#distributed web of care

[emiliaoleary]

Hooking rugs that look like dogs

Here's how I do it:

The process I use is called rug hooking (not latch hook or punch needle or tufting, though it is the forerunner of the latter two techniques). Rugs are hooked by pulling loops of fabric strips or yarn through the holes of a base fabric with a coarse open weave, like burlap, or linen, or rug warp. The loops are pulled through the fabric with a squat-handled hook whose business end is shaped like a crochet hook.  There are no knots and the loops aren't sewed down in any way.  The whole thing stays put just by the tension of all those loops packed together in the weave of the foundation fabric.

This isn't a true detailed tutorial but a walk-through of my particular process. The same information is on my web page, emilyoleary.com .

I hook with yarn, rather than with cut strips of wool fabric, which is what many rug hookers use.  I can get a looser, more organic distribution of loops with yarn than I could with wool strips, which are hooked in neat lines. 

Mostly I use wool yarn. In terms of yarn weight, I can use DK, worsted, or Aran.  If I'm using thicker yarn, I leave more holes un-hooked; if I'm using finer yarn, I hook more densely or double up lengths of it.  I particularly like using single ply yarns (like Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride or Malabrigo Worsted).  I don't keep count, but I think I usually use around two dozen types and colors of yarn per dog.  

This is my yarn wall in my apartment. Mostly brown and gray yarn!

I start from a small drawing in my sketchbook, then I head to FedEx office to use a copy machine, blowing up the drawing repeatedly and experimenting with how big the dog rug should be. 

After transferring the image onto my linen, I immediately go over it with Sharpie, because the Saral is really difficult to see and really easy to rub off.

The rug is held taut by a PVC quilting frame that I set on my lap.

I push my hook down through the fabric with my right hand and my left hand stays below the fabric and guides the yarn while I pull it up and through with the hook. Not every hole in the fabric is hooked. Hooking every hole would make the rug too dense. I do hook pretty densely, though-- If you pick up one of my rugs you’ll see they have a slight curl to them, which is because they’re hooked pretty tight. I'm using all different weights and types of yarn, so it's a challenge to keep the overall tension even.

I hook my loops at varying heights to create a very low relief. Sometimes I trim the loops to make them fluffier or wispier or to shape a particular part. I look at a reference photo while I work and pull out and redo sections a lot.

My q-snap frame can accommodate the growing dog rug. I have extenders to make it bigger and I can clamp around my hooking.

The back of a rug looks like lines of little stitches. The lines are little worm trails snaking around because lines of hooking are not supposed to cross over each other. It's important to start a new length of yarn rather than cross over a stitch you already made! I read this when I first started and took it to heart. It makes it much easier to undo and redo hooking if you have to (and I redo sections A Lot). It also keeps the back from getting too bulky and resulting in uneven wear on the back of a functional rug that gets floor use.

When I’m done hooking everything I turn the rug over and brush watered-down Sobo glue on the edges of the dog, making sure to get one or two of the outermost lines of hooking. I do a couple coats of this thinned out glue. I'm careful not to use so much that it seeps to the front of the rug. When the glue is dry I cut the rug out, but I don't cut so close that the loops don't have any linen to keep them in.

​ It generally takes me at least several months to finish one dog rug. My hooking frame and yarn bag are very portable (though bulky) so I can hook out and about at coffee shops or the library or a brewery if there's enough space and light.

Hooking in the wild makes me an ambassador for making things in general and rug hooking in particular. I answer people's questions and always emphasize how relatively easy it is to get started hooking. Sometimes I get anxious that other people will hook rugs that look like mine but better, but I think that working in a traditional medium means you should share your knowledge for the good of the craft.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BURBANK with WIL WHEATON TONIGHT (Mar 13), and in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24. More tour dates here.

My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the-shitty-tech-adoption-curve-has-a-business-model/

When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when they complain, they get results. To successfully deploy that abusive tech, you need to work your way up the privilege gradient, starting with people with no power, like prisoners, refugees, and mental patients. This starts the process of normalization, even as it sands down some of the technology's rough edges against their tender bodies. Once that's done, you can move on to people with more social power – immigrants, blue collar workers, school children. Step by step, you normalize and smooth out the abusive tech, until you can apply it to everyone – even rich and powerful people. Think of the deployment of CCTV, facial recognition, location tracking, and web surveillance.

All this means that blue collar workers are the pioneering early adopters of the bossware that will shortly be tormenting their white-collar colleagues elsewhere in the business. It's as William Gibson prophesied: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" (it's pooled up thick and noxious around the ankles of blue-collar workers, refugees, mental patients, etc).

Nowhere is this rule more salient than in Big Tech firms. Tech companies have thoroughly segregated workforces. Delivery drivers, customer service reps, data-labelers, warehouse workers and other "green badge," low-status workers are the testing ground for their employer's own disciplinary technology, which monitors them down to the keystroke, the eye-movement, and the pee break. Meanwhile, the "blue badge" white-collar coders get stock options, gourmet cafeterias, free massages, day care and complimentary egg-freezing so they can delay fertility. Companies like Google not only use separate entrance for their different classes of workers – they stagger their shifts so that the elite workers don't even see their lower-status counterparts.

Importantly, almost none of these workers – whether low-status or high – are unionized. Tech union density is so thin, it's almost nonexistent. It's easy to see why elite tech workers wouldn't bother with unionizing: with such fantastic wages and so many perks, why endure the tedium of meetings and memos? But then there's the rest of the workers, who are subjected to endless "electronic whipping" by bossware and who take home wages that look like pocket change when compared to the tech division's compensation. These workers have every reason to unionize, living as they do in the dystopian future of labor.

At Amazon warehouses, workers are injured at three times the rate of warehouse workers at competing firms. They are penalized for "time off task" (like taking a piss break). They are made to stand in long, humiliating body-search lines when they go on- and off-shift, hours every week, without compensation. Variations on this theme play out in other blue-collar sectors of the Amazon empire, like Amazon delivery drivers and Whole Food shelf-stockers.

Those workers have every reason to unionize, and they have done their damndest, but Amazon has defeated worker union drives, again and again. How does Amazon win these battles? Simple: they cheat. They illegally fire union organizers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/31/reality-endorses-sanders/#instacart-wholefoods-amazon

And then they smear unions to the press and to their own workers with lies (that subsequently leak):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/03/socially-useless-parasite/#christian-smalls

They spend millions on anti-union tech, spying on workers and creating "heatmaps" that let them direct their anti-union efforts to specific stores and facilities:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#guard-labor-v-redistribution

They make workers use an official chat app, and then block any messages containing forbidden words, like "fairness," "grievance" and "diversity":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

That's just the tip of the iceberg. A new investigation by Northwestern University's Teke Wiggin draws on worker interviews and FOIA requests to the NLRB to assemble a first-of-its-kind catalog of Amazon's labor-disciplining, union-busting tactics:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251318389

Disciplining labor and busting unions go hand in hand. It's a simple equation: the harder it is for your workers to form a union, the worse you can treat them without facing labor reprisals, because individual workers' options are limited to a) quitting or b) sucking it up, while unionized workers can grieve, sue, and strike.

At the core of Amazon's labor discipline technology is "algorithmic management," which is exactly what it sounds like: replacing middle managers with software that counts your keystrokes, watches your eyeballs, or applies a virtual caliper to some other metric to decide whether you're a good worker or a rotten apple:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

Automation theory describes two poles of workplace automation: centaurs (in which workers are assisted by technology) and "reverse-centaurs" (in which workers provide assistance to technology):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

Amazon is a reverse-centaurism pioneer. Take the delivery drivers whose every maneuver, eyeball movement, and turn signal is analyzed and inevitably, found wanting, as workers seek to satisfy impossible quotas that can't even be met if you pee in a bottle instead of taking toilet breaks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

Then there's the warehouse workers who are also tormented with impossible, pisscall-annihilating quotas. Some of these workers are fitted with haptic wristbands that buzz to tell them they're being too slow at picking up an item and dropping it into a box, pushing them to faster, joint-destroying paces that account for Amazon's enduring position as the most worker-maiming warehouse employer in the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/05/la-bookseller-royalty/#megacycle

In his paper, Wiggin does important work connecting these "electronic whips" to Amazon's arsenal of traditional union-busting weapons, like "captive audience" meetings where workers are forced to sit through hours of anti-union indoctrination. For Wiggin, bossware tools aren't just a stick to beat workers with – they're also a carrot that can be used to diffuse a worker's outrage ahead of a key union vote.

Algorithmic management isn't just software that wrings more work out of workers – it's software that replaces managers. By surveilling workers – both on the job and in social media spaces (like subreddits) where workers gather to talk, Amazon can tune the "electronic whip," reducing quotas and easing the pace of work so that workers view their jobs more favorably and are more receptive to anti-union propaganda.

This is "twiddling" – exploiting the digital flexibility of a system to "twiddle the knobs" governing its business logic, changing everything from prices to wages, search rankings to recommendations, in realtime, for every customer and worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Twiddling combines surveillance data with flexible business logic to create an unbeatable house advantage. If you're an Amazon shopper, you get twiddled all the time, as Amazon replaces the best matches for your searches with paid results. If you buy that first product result, you'll pay an average of 29% more than the best match for your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Worker-side twiddling is even more dystopian. When a nurse is assigned a shift by an "Uber for nurses" app, the app checks whether the worker has overdue credit card bills, which trigger lower wages (on the theory that an indebted worker is a desperate worker):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

When it comes to union-busting, Amazon's found a new use for twiddling: lessening the pace of work, which Wiggin calls "algorithmic slack-cutting." The important thing about algorithmic slack-cutting is that it's only temporary. The algorithm that reduces your work-load in the runup to a union vote can then dial the pace of work up afterward, by small, random increments that are below the threshold at which they register on the human sensory apparatus. They're not so much boiling the frog as poaching it.

Meanwhile, Amazon gets to flood the zone with anti-union messages, including mandatory messages on the app that assigns your shifts – a captive audience meeting in every pocket.

Between social media surveillance and on-the-job surveillance, Amazon has built a powerful training set for algorithms designed to crush workplace democracy. That's how things go for Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the shelf-stockers at Whole Foods.

But of course, the picture is very different for Amazon's techies, who enjoy the industry standard of high wages and lavish perks.

For now.

The tech industry is in the midst of three years' worth of mass layoffs: 260K in 2023, 150k in 2024, tens of thousands this year. None of this is due to a shortfall in profits, mind: Google laid off 12,000 workers just weeks after staging a stock buyback that would have funded their salaries for 27 years. Meta just announced a 5% across-the-board headcount cut and that it was doubling its executive bonuses.

In other words, tech is firing workers not because it must, but because it can. When workers depend on scarcity – instead of unions – as a source of power, they dig their own graves. For well-paid, scarcity-based coders, every new computer science graduate is the enemy, eroding the scarcity that your wages depend on.

Amazon coders get to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want to. That's not because Jeff Bezos is sentimentally attached to techies and bears personal animus toward warehouse workers. Jeff Bezos wants to pay his workforce as little as he can. He treats his tech workers with respect because he's afraid of them, because if they quit, he can't replace them, and without their work, he can't make money.

Once there's an army of unemployed coders who'll take your job, Jeff Bezos doesn't have to fear you anymore. He can fire you and replace you the next day.

Bezos is obviously incredibly horny for this. Like most tech bosses, he dreams of a world in which entitled hackers can't call their bosses dumbshits and decline to frog when they shout "jump!" That's why Amazon PR puts so much energy into trumpeting the business's use of AI to replace coders:

https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-22-amazon-cloud-ceo-warns-software-engineers-ai-could-replace-your-coding-work-within-2-years

It's not just that they're excited about firing coders and saving money – they're even more excited about transforming the job of "Amazon coder," from someone who solves complex technical problems to someone who performs tedious code review on automatically generated code barfed up by a chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

"Code reviewer" is a much less fulfilling job than "programmer." Code reviewers are also easier to replace than programmers. A code reviewer is a reverse-centaur, a servant to the machine. Every time you hear "AI-assisted programmer," you should substitute "programmer-assisted AI."

Programming is even more bossware-ready than working in a warehouse. The machines coders use are much easier to fit with surveillance technology that monitors their performance – and spies on their communications, looking for dissenting chatter – than a warehouse floor. The only thing that stopped Jeff Bezos from treating his programmers like his warehouse workers is their scarcity. That scarcity is now going away.

That's bad news for Amazon customers, too. Tech workers often feel a sense of duty to their users, a "vocational awe" that drives them to put in long hours to make things their users will enjoy. The labor power of tech workers has long served as a check on the impulse to enshittify those products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

As tech workers' power wanes, they don't just lose the ability to protect themselves from their bosses' greediest, most sadistic urges – they also lose the power to defend all of us. Smart tech workers know this. That's why Amazon tech workers walked out in support of Amazon warehouse workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deastroturfing/#real-power

Which led to their prompt dismissal:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley/#hang-together-hang-separately

Tech worker/gig worker solidarity is the only way workers can win against tech bosses and defeat the shitty technology adoption curve:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Wiggin's report isn't just a snapshot of Amazon warehouse workers' dystopian present – it's a promise of Amazon tech workers' future. The future is here, in Amazon warehouses, and every day, it's getting closer to Amazon's technical offices.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[wyvernest]

tú eres mi vida

( part 1) (next part)

pairing: miguel o'hara x wife!reader

warnings: a lot of fluff, suggestiveness, foreplay?

summary: with the opportunity of a surprise, miguel makes the most of your honeymoon

He walked away from the hammock with you, hanging over his shoulder, ass in the air, making sure to keep a large hand over it, both to conceal you from wandering eyes and to grope at the plump flesh every now and then.

All you're seeing is the beaten path through the shore's sand and the junction between the beach and the hotel's green gardens. He skips the alley leading to your room, your eyes widening in amusement. You know he's good with directions, as long as you're talking about the spider-verse. Otherwise, in the blissful comfort of your honeymoon, you may have caught him further away from the stoic, attentive leader he's gotten used to being.

"Miguel, baby, you missed it. It's that way." you giggle lightly, tapping his lower back, careful enough not to make him feel bad. The last thing you want to do is blow off his mood.

"I know." His tone is confident, teasing. Your chuckles are silenced abruptly at the reply, utter perplexity taking over you. All the places and facilities around the resort flash through your head one by one, none fitting for what you were intending to do. And you haven't discussed love-making in seawater yet, either.

"Where are we going then?" you inquire, after throughout accession of all possibilities.

"Paciencia, cariño. It's a surprise." He reveals, full of pride and excitement, voice lowered and playful. You shiver, gripping into his waist to support your upper body and look around, scanning for said surprise.

He gets to the entrance of the private beach, still not stopping. With a sudden jump, he hops on the pier, your weight secure over his shoulder. You can't deny the wetness gathering in your panties at the thought of how effortlessly he carries you around, showing everyone that you're his, and most importantly, that he's about to make the most of it.

You watch the waves crashing softly against the darkened wood of the pier, clear and cold. You feel the breeze blow up over your bare thighs, shivering. He runs a hand over the exposed skin, up underneath the fabric of your flimsy skirt, stopping shy of the small mound of your cunt. You squirm slightly, needing his touch up higher, but he retracts his wandering hand and tightens his grip over you.

Finally, he reaches the water bungalows. Small huts connected by piers in a web-like distribution. Your eyes fixate on the king-size bed sheltered by wooden walls on all sides, except for the one facing the sea. Open and free, white curtains flowed by the bed frames, carried on the wind's wings like sails on a ship.

His knees hit the bed before he lays you down on the soft, clean, white mattress, his back facing the open view. You shift under his shadow, scurrying back towards the bed frame, watching him crawl over to you, slow and methodical.

He grabs your ankles faster than the time it would’ve taken you to escape and rile him up further, pulling you under him so that he’s straddling your hips, holding you in place. You lift yourself on your elbows, attempting to move your legs out of the cage, gazing up at him.

“What d’you think?” He asks, toying with the elastic of your skirt.

“I’ve never been happier.”

You drop your head back down on the bed, having stopped fighting the impossible hold he’s forced you in, between his muscular thighs. He smiles sweetly, satisfied with himself.

“It’s been almost impossible to find one of these available. But now that I have you here,”, he bends down, an inch away from your face. His hot breath fans your mouth, and you take it all in, the scent of him, the fresh bedding, the sea breeze. Your eyelids fall heavy, and he closes the gap between you, kissing you slowly, unhurriedly, like you have all eternity to spend together in paradise, and you’re just getting started. And maybe that’s exactly what it is.

You taste his lips, strawberry sweet and ever loving, feeling your eyes roll back at the sensation. He cups your face with one hand, holding you from fainting, and you let him lead. You feel his body move against yours, yearning to be closer and closer. His happy trail rubs onto your stomach, skin to skin. Every ridge of his defined abdomen pushes down onto you, chest rising and falling with each breath.

Struggling to keep up with the kiss, you sense his hands drift lower, to your waist, and you flinch ever so slightly, muscle memory kicking in. You mentally pray that he won’t–

And he does. He resumes his earlier attack, tickling you and abusing all the sensitive and funny spots he knows so well.

You scream through the uncontrollable laughter, fragments of his name that he otherwise hears in a different context, but which he adores nonetheless. His grip loosens momentarily, and you slip away like a cobra in desert sand. Before you can manage to get up and make a run for it, he grabs onto your skirt, his talons ripping through the material, leaving you in your shirt and panties. You protest, but he’s quick to drag you back on the bed. He laughs wholeheartedly, pinning you to the white sheets. You’re more than certain that the racket can be heard from miles away, but you couldn’t care less.

In an attempt to shield yourself, you bring your arms to your sides, tears already rolling down your eyes as you’re running out of breath and energy. He stops, and squeezes his thighs around your waist. You’re not leaving.

As he gathers the white sheets, pulling them over you both, you try to ignore the weight of his half-hard cock that’s now resting on your midriff. Or not.

You run your hands up his burly thighs, over his hip bone and up his abdomen, feeling the muscles ripple with his movements. He gives you a knowing look, bringing the sheet over his head, trapping you in a semi-transparent cocoon.

“Who’s gonna see us? The fish?”, you manage to say, feeling the remnants of an explosive giggle kick back in right after you’ve calmed down.

“I’m not taking any chances. There are speedboats.” he mumbles, as he adjusts above you.

“They’re not allowed so close to the-” he cuts off the rest of the sentence, slamming his lips onto your once again, and just like earlier, he has you melting in his arms in no time. It’s almost embarrassing how he manages to surf you through emotions so quickly and effortlessly, but you blame it on the beauty of being utterly and irrevocably in love. His lips move against yours with expert ease and precision, stopping every now and then to breathe, barely breaking away, as your exhales mix together in desperation and fascination.

You wrap your arms around his neck, your legs around his waist, basking in the heat of his body radiating down on you. A groan reverberates in his chest at the action, resulting in him moaning in your mouth.

You continue to make out in the cool shade of the bungalow, sheltered from the blazing July sun, and every second you feel like it’s the first time again, butterflies in your stomach, heart about to burst.

When he finally parts from you, chest heaving, eyes half lidded, you feel as if you’ve been cut from a lifeline. He moves to your flushed cheeks, the kisses are open-mouthed and slow.

“Te amo. Tu eres mi alma”, he kisses below your temple, “mi corazón-”, he moves to your jaw and right below it, “-mi vida.”

He licks at your neck, kissing the sensitive skin with insistence, pressing himself closer to you.

“Y siempre lo serás.”

link to part one!

translations:

paciencia - patience

tú eres mi alma - you are my soul

y siempre lo serás - and always will be

a/n: ill do a part 3 i actually love this whole honeymoon idea:) i hope its at the very least a bit original with the bungalow and all that

ALSO if you're a native latin spanish speaker please correct me im here to learn and write him as well as i can<3

+thank you everyone for the AMAZING feedback ive received for the first part!! i really hope you like this one and the next just as much

taglist:

@cooch1ecruncher @nvkdjnvjkd @tsukkie-daisuke @noahspector

(it won't let me tag everyone, sorry if i missed you)

[bestanimal]

Round 3 - Reptilia - Procellariiformes

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Our next order of birds are the Procellariiformes, collectively called “tubenoses.” They are comprised of the living families Procellariidae (“petrels” and “shearwaters”), Diomedeidae (“albatrosses”), Hydrobatidae (“northern storm petrels”), and Oceanitidae (“austral storm petrels”).

Procellariiformes live almost exclusively on the open ocean. Their nostrils are enclosed in one or two tubes on their straight, deeply-grooved bills with hooked tips. Procellariiformes that nest in burrows have a strong sense of smell, being able to detect dimethyl sulfide released from plankton in the ocean. This strong sense of smell helps to locate patchily distributed prey at sea and may also help locate their nests within nesting colonies. Their wings are long and narrow. Their feet are webbed, and the hind toe is undeveloped or non-existent. Procellariiforms drink seawater, so they have an enlarged nasal gland at the base of the bill, above the eyes, which removes salt from their system and forms a 5 percent saline solution that drips out of the nostrils, or is forcibly ejected in some petrels. Many are long-distance migrants. They live in every ocean and sea, from Greenland to Antarctica, but are most diverse around New Zealand. Procellariiformes are for the most part exclusively marine foragers; the only exception to this rule are the two species of giant petrel, which regularly feed on carrion or other seabirds while on land. The diet of most species is dominated by fish, squid, krill, and other marine zooplankton. They obtain food by snatching prey while swimming on the surface, snatching prey from the wing, or diving down under the water to pursue prey.

Procellariiforms are colonial, mostly nesting on remote, predator-free islands. Larger species nest on the surface, while most smaller species nest in natural cavities and burrows. They exhibit strong philopatry, returning to their natal colony to breed and returning to the same nesting site over many years. Procellariiforms are monogamous and form long-term pair bonds that are formed over several years and may last for the life of the pair. A single egg is laid per nesting attempt, and usually a single nesting attempt is made per year, although the larger albatrosses may only nest once every two years. Both parents participate in incubation and chick rearing. Incubation times are long compared to other birds, as are fledging periods. Once a chick has fledged there is no further parental care.

Procellariiforms emerged in the Eocene, with some possible Late Cretaceous records. They are most closely related to penguins, having diverged from them about 60 million years ago.

Propaganda under the cut:

The Sooty Shearwater (Ardenna grisea) has the second longest measured annual migration of any bird, flying from its breeding grounds in New Zealand and Chile to the North Pacific off Japan, Alaska, and California, an annual round trip of 64,000 km (40,000 mi).

Some individual Snowy Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans), also called Wandering Albatrosses, are known to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean three times in one year, covering more than 120,000 km (75,000 mi).

Fulmarine Petrels can fight off even large predatory birds with their noxious stomach oil, which they can project some distance. This stomach oil, stored in the proventriculus, is a digestive residue created in the foregut of all tubenoses except the diving petrels, and is used mainly for storage of energy-rich food during their long flights. The oil is also fed to their young.

The Light-mantled Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata) has been recorded diving to 12 m (39 ft) underwater, and the Short-tailed Shearwater (Ardenna tenuirostris) diving to 70 m (230 ft)!

Albatrosses have featured in poetry in the form of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which in turn gave rise to the usage of albatross as a metaphor for a psychological burden, as the Mariner felt extreme guilt for the albatross he had killed. More generally, albatrosses were believed to be good omens, and to kill one would bring bad luck. There are also instances of petrels in culture; there are sailors' legends regarding the storm petrels, which are considered to warn of oncoming storms. In general, petrels were considered to be "soul birds", representing the souls of drowned sailors, and it was considered unlucky to touch them.

The oldest living wild bird is Wisdom, a female Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis). She is estimated to have hatched in 1951, making her 73 or 74 years old. First tagged in 1956 at Midway Atoll by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), she was still incubating eggs as late as 2024. Biologists estimate that Wisdom has laid some 30–40 eggs in her lifetime and that she has at least 30–36 chicks. She and her chick survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed an estimated 2,000 adult Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses and an estimated 110,000 chicks at the Refuge. The 2011 chick went on to have a chick of her own, making Wisdom a grandmother. Her newest chick hatched on January 30, 2025.

Procellariiformes are amongst the most severely threatened taxa worldwide, with threats varying from species to species. There are less than 200 Magenta Petrels (Pterodroma magentae) breeding on the Chatham Islands, only 130 to 160 Zino's Petrels (Pterodroma madeira) and only 170 Amsterdam Albatrosses (Diomedea amsterdamensis). The Guadalupe Storm Petrel (Hydrobates macrodactylus), which bred only on Guadalupe Island off Baja California, Mexico, is presumed extinct after the introduction of Domestic Cats to the island decimated the population during the late 19th century. The Fiji Petrel (Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi) has been rarely seen since its discovery, and is inferred to have a small population of less than 50, if it is not extinct. The Bermuda Petrel (Pterodroma cahow) was thought to be extinct for 300 years, until the dramatic rediscovery in 1951 of eighteen nesting pairs made it a "Lazarus species".

The principal threat to the albatrosses and larger species of procellariids is long-line fishing. Bait set on hooks is attractive to foraging birds and many are hooked by the lines as they are set. As many as 100,000 albatrosses are hooked and drown each year on tuna lines set out by long-line fisheries. Invasive species introduced to the remote breeding colonies threaten all types of procellariiform. Most albatross and petrel species are clumsy on land and unable to defend themselves from mammals such as rats, Domestic Cats, and Domestic Pigs. Other threats include the ingestion of plastic flotsam. Once swallowed, plastic can cause a general decline in the fitness of the bird, or in some cases lodge in the gut and cause a blockage, leading to death by starvation. Procellariids are also vulnerable to marine pollution, as well as oil spills. Some species which nest high up on large developed islands, are victims of light pollution. Fledging chicks, which would use the night sky to navigate, are attracted to streetlights and may then be unable to reach the sea. As procellariiforms are extremely slow breeders, laying 1 egg (or less) a year, they cannot replace their numbers fast enough once the population begins to decline.

[reasonsforhope]

"As communities across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee reel from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, federal agencies, aid organizations, and everyday volunteers have stepped up to help provide urgent relief.

But with unfathomable loss — including a rising death toll — rebuilding includes more than providing food, shelter, and power. 

It also includes confronting the toll these disasters take on survivors’ mental health.

“It’s normal for hurricanes to cause people to experience emotional distress,” the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration explains on its website.

“Feelings such as overwhelming anxiety, constant worrying, trouble sleeping, and other depression-like symptoms are common responses before, during, and after these types of storms.”

That’s why SAMHSA created the Disaster Distress Helpline.

The DDH is the first national hotline dedicated to providing 24/7 disaster crisis counseling to all residents in the U.S. and its territories.

It is toll-free and offers multilingual support in over 100 languages, as well as services for Deaf or Hard of Hearing callers. 

“The helpline puts people in need of counseling on the path to recovery. When you call or text, crisis counselors listen to what’s on your mind with patience and without judgment,” a DDH web page explains. 

“DDH is staffed by trained counselors from a network of crisis call centers located across the United States.”

Callers can find crisis counseling related to any natural or human-caused disaster, information on how to recognize distress, referrals to local crisis centers for additional follow-up care, and healthy coping tips.

Many in regions like Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee still lack access to cell service, power, or Wi-Fi. Anyone impacted by the storm and in need of counseling is encouraged to call or text 1-800-985-5990 whenever they are able.

“The helpline is open to anyone experiencing emotional distress related to disasters,” the DDH web page continues. “This includes survivors of disasters; loved ones of victims; first responders; rescue, recovery, and relief workers; clergy; and parents and caregivers. You may call for yourself or on behalf of someone else.”

Crisis counselors do not require any identifying information from callers, though counselors may ask a few general questions at the end of their session to help improve the helpline’s services.

“If you or someone you know is struggling to cope emotionally with the effects of Hurricane Helene, you're not alone,” DDH posted on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Help is just a call or text away.”

Those who are seeking more information about disaster-related evacuations, shelters, relief distribution, volunteer opportunities, and more are encouraged to call 211 for more information."

-via GoodGoodGood, September 30, 2024

--

For anyone who's struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

[prokopetz]

Hi, Mr Prokopetz, I'm a big fan. Apologies if you've answered this before, but I was wondering what software you use to create the pdf and epub layouts of your ttrpgs, and whether you'd recommend it to a hobbyist who wants to try putting together something more professional than a gdoc for their own ttrpg?

My workflow is unfortunately not terribly accessible unless you have a fair amount of technical know-how.

In brief, I write all of my games in Notepad++ as HTML documents, taking care to use only the subset of HTML5 tags which are supported by most popular EPUB readers. I then use Calibre (or, more, precisely, the command-line utility that comes with Calibre, though you can get mostly the same results via the GUI) to bundle the HTML document as an EPUB3 file. I typically distribute both the HTML and EPUB versions (the former in a zipfile with all of the fonts and images and such) because web browsers tend to have much better screen-reader support than EPUB apps do.

The PDF, meanwhile, is generated from the same master HTML document using CSS paged media extensions – the layout is all generated automatically based on rules specified in a big, gnarly CSS file, and is never touched by human hands. There are a number of software packages which can do this sort of CSS-driven HTML-to-PDF conversion, some of them free or open source; I use a commercial product called Prince because, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only such software which has out-of-the-box support for PDF/UA semantic tagging (i.e., the stuff you need to do in order to make your PDFs screen-reader friendly), but you have more options if you're willing to tag your PDFs manually. (I am not.)

As for whether I'd recommend doing it this way? Like I said, unless you're a proper gearhead, not really; it's super efficient once you get it all set up – the only version of the game I actually maintain is the master HTML document, and generating updated versions of all the other formats is a one-click affair – but it's really only feasible for me because I already knew how to all that workflow automation stuff for unrelated reasons. I can't imagine teaching yourself all that from scratch just to write elfgames!

[nymphomaniaa]

something about us [XX] "parasite" — a preview!

summary: this snippet includes part of a scene where the reader sets up a photoshoot for a merch drop featuring the lunch club members.

warnings: slightly nsfw joke

notes: FINALLY finished this monster of a chapter! it's really long because it sets up the current "arc" ending and the next one beginning, so it's... kind of a roller coaster of emotions. below is the only part of the chapter that i felt was fluff-ish enough to include as a lighthearted preview, so make sure to buckle in when you read the actual chapter because... oh boy. it's a lot.

Returning from the postal office (where the Lunch Club P.O. box was now up and running in hopes to receive packages from fans in the future, thanks to you, of course), you held the most important package in your arms three weeks before the start of TwitchCon.  Inside this large hunk of cardboard were the finalized versions of the new merch that you had painstakingly worked on throughout the past spring and summer.  It made it past weeks of reviews, tweaks, and packaging delays, and was finally in your possession, ready to be distributed to the boys so they could finally promote a project that had been on the works for months.

In the basement's common area, you spent most of the morning by yourself, working on setting up a photoshoot area for the group using a backdrop screenprinted with a repeating minimalistic pattern of the official Lunch Club logo — courtesy of a manufacturing company Ryan suggested weeks ago.  By the time you finished setting up the studio lights borrowed from Ted, arranged a couple of chairs on the set, and unpacked the box of merch to take a peek inside, most of the group had finished eating brunch upstairs.

Ted was the first to come down, since he was the one with the camera you would use for the shoot, so he was the first one to be spoiled by the surprise.  "Woah," he's taken aback by the set at first, bewildered by how official you made it look despite the very limited supplies you had.  "This looks really professional for only costing, what, like, two hundred bucks?  And my lights?"

"One hundred and eighty bucks, actually, with shipping and taxes," you snarkily reply, placing your hands on your hips with pride.

Ted lets out a halfhearted laugh, then after fiddling with his camera, hands it over to you.  "Take good care of her.  I've had her since the beginning of film school, she's practically my baby."

You wrap the neck strap around your head gently, and offer Ted a thumbs up while looking down at the camera screen, trying to orient yourself to its panel.  "We're all good to go, I think.  If you could bring all the boys down for me, please?"

"Yes, madam," Ted beams, then suddenly runs up the stairs, shouting, "Alright fellas, get all of yer asses down here right now!  We're aboutta' start rootin' and shootin'!"

A distant drawn out "yeehaw" (likely from Charlie) above you makes you roll your eyes.  These boys never ran out of ways to make noise echo throughout the house.

One by one, each of the Lunch Club members step down into the basement with 'oohs' and 'aahs,' until all of them convene in front of you and are now ogling the box behind you.  Methodically, you explain that you would start with getting shots of each member with their respective pieces of merch, then you would get photos of each of them wearing the group merch, then a few group pictures with all of them together: one set with their group merch, and one set with them wearing whatever they chose to wear.  All of these stills would be displayed on a new merch website that had already been prepared in advance by one of Schlatt's web developers he worked with, but you also intended to get some short candid video clips of them just goofing around and chatting with each other that could be used for a video promotion that could go on their channel.

If all went well, they could start promoting their merch exactly one week from now, and by the time TwitchCon rolls around, the manufacturing company should have enough pieces shipped to Ryan to be sold at the Lunch Club booth.

The shoot went as well as expected.  Each member had their turns modelling their own pieces, with the remaining boys being hypemen behind the camera.  As each session went by, you had a difficult time containing your excitement.  Your art and your designs were on official pieces of merchandise that people all over the world had access to.  You were directing a photoshoot, which granted, you had never done before nor had interest in, but for your first time trying it, each member seemed happy with the results when their mini modelling session was over.

Of course, when Schlatt's turn came around, you took the opportunity to get him in certain poses that accentuated his features.  Partly for you to shamelessly stare at his good looks in your own time, but also partly because you knew a certain part of his audience would be more inclined to support the merch drop if he looked overwhelmingly handsome in his own clothes.  If he could take advantage of you being a woman in his Love or Host show, you could take advantage of him being eye candy in clothes you designed.  More money for the group.  Everyone wins, and the score will be even between you two.

"Let's have you lean a little onto that back leg, and put your left thumb in your pocket...  Then just look at Travis behind me...  No, chin a little more to your right.  There you go.  Intense stare, and…" you directed the tall man, as you kneeled on top of a nearby stool to compensate for his height.

"Can you roll up your sleeves a little, like so the hem goes about an inch below your elbow?  Then just do that exact pose again...  Yep, that's it.  No, stop giggling.  You're serious.  You're calm.  You're serious."

"Sorry." You’re unsure what is so funny, but he stifles his laughter, then settles into the same pose as before.

"Okay, then can I maybe get you on the stool?  Yeah, just sit like you normally would.  Push your right knee outwards a little more, then let's get your elbows resting on your knees.  Yep, and then clasp your hands together, and lift your head and look towards Trav, but not too much?  You're trying to showcase your hat, so only let your eyes look up at him, not your entire head.  Chin to the right.  Perfect."

"I feel like you're shooting a fucking porno of me," he tries to contain his laughter.  "It's like you're recreating that one face reveal photo of me looking up at the camera,"

"Just trust the process, J," you roll your eyes as the shutter snaps a few more times when he closes his mouth.  "Here, you wanna look?"

You open the camera's preview gallery and show the rest of the boys first, who burst into a roar of overexaggerated gasps and whistles.

"Holy shit, he's hot!" Charlie moans, pretending to fan off his face.

Schlatt pulls himself off of the stool and meanders towards you, reaching a hand out to ask for the camera.  Once you give it to him, and he clicks through the photos, he raises his eyebrows in approval.  "Holy shit, I am hot."

"You sure are, handsome.  Now get back in that damn chair, we have more porn to shoot," you tease.  He shakes his head, chuckling as the boys keep cheering him on, chittering in excitement for his newfound confidence after seeing himself on camera.

read the entire chapter here, or start from the beginning here.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: spiny softshell turtle

It may be neither Flat Fuck Friday nor Turtle Tuesday, but because this is my series and I can do what I want, I'm talking about a very flat turtle. The spiny softshell turtle (Apalone spinifera) is the most widely distributed and possibly the most common softshell turtle in North America. Its range covers most of the Eastern half of the USA and stretched into Canada and Mexico. There are 6 subspecies separated by geography and hybridization can happen in places where their ranges cross. Hybridization has also been known to happen with the Florida softshell (Apalone ferox). The subspecies are the northern (A. s. spinifera), gulf coast (A. s. aspera), Texas (A. s. emoryi), pallid (A. s. pallida), Guadalupe (A. s. guadalupensis), and black (A. s. atra) spiny softshells.

(Image: a spiny softshell turtle seen from above and to the side. It is a turtle with a wide, flat shell. Its head and one foot are visible. The head is skinny and has an elongated nose. The foot is wide and flat, with webbed toes. The turtle is an olive green with black dots on the skin, yellow stripes on the face, and dark spots on the shell. End ID)

The thing that makes a softshell a softshell is the lack of keratinized scutes on their shells. This makes the shells smooth and leathery. The center of the shell has a layer of solid bone user it, but this does not extend to the edges of the shell, making it less rigid. Softshells are the fragile speedsters of the turtle world. Their shells are a lot lighter and often more streamlined, allowing for faster movement both on land and in water, but they provide less defense. Spiny softshells have spiny projections along the front edge of the carapace (upper shell), with males having more than females. They are some of the largest North American freshwater turtles. Females can reach a carapace length of 54 cm (21 in) and 11 kg (25 lbs) while the smaller males max out at about 25 cm (10 in).

(Image: a spiny softshell being held by a person, seen from the front. The leading edge of the carapace is visible, showing off the small spines. End ID)

Spiny softshells have wide, flat, paddle-like feet with three claws and an elongated nose that acts like a snorkel. The turtles are born a bright olive color with striped faces and dark spots on the shell. Males keep their juvenile coloration for their entire lives while females grow darker ad lose many of their markings. It can be very difficult to tell females of different subspecies apart, while males and juveniles can be distinguished by their markings. Smooth skin and highly vascularized membranes in the cloaca, mouth, and throat allow the turtles to breathe by diffusing dissolved oxygen from the water into their blood.

(Image: a male and female spiny softshell facing each other. The male is less than half the size of the female and has an olive colored shell and skin, with dark spots on the shell. The female is a uniform muddy brown color. End ID)

Spiny softshells are generalists able to live in a wide range of habitats. They prefer streams, rivers, and ponds with muddy or sandy bottoms and high visibility, but can live in most freshwater habitats. Softshells are diurnal, spending their days basking and feeding. Being turtles, they are ectothermic, meaning their body temperature matches the surrounding temperature. To warm themselves up, the turtles bask in the sunlight. They can often be found resting on exposed rocks, logs, sandbars, or shorelines. While not particularly social animals, the turtles will bask in groups. When threatened, softshells will attempt to swim away and/or bury themselves. In the right sediment, a softshell can bury itself in under a second. Because their shells are less rigid, softshells have to actively defend themselves when cornered and will bite and scratch. People have to be careful when handling them. They brumate (that's hibernation for reptiles) during winter. While brumating, they bury themselves underwater and slow their metabolism and oxygen requirements. In this state they can fully sustain themselves on oxygen absorbed through their skin or special membranes.

(Image: a spiny softshell turtle buried in its hunting strategy. Only the head is visible above the sand. End ID)

They are primarily carnivores and will eat anything that can fit in their mouths. Aquatic insects, crayfish, worms, amphibians, mussels, snails, fish, and more are on their plate. While capable of fast swimming, they are not pursuit predators. They employ two primary hunting strategies. The first is to bury themselves in the sediment and wait for prey to come by. The second is digging in the sediment to find worms and other animals. Fish have been known to follow digging turtles around to feed on animals unearthed by them.

(Image: a spiny softshell in captivity. It is swimming at the surface of the water in a tank, amongst artificial leaves. End ID)

Spiny softshells mate in spring. Males attempt to woo females by swimming over to them and bumping heads together. The male then sits on top of the female to mate. Unlike most species of turtles, the males do not grab onto the female's shells during mating. Eggs are laid between summer and early fall and will hatch next spring. The female will dig a nest in sandy or gravelly banks and bury the eggs once they have been laid. She provides no further care. Females will typically mate multiple times each year, with each mating having a different nest. The juveniles take 8 to 10 years to reach sexual maturity and they can live up to 50 years in the wild. Many turtles determine sex by the temperature the eggs are incubated in. This is not the case with spiny softshells, who have genetics based sex determination.

(Image: a group of 5 juveniles. The photo focuses on two who are sitting next to each other. One has its front right leg on the shell of the other. They have similar coloration to an adult male. End ID)

(Image: a newborn emerging from its egg. The egg is round and white, looking like a ping-pong ball. Only the head of the turtle has emerged. End ID)

Most subspecies of spiny softshell are classified as least concern or near threatened by the IUCN, meaning they are not in danger of extinction. The exception is the black spiny softshell, also known as the Cuatro Ciénegas softshell, which is critically endangered. The primary threats to the turtles is habitat loss due to human activity. Adults have no natural predators outside of the Florida and adjacent state populations, which are prey to alligators. Juveniles are eaten by a variety of animals including fish, snakes, raccoons, and herons. People will also eat the adults. Because it can take a whole decade for juveniles to become reproductive, losses in population take a long time to replace. They have been introduced to areas outside of their native range, most notably the western USA. Most of these introductions are due to people releasing pet turtles into the wild.

(Image: someone holding a juvenile. The shell is 2-3 times the size of the human's thumb. End ID)

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Four new Warzone Distro zines.

1. The Anarcho-Primitivist case for Straight Edge: Against His-Story, Against Alcoholocaust!

“The foundations of colonial genocide bear the stench of a long and protracted alcohol induced nightmare — nearly every indigenous culture the Europeans encountered was destroyed by European alcohol and disease. The spreading of firewater among indigenous populations of North America went hand-in-hand with the distribution of lethal smallpox-infested blankets. Many of these cultures, without the experience of thousands of years of civilized alcoholism to draw upon, were even more subject than the Europeans to the ravages of “the civilized brew.” Between alcohol, disease, commerce, and guns, most of them were quickly and utterly destroyed. This process was not unique to North America — it was repeated throughout the world in every European colonial endeavor. While the drug of choice varied (sometimes it was opium, for example, as in the “Opium Wars” Great Britain waged to control China), alcohol was judged in many countries to be the most socially-acceptable tool of pacification.”

2. More Than Just a Diet: A Conversation Between Warzone Distro & the Susaron 4

“…precisely what strongly motivated our actions as a group, was the dissemination of that message, somewhat diluted by time: The war against existence from an anarcho-nihilist perspective, fervently anti-speciesist and straight edge. Which to our taste fulfilled its purpose, since these discussions happened again as a result of the action and our subsequent arrest. And consequently; constant elaboration of propaganda material referring to our ideological thinking. Which gives us the desire to refloat within future generations these incendiary ideas, which have no intention of making peace or negotiation with the enemy. Be it the animal exploitation industry or any other authority that may seek to impose itself on us…

…Regarding the straight edge concept; we have always seen as essential the care of our body as a temple and as a channel of direct confrontation. And likewise refusing the brutal control exercised by the state and its tentacles through drugs. Ruining entire generations of rebels because of it. And it does not fit in our concept of opposition to all exploitation and apparatus of domination, that by our own complacency and mental weakness we are subjugated through substances made to appease the discontent and collapse. And as anarchic-nihilists we understand our body and mind as the only thing we own and our main weapon.

…many generations of young insurrectionists have been lost in the mental and physical deterioration generated by the web of drugs and their slow and camouflaged intrusion into the lives of those who begin to consume them, especially individuals prone to depression. This dramatically undermines the power of resistance movements that require people committed and prepared for the challenges involved in fighting such a giant and finely tuned machine as the reigning structure of domination.”

3. Burn Down The Animal Pharm By Lint Lobotomy

Various writings by Lint Lobotomy covering a wide range of topics from veganism, straight edge and anti-civilization!

4. Hygiene: Washing and Brainwashing

This zine critically examines the origins of being “clean”

All zine pdfs are free to print.

[calanthe-d]

All I can think about these days is The Magnus Archives podcast distributed by Rusty Quill, so I think I'll ramble about what I think other series' characters would align with/marked by which Fear (even tho I know that its more complex than 15 distinguishable labels but whatevs)

I wanted to start with Welcome to Night Vale for obvious reasons but I think One Piece would be funnier (two not at all niche interests but a very unlikely pairing) so here I go

Warning for spoilers with everything (except maybe after Dressrosa cuz I stopped watching and my knowledge is limited to the rest. Also I dont really know Jinbe so I'm leaving him out of the Straw Hats)

Disclaimer: the One Piece hyperfixation has passed a while ago for me and it's only started to come back recently so if I misremember sg tell me and I'll edit the post

Brook

I think its obvious, why the End. Many avatars/marked people died/had a near-death experience, so him being dead for a while and then a skeleton for 50+ years is - I think - worthy of becoming an avatar. He may not torment people (intentionally), but most new characters get a bit scared by a living skeleton.

He is also most likely been marked by the Lonely. If not for the fog and being lost for 50 years on Thriller Bark, its the whole being completely alone aspect of it. Him losing his entire crew. And the only wish, the only goal he has is to meet Laboon.

What is interesting is that (I think) music is mostly associated with the Slaughter (The Piper, Grifter's Bone), and other music-realted entities are the Stranger (the antique calliope steam organ) and the Corruption (may be a stretch but they described the Hive singing so)

Franky

At first I thought the Stranger cuz the uncanny-ness of his cyborg appearence but then realised that changing the body to be the most ideal version of you is a different entity's thing. The Flesh. But this one is tricky because he doesn't want to change other people's appearence and (I realised that this is not a requirement) neither does it out of obsession (at least I don't think its shown). So I'm up for debate.

Robin

For some reason, the Web came to my mind at first. She had to manipulate everyone near her to survive, didn't care about if she needed to destroy or kill someone. She definitely was marked by the Desolation because she lost everything dear to her. Then I realised the obvious answer - the Eye. She loves knowledge. She needs knowledge. She will do everything in her power to know. To find out a terrible secret, even if it kills her and destroys everything around her.

And y'know, she can have as many eyes as she can. Also other bodyparts which would be the Flesh but I don't feel like (for all its body-horror-ness irl) it gives the same feeling. She doesn't really think of it like we're made of these parts and are just parts of meat stuck to each other nor she uses her power to change her appearance, even tho she probably could give herself a few extra pairs of arms for convenience.

I think that she's still marked by the Desolation and/or the Web, the latter especially because of the Water 7/Enies Lobby arcs, but her manipulation might be just regular manipulation (like what Elias Bouchard does). And she was marked by the Stranger when Sugar turned her into a toy.

Chopper

Chopper is a hard one. He may be uncanny for both reindeers and humans, but I don't think it's that significant. The Corruption would also have potential, as he is a doctor, if Chopper would have an obsession with cleanliness (if he has, it wasn't shown). It'd be logical tho, for him to have a fear of illness, disease and such. You could also argue for the Flesh, with how much they joked about eating him.

Other fear with connection/association with hospitals/doctors/medical thingies is the End, which I think does not allign with Chopper, nor was he marked by it.

But I think the most fitting is the Lonely for him. A lot of the Straw Hat Crew could be marked by/alligned with the Lonely, but for Chopper, it's the only thing I can match to him. Living in an abandoned castle on top of an unreachable mountain, with an outcast witch, his family casted him away, almost killed him, and his father figure died, leaving him alone. Wants to help people but is more comfortable being alone, doesn't fit into society and is flustered easily. It just makes sense.

Sanji

I'd say he was marked by the Slaughter but I don't think he was personally involved in any wars or massacres during he was with his father (I didn't watch the Whole Cake Island Saga so correct me if I'm wrong), but he was stranded in a remote, lifeless island/rock for 85 days in the middle of the ocean and his biggest dream is an ocean, the All Blue. Yes, maybe the Slaughter brushed against him when he wanted to murder Zeff on that rock (and maybe eat him as well, I wouldn't judge) but it passed.

The Desolation may had a part in his early childhood until Baratie and came back a bit with Don Krieg, but I don't know how destroyed he felt during it. Anger, fear, yes, but complete loss of hope? I don't think so. And the Desolation feeds on losing hope.

His self-sacrificing nature isn't really Desolation-vibe either. It's more Lonely-coded, and he might as well could've been marked. Always the odd one out, had to stand up to himself, didn't feel like he deserves any intimacy and soft love. The only love he knew was always harsh, tough, and even if it was deep and genuine, it isn't what he always needed.

Usopp

With all the lying he should be with the Spiral... but he's awfully bad at it so I guess not. The paranoia/scaredycat nature of Usopp could stem from his deep fear of death and/or doom, which can be the End (and maybe the Extinction), and could have started because of his mother - when he could have been marked. But my mind always goes back to something else.

His cowardice and (exaggerated) arrogance, that may remind us (loosely) to one dear character from The Magnus Archives. Jonathan Sims. Usopp reminds me of season one Jon. Cocky, but only to cover a deep fear and paranoia. But its not just this small parallel. Usopp is an inventor, and has a great eye, almost inhumanly (ik ik, Usopp is not the only sniper nor the only one with observation haki but it fits). Tbh I didn't want to use one fear for multiple straw hats but in my opinion, the Eye is the closest to Usopp. He was also the one that defeated Sugar, an obvious avatar of the Stranger. Because he saw her. And then, Sugar develops a fear of anything that reminds her of Usopp. Sounds familiar.

Nami

I realised I need to think a bit more abstract with the characters and entities. For Nami, I was between the Buried, the Corruption, the Desolation, the Lonely and the Web.

The Buried because of the pressure she was under almost her entire life, especially after Arlong took over her island. I think its a bit of a stretch and the Buried is usually more literal so I'll leave it up to you. I thought of the Web because her manipulative nature, but even tho she might have the potential to use people and emotions to get what she wants, she has too much empathy and is more predictable imo.

What does fit, however, with her toxic habits, is the Corruption. I think her obsession with money (which is understandable, but what trauma is not), it could lead to her being corrupt. But. I think it never came to her not being able to choose between her loved ones and money. The other thing that has a potential but isn't a perfect fit is the Lonely, but only the 10 years that she spent in Arlong's crew. She sewered her relationships with the village people, and never got close to anyone besides her sister. But that's the thing. She never forgot her sister's, nor Bellemere's face.

I do think, however, that the Desolation feasted on her for a while because of Arlong. At first, when Bellemere found them and her original home (which was never named or was really talked about imo) was destroyed and burnt. She thankfully got a new, happy family in a friendly village. That later got destroyed. Her mom dead, her village in fear, hungry, hopeless. Then, the person that did this offered her hope. It was little, but she had to take it. As an 8 year old, she had to take up the burden of saving her village by working for the person that destroyed her life. And after 10 years of suffering, thieving, lying, hurting, she got close. So close. And Arlong took it away again. Then Luffy kicked everyones butt and all was good. But Nami is definitely marked.

Zoro

I thought a bit before my conclusion but it was kinda obvious. The Hunt. He was a bounty hunter for most of his life. He has only one goal and will cut up anyone that stands in his way. I think he matches the vibe. Also, he was marked by the Stranger when he got turned into a toy by Sugar.

I also think that he's marked by the Spiral. This might sound strange at first, but think about it. How can one possibly get lost this many times and in these stupid ways? Okay, everyone has mixed up their left and right a couple of times or whatever, some people just never remember, and people with bad internal maps exist. But Zoro is something special. On his own, he always go in the wrong direction. Which is just not what happens when someone doesn't know their left and right. Because those people by chance get it right like half the time. I think there was a research with a topic I no longer remember when the people who guessed performed better than the people who wanted to act like they didnt know. Zoro reminded me of this. I don't think he does this intentionally, so the only logical explanation is the Spiral is messing with him. What confirms this for me is a scene when they are in Enies Lobby, and before Sanji meets Kalifa and Zoro Kaku, Sanji tells him to go up the stairs. And he just turns before the stairs and doesn't go up. That's a bit mad, isn't it? And he doesn't have any brain conditions (that we know of) that causes it, so it's the Spiral having its fun with him.

Luffy

Luffy is an interesting one, because there isn't really an obvious fear that could be associated with him, if any. Or is there. We don't really see him being afraid that much, only when someone dear to him is in danger, but most of the time, he's still (kinda) calm and positive that he can save them. And when he can't, this is where the Lonely steps in.

He was abandoned by his father (sorry Dragon, but you were not a present father to him), never knew his mom, and Garp raised him like a wild animal, often leaving him to his own to survive. Shanks, his rolemodel (whom idk Luffy how many times met, my guess is not that much), also left him alone, saying that he wasnt strong enough. Then, Garp gave him away to social outcasts (sorry Dadan), whom were, again, harsh with him. And he met Ace, finally someone somewhat his age, also always tried to get rid of him, later get bullied by him and Sabo.

So okay, Luffy grew up without learning how to have a secure attachment style, what's the deal, it doesn't mean he was marked or anything. Well, these abandonments may not have broken the silly little Luffy, but when Sabo presumably died, he had a taste of what grief is. He even made Ace give his promise not to die. I would say its an End thing, but Luffy is not really fearful of his own demise (as shown countless times like in every fight he was in). So it must be a losing someone thing, that is more associated with the Lonely (or maybe the Desolation but idk, I don't feel the vibe).

So the main group is done. I wanted to do more but I ran out of steam so lmk if you want to hear me ramble on a bit more! Also, if you have other opinions, I am open to change my mind.

[thelordofologies]

Rio Pescado stubfoot toad - Atelopus balios

So this dalmation version of a toad is the Rio Pescado stubfoot toad. Absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately critically endangered.

@hispaatra you are gonna love this toad, it is so adorable ! :D

Description

Adult males measure 27 to 29 millimetres and females 35 to 37 millimetres in snout–vent length. The snout is pointed. The limbs are long and slender. The fingers and toes are partially webbed. The dorsum is olive green and is covered with rounded black spots that also extend to the limbs. The palms, soles, webbing, and perianal region are orange. The belly is almost totally cream yellow, except for the margins to which the black spots extend.

Behaviour

The Rio Pescado Stubfoot Toad lives along the streams of rivers in moist lowland forests of Southwestern Ecuador. They are a diurnal species of toad, active during the day when they can be found foraging for insects and other small invertebrates that form a large part of their diet. The breeding season for the toad is during the dry season from June to December. The female toad lays her eggs in the stream, attached to the underside of rocks. Neither of the parents provides any parental care, which is common in the genus. Once the eggs hatch, the tadpoles emerge and feed on algae. The tadpoles take between two and a half to four months to complete their metamorphosis.

Distribution and habitat

It is endemic to southwestern Ecuador, with records from Pacific lowlands in Azuay, Cañar, and Guayas Provinces. Its natural habitats are tropical lowland rainforests at elevations of 200 to 460 metres or 0 to 900 metres above sea level, depending on the source.

Conservation

This toad is threatened by chytridiomycosis (a pathogen fungus) and habitat loss caused by agriculture, logging, and pollution. It is a rare species that was already suspected to be extinct, but a single specimen was discovered in 2011 by a team from Conservation International during a hunt for missing amphibians.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Image sources:

1.

https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/salamanders-are-underrated.183993/

2.

https://citizen-conservation.org/en/portfolio/rio-pescado-stubfoot-toad/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Text references:

1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelopus_balios

2.

https://gonefroggin.com/2025/01/27/rio-pescado-stubfoot-toad-atelopus-balios/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street’s Internet of Shit slumlords

The American Dream, such as it is, used to be two dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.

As the New Deal gave way to the post-war social safety net, Americans discovered two paths to social mobility: they could join a union, and they could buy a home. Joining a union meant that your wages would rise with productivity, and that the democratic ideal that you were meant to approach once every two years at the ballot-box could follow you into the building you spent more waking hours in than any other: your jobsite.

Labor unions used their political power to win labor rights, so that even workers who weren't a union couldn't be arbitrarily fired, or maimed on the job with impunity, or harassed or abused. And while the labor movement was mired in the same racist legacy that every American institution brought forward out of genocide and slavery, where racialized people started unions of their own or demanded representation from the unions who nominally represented them, they thrived.

Then there were houses. On the one hand, owning your home insulated you from the petty tyranny of the landlord, the threat of eviction, rent hikes, indifferent or dangerous building maintenance, and all the other miseries that arise when you think of a building as your home and someone else thinks of it as an asset, and the board is tilted so that they win every argument.

But homeownership wasn't just sold as a way to get out from under scumbag landlords: it was primarily sold as a way to build intergenerational wealth. Your house wasn't just a place to live: it was an asset, and it appreciated.

And if the dividends of labor protection were unevenly distributed between white people and racial minorities, the dividends of home ownership were almost entirely hoarded by white families. Federal policies – redlining – combined with racist lending at the local level, meant that Black families and other racialized groups were stuck in tenancy, while white families build wealth thanks to federal subsidies:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170220005558/https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Asset%20Value%20of%20Whiteness.pdf

Those were the two American dreams: a good job and your own home. We killed the first one, and the second one devoured us whole.

Without a strong labor movement, wages stagnated. Corporate power waxed, and with it, the power to pollute, to poison, to maim and to defraud. The labor movement wasn't strong enough to stop Reagan from killing free UC tuition when he was governor of California. It wasn't strong enough to hold back spiraling health care prices. It wasn't strong enough to block the business lobby from neutering antitrust and ushering in four decades of market concentration, market capture and corruption. Workers couldn't save their defined benefits pension and were railroaded into market-based 401(k)s, forcing them to play the stock casino against their bosses, ever the sucker at the poker table.

With stagnant wages and out of control medical, educational and end-of-life bills, homeownership – the thing you do as an individual, where your gain is someone else's loss – became the American secular religion. Your house wasn't just a place to sleep and keep your photo albums: if it appreciated enough, you might be able to liquidate it on your deathbed and pay off your eldercare, your healthcare, your kids' college debt, and leave enough left over for your kids' downpayments.

And so every American who had a home became the enemy of every American who didn't – including one another's children. Every home built threatened your own property values. The racist, batshit American school funding formula, which sees schools funded out of property taxes, meaning the richest kids get the best schools, turned out to be a great way to increase your property values.

Protections for tenants, meanwhile, threatened the entire American way of life – the American dream itself. Every protection a tenant got – protection from eviction or rent hikes, the legal right to a safe and well-maintained home – reduced the value of every home in town.

After all, the better a landlord has to treat their tenants, the less money a landlord can make from a rental property. The less money a landlord can make from a rental property, the less they'd bid on a house like yours if it went up for sale.

And since anyone planning to buy your house to live in it has to outbid a landlord who might want to rent it out, giving tenants any protection threatened everything – the one asset you owned, which was your plan a, b and c for paying off all that health, education, and assisted living debt:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Today, the house-as-asset scam is breathing its last. There are millions more people who need homes than there are homes available. Sure, homelessness is a fantastically complex problem, but you could address every aspect of it – addiction, mental illness, joblessness – and millions of people would still be homeless, because there aren't enough homes for them to live in:

https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/myths-about-homeless-people-with-dr-margot-kushel

70% of all inflation in 2024 came from the cost of housing; a quarter of that came from illegal collusive behavior by landlords to hike rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation

Wall Street landlords have raised gigantic war-chests and are buying up homes at a rate never before seen, converting every available single-family home in many cities from an owner-occupied home to a rental. Private equity and hedge fund landlords have elevated charging junk fees to an absurdist theater project: you pay a "convenience" charge for paying your rent in cash. But also for paying your rent by direct transfer. Oh, and also for paying in cash. When Wall Street is your landlord, your home is a slum, dangerously undermaintained, sometimes lethally so:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Capitalists hate capitalism. The best thing to sell is something your customer can't live without, and that no one else has for sale. That's why "the market" loves private prisons so much:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

The vast sums Wall Street is putting into buying up all of America's available housing stock is a bet that they can establish regional monopolies over having a home, and charge all the market can bear.

That's the plan at Invitation Homes, a company that was just targeted by the FTC for a slate of eye-watering crimes against the tenants in the 80,000 single-family homes they've acquired:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security

Invitation Homes purchases homes as they come on the market, and they're also a leading customer of the "build-to-rent" housing industry, a fast-growing segment of new housing starts.

Writing about the FTC's enforcement action against Invitation Homes, Matt Soller brings in Starwood Capital Group, who manage Invitation Homes properties, and own 14,000 more homes in the sunbelt. Invitation and Starwood hate the anti-monopoly movement, and Barry Sternlicht, Starwood's billionaire CEO, really hates FTC Chair Lina Khan:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-corporate-slumlords

The FTC complaint lays out a suite of just comically sleazy things ways that Invitation abuses its tenants, starting with false advertising. The company lists its houses at relatively low rents, then charges a large fee to apply to live there. When you pass the application process, you're told the rent is actually much higher, and if you walk away from the deal, you forfeit your application fee. That scam's netted Invitation $18m since 2019.

Stoller really hates junk fees, calling them "convenience fees without any convenience, service charges without any service performed." He lays out Invitation's long list of junk fees, which honestly sound like a list that Chatgpt would spit out if you prompted it for fifty junk fees that wouldn't pass the giggle-test: "utility management fees" "Lease Easy bundle fees," "air filter delivery fee," "smart home technology fees," etc etc.

"Smart home technology fee?" Yeah, Invitation's gone in hard for Internet of Shit smart home tech. The SVP who oversees Invitation's smart home fee program was ordered to "juice this hog" (you guys, juice doesn't come from hogs).

After decades of recruiting everyday American homeowners to demand anti-tenant policies that benefit giant corporations, American tenants have few rights on paper and even fewer in practice. That's left the door wide open for Invitation to abuse their tenants in a myriad of dismal and unimaginative ways: stealing their deposits, trashing their credit reports to retaliate against complaints, illegal evictions, busted appliances, mold, vermin, insects – the whole slumlord playbook.

As Stoller writes, there's a twist: "this landlord isn’t just a random slumlord, it’s one of the biggest Wall Street players in housing."

There are vast fortunes to be made in converting the human right to housing into an asset class, but those fortunes end up in the hands of a very small number of billionaires. On their own, they wouldn't have the political power to dismantle protections for tenants.

Realistically speaking, most kids who grew up in their parents' owner-occupied homes are going to end up tenants, thanks to undersupply and housing inflation. But those kids' parents have spent decades demanding policies to make their homes as valuable as possible – including mortgage tax breaks (but not rent tax breaks!), looser eviction laws, and less enforcement of what few protections tenants have.

Middle class homeowners are the useful idiots and human shields of the billionaires who are determined to force every American under 40 raise their kids in a rented slum full of spiders, ratshit and black mold, which will still cost 60% of their take-home salary.

That's why the FTC's action against Invitation Homes is such a big deal. And as Stoller points out, Chair Khan is really just implementing Kamala Harris's campaign promise to get Wall Street out of the landlord business.

Wall Street's raid on your bedroom and kitchen has inspired a generation of "finfluencer" copycats who buy and flip apartment buildings, sucking ever-larger amounts of cash out of them until they're unfit for human habitation, with mountains of rat-infested garbage ringing their crumbling walls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

Any future worth living in is going to get housing right. We need to stop thinking of housing as an asset and realize that it is, first and foremost, a human right. That's the premise of my 2023 solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which just came out in paperback:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause

You can't protect yourself from rising seas or rising healthcare bills through individual home-ownership. Solidarity – the kind of solidarity that once powered the union movement, and that is powering it again – is the only way to defeat the housing profiteers. The New Deal wasn't perfect, which is why whatever we do next has to be bigger, further reaching, and more inclusive than what FDR did almost a century ago.

The only minority that should be excluded from the next New Deal is billionaires.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#rentier-tech

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

Carlos Delgado (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_-_New_York_Stock_Exchange.jpg

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[follow-the-compass-home]

violence, change & the sbg crew

background by marvin zettl in unsplash // school bus graveyard episode 46 by red // czeslaw miłosz, new and collected poems: 1931-2001 // warning sign // no escape by maxjagermansboyfriend // kitchen fork by jack conte // emmanuel lévinas, totality and infinity (tr. alphonso lingis) // it will end in tears by radicalbullshit

some rambling after the cut

this is my very first time doing a web weave so I'm not entirely sure of what I'm doing and what's the correct like crediting etiquette but I tried to be very careful to include everything, so please let me know if something needs to be corrected ;;

it was super fun to make and I wanted to talk a little bit about my process???

i knew i wanted to make something sbg related but I didn't know what about until i saw the "warning: it is possible to survive this but not unaltered" sign and the paragraph about violence, and suddenly it clicked! i kind of already had an idea about distribution so i just needed to find more stuff to fill the space in a little

i love this webtoon SO much and it has been my obsession for a little bit, I cannot wait for it to come back

[lilplushpatches]

Hello!

I have a drawing request!^⁠_⁠^

Can you pls draw my lynx plushie Sally?

I don't care about the style, you can draw her however you'd like :3

Take your time and have a great day!

- @little-mushroom1716 (my agere blog. I can't send asks from there for some reason :( )

🌺Of course, hun! I love plushies so much! I have a soft spot for big cats too. I hope ya like it! @little-mushroom1716

🌺Lil’ lynx fun fact!: Lynxes have wide webbed feet! It distributes their weight evenly which allows them to hunt in deep snow!

[proshippers-against-censorship]

if lolisho was illegal or on the same scale as horrible as csam, then why is it so easy to find it?

I know antis have somehow found access to csam, often times they have sent it to the victims as a “gotcha” (I wish I was making this up) but I have been using the internet for many many years and have never seen it, but I do know that it exists somewhere on the dark web

So I wonder how they access it, or better yet, I wonder if they even have morals. It’s a crime to save/distribute csam, and I’m SURE they know that (and most likely don’t care), but I guess by ranting about how lolicon is evil and illegal even though you can easily find it with a quick google search, they’re absolved of all crimes

^^^

[turrondeluxe]

Hey ik on that "equally distribute the horrors" post, a lot of people were talking about Mikey needing horrors (tbh he deserves some, they all need equal rights to the horrors.), but I've never seen anyone even talk about the horrors for Raph? Maybe that's just me and my web experience tho. (If you have any examples of Raph dealing with the horrors pls list them, my cousin ((who also says Mikey needs more horrors, at least)) and I are desperate)

ah that's probably because i specified mikey in the tags because im a mikey enjoyer who is followed principally by more mikey enjoyers teeheee

but huh

i guess i understand what you mean

in terms of Raph Horrors™ we have

mmmm i unfortunately won't include every single horror from every single tmnt iteration out there. there's too many for me to remember all the specific raph horrors from each of them rn so i'll just list some random ones off the top of my head 😺

Feel free to add more to the raph horrors list! lol

Mirage

- Raphael gets progressively demutated and basically reverts to a normal turtle for a while

(the panels of when this was happening were actually very emotive and made me cry) he does say this when he's back to normal which i find very funny tho

90's movies

- Raph gets beaten the fuck up and then gets thrown trough a skylight. He's then placed in a bath tub while he heals (Leo is the one who never leaves his side on this iteration)

2003

- Nearly injures Mikey greatly with a metal tube because of anger (He feels really bad about this and i def think this moment never truly left his brain ever)

- Getting kidnapped by footbots, getting interrogated by Hun

- All the fights with shredder or karai/all the injuries gotten in all the fights with shredder or karai

- Same As It Never Was Raph

- Watching his injured older brother get thrown to a window and watch said older brother heal from his wounds

- Seeing himself as the shredder/ thinking himself as the shredder

- Got his home raided countless times

- Getting separated from his younger brothers + dad in one of said times and waiting alone in the surface without knowing if his family even made it out alive

- Witnessed dad get disintegrated

- Brainwashed (actually getting infected with a digital virus but eh). Him and his brothers are foot ninjas for an unspecified amount of time (maybe days). During this, shredder sends the brothers to the most mortal/difficult missions in hopes that they die under his command.

- Getting thrown into the future (Raph is the one brother who hates this event the most lmao)

2007

- Witnesses older brother get kidnapped and blames himself for it

2011 IDW

- Raph gets separated from his family before mutating. Spends years homeless and by himself before his brothers find him again (this forever makes raph feel that even if he's with his family. he somehow doesn't belong)

- Right after getting mutated he spent some time being cared by Buck (blind homeless guy that is the first person ever/parent figure that's nice to Raph). Watches Buck get beaten to death. (Possibly. Buck did survive but i can't remember if he did die because of his injuries. still. traumatizing to raph that was still fairly new to the world)

- Forced to be family warrior/protector (he doesn't want this, he just wants to be a farmer man 😔👊)

- Witnessed shredder stab Casey (Raph's bestie/first ever friend that he relates to)

- Had to fight against brainwashed brother (Foot Leo)

- Witnessed Donnie's corpse (would def fuck u up if you feel like the protection of your family is your responsibility)

- Gets kidnapped and experimented with/tortured

- Dad dies, rip 🕊️

2012

- Losing Spike (he literally stayed 15 years underground with only his family for company. spike meant so much to him)

- Watching mikey get hurt because of his bad leadership literally made him freeze up and not know what to do at all

- The whole scene of splinter letting his brothers insult him. what the hell 💀

- Fighting his (brainwashed/hypnotized?) dad

- Cockroach mutant

- THE FUCKED UP SQUIRRELS

- Watching his older brother get thrown trough a window (the sequel). And watching said older brother be extremely injured.

- Leo 3 month coma

- GETTING TURNED INTO A PLANT?

- Brainwashed via worm that ate all the way through his skull and into his brain

- Dad dies, rip 🕊️ the sequel (this happens quite a bit in the series) and hil being in the front row of how splinter gets mortally wounded and then thrown off the roof

- Fighting his family while brainwashed

- kidnapped and being put into an oven to die (and would have died if leo didn't go ham and destroyed his enclosure)

- Witnessed someone kill himself while he was actively trying to prevent it

- Witnessing the death of both two little brothers

- Witnessing older brother nearly die. Again (Again. this happens quite a bit in the series)

- the whole mutant bomb apocalypse holy shit

theres def more that im forgetting mb

Bayverse

- Home gets raided, the sequel

- All brothers get kidnapped except for him

- BROKEN SHELL BECAUSE OF SHREDDER AND HE JUST KEEPS GOING???? please..............take one second to rest THATS YOUR SPINE

Rise

- Eldest sister syndrome

- The fucking bunny plushie that I've forgotten the name of (his siblings were so mean for no reason at all that ep 😭)

- Rise shredder

- Having to forcefully remove his family from deathly situation even if it meant leaving a beloved family member behind (he prob blames himself about karai ....augh)

- Kidnapped/taken hostage (?)

- Kraang Brainwashed

- Having to fight younger brother while brainwashed

- Apocalyptic Kraang Future

The last ronin

- Died for literally no reason at all . fly high king 🕊️

Mutant mayhem

- Getting kidnapped (quite violently too)

- Milking Machine

- Getting shell cracked from being squished too hard