Latest Posts by badweatherbartender - Page 3
sorry, can't today. the narrative forces aren't aligned
I’m really into internet discourse but only pointless and stupid internet discourse like how many holes there are in a straw (it’s 2)
A PSA about trucks from a truck driver
I and some colleagues were talking about how we wish everyone could see the safety videos that our company was showing us, because I don’t think most people understand how traffic works in a truck. So here’s some things we wish everyone on the road knew.
- we’re not kidding about tailgating. If you’re right behind us on a straight highway? Chances are we have NO IDEA you’re there, which means we can’t anticipate any of your movements. Plus slowing down takes multiple downshifts, so we might start decreasing speed way earlier than you expect.
- We’re not kidding about any of our blind spots. WE CAN’T SEE YOU, GUYS.
- That bit about slowing down taking a while? The same goes for when you’re in front of us. Don’t cut off a truck. Oh god, PLEASE don’t cut off a truck. If you cut me off, I’m not irritated, I’m terrified. For YOU. It can take 7 to 9 seconds for us to stop. DON’T CUT OFF TRUCKS.
- Before you get mad about how slow we’re going on the highway, keep in mind that many companies govern their vehicles so they literally CAN’T go over 60 or 65. This is a good thing, I promise. Because…
- Do you know what happens when a car meets a truck in an accident? The car gets totaled and the truck needs a new coat of paint. You will not win this fight. I know nobody likes getting stuck behind a big dumb truck, but it’s not worth your life.
We are trying our best to protect you from our 80,000 pound death machines. Please help us out.
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.
it warms my heart to know that ancient Romans would travel to more-ancient Greece and then get mad that it wasn't like it was in Homer/Plato/Aristotle & complain back home that Greece sucked to visit
I know that Caleb and Essek were both playing the long game and trying to manipulate each other prior to the cease fire, but it’s still very funny that these two highly intelligent wizards went ‘Ah, yes I will beguile him with my many spells and knowledge of the arcane to trick him into thinking he can trust me.’
And both of them fucking idiots that they are fell for it.
And then doubled down and said ‘But what if you could actually trust me? What if I used my spells to actually flirt with you? What if I stopped in the middle of a battle to pull you from underneath some rubble and you pressed your forehead to mine? What if we called each other partners for the next seven years and had an engagement portrait painted and hung in our home?’
Like I don’t know if you failed at the first step or succeeded.
As a DnD player, having your DM ask for more detail about your backstory and then say: “I would never put a character in harms way that did not deserve to be there” is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me
As a DM, the other half of me is standing back and applauding
I just saw a screencap of a tweet that said, “married couple looking for experience dom to tell them what to make for dinner each night” and honestly, yeah. Same.
ICONIC
I really hate a lot of the advice on the Internet about taming birds.
So much of it is literally "isolate your birds so they bond to you instead of each other" or "clip your bird's wings so it can't get away from you when it feels nervous." I'm no expert, but that's fucked up, man.
despite what popular opinion may lead you to believe, some rocks actually do have scientifically-proven auras! Unfortunately, those rocks are uranium and the aura is cancer.
Are you normal or did Matthew Mercer tell you to your face that Essek Thelyss grew his hair out because he felt like he could finally settle down for a normal life and also because his boyfriend looks hot with long hair so why not him too.
Yellowjacket-Mimicking Moth: this is just a harmless moth that mimics the appearance and behavior of a yellowjacket/wasp; its disguise is so convincing that it can even fool actual wasps
This species (Myrmecopsis polistes) may be one of the most impressive wasp-mimics in the world. The moth's narrow waist, teardrop-shaped abdomen, black-and-yellow patterning, transparent wings, smooth appearance, and folded wing position all mimic the features of a wasp. Unlike an actual wasp, however, it does not have any mandibles or biting/chewing mouthparts, because it's equipped with a proboscis instead, and it has noticeably "feathery" antennae.
There are many moths that use hymenopteran mimicry (the mimicry of bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and/or bumblebees, in particular) as a way to deter predators, and those mimics are often incredibly convincing. Myrmecopsis polistes is one of the best examples, but there are several other moths that have also mastered this form of mimicry.
Above: Pseudosphex laticincta, another moth species that mimics a yellowjacket
These disguises often involve more than just a physical resemblance; in many cases, the moths also engage in behavioral and/or acoustic mimicry, meaning that they can mimic the sounds and behaviors of their hymenopteran models. In some cases, the resemblance is so convincing that it even fools actual wasps/yellowjackets.
Above: Pseudosphex laticincta
Such a detailed and intricate disguise is unusual even among mimics. Researchers believe that it developed partly as a way for the moth to trick actual wasps into treating it like one of their own. Wasps frequently prey upon moths, but they are innately non-aggressive toward their own fellow nest-mates, which are identified by sight -- so if the moth can convincingly impersonate one of those nest-mates, then it can avoid being eaten by wasps.
Above: Pseudosphex laticincta
I gave an overview of the moths that mimic bees, wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, and bumblebees in one of my previous posts, but I felt that these two species (Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta) deserved to have their own dedicated post, because these are two of the most convincing mimics I have ever seen.
Above: Pseudosphex sp.
I think that moths in general are probably the most talented mimics in the natural world. They have so many intricate, unique disguises, and they often combine visual, behavioral, and acoustic forms of mimicry in order to produce an uncanny resemblance.
Several of these incredible mimics have already been featured on my blog: moths that mimic jumping spiders, a moth that mimics a broken birch twig, a moth caterpillar that can mimic a snake, a moth that disguises itself as two flies feeding on a pile of bird droppings, a moth that mimics a dried-up leaf, a moth that can mimic a cuckoo bee, and a moth that mimics the leaves of a poplar tree.
Moths are just so much more interesting than people generally realize.
Sources & More Info:
Journal of Ecology and Evolution: A Hypothesis to Explain Accuracy of Wasp Resemblances
Entomology Today: In Enemy Garb: A New Explanation for Wasp Mimicry
iNaturalist: Myrmecopsis polistes and Pseudosphex laticincta
Transactions of the Entomological Society of London: A Few Observations on Mimicry
You ever been in a state where you physically have no energy, but you're bored and socially understimulated so you kind of wish you could just invite people to come over like this:
do Ents reproduce by sexual intercourse or by pollination
Fun Fact: Hognose snakes are dramatic lil guys!
I am particularly fond of the snakes known as hognose snakes, and my reasons are both understandable and correct.
This is a hognose snake:
(They received their name by having the sweetest lil snoot to ever require a boop – image source)
They use these adorable snoots to burrow under sandy soil using a sort of nuzzle-y motion. They then use these burrows as a place to sleep at night, hibernate in the winter, and lay their eggs.
(you could say they’re into… the Underground Scene! …ok yeah i’ll show myself out – image source)
Plus, they come in a variety of delightful colours!
We’ve got brown! Beige! Yellow! Black! Red! Orange! Tan! Kinda greenish! Orange again!
(pretty sneks! – Here’s all the image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
And, to be clear, the snakes pictured above are wild snakes. No selective breeding by humans in these noodly bois! At least, not in these specific individuals. probably. I guess a few of them could be escapees…
But most importantly: These snakes know the true meaning of DRAMA
Hognose snakes are actors, first and foremost. When they feel threatened, the first thing they do is puff out their neck into a hood.
(like cobras, this hood is made by FLEXING THEIR NECK RIBS. which: gross – image source x)
This superficially makes them look like a cobra, but what they’re actually trying to do is make themselves seem bigger, and therefore scarier. Possibly those dark spots on their neck helps with that!
Any resemblance to real-life Eurasian cobras, real or fictional, is purely coincidental
Also, it makes its mouth do this:
(Snakes that SCREAAAAAAAM. – image source)
honestly, if I didn’t already know that hognose snakes were harmless, this would ABSOLUTELY make me leave it the hell alone
But if all of that^ is unsuccessful at scaring away the predator, the hognose snake pulls its signature move: playing dead
If you think that is a lame signature move, then you are wrong, because hognose snakes put EVERYTHING into their performance and I love them for it.
(they’re serious, they’ll do it! – image source)
((I’m actually going to stick the rest of this under a read-more, bc the pictures of the alive-and-physically-fine hognose snakes do kind of look like a legitimately-dead hognose snake, if you don’t know what to look for.
So, uh: cw for a snake being too good at pretending to be dead))
Keep reading
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.
OKAY THIS ARTICLE IS SO COOL
I'm going to try to explain this in a comprehensible way, because honestly it's wild to wrap your head around even for me, who has a degree in chemistry. But bear with me.
Okay, so. Solids, right? They are rigid enough to hold their shape, but aside from that they are quite variable. Some solids are hard, others are soft, some are brittle or rubbery or malleable. So what determines these qualities? And what creates the rigid structure that makes a solid a solid? Most people would tell you that it depends on the atoms that make up the solid, and the bonds between those atoms. Rubber is flexible because of the polymers it's made of, steel is strong because of the metallic bonds between its atoms. And this applies to all solids. Or so everybody thought.
A paper published in the journal Nature has discovered that biological materials such as wood, fungi, cotton, hair, and anything else that can respond to the humidity in the environment may be composed of a new class of matter dubbed "hydration solids". That's because the rigidity and solidness of the materials doesn't actually come from the atoms and bonds, but from the water molecules hanging out in between.
So basically, try to imagine a hydration solid as a bunch of balloons taped together to form a giant cube, with the actual balloon part representing the atoms and bonds of the material, and the air filling the balloons as the water in the pores of the solid. What makes this "solid" cube shaped? It's not because of the rubber at all, but the air inside. If you took out all the air from inside the balloons, the structure wouldn't be able to hold its shape.
Ozger Sahin, one of the paper's authors, said
"When we take a walk in the woods, we think of the trees and plants around us as typical solids. This research shows that we should really think of those trees and plants as towers of water holding sugars and proteins in place. It's really water's world."
And the great thing about this discovery (and one of the reasons to support its validity) is that thinking about hydration solids this way makes the math so so so much easier. Before this, if you wanted to calculate how water interacts with organic matter, you would need advanced computer simulations. Now, there are simple equations that you can do in your head. Being able to calculate a material's properties using basic physics principles is a really big deal, because so far we have only been able to do that with gasses (PV=nRT anyone?). Expanding that to a group that encompasses 50-90% of the biological world around us is huge.
giving birth sucks tbh. not only do you and the baby you’re birthing almost die, usually you shit yourself and often you tear your taint. then you have to push an organ out of your body (placenta) and if even a little of that remains in your body, you can hemorrhage to death or develop an infection that essentially rots your body from the inside out. even if you had a relatively “easy birth”, you bleed for weeks on end. even after that stops, your body and brain is changed for the rest of your life, the pregnancy leeched minerals from your bones, that can cause osteoporosis later. minor urinary incontinence is not uncommon, brain scans of people who gave birth show permanent changes in their brain, you’re never quite the same.
I say all of this not to say giving birth is disgusting but it is a harrowing and visceral experience. society downplays how fucking awful it is and makes it out to be a ~magical~ experience but it isn’t a magical transformative experience for everyone. it can be an extremely traumatic experience for someone who wanted to carry a pregnancy to term, much more so for someone who did not want to be pregnant in the first place or someone who knows their baby won’t survive the birth. anyway, abortion is a right. pregnancy and birth aren’t just inconvenient, it’s fucking awful.
I was going to ask why the scary stuff always happens to Fjord, but then remembered Travis and the haunted house and I get why Matt does it.
I find the fact that the closest mountain point on earth to the moon, the highest mountain and the tallest mountain are 3 different mountains to be a tiny bit disturbing
I knew poinsettias "faked" having big flowers by just turning some leaves red but I didn't know the real tiny flowers in the middle looked like such idiots
