kippurbird - Tumblr blog

[kippurbird]

The toadstools grew in a perfect ring the width of a child’s hula hoop.

They were upside down and clinging to the ceiling like stalactites.

“I have concerns,” she said.

“So do I,” they said. “If I step under it, does it count as stepping into a fairy circle? I mean, if a plane flies over a fairy circle it doesn’t count as stepping into it, but do the same rules apply if you’re walking under a fairy circle?”

“Right.”

“Actually, what is the area of effect for a fairy circle? Is it like a sphere that has the same circumference of the circle, so if I just duck underneath it I’ll be fine? Or is it a cylinder? How far up does the cylinder go? Or down, in this case.”

“Right.”

“Some of the many mysteries of the fey we may wonder about forever.”

They continued to stare up at the ring of toadstools. Thoughtful seconds ticked by.

“See, my concerns are mostly about how much moisture you have in your room.”

“Sorry?”

“You have mushrooms growing out of your ceiling.”

“Oh.”

She patted their back with sympathetic pity. “I appreciate that you live in a world of whimsy and delight, and I don’t want to squash that because I love you, but I also really don’t want you to die of black mold.”

“She’s right, you know,” said the goblin sitting upside down in the circle.

[kippurbird]

I fully understand that the preponderance of evidence is that George Lucas put absolutely zero thought into what Naboo’s culture was actually supposed to look like outside of what we see on screen, but as far as unintentionally effective worldbuilding goes, establishing that Naboo a. has a tradition of electing literal children as figurehead rulers of its planetary government, and b. apparently also has a tradition of assassinating these children with sufficient frequency that dressing up a bunch of other children as decoy targets has become standard operating procedure by the time of Padmé Amidala’s reign suggests that maybe the fact that this random backwater is a breeding ground for Sith Lords isn’t as unlikely as it initially appears.

[kippurbird]

"Black-footed ferrets are North America’s only native ferret species and were thought to be extinct in 1979.

When the species was miraculously rediscovered in 1981 in Wyoming, these long, quirky mammals quickly rose to become the center of dedicated conservation efforts.

At that time, the Wyoming Game Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services brought 18 ferrets into human care to begin cooperative breeding programs, like the one at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.

Between captive breeding, wildlife reintroductions, habitat restoration, and even genetic cloning, one of the continent's most endangered mammals is now seeing a comeback.

Perhaps the cutest manifestation of this conservation work is a new litter, born at the NZCBI on May 11. 

Since 1989, 1,218 black-footed ferret kits have been born at NZCBI, with 750 reintroduced to the wild. Currently, 48 ferrets live at NZCBI, including one-year-old female Aristides, who gave birth to the new litter of six kits last week. 

Last breeding season, NZCBI raised 51 ferret kits. Now with 2024’s season underway, animal care staff are closely monitoring the ferrets’ behavior through the institute’s Black-Footed Ferret Cam (a temporary live webcam the public can also view on the NZCBI website)...

Right now, the kits are still tiny, weighing less than 10 grams, with a thin layer of white fur covering their bodies. Their well-known mask-like markings and namesake dark feet will appear in the next few weeks. Then, they’ll start venturing out of their den and exploring the burrows of their habitat, akin to the tunnels they’d find in the wild."

-via GoodGoodGood, May 21, 2024

[kippurbird]

today in "google AI is fucking useless because it hallucinates things that never happened", i bought a couple CVS thermometers that have both been acting up, tried to search if there had been a problem with the whole product line:

there is no record of this product recall. it did not happen. the date "feb 8 2024" is the date someone listed a thermometer for sale on ebay.

[kippurbird]

[kippurbird]

[kippurbird]

“Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.”

— Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)

[kippurbird]

listen ok so i made some good jokes yesterday about Lestat having an onlyfans but i am back today with a new essay and this one is entitled

Why The Invention Of Social Media Is Going to Permanently Save Loustat's Fucking Marriage

come on this journey with me.

ok so on one hand we have Louis, who does not like to leave the house except when he absolutely fucking has to and even then he resents it. my man wants to be at home with a book 100% of the time and he's so fucking valid for that. When he leaves the house, bad things happen to him. He has learned this and honestly i can't fault his evidence. it sucks out there. it truly incredibly sucks out there.

the problem is that sometimes he is married to lestat, who starts clawing at the walls if people aren't paying attention to him for 12 consecutive seconds, and being Out Of The House is the best place for him to go foraging for People To Pay Attention To Him. my man once had a rock star career the way that some people get addicted to meth brewed in a trashcan in someone's garage. Louis, through no fault of his own, is simply not capable of filling this psychological need no matter how hard he tries, except he should not even HAVE to try like that, because no one can do it, because Lestat is fucked up and like wasn't hugged enough as a child or something

this imbalance in their relationship is the core source of all their marital problems since day 1: THIS man's idea of a good time is chilling on the sofa in silence and maybe staring contemplatively at the wall for a while, and THIS man starts self-destructing at a truly astonishing rate if no one is making eye contact with him. If you make Louis go outside and socialize with people, he's miserable and sulking and whining about "are we done can we go home". If you make Lestat sit in silence in a chair for five minutes he starts crying and claiming that No One Has Ever Loved Him, Ever, Ever, And No One Understands Him, And He Hates Everyone In This House and He Is Being Actively Neglected And Cruelly Mistreated Right Now And No One Even Bothers To Feel Sorry For Him, This Is BASICALLY Domestic Violence Against Him Personally, If Only Anyone Knew About The Quiet Hidden Tragedies Of An Unhappy Marriage, and then he breaks some furniture and a window and isn't seen again for six weeks and comes back like "you will not believe what just happened, i [checks notes] met Merlin and also a dragon who gave me three wishes, brb i'm going to write another book about it :))))"

all you fucking have to do to fix their problems is to hand Lestat a cellphone and say the words "do you know about social media? you can say whatever shit you want and there's always someone awake in some time zone to talk to you." Suddenly Lestat is now very interested in sitting quietly on the couch, Lounging Alluringly and posting thirst traps on instagram and finally getting emotional fulfillment from all the likes and comments of "omg???? omg this is the hottest man alive". he does not have to leave the house anymore to get his attention meth. His yawning abyss of neediness is being fulfilled by having parasocial relationships with millions of strangers online who all think he's sexy and don't have to experience how fucking awful he is up close. he can flirt pointlessly with 200 people at once which is FINALLY ENOUGH FLIRTATIONS FOR HIM TO SATISFACTORILY JUGGLE

Meanwhile Louis is 3 feet away, vaguely reflecting to himself that HE is feeling all emotionally fulfilled because they're spending this great Quality Time together in perfect silence while he reads his book and Lestat plays on his cellular telephone and only OCCASIONALLY giggles to himself or says "louis which of these photos do you think is sexier, the one with four buttons undone or the one with five buttons undone" Louis is feeling like his Opinion is being Valued, Louis feels like he is being Consulted on Matters that are Important To Lestat. He has opinions about the photographs. It is not that much trouble to be interrupted from staring philosophically at the wall to spend five seconds looking at a photograph and then saying "that one". Finally he is experiencing Cozy Domesticity. he is so horny about it. lestat is surprised and bewildered about the sudden sharp increase in the amount of sex he is now getting but before he can make any vaguely mean comments about it (bc he's confused and vaguely defensive and worried that it's going to stop out of nowhere and he doesn't know any other interpersonal skills for expressing a thought) his phone pings about how he's just broken 5 million followers on instagram and he totally forgets to even mention the sex thing, which means that he continues getting the sex instead of inciting an argument about the sex and going through his 800th divorce from Louis

all their friends are extremely confused when a whole month, and then six months, and then a year goes by without another Loud Divorce happening and no one crashing through their front door like "I HAVE TO SLEEP IN YOUR GUEST COFFIN FOR THE NEXT MONTH, HE IS INTOLERABLE". They are worried. they are concerned. what is going on over there. are they both dead. no, they can't both be dead, Lestat just posted another tiktok of him sucking on his own fingers, which he would not be doing if Louis were dead. there is an ecosystem collapse happening in the groupchat and it's because the main Drama Vectors have been neutralized

[kippurbird]

Have any of your friendships ever ended because you were always the first one to talk to someone and one day you stopped to see if they would talk to you first and they never did so you just stopped talking to each other?

[kippurbird]

[kippurbird]

here's a fun parchment fact for you re: reusing a surface: sheepskin was often used for legal documents because it's hard to scrape out a word and rewrite without it being obviously damaged, unlike good quality calfskin where it can be undetectable that something has been altered

[kippurbird]

The four penguins from Madagascar are, somehow, isekaied in the middle of the clone wars

[kippurbird]

The fact that the normal human pain level is 0 is such a foreign and weird concept to me. Like, what do you mean people just walk around without hip pain? What do you mean they stand up without having to fear that their knee might give way underneath them? What do you mean they open water bottles without pain in their fingers? What do you mean they can just run 3 miles without limping for the next week?

[kippurbird]

Video skit is by thepandaredd, I just added open captions

Lemme know if there’s anything I can fix up 👍

[kippurbird]

OMG, this home is absolutely stunning. It's a 1920 carriage house in New York City, has 5bds, 6ba, and is listed for only $37.75M. But, get this- everything is included in the sale- the furnishings, art, and the Rolls Royce. Just bring your clothes.

So, you get this Rolls. I would definitely have to reinforce those garage doors. This is a gallery and you get all of the art with it.

Beautiful exposed brick wall, a tapestry and 3D sculptural art.

The gorgeous living room with a glass wall. You get all the art and books. This is making me sick.

Whomever said money doesn't buy happiness is a bedeviled liar. I would be ecstatically happy here.

Look at this cool kitchen. It's not huge, but I don't need much.

Very interesting bench. The cost of the art alone has to be in the millions.

Lovely dining area. Look, you get the blue sheep & pink pig eating out of bowls. How whimsical is that?

Door to the beautiful patio.

Lovely pool room.

It has an upright piano and it has doors- must be a player piano.

This may be the primary bedroom with a big brick fireplace and tons of art.

Check out the en-suite.

The guest room is just as wonderful as the primary bedroom with a brick fireplace wall, spaciousness and art.

Amazing roof top deck.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/178-E-75th-St-New-York-NY-10021/31535475_zpid/

[kippurbird]