#dash stretcher

[kedreeva]

Okay so, I don't think I've spoken of the saga here yet but! Gather round. I shall tell you a long story about the bird I just acquired and why she is VERY IMPORTANT.

At the beginning of last fall, I started looking into quail genetics a little more, because I got tired of not being able to sex my Celadon quail by their feathers. Originally I thought I could kill 2 birds (ok maybe more) with 1 stone and order nice jumbo wild type (which MANY places advertised as wild type jumbo) hatching eggs, and this would help me put some size on the Celadons (jumbo) while also making them feather sexable (wild type). Perfect!

But then I come to find out that pretty much all jumbo lines are jumbo BROWNS, as in they all have the sex linked brown (SLB) gene. So, I was a little confused and a LOT annoyed because I wanted to work specifically with the wild type color/pattern. No mutations just straight, plain wild type.

And EVERYWHERE I looked - major production hatcheries, private breeders through websites, Facebook groups, local swaps, craigslist, e v e r y w h e r e -

People ONLY had SLB.

This spring I came across a video showing about the differences between SLB and wild type and I figured if the person who made it can tell, maybe she will have some. So I looked her up (not in a stalker way, her farm name was stamped on the video and took me to the website), and what luck! She was in Michigan! Upper Michigan, so still a hike, but not California, y'know?

So I shot her an email and explained that I was looking for WT and that her site said she bred them and that people could do local pickup. She responded yeah she's totally got a bunch! And I said great, I'm also in Michigan, albeit far away, but I don't mind driving 7+ hours each way, because I really need actual, trusted WT for sure birds for my celadon project, can I come pick them up?

Cue the most frankly bizarre email chain in my short life. As soon as I mentioned that I was going to drive, or perhaps that I had a genetics plan in place, she got super sketchy and started saying how she hadn't really paid as close attention to SLB vs. WT, that it mattered less than she thought it would when she started, that I shouldn't focus on that either, and also that "fawn celadon is practically unheard of" in the hobby and "you should focus on a clean Tibetan because it's hard to find without roux in it) implying that I should concentrate on those things instead. And concluded by telling me if I really want WT, to contact this other person (why happens to be someone I can't stand). It all sounded VERY much like she didn't have wild type males, after all, and had thought I didn't know the difference so it wouldn't actually matter. But, it does. It actually matters a lot to me.

So I messaged back to say, well, I don't want to do any of those things, I specifically want to work with this set of genetics and you said you have them so I shouldn't have to go to anyone else??

And then she went radio silent for a week. I kind of figured I'd called a bluff, and that she was one of dozens of people I'd contacted who'd said they had WT only to find out they had SLB. I get that it's difficult to see the difference, but this particular person was the president of the American Coturnix Breeders Association or whatever (found out it's actually just a club formed by her and her friends a year ago, so not as impressive as it sounds, considering they don't actually DO anything- no putting on shows, no newsletters, no certifications, no public breeder directory, no finished SOP, nada), so I kind of expected she should know what she's talking about, if anyone does.

Eventually, after a week, she responded that she had been judging at a county fair, but she had a few heterozygous males (WT het roux, which is fine) and she could set a hatch for me for more if I wanted to come at the end of the month, but she's in WI now, not MI. I said sure, since where she was in WI was actually closer than where she'd been in the UP, and we arranged date/time.

The day of, my neighbor friend, Jude, comes with me for company/keeping me awake through the 15 hours driving round trip. It's a pleasant enough drive. We arrived at a cutesy little house on the edge of town that looks like anyone's house in a neighborhood, with a spacious lawn. The person meets us and takes me around the side of the house to a 6x6x1.5 or so chicken tractor, where she's got some male coturnix. She pulls the available males for me to look through and... fam, they ALL looked SLB, to me.

Now, she swore to me up and down that they couldn't be anything except WT het for roux, because of the way she is breeding them. But I've put these birds next to my SLB males and if I didn't have my males banded, I would not ever have told the difference between them. I still picked up 4 of them, because I will give it a go- worst case, I can produce plain Roux hens/plain Roux males for use in breeding later, best case they do actually produce WT hens and they just LOOK SLB and I have to figure out what the differences are. I don't want to leave without seeing her hens, which she has told me are all WT (which is why the males HAVE to be het for it), and she takes me back. Now the hens, the hens are easy to see the difference. White bellies first of all, but the chest feathers are also wildly different! The shafts are white, the dot around the shaft is dark, ringed in red, ringed in white. On an SLB, the shafts aren't white, it's just a black dot surrounded in a red feather, and the belly is all red/buff/cream, not white.

This is what an SLB hen looks like:

So I take a nice long look to memorize the color, and thank her for showing me and meeting, and we head back home.

I do fecals when I get home because all of the males are VERY thin, no meat on them at all, and since she said she'd been feeding Purina (garbage for fowl feeds), I figured that was why, but no- HUGE coccidia loads in all of them. So I treated them and got them on a better feed. They immediately began putting on meat, and they're find now.

The rest of this summer, I have spent going to local bird swaps and inspecting all of the quail I could find, hoping to find one (1) actual wild-type phenotype bird. Hundreds and hundreds of birds, I have pawed through them all, being super obnoxious to the owners I'm sure, holding and inspecting males. I found ONE suspected WT male (and this is a HUGE "suspected," he could very well be SLB with low red expression). I compared him when I got home and I'm doubting myself still, so I don't know if I will ever actually pair him with the SLB hens or if I'll just wait til I have a roux set.

Regardless, it's been a dry season for getting what I want. It's been a dry YEAR. Yesterday was another swap and more hundreds of quail and me pawing through all of them.

Until.

My eyes landed upon.... her.

If you've only lived in an area that has american crows and not ravens, you find yourself wondering if crows are ravens. You see a big crow and you think wow! maybe that is a raven! It could be a crow, but it's seems bigger so maybe it's a raven. But, if you take a trip to a place with ravens, and you see one for the first time, you realize that there is no question, when you see a raven. When you see a raven in person, there's no question and not only is there no question, you wonder how you could ever have thought a crow was a raven. It's laughable, while looking at the raven.

That's how finding this bird felt. I'd been picking up every SLB hen and going maybe this is actually WT? It could be SLB but maybe it's WT? But the second I laid eyes on her in the middle of a pack of SLB with some mixed colors, I knew I was looking at WT hen, and I can't imagine how I ever thought maybe an SLB hen was WT.

Here's a better photo of her chest and belly (she's beat UP from her previous home, the back of her head and most of her rump are plucked clean from males). You can see the white shafts and the white belly.

And some other pics of her, showing the grey-brown on her side and back- VERY different than the SLB hens

I can't express how stoked I am about this bird. This is the first time after a LOT of effort and time, that I have felt confident I am holding the bird I want.

She's also the indicator that I have a LOT of work ahead of me.

My end goal is to have birds that look like her, weigh 12-14oz, and lay large, blue eggs. I have birds that lay large, blue eggs, I have birds that weigh 12-14oz live weigh, and now I have at least 1 bird that looks like her, which means I can make more that look like her. The first step is cleaning the color mutations out of the celadon line without losing the celadon eggs. This is going to be a bit of a nightmare, BUT, I have a friend helping me out with getting a few celadons that are either WT or SLB (I'm guessing SLB all things considered) to start the work with. I will work over the winter to get a few more actual WT birds here, and to start crossing out the celadons with the SLB jumbos to clean out the other feather color mutations. Once I'm down to just SLB and celadon for mutations, I can clean the SLB out with the WT and roux lines.

This project will likely take me a good 2 years, maybe 3, to complete and then test breed to ensure I haven't lost the celadon gene and I don't have any hidden recessives lingering about. But just having the fucking materials to do it all on hand now is a huge step forward from where I was when I decided to start the project.

[deathrocket]

A quick and dirty RP policy guide

Bold all that apply to you and your blog. Italics if you’re on the fence about something. Feel free to add anything I may have missed in the appropriate category, or recategorize something that is in the wrong place!

My blog is _______

Open to all - Semi-selective - Selective - Moderately Selective - Highly selective - Exclusive - Only going to RP with mutuals - Mostly going to RP with mutuals - Indie - Affiliated with a group - Spoiler free - Spoilers tagged - Spoilers mostly tagged - Not spoiler free

I will RP with ______

Any fandom - Most fandoms - Only fandoms I know - Only people in my fandom - OCs - OCs with no fandom ties - OCs who are related to/know my character in their backstory - Only one version of any particular character   - People who have the same muse as me - People who do not have a rules page - Multimuse blogs  - People in RP groups - Indie RPers

When RPing, I like to use _______

Paragraphs - Shorter forms of text -  *Action* - Icons - Gifs - Gif icons - Formatted text- Whatever my partner is using - My own style regardless of my partner’s reply

I will ship with _______

No one - Anyone - Chemistry - Select ship - OCs - Others of my own muse  -Crossovers with characters from different fandoms - Only one version of a particular character - One person in my main verse - Multiship - One main/canon ship within my main verse

My blog WILL contain ______ in it’s content

Fluff - Angst - Gore - Violence - Smut - Blood -Torture - Shipping - Death - Dark humor - Cheating - Assault

I will follow ______ back

Everyone - Only some people - Most people - Only people in my fandom - Every RP blog - Only people I actively wish to RP with - People who do not post a lot of OOC - People whose posts I am comfortable with on my dashboard

To RP with me, you should _______

Follow back - Answer an open - Message me OOC - Message me IC - Make a starter - Answer my starter - Send in a meme - Like a starter call

Other:

I practice reblog karma with memes - I expect reblog karma with memes - I expect my rules/about to be read - I always read the rules/about before following/interacting - If you follow me, I would like nsfw tagged - I expect all smut to be beneath a read-more - I am a multiverse blog - I am multi-muse - I do not wish for my OOC posts to be reblogged - I do not wish for my threads to be reblogged by those not involved - I expect post length to be matched - I expect icons/gifs to be used in a reply if I have used them - I don’t expect post length to be matched, but I will try to match yours - I am patient when waiting for replies and expect the same courtesy

// found this old handy template. don't have a source for it, but i find it very useful. feel free to repost!

[soleminisanction]

There are very few ""headcanons"" out there that get a bigger side-eye from me than people who try to make Stephanie Brown into a Black girl.

Firstly because that is not a headcanon. That's just a whole-ass retcon created out of thin air. A headcanon would be saying she's a natural redhead like how Morgan Kohan played her on Batwoman, or that she's mixed-race because of the curly way some artist draw her hair. There's definitely flexibility in race interpretations for comics but looking at the blue-eyed blonde-hair white girl and declaring her "actually Black" is not one of them.

Secondly, because I have seen (and sometimes gotten) a lot of harassment from Steph fans aimed specifically at Tim's actual, canon Black love interests and teammates. I still seethe at the memory of this one CBR interview I read back when YJ2019 was running, where Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker were clearly there to talk up Naomi and Teen Lantern, and in the middle of their heart-felt conversation about the importance of representation for young Black girls, the interviewer butted in to interject, "But you know who I want to see more of?? Stephanie!!!" This going on while Steph fans on Twitter were going on racist tirades because the book dared to highlight the history of Teen Lantern, a character who was actually advertised to be a part of the book and a new member of the team, instead of giving them more of their white-blonde fav who had never been affiliated with YJ and was never part of the advertising.

Thirdly, she was created and so often written by Chuck Dixon, a blatant racist, and as a result there are so many little scenes of her that have uncomfortable racial elements to them. Like the one where he created a pair of Black girls just so Stephanie could call them "raging morons" to their faces and then later talk about how stupid and immature they are compared to her. (Which I am still convinced was Dixon directly criticizing the much better teen pregnancy subplot from Icon & Rocket). Or the borderline-blackface white savior ""demon"" where she wears a dead gnu and maybe accidentally calls herself a bitch in Swahili. (Disclaimer: I do not speak Swahili, and thus do not know how a sentence structure that should read "I am thorn" turns into "I'm a bitch" or "I'm crazy," but I checked that translation with three different robo-translators and got the same results so, shrug.)

And finally -- god, Steph is just, such a walking avatar of white women's privilege. Her entire thing is demanding that she get her way, never letting anyone tell her no, and still being treated by the narrative as a pure-hearted ""beacon of hope"" that everybody needs to protect and nurture at all times.

The inciting incident of War Games can be boiled down to, "A white girl got told no, and made it everybody else's problem." The first attempted Black member of the Batfamly fucking died during that event and got almost entirely forgotten because people only went to bat for the white girl who caused the whole mess and the white woman who got character assassinated to kill her off.

If Stephanie were Black, she wouldn't exist anymore. Fuck, if she were a brunette or just as butch as Carrie Kelly, she probably wouldn't exist anymore. She certainly wouldn't be Batgirl, I can't imagine Dan Didio replacing Cass with another woman of color.

And it's not even just her? Her father is also a very white character. It is incredibly easy to summarize Arthur Brown as a mediocre white man lashing out at the world for not handing him the success he felt entitled to. Take that petulant entitlement away from him and you lose his entire character.

I'm ranting about it on my own blog instead of picking a fight because everybody's entitled to their own fandom experience and blah blah, but this is just. Yeah. Ugh.

[snarp]

Documenting a Tumblr post editor glitch

Fig. 1: I stripped the formatting from some text from an MDN article, copy-pasted it into the Tumblr browser WYSIWYG editor, and used the editor to add some italics back into the last two paragraphs. I then saved the post as a draft. The preview on the Drafts page looked normal both after saving and and after reloading the page.

Fig. 2: I re-opened the draft. The italics had moved. Specifically, the italicized text segments had remained the same length, but they had been offset backwards to cover earlier text. Examples using parens to evade glitching:

- "The (Queen Mary) sailed last night" became "T(he Queen M)ary sailed last night"

- "The word (the) is an article" became "The( wo)rd the is an article"

Fig. 3: Saved the draft again without making any changes to see if the problem was just in the WYSIWIG editor view; it still looked glitched; I refreshed the drafts page; still glitched. I opened it in the Firefox element inspector to see what it looked like. Still the same offset issues!

The MDN article: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/em#i_vs._em

The raw text I pasted in: https://gist.github.com/Snarp/7b268ae1d9f707d7cbec10b30268cdc0

[asmuchasidliketo]

Under the cut: a long article by the author about gay marriage

Source

Here’s How 9 Predictions About Gay Marriage Turned Out

Not often—in fact, pretty much never—have I been lost for words in the gay-marriage debate. But the Supreme Court’s national legalization of marriage equality leaves me gaping and gawping like a guppy. For a homosexual man of my generation, born in 1960 and deeply etched with wounds of self-loathing, discrimination, and bigotry, events in America now feel like the end of a Hollywood movie. Or, perhaps, the beginning a classic rock song, by Queen. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Although most people correctly predicted how the Supreme Court would rule in Obergefell v. Hodges, my overriding feeling is still, in a word: surprise. How—how in the world—did we get here? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about same-sex marriage over a period of two decades, including many predictions. Perhaps there is insight to be had by looking back on nine of them.

How did I do? A mixed bag. Three of my predictions have been wrong, indeed spectacularly (and revealingly) so. Three have been borne out (also revealingly). The jury remains out on three more. Let’s start with those.

1) “A Supreme Court decision imposing gay marriage will spark a fierce backlash.”

For years, I said the federal courts should butt out of the gay marriage debate and leave it to states, where consensus could be gradually and organically developed. I feared that involving the U.S. Constitution too soon would short-circuit a vital process of social persuasion and deprive us of the deeper kind of civil rights victory that comes only from broad public consensus, not from courts.

It’s too early to know how Obergefell will go down. Republican presidential candidates are mostly hostile. But I believe my prediction, although sensible at the time, has passed its sell-by date. A solid national majority now supports same-sex marriage, and holdout states are moving in that direction. When I asked a couple of well-connected social conservatives whether they or others in their world were likely to go to the barricades in a multi-decade campaign of resistance like the one over abortion, both said no. One of them told me, “We could all see that the battle over same-sex marriage was over, and that was true regardless of how the court ruled in this case.”

Here is my guess: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the court’s five-member-majority decision, is the most astute politician in America (counting Bill Clinton as retired). He has shown a flawless knack for knowing how far he can bend public opinion without breaking it, and I believe he has correctly judged that the country is ready to accept his decision.

2) “Gay marriage won’t lead to polygamous marriage.”

Predictably, the Court’s decision led to another of countless rounds of forecasts that the marriage-rights movement will now expand to multiples. (Like this.) Again, we’ll see, but I’m willing to stand by what I’ve long said: the case for gay marriage is the case against polygamy, and the public will be smart enough to understand the difference.

Gay marriage is about extending the opportunity to marry to people who lack it; polygamy, in practice, is about exactly the opposite: withdrawing marriage opportunity from people who now have it. Gay marriage succeeded because no one could identify any plausible channels through which it might damage heterosexual marriage; with polygamy, the worries are many, the history clear, and the channels well understood.

I won’t repeat the reasons; you can read some of them in this article by me or this new book by Stephen Macedo, among many other places. Predicting politics is hard, but I believe polygamy, if it even gets traction as a matter of public debate, will be decided as a policy question, not a civil-rights question—and the answer, correctly, will be no.

3) “Same-sex marriage will be part of a broader renewal of the culture of marriage.”

I’ve always believed that cultural conservatives misunderstood the gay-marriage movement: far from being an attack on the culture of marriage, it represented a shift back toward family values by a group that had learned the hard way, through eviction by their own parents and suffering in the AIDS crisis, how important marriage and commitment and family really are.

Perhaps same-sex marriage will not have cultural coattails. I hope and believe, however, that gay America’s embrace of marriage has sparked renewed interest and appreciation among straight Americans. And the marriage-equality movement has warmed many on the social left to a pro-family agenda. It’s possible now, as never before, to be pro-marriage without being anti-gay. And the big message of gay marriage—“Pro-marriage is pro-equality”—resonates across the spectrum. More than 100 prominent Americans, of varied political and partisan stripe, have already signed a statement calling for a new Marriage Opportunity movement building on the cultural momentum of gay marriage. This is only a beginning, but it is a breeze in the right direction.

So those are predictions where the jury remains out. Now for three I was right about.

4) “Marriage will transform gay culture.”

I supported same-sex marriage for many reasons: its message of legal and civic equality; its promise of support and stability for gay couples and their kids; its potential to broaden and universalize the culture of marriage; and more. Right up there was my belief that the gay culture I grew up in was toxic and that marriage could change it.

In the 1970s, when I came of age, being gay seemed to mean leading life in a Mephistophelean subculture that was obsessed with sex and alienated from love. In that world, gay people could have casual sex with multiple strangers, but publicly holding hands and exchanging vows were unthinkable. Gay culture internalized the legal and social repression of committed relationships in ways that twisted our psyches, distorted our communities, and ultimately fed the tragedy of AIDS.

Today’s national debate about a culture of promiscuity and dangerous sexual behavior revolves around drunken straight frat parties, not gay bathhouses. This is partly because of AIDS, which shut down the baths. But it is also largely because of something I was right about: by tying sex, love, and commitment together into a coherent whole, marriage could heal a broken gay culture. The sexual underworld was not an inherent feature of homosexuality, as our critics charged; it was an artifact of life without marriage, and therefore without a destination for love.

Though casual sex and dangerous promiscuity aren’t dead (and never will be, among gays or straights), they no longer define gay culture—and never will again. Gay marriage represents our time’s greatest triumph of social conservatism, as today everyone except social conservatives can see.

5) “Marriage will heal gay kids like Jon.”

My biggest interest in marriage, though, was very personal. I understood as a young boy, long before I had any inkling about homosexuality or sex, that marriage was not for me. And this knowledge was devastating. Every step I took toward sexual love was a step away from marriage and all the social approval and personal stability that went with it. I had seen my own parents’ marriage fail painfully and harmfully (not least to me), and I yearned for the kind of stability and contentment that I saw marriage bring to my friends’ parents. Desperate to keep that option open, I spent 25 years twisting myself into neurotic knots in an effort not to be gay. (You can read about it here.)

When the idea of same-sex marriage came on the scene, I immediately saw it as a form of vaccine against homosexual self-hatred. I imagined how much different, and better, my life would have been had I assumed as a young child that the path to marriage was open to me: that I could love, and be loved, within adult life’s most sustaining and engulfing institution.

Today, young gay children know from the first whispers of sexual awakening that they can progress from their first crush to dating, committed relationships, and a destination in marriage. And for the most part that’s what they are doing. Marriage has been a miracle cure for gay self-hate. Of course being young and gay will always be difficult and confusing for many people. But now it can also be something it never could be before: normal.

6) “Gays will actually get married.”

Actually, I didn’t quite have the nerve to predict this. In fact, I worried about it. In 1996, when I published a big article on gay marriage in The New Republic, I ended it this way: “The biggest worry about gay marriage, I think, is that homosexuals might get it but then mostly not use it. … It is not enough, I think, for gay people to say we want the right to marry. If we do not use it, shame on us.” Twenty years ago, after all, many in the gay-rights movement saw themselves as sexual liberators, rejecting “heteronormative” straitjackets like marriage.

I’m going to put this in the win column, because in my heart I always believed that gay America would embrace marriage. Before long, I saw I was right. A turning point came on that day in San Francisco in 2004, when same-sex marriage was briefly legalized and the world saw gay couples lining up outside the courthouse and around the block. (There are some marvelous photos here.) Massachusetts, legalizing gay marriage a few months later, saw a similar rush to the altar—a rush that has never stopped.

Irving Kristol, the late conservative editor and commentator, used to joke about gays and marriage: “Let them have it, they won’t like it.” Boy, was he wrong. Gay couples have reminded the straight world how much marriage really matters.

And, finally: what was I wrong about? Here are the biggest three surprises:

7) “Gay marriage will take decades, if it ever happens at all.”

When I published my first words advocating same-sex marriage (for a memorable Economist cover and editorial in January of 1996), I thought I was writing for some future generation. Almost nobody supported the idea or even took it seriously. Getting a gay-marriage bill introduced in even a single house of a single state legislature was unthinkable. The courts were rudely dismissive, except in Hawaii, where their openness to the idea sparked a state and national backlash—led by Democrats, notably President Bill Clinton. This was not an uphill battle. It was no battle at all. It was a flea annoying an elephant.

I was astonished when Massachusetts’ supreme court legalized gay marriage there in 2004, only eight years after the notorious Defense of Marriage Act swept through Congress: and I’ve been astonished ever since. I was not only wrong about the pace of change, I was wrong by an order of magnitude. I forever nagged gay-rights advocates to be patient and go slow. They retorted that I was underestimating the country’s movability. It took a few more years, but starting in 2012, when the tide turned, they proved right. I have never been so happy to be wrong.

In my defense, there is no precedent in American history for so rapid a fundamental social change. The folks at Bloomberg put together this nice graphic illustrating the point. Everything I knew about social change foretold a long, slow battle. Why change came so quickly and dramatically will be debated for generations. It could only happen, I think, because a lot of vectors converged. I’ve tried to explain some of them in this 2013 article. Whatever the reasons eventually prove to be, I stand by what I concluded in that piece:

At the end of the day, however, to me an element of mystery remains. America’s change of heart toward its gay citizens is the greatest awakening of mass conscience in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but it was achieved with far less bloodshed and bitterness. It is born of persuasion and love, not violence and hate. Witnessing this awakening has been the most exhilarating and humbling experience of my life. Explaining it completely is, perhaps, impossible. Or perhaps I just want completely explaining it to be impossible. It feels, after all, like a miracle.

8) “Marriage will retire the gay civil-rights agenda.”

Marriage, it always seemed to me, was the big kahuna for gay equality: so powerful in its symbolism and social reach as to come about only when there was little or nothing else left to be done. I assumed that traditional civil rights protections forbidding anti-gay discrimination by employers, landlords, and commercial businesses would be much less controversial than marriage and would be settled much earlier.

Oddly, I was wrong. Marriage was indeed much more controversial; today most Americans believe, incorrectly, that discrimination based on sexual orientation is already generally illegal. Yet marriage is now legal nationwide, but a majority of states and the federal government still lack antidiscrimination laws!

Indeed, antidiscrimination laws appear to be growing more controversial, because religious organizations see them as coercing participation in gay marriage. Conservative states are lining up to pass laws that shelter religious organizations, people, and businesses from antidiscrimination provisions. Like it or not, marriage or no, the battle over gay civil rights rages on.

9) “Writing about gay marriage will wreck my career.”

This was my father’s prediction, not my own. In 1995, he begged me to reconsider my leap into advocacy for same-sex marriage because, he said, the whole idea was so nutty that by favoring it I would give up my standing as a serious journalist. Twenty years ago, his qualms seemed perfectly reasonable.

I leapt anyway. And opprobrium never came. Instead I found astonishing receptivity. Never, to my knowledge, have I been punished or marginalized for saying my piece about marriage; time and again, my case has been welcomed in America’s most prominent journals—including some leading conservative ones, such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial positions were very different from my own.

In the wake of Obergefell, I received tweets and emails lauding my heroism. The truth is more like the opposite: after taking some risk initially, I never suffered or sacrificed at all. The real heroism was displayed by the culture and country, which opened its ears and ultimately its mind. For all the talk (some of it justified) of political correctness on the left and epistemic closure on the right and shrillness and polarization everywhere, I have learned that America, today as much as ever, or maybe more than ever, is a place where people can be brought to listen, consciences can be pricked, ideas can matter, and small, marginal voices can make themselves heard. That, to me, is a greater miracle even than gay marriage.

This is really sweet

So for my AP United States History class we have to write a research paper; my topic is the gay rights movement in America. Today I began reading one of the books that I chose as a source

And I opened it up to the dedication page and found this

And if you don’t think that’s one of the sweetest and most romantic things ever then get out of my face

[kedreeva]

This is Eris (left, 2020) and her younger half-brother, Bismuth (right, 2023)

This is Citrine (left, 2023) and her full brother, Bismuth (right, 2023)

I've talked a lot about how breeding and care matters so hugely to these birds, but I think this is a really obvious example.

When it comes to choosing breeders, 99.9999% of breeders I've seen and spoken to are mainly looking at the males and how pretty their colors are, and largely ignoring the hens. "Any" hen will do- I RARELY see people being choosy. Maybe they don't know how to be, maybe they think it doesn't matter - the hens are not as flashy, so what difference could there really be? - maybe they just don't care, maybe it's hard to find nice ones anyway because people don't care. I don't know. Once in a while I see people going gaga over a nice spalding hen with a lot of color on her, but by and large, they're ignored.

These three birds share a father. Indie is a beautiful boy, and he held his color very well, but honestly his train carriage left a lot to be desired and he was pretty small compared to my own birds. Regardless, he made a few really nice kids, including Amber (Bug), Bismuth, and Citrine (The Trio). He also fathered Eris, Opal, and Onyx, though not with my hens and not on property.

And here's where we get to the point. This is Eris' mom, Sasha:

And here is The Trio's mom, Aurora:

Sasha was itty bitty, with a small head, and very short legs. She also didn't have particularly good color- almost none, if I'm being honest, and her train carriage was Not Great. Aurora, on the other hand, while not as leggy as her offspring (which is partially due to feed... I raised her from 3mo old 15 years ago when 'game bird feed' didn't exist and the recommended "best" feed option was chicken layer feed mixed with kitten chow... atrocious by today's standards), still has pretty good type and excellent color. She typically carries her train high, she's spurred, she's Big. She's also an EXCELLENT mother and broody.

On top of having Sasha for a mom, Eris was raised in a brooder, and later in a small pen, and on feed that was 18% protein (instead of the 26-30% they should be on). She didn't have the space early on to use her leg and wing muscles, and it shows in her type. Even though i got her when she was just a couple of months old, those first few months are crucial to their development. Feed and environment can only go so far though.

Anyway, you can see the difference in breeding and care here. Eris is short, stout, short necked, and her rump curves down. Her face, particularly her beak length, is short like her mother's. It's hard to see in the photo, but I assure you her neck lacing is thick/muddy. In contrast, Citrine has thin, clean lacing, she's nearly as leggy as her brother, her neck has richer and more purple color, and her rump does not curve down- you can see the bend where her tail begins and is held down. She's also quite slender/racy in body type, like a good game bird should be, rather than heading toward the stout body type of domestication.

I can tell people that hen choice and care/environment matters until I'm blue in the face, but honestly, I think having comparison photos really brings it home.

[snarp]

Results from Bing Image Creator DALL-E prompt "Sesshu's "Winter Landscape."":

The images produced resemble generic wilderness winter landscape paintings with no obvious influence from Sesshu's style! It doesn't know who Sesshu is.

Results from Bing DALL-E prompt ""Winter Landscape" by Sesshū Tōyō.":

The images resemble generic winter landscape paintings, with stylistic quirks in the foreground elements (trees, stones, and water) influenced by ukiyo-e, not by ink painting. Mountains and foliage seen in some backgrounds resemble ink painting - but not Sesshu's style.

Conclusion: DALL-E's dataset contains enough information to allow it to categorize "Sesshu Toyo" as a Japanese name; its text parsing presumably tells it that it's a painter's name; it adds up "Japanese painter" and "landscape" to "probably ukiyo-e."

Results from Bing DALL-E prompt "The famous Zen ink painting "Winter Landscape" (c. 1470s) by Sesshū Tōyō.":

The images are clearly based on ink landscape paintings, one having what appears to be an attempt to design an artist's signature seal in the corner. However, none of the four employs the angular lines, abruptness, gritty texturing, and "paradoxical" sense of vagueness which distinguish Sesshu's style. Too round and soft.

Implicitly, DALL-E's dataset contains examples of the phrase "(Zen) ink painting," but either it has nothing by Sesshu specifically (???) - or the data doesn't just doesn't actually associate his work with his name.

Here's the original painting for comparison:

[kedreeva]

It's been ten years since I added Lenore's story to this post, and the notes are absolutely chock full of more stories about reasons to adopt the less adoptable kitties, cannot recommend enough going through them. This comic has single handedly inspired so much good in the world for special needs kitties.

Lenore passed on at the ripe old age of 18 (and possibly older, since I never knew her actual birthday/age exactly). She loved us to the very end, and I have no regrets about adopting her. It makes me so happy to see her story continuing to travel, and in combination with this beautiful comic, continuing to inspire folks to adopt adult and special needs cats. If I could have explained it to her, I think she would have liked that as a legacy.

This was meant to be a quick warm up, but it turned into a comic that I’ve wanted to draw for a while. This is something that is extremely important to me, and I appreciate it if you read it.

A while ago, I heard a story that broke my heart. A family went a cat shelter to adopt. The daughter fell in love with a 3-legged cat. The father straight up said “absolutely not”. Because he was missing a leg. That cat was that close to having a family that loved him, but the missing leg held him back. Why?!

Many people have the initial instinct of “nope” when they see an imperfect animal. I get it, but less-adoptable does NOT mean less loveable. 9 out of 10 people will choose a kitten over an adult cat. And those 10% that would get an adult cat often overlook “different” animals.

All I want people to do is be open to the idea of having a “different” pet in their lives. Choose the pet that you fall in love with, but at least give all of them a fair shot at winning your heart.

Don’t dismiss them, they deserve a loving home just as much as any other cat. They still purr, they still love a warm lap, they still play, they still love you. Trust me, next time you are in the market for a new kitty, just go over to that one cat that’s missing an eye and see what he’s all about!

[kedreeva]

I would love to hear about the otherworld marketplace

oh right!

Okay, so the REASON I went the expo yesterday, when we weren't planning on it previously because it is Distant, is because my friend that takes me had to exchange some caging, and the crafters were going to be at the show, so why not vend as long as we're out there if we're driving 2+ hours each way anyway. So we vend the show, it goes well, we have fun, everyone's packing up... except the vendor she's exchanging caging with, who tell her they're going to be at least another hour packing up etc and also they don't have the cages with them, we'll have to drive to their brick and mortar shop.

Well, whatever, that means we can go grab some food. We look up sushi places, grab the first/closest one, and drive out. GPS takes us to a mexican restaurant. we fiddle with the GPS and when swapped to "walking" it tells us actually it's across the street. We can't see across the street because of trees, so we drive across the street, and there's a Mall. Like a legit, old mall- and I realize with a bit of dawning horror that I KNOW this mall, it was built a couple of years before I went to college, it was shiny and new when I first visited it, we used to come here often. I did not recognize it because it looked like it at been through some kind of apocalypse. So I turn to my friend and say, we have a choice, we either go in and get Mall Sushi from a food court, or we pick someplace else. She stops her car in the middle of a road, not a parking spot, and we both look at the list of sushi places nearby. I see one just plainly called "sushi market" and it looks normal and there's a picture of its storefront indicating it is, perhaps, not Mall Food Court Sushi, and we take off.

I am expecting a Hole In The Wall sort of strip mall place like the two near my childhood home, but instead we enter The City.

The City, if you do not know, is the same place. You enter into it and you may or may not have been to this city before but you have been to The City and it all looks the same, really. The shops maybe have different names, but it's unclear if that is because time has passed and the coral reef of storefronts has grown/exchanged inhabitants or if this is a different place entirely and actually it doesn't matter. Which street you entered from may determine which stores you see, but you are always entering The City.

This place we are going is a hundred yards outside of The City, and looks like it. It is the same 100 yards outside of The City that exists down by my little sister. If the air had tasted a little different, I would have told you for sure I was in North Carolina visiting my sister, not a little bit lost in northwestern Michigan. We park in a little street parking place and look around hesitantly. There's a storefront for a bagel shop. There's a storefront for a local barbeque (local to ME, not this place, or at least I thought that was the case until I looked it up at home.... they don't have a shop local to me. I have eaten there a dozen times, at work, with others. it does not exist near me. this is how The City works though, sometimes you have to accept that). The parking lot is almost empty. The street is vacant. it's quiet. Nothing is happening in this location. The building indicated is unmarked, plain brick. No windows except at the bagel shop and barbeque's storefront windows. They do not have doors of their own, only a set of unmarked, double doors between them.

But, the GPS insists it is here, so we go through those blank doors, and step into an Otherworld. Inside, is a busy marketplace.

The floors are all dark, smooth concrete. Above is all grubby, teal-grey steel and wood, the walls are covered in bright-colored artwork. There are stalls that don't look permanent fashioning the interior into a maze. This is the bible belt of michigan. There's Thai food, sushi, a mochi donut shop. There's a stall devoted to popcorns, both in different flavors but also from specialty kinds of kernels. There's a wall of soda in glass bottles from companies I've never heard of. There were four shelves devoted to black cherry sodas. Floor to ceiling shelves of ginger beer, birch beer, root beer. There's a pastry shop around a corner where I stood and watched someone slicing a cheesecake six inches tall, decorated in strawberries like a painting. We pass a charcuterie shop to reach a wine and cheese bar, which is across from a seafood shop peddling fresh catch from the great lakes, which is next to a deli of local meats, across from a shop exclusively dedicated to seasoning rubs for meat. Tucked into a back corner is a chocolaterie selling bonbons and hand scooped michigan-made ice cream. There's some kind of reunion taking place up at the front of the place. There are old ladies buying popcorn. There's a guy looking at the soda walls, dressed like it's 3am and he couldn't sleep.

The place is packed, but there's hardly any cars in the parking lot so I have to assume people walked here. We dodge people and make it to the sushi counter, where we are greeted by a young woman who has sparkles glittering across the bridge of her nose instead of freckles. She takes our order and welcomes us to sit at the bartop to eat (we don't), and we find a quiet corner to sit and eat. It was the best sushi I've had in my life- the rice was actual sushi rice which is a good start, it was slightly warm still, it was melt-in-your-mouth good. We stopped by the chocolaterie to get a small scoop of ice cream (cashew caramel) and a couple of chocolates to bring home. They're tiny, with local strawberry/cherry fruits, with little things painted on their tops. They were delicious.

My friend took photos of some of the inside of the place. I don't know if she waited for the right moments or what, but there's almost no people in her photos. I cannot express to you enough that this place was FULL. I waited in lines to get food. That's me at the chocolate/ice cream shop counter and there were several people in front of me in line.

There was a second story we didn't make it to, because we had to leave to go get the caging. We exited back to a normal Michigan spring a hundred yards outside The City. The parking lot was mostly empty. The building was plain brick. There was no one on the street. The bagel shop and the barbeque storefronts had no people past the windows. There was no storefront for the sushi shop, because it was in the very heart of the place, it shared no walls with the building walls at all, there was no door to it.

[smalltimidbean]

Blast of Many Little Guys Upon You;

[asmuchasidliketo]

Oh yes a Picrew with my actual hair color!

glad that im not popular enough to have an evil shadow version of my blog that exists just to make contradictions on my posts

[prince-liest]

Have you heard of Roo (Vivziepop character)?

I've heard tell she (she?) was a scrapped character that became the root of all evil, and also is possibly related to/was redesigned as Eve? Or Lilith? Tl;dr: Not really!

[pungenday]

trying to get back into Art... so landscape practice ft. this photo* as reference

[smalltimidbean]

tell us about key lime please! They're so silly :D

(Although probably gonna break some of said paragraphs into bullet points so it's not too daunting jkfdgkjs)

First part is backstory stuff!;

Key Lime Pie - usually just shortened to Key - was clone number #04963, and is predominantly insect DNA, such as dragonflies, ants and beetles (haven't decided specifics yet)

They managed to escaped containment when all clones were being moved from an off-site lab to one in the Tower - thanks to their small size, they were able to sneak past any security and make their way into some vents

Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately - they fell down said vents and ended up on the third floor of the Tower - specifically what is known to us as the level 'Deep-Dish 9'

From the scientists' perspective, no one noticed Key was gone until they were moving clones into their rooms, and since most of the clones were unfortunately seen as expendable, no one looked for them and Key was quickly presumed dead, and thus a failure

But Key was alive - although a little shaken up by the fall and suddenly in a new and unfamiliar place - but they were a brave little guy!!!

They explored around for a while, and they found an unused spaceship, along with a spacesuit

Unbeknownst to them, these were intended for Peppino, but upon seeing a portrait of Peppino in previously mentioned spacesuit, by previously mentioned spaceship (where did this portrait come from? idk), Key had convinced themselves that the image was of them and these were their space things

Key had also changed their form to more resemble the portrait - mainly losing the chef's hat and tank top

Key donned the spacesuit - and despite the size/number of arms discrepancy between themselves and Peppino, the suit fit them just fine (bc it's super advanced or something)

However the ship was not in the best condition, and could not fly, but it was fitted with some accommodations - like a little kitchen and bedroom - so Key decided to make the ship's current location their base of operations until it was fixed up enough to fly

There was... A lot of trial and error as Key figured out how all the technology worked, but Key was probably one of the more intelligent clones, so it didn't take terribly long for them to understand it

They would frequently leave their ship to explore and look for supplies and parts - often 'borrowing' from the Olive Aliens or dismantling the larger, crashed ships and salvaging the things they needed

Key has also snagged an Olive Trooper's blaster as a means of defending themselves - although they have never actually used it as a weapon yet. Luckily for them, they haven't come across many threats and most run away when faced with a blaster (or Key just runs away first)

Key lived like this for a while, and they did eventually manage to get their ship working enough to fly, occasionally exploring the other planets that were nearby

They were on one of these explorations when Peppino went through the level, so they did not see him nor were they aware of his mission

Key had returned just in time for the Crumbling of the Tower, not sure what was happening, but they attempted to make an escape, just as all the other beings were doing

Unfortunately, Key's ship was hit by falling debris, and crashed, also knocking Key unconscious in the process

By the time Key woke up, the Tower was completely destroyed, and the ship was part of the debris

However to Key, they thought that they'd just crash-landed on a new planet, completely unaware that they were just simply outside the Tower

And now, Key is currently working on fixing up their spaceship (again) to try and get home - also completely unaware that there is no 'home' to return to...

This part is character things!;

As mentioned, Key is very smart - when they were in the lab, they'd frequently ace any tests given to them, and had great potential to the scientists - although, it was also this intelligence that helped them escape in the first place

They can figure out new technology fairly quickly - albeit with a lot of trial and error - and they enjoy taking things part and putting them back together, just to see how it works

While they are very curious, and love to explore, Key is incredibly anxious around other living beings, and usually avoids any interaction if they can help it

They are mostly mute, and cannot speak any human language - if they do need to communicate, they 'talk' via chirping (akin to a cricket)

They are pretty non-expressive in the face, but their antennae usually gives away to how they are feeling - ie curled is neutral, crooked is distressed, completely curled up and pressed to the sides of their head is overwhelmed, twitching slightly is happy etc

Along with the pair on their head, Key's 'moustache' are also antennae - these are all extremely sensitive and can be used to smell, hear or touch things

Key has a hardened shell on their back (known as an elytra), which can open up to reveal a set of dragonfly-like wings (how do wings longer than the elytra fit in there? idk, clone bullshit kjdfgk)

While they can fly with these wings, Key rarely does so, usually only hovering to reach something high or to give themselves a boost while jumping - they also tend to flare their wings out when surprised, frightened, or performing a threat display as a means to appear larger than they are

Speaking of threat displays, while Key also rarely uses theirs, they tend to split their face open while performing one

Despite being a 'flight' over 'fight' being, Key has a lot of abilities that they could use in a fight, if they so wanted to, thanks to their various DNAs - they have very large teeth, a fairly potent venom which can cause burning hot hives and itchiness, and although they have a very small stature, they are incredibly strong, able to lift roughly 50 times their own weight

But as implied, they do not like to fight, and prefer to keep others at a distance with the help of their blaster - any attacks are made in self-defence

Also as implied, unlike most clones' 'clothing', Key's spacesuit is not part of them and can be removed - not that they like to take it off

They also rarely remove their helmet as of currently, believing that the planet's air could be poisonous to them (which isn't wrong but y'know), and they will only remove it while in their ship

The large pocket on the front of Key's suit works similarly to a clone's pouch - as in it is a small hammerspace - but Key's can be opened from the inside, allowing them to interact with outside objects from the safety of their suit (i.e. they put something in the pocket from the outside, close it and then open the pocket from the inside)

They mostly use this pocket (and the other pockets on their suit) to carry parts and their blaster, they have recently started collecting other things, such as lost jewellery, coins and shiny rocks

They also have an interest in the local flora, frequently taking flowers back to drink the nectar in them - this may or may not have caused the sudden boom of new plants growing around the remains of the Tower, as Key is both planting them and pollinating them, albeit unintentionally

Much like flowers, Key very much enjoys the rain, finding it very soothing, and they will either sit out in it with their suit on, or have a nap to the sounds while in their ship - however, they don't like to get wet, mostly bc of the unpleasant sensation on their skin, and they cannot fly if their wings get wet

While there usually is rain when it happens, Key is terrified of thunder and gets overwhelmed to the point of a panic attack during thunderstorms - they usually hide in their room when one happens, but they'll find anywhere they can if they are away from their ship

Key has yet to experience other weather phenomenon such as snow, but they are confused and somewhat unsettled about hail (hard rain? how?)

Key has also yet to see another clone at this time, nor have they seen the real Peppino despite living nearby

This part is just fun facts about their creation!;

As previously mentioned, Key is based on another OC of mine called Kyp, who also believes themselves to be from another planet and has several bug-like features. But unlike Key, Kyp is just a baby and was adopted by a couple, and has a weird cat

Kyp is also from the same world that Satoshi (Linguine's OG form) is from! While they have never interacted in that world, they might in this one, hehe

Key's spacesuit and the idea it was meant for Peppino is based on Deep-Dish 9's title card, where Peppino is wearing a white suit with red gloves/accents

Similarly, the idea that the spaceship was also intended for Peppino is from the scrapped mechanic that Peppino would deliver (a) pizza, presumably while in one like the title card (but that's just personal speculation) - so Key taking the suit and ship is why Peppino doesn't do that in this AU hkjgdjkl

Originally, Key was going to believe themselves to be an Olive Alien, but I thought that was too farfetched and came up with them seeing a picture of Peppino instead

As with most clones, Key is a giant metaphor for the 'tism, can you tell dgkljsghk

And I think that's all I got for now! So if you read all that, then thank you jkfgkfg

[vigilantaes]

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!

[srarizard]

Not the first one to ship Rayman and Reflux and certainly won’t be the last. So don’t worry

Oho? I saw something on ao3 a while back, but I had thought everyone abandoned ship due to lack of content. Seems like they're still out there 👀