#months or years of research and study

[pensivetense]

I saw a post and it and (mostly) its comment section annoyed me and now I shall vague about it, sorry

[moookar]

one of my D&D characters, Hailen. I’ve been told he is the most pathetic podcast protagonist guy ever

[ryuki-draws]

Still on the Witch from Mercury roll and then the ending of Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 happened to me, so here's birthday boy in the epilogue, living the best life on Earth.

[stuckinapril]

It just clicked for me that I’m going to be all-consumingly devoted to intensive studying for the next month. I’ve been more ambivalent since the year started, bc I honestly miss my friends and want to pursue a lot of hobbies I’ve been dying to pick up, but I want nothing more than to ace an upcoming test that will genuinely determine so much of the trajectory of my life. I’ve already been studying pretty consistently for it, but now I’m actually letting go of my expectations for other things while this is going on. Putting all this pressure on myself has done nothing but slow me down. Like my brain is actually shifting into study camp mode. It’ll be back to waking up at 4 am, studying for 8 hours a day minimum, crunching flash cards w my morning drink/on the treadmill, getting so much done before noon, and not feeling guilty if other areas of my life suffer a little bit. Nothing outside of this matters.

[stormyrainyday]

this entire year has been flop after flop why am i losing so bad your honor i am literally just some guy

[littletrumpetcat]

thoroughly convinced my professor has a hard on for failing people in this music history class that's only offered once a year and not offered online anywhere. 45% course weighting on an exam that hasn't been changed since he got here, causing all of us to run out of time, when he's already explained that he expects us to do poorly and even fail the first exam. several people got 20-40% on the exam btw. and the icing on the fuckin cake is that our assignments are not even worth points. they have a 0% weighting. we're just doing these 4 page summaries on 20 page academic literature and it's not even worth anything. he won't even let it help our grades. he's proudly boasted about how he's not afraid to fail anyone and that he'd dig up his grandma and fail her. like dude this is insane

[willowgast]

in news from grad life, my supervisor asked me about phd plans today and upon hearing i want to take a few years to do various non-academic things before i start one, immediately produced an application form for a scholarship to study abroad in iceland for a year? like this was not remotely on the radar of what i was planning for next year but tbf i hadn't actually planned that much, and i was initially looking at a master's programme in iceland before i settled on the one i've actually ended up on, so... why not! could be living in iceland this time next year! sometimes niche, half-buried teenage dreams do come true!

[paigetics]

in august im going to listen to more music and read for pleasure more often + take more photos + drink nicer coffee + try not to fall into despair that this is the longest ive ever been unemployed since i was. 15

[minglana]

i say this every. single. fucking. exam season. but i genuinely dont know how much longer i can keep this up bc.... my brain Refuses To Study like its just. incapable of it. im incapable of sitting down and thinking "i need to study bc i have an exam in [x] days and i need to pass it" and then actually following through with it. i just think and think and think about how i need to study. and somehow my brain THINKS that that's enough to show up to the exam and like.... pass it? when its clearly not!!!!! not even going to the library helps me anymore i dont even do anything there either. so i just wonder if theres something wrong with my brain or if its just that ive trained myself since the pandemic to be lazy as fuck and ignore all of my responsibilities???

[nature-played-a-trick-on-me]

It's almost funny how I talked with ppl from school like 'fair warning, lots of people overestimate me because I look like I've got it all sorted and I get good grades but please please listen to me when I say I can't cope' 'ohhh no we're not going to overestimate you!'

Guess what happened?

[lowellsgraveyard]

exam season y'all I will NOT survive

[links-studies]

A very stupid amount of hours studying later and I have amassed a very enormous study with me video collection, which I have organized by length and pomodoro style (or lack thereof!) because of course I did

[waugh-bao]

*

[stuckinapril]

might have a parisian girl era soon. we’ll see

[champ-wiggle]

'She is so old': One-eyed wolf in Yellowstone defies odds by having 10th litter of pups in 11 years

By Patrick Pester, published June 3, 2024

Wolf 907F recently gave birth to her 10th litter of pups, which researchers say is likely a Yellowstone National Park record.

Wolf 907F walking past a trail camera in Yellowstone National Park. (Image credit: Yellowstone Wolf and Cougar Project)

The alpha female of a Yellowstone gray-wolf pack has defied the odds by having a 10th litter of pups at the age of 11.

The one-eyed wolf elder, named Wolf 907F, gave birth to her latest litter last month, the Cowboy State Daily reported. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) have an average life span of three to four years, so it's rare for them to reach 11, let alone have pups at that age.

Wolf 907F has given birth to pups every year for a decade straight since she became sexually mature, which Kira Cassidy, a research associate at the Yellowstone Wolf Project, said is likely a record for the wolves of Yellowstone National Park.

At age 11, Yellowstone’s Wolf 907F has lived more than twice a wild wolf’s average life expectancy. In this photo from April, she was pregnant with a litter of pups that she’s since given birth to. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

"Every day, I expect that she might die just because she is so elderly, but I've been thinking that for the last few years, and she keeps going," Cassidy told Live Science.

Cassidy has calculated that only about 1 in 250 wolves in Yellowstone make it to their 11th birthday, with just six recorded examples since wolves were reintroduced to the park in 1995. The oldest of all of these great elders lived to 12.5 years, according to the National Park Service.

Wolf 907F lies in the snow in Yellowstone in 2015. (Image credit: Kira Cassidy/NPS)

Wolf 907F is the oldest wolf to have lived her whole life in the park's Northern Range, where there is more prey but also more competition from other wolves. Wolves rarely die of old age in the wild, and in Yellowstone National Park, the biggest threat is other wolves.

"In a protected place like Yellowstone, their number-one cause of death is when two packs fight with each other," Cassidy said. "That accounts for about half of the mortality."

One of Yellowstone's oldest wolves, Wolf 907F is pictured here with her pack last year. She's the gray collared wolf on the lower left. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

Wolf 907F is the alpha female of the Junction Butte pack, which has between 10 and 35 members at any given time. Cassidy noted that this is a large pack — the average wolf pack size is about 12 individuals — and that reduces the risk of being killed in territorial fights. Wolf 907F's experience also gives her pack an edge.

"Packs that have elderly wolves are much more successful in those pack-versus-pack conflicts because of the accumulated knowledge and the experience that they bring to that really stressful situation," Cassidy said.

Wolf 907F has likely boosted her pack's survival chances outside of battle, too. Cassidy noted that the Junction Butte pack rarely leaves Yellowstone's border and that Wolf 907F is "savvy" when it comes to things like crossing roads and avoiding humans.

Wolf 907F, Yellowstone's aging matriarch at 11 years old, only has one eye. She's the fourth wolf to pass by this trail cam. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

What makes Wolf 907F even more impressive is that she does all of this with only one functioning eye. Researchers aren't sure what happened, but her left eye has been small and sunken since before she turned 4. "You would never know [when] watching her," Cassidy said.

Like other elders, Wolf 907F takes a back seat in hunts now that she's older, and she spends most of her day hanging around with the pack's pups. Cassidy and her colleagues have counted three pups in her current litter, which is smaller than the average litter size of four to five but not surprising. A 2012 study of Yellowstone wolves published in the Journal of Animal Ecology found that litter size declines with age.

"The fact that 907 is still having pups is amazing, and her litter being small is expected given that she is so old," Cassidy said.

A few of Wolf 907F's offspring now lead packs of their own, but most of her pups never reach adulthood due to the perilous nature of being a wolf. However, Wolf 907F and the others in the park don't seem to live like death is on their mind.

"They are happy to be with their family going from day to day," Cassidy said. "Even if they have injuries or are missing an eye or something really stressful is going on in their life, they move through that stress and go back to seemingly really enjoying their life."

At age 11, Yellowstone's Wolf 907F - the gray wolf in the center of this photo from 2020- has lived more than double the typical lifespan of wolves in the wild. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

[weird-fishes-i-reckon]

been knocking around the idea of going back to school to study art history and my main focus would be German Expressionism, Dada, and Weimar Germany in general because ho-ly shit am I seeing some parallels