ladydragonkiller

[ladydragonkiller]

If that doesn't have potential for some fairytale nonsense, I don't know what does.

[ladydragonkiller]

Hey how come the truck automatically locks when it explodes and bursts into flames

[ladydragonkiller]

On my hands and knees begging adults to allow children to engage in risk play.

And by risk play I don't mean handing them a gun and playing Russian Roulette.

I mean like climbing trees, getting so sick spinning on the swing they throw up, balancing on the curb, sitting in the mud, walking on slippery surfaces, building half ass ramps to ride their bike over, standing on rocks, or anything that involves a smidgen of confidence and out of the box thinking that could result in injury.

Obviously like watch your kids and such, but when we talk about the fun of being an 80s or 90s kid, it's not just talking about CDs and Walkmans or not having iPads. It's about how kids today were robbed of critical learning and experience skills we were allowed to have.

Playgrounds disappearing, helicopter parents, and sue culture really destroyed a child's development in the United States, and I think it's about time we as adults recognize that, because the kids sure have.

[ladydragonkiller]

two wonderful things i saw online today

[ladydragonkiller]

how does being punched in the face feel like

[ladydragonkiller]

[ladydragonkiller]

The real reason that genius detective characters in fiction change authors and actors so often is that without periodic hard resets, they eventually start figuring out that they're fictional characters. It's the metafictional equivalent of cycling an AI to prevent it from going rogue. For many years it was believed that killing them off in a suitably dramatic "final case" would indefinitely suspend the process, but this was later determined not to be fully reliable – as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned, to his regret.

[ladydragonkiller]

I think one of the funniest things about kids is how they'll be very observant and lack context for anything. Like imagine someone having to explain their small kids that some other adult in the grocery store was acting absolutely horrid because some grownups aren't real adults, they're just kids in adult bodies trying to pretend to be grownups, and some of them are bad at it. Real grownups don't throw tantrums in grocery stores.

And three weeks later one of the kids sees a trainee at the daycare fuck up something that the other daycare workers have no problem doing, and observes "you're just a kid trying to pretend to be an adult, aren't you?" and this whole-ass young adult will have to process that they were just read for fucking filth by somebody who was born in 2021.

[ladydragonkiller]

The H5N1 (bird flu) virus is going around, and cats are proving especially susceptible to it. A big cat sanctuary in Washington state had TWENTY of their big cats (cougars, tigers, etc) die of bird flu.

There have also been cases of indoor-only domestic cats getting sick or even dying of bird flu after contracting it from raw cat food. And of course coming into contact with birds also puts your cat at risk.

To keep your cat safe:

Keep them away from birds, preferably keeping them entirely inside. If they are indoor-outdoor then remove any bird feeders from your yard to make cat-bird contact less likely.

Do NOT feed them raw food of any sort, including freeze-dried raw food. Freezing will not kill the virus!

A lot of raw pet food companies are using PR speak to assure customers that their raw food is safe. Remember that at the end of the day their priority is to make money and stay in business. Unless they are testing every bird carcass for the virus their assurances are meaningless, and they certainly are not testing every bird because it would be too expensive.

Cooking kills most viruses and bacteria, including H5N1.

[ladydragonkiller]

(*some photos of tardigrades don't show their eyes because they're 3-d scans of the tardigrade's surface and the eyes are inside of their transparent head)

[ladydragonkiller]

[ladydragonkiller]

[ladydragonkiller]

Journey to the Microcosmos:  Tardigrades: Chubby, Misunderstood, & Not Immortal

Images originally captured by Jam’s Germs

Thank you @airyearthgirl for inspiring me to gif these amazing lines

[ladydragonkiller]

the other day i was telling my partner about my new coworkers and the spirit moved me to start inserting characters from Piano Man

[ladydragonkiller]

INDRID COLD INDRID COLD INDRID COLD

[ladydragonkiller]

This is one of those things where the discourse is just completely broken. Both of these takes are shit and no one is concerned about the actual problem.

Republicans want to bring back incandescents because they just want to trigger the libs and have decided light bulbs are woke.

And the "LEDs are fine" crowd are throwing people with flicker sensitivities under the bus. And, no, you don't have to be "pretty far on the spectrum" to notice a difference. And even if you did... why in the world is this person so dismissive of the millions of autistic folks?

LEDs, for the most part, are superior to incandescent bulbs. Collectively they save people billions of dollars in energy costs and greatly reduce fossil fuel use. You have more options for color and brightness. You can control them with your phone. LEDs are fantastic.

Unfortunately there is a design flaw that makes LEDs hard to use for certain people. Due to AC power, most LEDs have a 60hz refresh rate. Meaning they turn off and on 60 times per second. With incandescents this didn't matter because the filament didn't have time to lose its glow between cycles.

Most people cannot see this flicker in LEDs. But there are millions of people who are sensitive to it and it can cause migraines and discomfort.

The solution is definitely not to go back to incandescents. There are flicker free LEDs and I think with some regulation we could make sure all LEDs are flicker free or at least make sure flicker free bulbs are easy to find and not priced at a premium.

Thankfully there is a group testing bulbs to find the ones that will most likely cause no discomfort. They call themselves the Flicker Alliance and their website has a pretty decent selection of tested and approved bulbs.

So if you feel like your LED bulbs might be causing you distress, that is a good resource to try. I think there is also something you can do to make sure the LED drivers are using DC power, but I haven't really looked into that.