#I have done for a while

[idontknowreallywhy]

Is there anything more irrationally offensive than the mouthful of calciforous bits in your last swig of coffee* made with a limed up kettle?

I know what it is and I know it’s basically harmless but it feels SO WRONG and yes I am yelping in horror and running the cold tap over my tongue to MAKE THE FEELING GO AWAY.

(*other hot beverages are available)

Soft water people need not engage. Just carry on enjoying your beverage-gravel-free lives.

[bubobubosibericus]

the guys at r/fuckcars doing the lord's work

[badolmen]

WARNING 18+

19

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

hero/villain showdown but one of them has a spontaneous medical emergency and the battle gets put on hold while their archnemesis drives them to Urgent Care

[hoshizoralone]

reflection

[artist-rat]

fine dining at the blushing mermaid. with the boogieboys

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[catsharky]

[Slamming fists on table] TIME STONES! TIME STONES!

This was pretty much my first thought when Amy showed up. I know it probably won't happen but wow it sure is convenient that the game Amy debuted in was the one with the magic rocks that control spacetime...

(I also just like the idea that Stone is significantly more effective than Robotnik and when sufficiently motivated to work against Sonic and gang, he just... wins. Good thing for them then that he wasn't particularly interested in those time powers beyond using them for a Resurreggtion)

My thought process here was that this was only possible because Stone had the exact time and position of Eggman's death down to the millisecond thanks to the livestream, and he wouldn't have been able to do this without that information. So no bringing back Maria, sorry Shadow 😔

Also sorry for putting you in a glue trap Sonic I sure hope that washes out

[gahhhb]

need more kikimari content💚

[theswedishpajas]

I have a lot of stuff I haven’t posted here for a WHILE now, but I am BACK with a BANGER

Full transparent stan without compression and other gunk cus I drew it and don’t wanna waste it

[puppppppppy]

spirit tracks my beloeved

[hinamie]

spiraling

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Learning to celebrate the little wins!

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Needed an excuse to draw sun in his natural habitat (unpaid babysitter).

[couch-house]

little comic for disability pride month! HoH rouge is a headcanon i've had for a while but I never do anything with it... tragic... well now I've changed that :)

[yellowtrinity]

left behind again