Eternaljourneytmbr - Untitled

PSA: Microbats would be terrible pets. It's a scientifically proven fact they don't have a long lifespan in captivity (although, tbh, with current bat mortality rates in the Holocene, that's not *entirely* true anymore). Most bats are colonial, and humans will not be able to give them adequate social attention to the same rate that they would have in the wild... and then there's the diet to factor in. If they're insectivorous, you'll very likely be unable to meet their dietary requirements. Frugivorous bats would be substantially easier in this regard. Carnivorous bats... hope ya like raising chickens! And you'll need a lot of them. And you can't give the chickens any antibiotics or anything, they have to be all-natural meat, so, that's now a potential bird flu? reservoir.

yall i want a pet bat so bad you don’t even understand

bla bla bla rabies

I DONT GIVE A FUCK

I literally think the Code of Claw is A. The number one best book to give to middle schoolers to teach them about loss and war BECAUSE IT HAS SO MUCH NUANCE AND RELEVANCE TODAY STILL!!! And it teaches you so much abt grief oh my god I think half the ways I’ve coped with grief come from that series.

And B. ITS SO GOOD GOD THE TWISTS?? THE TURNS??? THE FIVE BOOK BUILDUP THE LAST PAGE???? ITS SUCH A GOOD SERIES I DONT CARE ITS WRITTEN FOR MIDDLE SCHOOLERS

murderfloof rolled a 1 on that check, lol bat's definitely caught red-han-... red-chested? red-faced? red all over, really.

exceptionally creepy. terrifying. (great work!) ... TUC had zero flier antagonists. closest to such could be Ajax, I guess? but, like, that dude got zero characterization other than 'nobody likes him' and being Solovet's bond.

so,, why not have a floof-flier be a malevolent bitch? albeit not to the same scale as the other malevolent bitch that affected damn near everyone in the North American Eastern Seaboard region of the Underland with their machinations, and 'just' limited to those that she might encounter by roaming around.

Hoary bat but underland. Maybe hiding a body beneath her. hoaries sometimes kill and eat smaller bats irl. jus surreptiously extretching her wing to conceal a bloody hand, foot, or limb. expression of who, me?~

dunno name. Who was the Greek bloke with the carnivorous horses? Sisyphus? Typhon? Could be selffulfilling prophecy, girl got a rotten name, shunned for rotten name, succumbed to inner demons or malign thoughts because everybody expected the worst from her so why not?

Possibly unrepentant manipulator. Exploits lack of knowledge or innocent assumptions. Missing people? Oh drat the gnawers got them.

You always ask me to draw such depressing bats 😢

Disturbing image under the cut, you were warned

Krita always de-saturates stuff when I export it (yes I've seen that srgb post going around, no the fix suggested didn't work), so I have to manually re-add the saturation after export. I hope I got the caught in the act feigned innocence expression right. To make the bats as expressive as they are in the books I have to give them binocular vision, larger eyes, and usually brows and eyelashes. It kinda makes them look 30% dog 70% bat. I hope the fur patterns and colors still make the species recognizable.

Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.

This turned into a longer post than I anticipated but whatever.

Something I've been seeing quite often in the comments under helicopter posts that make it to the broader internet spaces is discussions on autorotation. These discussions are mostly incomplete information at best and outright wrong at worst. A lot of people seem to be able to recall it as a fact about how helicopters can glide to a safe landing, but aren't aware of the actual process. So here's a guide on what an autorotation is, how its performed, and some of the nuances to it.

For the uninitiated, an autorotation is a maneuver that every helicopter is capable of performing which allows it to land safely in the event of a power failure. Even more simply put - its how a helicopter glides.

I've already made previous posts about helicopter controls and some principles of flight which I recommend checking out first if you're unfamiliar with those.

Under normal flight the engine(s) drive the rotors at a constant flight rpm and all control is made by pitching (changing the angle) The blades to make more or less lift. Essentially the same process as sticking your hand out the window of a moving car and making rise or fall in the wind. However the rotors are experiencing a lot of drag (wind resistance) which requires the engine to produce a lot of power to overcome and maintain rpm.

When an engine failure occurs there is no more power driving the rotors and the high drag will cause the rotor rpm to start to decay rapidly. If nothing is done about that then the rpm will fall so low that the rotors will stall or worse and the helicopter will fall out of the air like a rock. Thankfully we have the option to autorotate instead of that outcome.

The first thing that happens to initiate an autorotation is to fully lower the collective. This will flatten out the blade pitch and minimize the drag on the main rotor, slowing the rpm decay. As the collective is lowered the cyclic will need to come aft slightly to prevent the nose from dropping. Also the right pedal will have been pushed in as the power failure initially occured to prevent yawing.

Now the helicopter is in a steep descent and the autorotation has begun. The airflow through the main rotor has reversed from normal flight. Instead of being drawn from above and expelled downward there is a diagonally upward flow of air through the main rotor.

Now the rotor rpm will begin to rise again thanks to the special design of the rotor blades. A rotor blade has an airfoil shape which is sort of like an elongated teardrop with the wider end on the leading edge. This shape minimizes drag and maximizes lift. But the blade is also slightly twisted. It has a positive pitch at the root where the blade attaches to the rotor hub which gradually transitions to a negative pitch at the tip.

Because of this twist and the difference in relative speed along the blade length (tip travels relatively faster than the root) the blades will develop three distinct regions. These are the driven, driving, and stall regions

The driven and stall regions at the blade tip and root are still producing drag but the middle driving region is actually producing lift, in an upward and slightly forward direction. This forward lift is the thrust that causes the rotor rpm to increase during an autorotation.

So now you are in a descent and recovering rpm back to the normal flight range. If you leave the collective fully lowered the rpm will now start to increase past the normal range and begin to overspeed. If the overspeed becomes too great the blades will be damaged and one could eject. Not ideal.

You have to manage the rpm manually to prevent it from becoming too low or too high. You also do this with the collective. Remember, to start the auto you should lower the collective fully to minimize rpm loss initially and then to start recovering it. As the rpm reaches the normal range the collective should be raised again just a bit to "catch" the rpm. Now you can manually adjust rpm with a tiny amount of collective movement. Rpms a little too fast? Raise it a bit. A little too slow? Lower it a bit. What this is doing is changing the size of the driven and driving regions of the blade, thanks to the twist. Lowering the collective grows the driving region and shrinks the driven region, and vice versa for raising it.

Now the helicopter is safely gliding and can be steered to a landing spot. There's not much to do until you're approaching the ground. The next maneuver will be the level and flare. The height at which you initiate the level and flare depends on the helicopter. Generally a larger helicopter will have more momentum and need to start the maneuver sooner.

Starting with the level off. You will be gliding with a high rate of descent and forward speed in an autorotation. The purpose of the level off is to drastically reduce the rate of descent. By using some aft cyclic input you will pull the nose up and put the helicopter in a level flight attitude. This causes the upwards lift of the rotor disc to act as a sort of parachute and arrest the descent.

Now with the descent rate minimal you apply more aft cyclic to pitch the nose up further and neutralize the forward speed. This is the flare and its the last opportunity to build rotor rpm in an autorotation.

Now you are just over the ground with little to no forward speed and the helicopter will start to settle and sink. Apply forward cyclic to level the helicopter parallel with the ground and use the pedals to keep the nose pointed straight ahead. Then you have whatever rpm is built up to cushion the landing. Smoothly raise the collective fully as the helicopter sinks to touchdown and the landing can be shockingly smooth.

What an autorotation really comes down to is energy. You often start at a high-ish altitude with some forward speed and this becomes the potential and kinetic energy you trade to power the rotors instead of the engine. The energy is an absolute requirement though. If you dont have enough of a combination of speed and/or altitude then an autorotation can be impossible. There are phases of flight and certain missions where you have to accept the risk of a power failure and rely on the crash-worthiness of the airframe.

Despite that, I've done a lot of engine failure procedures in small planes and helicopters and 9 times out of 10 I would rather experience a real one in a helicopter.

@teagantheamazing Hope you don't mind, but I wanted to pull this reply out to talk about a little more in depth, because I think it is important that people understand this as we move forward.

Also, I am speaking as a private citizen here, not as an employee of the Forest Service.

In the United States, wildland fire response is handled at three basic levels: Federal, State, and Local.

Federally, it is further broken down into the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. (Some parks have their own fire crews as well, but that varies from park to park, and they're usually still technically Forest Service.) There's really not a ton of difference between the two aside from whose name is on your paycheck. Pay is the same across each, structure is the same across each, training is the same across each. Federal crews and resources are, generally, the main and biggest responders to wildfires because wildfires tend to happen primarily on federal lands.

At the state and local level things vary a lot from state to state. You can have things like the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control in Colorado and Cal Fire in California, and you can have local structure departments that also have wildland divisions and/or training. Some of the local departments will be volunteer. State and local responders also work closely with federal responders, but how much and for how long varies from fire to fire.

Then, on top of all of that, you have private/contract crews. They are what it says on the tin: private crews of firefighters. Some of these crews are great! Very professional, very skilled. Others are...ah...not.

Now, what I am concerned about specifically as we head into this new administration is what is going to happen at the federal level. As I mentioned in the original post, the Forest Service is already struggling. It has ALWAYS been struggling. Without giving you a whole huge history lesson, the Forest Service was founded in the early 1900s by Teddy Roosevelt to protect public lands and preserve them for future use. People threw a FIT about it, specifically people who wanted to basically strip mine the forests for every single available resource. Taft was elected after Roosevelt and basically started undoing everything his predecessor had done. The budget for the Forest Service was destroyed, protections were rolled back. The only reason the Forest Service survived was because in 1910 there was a MASSIVE fire. It was, at the time, unprecedented and the Forest Service was able to use it to lobby for better funding going forward. But the same cycle has repeated ever since. An administration that doesn't value conservation will come in, shred the budget, there will be deadly consequences that make the next administration pad the budget some, and then it will start again.

It's a lot like people who stop taking their medicine because they think they're cured since they feel better, but they only feel better because they were taking their medicine.

So what happens now? Well, it's already happening and it happened under Biden, and will only get worse under Trump. To keep it simple, there are two kinds of federal employment: seasonal, and year-round. Most of the federal Forest Service jobs are seasonal, because the work is seasonal. This includes firefighters, but it also includes things like park rangers and trail maintenance crews. From late spring to early fall there are tooooons of people working. Then, the rest of the year, its a skeleton crew of year-rounders doing mostly maintenance work, controlled burns, paperwork, stuff like that.

Now, with all of that said, here is where we stand at this specific moment: the decision has already been made that the Forest Service will not be hiring seasonal workers outside of firefighting next year. This means no seasonal park rangers, no seasonal maintenance people, none of that. This means next year parks are going to be a MESS. Bathrooms will not be cleaned regularly, campgrounds will not be maintained, trails will not be maintained, and a ton of other stuff. The year-rounder skeleton crew will be all we've got. And, crucially, there will be less professionals monitoring the woods looking for new fires. Rangers, even ones not working directly on fire stuff, are a crucial level of protection for spotting and reporting fires.

Secondary to that is the pay issue. Even if you're a year-rounder, the pay is abysmal. Your average out the gate, newbie wildland firefighter is going to make around $17/hr base pay if they work for a federal agency. Now, there's a ton of random stuff that can bump that pay up even without the retention bonus we're currently getting. You get a night differential and a Sunday differential for starters, and hazard pay when you are actively working a fire, plus there's ALWAYS overtime, sometimes an insane amount of it. Then there's per diem if you are traveling for a fire, and that can be a nice little bump too. But the point/problem is that the pay is VERY unpredictable. You can have a massively busy season and be swimming in money, or you can have a slow as fuck season and end up scrapping by because the base pay isn't enough. The Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act is supposed to fix this by bumping up the base pay, but that can has been kicked back and forth in the government for yeeeears now.

Now, as you mentioned, people CAN transfer their federal qualifications for fire to state and private crews. It generally pays better if you do. But we do not want to privatize fire response. Given the size of this country, given the spread of the population within it, we have to have a federal firefighting force. Leaving it to the states and private companies will not be enough.

That is where we are starting the new administration: abysmal pay, failing departments, and slimmed back hiring. Given Trump's repeated insistence on slimming down the government, on withholding aid in blue states, on getting rid of things like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which is also crucial for firefighting), and other things in that vein, I think we are staring down the barrel of a very, very dangerous time.

So, some action items if you want to help:

Call your local representatives and insist they pass the Wildland Firefighter Protection Act NOW, before the new administration comes in. The new administration could still screw it up, but we've gotta at least try.

Be patient and understanding with Park Rangers in the coming years. They are doing their best with what they've got.

Take responsibility for your use of public lands. Clean up after yourself, pick up litter when you see it, and donate if there is a way for you to do so.

Educate yourself and your community on wildland fire even if you don't think you are in a wildland fire prone area. Learn about and implement defensible space around your homes and communities. I'll be doing a lot of education around this going forward, so if you have questions or want help please ask me!

Gregor the Overlander

When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. This world is on the brink of war, and Gregor's arrival is no accident. A prophecy foretells that Gregor has a role to play in the Underland's uncertain future. Gregor wants no part of it -- until he realizes it's the only way to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance. Reluctantly, Gregor embarks on a dangerous adventure that will change both him and the Underland forever.

Okay I'm aware the audience for my Tumblr blog is not quite the same as the audience for middle-grade portal fantasy, but if this website is still talking about Percy Jackson then I can talk about this one. I read a lot of 6-to-8-book middle grade fantasy series and I can say with one hundred percent certainty that this is the best one. It's brutal. It's weird. You'll cry about a cockroach the size of a dog. You'll question the nature of fate itself. If any of you know any 8-12 year olds who haven't yet been scarred for life by a book series that will change their brain chemistry forever, do them a favor and pick them up this book.

Also, if you liked the Hunger Games, it's the same author. Did she tone it down when writing for younger audiences? Not even a little.

>abolish/defang the EPA

>abolish/hamstring the Endangered Species Act

>deregulate pesticides

...

this is ecocide

And also, the Nightmare Scenario of pesticide companies subsequently targeting natural pest control species (to increase their profit margins and consumer reliance however slightly) is a high possibility.

Combine this with their hope for an apparent necromantic revival of the coal industry (thus, reopening of old mining complexi), and by 2028 (if not sooner), multiple bat species might be extinct.

USAmericans

Read the Project 2025 manifesto RIGHT NOW

It's MUCH worse than y'all have been hearing

There is so much here you'll have to look at it for yourself, but the climate policy alone is nightmare fuel.

The republican coalition wants to essentially end funding for green energy, dramatically promote and expand fossil fuel industries, and eliminate funding and regulations in all sectors promoting climate change mitigation. Task forces and offices related to clean energy and lowering carbon emissions will be eliminated and replaced with offices for promoting fossil fuels.

They want to LOG NATIONAL FORESTS TO "THIN" THE TREES TO STOP WILDFIRES.

THEY WANT TO FORCE OREGON AND CALIFORNIA TO LOG THEIR NATIONAL FORESTS AND TREAT THEM AS FOR TIMBER PRODUCTION

There are specific provisions in Project 2025 to essentially destroy the Endangered Species Act, causing it to defer to the rights of "economic development" and "private property." The plan includes delisting gray wolves, cutting the budget so that a "triage" system is used to determine which species will get protection, removing funding for research, removing experts and specialists from the decision-making process, and preventing "experimental" populations of animals from being established.

This is so much worse than I expected it to be and there's much more past that: They want to deregulate pesticides and remove much of the EPA's ability to regulate pollutants as well.

Also included in the manifesto is that we should

withdraw from nuclear weapons nonproliferation agreements, build more nuclear weapons, and resume nuclear weapons testing

The manifesto comprehensively outlines the scorched-earth elimination of abortion access, down to ensuring doctors aren't even trained to perform abortions. There are plans in here to disrupt abortion access GLOBALLY, not just domestically.

Not only that,the Republicans plan on reframing family planning programs around "fertility awareness" and "holistic family planning."

I can't even describe it all. I'm trying to give screenshots of the most important things but there's so much.

The foreign policy is a nightmare. They plan to push fossil fuels onto the Global South and promote the development of fossil fuel industry in the "developing world."

It is aggressive and antagonistic towards other nations, strongly pro-military, proposing that we INCREASE (!!!!!) defense spending, improve public opinion of the military and military recruitment, and increase the power to fund new weapons technology.

Just read the Department of Defense section. It's about greatly increasing and strengthening the military-industrial complex, collaborating more closely with weapons manufacturers, removing regulatory barriers to arming our allies and to inventing new military weapons, and recruiting more people into the military. They include provisions to develop AI technology for surveillance. And of course, continuing to support Israel is in there.

Elsewhere it proposes interfering in foreign countries with creepy pro-USA propaganda campaigns, even establishing international educational programs where faculty have to pledge to promote USA interests.

There's a line in here about getting rid of PBS because SESAME STREET is LEFTIST for God's sake.

HOW are people claiming democrats have the same policies. I feel like i'm losing my mind.

This. Especially in the wake of the flooding and loss of the Garden. (unless I'm getting the timeline jumbled...) An opportunity for the people of Regalia to contemplate their actions / presence and consideration of 'are we the aggressors here' is abruptly shoved aside / tossed into a figurative dustbin as the majority of their political leadership structure are literally butchered in their own territory. In what they considered safety, as much as there can be in the Underland.

And much later, out of the entirety of the council of Regalia, only Solovet and Vikus survived? Hm.

One of your hottest TUC takes.

Solavet intentionally staged the death of Luxa's parents.

Lets bother cuddle mama