Same But I'm Terrible At Thinking Of Ways To Do This

25 million years PE: The End of the Rodentocene

Dusk of One and Dawn of Another: The End of the Rodentocene Era

It is a chilly afternoon in northern Nodera. The main yellow sun, Alpha, is beginning to set, casting the temperate landscape with a bright yellow gleam, while above it hovers the red-orange pinprick of Beta, promising a few hours more of Beta-twilight before true night sets in. Above in the sky soar a number of ratbats, emerging at dusk to seize the swarms of airborne insects active in this hour of tangerine skies.

It has been 25 million years since life first came to HP-02017, and the wildlife certainly shows its adaptation. Once all just tiny, humble hamsters, they have expanded into such an unimaginable array of forms their seeding precursors would never have foreseen--wherever they were, so long a time later.

In the grasses of the Noderan landscape the sounds of a scuffle can be heard: two rival male masked luchaboars are jousting for territory, squealing loudly as they lock tusks and try to throw their opponent into the ground. Their species, and their territorial jousting, has gone virtually unchanged since the Late Rodentocene, 5 million years ago, but by this time great changes have occurred around them. Once they were the greatest of all Nodera's creatures, but now that age has passed.

The luchaboars butt heads with loud squeals, trying to scare the rival off their turf. But suddenly, both cease their combat and perk their ears in attention, as a faint rumbling sound, slowly approaching, interrupts their petty dispute.

Something is coming.

Something big.

A herd of mison come plodding their way, the ground rumbling with their footsteps while clouds of vapor condense in the cold air with each mighty breath. Like the bumbaas, the mison are descendants of the cavybaras as well-- but their size is on a whole different level.

Weighing almost two thousand pounds when fully grown and measuring six feet high at the shoulder, these lumbering giants have increased in mass from their cavybara ancestors almost twentyfold, and are now thousands of times much more massive than the miniscule hamster that was released onto this planet all too long ago. The vacancy of niches allowed the miniscule hamster to spread out into bigger forms: some of which are now very big indeed.

The herd emerges onto the plains, migrating to new grazing land, and soon dozens, and then hundreds, come tromping their way through the grassland: and faced with such a massive herd, the two brawling luchaboars wisely drop their conflict and promptly flee, while the mison continue on, indifferent to the smaller creatures scurrying beneath them.

As the chilly climate of the Rodentocene's end caused sea levels to drop, the mison, which originated from Westerna, crossed the exposed land bridges down to Ecatoria and across to Nodera, and now they have become established there too, roaming the plains in large herds as they migrate in search of food.

But the mison are not alone. Soon the herd is flanked by several large bounding figures: a group of bipedal, hopping boingos. Large plains grazers descended from the jerryboas, specifically the greater skipperroo, these 190-pound, six-foot-tall leapers dominate the grasslands throughout nearly every continent save for Borealia and Peninsulaustra. Their efficient bounding gaits and grazing dentition have allowed the boingos to conquer the plains, crowding out most of the hamtelopes and keeping their grazing species as small hare-like grazers in the plains...or at least, most of them.

Towering above them all is an immense figure that, with its slender neck, long legs bearing hoofed toes, and a lack of a tail, is unmistakably a giant hamtelope: the girat. While most plains-dwelling hamtelopes avoided competition with the jerryboas and their descendants the boingos by remaining small and feeding on soft, low-ground vegetation, other hamtelopes instead avoided competitive pressure by taking the opposite route, becoming high browsers that feed on tall vegetation beyond the boingos' reach: culminating in the girats, which when full-grown can stand up to 16 feet high-- the tallest hamsters to walk the planet.

Suddenly, the once massive cavybaras and bumbaas are tremendously dwarfed by the great new creatures that have emerged to fill the niches of large megafauna prevalent on Earth, but absent here. The arrival of these massive, mighty behemoths heralds the end of the Rodentocene, and the dawning of a new era: the Therocene-- the age of beasts.

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪

The Uerdinger and Karlsruher lines.

The Uerdingen Line is the isogloss within West Germanic languages that separates dialects which preserve the -k sound in the first person singular pronoun word “ik” (north of the line) from dialects in which the word-final -k has changed to word final -ch in the word “ich” (IPA [ç]) (south of the line). This sound shift is the one that progressed the farthest north among the consonant shifts that characterize High German and Middle German dialects. The line passes through Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

A topographical map of the UK built out of a LEGO in a vintage style. If you’d like this to become a real LEGO set, then add your support here.

My niece enjoys reading but she struggles with pronunciations of words that don't sound how they're spelt. It doesn't stop her from enjoying reading and wanting to do it, though. Her learning difficulties make it hard for her but she does it because she enjoys it.

We all struggle through life trying to do things we either enjoy or don't.

For neurotypical people, it's not a question of whether or not they can do they things they don't enjoy but a matter of just doing it because it has to be done.

That's not the case for neurodiverse people.

For adhd and autism, it's very dependent on how engaging the things are and how they relate to any interests an autistic or adhd person has.

For depression, it's very dependent on being necessary and treated like it's either the Most Important Thing Ever To Do, or something that is just another motion to perform. There may be no joy in it, but if it's performed then it's over and done with.

For learning difficulties and disabilities, it's very dependent on how things are described, how complex they are, and what the end result Has To Be.

In all these cases, there's always an issue with the question of Can. The issue is that it doesn't matter how much a neurodiverse person may Want or Need to do something, whether or not it's something they enjoy/find unpleasant, it's almost physically Impossible to do the thing because the Brain Refuses To Cooperate.

Imagine you're standing in front of an electric fence. You try to put your hand on it. Your brain will literally stop you from doing so. In almost every case, you cannot touch that electric fence. You might manage it if you psych yourself up and try real hard, but that still isn't a guarantee.

In most cases, you won't manage to touch that fence. Your hand will freeze close to it, maybe even close enough to feel the electricity humming in the fence. But that last distance won't be closed.

You simply cannot do it.

That's what it is like to have a neurodiverse mind sometimes. That's what it's like to be neurodiverse.

You want to touch the fence because it's something you Have To Do, but your brain is saying No, No Thanks, We're Not Doing That and you end up stuck.

And the people who can touch the fence look at you standing there, unable to touch it, and judge you because "look, I'm touching the fence because it's my job and I gotta do it, I don't enjoy it but it's what I need to do, why are you being so lazy".

Sometimes, sometimes my niece just Can't Do The Work she's assigned from school during this period of lockdown and more home schooling. She tries but her brain is physically refusing to let her.

So she gets upset. She gets frustrated. She cries. She tries to avoid answering. She'll say the wrong answer because all she cares about is just giving an answer at this point and Moving On.

It's easy to get frustrated back. It's easy to get mean. It's easy to not understand because I'm not her.

But she's trying and she might be failing at the work but she's trying and trying hard. It's hurting her to try so hard because she's fighting against her own brain with her mind. That's Hard.

Being neurodiverse is a constant battle with your own brain and body, neuroses and anxieties. It's so easy to be cruel and judging when you're not the one on the front line.

It's so easy to call others lazy because you don't see and don't understand the mountain they've had to climb without equipment just to reach the same starting line as you just strolled up to.

My niece is trying. She's always trying.

Her reading will improve with time and encouragement.

It will never improve with judgement and cruelty in the guise of motivation.

To be neurodiverse is to be in a war without end; there are only brief periods of rest spent around campfires with others in the same war and occasional civilians who judge the time spent around campfires just resting to be a "waste of time" and "lazy".

This is what it is to be neurodiverse. This is what it is to be autistic, adhd, depressed, learning disabled, and so on. This is what it is to be Abnormal. And that's okay.

The world and people may say and imply otherwise. But there's nothing wrong with trying to do something and finding your brain won't let you. Brains just be like that, sometimes.

removed twitter account from bio, updated my discord account name

dana international 💕 israeli queer royalty 🇮🇱👸🏻

the first trans contestant and winner of eurovision !!!! 🇮🇱

Blyth's Tragopan. Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935)

via

I cast Summon Kidney Stone

If you consider yourself an ally of mentally ill people, here are some words, phrases, and general behaviours that make your mentally ill friends and family distrust the true nature/intentions of your allyship:

• Using the word "triggered" in place of "bothered", "upset", or "offended", without regard for the fact that "triggered" is an actual psychiatric term that refers to actual psychiatric triggers. (Also, 99% of the time when someone says something like "oh did I trigger you?", they're literally weaponizing the term in order to gaslight the person they're talking to, which just makes them a really shitty human being).

• laugh reacting, and/or sharing "funny" videos of human beings acting "fucked up" in public.

• conflating the meanings of "psychotic" and "psychopathic"/"psychosis" and "psychopathy" as if they're not two completely different words that just happen to sound similar.

• using the word "psychotic" or "psycho" to describe someone who just happens to be an aggressively shitty person. Actually, to be honest, you should probably stay away from calling shitty people anything that denotes mental illness, like, "crazy" (unless you're mentally ill and reclaiming the word for yourself)... I don't personally have an issue with people who use the word "crazy" to describe erratic behaviour, but a lot of us psychiatrically unwell folks do take issue with it.

• Something a lot of our society has a hard time wrapping their heads around is the idea that people can behave badly and with "evil" intent while being perfectly mentally healthy. Assuming or suggesting anytime an "evil" person makes headlines, that they must be "sick" to be able to do something so terrible is not only highly ableist but that assumption (that only mentally ill people can be evil, or dangerous, or violent) literally leads to the deaths of innocently suffering mentally ill people every single day.

Anyway. This is just a rant, really. Other mentally ill and/or neurodiverse people are welcome to add to the list. Neurotypicals and mentally healthy people can repost or reblog, but keep your opinions and questions to yourself (Google it if you need to), so as not to speak over others who are actually personally affected by this shit. Thanks.

Hebrew should be coloured blue here

Etymology for chess in European languages