Here be dragons.
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You mentioned in a post on my dash that you were old enough to experience real seasons unaltered by climate change. What was that like?
I was young, so it feels like something I read in a book sometimes. I remember how chilly it could get at night in the summer, which doesn’t seem to happen as much anymore.
That’s actually the thing that seems to keep popping back up in my mind - that like, it was really chilly in the mornings in summer even, and it would warm up, and it seems to just kind of… stay warm all the time.
I dunno. The seasons were more distinct, there were bigger temperature swings on individual days, and like… weather was more predictable on a seasonal basis, if not on a daily basis.
Like… the kind of seasons you read about in Olde Tyme Books? They… were real things. We didn’t always have snow on Winter Break, but we had a pretty predictable number of snow days?
And it almost feels silly to talk about it. “What were normal seasons like, Uncle Spider?”
But yeah.
Watch seasonal-based movies made before about 1975 – ones set around Easter, or Halloween, or New Year’s – and pay attention to what people are wearing. Late October? It got cold when the sun went down, like ‘put on a jacket’ cold and I’m not talking northern US, I’m talking Georgia.
Today (Aug 18) is only a week before the start of most public schools in the US. A week from now? Back then, it’d already be chilly in the morning, enough to need a windbreaker on the way to school. By midday it would’ve warmed up, but even in Georgia the mornings had a nip to them by end of August, start of September.
And in northern Virginia, not sure about now, but the schools used to plan for ten snow days a year. I recall one year we had eleven days off thanks to a foot or so of fresh snow every two or three days. Even in years we didn’t use all the snow days, there were still frequent late openings and early closings. It wasn’t all that uncommon for summer vacation to start a week later, because those days had to be made up, somewhere.
Locally, this summer has (despite the terrible heat elsewhere in the US) been a strange bit of callback to my childhood. Excepting two nights all summer, every night it’s dropped to 72F at the highest, but most often in the 60s – with the caveat that it sometimes took half the night to get there. It’s not a sharp drop like I remember, as a child. But at least it has been cool enough to leave the windows open and a fan on – and that’s the kind of summer I grew up with, in Alabama and Georgia (regions significantly warmer, otherwise, than the mid-atlantic where I live now).
That sharp drop was the reason my dad installed a whole-house fan every place we lived: because the evening air would legitimately drop a good 5-10 degrees as the sun set. Enough to open the windows, run the fan, and the whole house would cool right down by dinnertime.
Now? If we go by last summer, even having a house set up perfectly (central open staircase) for a whole-house fan, what’s the point if the temperature stays just as high after the sun goes down, as it was before?
I recently read a poem about climate change making the seasons less familiar in a poetry collection published in 1978.
I was like, excuse me? It was noticeable already? Obviously I know it’s changed in my lifetime, but…
so I was reading this book Travels in Alaska by John Muir and in it, he mentions visiting Glacier Bay and that within living memory of the locals, that Glacier Bay used to be entirely iced off, but that the seasons had been changing for the warmer and the ice was in retreat. he posits in the book that this might have something to do with people burning more coal.
Oh that’s the tail end of the Little Ice Age. That’s a known non-man-made climate shift. Good on Muir to be concerned about coal burning though
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Nothing makes your native language feel foreign like having speakers of another language look at it a bit too closely in the way you do when words are new & intriguing entities instead of transparent conveyors of meaning. It’s delightful. I saw someone explain that rendez-vous is the 2nd person imperative of the French verb “se rendre” = to go (somewhere) and “dépareillé” (mismatched) comes from the word ‘pareil’ (same) so rendez-vous is just “you go (there)” and our word for mismatched is just “unsamed” and as a French speaker it was so destabilising. I had never looked at the word dépareillé and thought ‘unsamed’ in my life, it felt dignified and whole until you poked it. My English speaking cousin asked me what was our word for memo and I said “pense-bête” and he translated “think-dumb? we say memorandum and you say think-dumb?” and I was like nooo stop doing this
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I just remembered I forgot to water the seedlings in the greenhouse so I went back outside, and I was too lazy to look for the small watering can for seedlings at this hour so I just knelt down near the fish tank and took some water in my cupped hands and started tossing it towards the seedling tray on the table behind me
—only the fish are starting to be very friendly by now, as soon as they see me they come wriggling happily to say hi and check if I have a little insect or some other snack to give them, and suddenly I found myself accidentally catching a friendly little fish in my cupped hands and throwing it in the air behind me. I literally realised what I was doing as I was doing it
I have bad reflexes usually but this time I jumped up and flailed around desperately and managed to catch the little guy mid-flight!!!!
The fish was very confused but unharmed 😭
(sorry for the poor stick drawings, I felt I could not adequately convey our mutual jolt of surprise and terror with words)
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Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.
(via bahoreal)
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Humans have finally managed to land on Mars, only to find a locked safe buried in the Martian soil. The key is apparently on Earth, but no one knows where.
The galactic council watched on to see how humanity would handle the task, much as they had with several species before. What the test was supposed to show was whether or not a species of violent nature could ever be brought to work together. They finally picked something up, another ship already headed to Mars? Was it possible humans were that clever to have found the key, maybe it was more specialists and equipment to analyze the locked crate to ensure it was safe to open. A few minutes after landing, they got another broadcast from the red planet.
“This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I’ve got something quite special, this locked alien chest. First of all I have to thank everyone who recommended me for the job, I’m honored that you all thought of me. Now let’s get to work”
The council representatives were confused as they started analyzing the translation, before even getting through the name he spoke something haunting
“Normally I don’t say things like this but this lock is quite unique, however with no security pins it will still be quite quick.”
“There we go, a click on 3… “
All the species of the galactic council sat dumbfounded, they spent many galactic cycles refining and perfecting their study and in all their time not a singular race had tried this method. Click after click, even in such an intricate lock the human had only spent around five minutes tampering with it.
“There we go, now while I can’t open this as part of my video I can say that I at least have a clue what the key should look like in case it ever gets locked again. I admire the design choices and the fact that at least it was harder to get open than anything Master Lock has made”
The final sentence on this cracked me up
(via sharkbeneaththelotus)
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Little ascii creatures are so so good and important
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Most popular swear words by state in the US
Finally some useful research being done
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kittyplayz1cantmsg4somereason:
im-sherlocked-in-my-mindpalace:
socially-awkward-supervillian:
Fun fact: Cheetahs only attack prey that runs
jesus that is good to know.
Yup, that’s the point you just stay still and let it do whatever the fuck it wants that doesn’t involved you getting eaten.
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly - not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do?
They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!AJHHHHFDDGHH SO PRECIOUS
this post just got so much better
THIS IS OFFICIALLY MY FAVOURITE POST
this is emmett and cullen they are best friends
This is the greatest thing I’ve seen all day.
Dogs are truly angels.
so THATS why these cheetah ft dogo pics exist
the anxiety cat
Also! Cheetahs are not in fact classified as big cats, they are simply very large lesser cats, due to the fact that they purr, meow, chirp, and cannot roar. Also many cheetahs have learned to recognize wildlife photographers are friends and not foes, so they will just come up to people and be friendly occasionally as pictured at the top of the chain. Some will even leave their Cubs with photographers to look after while they hunt. So. Yeah. Cheetahs are great
this works because cheetahs are actually fairly social animals, and they look to members of their group for context on how worried they should be about any given Situation. but since cheetahs are also nervous social animals, they can work each other into an anxiety spiral pretty easily over things like “being in an enclosed habitat” and “there’s a guy over there”.
so by introducing a dog as a member of the group, the cheetahs will now look to the dog for context clues on how worried they should be! and the dog Is Not Worried At All, Thanks, so the cheetahs think everything must be chill even if they were personally unsure about it, and they stop being so freaked out about literally everything.
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OMFG THIS IS ME TALKING TO BABIES
im obsessed w this video
Omfg u think this is funny without sound fucking turn it on i beg of u im laughjng sohard icangbreatheee
THE WAY THE BABY IS KINDA NODDING KILLS ME
Ok but that’s actually good for them so
Yep :) Baby talking babies is bad for teaching them language and language skills help with other kinds of learning. Talking like this is really good
Probably this has been answered by others but… According to linguists, baby talk (in academics, often called motherese, parentese, caregiver register, or infant-directed speech) ISN’T bad for babies! In fact, it is good for their language development. Across cultures and languages, infant-directed speech shares similar traits, such as a simplified syntax, a generally higher pitch and slower rate of speech, a far broader dynamic range than in standard language (tonal ups and downs, the “sing-song” pattern), over-enunciation of words, and more exaggerated paralinguistic elements (especially facial expressions).
This helps infants get the basics of language because:
1) the high-pitched sing-song pattern of the register is really attention-grabbing (which is also why a lot of people find it so annoying; it’s VERY hard not to be distracted by it) so it’s easier for babies to pay attention to it, which makes it easier to learn things
2) the over-enunciation helps demonstrate the shapes that their mouths should make in order to produce sounds
3) the simplified syntax is easier to understand, since babies are not yet fluent in the language. Think of the reflexive response one person has towards another who is struggling with fluency in the language that the conversation is being held in – the more fluent person generally modulates down to a slower rate of speech with simpler sentences and uses more gestures, because that genuinely does help communicate meaning.
4) the adult’s exaggerated gestures and facial expressions (besides being fascinating to the infant) help establish emotional connection and attachment, which as it turns out is crucially important for an infant’s wellbeing (see the still face experiment and studies on the impact of neglect on the brain development of infants and young children)
So yeah, baby talk isn’t bad for babies at all! It’s just this weird evolutionary thing we’ve developed to help these small humans learn the language. The key is to use age-appropriate baby-talk, which most people will do automatically without having to think about it. As a child’s language develops, the adults around them typically upgrade gradually from baby-talk to toddler-talk (which has a reduced amount of sing-song, a slightly more complex syntax in somewhat longer sentences, isn’t as high-pitched, and often uses a disproportionate amount of questions and affirming speech to elicit further verbal responses in extended back-and-forth conversations (examples: “Wow! Really?” “Your bear went to the MOON? Cool! How’d he do that?” “Ooh! What happened next?”). Adults typically continue upgrading their register based on the kid’s individual rate of development – with some six year olds, you can have a really deep and complex conversation; with others, maybe they just aren’t there yet, and that’s okay, because everybody grows at their own pace.
If adults are not regulating their speech register to an age-appropriate level, then at a certain point most children start setting boundaries about it themselves – have you ever seen an adult using infant-level babytalk to a five-year-old and getting wintry disdain in reply, accompanied by a cold comment of “I’m not a baby”? (Nobody does wintry disdain like an offended five-year-old.) Effective and developmentally-useful child-directed speech is either matched to the child’s fluency or just a little more complex than that – in other words, it is led by the child and their individual needs at any point in time, both as a language-learner and as a a person. Example: a really smart 4 year old might be able to have almost-fluent conversations when they’re well-rested, but less so if they’re tired and cranky. This is normal – we all struggle to think when we’re exhausted, and it feels good when people care enough to offer accommodations no matter what age you are.
(Note: In cases where the child is using age-inappropriate babytalk (eg a seven year old talking like they’re three), that’s often indicative of separate issues – yes, sometimes it is problems with speech development (solution: consult a pediatrician), but sometimes it’s just that they’ve learned that Being Cute And Small is an effective tactic for getting their way (which, frankly, is evidence of pretty complex cognitive reasoning and keenly-developed interpersonal skills, both of which are good to have. The solution there is to set firmer boundaries so those keen interpersonal skills get practice navigating not just “what to do in order to get what I want” but also the higher-level boss battle of “what to do when I DON’T get what I want”).)
For more information, here and here are a couple articles that cite a number of recent studies.
NOW, to return to the original video – he IS ACTUALLY using a form of baby-talk. He’s deliberately trying to be funny by having a super deep existential conversation with an infant, and even though he’s not using high-pitch or the sing-song pattern, he is using a broader dynamic range than typical for adult-to-adult speech, he’s emphasizing emotion in his tone of voice (to an adult speaker, this would read as “enthusiasm”), he’s making lots of eye contact, and he’s doing a lot of paralinguistic exaggeration – note his nodding/expressive head movements, widened eyes, and the acrobatics he’s doing with his eyebrows. The kid’s astonished expression is because they have NO CLUE what this man is babbling (compare to the panic-moment of “omg bro slow down” when your foreign-language teacher has you do a listening exercise in class and says something really fast), but they’re transfixed by what he’s saying because there are aspects of his speech register that are STILL age-appropriate babytalk! Which is a pretty cool human brain trick, eh? Really goes to show how INSTINCTIVE this is. 10/10 would trust him with an infantI looked it up on my blog and I reblogged this video back in April 2016. That means that baby is at least 7 now, probably closer to 8 at this point.
(via sharkbeneaththelotus)
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it also made me very sad at one point one of the kids said her dad was being hateful towards drag queens and that he had a very skewed/incorrect view of what a drag queen was and wouldnt listen to her and told her she was “too naive” when she tried to explain
and i replied “if i remember correctly when youre at this age it seems adults will wave off any of your life experiences even if they lack their own because they refuse to see those younger than them as their own people” and EVERY SINGLE KID AT THE TABLE turned and said EXACTLY
and i was like. oh. so i wasnt alone in that. but also. i dont have to BE that. im not doing that. im listening and actually talking to them. i hope that there are older people in their life doing the same.
um. i dont know how to say. please listen to the children in your life. its true sometimes youll know better but, often times they have perspectives we may miss and dismissing them hurts everyone in the end. we have so much we can share and learn together.
(via little-smartass)
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catherine tate rocking up to doctor who with a background in sketch comedy and knowing literally nothing about the show; giving one of the most nuanced, tragic performances in the entirety of sci-fi history; and then dipping after one season with an absolutely horrifically devastating character ending is icon behavior i don’t make the rules
(via snoozingcat)
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