We Are In A Mansion Where We Had To Leave Our Weapons At The Door. There Are However* Pretty Sharp Knives

i don’t have anything grand for the 13th anniversary, but here’s a drawing i got done of my favourite bot earlier. happy anniversary spg!! 💘

don’t trace, copy, or steal.

Stutterer Pride!

Same across all my social media. Also avoiding works by creators that say antisemitic stuff has left me with less and less entertainment to consume.

i finally started just unfollowing people who reblog antisemitic posts on here but now i have run into an entirely different problem

i'm not seeing any fandom posts about things i like on my dashboard anymore. that's the entire reason i use any social media, i want it back

pretty much the only things on my dashboard now are from other jews and they are understandably mostly just posting about the war and their own experiences with antisemitism

why are my options either "i constantly see people saying they want me and my people dead" or "there is nothing fun on my dashboard"

the sunbittern is a bird found in tropical regions of the americas. despite its name and misleading body type, it is more closely related to tropicbirds than bitterns. the sunbittern is best known for its stunning plumage, featuring two orange ‘eyes’ that are used to scare off potential predators when the bird fans its wings. sunbitterns feed on a variety of prey, and are documented in captivity using tools, in this case lures to catch aquatic prey.

kofi

I have a book of Celtic mythology at home, can confirm Old Welsh and Old Irish stories are like that.

Old Welsh lit: Dave punched Steve. This incurred a fine of twelve cattle and a nine-inch rod of silver and is known as one of the Three Midly Annoying Blows of the Isle of Britain

Old Irish lit: Dave punched Steve so that the top of his skull came out of his chin, and gore flooded the house, and he drove his fists down the street performing his battle-feats so that the corpses were so numerous there was no room for them to fall down. It was like “the fox among the hens” and “the oncoming tide” and “that time Emily had eight drinks when we all know she should stop at six”

Old English lit: Dave, the hard man, the fierce man, the fist-man, gave Steve such a blow the like has not been seen since the feud between the Hylfings and the Wends. Thus it is rightly said that violence only begets more violence, unless of course it is particularly sicknasty. Amen.

The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment

Retro Rodents: The Furbils and Duskmice

By 10 million years PE the hamsters have diverged into many different forms, such as ungulate-like runners, mustelid-like predators or macropod-like hoppers. But while some of the resident rodents have further specialized away from the basic rodent body plan, two lineages, the furbils (family Caudatocricetidae) and the duskmice (family Cricetomuridae) are notable in having retained fairly conservative rodent anatomy, and are all the more successful for it: these two unassuming lineages have attained a diversity rivalling that of the jerryboas, and fill nondescript mouse, rat, hamster or gerbil niches all across the world.

The furbils, the more derived of the two lineages, are highly social creatures with long, tufted tails, displaying a very marked sexual dimorphism in many species, with dull, drab females and extravagantly-adorned males sporting striking markings and decorative tufts and manes of fur, which are used for display and attracting mates. Furbils tend to live in harems of several breeding females and one dominant male, while younger males are typically solitary and roam about searching for an opportunity to breed with any receptive females. Furbils are omnivores, feeding on insects, invertebrates, seeds, nuts and fruit, and males are known to attain their brilliant colors from pigments in their food: their colorful fur serving as an honest advertisement to their good health.

Male furbils are highly territorial, with the most brightly-colored and brilliantly-patterned males being the ones most attractive to females. This same coloration makes them more conspicuous to predators, as an unfortunate side effect: however, the fact that it gets them a higher chance to breed nonetheless allows them to more effectively spread their genes at the cost of individual longevity-- and in addition, essentially shows off their fitness by advertising an intentional handicap: a male that survives to breeding age even with such visible colors must be a very fit individual indeed, as far as females are concerned.

The most distinctive furbil characteristic of all is their long tail, which depending on the species serves a wide array of functions: for display, social signaling, or balance. One lineage of furbils, however, the subfamily Caudotomae, have a different, more drastic use of their tails: as a defensive measure used to divert predator attacks.

The Caudatomae are unusual among their furbil kin as they are solitary and come together only to mate, and as such lack the marked sexual dimorphism of their cousins. They have instead opted their tail into a lure, with the tuft at the end serving to draw predator attacks away from their body and head. Usually this is only meant to distract the predator and allow the furbil to escape: however, should the tail be caught, the furbil can actually detach it completely and flee from danger, as a special joint at the tail's base allows it to break off with little injury when sufficient force is applied. Unlike lizards who use a similar tactic, however, the tail-dropping is a one-time trick in the animal's whole lifetime, as it does not regrow once shed-- as such, it is a costly sacrifice that is only used as a last resort if no other means of escape is possible.

One very peculiar species, however, has compensated with the lack of mammalian regeneration with a downright absurd adaptation: multiple fracture points along the length of its tail. Known as the fuse-tailed dynamouse (Fragmacaudamys cabuum), it can fracture off its tail a maximum of up to three times, as its tail is comprised almost entirely of three very long and stiff vertebrae. Its reddish fur camouflages it well in Beta-twilight, the time when it is most active, but a conspicuous yellow tuft on the end of its tail serves as a predator distraction tool. If the tail breaks off at a joint the tail quickly heals the end of the stump and a new tuft of yellow hair soon grows around the injury, restoring the form and function to a now-shorter tail. Once a dynamouse has broken its tail three times, the tuft forms directly at the base of its rump, and while no longer to shed any more segments, can still serve as a distraction by making predators attack the wrong end and still giving the now-truncated dynamouse a fair chance to flee.

Just as strange and diverse as the furbils are the even more basal duskmice, small, stocky short-tailed rodents that still very closely resemble their hamster ancestors. Duskmice are a diverse group numbering nearly a hundred species, most of which are nondescript mouse-like seed eaters that hoard food in burrows and emerge at night and sometimes at Beta-twilight to forage, avoiding the many diurnal predators active during the day.

Some duskmice, however, have taken off to unusual niches, to take advantage of food sources beyond the reach of other hamsters. One genus, the molemice (Subterramys spp.) have adapted into specialized burrowers, developing large clawed forepaws for shoveling away dirt and hairless flat noses to push loose soil aside. They tunnel underground in search for roots, tubers and worms, and rarely ever come to the surface unless disturbed or if their burrows are flooded by heavy rains.

Another duskmouse lineage, the pondrats (Aquacricetus spp.), have instead taken to the water to feed on aquatic invertebrates and water plants that occur in abundance in freshwater bodies such as lakes and streams. They are the first hamsters on HP-02017 to specialize to a water-dwelling lifestyle, and as such have utilized a very unusual part of their anatomy to thrive in wet habitats: their cheek pouches. Acting as both flotation device and air storage, they can contract specialized muscles in their cheeks to compress the air, allowing them to sink and dive, and when returning to the surface quickly reinflate their cheek pouches to rise quickly to the top. Due to this specialization the cheeks can no longer be used as a food storage, and the pondrats instead hold food in a new different set of pouches that open lower in their mouths, surfacing every now and then to feed on their haul while floating at the surface.

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And thus with the duskmice ends the list of diversity in the Middle Rodentocene, the peak of speciation in a world of the small and scurrying. Our next stop will be at the Late Rodentocene, 20 million years PE: a time of even more diversity, but one that heralds the end of an age-- and a new promise of even greater things to come.

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Trying to pick up my broken heart, and standing next to you as we light candles

The “Necromancy is evil“ we see in most fantasy worlds stems from a christian view of having to honor the body after death in a certain way to ensure the soul’s safety in the afterlife. And while I encourage you to explore societies that don’t see necromancy as evil, I also encourage you to explore societies that see necromancy as evil for different reasons.

Drow might believe that after death, your body belongs to Lolth and must be fed to spiders. Reanimating a body means stealing from Lolth and must therefore be punished.

A Zoroastrian inspired society might believe that with death, evil starts infesting the body, so dead bodies must be kept away from the community, and reanimating them keeps them in the community and is therefore bad.

A flyby of Earth from the International Space Station.