2,000 scorpion species in existence (and more being discovered all the time) that makes *pulls out my high school graphing calculator*

Nature is fascinating and I hope you live in deep unease and suspicion for the short remainder of your days!

Photos below the cut! (of the hybrid discovered in arizona, and others selectively bred by researcers)

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.

In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.

“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut

“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”

Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.

“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”

it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.