#images described

[rowan--photography]

peaceful paths

December 2022

[replicatortrash]

Kes was so real for this. She’s been on board for like 5 episodes and she is taking the captain aside to question her beliefs and morals. Kes doesn’t get a lot of credit or attention in the fandom but she is an ally and a friend to someone who doesn’t even believe in his own right to be treated kindly and it’s so important to me actually.

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

Arrest made after Dallas Zoo events, including the theft of two tamarin monkeys:

Davion Irvin said he loves animals and that if he’s released from jail, he would steal more, the documents said.

Irvin, who remained jailed Tuesday on $25,000 bond, was arrested last week after asking questions at a downtown Dallas aquarium about animals there. He is charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary.

Zoo staff say the monkeys have lost weight but are unharmed.

Irvin told police that on the night of Jan. 29, he waited until dark, jumped a fence to get onto zoo grounds, cut the metal mesh of an enclosure and took the two emperor tamarin monkeys, according to arrest warrant affidavits . He then got on the city’s light rail before walking to the vacant home where he said he kept his animals.

Irvin has been charged in two of the odd events over a span of several weeks at the zoo and is linked to another, police said. In the taking of the monkeys, Irvin faces one count of burglary and six counts of animal cruelty — three for each monkey. He also faces a burglary charge in relation to the escape of a clouded leopard named Nova, who was discovered missing Jan. 13. A cut was found in her enclosure, and the zoo closed as a search was launched. She was found later that day near her habitat.

Irvin told investigators that he’d wanted to take Nova but that he was only able to pet her before she got on top of her enclosure, an affidavit said.

Police said have said they are still investigating, but Irvin has not been linked to the suspicious death of an endangered vulture at the zoo in January.

Meanwhile police in Louisiana announced the arrest Tuesday of a 61-year-old man in the case of 12 squirrel monkeys that were discovered missing Jan. 29 from their enclosure at Zoosiana in Broussard, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Baton Rouge.

Police said the missing monkeys haven’t yet been found.

Source

[dear-ao3]

[ID: an AO3 tag: "Fish Larceny" /end ID]

[only-book-lovers-left-alive]

Snapshot of my day today! I'm making really good progress on my cabinet- I think it'll be done by saturday, ish? I finally got around to repotting my new caladium :)

[vedgsig]

Horror movie night!

[First image: A digital drawing. An anthropomorphic cuttlefish and chameleon sit cuddling together on a couch. The cuttlefish is wearing pajamas and reaching for a bowl of popcorn with their retractable appendages. Their pupils are very large. The chameleon, wearing glasses, plain pants, and a short-sleeved button-down, has one arm around the cuttlefish and has both eyes turned behind him to the wall. The cuttlefish says, "Keep watching!" The chameleon replies, "I am watching." The cuttlefish says, "You're lookin' backwards. Coward."]

[Second image: The same drawing as above, except there is no dialogue and now both the cuttlefish and chameleon are blending in to the wall, couch, and their clothing. The cuttlefish is additionally blending in by texture mimicry, so their outline is less distinct. They have also retracted their appendages. Both the cuttlefish and the chameleon are indicated by arrows pointing from the label: "Jumpscared."]

[digitalerrabe]

CYBORG DREAMS 1, 2 & 3, May 2023.

[ID: Three colored pencil illustrations on paper. They are all portraits. The first is in black and white, showing a person with curly hair, grey skin and a breathing tube in their nose. The second is in orange, blue and brown, showing a person with brown skin, wearing a blue hat with bunny ears. There is a screen hovering above their left eye, showing an message that reads: Error, connection failed. There is an orange frame drawn around the picture with text in it. It reads: I AM NOTHING MORE THAN A MACHINE, I AM LIKE YOU, YOU ARE LIKE ME. The third illustration is in pink and green, showing a person with pink skin, red horns and a cable wrapped around their neck. One of their eyes is abstracted to a green circle with circuit lines coming out of it. There are venus flytraps in the background. END ID.] (ID also in Alt text)

[tf2workbench]

It's beginning to look a lot like Dustbowl

This is something a little new for the blog that I'm hoping will be enjoyable. I'm going to talk about individual maps in the game, especially those known for being unbalanced. What better way to start things off than with Dustbowl, one of the original six maps?

Dustbowl tends to be very difficult for the attacking team to win. This is in large part due to the way the map is set up. Let's take a look at some key spots on the map.

As we go through these pictures, I'll ask you to bear one thing in mind: if a team has to go to somewhere, the goal is to minimize the damage they take while getting to the point. This is something that is a major problem on Dustbowl: there are many areas where BLU will have to expose themselves to sentry fire, explosive spam, Sniper shots, and more if they want to even have a chance to kill the defending team.

The first major struggle for BLU team is getting to the first point. All three spawn exits lead to wide areas of open ground leading up to the capture point. RED can easily shelter in the building, but there's very little cover for attackers to benefit from, meaning they take a lot of damage as they rush up.

Approaching the second point can be tricky. BLU has great holding spots in the mineshafts just before this area, where it's almost impossible for RED to root them out. But to approach the point, they have to take one of two routes: through a narrow, straight stairwell directly into the RED hold, or across a wide swath of open ground that's easily visible from RED spawn.

Second stage, first point. It's quite difficult for BLU to get inside the house leading to the point, and RED can resist them fiercely by spamming into the narrow corridors. The main path also gives RED the height advantage, particularly while they hold the shed near the front, which lets them bombard all BLU spawn exits.

After the first point, BLU has to go through a couple of choke points, most of which emerge right in the heart of RED defenses. Defenders can set up on the patio this photo is taken from, but they can also build fortifications on top of the mineshafts, allowing them to hit emerging BLU players from both sides.

This area is BLU's best bet for taking the next point. They can come out the one-way door on the right and go into the building, which has ammo and health reserves. But it's an enclosed space, meaning RED can spam the entrances with explosives. At least it gives the attackers an area to hole up in.

This isn't the hardest point to take on Dustbowl, but it's easily second-hardest. The building to the right of the image has a height advantage and narrow windows from which RED can fire out on BLU spawn. Behind the building is a great place to build dispensers and sentries. And the path near the top-middle of the image is just outside RED spawn, giving the defenders easy control of a sightline that BLU will have to walk through to reach the point.

This straightaway is between the first and second points on the final stage. BLU turns left into a long corridor in which they have little cover, while RED has a height advantage and can easily spam the corner. To boot, see those windows at the very back? Those are very easy for RED Snipers to hide in and take shots at attackers. It's common for Dustbowl to end with the BLU team unable to advance past this corner.

This is why the last point of Dustbowl is the hardest. BLU has very few options for the attack; the main route is straight and has no cover. There's a flank route on the left side of this image, but it requires crossing the main path, which means crossing a RED sightline. An alcove on the right is an easy holding point for defenders. The only other flank route requires attackers to pass through a wide-open ravine that is in full view of defenders, who will have the high ground.

Conclusion If I had to pick one thing that makes Dustbowl difficult, I'd say it's the open spaces. Because BLU has to take points, they always have to move through these spaces if they want to progress. But because there's so little cover, they are forced to take damage as they move. This is an attacker's disadvantage, and on other maps, it's mitigated by giving them more cover, including (often) a high-ground position and more viable flank routes. Dustbowl:

has little cover for attackers;

has few flank routes;

has extremely narrow flank routes that are open to defending spam.

For the uninitiated, I recommend the delightful early-TF2 meme "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Dustbowl." (Maybe don't listen to it in polite company.)

Is Dustbowl unbalanced? Yeah, sure. But - and I want to stress this - it can still be fun. It's not like every match on Dustbowl is a guaranteed RED win, and individual players can have really great moments regardless of which side they're on.

And what's even more important is that Dustbowl was one of the first maps. Valve and many, many community mapmakers have been practicing their art for over 15 years now, meaning that, if you start on Dustbowl and move through maps in chronological order, you can feel how much designers (both Valve and community) have improved. When you're on Dustbowl, there's nowhere to go but up.

[guiltyidealist]

🐺🤎 Concept for my leather mask based on my main WQ wolf, Iberio! 🤎🐺

1️⃣ ID: The first image has a photo of the original mask unedited on the left, and the same photo but heavily edited on the right. A large, pale yellow, semi-transparent watermark reading "@guiltydealist" rests across the top of the right mask's head.

The left shows a cosplay-style leather wolf mask. It covers the whole face except for eyeholes, though it lies on periwinkle bedsheets in the photo. Its white paint job is rough around the edges. The muzzle is semi-3D and has a black snoot with white paint smears on it.

The edited version on the right resembles an Iberian wolf's face-- rich tones of brown with crisp contrast from one another in a symmetrical pattern. A dark red-brown color surrounds the muzzle, fills the inner ears, and frames the eyes. The muzzle is tan with a dark red-brown stripe down the middle, which stops at the nose. The nose has been edited to remove the white smears and is dark gray. Beneath it, the muzzle stripe extends down to the chin but in a darker, nearly black hue. The forehead, ears, and upper 3rd of the cheek fur are also nearly black. Large, tan "eyebrow" markings rest atop the eyeholes.

Black, see-through mesh like that of a screen door occupies the eyeholes as if taped to the inside of the mask, and ambiguously turquoise/aqua circles lie in the center to resemble irises or pupils. End ID for image #1

Like with my Ammy concepts, I included a version edited with real eyes (based on how it looks on me IRL) to sample how the edit would look on me IRL 👁

2️⃣ ID: The second image is identical to the first except that both masks are edited to have real human eyes -- brown with white skin around them -- behind the eyeholes. They are harder to see in the rightside edit due to the mesh. End ID for image #2

Again, the leather base was made by OkamiKitsuneStore on Etsy!

🚫 Do not repost

Here's Iberio-- I headcanon them as an Iberian wolf. While I haven't yet developed my own design for them, they'll have the signature leg marks for sure.

3️⃣ ID: The third image is an in-game screenshot from the game WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition, which takes place in Yellowstone. The graphics are on the lowest settings, but the spring scenery is vibrant with green grass, a blue sky free of clouds, and numerous pine trees. A dark brown wolf sits in the center foreground at a 3/4ths angle, head turned to stare into the camera. Its full body is shown, dark red-brown and nearly black with a tan underbelly and legs. The wolf closely resembles the one in my edit from the first 2 images. It has asymmetrical bent ears and a very short tail. The eyes are pale green-blue, lighter and greener than those of my mask edit and similar to the hue of the grass, but the color is still somewhat ambiguous. The wolf has adult proportions but is small. End ID for image #3

🎨 To bring this to fruition, I'd have to paint the mask, add mesh behind the eyes, color (?) onto the mesh, and maybe coat the paint with a finish!

✅ Okay to tag as kin/me/etc as long as you don't mind others tagging similarly or that this is my 'sona ^^

♿️ See notes for version with less text (no ID's)! ♿️

[rowan--photography]

fading

December 2022

[beetle-freak]

[id: the chris fleming “ok so was anybody gonna tell me that blank or was i just supposed to blank myself meme” it reads as follows: top panel “ok so was anybody gonna tell me that st augustine from ofmd is in fucking florida?!?!?” bottom panel “or was i just supposed to know about this spanish colonial city from the 1500s that still very much exists in modern day florida myself?” end id]

jim is canonically a florida man.

[is-the-primate-vid-cute]

Not sure which ape to sponsor on Giving Day for Apes?

Hope aka "Freckles"

For the first ten years of her life Hope struggled with her health at a medical research center...so much so, it wasn't clear if she would survive. But Hope never gave up, fought through her health issues and these days she’s flourishing at Primarily Primates

She loves sipping water from hoses, watching her favorite DVDs, and painting beautiful pictures! Learn more about her and see how you can become her sponsor here

Mandy

Mandy lives at Primarily Primates. She is a master of the side-eye and strongly believes that sharing isn't necessarily always caring. 🤨 you can become one of her sponsors here!

Nicole

Nicole lives at Primarily Primates. She is a bit of a diva and she's the boss of her group...she also loves combing her hair! You can become her sponsor here!

ShuShu

ShuShu lives at Primarily Primates and spends almost all her time carrying, grooming, and sleeping with her plentiful stuffies. you can become her sponsor here!

Tango

Tango had a previous life as an "actor" for Tang commercials, she now lives at Center for Great Apes with BamBam. She likes to hide under large buckets and tubs, and is also crazy about water play. She will often suds herself up if given bubbles in a bath and loves sprinklers. Tango likes chalk so much that she will draw on the walls and floors in her nighthouse as well as on her toys… and even on her own and BamBam’s face. Sponsor her here!

BamBam

BamBam also lived the life of an "actor" before he became too strong to be controlled. He came to Center for Great Apes with several other acting orangutans. As a youngster he enjoyed wrestling, rough-housing, an other tom-foolery. As an adult he now enjoys investigating new toys, watching over the sanctuary from his tunnel, and grooming Tango. Sponsor BamBam here!

More apes to come!

[koumine]

[ID: a screenshot from the Valheim game. A player character stands over a boar with a health bar labeled "Lucifer". The boar is emanating pink hearts and text over it says "Lucifer loves you". /end ID]

this is how far the Luci madness has progressed 😔

[malwarechips]

yknow i never noticed the sheer rareness of images having ids or alt text on this website until i started adding alt text to my art (and trying to remember to add it to any images i post in general, especially text screenshots) and that makes me kinda sad

[iscollective]

Edit: wow this blew up. i dont have anything to promote but i made a response to the most common replies ive gotten to this as well as my thoughts on the direction the web has been heading. you can read it here if you like <3

[Image ID: A screenshot of the youtube popup that appears if you use an ad blocker. It consists of a title, then three bullet points, then two buttons. It has been modified to read: Going to pee during the ad break violates YouTube's Terms of Service

it looks like you selfishly left the room while our ads were playing. Don't you know that by watching youtube you entered into a contract?

We killed the competition by operating at a loss for a decade. we paid good money to be the only game in town.

now that there are no other options, we can start to make that money back however we like. So turn your webcam on so our advertisers know you're paying attention The two buttons read "let us program your brain" and "foot the bill directly" /.End ID]

[brightsuzaku]

SOLAR ECLIPSE 2024

Monday, April 8th

Hello, everyone! I'm a couple days late, but I wanted to share a a few photos I took with my smartphone during the solar eclipse!

I DID NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. All photos were taken by indirectly "looking at the sun" through my camera and phone screen. I am not sure how much better it was that it wasn't sustained looking, it was frequent glances to make sure the lens was facing the correct object an that the zoom was right.

Phone is a SONY Xperia 1 IV. Pictures, below:

f/2.8, 1/50000, 14.5mm, ISO 125

In this image, surrounded by darkened clouds, my camera focuses on the sliver of the Sun visibly left uncovered by the Moon. The eclipse is a partial solar eclipse, and will never fully cover the sun from where I was located. The clouds look far darker than they actually were in real life, and the Sun's still-powerful light shines through, as if a halo.

Here is the same location, using a different lens, so that you can understand:

f/2.2, 1/1600, 2.67mm, ISO 125

Using a different lens, you can see the darkened shape and logo for the entrance of a Home Depot hardware store building in the foreground. I'm standing under a small tree in the parking lot, and you can see a few branches on the far left side. Anyway, the day's blue partly-cloudy skies above are significantly darkened by the partially-eclipsed Sun, in the upper middle of the image. It's an extremely bright glowing spot!

I didn't get any cool pictures of cast shadows on the ground, mostly because of the store building having cast the largest shadow of all.

But, I did get a weird photo of the lens flare as the eclipse progressed!

Once more, using these settings, f/2.8, 1/50000, 14.5mm, ISO 125

In this photo, I tried to get another picture of the eclipse! If I wore borrowed eclipse glasses, I could see the Sun as a small crescent, because it was mostly-covered by the Moon. However, my camera couldn't capture such details very well, and that sliver of light creates a bright round circle of eye-piercing glare, in the middle of the darkened clouds. What is notable is the shape of the lens flare, radiating from that too-bright orb: crescents! The lens flare features two crescents that can be seen: one closer to the Sun that is similar in orientation to the sliver of Sun located to the upper-left of the glare, and a second crescent with a "pink" halo (that appears reflected in orientation), even further to the upper left. The fuzzy, cottony shapes of the surrounding clouds are just visible around the source of the glare, but the rest of the surrounding sky is almost uniformly darkened.

I hope my pictures were interesting! And, I hope my descriptions were helpful. Catch ya later!