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One of my favorite stories to tell about myself from when I was a kid is the story how my grandma’s “Catching Fairies” game was banned because of me

So when I was really little my grandma had this game she made up, she’d give me and all my cousins jars and containers and tell us that in her garden there were fairies but they were smart and tricky so they disguised themselves as caterpillars and butterflies and as grasshoppers and worms.

Whoever caught the most ‘Fairies’ won but we had to set them all free because they tended to the garden

One summer day my brothers were at the age they were dreading ‘girly’ stuff so I was playing alone

At this point I had met all the fairies in the garden and I was getting bored without any competition and with finding the same old fairies

But then just as I was begrudgingly heading back to my grandma with the same fairies as usual I found a new fairy!

I thought she was so beautiful! She was resting on the sparkly thread in the leaves and her black body gleamed in the sunlight, she had long legs and a cool red spot on her back

Excited I coaxed her onto my hand and was so giddy I found a new one! I rushed back to the farm house to show my Grandma and Dad, gently carrying my new friend.

But when my Dad and Grandma turned around to see what fairy I caught I saw the color drain from their faces and both of them freeze, I could tell something was wrong but didn’t understand

My dad congratulated me and asked me if he could see the pretty fairy, I let him but felt a little nervous seeing how terrified he looked as she moved into his hands from mine.

Slowly he walked back towards the door, my grandma clutching my shoulders then my dad LAUNCHED the fairy back into the garden which I thought was rather rude

Then we had a nice long talk about Black Widow spiders

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Enamored by this picture of a legless lizard from georgian reptile fb group

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What you can’t see is me with the controller panicking and yelling

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Bothersome beast, comforting friend

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THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

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Today I went to the science museum. It was basically empty. You might think of course it was, it's a natural history museum, shouldn't you be doing things specific to Florence? Buddy this museum has had the same badly-taxidermied hippo for three hundred years, and for a hundred years before that a different museum had it. Multiple European scholars with varying levels of hippo expertise have tried to improve it over the centuries. You can't see stuff like that just anywhere. The description mostly just talks about everything that's wrong with the hippo, and how the current curators have worked to preserve the different layers of alterations and attempted fixes, while also stabilizing the specimen:

Its unnatural position and unappealing details make us suppose that its taxidermists have never seen it live. For example, although it is a digitigrade animal, the position of its feet was prepared like that of a plantigrade. [...] Two different approaches thus coexisted for over two centuries: a seventeenth-century one "cabinet of curiosities" like and a late eighteenth century one, with a naturalistic aim. [...] Therefore, a restoration, completed in 2012, was necessary which highlighted the two different approaches of preparation, allowing to enhance its original appearance, but also preserving the beautiful wax modeling reconstruction of the details of the head.

Here we have, in part, a history of "exotic" European zoological inquiry in microcosm. Everybody's all oh let's go see the important church, or the other important church, even though the line is an hour long, and no one wants to look at the fucked up hippo with me.

Also, I want to be clear: this was a great museum and I think more people should go and would have a great time there even without knowing or caring much about the history of science (or even being as easily amused by taxidermy as I am). Their current exhibit juxtaposes actual historical taxidermy with modern art of fantastical medieval-esque imagined creatures. And their collection of wax anatomical models is fascinating (and quite famous). They have a lovely mineral collection, too.

Also if you like me are easily lost, and you get confused about how to leave, you can just follow the wheelchair-accessible path because it's the only one you can find that leads to the exit! And then you get to see a surprise giraffe in a corner by the elevator, away from all of the other taxidermy. Why not!

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Well!

So first, let's clear a common misconception: no, President Abraham Lincoln did not love Black people nor see them as human equals. At best he was centrist about it (though, even his implication that 'exceptional' Black men ought to vote got him assassinated).

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do, it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

The "freeing of slaves" after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 was meant to kneecap the economic and military powers of the seceded South. Lettuce stop making a white savior figure out of Lincoln, or thinking that my people's shackles were unchained via anything other than desperate war strategy and extreme violence. Think on that, for a moment.

That being said!

But not everyone in Confederate territory would immediately be free. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, enslaved people would not be free until much later. Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth," by the newly freed people in Texas.

Consider going through the Smithsonian website to learn about Juneteenth! Recognize why it's an actual day of freedom, versus July 4th and the independence of a select few.

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bi slut pigeon

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It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

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the perfect shot

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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person in fandom: eeeyikes!!! i hope im writing this character in this short little fanfic right >_< eeekkk what if my takes on my meta are all wrong and everyone will Kill me!!

guy in professional comic industry: okay lets mischaracterize every single character that appears in this comic for 50 or so issues

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happy pride month to the fuck tree I guess

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me when i see an animal that is known for being in my area

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this is why he has kangaroo biceps

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A good rule of thumb for AI is "would you trust a trained pigeon to do this?"

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

"We trained a pigeon to recognise good CV:s and left it in charge of sorting through all our job applications" uh perhaps consider not doing that.