Getting A Good Night's Rest Is A Journey.

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.

the Guardian

German police shut one of world’s biggest darknet child abuse images sites

Boystown platform had membership of more than 400,000 international subscribers

I wanna scream, 400k people????? I hope they can find them and arrest them all because the details of this story are so horrible and those people need to be all put away for good.

Day one!

Pronouns: he/him, she/her and they/them. Sexuality: Pansexual

Well, well, well, will you look at that? It’s Pride again.

You know the drill by now. It’s June 1, and suddenly everything from banks to big box stores has slapped a rainbow on their logo. Rainbow capitalism knows how to target LGBTQIA+ customers. For exactly 30 days of the year. How quaint.

Of course, it’s nice to make things bright, and colorful, and pretty. But it’s meaningless if that’s all it is.

Pride should be about uplifting and celebrating you, the community. And it should be year-round, not just 8.22% of the year. So, we’re signal-boosting your posts that celebrate, support, and honor all genders and sexualities over here. Follow to keep your dashboard lovely and gay as hell all year round.

And, yes, we’re also making a bit of a fuss right here on @celebrate (apparently, we just can’t help ourselves). So if you’re interested in talking about what Pride means to you or want to celebrate Pride but don’t know how to go about it this year, we made a fun little 30-day Share Your Pride Challenge list. Because you do, in fact, deserve to be celebrated.

Tag your posts with #ShareYourPride if you want to make them a little easier for other people to find. And Tumblr? Happy Pride. We’re glad you’re here.

Hey guys, just a heads up. There's a serial killer in the greater Atlanta area (as of August 1st, 2021 there have been at least 3 murders attributed to the same killer and they've all been killed and mutilated horrifically in the same way). More details under the cut cause they're potential trigger warnings for some people:

Stay safe y'all!!

News article about it: x

Madison Frederick, the main character of a story I'm doing rn 😊

Being stuck in a windowless penthouse with no social media, Madison is unaware of the state her world is in (as well as the existence of phones). She's an important figure for the future of the world, but all she wants to do is sleep and punch people.

Disney Has Reportedly Cuts All Ties With Scarlett Johansson

Who knows what future movies or projects were ruined.

Okay, I don’t know how true this is - but this is huge fucking news.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Disney, Amazon and co. are trying to return to the studio system of the old Hollywood days that got - rightly - discontinued in the 1960s. Those were the days when each studio owned their own cinemas that could only stream their movies, where they owned actors who could only play in their movies (unless hired out by others) - and that led to people like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe etc. literally being owned by studios that fed them non stop pills and driven to overdose.

That’s the end point. That’s not the point we’re at now. But you’ll notice that in the last 3 or 4 years, every major production company now has a streaming platform. Much like up until the late 1960s in America, you can only see movies on company-owned platforms. This, with Johansson, is a huge step further - the largest production company in the world - who breached contract, not the other way around - are now essentially blacklisting Johansson from working with them for speaking out against them. Sure, this isn’t a blacklist on the level of the red and lavender scares - but if they can do this to Johansson, the biggest actor in the world, it sets a huge fucking precedent for blacklisting anybody who stands up for workers’ rights.

It also sees Disney - and other companies will follow suit, as they always do - moving a step closer to owning their stars. What Disney is trying to say is that Disney and Johansson are not equal partners in the contract, but that Disney has the ultimate say over everything. This idea that the contract is a formality is absolutely fucked, because it means that artists have no rights under the corporations, and if they want to continue to work they have to obey. Nobody is signing exclusive contracts yet, but you bet this is reverting to Judy Garland times. 

We are not going forwards. The movie industry is going backwards to the days of Louis B. Mayer (and it’s capitalism’s fault) and we all need to boost the fuck out of this. The courts will handle the Disney case - but we must support ScarJo (I say as very much a non ScarJo fan) and make sure that she continues to have a career after this, to set the precedent that audiences will not stand for future blacklisting.