#no coal for me this year

[itsguysnightitsironic]

HEY Q U I E B R A , AY!

🎶Dale tu cuerpo alegria Macarena, que estamos enterrados en deudas, dale tu cuerpo alegria Macarena, HEY QUIEBRA, AY! 🎶

There's one brain cell and somehow the ones who don't have it are winning.

[magpiedraws]

So I started watching Once Upon A Witchlight-

[kedreeva]

After a month-long fight, Artemis' system finally threw in the towel. We put her to sleep this morning.

I am crushed, and I don't really know what else to say.

She started slowing down shortly after her last suprelorin implant, and the xrays showed something, a weird shadow or cross-peritoneal sac encompassing her heart and liver, but none of the three avian vets who saw it could interpret what it actually was or what to do about it. We started her on some painkillers and antibiotics, and tube feeding liquid chow so she would not lose condition if she was not feeling well. We changed up antibiotics, we gave her an antiemetic for nausea, we tried different pain meds...

For a little while, she seemed to be improving. Whatever it was, it wasn't as visible on the next xrays, and her bloodwork looked better. She was moving around more and sleeping less (she'd been sleeping all day at the start), she could get up and down to the big perch on her own.

And then last night, her crop was a little squishy when I gave her her evening meds. I hoped that it was just that she'd finally eaten a good meal before bed, but when I came out today to give her morning meds, the blueberries from the evening before were still in her crop. That's NOT good. Her urates were also stained yellow. I called the vet and got an emergency appt, but I knew before I left that I would probably have to make the call to end it. I gave her a little time out in the sunshine and grass while I got the car ready, and then we drove down. She sat quietly, and didn't complain during the exam, but ultimately the radiograph showed the problem was still present, and her kidneys were shining bright. Her GI tract had slowed to a stop, her heartbeat was slowed way down, and her urates were showing crystals.

So, I said my goodbyes, and the vet did as well. Everyone was fond of Artemis- she was always well behaved and sweet to everyone she ever met. She loved people, she loved cuddles. She was only 6. I knew she wasn't going to make it a full, normal lifespan, not with everything that was wrong from the get go, but I had hoped for a few more years. I got a few more than she'd have gotten with anyone else. It's never enough.

Artemis was my favorite, from the moment she hatched. She was never mean- not to humans, not to other birds. She is the ONLY bird I've ever owned that was like that. She loved Stan from the moment she met him, and tolerated his weird social habits to the end of his days. They were ALWAYS together, always sitting in the sun together, always following one another. I'm honestly not surprised she followed him to death- there are so many anecdotes from keepers who have birds that spend weeks, even months, grieving after losing a close flock mate. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find Artemis had been holding onto life with both hands for Stan, and with his passing she gave up.

I am going to miss painting with her so much. I have her first painting, and her last, in my bedroom, and I'm really glad I didn't let that last one go yet.

I don't really know what else to say, besides that she was my heart. I loved her, and I hate that she's gone. There will never, ever be another lady like her.

Sleep sweet, lovely. I'll miss you til the end of my days, and I look forward to joining you at the meadow when that comes.

[incorrect-upon-a-witchlight]

Gideon: listen, Twigsie, I’m not mad, I just wanna know why you needed a fake ID

Twig: *mumbles*

Gideon: what was that?

Twig: …you need to be over 18 to hold the puppies at PetCo

[starryeyeddreamer21]

The fact that Vox could be Santa Claus and actively chooses not to is the reason I can't fuck with him on a fundamental level

[sillykitty9000]

Day 22: Ain’t his first rodeo

I had a choir concert tonight and I forgot to draw something earlier, so I did a quick pose trace with some added details :)

(No ID)

[orb-weaving]

I have not been so physically unwell about a ship as chronohaul in a long, long time.

[metanarrates]

Katniss should have killed Rue.

It would have been a mercy, of course, but she would never be able to publicly acknowledge it that way. The Capitol can't let the districts get along. that's how a revolution starts.

I'd be interested to see how they end up playing it, though. Killing her friend because she had no choice? Betrayal? Either way it would make her Capitol Persona much more interesting, and her inner conflict too.

How would District 11 take it? Do they believe the Capitol's angle of the story? Do they understand it was a mercy?

yeah exactly it would be much more interesting that way! the whole apparent point of the games is that they're awful and force the kids in them to do awful things. katniss being forced to deliver a mercy kill to a mortally wounded friend would bring up all sorts of interesting concepts around mercy, violence, and coercion, and like you said it would have interesting longstanding impacts!

district 11 having complex feelings on it also interests me because there's no way that this is the first time they've had to (at bare minimum) hold victory parties and such for a victor who has personally killed the kids from their district. the impression the book wants to give of the games is that everyone is culturally desensitized to the events that happen within. it happens yearly, it's awful, everyone tries their best to pick up and move on. so would the mere possibility of it being genuine kindness break through that desensitization?

[idlescience]

So one of my all-time favourite scientific theories is endosymbiosis, because I think it's crazy cool. And there has been some big news in the science community lately because they think they've found a nitroplast!

If you haven't heard the theory before, it basically goes like this. Way back in the day, our ancestor cells did not have mitochondria to produce their energy. Instead, cells would produce energy throughout the cell, pretty inefficiently. Then one cell decided to eat a bacteria, business as usual. Except in this case, the cell ate it wrong and essentially forgot to digest it. So this bacteria kept living in the cell, dividing with it. And after a lot of evolution they became completely dependent on one another. The mitochondria receives compounds from the cell, and creates energy in return.

That's thought to be the first event, but it's not the only one. Plants came about because of endosymbiosis as well. A cell failed to eat a photosynthetic bacterium one day, and boom. Suddenly it can eat sunlight.

Both of these endosymbiotic events are pretty crazy, and pretty rare. Until recently, we only knew of it happening three times in the last 1.5 billion years or so (mitochondria, chloroplasts and the chromatophores of Paulinella). But now scientists are proposing a fourth.

The nitroplast!

Nitrogen fixation is an incredibly important process for the Earth, which involves turning nitrogen from the air into usable nitrogen in soil and water systems. If you've ever used a nitrogen fertilizer on plants, you get why this is an important process.

It's always been considered the domain of bacteria, but now they have found a nitrogen-fixing organelle inside an algae (Braarudosphaera bigelowii), making this event number four! You can see the arrow pointing to it below. Look at these cuties hanging out.

Endosymbiosis is so cool, seriously.

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

🐒25 Dec '22🚴‍♀️🦴

Twas the night before christmas Louis' birthday when suddenly I recalled- I sat bolt up in shock- I'd forgotten a promise to yall! It was a christmas day, you see, back in 2018, that Simon Cowell dramatically demonstrated exactly how brilliant he is when thinking things up all on his own rather than taking credit for a woman's ideas- he would be starting a new band he said, of CGI monkeys!! One of them would be modelled after Harry Styles! Sadly someone slapped him out of whatever drugged stupor led to telling the press about that brainstorm, and we never heard about it again... except from me, who had made a vow to Never Forget and to bring it up every xmas forever and ever (because I can only assume Simon would hate that.) He still hasn't learned though, just this year he hyped up an AI deepfake of himself made with that very same technology- he really just so transparently wants a band without any pesky rebellious humans in it, yikes. The fact is, the man is a clown all year every year, so may I present… a 2022 review!

Sadly, the year's biggest Cowell news was but a hoax- he did not in fact die, yet. However, he did lose a tooth, get COVID, and fall off his electric bike and end up in the hospital AGAIN, proving that ill wishes (mine) can come true to some extent! And not to worry, there's still hope for next year- apparently he still bikes around without a helmet daily. A recent TV appearance had his fans (??! sounds fake but okay) "distracted by his incredibly smooth visage"- allegedly his botox and other modifications got to the point that his son was "in hysterics" at the site of him, a clever turn of phrase that implies tears but could also mean he was laughing his ass off- me too kid, me too. Although The Sun continue to print only flattering and respectful articles- almost as if they had some kind of relationship or agreement with him?! wow this is Brand New Information- the Daily Mail definitely got the brief that tis the season for making fun of Cowell, and have been running an endless series of articles about his "many faces through the years" and "melting mug". They were denied the opportunity with his most recent TV appearance however, as he did that interview with a shadow strategically cast across himself like a low tech witness protection gambit. Perhaps, I thought, some of the issue was with the confusing and scary sounding 25 pound face masks he was reportedly doing, but it turned out that was merely an audio based misunderstanding- it was sponcon for a £25 face mask, boring.

He continues to talk up his son in interviews, bragging that the kid is a great talent spotter and he "leans on him" for opinions (that I can believe) but if you're skeptical that Simon would actually let himself be upstaged, you're quite right! Consider: he also had some things to say about what his cancelled show The X Factor would look like if it came back. The tabs report that he "is adamant that the judges should be industry insiders such as A&R people rather than artists because they are better judges of talent and less jealous of bright young artists.” Sounds like SOMEONE is jealous all right but it's not an artist judge! I think we all remember who stole the show and the hearts of multiple nations- not to mention those of scores of allegedly straight men- on the last season of TXF while spotting and nurturing the talent who went on to win it all, all while making fun of Simon at every opportunity: yes indeed, it was bright young artist and Guest Judge Louis Tomlinson! Gosh who could have seen THAT coming? Possibly the actual visionary of TXF, Nicole Scherzinger, another guest judge who upstaged Simon- most recently when footage of her forming 1D was finally released on the 10th anniversary. She said she was surprised it had survived, that she assumed he had "burned it" (to bolster his decade long lie that it was he who had had the world-changing idea.) But no, she says, in fact it was "the way that my mind grapes were working" which is, um, a very weird way of putting that, but it WORKED OUT GREAT so who am I to quibble with the way her grapejuice flows.

Meanwhile just when you thought we were free of NFT type annoyances Zayn invited us to join the metaverse, no thank you, but get that cash babe and a happy holidays to you and to all our boys: to Liam, acting like he has to make up for the few months off the radar by posting an equivalent amount of insta stories before the end of the year, to Niall, taking a break from taking over tiktok to tease about how busy he'll be next year, to Harry, dousing himself in freezing water in the UK while pap pics of him in LA were dropped, and to Louis, 31 (!!) now and hopefully with some wonderful plans over his long awaited break before another jam packed year of winning. And to all out there, a very let me be your good night and all the love!

[orcelito]

Ykno the suckiest thing about being broken up with for someone else is that like. Well I'm doing generally fine, all things considered, but I Am kinda sad thinking about the things I've lost and all the casual affection that I can't have now.

But she's out there having all the affection she wants from her coworker, and it's just like. Damn this feels so skewed and SO unfair.

[themorguepoet]

Veera Raja Veera sounds exactly like the vibe I imagine great hindu kings from the golden era of India to have embodied. It just sounds so perfect.

[wiredsmi1e]

hi yes ive got sm to do today istg i just wanna

[thepisserrrrrr]

there isnt a better feeling than exploring in minecraft and finding a HUGE fucking cave

[gideonisms]

Astral projects myself into a future that's better so I can have any motivation whatsoever to improve my life rather than continuing to girlrot in a sexy fashion ♥️

[thechivalrousfox]

Just a reminder to all the retail workers: you get one free kill today!

Reminder to all customers: watch out!