Pumpkitten :>

masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved

these are all creatures to me

California Quail (Callipepla californica)

🤫 Shh…wanna hear a secret? The secret toadhead agama (Phrynocephalus mystaceus) has one. Growing about 9 in (24 cm) long, this wide-ranging species inhabits deserts in parts of Asia. When confronted by predators, like birds of prey, it can open its mouth to deploy brightly colored cheek flaps—shocking foes with a sudden change of appearance! If that doesn’t work, this reptile can also rapidly bury itself in the sand, disappearing from view. 

Photo: Leonid A. Neymark, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist 

if it sucks hit da bricks <- litany against sunk cost

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism

now say something beautiful and true <- litany against irony poisoning

I have been thinking a lot about what a cancer diagnosis used to mean. How in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when someone was diagnosed, my parents would gently prepare me for their death. That chemo and radiation and surgery just bought time, and over the age of fifty people would sometimes just. Skip it. For cost reasons, and for quality of life reasons. My grandmother was diagnosed in her early seventies and went directly into hospice for just under a year — palliative care only. And often, after diagnosis people and their families would go away — they’d cash out retirement or sell the house and go live on a beach for six months. Or they’d pay a charlatan all their savings to buy hope. People would get diagnosed, get very sick, leave, and then we’d hear that they died.

And then, at some point, the people who left started coming back.

It was the children first. The March of Dimes and Saint Jude set up programs and my town would do spaghetti fundraisers and raffles and meal trains to support the family and send the child and one parent to a hospital in the city — and the children came home. Their hair grew back. They went back to school. We were all trained to think of them as the angelic lost and they were turning into asshole teens right in front of our eyes. What a miracle, what a gift, how lucky we are that the odds for several children are in our favor!

Adults started leaving for a specific program to treat their specific cancer at a specific hospital or a specific research group. They’d stay in that city for 6-12 months and then they’d come home. We fully expected that they were still dying — or they’d gotten one of the good cancers. What a gift this year is for them, we’d think. How lucky they are to be strong enough to ski and swim and run. And then they didn’t stop — two decades later they haven’t stopped. Not all of them, but most of them.

We bought those extra hours and months and years. We paid for time with our taxes. Scientists found ways for treatment to be less terrible, less poisonous, and a thousand times more effective.

And now, when a friend was diagnosed, the five year survival odds were 95%. My friend is alive, nearly five years later. Those kids who miraculously survived are alive. The adults who beat the odds are still alive. I grew up in a place small enough that you can see the losses. And now, the hospital in my tiny hometown can effectively treat many cancers. Most people don’t have to go away for treatment. They said we could never cure cancer, as it were, but we can cure a lot of cancers. We can diagnose a lot of cancers early enough to treat them with minor interventions. We can prevent a lot of cancers.

We could keep doing that. We could continue to fund research into other heartbreaks — into Long Covid and MCAS and psych meds with fewer side effects and dementia treatments. We could buy months and years, alleviate the suffering of our neighbors. That is what funding health research buys: time and ease.

Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here. But it is a quiet miracle what’s happened in my lifetime.

burning text gif maker

heart locket gif maker

minecraft advancement maker

minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags

windows error message maker (win1.0-win11)

FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)

image to 3d effect gif

vaporwave image generator

microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)

you're welcome

This Caturday, meet the black-footed cat (Felis nigripes). It’s the smallest wild cat in Africa, only growing about 8 in (20 cm) tall and weighing around 4.4 lbs (2 kg). Don’t let its size fool you: This pint-sized predator is an extremely successful hunter, with a recorded kill rate of 10 to 14 prey animals per night—taking down critters such as rodents and birds about every 50 minutes! How does this stack up to bigger felines? The black-footed cat’s hunting success rate is 60 percent, far higher than that of a group of lions on the hunt—they peak at about 30 percent. And why does this tiny cat eat so much? This species’ fast metabolism requires it to refuel constantly. 

Photo: Patrick Ch. Apfeld, CC-BY-3.0, Wikimedia Commons

All amazing points and so important to take in. I think I have done a couple of these, but not habitually or intensely. But it’s good awareness for me.