thethingything - Tumblr blog

[thethingything]

small joy of the morning: opened my curtains at the exact moment that an extremely tiny little sparrow landed directly in front of me on my fire escape, and then it just sat there quietly for a minute looking at me before its friends showed up and it flew away

[thethingything]

i've thought about this a lot and if i had to explain recorded sound to a ghost or a time traveler or an alien i would play them the recording of california song from this tmg show. the quiet simplicity. the person in the audience who shouts "i love you". the way after two lines, john leaves his mic and all you hear is the crowd, but it's small enough that you can pick out individual voices. the person with high voice who hits every note and you can hear their smile. the way the quiet of the first verse turns into a emphatic chant of "i've got joy, joy, joy in my soul tonight". the guy who sings the song the regular way while the rest of the crowd holds a note, and ends up being the only person singing in the audience for a moment. the way the john and the crowd keep singing "you really got a hold on me" until it's just peter's bass and everyone snapping along. the little improvised lines john sings before he says "thank you very much" and the crowd erupts. humanity at its absolute finest for real

[thethingything]

idk if Tumblr will keep the boops going after today, but through the power of discord emoji, you can boop your friends in a server. or idk, paste them in someone's askbox.

[thethingything]

Do you have any unusual fears?

[thethingything]

on a lighter note, our sunburst diagram thingy for this year is very fun after all the stuff we saw today

we've also done a lot of IDs

also apparently we've observed 104 species this year which is pretty cool. our most observed species of the year so far has been the 7-spot ladybird because we saw so many of them today. we got a lot of observations of flies too

[thethingything]

as a side note, we are probably going to be complaining a lot about how shit we feel physically. it's probably going to mostly be the exact kind of shit we'd expect from overexerting as much as we did because we know what happened last time we went on a walk and we definitely overexerted more this time.

we were fully expecting to feel like shit afterwards and it is kind of our fault for doing something we know our body doesn't handle very well, but at the same time I feel like we're allowed to complain because other people don't feel this shit physically after the same amount of exertion and it sucks that our body can't handle basic shit and we're allowed to be upset that we can't do the things other people do regularly without it completely fucking us up

[thethingything]

also, 🍬 managed to bruise his arm where the loop on our crutches tends to go because he didn't realise that if you're too vigorous and/or keep stepping awkwardly it can press against/repeatedly hit your arm in a way that does damage

[thethingything]

CITY NATURE CHALLENGE TIME LET'S GOOOOO

[thethingything]

Varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci, Dermestidae

Found throughout the world, the varied carpet beetle is commonly found in homes. Larvae feed primarily on animal fibers like wool, feathers, fur, leather, hair, hide, dead bugs, silk, and dry pet food. While not harmful, they can be destructive. Adults feed on flower nectar and only incidentally enter homes, especially in spring, often to find a food source to lay eggs near.

Photo 1 by gustavopt, 2 by suejaggar, 3-5 by tshahan, 6 (for scale) by miskatoniq, 7 (larva) by the_knower, and 8 (larva w/dime for scale) by jbower

[thethingything]

Haha get loved unconditionally idiot. Get absolutely fuckin cherished. Lol you're about to be hugged so hard. I appreciate you deeply as a person, what you gonna do about it? Nothing lmao

[thethingything]

so apparently we walked into a load of thistles and brambles without quite registering it properly while we were out because now I'm trying to make sure our joints don't get too painful and checking over stuff and realising our ankles are covered in little sore spots from all the spiky plants

[thethingything]

i think everyone who's ever had migraines should be financially compensated forever btw

[thethingything]

why yes I AM making boop gifs from screen recording

[thethingything]

oh boy

[thethingything]

took this photo while we were out, plus here's a recording of the sound next to it. there was some other equipment nearby that I think was actually making the sound rather than the pylon itself

[thethingything]

My absolute hottest take is that, from a culturally relative perspective, no food is bad. None of it. It's an expression of culture, art, history, ecology, material conditions, subjective taste. It's all inedible pap to somebody and the taste of childhood for someone else. Americans be eating cheesed burger. Pea wet is as good as gravy in Wigan. The French eat snails and the Inuit eat seal, the Germans eat sauerkraut and the Russians drink kvass, the Inca ate cavy and the Romans ate flamingo. People around the world have been eagerly awaiting their serving of simple bread or thin porridge or fermented milk product or pickled whatever-the-fuck since we learned to cook food over fire. We all love the slop we grew up eating. Food is a reflection of millennia of culture and loving human artistic expression. Attempting to extrapolate largely harmless online food banter into actual serious comparative rankings or half-baked critical analyses of cultures based on how much you subjectively don't like what they eat is a miserable way to live. Live a little. Peace and love on the only planet with food.

[thethingything]

Iris weevil! Mononychus vulpeculus. I was happy to see a large number of blooming irises in a secluded swampy area, but even happier to find pretty little weevils in a couple of them. 🥹