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i watched one episode of death note and this show is soooo funny for opening on skull demon guys and youre like oh shit its the evil freaks and then theyre just like chilling playing cards. and then you meet your mild mannered middle schooler boy protag and hes like i want to kill everyone forever
y'all ever think about how insane the sauropods were
this is a leg off of Argentinosaurusof them and its already the size of a two story house like LOOK at the size of these fuckers
the fact that any land animal ever got to be as large as this is insane. this shit is only beat by fucking whales, creatures that dont have to support their weight on legs
To be honest I don’t understand how these things were able to, like, move or breathe or anything with how heavy they must have been
This thing would have been MUCH scarier than T. rex cause like look at it
Actually they were a lot lighter than you’d think for their size, they were FULL of air sacs specifically to make them lighter. They moved by having really, really straight legs so the weight was transferred straight down into the ground, and they walked on cushioned pads just like an elephant. Their lungs were sort of constantly cycling air around because otherwise it wouldn’t be much good, and the whole point of having a really really long neck was specifically that they didn’t need to move much!!!!
Like, they’re incredibly unspecialised herbivores who just ate everything and let the gut handle it (hence why they had to get so big, just because they had to fit A LOT of gut in there) like their mouths were basically just Rakes.
This thing was built to sweep its head from high to low to near to far and rake in everything it could eat. By evolving a long neck it basically meant it was giving itself a huge range of motion to eat with but also being VERY energy-efficient because moving your legs takes a LOT more energy than just. Tilting your neck up and down, especially at that size. So this thing was basically built to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY energy efficient, light and weight-spreading for its size.
Blue whales sort of practice a similar feeding style, where because they’re so Big and need so Much food, they just sort of went “ok im just going to take in AS MUCH food as possible as efficiently as possible” and the thing is. Using baleen takes 0 effort really other than opening and closing your mouth. Which is why whales can grow to be really big. See in the ocean weight matters less, so you can afford to just have a big mouth, but land animals have to do it differently.
Being Big isn’t just a case of having lots of food available. It’s about being as Efficiently able to eat it as possible. Hell, i mean elephants basically evolved the same thing, except they’ve just given themselves really long noses rather than necks. It means the elephant can stay in one spot while still reaching huge amounts.
Idk if you actually wanted answers, but, well, here they are.
first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line
second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all
third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below
fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?
fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves
sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it
seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him
eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night
ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him
tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk
eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important
twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go
thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme
fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader
fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that
sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why
I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?
alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we’re all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it’s not really about bananas per so–the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.
so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: ‘oh, these ridiculous communists think it’s imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally’. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!’.
there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas’. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn’t really 'have’ them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals–when they’re not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn’t you know it, it’s those intervening middleman steps–export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.
when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.
why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there’s the fact that if they didn’t, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!
this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy’ a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas’ – honduras only 'has a lot of bananas’ because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it’s long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.
so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:
the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimesmurdered
the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate
shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paidat all or forced to pay to work (!)
bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they’re produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.
so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it’s a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not “if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys”, but rather, “if there’s a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that”.
(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?’ reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)
and again, let’s note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it’s not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don’t care and neither does anyone else. it’s about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!
tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don’t see a cent – and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)
americans and canadians have no right to complain about the Banana Question. not only do they live right next to regions rich in gastronomy and agricultural variety, the cuisine and food that they could grow without their colonial states would also be diverse and plenty enough to fill that gap
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
I think what’s often missed is that these luxuries are consolation prizes. They serve to placate and distract a Proletariat from their alienation from their communities and their passions, from how they sacrifice their health through coerced, largely meaningless labor out of fear of homelessness and destitution, and how outside of said luxuries they are unable to take advantage of the fruits of their labors.
And so I think leftists are reacting to the question “How would I feel if I woke up tomorrow and suddenly all these things I enjoy were gone?” when they ought to be asking “In the process of building a world where access to food, healthcare, housing, and even community was no longer linked to the whims of an employer or corporate entity, how important would access to a banana or luxury cruise be to me?”
To put it differently, the anxiety around bananas under socialism marks not the fear of losing bananas, but rather of losing the right to enjoy the products of capitalist exploitation from the periphery. From this perspective, the banana is the perfect fetish object, the ideal substitute phallus, and not just because it looks like a dick. The banana offers the Western worker assurance of their right in the surplus value, or alienated labor, of the racialized worker on the banana plantation. This is why, for instance, American grocery stores often sell bananas at a loss. They know that if they present people with cheap bananas, they will come in and shop because cheap bananas are part of what makes shopping in America enjoyable. When an American goes to WalMart, they do not primarily enjoy the mere access it offers them to the food they need to sustain themselves. Rather, they take pleasure in having the whole world’s labor neatly arranged for them to grab, inspect, fantasize about, and ultimately put back on the shelf because they already have some at home.
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
“what’s your dream job??” Uhh to have 17 weird little hobbies that I don’t have to be good at and hang out with friends. I get money via being the world’s specialist little princess
“Autism traits that are actually advantages-” Hey guys did you know that the problem with eugenics and ableism is the act of assigning different degrees of worth and moral value to different people and abilities and not that we were simply attacking the “wrong” group?
just found an important message from my cat on my phone
A RIFT IN THE CHURCH OF CAT DIVINATION
– no – yet i – presume – if i – the ME – of – may – join – by – The – Am by – The blue – the – presume – no – believe – presume – a lot more of – a lot – of – may – one – from – the – the – to– by – itself – now – by – therefore – I have – for the – of – in my – for – no no no – religion religion – seperation – relationship –
“It’s ya boy Guzma” is probably the smoothest translation of ore-sama I’ve ever seen (makes eyes at Hetalia and TTGL) but it’s also unfortunately hilarious wwwww
It’s for ore-sama? AWESOME!
Yeah, ore-sama is a bitch to translate because standard English just doesn’t use pronouns like that but “it’s ya boy” is actually a great way of conveying both the conceited “you should know me” and inappropriately close connotations. I think it’s kinda rare to see direct ways of translating how rough/friendly speech is kinda the same thing in Japanese. I mean, we DO have an understanding that being overly familiar is rude in English but I feel like I rarely see that aspect of ore speech translated gracefully.
hey you. young trans girl dating for the first time as a girl. you know you don’t have to date people that sick and you can have boundaries
if you’re dating cis people you should not be worrying about enforcing boundaries or saying no to anything for fear of offending them. if you’re dating trans people you should not have to worry about lateral aggression- it’s ok to experience gender and sexuality different from your partner, even if you’re both trans women. you are just as allowed to be uncomfortable with things as anyone else.
you are not alone. many girls, cis and trans, feel like they’re on their own when dating and things are just always gonna be bad. they don’t have to be.
you deserve a good relationship, too
“you deserve a good relationship too”
I wish I’d heard that a while ago, going into social interactions online with some self respect about a year ago would have been nice
just had a convo with my friend. she mentioned she doesnt like sake cause its sparkling.
“wait, sake is sparkling? what have i been drinking?” i said. because i also dont like sparkling stuff.
i look at the sake bottle ive been drinking from for fun events for the past year. its vinegar.
i’ve been drinking strawberry flavored vinegar.
in my defense:
and:
ALTALT
its very hard to tell for someone who only kind-of reads Japanese and just saw the component for “sake flask” (酉) and, rightfully assumed, that the bottle that said sake was probably sake.
its terrible for any number of reasons, but i think if we invent immortality there should be an extreme sport called civilizational speedrunning where teams of 20 go into the wilderness somewhere and try and be the fastest build the first internal combustion engine. i bet you could get it down to like 3 years tops
The real trick is to eat seed heavy food before the speedrun starts so your first poops are halfway to agriculture already
its terrible for any number of reasons, but i think if we invent immortality there should be an extreme sport called civilizational speedrunning where teams of 20 go into the wilderness somewhere and try and be the fastest build the first internal combustion engine. i bet you could get it down to like 3 years tops
The real trick is to eat seed heavy food before the speedrun starts so your first poops are halfway to agriculture already
its terrible for any number of reasons, but i think if we invent immortality there should be an extreme sport called civilizational speedrunning where teams of 20 go into the wilderness somewhere and try and be the fastest build the first internal combustion engine. i bet you could get it down to like 3 years tops
The real trick is to eat seed heavy food before the speedrun starts so your first poops are halfway to agriculture already
its terrible for any number of reasons, but i think if we invent immortality there should be an extreme sport called civilizational speedrunning where teams of 20 go into the wilderness somewhere and try and be the fastest build the first internal combustion engine. i bet you could get it down to like 3 years tops
The real trick is to eat seed heavy food before the speedrun starts so your first poops are halfway to agriculture already
Leelah Alcorn was a trans girl, a teenager, who sadly committed suicide nearly 10 years ago. I’m happy that her comic touches the hearts of so many people, years after her death.
I saved screenshots of her blog and last message to the world. Her parents had a lot of control over how she was perceived after her death, but it was also to prevent deletion by Tumblr itself. Even back then, Tumblr has been shadow banning trans women on this platform.
My heart goes out to all trans women who are struggling with society’s expectations of who they are supposed to be and who they are allowed to be. May you find peace, growth, and respite from whatever you’re going through. You deserve happiness, most of all. Thank you for living, thank you for being here with us.
Leelah Alcorn was a trans girl, a teenager, who sadly committed suicide nearly 10 years ago. I’m happy that her comic touches the hearts of so many people, years after her death.
I saved screenshots of her blog and last message to the world. Her parents had a lot of control over how she was perceived after her death, but it was also to prevent deletion by Tumblr itself. Even back then, Tumblr has been shadow banning trans women on this platform.
My heart goes out to all trans women who are struggling with society’s expectations of who they are supposed to be and who they are allowed to be. May you find peace, growth, and respite from whatever you’re going through. You deserve happiness, most of all. Thank you for living, thank you for being here with us.
I didn’t know bucket toothpaste was only a thing here!
WAIT! How do people in other countries put toothpaste on their toothbrushes??? You d-don’t use your toothpaste spoon????
You keep your toothpaste in condiment tubes???
This whole thread is making me so sad 😔😔
For the americans out there, 1kg is about 2lbs. Rewriting this bost gives:
“To answer a lot of people’s question: this package is [4lbs] there’s also, [10lbs] and [20lbs] ones (which used to be sold in most stores, but you can find them only in specialized ones nowadays). There are some tiny ones, like 1lb! Those are the ones you buy to carry when you travel.”
Croatians apparently take a pound of toothpast with them when they travel.
I would literally be unstoppable if I didn’t have that persistent pit in my stomach that everyone in a room is just a little bit annoyed by my presence
concept: a death god that is actually surprisingly supportive and on the side of the good guys, supporting actions and promoting policies that will lead to the kingdom growing and thriving instead of being destroyed, because the more the kingdom grows, the more people there are, and the more people there are the more people will eventually die, and when you’re an immortal god of death, you know there’s no need to rush. you’ll get them all in the end
i like how the responses on this post are cleanly split between “hey this is a great story idea i love it” and “this is absolutely terrifying”
Yes. A Death that is kind, and patient, and inevitable.
A Death that need not fight against you, that will often
fight for you, because why not? It
will gather you home eventually. Why not enjoy you first?
A Death that treasures those who fight it most ardently.
That loves healers and defenders and survivalists and necromancers and mad
scientists and immortal gods. That lets them pour everything they are into
fighting it, denying it, adoring every desperate scrap of strength and will and
brilliance and raw determination poured out against it. That catches you when
your strength is done and all your will and brilliance run out, that gathers
you close beneath a warm, dark cloak, and whispers well done, oh child, you were magnificent, well done.
A Death who will not seek to hasten an inevitable end, who
will chastise those who seek to hasten it for others in Death’s stead, who will
slowly and patiently plot and sow and siphon away from the great monsters of
the world. Because who are they to hasten
Death’s domain, who are they to deny Death its time and its place, who are
they to cut short these vital glories that illuminate it so? Who are they to
presume upon its will, that is so much larger and so much longer than theirs?
Who are they to call, and presume that Death, of all beings,
should obey?
A Death that is not a hunter but a gatherer, who is always
and eternal, who loves you, and can afford to wait. A Death who will fight for you and defend you, who will place
its hand upon those who would speed you to its embrace, who has no need to rush you, only to greet you when
you call.
not interested in getting involved in the rest of this discussion, for the most part, but to me this is a GREAT piece of advice that many people these days don’t seem to be getting or understanding.
not everyone you meet or interact with is your friend, the requirements and expectations for respectful behaviour between friends is not the same as between strangers.
hey man, you’ve been looking really glum ever since we reversed the genderbend curse that that wizard hit you with. is there something you wanna tell us?
ALT
ALT
