You’ve heard of Earth is space australia now get ready for: Earth is the space Amazon Rainforest. Aliens land on Earth and they are losing their goddamn minds because every square inch of the ground is absolutely PACKED with life like there are hundreds of species just in this one site, there are winged animals flying through the sky and multiple colonies of sophisticated social insects just in the shadow of their ship, this ONE ROCK is covered in MULTIPLE SPECIES OF ORGANISMS that are themselves MULTIPLE ORGANISMS LIVING SYMBIOTICALLY, the tall, woody autotrophs look so different from each other because they’re…holy shit that’s like 5, 6, 7???? different species on this one site???
they start talking to a human and the human is like “haha yeah that’s a crow!” and the alien researcher is like “you called it a ‘bird’ earlier, is that a different name?” and the human is like “oh a crow is just one species of bird, there’s like, 10 others out there”
“On this planet?”
“No, in the back yard right now.”
imagine aliens that come from a tidally locked planet where only a thin band of the planet is habitable, or a planet life was only able to develop in small areas at the poles, or in the few pools of liquid water on the planet’s surface, or just in isolated areas where geologic activity causes geysers and springs, visiting Earth. They seem completely unprepared for the shock of realizing that Earth’s continents appear green because the continents are absolutely covered with green organisms.
The alien biologists are so uncomfortable because there are certain protocols for maintaining certain distances from life signatures to avoid harming unfamiliar organisms, and groves of plant like autotrophs and pools where aquatic life dwells are carefully protected and respected, with very important rules for approach
On Earth, the inhabitants are just. Playing and walking LITERALLY STEPPING ON CARPETS OF ORGANISMS the whole time. the aliens are like “it doesn’t hurt them??? Can’t you just…move them to a place where you don’t have to step on them?” and the humans are like “no of course not, grasses evolved to tolerate being stepped on, and besides, more plants would grow there if we tried to move the existing ones”
It then must be explained that humans would need to regularly spray poisons on the ground to prevent any given area of bare soil from filling up with plant life, and that “regularly” means “multiple times within a single solar cycle.” And that the poisons stop working within a few decades because the plants evolve to resist them that fast.
Human: yeah solar is the dominant energy source these days but some of the recent solar farm projects are pretty controversial because they’re in reclaimed strip mining sites that others argue should be restored as best as we can to their previous ecological state
Alien: I don’t understand…why would you not place the solar farms in an area of the planet with no existing ecosystem?
Human: …what?
Alien: You have rather sophisticated protective gear and have done some space exploration, surely you could establish them in an area of the planet to which life is not yet adapted?
Human: …there isn’t one.
Alien: …what do you mean there isn’t one
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ’DON’T KNOW’ HOW MANY SPECIES THERE ARE”
“Our biologists would love to collaborate with your Earth scientists to draw up a definitive listing of Earth species and resolve any inconsistencies in the records.”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. Only 25% of Earth’s species have been formally described, at most.”
“that’s…that’s most of them.”
“Yes?”
“Well…I suppose the ocean trenches and abyssal plains must be difficult for you to reach…where did you have to travel for your discoveries?”
“Travel? I moved here to Alabama in the first place to study its aquatic ecosystems. The crayfish I discovered live in that creek I showed you earlier.”
I slept in and just woke up, so here’s what I’ve been able to figure out while sipping coffee:
Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.
The official branding is that a tweet is now called “an X”, for which there are too many jokes to make.
The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn’t reclaim the username first.
The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.
Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name “X” in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for “X” in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.
The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term “X Japan” is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.
Elon had workers taking down the “Twitter” name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says “er”.
He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as “Xvideo”. Nobody tell him.
This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.
I feel like I’m going to go to my grave without figuring out if Dr. Horrible is deliberately a condemnation of the geek-flavored version of toxic masculinity that would, years later, play a significant part in the resurgence of open white nationalism and the like in America, or if Joss Whedon is just a dumbass who wrote an extended callout post for himself on accident
Personally, I think it being an accidental self-callout enriches the narrative immensely. There’s layers to writing a cliche villain who thinks he’s the hero (but actually ends up being the villain) (but the writer thinks he’s a hero) (but the writer is wrong, possessed by the same self-delusions the villain has). It’s a text that doesn’t know what it’s about in a way that mirrors the way the main character doesn’t know what he really is. It fascinates me. At this point I’d actually be disappointed if Joss did it on purpose.
Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out because my kinks aren’t weirdly specific enough. The folks who get off on the most narrowly contrived scenarios always seem to be having the most fun.
People are out there like “I’m a naughty little cube and I need you to tell me my axes of symmetry are cute and multifarious” and having a fantastic time with it, and I’m just over here sucking dick like an idiot.
Oh… not only does the new shitty tumblr dashboard design look like twitter..it also kinda looks like facebook.. So thats 3 sites that look almost exactly the same and all look like crap…
+ this new tumblr dashboard is so damn confusing and it did the thing where if you want to log out you need to click through a whole bunch of little windows instead of just one..
i really hate when pages make it harder for me to just leave or switch accounts..always extremely bad sign
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
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If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I’m not hearing about that, so… Tree law!
It gets even better, because he was doing all of this on a pitch black night. This dude swam towards a lure, slapped at it with his glove, and when it got caught; he let himself float and tugged on the line so the fisherman thought he had hooked a 100+ pound salmon. Once he was finally up to the shore, he turned a flashlight on in the guy’s face and walked out of the water, saying “good morning, gentlemen. State fish and game warden, you’re under arrest.“
At this point, the guy who had reeled him in had literally fallen over in shock, and the other people with him were scared shitless. The warden whipped some citations out of a plastic bag in his wetsuit, made the trespassers sign them, asked if they had any questions, and then gathered all of their fishing gear. And he just. Walked back into the river. And quietly swam away, without another word.
This man is a legend.
warden coming out of his river to shame fishermankind
Thought I’d misread it but no, that’s correct actually
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![sleepymccoy:
“do-you-have-a-flag:
“ hoseph-christiansen:
“ theawesomeadventurer:
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okay but this is a power move above any other
”
It gets even better, because he was doing all of this on...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1fd447caa3b037691cd21fe9101a7388/tumblr_oyqfosuqIB1rhavdko1_500.png)
