Hottest of hot takes, Heimdall is literally the only competent Asgardian, he’s the only one, he’s the entirety of the functioning government
Odin: (Goes off to Norway to die)
Thor: (Laying facedown in garbage) I LIVE HERE NOW
Loki: (Getting drunk with the Grandmaster) WHEN IT’S TIME TO PARTY I WILL ALWAYS PARTY HARD
Asgard: (ON FIRE)
Heimdall: (actually rescuing people from Hela’s rule, sheltering hundreds or maybe thousands of refugees, keeping her from accessing the bifrost, dealing with Evil Skeletons) NO ONE EVER HELPS ME IN THIS FUCKIN HOUSE
to remember how many feet there are in a mile, u just gotta use 5 tomatoes
five to-mate-oes sounds like five, two, eight, 0 and there’s 5280 feet in a mile
To remember how many meters there are in a kilometre you just remember “1000” because the system of measurement in the rest of the world wasn’t invented by a drunk mathematician rolling dice.
a japanese guy who made a bunch of creepy pasta videos a long time ago (you’ve probably seen Youtube666, he made that) is playing through minecraft for the first time and he’s not using any guides or anything other than the in-game guidebook and he’s fucking. doing it in such a buddhist way.
like, he’s so patient and detached from all of the stuff he’s gotten.
in the newest episode he destroyed 14566 blocks of bridge and blew up his original house just because he learned about xyz coordinates by accidentally pressing F5 and he wanted his house to be at the X:0 coordinate.
also look at this quarry. it’s his 5th quarry.
look at this absolute fucking massive hole.
and it’s not like “HELLOOOOO EVERYBODY WHAT IS UP, TODAY WE’RE GONNA BE PLAYING MIIIIIINECRAAAAFT” he’s just like. a quiet 30 year old japanese man who speaks very precisely and politely. and he even does his own english captions which are overlayed on the video and he uses emoticons like (0u0)/
he’s so wonderful and cute.
please watch at least like 5 minutes of this.
i PROMISE you you’ll smile.
i’ve been keeping track of piropito’s minecraft series since the beginning and i can promise you all 76 episodes and counting are well worth the watch because it’s incredible the LENGTHS this guy goes to learn and explore without help from others.
some highlights:
-spends literal HOURS upon HOURS building these long, seemingly endless bridges because he wants to reach “the ends of the earth”
-around episode 40, he’s learned the ins and outs of redstone but doesn’t realize you can sleep in your bed.
-the noises he makes when he’s afraid of enemies/dies are precious and gentle and not at all what you’d expect from a famous horror artist
-spends hours trading resources with villagers to get glass only to find out almost 50 episodes in that you can make glass from sand
-destroys several mountains of sand in the desert to not only fuel his love for glass, but also because “explosions are sugoi 0u0″
-sees a silverfish and
-builds a giant “machine” that runs on redstone, minecarts, and pistons that pushes colored sand through a massive glass window. it doesn’t do anything, it just pushes all the blocks to the bottom and breaks after a few minutes. piro seems very pleased with it.
-makes these complex shapes/structures in an attempt to create a nether portal, doesn’t realize it’s just a rectangle
-a fan made a skin just for him, complete with 0u0 face
-falls in lava multiple times, never gives up
-builds a giant coin pusher game for funsies
–NANI KORE?
-in short i beg of you to watch this gentle man play minecraft blind it’s so fascinating
hey everybody, welcome to another amazing installment of Weird Biology and WOWIE ZOWIE do I have an odd one for you today!
this bizarre creature is among the largest of its kind, but bears hardly any resemblance to the rest of the family. (we’re sure this gets mentioned a lot at its family holiday dinners.) it has a real mouthful of a name and the spirit of a cranky old man about to whack you in the shin with his walker.
give it up for…
I’ll just give this image a moment to sink in.
(it’s also called the small-headed softshell turtle, because scientists are a bunch of mean highschoolers.)
seriously, I don’t even really know where to START with this guy. unlike the humble regular earnest hardworking turtle, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle does not have an armored shell (hence the name). instead, its shell is soft and leathery. like a pair of well-broken-in Timblerland boots, except that the boots will not bite you.
oh, he is absolutely going to bite you.
this soft pliable shell cuts down on the turtle’s weight by a huge amount, making them far more agile in the water and faster on land than a conventional everyman turtle (this should make you worried). the flattened shape of the shell also makes them more hydrodynamic, making them faster in the water than you can possibly imagine.
for a turtle, I mean.
this is an important advantage, because the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends most of its life in the water. they live on the bottoms of sandy rivers across a wide area of central and southern Asia, where they reach sizes best described as fucking huge. adults can reach up to 45 inches (shell length only) and 260 fucking pounds (whole damn turtle).
their total body length can be over a meter. fuuuuuuuuck. a turtle that size needs a LOT of shoulder room, especially because the adults are a bunch of cranky ginormous chompmonsters. (can’t really blame them, I guess. I’d be irritable too, if my head was that small)
now imagine a cheesed-off 260-pound turtle swimming towards you at Mach Fuck.
Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtles are aggressive, and will attack anything they consider a threat (including humans, fishing boats, and probably also rocks). their primary attack is to just bite the fuck out of whatever is annoying them , but their secondary move is the one to watch out for.
when terminally pissed off, the turtle extends the full length of its surprisingly long neck and delivers a literal cannon headbutt. this attack has been documented as being powerful enough to damage fishing boats. imagine what it would do to your face. (nothing good. if you see this turtle winding up, run.)
the true face of terror.
when left to its own devices, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends its time buried at the bottom of the river, waiting for its next meal to happen by. (which it can do almost indefinitely because softshell turtles can breathe underwater, holy shit.) once another animal smaller than itself passes overhead the turtle strikes, mortally wounding the prey with its nightmare bite (no joke, the first strike usually kills instantly. this is a creature capable of taking a chunk out of your leg). it’s a pretty solid gig, if you’re a lonely grumpmonster.
beats pumping gas all day, I guess.
in fact, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends so much of its life underwater that we… don’t really know all that much about it. apart from the biting thing, I mean. the turtle has been very clear on that.
we’re not even entirely sure how long they live, though captive turtles have made it more than 70 grouchy, grouchy years. locals in India claim that in the wild individual river bastards can stick around for up to 140 years, which I am inclined to believe because these people fish for a living and they have to remember where the boat-sinking nightmare turtles live.
it’s only common sense.
despite its wide range, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle is now considered Endangered. (note: this is not allowed. what would we replace them with? large cantankerous frogs? big passive-aggressive catfish? I DON’T THINK SO.)
this is primarily due to human hunting, as the turtles are consumed in huge number throughout Asia. (humans will eat anything.)
the government of India has now moved to protect the turtle, restricting trade and moving to conserve the species. we dearly hope this will be enough to save the grumpy frumpy river grandpa.
please stay with us forever, Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle. we love your tiny tiny face and terrible attitude.
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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee to support Weird Biology.
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IMAGE SOURCES
img1- Wikimedia Commons img2- conservationindia.org img3-zoosrcool.wordpress.com img4- Joel Sartore img5- Turtle Survival Alliance img6- Turtle Survival Alliance img7- The TeCake img8- Joel Sartore
Happy International Turtle and Tortoise Week, Narrow-Headed Softshell friend! We celebrate you and hope you’re around for many more generations of shell lovers to admire!
What an excellent post about a relative of a species we highlighted in our post today for ITTW! Losing a GRUMPface this amazing would be devastating. Help save us shells!
whether or not romeo & juliet’s marriage would have worked out is not the point. rather, the point is that love cannot flourish in a world filled with hatred and an unwillingness to change, which is the main reason why modern adaptations would benefit from being about a gay couple. in this essay, i will
me: progressives should be more accepting of religious people.
conservative christians: i agree. american christians are severely persecuted by liberals.
conservative christians: i can’t even leave my house without fearing constant humiliation and persecution 😔 2 timothy 3:12
me: man, it sure is difficult to be a religious minority in america. for example, musl-
conservative christians: i know what you mean. not being allowed to turn gay people away from my restaurant basically makes me saint peter
persecute the christians it’s been 2000 years it’s their turn on the suffering again
just because american christians are capable of being really shitty doesn’t mean that all christians “deserve” persecution. christians are already persecuted all around the world. churches burned down. people are killed. it’s fucking horrific. don’t act like their suffering is deserved.
i was critiquing a very certain kind of christian. don’t twist my post.
mmmm after thousands of years of genocide and colonialism I don’t…..how you say……care.
It’s important to remember that Christianity was never exclusive to Europe. It began in the Middle East and it was being practised there and in India and North Africa while most of Europe was still polytheistic. A lot of these communities are being persecuted today, like Egyptian Copts and Iraqi Chaldean Catholics.
This isn’t to say genocide and colonialism never happened because they obviously did, and this isn’t to excuse any of the brutality, but not every Christian is a white European or North American who gets privilege because of colonial history. Which religious groups are being attacked or not really depends on where you’re talking about.
Literally 7 Coptic Christians were targeted for their faith and murdered today, so please stfu about Christian suffering as a joke(?), please. I have plenty of my own issues with Christianity (especially conservative, evangelical, and/or mission based types), but Christianity is a global religion with people of all colors, classes, and sexualities. Many of the global Christian community suffer serious threats to their safety. Even in America queer Christians suffer due to poor understandings of the text and sexuality.
These are things you should… I don’t know… care about about a human being?
Fun Vampire Fact; the reason that Vampires traditionally cannot see their reflections in a mirror is because mirrors used to be backed with a reflective layer of silver — which, as the metal of purity, would not ‘interact’ with Vampires, who are the Devil’s work.
However, modern mirrors have used aluminum as their reflective backing for many years now — and aluminum is not a ‘picky’ metal at all. So Vampires are able to see their reflections in modern mirrors.
All I can think about is a vampire used to not seeing their reflection in mirrors for centuries, and one day they are just walking along and unknowingly pass a mirror backed with aluminum and THEY NEARLY SHIT THEMSELVES.
rip tumblr 