Hello!

oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”

hello, fellow apes

[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]

imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

#sometimes people will do a harry potter comparison to say ppl are morally obligated to join an informal boycott of another author's work #when that author is revealed as sleazy or abusive or bigoted #and i will be real: i just don't think that's true. #go ahead and stop engaging with that other person's work if that's what your conscience dictates #but it's not a very meaningful choice one way or the other #outside of what it means to YOU. #but harry potter is different. you actually do have to eschew that shit. #you can't even 'be a fan' without paying for anything-- you're still feeding into the cultural phenomenon #that allowed and allows this woman to act like a petty tyrant #and pump money into hate groups #it truly is unique. singular. unlike any other situation in literature. (tags via @flameswallower)

So the UK will reroute a fucking Internet cable for a fake grave for a fake elf because a bunch of brain dead nerds through a pissy fit, and meanwhile real actual natives in the US are getting arrested for trying to keep oil sand pipelines from going through their actual graves, holy sites and unceded territory. Burn it all down.

oh it's worse, it's not an internet cable, it's a cable for distributing cleanly generated solar/wind electricity

this grave has a real life physical location and YOU 🫵 can destroy it

they routed the project and such that it's close to an actual Bronze Age burial site btw. so they're possibly disturbing REAL graves in order to not "disturb" a fictional character's "grave"

Yeah, this is in West Wales - Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire. Shit head tourists keep going there and littering it with fucking socks and painted pebbles. It's in a national park and is environmentally sensitive, so yes, please, do go and destroy the fucking thing

When people argue that food from Chinese and Mexican restaurants in the US are not 'real' representations of that culture's cuisine ignore the historical reality that these dishes were developed by diasporic communities striving to recreate the flavors of home with available resources. Such criticism frames adaptation as a loss of authenticity, rather than recognizing it as a sincere and evolving expression of culture by people separated from their homeland.

(USAmerican trying to imagine a societal environment) Okay, so picture a highway,

inability to correctly perceive 3d objects is in fact far more dangerous when someone is driving a car next to you then when they're like, sending emails to you.

can we focus on the gnome for a second

wait sorry i was not wearing my glasses. that is a cat

these are the people i have to share a highway with

what if you 🫵 were a police officer temporarily transferred to work in a constabulary based in the town where you dropped out of uni, and you had to investigate a lecturer at the same college you attended, and you realised his wife was the same opera singer whose voice you have listened to for years, the same voice that got you out of one of the darkest moments of your life, and after a long investigation pushing you past the limits of what you can stand to see and what unveils the corruption at the heart of many higher-ups in the constabulary and in the government, you try to quit and you end up going to the opera singer's house and you practically confess your love to her and try to kiss her, but then after more investigating it's revealed she was the killer all along, the same woman who helped you survive being the woman responsible for the brutal and jealousy-driven murder of a 15-year old, and you walk onto stage after her final performance and give her a rose as you personally escort her off and then she hangs herself in the jail cell. like personally I would not have accepted that job in oxford after all that.