“The Average US President Has Been Convicted On .75 Felonies” Factoid Isn’t True. Average US President

This is a good point. I am reblogging about the antisemitism relating to the war rather than what is happening in the war itself, but I can see how this is can be unfair to those who are looking for positivity or trying to avoid the negatives rn. There should be discussion about where are the appropriate boundaries for the tags. Maybe people like me should stick to other tags (I am lately using #judenhass and #queer antisemitism because those are far less likely to be co-opted than #antisemitism), or maybe they should use other tags themselves. But it isn't fair to people's mental health to leave them without a safe space where they aren't constantly retraumatised. There's also of course the perennial question of what aspects of hiloni life and Israeli life outside of religion should count as part of Jewish tumblr.

Guys. If you’re gonna make a post about Israel or Gaza, and just Israel or Gaza, can you get off the #jumblr tag

That’s a tag for Jewish tumblr. Yknow, Jewish stuff. Mezuzot, stories from the mikrah, converts talking about the process. The politics of one Binyamin Netanyahu and his cronies is a different topic and for the love of god I want to get a break from this shit sometimes.

Imma start blocking people who do it istg

SMH we Israelis blazed the trail for trans people in Eurovision and now people talking about the queer history of Eurovision either erase Dana International or refuse to mention what country she represented. It is clear that the international LGBT movement does not care for LGBT Israelis. The goy queer population of Europe came out to protest Israel at Eurovision for the temerity of *existing* but did not march in solidarity when LGBT Israelis protested against homophobia and transphobia in our government last year. I do not want to hear a single word about the importance of intersectionality or solidarity again from people who believe Jews and Israelis are exempt form either of them.

dana international 💕 israeli queer royalty 🇮🇱👸🏻

the first trans contestant and winner of eurovision !!!! 🇮🇱

Some handy keyboard shortcuts for Windows:

[win] + [arrow key] : snap the current window (left or right snaps the window to the corresponding half of the screen, up maximizes the window, down un-maximizes or minimizes the window; if a window is already snapped right or left, up or down will make take up the higher or lower quarter of that side of the screen)

[win] + [;] : bring up an emoji picker

[ctrl] + [shift] + [escape] : bring up the Task Manager (this used to be [Ctrl] + [alt] + [delete], but in recent versions of Windows that combination brings up several possible actions, like locking the screen or switching users, in addition to launching the Task Manager

[win] + [L] : lock the screen (so you'll need to enter the password to unlock it)

[win] + [D] : show or hide the desktop (minimizes all windows so you just see the desktop, or brings all windows back up)

[win] + [E] : launches a File Explorer window

[win] + [I] : opens Settings

[alt] + [tab] : brings up all windows and let's you cycle through them by repeatedly hitting [tab]

[win] + [shift] + [S] : take a screenshot of part off your screen

[win] + [U] : opens accessibility settings

Also in general, [tab] will cycle between selected things (eg fields on a web site or Excel cells) and [alt] will activate the menu.

Also, if you hold [shift] while pressing the arrow keys in a text field, it'll select text in the direction you press. It'll go letter by letter if you just hold [shift], but adding in [ctrl] will make it select word by word. These, combined with [home] (go to start of line) and [end] (go to end of line) let you do a lot of text manipulation without ever needing to touch the mouse or touchpad!

The Early Therocene: 30 million years post-establishment

Bouncing Bipeds: The Boingos and the Oingos

From the tiny, hopping jerryboas of the Rodentocene would arise the most widespread and dominant of all the herbivores on the planet: the boingos. Descended from the greater skipperroo of the Middle Rodentocene, these bipedal bounders would come to dominate the open plains, grasslands, and savannahs all across Nodera, Westerna, Easaterra and Ecatoria, crossing tthe land bridges of the Late Rodentocene and quickly expanding all across the primary continents.

Today the boingos have become one of the most diverse clades of HP-02017, spanning nearly a hundred species as of the Early Therocene. The largest species, the spotted boingo (Macropodomys giganteus) stands six feet in height and can weigh up to 190 pounds, while its other relatives are smaller, but still far larger than the tiny jerryboas they descended from.

Various species of boingos of this age have since diverged into a wide variety of forms with unique adaptations and lifestyles that set them apart from their relatives. Easily one of the most remarkable species is the streaky zibba (Saltozebroides melanoleuca), sporting bold black-and-white stripes and traveling in large herds numbering in the hundreds. When attacked by a predator, the entire herd scatters and starts bouncing away in all directions, and their erratic movements and dizzying coloration makes it difficult for a predator to zero in on a single target. Others, such as the dusky boingo (Tenuipodomys cinereus) prefer to fight than flee, sporting large claws on their hind legs that can deliver devastating kicks to an enemy.

Some of the boingos have started spreading out from the grassy plains and into other biomes as well. The twinstripe tattoroo (Gracilosaltomys lineaurum) lives in marshy wetlands, where its broad webbed feet keep it from sinking in soft ground and also makes it a surprisingly good swimmer, propelling itself with powerful kicks of its hind limbs. The desert jackaroo (Gymnocaudamys heremus), on the other hand, makes a living in a far drier clime, where its large ears, hairless tail and feet, and light-colored coat help it in losing heat in the arid climates of northern Easaterra.

Meanwhile in the continent of Easaterra lives another, smaller lineage of jerryboas descended from the prairie roobit of the Middle Rodentocene, and closely related to the boingos: the oingos. These smaller cousins of the boingos are endemic to Easaterra, where the only hamtelopes present are towering high browsers: as such, they fill the niche of low-browser and small-scale grazer that are filled by smaller hamtelopes elsewhere.

Various biomes are prevalent in Easaterra, and the oingos have adapted to thrive in a wide variety of them. Scrubland oingos (Minimosaltomys lagoides) thrive in lands dominated by low-lying bushes and shrubs, while the forest oingos (Australosaltomys longuscolli) make a living in tropical forests where they use their longer necks to reach for low-lying branges and bushes in the understory of their jungle home. And in the southernmost region of Easaterra, predominantly icy tundra and permafrost, lives the arctic oingo (Frigorimys glacies), insulated with thick white fur that it sheds in summer and regrows in winter, as well as broad, fluffy feet that prevent it from sinking in the snow.

The tremendous success of the boingos and the oingos revolve around their unique anatomy, namely their growing molars and hopping locomotion. While most herbivorous hamsters have molars with no definite roots and thus can grow constantly like their incisors, the molars of boingos and oingos grow relatively quickly and thus can better handle daily abrasion from the tough stems and sheaths of plains grasses, their favorite food.

Their bounding gaits are also incredibly efficient for traversing the open plains, with spring-like tendons in their hind legs that store energy with each landing and use it to power the next hop, allowing them to bound long distances across the grassland with scarcely any effort at all. This gait also compresses and expands their body with each hop, aiding in their breathing during strenuous activity. With more efficient dentition and locomotion, the boingos have the upper hand in the plains over the hamtelopes, which instead evolve into strange new niches to avoid their competition, such as browsers and small soft-grass grazers, and only on the continents of Borealia and Peninsulaustra, where boingos and oingos are absent, do the hamtelopes get a shot at grassland domination.

But though they look like kangaroos, move like kangaroos and hop like kangaroos due to convergent evolution, the boingos and the oingos are still placental mammals, and thus lack pouches to carry their young. Instead, much like hares and guinea pigs, they give birth to small but well-developed young that are fully-furred and open-eyed upon being born, and within an hour of their birth can already hop about and are able to follow their mother about at only one day old. Boingos and oingos typically give birth to a litter of about three to four, but sometimes as many as eight, and the sight of a mother boingo hopping along followed by her bouncing young ones in single file is a common spectacle across the plains throughout their native continents.

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Blyth's Tragopan. Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935)

via

Truth

I've heard High Valyrian has no words for grandparents, is that right? And what word might exist for that role?

It sure didn't—until I created them.

There are four terms:

kekepa "father's father"

mumuña "mother's mother"

kepāzma "mother's father"

muñāzma "father's mother"

In a conlang, there are always words that aren't there because they're supposed to not be there, and words that aren't there because they haven't been created yet. That latter category is always going to be much, much larger than the former.

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Island, You Land, We All Land: The Centralis Archipelago

In between the narrow strait separating the continents of Nodera and Easaterra lies a small group of five islands, that have been separated from the northeast peninsula of Easaterra for only 500,000 years. And yet in this in this relatively short span of time life has evolved in strange ways in these secluded islands: as islands in isolation become hotspots for unusual routes of evolution, and the Centralis Archipelago is no exception.

No other example illustrates this better than the badgebears of Isla Maslum, the largest and most northernmost of the islands that unlike the others was once part of the Noderan mainland. On the scrubland of southern Nodera lives the common striped badgebear (Badja badja badja), a lapdog-sized omnivorous ferrat that feeds on a wide range of available food. However, in the forests of Isla Maslum, lives a different subspecies: the insular striped badgebear (Badja badja maslum), still technically the same species as its mainland relative. However, the differences are obvious: the insular subspecies is at least three times as big as the mainland one, and is entirely herbivorous, feeding on fruit, seeds, and low-lying vegetation that grows in abundance close to the forest floor. In the absence of competition, the insular striped badgebear has filled an entirely new niche, despite otherwise still closely resembling its mainland subspecies in nearly every other respect save for size and diet.

Isla Maslum is also home to grazing hamtelopes, most notably a close relative of the rusty hamtelope, the painted hamtelope (Erythrocervimys piniata maslum). Free of competition from large grazing jerryboas the painted hamtelope is free to conquer the open grasslands of the eastern side of the island. Its conspicuous bright coloration is used in social signaling, with the lack of predators making camouflage less necessary.

Meanwhile, on the other islands live very unusual forms of ratbats, which spend most of their time hunting on the ground and only rarely and clumsily taking flight. It has not been long since the ratbats first evolved flight, and yet here in these islands some are already on their path to flightlessness. Having flown to these islands only 100,000 years ago, they quickly filled the niche of ground predator at the expense of their flying capabilities, and are now, for all intents and purposes, now confined to this isolated ecosystem.

On Isla Vodum lives the ground foxbat (Nyctovulpes kitsuni vodum), a Labrador-sized omnivore that forages on the forest floor for small rodents, insects, fruit and berries. Still capable of short bursts of flight to ascend trees, it is now by no means a significant flyer, unlike its relatives on the Easaterran mainland, which, as with the badgebears, are technically the same species, but now in a subspecies behaviorally different from its still-extant forebearers.

Meanwhile on Isla Dolum lives another insular ratbat, that has independently began losing its flight as well. Known as the Dolumian catratbat (Nyctoailurus felinoides dolum), this tiny carnivore is about as big as a small housecat, and is an avid predator of the numerous abundant furbils and duskmice that are endemic and plentiful on the island. Hunting its prey on the ground, it has almost all but lost its ability to fly: an unnecessary expenditure whose energy is better spent toward better running, after its grounded quarry.

However, despite these unique adaptations that they have developed, the endemic fauna of the Centralis Archipelago have essentially backed themselves into a spot of trouble. Evolving in isolation, they have lost many of their abilities to deal with competitors: and should the islands reconnect with the mainland in the distant future, these strange new pioneers may struggle in the face of new adversity: forced to adapt, or go extinct trying.

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Regardless of what you think of this tree… this comment was my favourite out of the collection of people who didn’t know deer shed their antlers every spring