Amy Pond Dies More Times Than Rory Williams

Grian be like:

If there's one thing that humanizes me to my fellow productive member of society, it's that I love a good button. Elevators, jukeboxes, medical equipment: if you make a quality button, I will push the hell out of it. I've bought tons of things on impulse, just because the buttons were of a high quality.

What that device is does not really matter to me. Like I just said, I'll buy anything if it's satisfying to push. And lots of high-quality, expensive stuff just... isn't. There's no excuse for why your hugely pricey stereo system feels worse to jab your finger into than any given Fisher-Price toddler toy.

I didn't know much about buttons at all when I was a kid. Just took them for granted, like you do for so many other things: gravity, breathable air, the option for grandpa to hide you from family services when they start wondering why your mom and dad are off auditioning for the circus again instead of feeding you. Buttons, though, have a long and fascinating history. And you won't read about it here, because we have things to do.

So if you're about to throw something away that has a satisfying button on it, pry that button out and keep it. You'll wish you had it the next time you encounter something with a button that sucks. And it's not like the police can really get you for "vandalism" just because you pried out that bullshit touch screen from your apartment elevator and crammed a nice Otis part in there. At least, not if you do a good enough job of wiring.

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Just went to Yad Vashem. I think all of tumbler needs to go there.

אם היה יום שמיני בשבוע, מה הזברה הייתה לובשת בו?

(לצורך העניין יום המנוחה הוא עדיין יום שבת)

אני מצפה לתמונות להמחשה.

אלא אם היו שתי הפקות יב שעשו את חוות החיות השנה, אני יודעת איפה אחותך לומדת

אחותי עשתה הפקות יב שבוע שעבר (היא בתאטרון) ובחרו אותה כבימאית, היא בחרה את חוות החיות מאת ג׳ורג׳ אורוול. ההצגה עצמה הייתה מושלמת אבל היה משהו קטן שתפס אותי ושאני חייבת לדבר עליו.

בהצגה שמו את השיר ״נפלא פה״ מאת הבילויים כדי להמחיש כמה החיות עובדות קשה בחווה, ויכול להיות שזאת רק אני אבל השיר הזה ממש מתקשר לתקופה הזאת במיוחד במדינה הזאת.

הפזמון של השיר זה ״נפלא פה, נפלא פה, נפלא פה, תבואו תבואו מהר״ ומי מכם שהקשיב לשיר בעבר יודע שהחלק הזה תמיד נותן צמרמורות.

נפלא פה זה בין השירים הציניים של הבילויים, ואני לקחתי אותו למקום דיסטופי. לעולם שכולנו רוצים - חוות החיות.

חוות החיות מדבר על קומוניזם, ואני הולכת לדבר על משהו רגיש אבל תסתמו דקה. נפלא פה מתקשר ליום שאחרי, ליום שנחפש אשמים (ויש), ליום שתיגמר המלחמה ונמצא את עצמנו מחדש, וכל הדבר הזה יהיה רק זיכרון.

כל מה שאני רוצה זה שוקולד פרה מריר עם סוכריות קופצות. זה יותר מדי לבקש?

יעני מו

Ddba is so. Fucking. Good. It has many problems but this episode was almost perfect. Literally the only thing that bothered me is that the roses are blue (roses can't be blue. You can dye them but not on the bush). Literally how is this episode so perfect. No spoilers but god. The parallels. THE PARELLELS.

List of parallels (no spoilers)

Matt | Foggy (yes. I did cry.)

Matt | Fisk (a classic)

Matt & Heather | Fisk & Venessa (classic 2.0)

Matt | Venessa (this is new and exciting)

Heather | Fisk (aAAaaa this is incredible)

Venessa | Fisk (expected)

Bonus: BB | that police dude

Just enjoy it?? Have a tiny kid climb on you. Let them control your actions like a robot. Help them jump and play games with them and laugh with them and talk politics with your baby cousin. It's fun. Alternatively, embrace being an adult. Talk about adult stuff. Find out your mom used to throw her little brother in the trash. Find out that your uncle knows German??? How? Learn about old stuff like. Talk to your grandma about why she became a mother at 21. Talk to your aunt about her kids education. You can enjoy all of it! You also might learn some weird stuff

reblog if you're the single teen at family functions so you just stand in the corner watching the kids play and the adults talk

It can also just taste bad. I ate a garlic chip once. Turns out you are not supposed to eat them straight up, but cook with them. The garlic chip was disgusting. I eat raw garlic sometimes, but garlic chips is garlic intensified

You know those anime meta posts along the lines of “I was born with pink hair. The doctors told my parents I was a Main Character and ever since my life has not known peace from demons/spirits/sports competitions/harems who find me”

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

He’s rising up, his every dream within his grasp. Until one day he gets a note under his door, taped to an old picture of his Normal Boring self from middle school, that says “You don’t belong”