Lowkey Funniest Part Of Mandalorian Is That If The Reason Yoda Talks The Way He Does Is True, It Follows

Photosynthesis is one of those things that you usually learn about in a simplified way when you're little, that we grow up kinda taking for granted that we "know how that works."

But the process is actually so spine tinglingly bizarre, that if you heard about it for the first time as an adult, you wouldn't even believe it.

Plants are just transmuting light beams into highly complex molecules of sugar. By using the light as a fuckin' battering ram to shatter molecules of water apart. And we're just like "oh yeah, they do that, no big deal" as if that's not a seven layer bizarro dip of what the fuck.

This is the first confirmed live observation of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, at depth in its natural habitat. Pilots filmed the young cephalopod at about 600m near the South Sandwich Islands as the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle SuBastian descended through the water column on a dive aiming to discover new marine species, in partnership with Ocean Census during the #SouthSandwichIslands expedition. ©Schmidt Ocean Institute

One of my mutuals is filling my dash with Mythbusters posts and while I was ABSOLUTELY raised on those guys, I also love talking about Adam's current presence online. Because he's the only "celebrity" I trust. He's so open about his whole life's journey, who he has been in the past and mistakes he's made, how he grew up as the weird kid with undiagnosed ADHD. And you can really tell in the last couple years how he's accepted and embraced the way his own brain works. He supports his sons who want to go into art, and doesn't use their names publicly. He's been vocal about his support for the lgbt, trans, poly, heck even the furry communities (he praised furries as the one community who really knew how to pay their artists what they deserve). If you ever need to feel comforted about your place in the world as a nerd and as an artist I can't recommend enough to look up a playlist of his talks from the past decade.

You cannot look me in my eyeballs and tell me "The series really picks up in the fifth book and then they're all bangers, you should try them." I AM NOT READING FOUR SHITTY BOOKS FIRST. WHO HAS THE TIME.

By the way, It Could Happen Here and Behind the Bastards are great podcasts by Robert Evans and friends.

ADHD is such nonsense sometimes. I was worried my PMDD had escalated and was continuing into my cycle and that I’d never know the warmth of sunshine on my skin or the fresh taste of strawberries.

And then I decluttered the bedroom and removed something I’d been meaning to tackle for weeks and ah, I see. I am not in actual fact on the brink of a nervous breakdown, I was just visually overstimulated and my ADHD was doing the nervous system equivalent of a chihuahua shaking itself to death out of sheer nervous existence. As though I don’t have actual Horrors to be overwhelmed by but no, the chair in the corner that had become a dumping ground for all my stuff was my mental limit.

Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff. (edit: yes, cliff then hyenas. But cliff first. Lol.)

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took a step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

The chili plant made a deal with their God to only be consumed by things that could spread its seeds and fly. The chili received capsaicin, making itself painful to eat for mammals, but not birds, and all was well for the chili.

Then the human shows up, tastes it, and likes the pain. So now there's this flightless fucking mammal eating the chili. Like not even a fruit bat or anything, a flightless fucking mammal chomping on the chili.

What the fucking shit, God, cried the chili, I specifically requested the opposite of this.

Now hold on, wait a moment, replied the God who talks to plants but has no idea what the fuck these apes are going to do next. It might be something cool.

And in a flash of a second, in barely fraction of the time that chili took to develop capsaicin, the humans went from walking across land bridges and rowing little boats across small waters, into building ships that could cross oceans. More humans tasted the chili, and liked the pain. They took the seeds with them, and planted it elsewhere.

See? They spread the seeds.

They're still not flying, said the chili, still feeling insulted and betrayed.

But before the conversation was over, the humans were still not done fucking around and nowhere close to finding out. The ships became machines, and another machine was invented, capable of flight. Now, not only were the humans farming chili on continents far too far away for any of the birds that originally ate it could dream of flying, but the chili flew with them to lands where it could possibly not grow, so that humans over there could also eat it and enjoy the pain.

You see? They spread your seeds and fly.

It doesn't count as keeping a promise if you only manage it by a fucking accident, said the chili, still somewhat insulted. But nonetheless, the chili thrived.