#the other examples that i have collected don't have THAT much going on and are between 1-5 lines

[mareastrorum]

Adding onto this. I'm an attorney, but I don't work in this area.

Get an estate planning attorney. Don't rely on services like Legal Zoom because they're literally just forms that may not be the best option for you or your family. You want a lawyer for the advice.

Family, estate, trust, guardianship/conservatorship, and adoption laws all vary by state. They don't change very often, but they can be difficult to navigate. What the documents are called, what they can do, and what happens without them all vary by state. Get an attorney licensed in the state where you live.

Most attorneys in this practice area offer packages like (a) a simple will alone, (b) a full set of documents, (c) trusts + other docs, etc. These packages usually are meant to cover a certain amount of hours working on the documents, including the back and forth discussions and going in to sign the documents with witnesses and a notary. Your retainer agreement will likely mention that if they go over that number of hours, there's an additional charge; it's unlikely that prepping the plan would take more than 10 lawyer/paralegal hours except in complex cases. Depending on the attorney's experience and geographical area, it may be a few hundred dollars for a package.

Some attorneys may suggest an hourly rate instead of a package. Don't psyche yourself into thinking you'll save money because you'll save money by not asking questions. You should ask questions. Get a package. People who need to pay an hourly rate (for however long it takes) are people who have so much money and so many assets to account for, they don't really worry about the rate or the hours.

Before you meet with an attorney, make a basic list of what you're worried about. Do you have property or savings that need to be taken into account? Do you have kids? Is anyone on their second+ marriage? A good attorney will have a pretty comprehensive questionnaire or interview to figure out your needs, but you still want to go in with a general idea so that you're ready to talk about it.

You may want to ask the attorney if they work in more than just estate planning. An attorney that also does probates, adoptions, guardianships, etc. is actually a good sign because that attorney has a better idea of what happens when things go wrong. Some firms have attorneys that do one area, but they group to share their clients as they need each of these services. It's not uncommon, and it's not a bad thing.

Basic list of potential documents you may need (again, varying by state):

Will: When you die, who gets your assets after your debts are paid? If you don't decide this, the state has default "intestate" rules that may fuck over your partner, kids, etc. This is the document where you ask your attorney if there's ways to ensure that your partner and all dependents will receive what you want them to even if your legal relationships are invalidated. (Sometimes, a will can direct all assets to a first choice, then to a second choice, and if it turns out someone is still underage, hold the assets in a trust. They can be conditional sometimes!)

Personal property designation (sometimes can be separate from the will): When you die, do you have specific items of personal property (NOT MONEY OR LAND) that you want to go to specific people? For example, maybe you want to leave everything of value to your partner, but you have a Babe Ruth baseball for a cousin. Maybe you want to avoid your family fighting over who gets what pieces in your Beanie Baby collection. You'll be dead; let everyone be angry at you instead of each other.

Guardianship nomination (may be part of another document): Who would you nominate as guardian of your children and wards if you (and your spouse) die or are incapacitated? THIS IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT IF YOU ARE NOT IN A CISHET MARRIAGE. BOTH OF THOSE THINGS: CISHET AND MARRIAGE.

Financial Power of Attorney: Who do you want to handle all of your assets if you are incapacitated? Literally everything. This person could fleece you, so it has to be someone you trust not to do that. Often times, you can also name a backup in case your chosen person is incapacitated, and it's suggested in case you and your partner get into an accident. (NOTE: Sometimes, if you are a single person with a fair amount of assets, it can be a good idea to name your attorney. This might be a preferred option if your next of kin cannot be trusted. It costs money, but if you are at all worried about what your family might do, at least have that discussion with your attorney so you can learn your options.)

Healthcare Power of Attorney: Who do you want to make all medical decisions if you are incapacitated? Who do you trust to make decisions you would have wanted? Who do you think could handle this without getting their own emotions in the way? Who would actually be available where you live to make those decisions? You can also name a backup for this as well.

HIPAA authorization: Who is allowed to access your medical records if you are incapacitated? This should at least match your healthcare POA, and you may want to allow biological relatives to do this too if you have any genetic predispositions.

Health Care Directive/"Living Will": Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart stops? You can decide either way, but this means your next of kin doesn't have to make a snap decision on your behalf while you are actively dying.

Trust: The utility and purpose of a trust HEAVILY VARIES BY STATE AND YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES. For example, they are super popular in California, but they're usually excessive in Washington. There's also different kinds of trusts. Ask your attorney what the benefits would be over a traditional will. Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not.

This is a scary time. Making a plan means you're ready if something goes wrong. Breathe, talk with your loved ones, and make a plan.

Before January 2025:

If you are a USAmerican in a relationship that might be affected by legislation that dissolves same-sex marriages, who may no longer be recognized as next-of-kin, especially if you have children, get your rights in writing!

Your marriage certificate may not be enough to prove you have rights to make medical decisions for non-biological children or for a same-sex spouse or partner.

Go to a lawyer, get it spelled out as clearly as possible that you have a voice in emergency medical and legal situations.

[anim-ttrpgs]

A big part of Eureka is splitting the party. Normally games are loathe to do this because of the potential to bore players while they passively watch others play the game. I'm curious how you deal with this when you run Eureka. Sending players away seems like it could make it either better or worse. Like if it's at a home, people can go hang out by the snack table and drink and chat, but that doesn't work as well at, say, a game store. I'm curious how people felt about having to leave the game several times.

While the risk of boring the players or putting too much stress on the GM is a real concern, the addage of "don't split the party" actually originated in the TSR D&D era, where splitting the party made them weak and vulnerable to all sorts of situations that would be less of a problem for a full strength party, However, for a game like Eureka that produces more conventional narratives (everyone take note that I did not say that Eureka produces more narrative or is "more focused on narrative", just more conventional narratives) and has more of a focus on intrigue and horror, the party splitting up to cover more ground and collect more clues in the limited time they have to solve the mystery, but also making each one of them more vulnerable if something happens, is an actual trade-off that can improve the gameplay and story.

First of all, besides it just being really entertaining, I really recommend you listen to the Tiny Table Actual Play of Eureka. It has some really good examples of splitting the party and sending players away that are executed really well, and also some good discussion of it in the post-mortem episode and the interview.

I’m going to answer the ask directly from my own gameplay experience, but I really really urge anyone who has played Eureka to comment with their own experiences with splitting the party and sending players away.

Alright, so, obviously how long players are willing to wait their turn is group-dependent, but with our own group, we’ve actually kinda had the opposite problem from players getting bored. Instead, Narrator and the players whose characters are currently in the spotlight start to worry that they’re selfishly hogging too much session time, and try to rush the scene along (to its great detriment), when in reality the players who were sitting out were happy to keep waiting. Realizing this led to us altering the advice regarding splitting the party in the rulebook, and actually recommending the Narrator go a little longer before switching to the other characters.

I personally am happy to wait up to like 90 minutes if my character is out of the scene, because I have faith in my group and also in Eureka that the payoff for waiting will be that much greater, seeing the characters relay what they have learned while they were apart in dialogue rather than the player just saying “My investigator tells them everything that happened.” It really heightens the tension, lets the characters shine, and can even really help with solving the mystery, because having the events and evidence recounted out loud can help with making connections that might have gone over people’s heads the first time.

Of course like the rulebook says, it also comes to the judgement of the play group as a whole, and should definitely be discussed beforehand basically as part of session zero, and even mid-session if it needs to be. (Communicate your preferences to your play group!!!!!) There’s plenty of scenes and situations where having the other players leave the room instead of sitting and watching would add nothing at all to the experience.

Now I want to hear other people’s opinions. If you have played Eureka and had a party split where some players left the room or otherwise excused themselves, how did it go?

[airenyah]

wish me luck that i'll manage to fit 12 different examples into my analysis

[headspace-hotel]

Oh my god I'm sooooo mad right now

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

I don't even know if this is illegal if it's not a formally endangered species so I don't know if I can report them I'm just. really sad and angry

[grison-in-space]

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[jealousmartini]

⋆.˚ how I like to manifest ! .𖥔˚

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

To be honest, my kind of manifesting is like a lazy type because of how silly and laid back it is. It's good for loa babes like me who just wanna have fun manifesting, but don't wanna do too much.

But because of how complicated manifestation was made in the past years, you guys might see my manifesting as creative.

It just depends on how you, a master manifester, personally like to manifest compared to how I do things.

I like to call this process :

𐙚 shop, purchase, spawn ⋆.˚

Some of you read that and might be thinking "why is it shopping themed-" Silence. hear me out.

– what does it mean to "shop" and how to do it?

To shop means to browse, to look for, and to figure out what you want.

Like you would do before you go to a shop or even while you are in a shop, you would see something you like and wonder to yourself, "oo I really want this " or "Wouldn't it be so nice if I had this" or "Omg I have got to have that" something amongst those lines. This is the first half of my shopping process.

The second half is to look for whatever tickles my fancy and add it to my basket. But how do I do this, and where do I look for my desires? Literally anywhere. But my favourite shopping area is definitely pinterest (just like any other manifester), so let's use her as an example: To shop on pinterest would be to scroll or search for whatever my desire is. To place in a basket would be to sort it into a board.

– what do you mean "purchase", how to do it?

To purchase means to buy something; usually using digital or physical money. Or, in my case, to finalise the fact that it is mine/decide it's mine, by using affirmations!

Affirmations is my currency. When I give some affirmations, I lose some affirmations in order to "buy" my desire.

What I mean by this is that it's like a trade offer with myself. In order to buy my desires, I must trade in some limiting beliefs I have about the desire with new ones that support the fact the desire is now mine. Do you get it?

I traded my old beliefs for new beliefs for my desire in return!

– what does it mean to "spawn", how to do it?

To spawn means to appear very quickly or from nowhere in seconds. For me though, this would just be a simple word for "instant delivery" or "instant reality shift".

Now this is all spawning is. It is me shifting my reality to one where everything is the same but my desired affirmations have materialised instantly. To spawn a desire is to instantly shift to a reality where my affirmations about having my desire has materialised.

I love to spawn my desires instead of going through the process of having to collect it from somewhere (which IS still the manifestation of my affirmations but I'm just too lazy dude☠️😭)

𐙚 the world is a supermarket, and everything is free ! .𖥔˚

This is where my silly imagination gets creative, yall. I'm about to put you guys on some "shops" where you can "purchase" your specific desires from. Here are some obvious ones:

— what you can "buy" on pinterest !

Clothes, Shoes, Accessories, Wigs

Face claims, Body claims

Houses, Apartments/Penthouses

Food claims

Vehicle claims

Aesthetic claims

— what you can "buy" on tiktok ! (And youtube)

Song/Audio claims

voice claims/Accent claims

Face claims, body claims, personality claims

Fame claim

Aesthetic claims

Closet claims

Significant other claims (platonic or romantic)

Relationship trope claims

Room claims (bedroom,bathroom living rooms etc)

— what you can "buy" on Google maps

Houses, Apartments/Penthouses

Islands (😭)

Environment claims

Vacation spots

— what you can buy with your phone camera

I really love using my phone camera to shop for new desires guys because you can take a picture of ANYTHING.

You want to live in a specific neighbourhood? Take a picture of it and purchase is. Want the cutest clothe set you just saw in the window of a store? Take a picture and purchase it.

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

Anyway thats all I have to say for now.

CIAO!!😙💋

Tags I'm tryna put some cool loa babes on. Tell me what you guys think : @esotericc-angel @etherealkissed88 @edwadio @livingmydreamlife5555 @theshifterbear @nondualiber @ponchigg @ningsols @themanifestingbrat @4ellieluv @dollfaceirene @babygothprincess @revrealities

[moonastro]

Juno persona chart

venus in the houses

what is a juno persona chart? looking into juno persona chart gives more detailed insight of how the relationship and marriage overall of you and your spouse will be like. it also describes them in a sense as well. The Greek Goddess Juno is described to rule over love and marriage and hence why the asteroid is looked into for that theme.

venus represents beauty, aesthetics and values. within the juno persona chart, venus signifies the love within the marriage, relationship style and the beauty that comes along in the marriage.

reminder: this is my interpretation from observations and first hand experiences, so don't take this to heart.

**also this can also be used for signs as well, for example if venus in persona chart is in sagittarius, read what applies to the 9th house as it may resonate as well.

venus in 1st house: lots of embodying of one another. quite literal the definition of worshiping your partner. this placements loves their partners independence, courage and fiery aura. this placement is very protective and encouraging of their partner, they act as if they are their soldier, their guard. are quick to act upon when their spouse needs attention of any kind, are always willing to put their partner first. this placement may love how their partner matches their vibe very well but keeping their identity and staying true to themselves at the same time. they lovee their partner body, yes the appearance may play a big part here also and loving how their spouse looks and presents themselves but its more how they do it and not what they see at that moment if that makes sense.

spouse can have natal venus in aries, 1st house, fire sign or fire house.

venus in 2nd house: this placements way of showing love to their spouse can be by cooking a home cooked meal, buying tiny meaningful gifts to them also. can also be by organising a comfort space for their loved one after they are having a bad day or had a hard day at work. the aesthetic of the marriage is very chill, the couple have a comforting aura towards each other, they can be each others comfort space. income is valued amongst themselves and money matters a lot to this placement. this placement may spoil their spouse and may have a mindset of its only acceptable if i spend lots of money on the person that i love in order to show that i truly love them. this placement may value objects and may have a collection of some sort that they keep, perhaps its crystals, books, scarfs, earrings etc etc whatever it is it is very special to this placement and it is very appreciated when others acknowledge their love for objects and even better when someone adds to their collection.

spouse can have natal venus in taurus, 2nd house, earth sign or earth house.

venus in 3rd house: love is very much shown by hobbies and words. lots of words of affirmation 'you look beautiful today', 'i love you' and so on. lots of strolls through the neighbourhood and doing things and spending time within the neighbourhood. for example the couple could easily just go out on a walk around their neighbourhood and go on a creative venture. sharing love through buying latest technologies and sharing some technical skills to each other, it may be internet influenced approaches as well like going online shopping or buying majority of house items from online. the couples may value the arts of writing and their relationship with ones siblings, perhaps this placement has a solid connection with their siblings and may be a big part of their life and perhaps the other also has good relations with their spouses siblings and so forth.

spouse may have natal venus in gemini, 3rd house, air sign or air house.

venus in 4th house: love between the couple is caring, sensitive and very protective. this placement tends to be very protective of their spouse and almost to the point of they'll do anything for them. literally if their spouse gets upset they get upset and want to fix it. nothing is more important to them than them being happy. the couple value their family traditions and most likely will pass it on onto their kids and will make sure to teach their kids the importance of their homeland and heritage. this placement may love how invested their partner is about their ancestry and is always wanting to find themselves. the couple may connect by relating to they way they were brought up and may agree on many things. this placement may have good relations with their family and therefore may appreciate their spouse doing the same. the aesthetic of their home is very important for this placement, it provides not only comfort but a chance for them to create special memories that they'll remember forever and pass it on for generations to come.

spouse may have natal venus in cancer, 4th house, water sign or water house.

venus in 5th house: this placement may love how fun, independent, well spoken and creative their spouse is. the love between the couple are seen by many, they are not afraid to show their love to each other in public and are proud to show off their partner to other people. the aesthetics in this relationship may be part of an entertainment business, lots of creativity in this marriage, arts, singing, dancing, writing, anything that requires to be creative is valued among each party and may be a very important part of their identity and who they are. this placement enjoys pleasure so expect them to get their way and no other, this placement will do anything in order for them to feel satisfactory and the same goes with their partner, they may want only the best for their partner and will go all out for them to make sure they are happy and satisfied. this placement may enjoy intimacy like no other, being intimate in their eyes is art itself, it connects both parties and this placement may find it beautiful how the whole thing plays out.

spouse may have natal venus in leo, 5th house, fire sign or fire house.

venus in 6th house: this couples way of showing love is definitely through acts of service, this placement is ready to literally do anything for their spouse just to show how much they love them. taking care of their spouse is how they express their love for them for example if they are sick in bed or, if they are back from a long day in work and so forth. this placement may romanticise their lifestyle and put in as much effort into it in order to satisfy their needs and their partners. this also may refer to loving their other half's flaws and insecurities, being in love for who they are and not what they are, not caring what may be wrong with them as others may put it. this placement may provide and show love by factoring lots of labour for their partner also which quite literally can mean that they may perform services for their spouse whether its doing what they ask, going out of their way to do extra work for instance when it may not necessarily be needed.

spouse may have natal venus in virgo, 6th house, earth sign or earth house.

venus in 7th house: the love shared between the couple is romantic, everlasting type of love, the love you see of an long lasting marriage of an elderly couple. the couple may express their love through physical touch like holding hands, hugging, holding onto your arm and so on and anything that requires skin to skin contact. i feel this placement also loves to keep their peace and keep everything within the relationship fair. the aesthetic of the relationship may be very peaceful and full of luxurious items in the home, so the home can be very organised and every single item is picked out precisely to the tee. they love to go out shopping for the tiny luxurious things such as perfume testing or going to shop for artistic supplies. this placement loves when their partner goes all out for them and drops everything for them, the definition of having their full attention.

spouse may have natal venus in libra, 7th house, air sign or air house.

venus in 8th house: love can be shared in secret, i feel like with this placement they show love to each other privately so the public may not see that side of the marriage. the sign its in can tell how the couple may express it privately, so for example in aquarius, there may be lots on and off moments. the couple may get along when it comes to shared money so they may get along more when one one gets a bonus at their work, or if they got extra money and so on. this couple may not be seen in public together either, whether its due to each others work schedule or their routines, most of the time they keep it low. may appreciate when their partner trusts them especially when they open up about their trauma and difficulties in life.

spouse may have natal venus in scorpio, 8th house, water sign or water house.

venus in 9th house: love is shown through interest in topics in what their spouse has to say, for example if they have learned a new thing and they share it with their spouse and this placement is in full attention mode in order to show their full interest in what their other half has to say. this placement reminds me of 'did you know this' and 'did you know that' sort of thing, always sharing what they know to their spouse. this couple may value their higher education and are proud of their success in that field. this placement has a special spot for journeys and if their spouse takes them on a journey they will take that as in that they love them. they love it whenever what they say or teach to their spouse how they use that knowledge and share it with other people, this placement appreciates it and its a sign in their eyes that their partner believes and trusts them.

spouse may have natal venus in sagittarius, 9th house, fire sign or fire house.

venus in 10th house: the couple show their love by working hard and proving themselves to beyond expectations over and over again just to prove how much their spouse means to them. reputation has a lot of value, so this placement will spend lots of money to make sure their partner looks the best and feels the best. they may love it when they are exposed to others and them seeing the love that they have for each other. the couple appreciates the maturity of one another in professional situations, they know when to draw the line when it comes to professional titles. this placement loves and is proud of their partners career choices, they find it very motivating. this couple may like to show off lots, their luxury, their home, their cars, anything that may require competition, they like being on top as it shows their validity as respectful human beings.

spouse may have natal venus in capricorn, 10th house, earth sign or earth house.

venus in 11th house: the love between the two is known amongst social groups, everyone knows them as the couple. this couple may be role models and may be know online (the sign in which venus is in can tell you why, for example if in cancer the internet may view how caring one is for each other and how protective and family oriented they are and so forth). this placement may love how their partner is independent, how different they are from other people so they may feel like they hit the jackpot with their spouse. the relationship may be filled with lots of unconventional things and find beauty in those areas in their lives such as roles that are not usually done in a traditional way, they have their own way of finding the glam and beauty in their marriage, different from the stereotype couples.

spouse may have natal venus in aquarius, 11th house, air sign or air house.

venus in 12th house: the couples way of showing love to each other is dreamy and can make the other nearly read ones mind and make their desires of the way they want to be loved come true which makes it feel like their dreams have came true. but on the other hand there is lots of creativity in this marriage, lots of ethereal aesthetic and lots of desires to make their partners dream come true, so with this placements there is most likely going to be lots of travel surprises such as them buying a ticket and saying to their spouse 'yeah, we are going to this place in two days so get ready' but it might be a dream destination for their spouse. others may view this relationship to be a dream come true, there may be lots of illusions for other people that this marriage is perfect. this placement may love how creative, imaginative and out of this world their spouse is, perhaps their spouse is someone they have always dreamed off and they are the perfect representation of their perfect one.

spouse may have natal venus in pisces, 12th house, water sign or water house.

thank you so much for your time, i hope you have a good day like always>

[fuckyeahisawthat]

There are so many places in the Villeneuve Dune adaptations where he just...takes all the narrative pieces that Frank Herbert laid out and subtly rearranges them into something that tells the story better--that creates dramatic tension where you need it, communicates the themes and message of the book more clearly, or corrects something in the text that contradicts or undermines what Herbert said he was trying to say.

The fedaykin are probably my favorite example of this. I just re-read a little part of the book and got smacked in the face with how different they are.

(under the cut for book spoilers and length)

The fedaykin in the book are Paul's personal followers, sort of his personal guard. They show up after his legend has already started growing (the word doesn't appear in the book until chapter 40) and they are people who have specifically dedicated themselves to fighting for him, and right from the moment they're introduced there is a kind of implied fanaticism to their militancy that's a bit uncomfortable to read. They're the most ardent believers in Paul's messianic status and willing to die for him. (They are also, as far as you can tell from the text, all men.)

In the book, as far as I can remember (I could be forgetting some small detail but I don't think so) there is no mention of armed resistance to colonialism on Arrakis before Paul shows up. As far as we know, he created it. ETA: Okay I actually went back and checked on this and while we hear about the Fremen being "a thorn in the side" of the Harkonnens and we know that they are good fighters, we don't see anything other than possibly one bit of industrial sabotage. The book is very clear that the organized military force we see in the second half was armed and trained by Paul. This is exacerbated by the two-year time jump in the book, which means we never see how Paul goes from being a newly deposed ex-colonial overlord running for his life to someone who has his own private militia of people ready to give their lives for him.

The movie completely flips all these dynamics on their head in ways that add up to a radical change in meaning.

The fedaykin in the movie are an already-existing guerrilla resistance movement on Arrakis that formed long before Paul showed up. Literally the first thing we learn about the Fremen, less that two minutes into the first movie, is that they are fighting back against the colonization and exploitation of their home and have been for decades.

The movie fedaykin also start out being the most skeptical of the prophecy about Paul, which is a great choice from both a political and a character standpoint. Of course they're skeptical. If you're part of a small guerrilla force repeatedly going up against a much bigger and stronger imperial army...you have to believe in your own agency. You have to believe that it is possible to win, and that this tiny little chip in the armor of a giant terrifying military machine that you are making right now will make a difference in the end. These are the people who are directly on the front lines of resisting oppression. They are doing it with their own sweat, blood and ingenuity, and they are not about to wait around for some messiah who may never come.

From a character standpoint, this is really the best possible environment you could put Paul Atreides in if you want to keep him humble. He doesn't get any automatic respect handed to him due to title or birthright or religious belief. He has to prove himself--not as any kind of savior but as a good fighter and a reliable member of a collective political project. And he does. This is an environment that really draws out his best qualities. He's a skilled fighter; he's brave (sometimes recklessly so); he's intensely loyal to and protective of people he cares about. He is not too proud to learn from others and work hard in an egalitarian environment where he gets no special treatment or extra glory. The longer he spends with the fedaykin the more his allegiance shifts from Atreides to Fremen, and the more skeptical he himself becomes about the prophecy. This sets up the conflict with Jessica, which comes to a head before she leaves for the south. And his political sincerity--that he genuinely comes to believe that these people deserve liberation from all colonial forces and his only role should be to help where he can--is what makes the tragedy work. Because in the end we know he will betray all these values and become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be.

There's another layer of meaning to all this that I don't know if the filmmakers were even aware of. ETA: rescinding my doubt cause based on some of Villeneuve's other projects I'm pretty sure he could work it out. Given the time period (1960s) and Herbert's propensity for using Arabic or Arabic-inspired words for aspects of Fremen culture, it seems very likely that the made-up word fedaykin was taken from fedayeen, a real Arabic word that was frequently used untranslated in American news media at the time, usually to refer to Palestinian armed resistance groups.

Fedayeen is usually translated into English as fighter, guerrilla, militant or something similar. The translation of fedaykin that Herbert provides in Dune is "death commando"...which is a whole bucket of yikes in my opinion, but it's not entirely absurd if we're assuming that this fake word and the real word fedayeen function in the same way. A more literal translation of fedayeen is "self-sacrificer," as in willing, intentional self-sacrifice for a political cause, up to and including sacrificing your life.

If you apply this logic to Dune, it means that Villeneuve has actually shifted the meaning of this word in-universe, from fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for Paul to fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people. And the fedaykin are no longer a group created for Paul but a group that Paul counts himself as part of, one member among equals. Which is just WILDLY different from what's in the book. And so much better in my opinion.

[apas-95]

What criticisms do you have of direct democracy? Assuming it’s communist, as well as having laws about what can and can’t be voted on such as “no killing/disenfranchising the (blank) people” and “no voting for capitalism” (the actual laws would be longer but I don’t want to write a long paragraph about how you’re not allowed to vote for fascism in a fake direct democratic society)

While it's fine in the abstract, in practice it's exceedingly slow and inefficient - being a political representative in a council is a full-time job, and if every single decision made is subject to the popular vote, then both 1) polling itself takes considerably longer; and 2) the necessary amount of education and discussion needed to be carried out prior to a proper vote is much larger: rather than simply summarising the issue and presenting key facts to council members, a massive public education campaign now has to be carried out every time a new, say, regulatory standard for storm drains, is decided upon.

Which leads us into the other main criticism - in practice, people don't *want* to have to deliberate and vote on canal works every day. Either voting is mandatory, in which caee annoyed, disinterested voters are just randomly choosing without much thought; or voting is optional, and the vast majority of people aren't actually being represented in any given issue, because it's solely decided by whichever segment are motivated enough to get a campaign going. Here, delegating the business of understanding and making decisions on random organisational matters *does* genuinely lead to a more representative and democratic outcome.

Fundamentally, what we're talking about is division of labour - a factory is more efficient when each worker doesn't have to make a complete product by themselves. Bureaucratic and administrative work *is* still work, regardless of its political character. Again to bring up division of labour, in industrial society the operation of a single factory relies upon the co-operation of electrical substations next-door, power plants the next town over, logistics offices in the provincial capital, resources developed and extracted on the other side of the country, and the entire nation's collaboration on a unified economic plan; it is something that can only really be directed by a central authority that can collect and collate massive amounts of data to produce new courses of action - to try to operate such a body based entirely on direct democracy is, beyond any other considerations, both impractical and undesirable.

This is not to say there doesn't exist great political drive and passion among the masses, nor that they have no interest in the political process and their representation - but not everyone actually applies to be a council delegate during elections, because most people are fine with the council work itself being handled by a trusted representative.

In practice, the way communists have managed these matters is democratic centralis' - here are a few graphics explaining how representative democracy is carried out on the local level in China, as an example:

[markrosewater]

You often say something akin to "If you don't like something Magic has done, don't build a deck with it", but that ignores the actual problem. If I don't like something in the game, I don't want to PLAY against it either. I can't control what other people play but if the things I detest keep getting made, and at a higher and higher power level, the idea of just not putting them in my own personal deck doesn't solve anything. This is doubly true with things that are competitive or exclusively with strangers, ie Arena or FNM.

Let’s me try to approach this from a slightly different vantage point. One of the core things about Magic is that it constantly reinvents itself. Much like how we design the game, it iteratively adapts.

That means we try something and then the audience, the collective whole of all the players, gives us feedback. Note, for the rest of this answer, I’m going to use the word “players”, but I’m using that word to mean the totality of everyone playing. If it’s something players like, we make more of it. If it’s something players dislike, we make less of it. If players despise it, we don’t do it again.

My example for the last point was ante. For those unfamiliar, ante made you play an extra card exiled from the game which the winner permanently took from the other player if they won. The game started with ante as a core part of the rules. Originally, it was the default. You had to opt out of it.

Players hated it. Hated, hated, hated it. I remember, whenever you would meet a stranger, you had to start by saying “no ante”. It didn’t take long for the game to reject ante. Eventually, we even banned all the ante cards in every tournament format.

Part of the social contract of playing Magic is agreeing to experience what the players want in the game. Yes, you can build your deck however you wish, but other people get to do the same.

This means if something exist in any volume, it exists because the players want it to exist. If the players didn’t want it, like ante, the will of the players would force it from the game.

A common note I get on Blogatog is “I don’t like thing X. Can we please remove thing X from Magic? Thank you.”

My answer is always some form of this: The players (again the totality of the players) have said that this is something they want in the game. It’s now part of the game because people want it to be.

This means being part of Magic means to signing up to anything the players have said they wanted. I keep focusing on how you can control what you play with, but yes, part of being in the Magic ecosystem is the agreement that each player gets to play with the parts of the game they enjoy most.

So, let’s talk Universes Beyond. The reason we tried it in the first place was because we had data that made us think players would like it. That’s what R&D does. We extrapolate based on player feedback and try new things.

The players will embrace or reject it. If they embrace it, we’ll make more. If they reject it, we make less of it. If they reject strongly, we might never make it again. Look at March of the Machine Aftermath. The players hated it, and we excised it from our future plans (surprisingly quickly, by the way).

Why are we making more Universes Beyond? Because the players are saying loudly that they want it to be part of the game. The best selling Secret Lairs of all time are Universes Beyond. The best selling Commander decks of all time are Universes Beyond. The best selling large booster release of all time is Universes Beyond. It’s not “sets” because we’ve only ever released one.

It’s not just sales. We do market research. Market research also strongly says players want Universes Beyond. Note, each individual player wants specific ones, but the collective data is they want it.

We also look at data about what creates the biggest online discussions. Universes Beyond rules supreme there as well.

I could go on and on. There are many metrics we look at to reflect the will of the people, and Universes Beyond is crushing it in (almost) every metric.

My point is Universes Beyond follows the pattern of every new thing we’ve tried. We try it in small samples and then increase its usage as the players show acceptance.

Why do you have to play against it? Because, by being a Magic player, you accept the will of the people. You accept that part of being a member of the community is allowing the community, as a whole, to dictate what the game is.

It doesn’t want ante, but it definitely wants Universes Beyond.

That’s why you have to play against it.

[noneorother]

I broke down the hilarious amount of "Aziraphale tartans" so you don't have to.

I've been slowly going bonkers collecting the amount of times members of the cast/creators and fans of Good Omens over the years have referred to various things as "Aziraphale's tartan". Even on merchandise, I've seen wildly varying opinons about what pattern Aziraphale's tartan actually is. Your resident graphic designer has decided to sit down and just do the damned thing*. Exhibit A) Tartan Origin

Sarah Arnett posted this image to her instagram in 2019, having created "Heaven's dress tartan for the character Aziraphale". However, the only time I've actually seen this pattern used in good omens is in the season 2 announcement poster made by Mickey, and maybe on a pair of socks Aziraphale wears in season 1, (but I'm not convinced).

So here's what that looks like. Note I've rotated the original pattern 90 degrees clockwise in my final pattern (far right) for reasons that will become clear shortly.

Exhibit B) Aziraphale's Bowtie, Thermos, Notebook etc.

This is the tartan that Aziraphale actually wears for most of seasons 1 & 2.** It's a recoloured version of the Exhibit A), and has been rotated 90 degrees on it's bowtie application so that the darker bars run vertical, and not horizontal. The problem is, while the direction of the pattern on his accessories doesn't change, it does on the bowtie. You can see examples of the tartan going right OR left in both season 1 and 2.

Exhibit C) Aziraphale's Brown Bowtie...

This Tartan isn't just a trick of the light. For the first park bench scene in season 1, Aziraphale is wearing a version of his regular bowtie, recoloured in brown and rotated 90 degrees, so that it fits with the direction of the original Exhibit A) Tartan, but not with the direction of the tartan on his Exhibit B) regular bowties. This bowtie was made special, from cloth cut in the opposite direction.

Exhibit D) Aziraphale's Magical Cravat!

Now this is where it starts to get interesting! I haven't seen many people discuss Aziraphale's magician disguise from season 1, but his cravat actually has both Exhibit B) and Exhibit C) tartans to create a contrasting double sided tartan: the outward facing brown, and the hidden, inward facing blue (according to costumer, because of lack of enough brown).

Exhibit E) Saraqael's and Muriel's Tartan

Don't be fooled, Saraqael's and Muriel's tartan may look similar in colour to Aziraphale's, but when you pick it apart, it's got inverse colours, and mildly squished horizontal striping. If you note the orange boxes in each picture, you can see the ratio of the blue stripe to the vertical stripes in each tartan is different, while keeping the overall pattern and ratio in each direction the same. Exhibit E) has a square intersection. It's also usually woven much larger. This tartan also introduces a small sliver of hunter green into the beige/blue/purple palette that's been seen so far.

Exhibit F) Gabriel's Tartan Blanket

Like the others, Gabriel's S2E1 blanket is a variation on the original Heaven's Dress Tartan. It's got very squished horizontal striping though, and is woven even larger than the Saraqael Tartan. Most noticeably though, while it has the same grey vertical striping as Exhibit E) it's now got even more green in it, and the purple is gone almost entirely (save one line).

Exhibit F) Have a bonus Crowlee Tartan from the Season 1 body swap miracle that matches none of these.

It's silver silk though. Can I get a wahoo....?

__________________________________________ *Disclaimer: I am not Scottish, and definitely not an expert in tartan, just a tired graphic designer. If you want tartan expertise, you can go here (although I don't really agree with what they say about the main colour pattern) https://livebloggingmydescentintomadness.tumblr.com/post/189300035060/a-discourse-on-tartan

**In order to deduce colours, I've used high quality BTS footage or photography in neutral lighting whenever possible. Especially in season 2, colour grading and post processing of the final show make colour matching between scenes and/or seasons impossible.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: cave fish

Prepare for a deep dive today. Not because I'm going to be more in-depth than usual, but because we're talking about caves. Which are deep. In the ground.... Yeah, you get it. Today is going to be a bit different from my normal WBW posts. Instead of going in depth on a particular species or group of related species I'm going to discuss common adaptations fish evolve to live permanently in caves and then go over a few species I find interesting. Let's get spelunking.

(Image: Typhleotris madagascariensis, a typical cave fish. It is a small fish with an entirely white body and smooth skin where the eyes would be on a normal fish. It is resting on rocky sediment. End ID)

Caves are not an easy place to live. There's no light, limited food, often low oxygen levels, and the threat of collapse or rockfall. Cave-swelling animals (collectively called troglofauna) need a number of special adaptations to survive and there is little room for error. Troglofauna that are strictly aquatic are called stygofauna. Troglofauna and stygofauna can be divided into three groups based on their life history. Troglophiles and stygophiles complete part of their life cycle in caves and part outside of them. A classic example of this is the many species of bat who seasonally inhabit caves to give birth and mate. Trogloxenes and stygoxenes are animals who will visit caves, but do not require time in caves to complete their life cycle. An example trogloxene would be a bear who takes shelter in a cave during winter. Finally, troglobites and stygobites live their entire lives in caves and never leave. The fish I discuss today are stygobites. Because troglobites and stygobites generally will die outside of their caves, they have very little opportunity to disperse. As such, many cave fish species are found only in a single cave or cave system and are entirely dependent on the health of their homes to survive.

(Image: two cave catfish sitting next to each other on a rock. They are white with elongated anal and rear dorsal fins, and no eyes. End ID)

Many cave-dwelling animals develop a set of common adaptations called troglomorphism. Cave water is often high in minerals but low in oxygen and food content. To survive, the fauna develop very slow metabolisms, allowing them to last a long time on limited resources while slowing down movement and other active systems and increasing age. These species are also typically smaller than their epigean (above-ground) relatives, further reducing their energy requirements. Slowed metabolism results in comparatively slow development. Cave species take much longer to mature and reproduce then related epigean species. Many species further decrease their energy consumption by moving as little as possible. Many species of cave fish are able to last long periods of time between meals without negative impacts to their health. They will binge eat whatever they can find and then subsist on fat stores while food is scarce. One test in captivity showed that a Phreatobius cisternarum (cave catfish) could go a while year between meals and stay healthy. Cave species are usually opportunistic generalists as they can't afford to pass up resources. Much of their food will originate outside of the cave, either directly or indirectly. Water flow into caves brings in algae, bacteria, plankton, and other food sources. Other more indirect methods of introducing include bat feces. While the fish may not eat the feces directly, other species may do so and potentially become prey to the cave fish. The feces also introduces nutrients from outside the cave that encourages the growth of other food sources like bacteria, fungi, and planktonic animals.

(Image: Amblyopsis hoosieri, the hoosier cave fish. It is a very simplistic fish with no eyes or scales. End ID)

Life in a cave comes with a different sensory requirement. The complete lack of light makes vision useless. You don't know dark until you've seen cave dark. Fun fact: caves are so dark that sighted people can start hallucinating in them because our brains aren't evolved to handle zero visual stimulus and will start making stuff up to fill that gap. As a result of the utter darkness, many species of cave fish are blind. They either evolve to completely lose their eyes or have the eyes considerably reduced in size and function. Eyes take up a lot of energy to maintain and in caves, there is a lot of selective pressure to get rid of organs that aren't useful there. Despite the blindness, many species retain some form of photosensitivity and will flee from light. Cave species also often lack skin pigmentation. Skin pigment has two primary uses. It protects the skin from ultraviolet light in sunlight, and provides skin coloration that can be used for camouflage, displays, warnings, and so on. In an environment where there is no ultraviolet light and everyone is blind, skin pigment serves no real purpose and is lost. As a result, most cave species are white or translucent. The lack of pigment may be a reason so many species remain photosensitive. Without pigment, they would be highly susceptible to sunburn or skin cancer from ultraviolet light. Caves also have a sound dampening effect that makes hearing less valuable. Reduced eyes and pigmentation is also seen in deep sea fish that live too deep for light to reach. Even those species still use visual curs more than cave fish due to the abundance of bioluminescence in the deep ocean.

(Image: Sinocyclocheilus longicornus, a recently discovered species. It is a fish with translucent skin, revealing the skeleton. It has a long shout with two pairs of barbels. Emerging from the upper back is a horn-like protrusion. End ID)

With vision off the table, cave fish rely on other senses. chemoreception through taste and smell are strongly selected for as traits that can direct cave animals toward food or away from threats. Another sensory system fish have is the lateral line. The Lateral line is an organ system found on each side of a fish where modified skin cells called hair cells detect motion in the water. The lateral line allows fish to sense movement in the water around them, informing them of water flow and the movement of food and threats. Cave fish typically have a well-developed lateral line system that compensates for the lack of vision. Many fish perform displays for various reasons, such as attracting mates. These displays are typically visual, but in cave fish, that isn't an option. Instead, their displays are more focused on moving the water in ways that can be detected by lateral lines. Some species of cave fish maintain additional sensory abilities from their epigean ancestors. An example of this are cave catfish, who retain the barbels and electroreception common to their kind.

(Image: six Phreatichthys andruzzii. They are long, eyeless, white fish. The blood-filled gills are visible through its translucent skin, seen as a large red patch on the head. End ID)

Before moving on to specific species, it should be noted that cave fish is not a taxonomic category. Cave fish come from many different lines of descent and independently evolved similar adaptations to cave conditions. These similar adaptations are seen in most cave fauna, not just fish, and are collectively called troglomorphism. There are about 300 species of cavefish known to science.

Ophisternon candidum, or the blind cave eel, lives in north Australian caves that are connected to the ocean. Because these caves intake salt water, the pools and streams within them can become very salty, resulting in the eels developing a tolerance to a high range of salinity. They are rare, having been spotted under 40 times since 1959, and thus little is known of their lifestyle. We do know they burrow into sediment and secrete mucus to keep those burrows stable. Males seem to build burrows to woo females. They have been bred in captivity for use un laboratories. At up to 40 cm long, they are huge for cave fish and used to hold the record for the largest species known until another species was found that's even bigger.

(Image: an eel with translucent, pink skin, no eyes, and ribs visible through the skin. It looks somewhat like an earthworm. End ID)

The actual largest known cave fish is Neolissochilus pnar, which gets up to 40 cm while being more massive than the eel. They are found in a single cave system 100 meters underground in India. The primary food source in the cave appears to be debris from the nearby forest that is washed into the cave during seasonal flooding. The fish may have been known to locals well before it was scientifically described, as there are stories of white cave fish going back over a century in the region.

(Image: a small fish with no eyes, white skin, and a long snout with barbels on it)

The Alabama cave fish (Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni) may be the rarest species of freshwater fish in the world. They live exclusively in key cave, Alabama, USA and no more than 10 have ever been seen at a time. The population is estimated to be under 100, below the generally accepted minimum viable population for a species of 200. Fittingly enough, this means a species only found in Alabama may be severely inbred. They are believed to be triggered to mate by seasonal flooding and may be mouth brooders. Climate change-caused changes to flooding and toxins leaking into the groundwater from sewers are currently threatening them with extinction.

(Image: a long, white, eyeless fish with an elongated snout. Its skeleton is visible through its skin. End ID)

Typhliasina pearsei, the Mexican blind brotula or dama blanca ciega (blind white lady), lives in the cenotes of the Yucatán peninsula. Cenotes are sinkholes filled with groundwater and the ones in the Yucatán are often connected by underground caves, rivers, and aquifers. The fish are apex predators who eat shrimp and mysids and are known to coexist with other cave fish in part of their range. As with other brotulas, they are a rare example of a bony fish that gives live birth. Because of how interconnected and numerous the cenotes are, this species has one of the largest distributions of all cave fish.

(Image: an eyeless white fish with a long tail and elongated rear dorsal and anal fins. It is next to an orange rock. End ID)

Cryptotora thamicola, the cave angel fish or waterfall climbing cave fish, is the adrenaline junkie of the cave fish world. Most cave fish live in slow-moving or still water, but this daredevil lives in rapids. But just living in rapids isn't extreme enough, these guys climb waterfalls. Their large fins with hooked fin rays let them cling onto the rocks while facing into the current. They then allow food to flow right into their mouths. Unlike other walking fish, the waterfall climbers have a well-developed pelvic girdle and walk in a style very similar to tetrapods, with front and back fins alternating strides. This has made them very interesting to evolutionary biologists studying the transition from fish to tetrapods.

(Image: a typical cave fish with very large pectoral and pelvic fins. End ID)

The Mexican tetra (Astyanax mexicanus) is an example of a handful of fish species that have a cave form and a non-cave form. Most Mexican tetras are perfectly ordinary tetras, but one population has adapted to cave living and has developed trogomorphic traits. The cave from lack pigment, has tastebuds on its head, lacks eyes, and can store more body fat. While you would expect such radical physiological differences to mean the two populations are different species, they aren't. The two populations are fully capable of producing fertile offspring and do so in the wild. If you've ever seen a cave fish in person, there's a good chance it was one of these as the cave form has entered the pet trade and they do very well in captivity, making them the most studied cave fish.

(Image: the non-cave and cave forms of the Mexican tetra seen next to each other for comparison. The non-cave form is a fairly typical silvery-green fish. The cave form is slightly more robust, white, and eyeless. End ID)

Because most cave fish are found only in a singe cave or cave system, they are fully dependent on the health of that cave. Caves tend to be very stable environments, which results in the inhabitants being pretty bad at adapting to change. Changes in water flow, introduction of new species, and pollutants can seriously harm or wipe out whole species. Many species of cave fish are rated as endangered or critically endangered based on their low populations and vulnerability to change.

[sebscore]

rubyyy i have an idea for your gen-z driver series! when you are free, maybe you can write about when lil miss just got into f1 and had many people doubted her just for her to nail her rookie season like the goat sir Lewis Hamilton did in his. feel free to tweak it however you want. I just thought it would be cool to see more off the racing side of gen-z driver. :))))

and i really enjoy your writings, keep them coming but also don't stress out too much about them as well :)

WELCOME TO THE STRANGE WORLD

pairings: f1 grid x driver!reader 

warnings: sexism. swearing. based this one on the 2018 grid, cause I imagine her joining the grid that year. christian horner & helmut marko. 

author's note: this got me immediately inspired!! It's also the first time I tackle the racing aspect of the series so I hope it's a bit accurate and that it is enjoyable x

• • • • • • •

''Do you feel the pressure going into this week's race?'' The reporter asked her, a polite smile on his face. 

Y/N carefully adjusted the mic attached to her cheek. ''Uh, definitely,'' she nervously chuckled as it was her first F1 press conference, ''there have been a lot of reactions, both negative and positive, so I do feel a lot of eyes on me at the moment.'' 

To say that there had been a lot of reactions was an understatement. The announcement of the female race car driver joining the F1 grid had become the #1 topic on several social media platforms and even international news channels had broadcasted about the ''controversial'' arrival of the young woman. 

Various notable figures in the motorsport world had also voiced their opinion on the new face on the grid. There were many positive reactions, for example, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff saying: ''It's a step in the right direction. Many young girls will see her race and get more interested in the sport, which will hopefully motivate them to start karting.'' 

Susie Wolff, former development driver for Williams, also showed her enthusiasm. ''I think Y/N is the perfect role model for all the young girls who watch F1 at home. We've been following her closely the last few years and she's proved that she can compete with the big guys, I'm very proud and I can't wait for her performances this season.'' 

Unfortunately, there had also been less positive feedback. Red Bull Motorsport advisor, Helmut Marko, had questioned whether she would be able to handle the ''physicalities'' the sport asked of a driver. ''I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if she would be replaced by the second race.'' 

His Red Bull colleague, Christian Horner, had also made some sensitive comments about the young woman. He recalled his first meeting with her, stating he thought she was one of the grid girls and that it would be tough as she's ''entering a man's sport''. 

Y/N had been upset with key figures of the sport making such statements about her, but she had heard worse throughout her racing career. Men like Horner were stuck in old times. 

''Sebastian, how do you feel about a female joining F1?'' Both Y/N and Sebastian internally cringed at the rookie being referred to as a 'female', trying to not let it show on their faces. 

The German collected the right words before answering. ''I'm very happy that Y/N is sitting here next to us,'' he smiled at her, ''I think her being on the grid and competing alongside us, is going to bring a lot of positive changes that should've been happening a long time ago. I've known her for some years now, so maybe I'm biased, but I couldn't think of a better person joining the line-up.'' 

''Thank you.'' Y/N mumbled, grown shy by Sebastian's praises. He had been involved in her career since her humble karting beginnings, wanting to guide her as he knew a lot of people would try to stop her from flourishing in the sport. 

The journalist then put his focus on the other world champion sitting at the panel. ''Lewis, you share the same opinion as Sebastian?'' 

''I agree with Seb, it's nice to see that progress is being made in diversing the sport and she's here, because she deserves to be here.'' Lewis' answer showed his disagreement with the people who were convinced that the woman's arrival to F1 was nothing more than a statement to the FIA. 

Y/N wasn't ignorant and knew her claiming an F1 seat would bring a lot of publicity, not only to her, but her team as well. However, they wouldn't risk losing millions of euros, because they simply wanted to make a point that women can competitively drive as well. 

''I've seen her drive, we've all seen her drive and you can't deny that she has a huge talent.'' Lewis concluded his answer, sending a soft smile her way. 

The reporter who asked the question directed his attention back to the young woman. ''Y/N, it must be great to hear those positive words from such seasoned drivers.'' He said to her, his hands pointing towards the two World Champions. 

She shyly nodded her head, feeling the gazes of everyone in the room on her. ''Yeah, it's, uh,  very nice of them.'' 

''It's the truth.'' Sebastian chuckled. 

''That's P11 tomorrow, Y/N! Good job, we're proud of you over here.'' Her engineer announced over the radio, letting the driver know her qualifying session was over. 

She pressed her radio button. ''Thank you so much, guys! A good start!'' She enthusiastically exclaimed, delighted about her team being happy with quali. 

They had greeted her back into the garage with an applause and many headpats, congratulating her on her first ever F1 qualifier. ''Let's discuss now.'' Her coach put his arm around her shoulder and guided her to the team's briefing room. 

It hadn't lasted long. The team was overall very satisfied with how the qualifying session had gone and didn't have much feedback for the rookie. 

''Of course it would be great to score points, but finishing P11 is the realistic standing tomorrow.'' Her team principal's words had taken her by surprise, expecting them to want to score as many points as possible at the race tomorrow. 

Y/N wasn't too sure if that was the genuine opinion her team had about the next day or if they thought that she wouldn't be able to make any overtakes. Whatever it was, the dilemma clouded her mind as she walked through the paddock, ready to go back to her hotel and unwind. 

However, an arm pulled her out of her thoughts, making the rookie flinch at the sudden touch. ''What the heck,'' she hastily turned towards the person, ''Seb, don't scare me like that.'' Y/N calmed down seeing the German man grinning at her, Britta standing next to him. 

''You looked like you were overthinking.'' He had seen the frown on her face as she passed the Ferrari hospitality, immediately knowing something was on her mind. ''Starting P11 is good for your first race, the best of the rookies.'' Sebastian figured it was related to the qualifying session. 

''No, I'm happy with my starting position.'' She assured him, shaking her head. 

The Ferrari driver furrowed his eyebrows, being confused. ''Then what is it? Did someone say something to you?'' 

Y/N glanced around the paddock, making sure no one of her team or a reporter was standing near them. ''I just, uh, well- during the briefing, they basically said that they don't expect me to make any overtakes and that I just need to try to keep my position.'' She explained to the duo, both listening attentively. 

''They're already underestimating you?'' Britta commented, shocked they wouldn't encourage her to at least try to overtake as many cars as she can. 

Sebastian agreed with his friend. ''A team telling their driver to not score points is the weirdest thing I've heard in years.'' He said to Britta, a frown gracing his face. 

He turned towards the young woman. ''Don't listen to them, okay? You pass as many fucking cars as you can, alright?'' It almost looked like he was scolding her. 

The girl nodded her head, an appreciative smile on her face. ''You know I will.'' 

''I love the confidence.'' Britta laughed, patting her back. 

''Don't think about it too much, Y/N. You're gonna do great tomorrow, I'm sure of it.'' Sebastian ruffled her hair, a sincere tone in his voice. 

Y/N simply smiled at both of them, and thanked them for their support. ''I'm gonna go back to my hotel now, but I'll see you tomorrow then.'' She bid them goodbye, waving as she walked through the exit gates. 

She could see and feel the condescending stares as she waited on the grid before the start of the race, some people didn't know how to be subtle. She had her headphones on, blasting music through them so she could drown out all of the negative thoughts. 

A tap on her shoulder brought her eyes from the ground to the face of a semi-looking concerned Kimi. She paused her song and took the headphones off, ready to listen to what the older man had to say. ''Yeah?'' 

''I can hear your song.'' Kimi pointed at his own ears, visualizing his words. 

Y/N's eyes widened, her worried expression altering into one of embarrassment. ''Oh, sorry, I'll turn it down.'' She apologized, immediately grabbing her phone to change the volume. 

''No, uh, is okay,'' he told her, ''you good?'' 

She was stunned by his question, awkwardly staring at him for a few seconds before answering. ''Yes, I'm good.'' Kimi always kept it short, she figured she should do the same. 

''Don't be nervous,'' the Finnish driver continued, looking into her eyes, ''people want to see you do bad, prove them wrong.'' 

She had met the man a handful of times before, but they had never talked this much with each other. Kimi kept to himself and she wanted to be respectful of that, not wanting to accidentally cross one of his boundaries. 

He wasn't a man of many words (at least sober) so she appreciated his advice very much, knowing he wouldn't tell her this if he didn't think she could actually prove them wrong. 

''Thanks.'' 

''No worry.'' A small assuring smile was found on his face, making the grimaces of her critics seem like nothing. 

''Y/L easily passes the Renault, moving up to P10.'' The commentary of David Croft sounded as she overtook Sainz, going from P11 to P10. 

Her team's pit crew cheered in the garage, watching the spectacle on the screen. ''Keep pushing, Y/N! We're in the points.'' Her engineer told her over the radio. 

''Hehe, understood.'' She chuckled, proud of her smooth overtake. 

She managed to pass the Mclaren of Vandoorne in the same lap, falling behind the Mercedes of Bottas and the Renault of Hulkenberg who was doing his best to keep his seventh position in the race. 

The pair was too busy challenging each other that they didn't see the car of the female driver coming through, passing both of them when they left a gap. ''Y/L jumps ahead of both of them! She jumped Bottas and Hulkenberg, moving up to P7! What a stellar performance of the rookie driver!'' 

People couldn't believe their eyes as she passed the Mercedes, undoubtedly one of the fastest cars on the grid compared to her team's midfield one. 

''Bloody amazing, Y/N! The Red Bull is too far up to catch, but defend for your life now!'' P6 wasn't possible anymore as she went into the last lap, Max's car being quicker and having fresher tyres than her. 

The last lap almost went by in a haze, the young woman scared something would ruin the beautiful moment for her, but that never came. ''Y/N Y/L comes across the line to celebrate her dream debut and she becomes the first woman in over 40 years to score points in a Grand Prix!'' 

She parked her car behind Max's, her hands on her helmet as if it were her head. Y/N sat in disbelief as reality dawned on her. You scored points in your first F1 race, the sentence played on a loop in her head. 

''Oi! Little Miss scoring points on her debut!'' An Australian accent pulled her out of her thoughts, several pats on her helmet making her look up. ''You passed the Mercedes? Fucking amazing!'' He exclaimed as he saw the silver car parked behind her. 

''Daniel, can you help me get out? My body is in shock, I think.'' Y/N awkwardly chuckled, a bit embarrassed about not being able to get out of her car on her own at the moment. 

Fortunately, the Red Bull driver didn't see the big problem and helped her stand up, supporting her underarms. 

The support turned into a congratulating hug, the Australian swaying her side-to-side. ''Welcome to Formula One, baby!'' He loudly exclaimed. 

Y/N laughed at his antics, touched by his excitement for her good result. ''Thanks, Ricciardo.'' 

''Good overtake there.'' Valtteri patted her helmet with his hand, complimenting her. She bowed her head in appreciation. ''Thank you.'' 

Her and Daniel followed the Mercedes driver into the cooldown room, the latter handing her an ice-cold water bottle from the table. ''What place did you get?'' Y/N asked Daniel, turning to him. 

''P4,'' he sighed, ''but I got fastest lap, so a little redemption.'' The Red Bull driver laughed it off, at least happy he got an extra point for the championship standings. 

A pat on her back made her look back, being met with a sweaty Charles. ''Hey, man.'' She greeted him with a side-hug.

''Saw you got P7, congrats.'' The pair had been teammates the year before at Prema Racing so they have a good friendship with each other. ''Thanks, how did it go for you?'' Y/N was curious about her fellow rookie's debut race. 

He shrugged his shoulders. ''P13, but only because 5 people retired.'' Charles downplayed it, glimpsing at the ground. 

''Cheer up, Charlito! It's only the first one of the season.'' She tried comforting him, not wanting him to be down about his result. 

Charles just smiled and moved on, ready to go back to his team and discuss everything. The rest of the drivers, except the top 3, followed swiftly. Y/N received a grand welcome back in her garage, it almost seemed like she had won the World Championship. She had a brief discussion about the race and her team prepared her for the post-race interviews. 

Surprisingly, the interviews had gone well and not one discriminating question was asked. She mainly received a lot of congratulations and one female reporter even thanked her for her race performance as it would inspire many young girls watching it. Y/N had almost teared up during the specific interview, not expecting anyone to do that. 

The rookie was walking to her driver's room when a call of her name stopped her in her tracks. Lewis jogged up to her, greeting her with a big embrace. ''Good job, you did so well!'' He told her with a huge smile on his face. 

''Thank you, Lewis.'' Her head felt warm, the older man making her a little flustered. 

''And this is only the beginning, you know? You showed everyone today that you deserve to be here, truly amazing!'' He continued praising her. 

Y/N grinned at him. ''Thank you so much, that means a lot to me.'' 

''The three of us were watching it back in the cooldown room, like waiting to see in which position you came in.'' Him, Sebastian and Kimi had attentively observed the screen that replayed the race, interested in knowing how the young woman had performed. 

She was touched by Lewis' words, honored that three World Champions had looked out for her and wanted to know her result. ''Oh my god, that's- wow, that's really cool.'' Y/N awkwardly laughed, not knowing how to give a proper response all of a sudden. 

''Anyway, congrats and celebrate it well,'' he made a move to leave before visibly remembering something, ''oh, yeah, Seb asked me to tell you that he'd come by your driver's room.'' Lewis conveyed Sebastian's message. 

''Oh, great, I'll, uh, see you in two weeks then.'' She bid him goodbye and she was on her way again, hoping the German wasn't already waiting for her there. 

Fortunately for her, Sebastian wasn't there yet and she had the time to change into her casual wear so she could leave the circuit and go straight to the airport afterwards to go back home. 

Three knocks on her door stopped her scroll through social media and she called for her guest to come in, not having the energy to get up from her couch. 

She watched an energetic Sebastian walk into her driver's room, practically running to give her a hug. ''I told you that you could do it! P fucking 7!'' He exclaimed, excitedly. 

''Congrats to you for winning!'' She retorted back, not having had the chance yet to congratulate him on his GP win. 

''Thank you, honey.'' He sat down next to her on the couch. 

''I would have loved to see the faces of everyone on your team the moment you passed Carlos, it must have been priceless.'' Sebastian smirked, thinking of what she had told him the day before. ''And the double overtake? You couldn't have had a better race.'' 

''Oh my god, I couldn't believe it, Seb! Like I finished in front of a Mercedes? Wow, just wow!'' Sebastian laughed at her enthusiasm, imagining how great she must feel now. 

The winner of the day scratched his voice. ''Kimi said how nervous you looked before the race and I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit worried about you,'' he had lowered his voice, different from his loudness of before, ''but you dealt with the pressure perfectly and you didn't let it affect your race. I'm very proud of you.'' His sincerity and expression of pride almost brought tears to her eyes, the words of her idol and mentor meaning a lot to her. 

''Thank you, Seb,'' a shy smile graced her face, ''that means a lot to me, I couldn't have done it without you.'' She thanked him. 

''No, it was your hard work that got you here.'' He argued, not wanting to take any sort of credit for her accomplishments. ''And maybe a little of my money, but you know.'' Sebastian jokingly added, not able to help himself from teasing the younger one. 

Y/N rolled her eyes at the comment. ''Always so humble! Red Bull Seb made an appearance for a second there.'' 

''He's still in here, I just need to keep him in check.'' 

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[aquacomet]

Happy Sun/Moon Reveal-versary! 🎉

The 21st of September has arrived meaning it's time to grab a slice of cake and celebrate as today is Sun and Moon's Reveal-versary/Birthday! In celebration of this, today is also the day the 2024 Reveal-versary magma collab opens!

The reveal-versary collab is a week-long event featuring two magma boards artists can draw in! (Time is dated from when this is originally posted.) Biblically accurate DCA, AUs and variations are all welcome to join in the celebrations! (If you have questions about what magma is or want to see some previous examples you can check out this post!)

Like last year the reveal-versary collab is split into two boards! Though starting from this year there will now be a surprise themed board each year!

The Party room: The main board where you can join Sun and Moon to celebrate their birthday! Grab a slice of cake, bring some snacks, add some gifts they may enjoy or add balloons if you wish!

Themed board: This years themed board is a Sleepover! Join a tiny pair of familiar faces over by a collection of pillows! Would you join in any mischief, join a sunny friend in some reading or simply get cosy during the sleepover? Feel free to add blankets, pillows, beanbags and maybe even some plushies!

Before jumping in here are the rules:

No NSFW

1 Character per board (For now! This may ease later into the event, this is to give people time/space to join when they can. Keep an eye on any updates for if this changes! Small props/additions can be added freely so long as they don't take too much space.)

Merge your layers when finished! (This is important to prevent slowdowns and allow others to draw if we go near the layer limit)

Sign your work (So I can credit you when the final result is posted!)

Keep your character a reasonable size (No characters that take up a large quarter of the canvas please!)

Please try to colour and finish your character/art if you can!

✨A additional thank you to the daycare friend pick-up server mods for their support with having this event run in their discord!

Without further ado, happy doodling and happy reveal-versary! 🎉

⭐Collab boards:

⭐Casual Boards: For those who want to doodle outside of the collab!

[blueskittlesart]

did u not like totk?

i LOVED totk. i think it was well-written and did its job as a sequel to botw very well. HOWEVER. i do think it suffered slightly from the commercial success of botw. as i mentioned in my last post, nintendo does this. thing. when one of their games gets popular where every game after it has to be Exactly The Same so they can make all the money in the world via comparison marketing. (and this is a problem with the wider game industry in general but also a very observable pattern in loz specifically.) I know it's been a pretty long time since botw came out, but before (and immediately following) its release there was some pushback from longtime fans who worried that the open-world and lack of traditional dungeons meant that the game had strayed too far from the classic formula that makes a game a "zelda game." this is to say, botw was EXPERIMENTAL. and the devs had no idea if what they were doing was going to be successful or not. the open-world of botw wasn't a gimmick, and it wasn't the devs jumping on the open-world bandwagon. it was what CREATED that bandwagon. the open-world was a deliberate choice made specifically for botw because it reinforced the story that botw was designed to tell. the game is about exploring a desolate world, about making connections, and rebuilding both the broken kingdom and the player character's shattered sense of self by traveling and learning and building relationships. a large open-world map with only minor quest guidelines and lots of collectibles and side quests lends itself perfectly to this specific story, which is specifically about exploration and rebirth.

the problem is, botw was. almost TOO good. it was so good that every other game company on the planet started scrambling to build giant open-world maps into their next release, regardless of how much sense that actually made narratively. and because of that, when it came time to release a sequel to botw, the devs had a lot to think about. they had HUGE shoes to fill in terms of fan reception, but they were ALSO being asked to follow up one of the best-performing games of all time, commercially. totk needed to SELL as well as botw. And, likely because nintendo was worried about that potential commercial value, totk needed to keep people comfortable. I don't know for certain, but I definitely get the feeling playing totk that the devs were specifically told not to stray too far from what made botw marketable and successful--that being the open world and the versatility of gameplay. so in order to follow that up, they made... 2 more huge open maps, and new gimmick gameplay which was explicitly super-versatile.

do i think that the extra maps and ultrahand were BAD choices? no. however, i don't think they necessarily ADDED anything to the game as a narrative whole. one of my favorite things about botw was how everything seemed to be designed AROUND the narrative, with gameplay elements slotting neatly into the story thematically. totk just. didn't really have that, imo. there wasn't a huge narrative benefit to the gigantic, completely unpopulated depths and sky maps. ultrahand was cool, but within the context of the story it meant basically nothing. in some ways, i almost think totk could have benefitted from a much more linear approach to its storytelling, a la skyward sword, because there are a lot of story beats that have to be found in chronological order in order to have the right emotional impact, but because of the nonlinear open-world it kind of became a struggle to hit all the important story points in the right order. an easy example of this is the dragon's tears in comparison to the memories--the dragon tears have a very specific set order in which they happen, and finding them out of order can make the story you're seeing in them feel confusing and disjointed. the order in which they should be found is technically displayed on the temple wall, but most players aren't going to pick up on that or follow it--more likely, they're just going to explore the geoglyphs as they come across them organically, and therefore will likely witness the story in a completely disjointed way. compare this to the botw memories, which ALSO technically have a set order--the order in which they're displayed on the sheikah slate. however, because they're largely just small moments in time, and not one continuous story, finding them out of order has a lot less of an impact on how you as the player experience the narrative, and it's not hugely detrimental to your experience of the story if you find them naturally as you explore rather than explicitly seeking them out in order. If TOTK had been allowed to deviate from the botw formula a bit, i think we may have ended up with a more cohesive game in terms of narrative beats like that. as it is, i just think the game is torn slightly between wanting to be its own new game with new gameplay and needing to be botw, if that makes sense.

[gojocumdumpster]

Pebbles and Stones

Things Pickle does to show that he loves you.

Songs to listen to while reading: Like a Tattoo by Sade. "I remember his hands and the way the mountains looked..The light shot diamonds from his eyes"

Making things for you he likes making little crowns made out of leaves and sticks you have about 10 of them, he likes bringing back little flowers or daisys you also have a collection of those. Whenever you guys go on trail walks he points at the butterfly's to show you how pretty they are.

Grooming you, he likes messing with your hair a lot styling it he also likes does braids on your hair like he does with his, he will lick your face making sure it's clean and if you wear makeup he thinks something happened to your face and is licking your whole face until it's completely gone or smeared.

Squishing random parts of your body, he real like cupping your cheeks the ones on your face and squishing them not to much to hurt you. He also likes poking your cheeks and boobs a lot. When he poked your boobs at first he was wondering why they were covered with a weird material (Bra) since he's walking around shirtless most of time he wants you to do the same. So when you go to sleep without a bra he pokes them and realizes you don't have the weird material on so he ends up groping them.

Trying human gestures he sees people do. One day you guys had to go somewhere so he wanted to try and open the car door for you so that's what he did, when he did it you smiled at patting his head saying how much of a gentleman he was. Others are like trying to help you around the house for example helping you clean the counters, he watches you do it and then copies at you smiling at you.

Taking you to his Pillow fort he made so you guys can cuddle in he likes it because it reminds him of his cave so that's what he does and he invited you in it with leaves and sticks scattered in it while holding you in his arms as your guys sleep together.