up to... something

THEY SURE FUCKIN DO.

many sharks are at least moderately social, and if a specific species of shark has the ability to breathe without actually swimming and tends to have a lot of sharks in a fairly small area, well.

they are just going to Pile. and there is simply nothing you can do about it.

it's pretty much slumber party or nothing for these guys. you won't find a whitetip sleeping alone except in the most dire and tragic of shark circumstances.

>thread is from 13 years ago

The craters of Mercury, which is named after the Roman god of messages and information (among other stuff), bear the names of artists: composers (Haydn, Verdi, Vivaldi), writers (Homer, Vyasa, Murasaki), and painters (Giotto, Harunobu, Goya).

Large features of Venus are named after women of myth: mountains and plateaux after goddesses (Freyja, Tefnut, Lakshmi, Aphrodite), plains after mortals (Guinevere, Leda, Lavinia). Smaller features are named after women of history: scientists like Lise Meitner, artists like Anna Pavlova, and rulers like Cleopatra.

Having been named first, the features of our Moon and Mars are a bit all over the place.

The lunar maria ("seas") are named after states of mind: Tranquility, Serenity, Ingenuity, and, uh, Moscow. Or after clouds (Mare Imbrium) and storms (Oceanus Procellarum). Craters bear the name of astronomers (Tycho, Hipparchus), physicists (Oppenheimer, Leibnitz), and space travellers (Grissom, Gagarin), but there's a bit of everything (Caesar, Icarus).

On Mars, we have the plains of silver (Argyre) and gold (Chryse), the Tharsis plateau, plains named after Greece, Isis, and Utopia, mount Olympus and mount Peacock, and more astronomers for the craters (Huygens, Herschel, Lowell). The moons of Mars are of course named after the sons of the god of war, Deimos ("dread") and Phobos ("panic").

Jupiter doesn't have many permanent surface features, of course, but its moons are named after Zeus' numerous lovers: Io, Europa, Callisto, the boy Ganymede, Metis, Leda, Pasiphae. One exception is Amalthea -- the goat that nursed him as an infant on Crete. The features of volcanic Io are mostly named after fiery, temperamental gods (Loki, Chaac, Amirani); those of Europa after places from Europa's own legend (Cyclades, Tyre) or Celtic myth (Conamara, Annwn, Dyfed); those of Callisto after Nordic myth (Valhalla, Asgard, Fimbulthul); those of Ganymede after Egyptian holy cities (Memphis, Abydos) and Mesopotamian myth (Mummu, Lakhmu).

The moons of Saturn are named after Titans, the brothers and sisters of old Chronos: Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Prometheus, Pandora, Iapetus, and of course the largest is just named Titan. The largest features of Titan bear the name of all orts of places of legend (Dilmun, Xanadu, Aztlan, Shangri-La), its creaters of deities of wisdom (Papuan Afekan, Etruscan Menrva, Lakota Ksa), and its hills after JRR Tolkien's characters (Bilbo, Gandalf, Arwen).

The moons of Uranus are all named after characters from Shakespeare's plays (Oberon, Titania, Puck, Miranda, Caliban, Cordelia) and Alexander Pope's poems (Ariel, Umbriel). Shakespearian names are also given to the craters of Oberon (Coriolanus, Falstaff, Romeo) and Titania (Calphurnia, Jessica, Imogen).

"Don't you feel foolish trying to make progress when the goal you're working toward is so far away??"

It's not a perfect metaphor--we are not nearly as insurmountably far away from accomplishing environmental goals as the knight in this comic, and every step we take along the way makes the situation significantly better.

—

“The Semiotics of Race, or: Walks on the Wild Side”

by Aaminah Khan

Source is Instagram user thatmodernlife. Per Reddit, this post was deleted quickly, and was captioned:

Like worstie, I can barely promote my own published book without wanting to curl up and die.

They’re just not disclosing it as ads, which they are supposed to do, and instead it's marketed in a very Tumblr-esque way which can be summed up as “omg guys look how CUTE this is” followed by a different account underneath going “omg found it!!” and it links to a drop ship site with the item(s).

And the link usually has an affiliate tracker in it, which you may or may not be able to spot unless you’re familiar with them, which is also something you are legally supposed to disclose.

I used to get a lot of offers from around 2016-2020 to sell “moon lamps” on here, y’know those orb lights that look like a moon? Yeah. I was offered a higher kickback to make it look like I wasnt posting an add because these sellers know Tumblrites don’t like ads.

They wanted it to look as organic and hyped up as possible and then I’d just so happen to be like “omg you guys it's on sale” and post a link. Which is skeevy as shit and also illegal af in the US.

It’s like the insta/tiktok girlies saying “link in bio” to get around saying “here’s a product I make money on if you buy it” because they want to sound like your friend because people are more likely to impulse buy stuff if a “friend” is recommending something.

They’re also trusting that everyone knows “link in bio” means “affiliate link” which is technically not enough of a disclosure but whatever.

This is why I tag all my own book promos with “affiliate links” because depending on which storefront you buy Hunger Pangs from, I may get a kickback from the vender which I do to help mediate the fees I lose from distribution. It’s not much—literal pennies in some cases—but I’m still legally required to state it.

It’s also why when I do post products I use or like, I make a point of letting people know I’m not an affiliate and not sponsored because despite the legal ramifications these people are flirting with by not disclosing their affiliate status, I want to be fully transparent with my followers when it comes to me trying to sell them things.

Y’all keep my lights on by reading my work and through my ko-fi and patreon. I am not about to risk that trust for the sake of some shitty vibrator sales from a sketch-ass drop shipper who wants me to pretend I’m not selling you things.

So, yeah. People do successfully sell stuff on here. A lot of us small indie creators sell our own work all the time.

These type of undeclared sellers are relying on you believing that Tumblr is different from other social media platforms where the advertising is usually more blatant. They are also relying on your trust in your community not to put undisclosed ads onto your dash.

After all, everyone knows Tumblr is a sinkhole where profit goes to die and everyone hates ads. Why would anyone waste time doing that here… unless they can adapt what they’re doing to make you think you’re not being marketed to, because Tumblr as a user base would never allow that kind of thing. Right?

Turns out, not so much.

Some people might say, “well that’s just obvious! You’d have to be really silly not to realize it!”

And maybe it was obvious to them.

I know it was obvious to me. But I also know I have enough online experience to play “spot the affiliate link” and enough knowledge as a indie author about how those links are supposed to be disclosed by law, to know when someone is being dishonest and trying to make a post seem organic and not like an ad.

But not everyone has the same knowledge or life experiences to put the context clues together, and that’s why I wrote the above post because many, many, many people on here are unaware they are reblogging ads—usually while talking about how much they hate ads!