astronomy in reverse

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”

I grew up on a farm two miles outside a town with less than 200 people. For a short while, there was a queer-owned coffee shop/art gallery on the main highway. It's where I spent the better part of an entire summer, just hanging out with my laptop. The owner would start experimenting with new drink ideas on slow days, and give me free ones in exchange for feedback.

"And he didn't get run out of town?!" Nah, because his mom owned a hair salon and did the hair of all the old ladies in town, and if they were jerks to her son, she would have stopped doing up their hair and they'd have had to drive half an hour into the city to find a new hairdresser.

My hometown isn't some bastion of progressive politics or anything, but like...it's not a two-dimensional caricature, either. I still live in the area. There are queer people. There are a lot of people of color, especially Black elders and Latinx immigrants. There are disabled folks. There's an entire group of found-family queer leftists who bought a farm together. I know of at least two pagan families, and multiple Jewish folks.

If you read "town of 200 people" and immediately assumed that all of them are white, Christian, cis, straight, able-bodied, republican landowners? You're extremely mistaken.

I'm from Florida, actually, which you'll recognize as being pretty notably in the South.

The American South has the highest population of Black people in the entire country. The three states with the highest population of Black citizens are Texas, Georgia, and Florida. [x]

Texas and Florida are both listed in the top three US states with the highest populations of Hispanic/Latinx people. [x]

Texas is listed as the overall second-most ethnically diverse state in America. Out of the five least ethnically diverse states, three of them are Northern states--Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. [x]

Six--SIX--of the world's top 50 largest Pride events happen in the American South--Houston, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, New Orleans, Charlotte, and Miami [x].

Florida and Texas are both listed in the top five US states with the highest percentage of queer & LGBT people [x].

Of the top five American states with the highest percentage of disabled people, four of them are in the South [x].

I could keep going.

For a long time I'd been assuming that they knew what they were doing, but today, via Peter Woit, I got confirmation. Cox writes in a memorial for Zucker:

“A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.”  

The Crows at the beginning of Six of Crows and at the end of Crooked Kingdom. I wanted to draw hands and it grew into something more. The designs are inspired by both the show and the books.

ID under the cut.

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

1) a very simple and genuine “i like your shoelaces”, which tells me that you are either a lesbian or a very cool ally

So anyway this post is dedicated to anybody who went through any transitional period during the pandemic. Whether you graduated, lost somebody, moved, or anything else where you will never truly be able to get the last months/year of [whatever] back. It’s so easy to feel like you should be over it by now and just be grateful whenever you can eat in a restaurant and go into stores again but you lost more than that.