#i love it SO much it's so beautiful

[postmakerkiwi]

🧊 Crystal Glacier Expedition - Neon Cave Tour ❄️

This extensive cave system circling underneath the center of the glacier is home to several large pools of subzero waters, brightly illuminated from below. Try not to lose sight of the guide, but if you do, just watch your step and follow the sound of crunching snow from the group's steady march.

photos by CatbatQuartet

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The math just adds up!

[sukinapan]

[nemkero]

the heretic

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[hinamie]

subject, specimen, spectacle;

should i say that you're dead?

[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

[where-that-old-train-goes]

not normal about orpheus and eurydice. you loved someone so much it opened the stones of the underworld. so much that death had to listen. so much that everything stopped for your love. so much that you turned around. so much that even when you did wrong. she forgave you.

[arttsuka]

Uncle and nephew

[brandonlees]

The road to true love may be barred by still many more dangers, which you alone will have to face. So arm thyself with this enchanted Shield of Virtue, and this mighty Sword of Truth, for these weapons of righteousness will triumph over evil.

SLEEPING BEAUTY 1959, dir. Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman, Les Clark

[thealienstud]

Anyway I hope studs, black femmes, black butches, black trans lesbians, and all black lesbians have a great day😘🫶🏾

[theirondragonrants]

I love you all, but you have the wrong parallel. We love Rhaenyra asking Alicent to fly across the narrow sea and eat only cake, but it's Rhaenyra and this Alicent that mirror each other. It's the smiles, and that halting breath.

[ministarfruit]

yuri month day 12: I want you to find me ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

[jynandor]

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU TANGERINES (2025) dir. KIM WON-SEOK episode four: THE BLAZING SUMMER SUNSHINE I found happiness in my own way. There was sunshine in my life, too. I've had so many picture-perfect moments.

[demaparbat-hp]

Zuko's eyes watered against his will when the ghost of a woman he did not know smiled at him like he was her child.

Zuko decided right there and then that maybe, just maybe, this too was something he came to find.

Ghost-Mother takes a look into Zuko's soul in For the Spirits Chapter IX: A Rider Alone.

More than a stranded soul, Kya holds all the love of the Old Tribe and the means to calm a coming tempest. Zuko won't ever forget her.

(He won't be allowed to.)

[heartorbit]

figure skating set right now please. thanks