k i r b z y

see, you wouldn't necessarily pick up on this, but beluga skulls (and most cetacean skulls in general) are pretty much

flat...

so what's going on up there? well, most of the beluga's head is taken up by soft tissue and a large organ called the melon, which is basically a big ol waterballoon of semiliquid fat!

(boob. it's a head boob.)

this organ is found in every toothed whale and dolphin species on the planet and it's INCREDIBLY important, because the melon is what lets them echolocate!

the actual sound-producing organ is inside their nasal passage of all places, which sits up behind there, but the melon is what's actually used to fine-tune the soundwaves into the laser-accurate pinpoints that dolphins and toothed whales are so famous for.

'hey we've been spying on you and tracking your every move. it's a culmination of state of the art technology and an unprecedented invasion of consumer privacy. a room full of men with made up jobs bent their will toward decades of constructing this system, defending it in court, and tirelessly innovating new ways to aggregate more data about you'

and the end result is

'yeah so uh we saw that you recently bought a car. so here's an ad for that car'

I know it is.

But I'm old, and I need y'all to just listen to me a second. Ten seconds maybe.

Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, there were kids outside. 40 years ago I was among Those Screaming Kids Outside.

Suddenly, kids being outside became a PROBLEM.

Some dumb fucks started suing parents when their kids got injured at their homes. They started calling CPS on kids who were "unattended" outside and levying abuse charges.

We went from It Takes a Village, to I'll call the cops on you if you hang out at the mall for too long without buying something.

It went from Hanging Out at The Park with Your Friends, to getting escorted home because a group of teens was automatically a Gang, and Gangs were terrible and awful and no one wanted their property values to go down because of hooligans.

No big kids outside. No one to watch over the littler kids, so no little kids outside. Less kids outside, more kids inside.

And hey, hey - Look At ME - I loved video games and computers and I was not a fan of "Outside". But I walked down to the Blockbuster than was 3 miles away from my house, and I rode my bike through parks and I played basketball in the street, and now that's gone.

Sure, kids carve out space here and there where they can, but as a general rule, it's all gone. It's paved over, under surveillance, with "This will be exhibit A" signs plastered all over the place.

The cacophony of loud, irritating, barely contained children missing from the day to day sounds of society were the first sign of its death, frankly. I don't know how it lined up to happen so fast, I'm sure someone smarter than me could point to the assholes that got the ball rolling in the wrong direction.

bonus/proof: