Snakes and coffee

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

Now, through the efforts of so many wonderful people, Renegade Bookbinding Guild has developed out of the Discord server I originally created just to answer questions about paper, fonts, printers and such. I figured there would be no more than 15 people joining. We have surpassed 3000.

I hope in another 20 years time my little tutorial still be kicking along out here, my bad photography and potty mouth sitting forever at the foundational level of an exploding practice of radical generosity and community, preserving the best of fanfiction from the ravages of time and digital threats and censorship, and giving authors the best thank you I know how to give.

“In some places, such as Nri, the royal python, éké, is considered a sacred and tame agent of Ala and a harbinger of good fortune when found in a home. The python is referred to asnne ‘mother’ in areas where the python is revered, it is a symbol of female beauty and gentleness. Killing of the python is expressly forbidden in these places and sanctions are taken against the killer including the funding of expensive human sized burials that are given to slain pythons.” (x)

And more thanks to kaijutegu:

What do ball pythons eat?

Rodents.

Ball pythons are sacred in central Africa for the exact same reason cats are in north Africa and the middle east.

So they not only protected granaries, but they didn’t pose a threat to people as compared to other sorts of snakes which may bite or in the case of venomous ones, pose a threat to people and live stock. 

So they fulfill the two key things humans like in other animals 

1) Helpful to us 2) Not harmful. 

They were called “Royal Pythons” because they’re calm enough that you can wear them like jewelry, which some royalty did. It’s human nature to like animals that let us touch them, hold them, use them as we see fit and don’t hurt us. Even among Christian Igbo the snakes are seen as a positive animal, a gift from god, because humans tends to see animals as “good” or “bad” based on if they pose any threat to us. 

And that actually is fairly practical for humans to do, to distinguish ‘dangerous’ from ‘non dangerous’ and develop negative prejudices against ‘harmful’ and positive feelings towards “non-harmful/helpful” animals. 

Fascinating! What makes it so difficult to raise baby hermit crabs? How do we normally get them?

It’s up to chance as to whether you get eggs to begin with - you have to have crabs old enough, both sexes, a good set up, and crabs that are interested in mating at all. If you get eggs, then you have to get lucky & have the female correctly spawn them in the salt water pool - it’s not uncommon to have her drop the eggs on the sand, eat them, or drop them in the fresh water instead. You also need your salt water pool to be aerated so the water stays moving & oxygenated, or the babies will just die once hatched.

Once there’s babies, you have to remove them from the pool and put them in the right set up - aerated jars or a kreisel. For purple pincher crabs (which is the species I have), it takes ~25-35 days for them to move through the first five aquatic larval stages, during which you have to do water changes, feed them, and keep the environment clean. It’s impossible to siphon water & debris (sheds, dead larvae, food, etc.) out without also getting larvae, so then you have to try & retrieve them out of the waste water or you end up throwing out tons - you end up throwing some out anyway, it’s impossible to get them all. 

Once they change to the pre-land stage, megalopa (which is where I’m at), you have to have a new set up ready for them so they can start to look at shells and have space to move to air when they’re ready. If they’re still in water and make the final change, they’ll drown. If all goes well, they’ll get in a shell, move to land, do their first land molt, and then they’re officially a land hermit crab, with all the right parts.

He’s over 43 years old - he’s been with his owner Carol for 43 years and would’ve been at least a few years old already when she got him. You can find news articles about him if you search, he’s a famous crab! 

2) Jellies are not cephalopods they’re medusozoas

3) …ngl i really really love cephalopods i think they’re fascinating and octopodes especially are SUPER THRILLING to me because they’re so fucking smart, and I would feel, frankly, honored to be embraced by an octopus.

The owner is a well-known and experienced handler who has four other axolotls that are way more… axolotl shaped lol. But she is healthy, not being overfed or suffering due to poor husbandry.

Wisdom and her egg on Midway Atoll in 2018. Photo credit  Madalyn Riley /USFWS

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross and world’s oldest known, banded bird in the wild has returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial! 

She first appeared back at her traditional nest site on November 29 and biologists on Midway have confirmed that she has laid an egg.  Wisdom was first banded as an adult  in 1956, and although she is at least 68 years old, she is still laying eggs and raising chicks.

Wisdom and her mate Akeakamai return to the same nest site on Midway Atoll each year. Albatross often take time off to rest between egg-laying years, but the pair have met on Midway to lay and hatch an egg every year since 2006. 

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, but here we are.

As per this post from Tumblr, starting December 17th all adult content on Tumblr will be banned. Here are some of the key quotes:

Starting Dec 17, adult content will not allowed on Tumblr, regardless of how old you are. 

Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts. 

Written content such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr. 

Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy and before December 17, 2018 will still be overlaid with a content filter when viewing these blogs directly. While some of the content on these blogs may now be in violation of our policies and will be actioned accordingly, the blog owners may choose to post content that is within our policies in the future, so we’d like to provide that option. Users under 18 will still not be allowed to click through to see the content of these blogs. The avatars and headers for these blogs will also be reverted to the default settings. Additionally, posts from these blogs are kept out of search results.

So there are some interesting tidbits here in relation to this blog specifically. They are primarily going for pornographic material. I could (and would) argue that what I do is a sort of erotica/theater that would fall on the side of written erotica more than visual pornography (i.e. nothing happening in my audios is real and is a performance art vs. porn). 

However, what they’re going to do to self flagged NSFW blogs is essentially neuter them. Posts hidden from search, icon turned into a gross Tumblr default pic, and so on. Whether my content remains on the blog is purely up to Tumblr, but it’s clear that Tumblr can no longer be the key platform for my content. The good news is, we’ve been preparing for this!

You absolutely should go subscribe to my YouTube channel HERE, where I’m going to be releasing all sorts of old SFW audios this month and soon I”ll be posting totally new content with new characters!

If you want to absolutely guarantee that you keep getting my NSFW content, you can sign up on my Patreon HERE and you’ll get NSFW audios at the $1 tier. All the content that has been publicly posted is in the archive there. 

What I’m NOT going to do is panic, and neither should you. The writing was on the wall, and out of this mess I’m sure there will be people looking for a new platform that suits their needs, and maybe it’ll come around. I’ve still got a very clear picture of the future for YuuriVoice, and it didn’t exactly involve Tumblr all that much anywho. 

I’ll link the relevant links, and urge you once again to go follow, subscribe, etc. because this is it. For real this time. We’ve got two weeks, and then we don’t exactly know what this blog is gonna look like, so let’s make the most of it, yeah?

Crow’s Flight Tarot Spread

1 - Truth. What is my secret truth? 2 - Harbinger. What important message do I bring to others? 3 - Perception. What do I see that others don’t? 4 - Adaptation. How can I adapt to my current circumstances? 5 - Death. What must die so that I can continue to move forward?

I think it’s a fine way to keep a ball python, and so do other folks, such as @wheremyscalesslither (link goes to WMS’s setup howto post).

A well-set up tub is much better than a glass tank, by far.

The same money that you’d spend just buying the glass tank will buy you a much larger tub, and all the other things that you’ll need to set it up: thermostat, heat mat, decor, water dish, hides, substrate.

On that note, buy a large tub. As large as you can fit in your home. They’re so cheap at a home improvement store, and your snake will thank you.

Buy a tall tub, and put in some dowels that span the width, on different heights. Ball pythons climb, and do it well. Climbing will help keep your snake in good body condition. If there’s one thing I regret about my snake setups is how little headroom I afforded my BPs in their AP cages.

The Container Store has two right now that you can get for under 50 bucks.

https://www.containerstore.com/s/sterilite-tree-storage-box/d?productId=11009874

This one will allow for several climbing perches. I bathed Sunny in one of this size, so you can look through his tag and see how big it is.

And here’s the other, legendary tree storage box, not as tall, but quite a bit longer. I kept Sunny in one like this while a new cage was being manufactured and shipped, the linked video also shows the use of lashing straps. (This was an emergency adoption and I did the best I could at the time. I ordered a new cage for him right away – rather a new cage for Rocky, and Sunny got moved into Rocky’s 8-footer).

https://www.containerstore.com/s/storage/iris-44-gal.-storage-tote-with-wheels/1d?productId=11005991

You can order online for pickup in-store, and I think that is free. They also ship for free if you order over some amount, and you may need more stuff from that store.

BOTH these boxes I own, and BOTH needed straps around them to keep the lids on securely. The longer one, three. The shorter one, two. I personally own a shit-ton of these, from my other hobby, but these here seem to be good too. Just go to a home improvement store and ask for “lashing straps” – select some that are long enough to go around the bin, and buy several. AND USE THEM always.

#i texted one of the people i know in a corn genomics lab today#bc i was haunted and vexed from the memory of a pic she showed me like six months ago#of her in front of a solid wall of supercorn#and when i say ‘supercorn’ i mean like. literally four feet above her head#shes like 5 foot 5#i cannot make this shit up#but i kept wondering this week#if it was a real pic she showed me or if i had just dreamed it or smth#and she sent me the pic#its real#it looks like shes standing at the edge of a fucking jungle#and u kno what maize is? a grass. a fucking grass. a really fucked up grass#the image haunts me u . have no idea#maize

and after discussing the Just Really Big Corn more with the person in question, I have some more information about the offending Really Big Corn (the pic is coming up dont worry): 

-for those who are new to Exactly How Fucked Up Corn Is, corn, or Zea mays, is comprised of many varieties (called ‘landraces’) native to central and south america. They were first bred by the native peoples in the region from an ancient grass called Teosinte that’s still around today. theyre really fucked up. i cant talk about it here but trust me there’s a reason some people devote their entire lives to studying it

-the lab in question is a maize genomics lab, and does a lot of work with these landraces. sometimes this work involves bringing various kinds up to their lab at my university in Iowa to grow in test plots for experiments. you can see where this is going 

-so the supercorn itself. the supercorn in question is actually a collection of a few different landraces from the valleys of mexico and south america. they are naturally taller than what we would consider ‘normal’ corn in their native environment, but like corn generally is when brought to Iowa, they’re really fucking happy here and are a little bit taller than their natural height to show for it (we get longer days here then they get where they’re from, resulting in the plant getting slightly different growth signals, so on so forth) 

-i got the height wrong in the tags on the original post. my friend is 5 foot 7, not 5 foot 5. this corn is over 20 feet (6 meters) tall. they were grown from seed in this test plot. she says the stalks are as thick as bamboo to compensate for the sheer height. behold the image that’s haunted me for literally months: 

#i texted one of the people i know in a corn genomics lab today#bc i was haunted and vexed from the memory of a pic she showed me like six months ago#of her in front of a solid wall of supercorn#and when i say ‘supercorn’ i mean like. literally four feet above her head#shes like 5 foot 5#i cannot make this shit up#but i kept wondering this week#if it was a real pic she showed me or if i had just dreamed it or smth#and she sent me the pic#its real#it looks like shes standing at the edge of a fucking jungle#and u kno what maize is? a grass. a fucking grass. a really fucked up grass#the image haunts me u . have no idea#maize

and after discussing the Just Really Big Corn more with the person in question, I have some more information about the offending Really Big Corn (the pic is coming up dont worry): 

-for those who are new to Exactly How Fucked Up Corn Is, corn, or Zea mays, is comprised of many varieties (called ‘landraces’) native to central and south america. They were first bred by the native peoples in the region from an ancient grass called Teosinte that’s still around today. theyre really fucked up. i cant talk about it here but trust me there’s a reason some people devote their entire lives to studying it

-the lab in question is a maize genomics lab, and does a lot of work with these landraces. sometimes this work involves bringing various kinds up to their lab at my university in Iowa to grow in test plots for experiments. you can see where this is going 

-so the supercorn itself. the supercorn in question is actually a collection of a few different landraces from the valleys of mexico and south america. they are naturally taller than what we would consider ‘normal’ corn in their native environment, but like corn generally is when brought to Iowa, they’re really fucking happy here and are a little bit taller than their natural height to show for it (we get longer days here then they get where they’re from, resulting in the plant getting slightly different growth signals, so on so forth) 

-i got the height wrong in the tags on the original post. my friend is 5 foot 7, not 5 foot 5. this corn is over 20 feet (6 meters) tall. they were grown from seed in this test plot. she says the stalks are as thick as bamboo to compensate for the sheer height. behold the image that’s haunted me for literally months: