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theo van gogh was the one who suggested that his older brother vincent start seriously painting. as soon as theo was gainfully employed he gave vincent around 15% of his own yearly salary for art supplies, lodging, and food. about 2/3rds of vincent's surviving letters were to theo (including vincent's earliest and last letters), all of which were found stored in theo's desk. theo's child, vincent willem, was born on january 31st, 1890, and vincent was so delighted by his nephew that he painted almond blossoms for him. vincent shot himself half a year later on july 29th, 1890. theo's distress at his brother's death worsened his syphilis symptoms and he died half a year after his brother on january 25th, 1891 (four days before vincent willem's first birthday). theo was reburied next to vincent in auvers-sur-oise at the request of theo's wife johanna.

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do you know how many times i listened to let down by the radiohead while drawing this (i only started reading jean’s books recently sorry i was so andreil pilled)

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redesign of this pic from GAY magazine 1974 (if you know more about the source, please let me know)

[Image ID: a black and white typography edit that reads "are you man enough to be a fag? ask yourself!" beside the text are some flowers, also in black and white. the entire picture is textured to look aged and photocopied. /End ID]

click for quality + do not remove caption (instagram) (my shop)

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My boyfriend breaking up with me the day after wishbone dropped is going to be Everyone's problem very shortly

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(stumbling out of the document covered in blood) ok i wrote 100 words

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the world may be a dark place sometimes but there are also 1200 year old paw prints from a happy kitty cat out there

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Funniest and most correct internet usage is when I was like 10 and didn't understand what piracy was so I was just doing it all the time without even being conscious of the fact, yknow, "free online" implies that you are supposed to be paying for it somewhere else

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thinking about future/alternate world ecology and deciding what animals will be widespread in a speculative!north america. (yes has to be north america cause i cannot become familiar with ecology of anywhere else...)

speculative world where all the animals are dead= bad, implies that current state is hopeless, corrupting the message of the story. speculative world that has been restored to imagined pristine state in the past= overly simplistic, boring, raises questions about how that happened and how people knew what the goal was.

therefore, the goal is to have a vibrant and optimistic but wacky ecology where native animals, dubious genetic engineered versions of animals, novel adaptations and evolutionary developments of animals, and introduced animals are all mixed up all throughout the ecosystem, and no one knows which is which.

I'm trying to indulge my mad scientist goblin brain that says "okay what if we just released every species of large mammal onto the same continent and see what kind of ecosystem they turn into"

And on the research side of things, Texas is the closest we have come to trying this experiment; there are quite large and widespread populations of nilgai, auodad, axis deer, blackbuck, fallow deer, and scimitar-horned oryx in Texas because in the early 20th century we almost made nearly everything extinct so we decided to introduce a bunch of new game species for people to hunt. Meanwhile Florida is having the invasive species battle royale. As per iNaturalist, there are THREE SPECIES OF MONKEYS in Florida. There's hornbills. There's Nile monitors. Not to mention the Burmese pythons and iguanas that are everywhere wreaking havoc. There's capybaras in Texas and Florida. I tried to google capybaras in Florida and all I can find is a news article cryptically stating that they "escaped from a research facility" in the 90's.

What kind of research facility has a bunch of capybaras that can just...escape???

But some of this nonsense turned out to be pretty good for the species in question, for example, scimitar-horned oryx literally went extinct in their native range and are now reintroduced because a bunch of them were still lying around in Texas.

It seems like there should be more scientific data collected on these bizarre introductions but the only thing the news article was able to say about the capybaras was like "they could be considered an invasive species...if they start eating people's crops" dude what about the ECOSYSTEM

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You guys I have to move

Pros: much better apartment, right by my best friend, cheaper

Cons: I have So Many Books

You can only see half the other shelf. Trust me when I say it is also. Full.

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At some point, Danny was late to class so often that teachers began to refer to him as “the late Danny Fenton”. Tucker and Sam think it’s hilarious.

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I'm sure I'm probably not the first to send an ask about this, but did you see where a Danish zoo asked for people to donate animals they'd otherwise be euthanizing in order to feed their animals? I see a lot of people reacting really negatively to that and on an emotional/gut reaction level I understand why, but I also don't see an actual issue with this, and was curious about your thoughts on it.

I got a second ask on this topic, I'm going to paste it below and answer both at one.

"What is your take on the Danish Zoo asking people to donate unwanted pets to feed their animals? I’m in Australia and this is something unthinkable to me, no zoo here would ask for pets to feed lions so I wanted your perspective."

For anyone who missed it, here's what I think is one of the earliest pieces of reporting in English.

I can't get google translate to work on the text of the zoo's original IG post, but as interpreted by the media: the zoo is asking people to donate domestic and/or livestock animals in order to feed them out as (pre-killed) whole prey.

There's three things to discuss here, really. The practical/operations aspect of why they're asking, the emotional aspect, and the cultural differences involved. I can only really speak to the first two, so I'm hoping Danish readers will chime in about the latter.

The first thing to know is that feeding out whole prey or partial carcasses is really normal. It's important enrichment for carnivores, and it also has impacts on their jaw strength and the bone development in their skulls. In the US (which is the only country I can speak to knowledgeably), they're obtained different ways. Many whole prey animals are purchased from companies specifically breeding feeder animals - think like mice and rats and chicks. Larger animals are a little more complicated because they're expensive to buy. In many cases, especially for smaller facilities and sanctuaries, livestock that's going to be euthanized or culled is often donated to be used as food. I've seen it with cows, horses, and turkeys, and I think it happens with other species. To be clear, these donations are pretty closely vetted and are not sick with something that would be unhealthy for the carnivores: often they're old animals reaching end of life, or animals that have been injured and need to be let go. I don't know how larger urban zoos do it, but I know of smaller zoos and sanctuaries that will have the animals transported to them live and then butcher them themselves. So what the Aalborg zoo is doing is saying hey, we would like to feed out more whole prey, if you have an animal that you no longer want to keep (euthanasia in this sense seems implied, someone who is Dutch please check me), please consider donating it to us.

The problem is, right, that's a really hard thing to hear for the public. Especially if you're in another country and not looking at the original post in the original cultural context, instead encountering it through the Western media lens. I'm kind of surprised that's the way they decided to solicit donations - it makes me wonder what else is going on that they didn't to make the request privately to farmers or such, since that would be the US approach. Part of what makes the post so shocking is that it they asked for "pets" and not "livestock" or "farm animals", insofar as we know from the translation of the post. The idea of a pet has a level of emotional meaning that farm animals generally don't to many American (and probably other Western) readers. It's a very emotional thing to consider for anyone who has a close emotional bond with an animal.

Now, the aspect I can't comment well on is the cultural context of animal death and use in Denmark. I know that European zoos are much more casual about euthanasia for population management reasons, and that maybe there is less public distress over it compared to the US? Marius, the giraffe euthanized in 2014 who was then necropsied in front of the public for educational purposes, was at the Copenhagen Zoo. There seems to be different mentality in parts of Europe than in the US around animal management - and this is not an implication that it's ethically worse or anything - but I don't know how it manifests. I'd guess, though, it's part of why the zoo felt comfortable making a public request of their audience.

To follow up, I did find this article about a woman who donated a pony to the zoo in 2020, and it's in line with my interpretation of the situation. Here's a quote from the article:

"A 44-year-old Danish woman revealed that she once decided to donate her daughter's 22-year-old pony to Aalborg Zoo to be euthanised and fed to lions due to the pet's severe eczema and excruciating pain. Her comments came amid recent backlash against Aalborg Zoo after it asked people to donate small and healthy pets to be used as food for captive predators. The woman, named Pernille Sohl, told The Times that in 2020, she decided that Chicago 57, a German riding pony, had to be put down. While speaking to the outlet, she said she understood how the decision may sound "very dramatic and bizarre". However, the animals being sent to the zoo were "going to be put down anyway". "But they are going to be put down anyway, and it is not like they are alive when they are given to the predators," Sohl added.

The article also adds that so far in 2025, the Aalborg Zoo received "22 horses, 53 chickens, 137 rabbits, and 18 guinea pigs as donations." So clearly this isn't a new program (those can't have all been donated in the week since the Instagram post) and it's something a decent number of people are contributing to. I would guess it's almost, if not entirely, animals that are at end of life for various reasons, and their owners would prefer they have value in death. I don't find that shocking or extremely upsetting.

But, of course, the media doesn't understand how the field operates and can't really be bothered to take the time to find and provide that context. So they portray it through a lends of "how weird" and "scandal" and it ends up represented as something that's understandably distressing to a lay reader.

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i'm not usually jealous of binary trans people but life would be a lot easier if my transition goals were something like jesse pinkman or ramona flowers instead of my actual dream of being an amorphous shapeshifting pile of toxic sludge (sexy version)

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All I wanna do is draw this horse.

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tgis is so fucking funny to me. they accidentally Rock Lee'd a retired racehorse

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