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@kernelbastard

call me Kernel! 23, it/its or he/him

One of my favorite things about Put Baby In Pelican Mouth is that not only does the pelican have the intelligence necessary to speak human language but also knows how to lie, suggesting it has a theory of mind, yet not enough to understand that no one is going to put baby in pelican mouth.

To be entirely fair to the pelican, I have seen humans do much, much dumber things with their infants. The park rangers in Louisiana ha e to regularly tell people to not put their babies on the ground next to the gators for a pic.

In fact, it could be argued that the peculiar grammar used by the pelican in the Put Baby In Pelican Mouth post is deliberate, like how phishers use major grammar errors in their messages so that people too smart for the scam (or smart enough to report them) ignore the emails and the scammer can focus on the most likely marks.

Regardless, the pelican is right: there is absolutely someone dumb enough to put a baby in its mouth because it asked politely. Probably dozens on that beach alone.

Put baby in pelican mouth for Instagram photo. Facebook photo of baby in pelican mouth for many likes and also happy asleep baby. So cute baby in pelican mouth for video on TikTok. Youtube short of baby so cute in soft pelican mouth for so many views to Youtube channel. Baby in pelican mouth challenge.

“Why does Batman need to be a billionaire?”

“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”

“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”

“The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny.”

He has, like, three charitable organizations he funds, named after his father, his mother, and Alfred.

Between both Bruce and Batman’s contributions, Gotham should be a better city than it is, and the only reason it isn’t is DC Editorial Mandate that basically says Gotham has to get worse and worse and worse or there’s no Batman stories they can tell (and, obviously, they have no other characters besides Batman).

There’s a reason Batman thinks the city is literally cursed.

I want to see Bruce Wayne go off

“Oh, oh, just charity my way out of dealing with the Penguin, a living, breathing 19th century Marxist’s cartoon of the bourgeoisie? Just fund anti-Clayface measures? Crack down on corporations who put out shapeshifting cosmetics? What socio-economic pressures turn botonists into actual fucking dryads?! What inspires anti-animal terrorism? THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL KIND OF ECO-FASCISM!”

For the record, Gotham is canonically curse, because it sits on some sort of evil swamp. I think.

There are like, half a dozen curses. The Lazarus Pits are leaching into the water, Slaughter Swamp is an unconnected body of water a few miles outside of the city that also ressurects people (see Solomon Grundy), the Bat-demon Barbatos and his followers (the Court of Owls) have been fucking up the city psychically and financially, the malevolent influence of the warlock Doctor Gotham’s tomb in the center of the city, the madness hypersigil of Amadeus Arkham (in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), there were several outposts of subterraneans and aliens beneath the city during the Silver Age, constant chemical warfare that makes it the equivalent of a WWI trench managed by MK-ULTRA, it’s in New Jersey, and I think God just hates it

tired: Batman could do more good by running charities than by fighting criminals

wired: Batman could save literally every other city on the planet simultaneously with the amount of effort and resources he’s pumped into Gotham, which is a lost cause, but this is his city damnit.

Inspired: Batman’s diligence is containing the menace that is Gotham’s madness from escaping too far from city limits.

For all his billions, for all his activity, for all his efforts, Gotham is a bonfire fed by the madness of mortal people, cultivated by dark powers and just existing there makes living souls like kindling for it. And left to its own devices,it’d become a breeding ground for supernatural unrest that no mere social service system or social awareness of activist campaign, no government program, no actions of a singular vigilante, could ever hope to undo.

Batman is single handedly if need be but fortunately not alone so often, holding back the noxious psychic influences of warp and wyrd entities and what they do to the very environment and landscape through the power of sheer, unbridled humanity.

Ascended: Gotham is containing Batman, because the forces of evil, consciously or not, have figured out that if let loose, this motherfucker and his sprawling adoptive family would’ve solved every crime in the world ever, so they throw literally everything they have at his home town in hopes that he stays there.

Because they were foolish and let Alan Scott escape. They aren’t making that mistake again.

What if Gotham is the pump?

Like. What if, because Gotham is such a shitshow, anyone looking to improve their lives has their eye on being able to move out of Gotham, so whenever Bruce Wayne’s charitable endeavors come somebody’s way, they take it, pack their bags, and move the fuck away, and take that money with them.

Meanwhile there’s an ongoing influx of people to Gotham primarily because they’re flat broke and real estate in Gotham is dirt fucking cheap because it’s a shitshow, and there’s always places hiring because 1) they’ve got Bruce Wayne money to try to make a difference, 2) there’s no shortage of places that need to be fixed up a little, and 3) villains are always in the market for new henchpeople.

So you’re a broke millennial from any other town in the country, and you have student loans, a job that hasn’t kept up with inflation, and your landlord has raised the rent three times this year so far and it’s eating up two-thirds of your paycheck. You look for housing on the internet and discover that one-third of your paycheck will get you the mortgage for an actual house in Gotham, a house you own and will never have to deal with your scummy rentjacking landlord again. And Wayne Industries is hiring, and so are sixteen different disaster remediation places, and six staffing services with a sort of weird vibe to them but they offer benefits, since when do temp agencies do benefits, and sure the crime rate is high but the rest of the world’s heading in that direction anyway, especially if you’re homeless, which you’re gonna be in like four months if that jackass your landlord raises the rent one more time, so get in losers, we’re going to Gotham!

And you settle into your bigger-than-expected apartment and get a job that brings you a comfortable paycheck and you learn to live with the terrorist attacks and the explosions and the gunfire and the neighbors and the drunken billionaire swimming in the restaurant fountain, and you pay off your student loans, buy a car, suffer a few months’ unemployment when your boss goes to jail for trying to assassinate the mayor and then your partner loses their job for a few months when the office gets smothered in a jungle’s worth of climbing plants and you develop hospital bills when you both get caught in a hallucinogenic terror gas eruption at the mall, but hey, you’d be homeless by now in any other city, so you live with it.

And then it’s a few years later and you’re wanting to start a family, but the neighbor three doors down owns pet hyenas and the park was firebombed last week and someone froze all the water pipes and you crashed your car into one of the impromptu ice sculptures and you’d really like your kids to grow up in a normal city where they don’t have to receive advice like “don’t talk to strange plants.”

So you visit one of the social work offices and get yourself a bit of assistance, save up your money, sell your house for the price of a down payment to the sort of incoming fool you were six years ago, and use your polished resume to get yourself a job someplace that doesn’t have What To Do If Clown Attack on their safety training syllabus.

You came, you left, and Gotham remains. A shithole.

This is a really well thought out way in what keeps Gotham moving. Sure there’s the people that have been there they’re whole lives, families that go back generations, but these are reasons people move in. The kind of people that want out. And maybe are desperate enough to take that Job hunching.

It’s also weird to see my pithy response circle around over 20 times and end up back on my dash…

When the glimmering hope continues against the tide of the hopeless.

I love all of this, but the addition of “and it’s in New Jersey” to why Gotham is like that made me laugh out loud.

And then the “they let Alan Scott escape” made me smile.

When the glimmering hope continues against the tide of the hopeless.

When the glimmering

hope continues against the

tide of the hopeless.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I still think the most devastating enshittification I've ever seen has been picrew. One of the few dress-up game websites left that's not flash-based and it's become DRENCHED in ads. You can't open the home screen without being blasted by at least three or four ads. You can't open two picrews in a row without watching a video ad first. When you have a picrew open the ads cover up the different options and sometimes even stack on each other so you have to hit like 2 or 3 different x buttons to get it to go away, only for more to appear seconds later. Evil world

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When my brothers were younger I wanted to teach about misogynistic tropes in media without scaring them off by presenting the topic right out the gate as serious and aggressive and intimidating so I pointed out one day that movie dudes usually only ever have three motives- 1. Wife, 2. Daughter, 3. Dog.

And now whenever we watch a movie together and a dude character is about to reveal their angst backstory we take guesses if it’s gonna be 1, 2, or 3.

Which is specifically the most fun to do in bad B-list action movies because you can say “It’s a 1” as it starts and then ten minutes later the ham-fisted Macho Man Tough Guy quietly mentions being married once and you can put your hands in the air and go “AYYY IT WAS 1” like your team just scored a sportsball goal

Truthfully though I think we need more 3’s

4’s and 5’s, even. Maybe even some 6’s

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fascinated by the nurse who did my mental health assessment who was apparently so allergic to the concept of they/them pronouns that they unprompted decided i'm a she/he instead. it's so bizzare it kind of loops back around to based tbh. i'll take it.

[Image IDs: three sections of text: "He describes her pace as very slow;" "He takes her medications on her own accord" Suicidal Ideation: She sometimes has thoughts of ending his life" /end]

Me when my medical practitioner is a time traveller from 1732

This was the museum I went to often in my childhood. I'm no longer able to visit unless I visit family, but this place holds a special place in my heart.

As stated in the article, they hold around 7 million artifacts- many of which are orphaned fossils, with the museum taking in collections that otherwise would have been trashed.

Please consider buying a Paleozoic Pal, but I'll also leave a direct donation link as well.

THE GIANT EURYPTERID BODY PILLOW IS BACK IN STOCK

I JUST WENT INTO A FUGUE STATE AND BOUGHT ME A 16 INCH CUDDLE BUDDY WITH PLATED TEETH!! DUNKIE, MY BELOVED!!

Screeching aside, anyone who can afford to, go look through their shop! They got clothes, and cute gifts, and books and all kinds of other awesome stuff! Ye, the shipping sucks, but we need to keep our museums alive! (the good ones, not the British Museum of Thievery XP)

HE’S HERE! MY BIG BOY IS HERE!! (And yes he is my BIG boy despite only being 16 inches, you shush!)

He took nearly a month to get here, but that’s because of ALL THE ORDERS THEY’VE BEEN GETTING! OVER 1800 ORDERS! This is why I love the online community!!

Now if you don’t mind I’m going to tuck Duncan into my sweater and go work on the piles of stuff I still have to do 😅

For anyone curious what's happening with the PRI they're digging themselves out! An anonymous donor gave them $1 mn which they used to secure a stay on the forclosure for the rest of the year and they're approximately a third of the way to buying their way out of the mortgage.

Just reading a book all about ethnozoology of reptiles and amphibians and jesus christ Europeans hated frogs so much, calm down they're just little animals goddamn

Linneus is the biggest bitch regarding this with his whole screed against reptiles calling them foul etc. etc. but what's funniest about it is when he says that reptiles and amphibians are so awful "the Creator did not make many of them" well Carlitos that's because you lived in stupid Sweden which has three species of lizards at most, come down to the Amazon see the hundreds of poison dart frogs and tell me that the Creator hated them

I don't remember where I heard this anecdote, I think it was from a professor that was in exchange in Brazil, but there were a couple British herpetologists who came to Manaus and got a guided visit, in a short walk they saw like 45 (or something like that) different species of frogs and they were amazed and the Brazilian herpetologists were like "oh too bad you came in the dry season usually we find like 70 or 80 species"

There are only two native frog species in Great Britain btw

you know how people say that cats and dogs don’t feel love the way humans do but it’s like. “oh they don’t love you they just associate you with warmth and safety and seek out your company and being near you and spending time with you makes them feel comfortable and secure” bro if that’s not love then what the FUCK do you think love is???

love is real because my kitty cat seeks me out for warmth and safety and also so do my friends on account of the fact that i love them

It’s also just bullshit in general. The Human - Animal bond has been studied extensively and results in similar biological responses across animal groups and humans.

Not only do your dogs and cats love you, but your parrots love you. Your mice love you. Your lizards love you. Your ants love you. Your spider loves you.

Turns out bonding is just something we animals (humans included, bc we’re not fundamentally different from other animals as such statements op is referring to imply) like to do when we can afford to do it.

Fucking THANK you

This is the #1 thing that people ask or say when they learn I have a tortoise- "oh, but does he actually love you?"

Look buddy. Maybe you have some specific definition of love that'll exclude anything other than human, or mammalian love.

But he recognizes me specifically, and when he sees me, he scoots his shelled butt out of his hut and cranes his neck up for little head scratches and maybe a dandelion leaf as a treat, and when he's out on the floor or on the field with me he likes the huddle on my shoes or under my legs and circle around them before going on his next adventure to nom a lil clover sprig

He associates me with warmth and safety and food and that good feeling on his skin he gets when I touch him gently. And whatever that manifests as in his little reptilian brain is some form of love.

having a bad memory sucks but it's even worse when you have an inconstantly bad memory. first kiss? no clue. when i realised i was trans? i dunno, some time in highschool i think. drinking orange juice in my grandma's car when i was 6? crystal clear, baby.

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my mom's tiny old dog got rained on during her walk last night

absolute creature moment

I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT WET BEAST WEDNESDAY

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