Antonius Marie Hogebrandt ⚧ @melindrea@wandering.shop

i read a thing recently that blew my mind a little.
went something like:

people can imagine time travel to the past and one little act making massive differences in the timeline

but in their present they think even the greatest effort they can put in will not make any difference to the future

The other day I saw a poll asking “what made you stay at mastodon”. Choices were like “my friends are here”, “dunno, I just stayed”, or some specific good aspects of this place. That was rather ironic as my reason which is also most Chinese users’ reason, is not listed. To this English speaking world, it’s beyond imagination for many that people tooting in Mandarin would most likely call themselves “cyber refugee”. Because we had nowhere to go. Because everywhere was censored and we had to flee.

a computer is a horseless typewriter

A general PSA: if you keep wanting to cut off your toxic family, and you're in a position where you're able to: you can, and you should. You are NOT a bad person for doing it, you deserve love and safety.

People joining Mastodon:

Okay! Final choices for my plant based hero!

Her human name is Zahra Hart, and she has an alternate form that looks like an anthropomorphic flower with petals, leaves, thorns and vines for clothes, with a reddish face, green bodice, and dark reddish-purple (near-black) cape, hood and overskirt, and visible underskirt in similar colours but with lots of texture.

In her floral form, is she ...

The idea that "small web" means personal websites and nothing else is starting to bother me. Leave room for #communities. Forums with two dozen members. Wikis with half a dozen contributors.

trying to follow this instruction:

talk about the things you love, even if you think nobody cares.

people won't ask for it at least at first, but some of them will care

and it's attractive to see someone talk about the things they love.

let go of the notion that it's worthless if you don't get a minimum number of listeners, reactions, replies.

practice caring publicly about the things you care about.

I think this is a good reminder for me. I never liked being shy anyway

Web developers: take a moment to turn off javascript on your websites. If it can't be used at all--especially if the user is confronted with a blank screen--without js support, fix it. It's a bad website. #xp

PSA: I'm going to be spamming this link a LOT because a lot of motherfuckers need to see this... https://jer.wtf/myob #xp #myob #MindYourOwnBusiness

THEY FIGURED OUT SIDS

My husband is a pharmacist and pointed out that this also impacts the ability of doctors to safely anesthetize some patients, because sometimes they need to use a paralytic and if they can test for this enzyme they can have a much better chance of predicting how well their patient will recover

but also

HOLY SHIT??

I hope this brings some small measure of peace to parents blaming themself for the loss of an infant to SIDS. Because it wasn't that the mattress was wrong or there was a blanket nearby or whatever whatever because blankets don't fuck up obscure baby brain enzymes

it's a fucking enzyme thing

And I read this research was at least partially crowdfunded too, so we can maybe add another tally to the Seizing The Means Of Research Production victory column.

https://www.biospace.com/article/researchers-answer-how-and-why-infants-die-from-sids/

@melindrea I'm a zoologist in my other life and I put some research into marine mammal genitalia (not so easy, unfortunately there isn't so much data). Apparently, whale vaginas are pretty complex and enable the whale girl to decide whether or not she wants a sex partner to "score".
If you want that element, giving mermaids a labyrinth of a vagina with twists and folds and dead ends could be one way to do it.

Here are some pictures:
https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/life-of-whales/physiology/reproductive-system/

(CW deer skull painting, no gore tho)

The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. https://ko-fi.com/i/IQ5Q0CJX9T #MastoArt #BrynnDraws #Art