ibraesil - Tumblr blog

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"Do you think bugs don't count as animals or something?"

Indeed, many people don't. Most people's everyday language doesn't even consider birds animals!

“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice, “and those twelve creatures,” (she was obliged to say “creatures,” you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose they are the jurors.” - Alice In Wonderland, chapter XI

[O]ne can hardly imagine anyone saying What a beautiful animal!, referring to a bird. And there are popular books with titles like Birds and Animals of Australia (which wouldn't make sense if birds were a kind of animal) ... [I]n common usage birds are not normally referred to as animals. Not many people would refer to a swallow or a magpie as an animal. Likewise, if someone asks, about an unknown bird What kind of animal is that?, we would want to say It's not an animal. It's a bird. Similarly, insects and fish are not animals in the ordinary sense of the word. It would be peculiar to hear someone say There's an animal on your collar referring to an insect, or to say There were some beautiful animals in the fish-tank. - Semantic Analysis: A Practical Introduction (2nd Ed), chapter 7.2.2

I have personally had funny reactions when I call insects animals (e.g. "There's an animal on my pillow"), because most people where I live have a primary sense for the word "animal" that doesn't include insects (but secondary senses often do).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if most people's primary sense of carnivore is much closer to "something I can imagine eating (part of) a person" than the scientific definition. I know personally that as a child I adamantly felt that insectivores like echidnas and frogs weren't carnivores, and I have no hesitation claiming that most English speakers would likewise not readily consider mosquitos to be carnivores.

(the real answer will be under the cut. pretty pretty please only look after you vote)

without looking it up, just based on your existing perception of whales and their diets, are you under the impression that:

- neither toothed nor baleen whales are carnivores

- toothed whales are carnivores, baleen whales are not

- both toothed and baleen whales are carnivores

- other (???)

- op why are you questioning us about whale diets. what prompted this.

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22.jul.24, 4:40-5pm

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I only ever shaved the right side of my face until after my 18th birthday to test whether shaving does make hair grow back thicker or faster or in any way differently, and I took before and after photos every time I shaved (which I sadly don't think was often enough to render the experiment valid).

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THEY MIGHT HAVE DISCOVERED SILPHIUM?????

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After I heard this SBS interview about Long COVID, I couldn't help emailing my local MP to say that I think Australia should regulate indoor air quality. I encourage others to do the same.

"Breathing clean air—breathing air that doesn't have virus in it—is one of only 3 things, really, you can do for respiratory diseases like flu, like RSV, and of course like COVID. The others being you can get vaccinated. For most of these, certainly for flu and COVID, and absolutely that's the first and most important thing that you should do and keep up with those vaccines. The other thing you can do is to get tested and act on that test—isolate, get treated if you're eligible to get treated, protect those around you sort of thing. The only other thing you can do is breathe clean air. That means you're in a room like we are at the moment, Greg, that I know has good air quality in it. And if you're not in a room that has good air quality in it or that room is crowded, you can wear a mask—a properly-fitted respirator-type mask, not just a surgical mask—that's kind of it. "And so the first reason we're interested in clean indoor air is that it's one of those things you can do. The second reason is it's the only one that, like drinking clean water, doesn't require a social license; once it's in place, people will just benefit from it, they won't have to think from it. So: it's a powerful tool, also doesn't require that social license. "Now while we're in this position, though, where we don't have clean indoor air, or we don't have standards for clean indoor air—noone knows when you walk into a space whether it's well-controlled or not—is that this is the big neglected public health area. I mentioned clean water already: well regulated. Our food: well regulated. Outdoor air: well regulated. Indoor air, where we spend 90% of our time: completely neglected."

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Absolutely. My parents house in Tasmania (on a mountain) was leaky and uninsulated until this year. Now that they've renovated, they can have the temperature inside be 16°C all the time instead of having to get the air temperature up to the mid 20s or higher to account for the fact that all the walls, floor, furniture, etc. are still 4 degrees.

A few other things to note are that direct sunlight and your own activity have a huge impact on how cold you feel. I've gone on a sunny walk at 11°C with a light jumper and felt very comfortable, but sitting still on a couch indoors on a dark 15°C day is a very different story.

The secret is to have a hot water bottle under the 3 blankets btw

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told my parents that whenever i dont know something basic about celebrities/media that everyone else knows i tell them its because i grew up on a commune

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i love writhing 👍

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tell me what the fuck europe has going for it. you dont even have tree ferns

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You turn off the light, cats light up the space

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I've always thought of these as adult versions of lego round dish inverted, lego round plate, etc.

One of the niche hobbies I have is insulator collecting. Insulators are the glass/ceramic parts that keep electrical lines from shorting out:

They come in all sorts of colors and shapes, some rare, some common:

They can be the size of a fist, or long chains:

The hobby is dominated by retired lineworkers. But it deserves so much more attention! They are often referred to as "crown jewels of the wire". Anyway, this is my niche infodump. Thanks for reading!

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They should make an alternate version of boba tea called kiki tea and its filled with spikes

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People tend to throw out the phrase "extremely specific kinks" as though that inherently implies something transgressive, but in my experience, the overwhelming majority of extremely specific kinks are so innocuous that you could see them in public and not even clock them. For every person who can only get off to having their nipples electrocuted, there are a dozen who are volcanically aroused by seeing their partner wearing one specific pair of socks.

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Photographers all know about polarizing filters. They remove reflections off the surfaces of objects. We use them to see into water or windows that are obscured by those reflections. But anything with an even slightly glossy surface has a layer of reflection on top. So if you have a shiny green plant, it can remove the shiny and reveal a very saturated green underneath. Polarizers also remove a lot of scattered and reflected light from the sky. Which reveals a deep blue color you didn't even know was there.

Here is a photo I took of my circular polarizer.

And the first thing I noticed when walking outside during the eclipse was the color of everything was more saturated, just like in that circle. Apparently, an eclipse significantly reduces polarized light and I got this creepy feeling because I was only ever used to seeing the world like that through the viewfinder of my camera.

The other thing I noticed was my outdoor lights. I leave them on all the time because I never remember to turn them on at night. And usually the sun will render them barely visible during the day. On a very sunny day they almost look like they are off.

But you can clearly see they are shining and even flaring the camera during the eclipse.

Our eyes adjust to lighting changes very well so it was hard to tell how much dimmer things were, but that is a good indication. I took this photo a few minutes ago and you can see how dim the lights appear after the moon has fucked off.

I did a calculation using the exposure settings between these two photos. The non-eclipse photo has 7 f-stops more light. That is 128 times or 12,700% more light.

A partial Pringle eclipse cut the sun's light by 99.2% and somehow our eyes adjusted to make it seem like a normal sunny day (with weird ass saturated colors).

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Jane Sheldon singing The Galaxy Beneath Me from ANTARCTICA by Mary Finsterer at Sydney Festival 2023 with Sydney Chamber Opera & Asko|Schönberg.

[full recording]

A woman in 19th century clothing lies motionless suspended in midair on a small stage filled with fog and lit with red light. The huge proscenium fills with words from an account of a flood.

Peaceful, pensive music plays while a voice whispers and the light slowly turns blue.

The woman sings. Her voice is very clear, with little vibrato - like a Baroque or Early singer. The melody begins plainly. Besides the movement of her mouth, she remains completely motionless. "Solitude, true solitude; the night black; horizons melt sky and sea. Somewhere... solitude." A few small ornaments are added to the melody - grace notes. "Milky Way smeared over all, oh shatter of stars crashing in vastness. Far from the lights of home." A different melody without ornaments, but more movement and wide intervals. "Oh see - there is no soul awake to see the shimmer of the night sky hanging in the water; the multitude of lights swimming." Now many simple ornaments on a melody with a lot of movement. "Tumble of starlight down among us to sleep in our darkness. Solitude." Now many difficult ornaments - complex mordents and runs - turn a simple melody into an acrobatic show with a strong sense of movement. Her tone remains clear and pensive, and she is still perfectly motionless in midair. The proscenium finally fills with text. "Underfoot, underdeck, a million tiny creatures! Underspace, a galaxy beneath- beneath me."

The singer and the orchestra slowly fade out, and a pure, piercing tone rings out then fades.

All of the text on the proscenium begins to fade.

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Applies to all men tbh

Hot take apparently but i do not think trans men should feel bad for being men. I love being a man! Being a man does not make me evil or dirty or violent! Being a man is not an inherently bad trait! I love all of my fellow trans men <3