crysthemist

[crysthemist]

This seems like it may be a yearly occurrence

[crysthemist]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[crysthemist]

I hate hot and humid summer days. I burn like dry grass and the bugs swarm me the second I let my guard down. It’s loud and there are so many people.

and yet

I still go out for marching band every year. I spend hours of my own time practicing for it. I commit to the hot game days where I’ll need to tolerate loud drunk people, because that’s who we’re playing for. I tolerate the loud speakers overhead, because goddammit we’re going to be louder than those stupid things. I put on so much sunscreen that I look a shade paler and I still get burned… but whatever.

At least I’m out there in the stands playing music and being rowdy.

I love music. I love marching. I love working in a unit that acts as one moving form. I can’t imagine doing anything other than enduring the devil’s armpit of summer while I slowly lose my hearing

[crysthemist]

where to download every pokemon game excluding spinoffs

(plain text: where to download every pokemon game excluding spinoffs)

GAMES

pokemon red/blue

pokemon gold/silver/crystal

pokemon ruby/sapphire/emerald

pokemon firered/leafgreen

pokemon diamond/pearl/platinum

pokemon heartgold/soulsilver

pokemon black/white

pokemon black2/white2

pokemon x/pokemon y

pokemon omega ruby/alpha sapphire

pokemon sun/moon

pokemon ultra sun/ultra moon

pokemon let’s go pikachu/let’s go eevee

pokemon sword/shield

pokemon brilliant diamond/shining pearl

pokemon legends arceus

pokemon scarlet/violet

EMULATORS

gameboy

DS

3DS

switch

let me know if any of the links are dead and ill update them as soon as i can!

[crysthemist]

No marching band practice for me for a bit 😔

y'all it's about to get really fucking humid and hot

[crysthemist]

[crysthemist]

Unironically, pretty decent explanation of how evolution works.

Thing is, it’s not only random chance. Mutations are random, but selection is not. So random mutations sometimes lead to things that are selected for more, and then there are harmful mutations that would be selected for less.

Sometimes selection is how an organism chooses its mate, like how female bower birds will judge the collection of items that a male bower bird collects. If she deems the collection good, then she will mate with him.

Other times, selection is just survival of the fittest. I’m going to use my favorite example: the stickleback fish. This fish has freshwater and marine varieties. The marine stickleback has a pelvic spine that acts as a deterrent to getting eaten (no fun being stabbed in the throat) meanwhile, the freshwater stickleback does not have a pelvic spine, as seen below.

Why would that be selected for when there are still things in lakes that would like to eat it?

Well, the ocean is a very open environment and lakes are typically shrouded with vegetation. That pelvic spine would get caught on vegetation and slow the fish down. It becomes more costly to have it than to not have it, so sticklebacks with no pelvic spine are selected for in freshwater environments (and this phenomenon is specifically called adaptive evolution). The coolest part about this fish is that this has happened more than once before! The same gene mutated at different points in time in different populations that somehow became trapped in freshwater environments and led to very similar results. Idk why, but that's just so very cool and crazy to me.

Also, kinda nitpicky, the "billions of years" thing in that post isn't wrong, but it oversimplifies. Life has existed on Earth for a very long time (the oldest known fossils being 3.5 billion years old), but you can see big change in much less time than that. Like it was only 600 million years ago that multicellular life first developed and 460 million years ago when plants colonized land for the first time. Like just look into whale evolution if you wanna see some crazy fast evolution. Those things went from fully terrestrial rat-thing (pakicetus my beloved) to fully aquatic toothed whale ancestor (basilosaurus and dorudon) in only 10 million years or so. Now THAT is crazy!

Evolution is crazy fascinating the more you look into it. Absolutely it’s possible thanks to random chance, but random chance hardly ever dictates survival.

what annoys me about explaining evolution to people who don’t think it’s real is that everyone’s idea of how it works seems to be from this

Whereas the reality is far more like

[crysthemist]

Physically, I’m working on a draft for my fic

Mentally, I’m working out how I would structure a literary analysis of 17776/what football will look like in the future

writer's block so bad i'm writing character analyses instead of actually working on the story

[crysthemist]

Say, that’s a beautiful bird. What do you think it is?

Well, that’s a beautiful nuthatch!

We can both agree that it’s beautiful, but what is it called?

I told you! It’s a beautiful nuthatch!

So you’re saying it’s a beautiful nuthatch?

Yes.

But you won’t tell me the species name?

It’s a beautiful nuthatch.

Now you’re being ridiculous!

I’m not being ridiculous! I’m telling you, it’s a beautiful nuthatch!

Beautiful nuthatch is the species name?

Naturally.

So it’s a naturally nuthatch?

No, it’s a beautiful nuthatch.

I’m not going birdwatching with you anymore if you won’t tell me the goddamn species name.

I’m telling you! It’s a beautiful nuthatch!

I KNOW IT’S BEAUTIFUL. GO AWAY! Bird watchers, pfft.

Oh no that one is not a go-away bird. That’s a fluffy-backed tit-babbler.

WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?

Beautiful Nuthatch (Sitta formosa), family Sittidae, order Passeriformes, Mishmi Hills, AP, India

photograph by abhinav sharma

[crysthemist]

A lot of adulthood is shouting “AUGH MY LAUNDRY” hours after you put it in the washer/dryer and running to go fetch it

[crysthemist]

Had a couple interesting visitors at the bird feeders today!

Bird ID:

1st picture: Common grackle

2nd and after: Baltimore Oriole

[crysthemist]

[crysthemist]

Introverts be like " ."

[crysthemist]

there’s no such thing as a wasted draft. even the trash ones fertilize the good ones. compost your failure.

[crysthemist]

Emotional Walls Your Character Has Built (And What Might Finally Break Them)

(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.

✶ Sarcasm as armor. (Break it with someone who laughs gently, not mockingly.) ✶ Hyper-independence. (Break it with someone who shows up even when they’re told not to.) ✶ Stoicism. (Break it with a safe space to fall apart.) ✶ Flirting to avoid intimacy. (Break it with real vulnerability they didn’t see coming.) ✶ Ghosting everyone. (Break it with someone who won’t take silence as an answer.) ✶ Lying for convenience. (Break it with someone who sees through them but stays anyway.) ✶ Avoiding touch. (Break it with accidental, gentle contact that feels like home.) ✶ Oversharing meaningless things to hide real depth. (Break it with someone who asks the second question.) ✶ Overworking. (Break it with forced stillness and the terrifying sound of their own thoughts.) ✶ Pretending not to care. (Break it with a loss they can’t fake their way through.) ✶ Avoiding mirrors. (Break it with a quiet compliment that hits too hard.) ✶ Turning every conversation into a joke. (Break it with someone who doesn’t laugh.) ✶ Being everyone’s helper. (Break it when someone asks what they need, and waits for an answer.) ✶ Constantly saying “I’m fine.” (Break it when they finally scream that they’re not.) ✶ Running. Always running. (Break it with someone who doesn’t chase, but doesn’t leave, either.) ✶ Intellectualizing every feeling. (Break it with raw, messy emotion they can’t logic away.) ✶ Trying to be the strong one. (Break it when someone sees the weight they’re carrying, and offers to help.) ✶ Hiding behind success. (Break it when they succeed and still feel empty.) ✶ Avoiding conflict at all costs. (Break it when silence causes more pain than the truth.) ✶ Focusing on everyone else’s healing but their own. (Break it when they hit emotional burnout.)

[crysthemist]

Hey, you know how Trump is really good at making smokescreens for terrible stuff?

Check this article out. While yes, Trump & Musk might be having an argument, and I don't think it's staged, Trump is using this as an opportunity to basically get Big Brother set up - a national threat registry of every citizen, where disagreeing with Trump could have you reported to his gestapo and potentially disappeared.

I literally have no idea what people can do to stop this, but I figure that the first thing that I can do is just spread the word, share this article and make sure other people know about this.

I'm scared of this man, and we're not even a fourth of the way through his reign.

[crysthemist]

I’m revisiting notes I made for a story three years ago and one of the bullet points is literally:

You know this already lol

…y’all I don’t even know

Psst. Writer. Write that idea down. Yeah, it’ll stay in your brain forever and all, but it won’t. Write it down.