staticespace

[staticespace]

[VD: TikTok by @/dunkin.ducks showing the owner and her pet duck sitting outside with a wooden table. The owner sits behind the table while the duck stands on top of it. After the owner's first sentence, she shows a clip of her duck drinking water with freeze dried strawberries, only to turn and show interest in her pink drink, where the owner asserts she cannot have it. After the clip, the video returns to the present as the owner lists common pink drink ingredients and prepares to make a duck-safe version. As the owner prepares her pink drink, the duck continuously pokes her head into the glass after each step, increasingly interested and enjoying the taste. By the end, the duck is sticking her entire head into the full glass, face submerged in the duck-safe pink drink. At the end, the duck wipes her beak on the table then flaps her wings, cleaning off with satisfaction. //End VD ID: Photo from the video with the duck's head completely submerged in the pink drink. //End ID] she's DEEP in the sauce

this duck LOVES pink drink

[staticespace]

your regularly scheduled reminder that tumblr operated with <20 tech staff for literal years. honestly even having like... 100 was a relatively new and short-lived development

[staticespace]

If not for the diseases, mosquitoes would only be mildly annoying and extremely helpful. But noooo, viruses and diseases had to fuck it up for everyone, and now we have to talk about the importance of mosquitoes before laws pass that ruin the ecosystem in a major way...again.

Mosquitoes actually are not replaceable in any ecosystem that naturally has them and that includes replacing them with any of the non biting species because these are the traits that make them so core to food webs:

Tiny

Can use every single pool of moisture to raise generations no matter how dirty and stagnant and low in oxygen

Can fly

Males get by on just sugars

Females take protein from larger animals to manufacture thousands more eggs

All these things combined allow thst ecosystem to make huge volumes of insects from conditions barren to most other macroscopic life. You might think there are other insects that seem to make huge massive swarms out of nothing but there's really nothing that hits all the same qualities *except other insects that also suck blood.*

It's the precise combo of being able to "prey" on things millions of times larger and breed in nothing but a few drops of filthy rainwater or the moisture in a rotten log. That's the most efficient combination for anything that size to multiply that rapidly where nothing else can even survive, except of course the things that can move in because they eat them :)

[staticespace]

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

[staticespace]

セーラースターＰｌａｓｔｉｑｕｅ

[staticespace]

The thing is I would be a lot less upset about paying $80 dollars for a video game if

A. The money actually went to the laborers and developers who made the game in the first place.

B. Prices for most console games were more flexible, and actually went down over time, rather than selling a years-old game from the last generation at a markup from it's original MSRP.

C. The price was adjusted for places where buying a video game can cost several month's paycheck.

[staticespace]

Some of you guys have never burned a CD and it shows

[staticespace]

[staticespace]

I can be shaped by more than the things that hurt me

[staticespace]

posting this for no particular reason

[staticespace]

After years of living in the adulting world, I think I’ve come to a realization: Manners exist to guide you to good conduct even when you’re in a bad mood.

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society.

Because most of the time, it’s not the waiter’s fault that the food you ordered wasn’t what you expected. It’s not the clerk’s fault that your account is overdrawn. It’s not the fault of the barista or the stranger on the subway that you got fired today or your favorite aunt died. But even when you can’t summon a smile or a cheery word, you can still have manners, because they will serve you the same in sunshine or rain.

[staticespace]

[staticespace]

whether you call it an "AMV", an "edit", or a "fancam", all of us, across generations, want the same thing: videos of The Character set to music. and i think that is beautiful ❤️

[staticespace]

'you are not immune to propaganda' is true but sometimes the way people deploy this particular soundbite reveals a complete unwillingness to attribute any agency or ideology to people who espouse some pretty heinous bigotry.

like there was a post going around recently talking about people whose parents became increasingly radicalized by fox news and it had one of those tumblr style comments on it along the lines of "REMEMBER! THIS COULD BE YOU! You are not immune to propaganda either. STAY VIGILANT" and the implication here is always that right wing radicalization is something that somehow happens to otherwise pleasant people without their consent or knowledge. But perhaps some of you guys just need to grapple with the fact that your parents might be more bigoted and reactionary than you want to believe.

nobody is immune to bad information ecosystems or groupthink or poor science or anything else that makes radicalization possible, but i do think the idea that anyone is just a bad news pipeline away from supporting white supremacy does a lot to let white supremacists off the hook. it's the same kind of line of thought that gets people to talk about how bad things in fiction shouldn't be 'romanticized'. its a kind of worldview that operates under the implicit belief that a human being is a vessel being uncritically filled with whatever you pour into it and does nothing to grapple with what the actual appeal of these far right talking points is to the sort of otherwise ""normal"" seeming people that can be sold on them.

[staticespace]

Also I've said this before but advertising is an industry that should be considered as pointless and harmful as fossil fuels.

[staticespace]

Did you guys know there's nothing inherently wrong with selfish thoughts and desires and there's no such thing as thought crimes or thought sins and a balanced amount of selfishness is healthy and adaptive for living things to have and it's fine to act selfishly as long as you don't harm others