Sludge-cat - What Kind Of Animal Is This

where am I

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study shows

Komodo dragons, the world’s largest species of lizard, have iron-tipped teeth that help them to rip their prey apart, according to new research. The metal is concentrated in the cutting edge and tips of their curved, serrated teeth, staining them orange, scientists wrote in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia and weigh around 80 kilograms (176 pounds) on average. They eat almost any kind of meat and are known as deadly predators...

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/science/komodo-dragons-iron-teeth-scli-intl/index.html

Imagine spending the night under relentless bombing, unsure if you or your children will see the morning light. Imagine being told to flee—again—not knowing where safety lies.

Images: (Top) Hossam and his daughter Diana (Middle) Map of the evacuation notice given to about 80% of Khan Yunis residents (Bottom) A close up map of the evacuation area. Hossam's family is in square #111.

@naimq

Story written by @rumiandroses

Hossam Al-Qazzaz, his wife Hanan, and their four young children, are among the 80% of Khan Younis residents now ordered to evacuate toward the coast.

They are currently in Square 111, a region dangerously close to the so-called "evacuation zones" that are actively being bombed.

Hossam has shared that their area is expected to be targeted next—and they fear that when the next order comes, they will be forced to flee into even deadlier zones.

Last night (05/18/2025) was horrific. “We never imagined that we would be alive in the morning,” Hossam wrote. Now, with communications at risk of being cut off, Hossam has asked the world to share his message and pray for his family’s survival.

His hope is to find a path to safety, to protect his loved ones, and to stay alive long enough to rebuild.

Please, share this post, pray for Hossam and his family, and consider donating if you can, so that this precious family can continue to survive.

You can donate to Hossam's GoFundMe here:

gofundme.com

Donate to Support Hossam’s afflicted family to rebuild their lives., organized by nouraldin alqazzaz

Dear reader, I am Hussam Al-Qazzaz from Gaza, and I am wr… nouraldin alqazzaz needs your support for Support Hossam’s afflicted family t

Hossam's campaign has been vetted by @gazavetters and is (#287) on their list of verified campaigns.

when yr laying in bed and your brain starts releasing long lost archival footage

come on gimme things to sort. i'm so fucking good at sorting come on lemme sort

congratulations! your reincarnation status has been upgraded from COCKROACH to SEAGULL

I think on the broader scale of things, Spinning Top represents everything that the ancients left behind. The echoes we meet that didn't have a particular attachment to the area we find them in usually talk about selfish things like their status, the things they owned, or how much they mattered - or in the case of Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets, how little everything else mattered in comparison. There was some grandiose idea of legacy, as evident by the iterators being a "great gift" to the lesser lifeforms, or the fact that they left behind their literal memories in the form of data pearls. Who were the pearls for? They were for the people who left them behind, who wished, even if subconsciously, for their lives to have had meaning. Spinning Top wasn't just left behind, but they were tormented by the idea that their life, or even their death, didn't have any meaning.