#i have been saying this

[fujoshiribbon]

in the most completely normal and platonic way possible i would like to kiss whoever wrote wikirbys list of kirby misconceptions on the mouth for this

[blimp-of-evil]

so im in a production of Urinetown rn, right?

and saying good luck to other is obvi bad luck, so the classic substitution is "break a leg"

BUT MAY I PROPOSE

"Go piss girl!!!"

[ravewing]

OH MY GOD IM JUMPING UP AND DOWN FINALLYYYYYYY

[lover-of-mine]

hey darling I'm sorry but what episode?

https://www.tumblr.com/lover-of-mine/757563816913616896/httpsxcombingebuddiestatus181864759296154853?source=share

Oh, hi baby, it is 704. I know we keep talking about the episode as if the triangle was the only thing that happened, but we had the Athena plot with the mother who shot her own son because she couldn't recognize him and the Harry plot with Athena feeling like she doesn't recognize him anymore after he got arrested for assault that was exacerbated by the way they recast Harry. Buck, bothered and bewildered is about not recognizing things. But everyone got so caught up in the euphoria of biBuck that they failed to realize that. Which is ironic, to say the least lol.

[juney-blues]

[slur-sayer]

[confessxcheese4tcc]

brenton tarrant looks like a neanderthal

CONFESSION #1404

[scholarhect]

the thing about caroline polachek is she will put out a dan nigro-produced song with a remix by ag cook. some of the nigro girls could take notes. or not idk everybody’s style is their own i just really would like to see it. hear it i mean

[starscelly]

Miro is a lesbian

amen brother

[atissi]

locked the fuck back in

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[tierras]

the mutual aid los angeles network (malan) has put together a spreadsheet with valuable resources for people affected by the ongoing los angeles wildfires and wind storm. the sheet is constantly being updated with resources such as shelter info, animal boarding info, addresses for distribution centers, volunteer opportunities and so much more.

please share this spreadsheet widely

[s-s-s-senp-p-p-pai]

This is so cool tho

turns out all biology is literally just hormones and proximity to a girl

I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.

This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.

I was, of course, immediately curious.

Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.

In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!

So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.

This was Xerxes (rip).

Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?

I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.

Hmmmm.

Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.

(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)

And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.

(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)

Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?

I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.

It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.

Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.

In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.

Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.

Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.

As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.

He started here, in February:

Yesterday:

What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!

[darksouls2yuri]

hey is it okay if i eat my nature valley oats and honey granola bar here. yeah its the kind that comes as a two pack and immediately disintegrates into millions of annoying crumbs. its okay my ants that follow me everywhere will eat them. youll have ants now though.

[thecryptkeeperskeeper]

rian johnson i am begging you to reconsider the knives out x muppet crossover

[asweetprologue]

this is so devastating. laois should have just shot him with a gun