i think queer people should be more confusing actually. i think we should make everyone as confused as possible until they give up and realize that total understanding of other people isnt the gateway to respect and compassion
You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.
For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:
Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning
Don’t fuck with flamingos
….. Didn’t know most of that
Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.
Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.
American flamingos just drink that shit
(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.
When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.
It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:
Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.
[ID: Two images of shiny pokemon. On the left is a pale brown bayleef with pale green accents. On the right a purple mega Charizard y with red accents. End ID]
“Why are you so upset about adult content bans? You don’t even post that stuff. can’t you just look at porn somewhere else?”
Well, you see, I have this small problem where my very existence is considered adult content by a small but very powerful group of people and I actually rather enjoy being able to exist in public without restriction so uhhhh put that in your bong and smoke it kiddo.
[image description: a video of a tiny, fluffy dog getting a haircut. at the end, the groomer puts the dog in little sunglasses and a little cowboy hat.]
Gamers this has been on my mind for a while, and I’ve been Going Through It so I can’t thoughtfully articulate it yet but: the little things can, and absolutely will, save you.
It’s noticing the bunny in the yard eating dandelions one by one. It’s buying lemonade from eager kids at a stand using change scrounged from the center console of your car. It’s enjoying the smell of hot pavement steaming after a brief summer rain. It’s taking a breath that feels fuller and more satisfying than usual.
It’s painstakingly training your brain to notice the small but rampant string of good things woven through every single day. It’s that same kind of training that you have to do in order to undo the years of anxious patterns that have been ruthlessly hammered into the soft pathways of your mind.
I don’t know how to connect the two dots, but the connection is there. I know it’s there because something as silly as the satisfying crunch of a knife cutting a crisp grilled cheese sandwich in half has meant the difference between hanging on and panicking during a stressful day.
I can’t explain how the many small things I did and asked for and noticed over YEARS finally coalesced into something solid and real and steadying but they did. I’m not saying that petting the one patch of fur between your pets ears that’s a little softer than any other spot is going to cure your depression tomorrow.
But I’m suggesting that when you stitch it together with a thousand other things from a thousand other days, it might just rescue you from the one day in your future that would have destroyed you otherwise.
