May 2025, Overgrown House

Same energy: average day in wisconsin

I have pretty mixed feelings about my country, especially right now, and sometimes it's really nice to run across something like this on my dash and be reminded that not literally everything here is awful. Like for example, we have dorks. <3

Helmut Moik: Dalmatian Pelican in the Danube Delta, Romania, 2003

I think about this sometimes. How did I learn that there are some things you just don't do to people, no matter who they are or what they've done? I used to think I learned it as a young adult working my first few jobs. I did some childcare and a shitton of foodservice, and in both types of work it was really clear to me that if I didn't do my job right -- if I made a mistake with an allergen, or forgot to lock the child lock on the basement door -- someone could be badly hurt or even killed. That was a heavy thing to realize and it made me so aware of my responsibilities to other people, it really solidified it for me that you don't do to your enemies what you wouldn't do to your friends. But I think I must have learned it earlier. I think I learned it by...needing help from other people, and getting it. I think I learned it from times when I was in trouble, and someone helped me. The people around me had enough empathy for me, enough of the time, that I learned empathy too. Maybe "learned" is the wrong word, even, because it wasn't a thinking process. I think empathy is more like grammar: it's not a sense like sight or touch, it's a thing you can feel if the people around you have it. You absorb it from them via mirror neurons.

It's funny because I know, in a cerebral way, that abuse can damage children's empathy. But it's really different to see and feel how that relates to me, personally, and to the people I know best. I have the empathy that I have because people were decent to me when I was small. That's it, that's the entire reason. And that's so strange because it wasn't something that was in my control. It's not something I had, or have, the power to choose.

Lately it's giving me patience for people. Because no one is born an asshole. And because something that's been damaged can be repaired, sometimes.

really devastating to realize that my belief that “there are some things you can never to do to another person, regardless of who they are and what they’ve done, because they are a person” is held by so few people. they aren’t upset by the unjustifiable, they’re simply unhappy that it happens to the ‘wrong people.’

Pushing the definition somewhat but still a griffon imo

-3012

I'm too stoked. I can't focus, can't work, I can't think about anything else right now. Here is some stoked music:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I slow blink at people all the time. My roommate's dog has come to understand what it means and now sometimes does it back to me. So I guess I accidentally taught a dog how to speak cat, or one word of it anyway.

I haven't meowed at anyone, but I have reflexively hissed at people. Also, during the years when I was living with just my cat, and not getting a huge amount of interaction with other humans, I would occasionally slow blink at people instead of smiling 😻

I still slow blink at people to indicate friendliness and I no longer have an excuse.

It’s never been negatively received but on some occasions cat savvy people have paused before demanding, “Did you just slow blink at me??”

FURRY ART CAN HAVE WOMEN?

This artist is amazing

𝖮𝗂𝗅 𝗉𝖺𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖻𝗒 𝖨𝗏𝖺𝗇𝖺 𝖹̌𝗂𝗏𝗂𝖼́ ( 𝖻. 𝗂𝗇 𝟣𝟫𝟩𝟫 𝗂𝗇 𝖲𝖺𝗋𝖺𝗃𝖾𝗏𝗈)

[Image description: a comment from user @polyceridae reading, This is how clowns do BDSM /End image description.]

[Description of images: screenshots of text. First image reads: Scientists Find A Whole New Ecosystem Hiding Beneath Earth's Seafloor. Second image reads: Most recently, aquanauts on board a vessel from the Schmidt Ocean Institute used an underwater robot to turn over slabs of volcanic crust in the deep, dark Pacific. Third image reads: It's a whole new world we didn't know existed. "On land we have long known of animals living in cavities underground, and in the[..."] Fourth image reads: Scientists found tubeworms particularly fascinating. These deep-sea creatures seem to travel underneath the seafloor through volcanic fluids to colonize new habitats. This could explain why so few of their young are ever seen congregating around deep volcanic fissures. Most may be maturing below the surface. End descriptions of images.]

Wait, beneath the sea floor?

OUGHGH??

OIUOHGHHVOIH!!!!!