tbh when I ran into the “horses are for rich people” bullshit I was so confused because they’re cheaper than a motorcycle? cheaper than an iPhone? then I realized most people weren’t dealing with the $900-$3k auction slaughterhouse bound pasture ornaments I grew up riding. I get that they’re extraordinarily cost prohibitive pets, especially if you don’t live in an area where land is as cheap as the dirt but you say ‘horse’ and I’m like. oh yeah.

horse.

like ohhhhhhh. you meant an $18k+ thoroughbred that is somehow more inbred than any of these 3 sad little equines. haven’t encountered many of those.

also it is so interesting to talk to these people about how they got their horses. I met a woman who had a really beautiful white gelding and I asked her how she got him and she proceeded to explain to me he was mauled by a pack of feral dogs (common in my area) and his elderly owner didn’t have the money to get him treated or the desire to put him down so he was giving away this poor baby on a first come first serve basis. one of my mom’s neighbors inherited an elderly horse from his ex girlfriend and had the horse on essentially horse hospice for years and the horse was just not ready to go. there is a horse distribution system like the cat distribution system.

the term “never look a gift horse in the mouth” is still relevant and there are still people trying to gift you horses with terrible dental issues. for free.

I love telling people that my mum bought my family’s first horse at a yard sale. We lived in a really rural area at the time and yeah, our neighbours (next ranch/farm over) had a yard sale and sold off three of their old ranch horses. She bought one for $200, led it down their lane and then up our lane and tada we had a horse in our back pasture!

Mr Mustang was $400 from the Bureau of Land Management.

Pal was $900 from my godmother who had some vet bills to clear up.

And that’s the ones we paid for. We had a whole suite of elderly horses while I was growing up that we just got for free. Elderly school horses who were retiring or old kids ponies with asthma in need of a good home to live out their days. They were great horses who had a ton to teach me.

There is absolutely a horse distribution system like the cat distribution system, you just need to be in the right place and also be happy to have an older horse with probably some health issues (and definitely terrible teeth).

Conspiracy theorist discovers basic geometry

citing wikipedia is harsh but citing khan academy is going for the fucking jugular

hey, sex pervert question: do you ever think about me even when im not present

Sewing Beginner Traps

i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better

are you really bad at it or are you in "good at it" spaces

"are you really bad at it or are you in 'good at it' spaces" has derailed so much self-hate since I read it

this is a load bearing sentence in my psyche and I can't believe it's only 2 months old

brooding men who cannot communicate their feelings if their life depended on it are only hot when they're fictional. if i have to deal with one in real life i will curse him and pray for his downfall every night before i go to bed

It's because the writer communicates their feelings for them. If people wanna pull that off in real life they need to hire a guy to walk around behind them narrating.

#can i be the guy#ill narrate SO incorrectly#theyll all learn how to talk for themselves just to shut me up (via @cirrus-grey)

i'm loving the implication that this isn't something they hired you for, but something you'd do as some sort of public service.

Ah these children who always create problems for poor mothers....

Let's hold up traffic with mama!

Ya know what I should kidnap a princess it's been awhile since I've done something fun for myself

Okay so it's been a few months since I kidnapped the princess and uh. No one has come to try to rescue her yet. Like at all. I sent a spy to the kingdom and they just don't care. Like they know she's gone and they're not bothering. She's been crying for a few days straight now. Idk what I'm supposed to do here.

An update on the princess. She kinda broke and was very... hollow for a bit there. It took some time to get her interested in learning magic but she eventually came around to it. I'm trying to goad her into reaping bloody vengeance on the family that abandoned her but she's just been really focused on her studies. Maybe once she's more capable, she is still a beginner after all.

It's been a couple of months and the princess' progess on her magical studies is absolutely *stellar* I swear this kid is a generational prodigy she's already bent a Cambion to her will and is casting higher level necromancy and evocation spells. She's such a good apprentice. Is this what it's like to be a proud dad? I'm buying her a gift. Teenage girls enjoy tomes full of dark rituals and such, yeah?

the early-mid 2010s YA book scene was so funny because all the most popular stuff was fantasy and dystopian series with high drama and world-ending threats and then there was like. john green.

it was weird for me too.

ALWAYS go to the county fair. Today in the fine art exhibit I saw the execution of Lady Jane Gray but drawn like she was in minecraft.

Went to the ag fair this weekend and found the decapitated cardboard head of Jax The Amazing Digital Circus

Scientists didn’t know. It should be “Scientists just found out”

There’s actually been a load of vitriol leveled against folks who try to raise traditional colored cottons, because a lot of cotton growers don’t want the colored cottons cross-pollinating with their standard white cotton.

But anyway cotton can be grown in lovely natural shades of greens, reddish-brown ochres, and browns, all of which deepen with a good boil in water with a bit of washing soda thrown in.

The color obviously doesn’t fade or run, because it’s not dye. It’s the intrinsic color of the fiber itself.

I....I want clothes made out of those colors. They don't hurt my brain!

Aren’t they lovely?

I’m biased because I love the natural earth tones of many fibers, of course...browns, blacks, creams, copper-reds, ect...but I think they’re just gorgeous.

https://www.vreseis.com/shop

If anyone wants to know where you can get yarn or cotton like this!

Scientists did not "just find out", and this is more of the same anti intellectual bs as the post that goes around claiming archaeologists were too stupid to know that hair could be sewn for elaborate styles.

Anyway, scientists DID figure out how to grow colored cotton. They genetically engineered it to be bright fuckin pink, and they didn't "just find out" about it, they already knew which is literally what inspired them to attempt the thing they just accomplished. Begging y'all to stop pretending that scientists don't know things, don't have interests, don't grow up in farming communities or have family who taught them this. Scientists are people. Do you seriously think people who use genetic engineering to make eco-friendly pink cotton don't know anything about textiles?

Anyway. Bright pink cotton without dyes, because science is awesome

Yes. CSIRO scientist Doctor Colleen MacMillan led the team that figured this out. They used tobacco plants for testing because of the genetic similarity. Basically if the tobacco leaves produced colors when injected with a bit of the experimental genetic material, the scientists on the team already understood that the color change would affect cotton bolls as well.

They grew bright red and bright yellow in a petri dish.

And yes, Doctor MacMillan knows lots of things. Here's a list of some of her publications.

@csirogram on Instagram

Additionally folks are researching how to create flame resistant cotton and black cotton. If a variety of black cotton becomes viable, it can stop a LOT of environmental damage caused by chemical manufacturing of black dye.

telling people about the adventure zone is hard because how can i convince them it features one of my favorite loves stories when the way i describe the characters makes them out like this

nuclear power is impressive until you get up to why. "we use the most precisely engineered machinery ever created to split atoms to release energy" oh yeah how come? "boil water to turn a fan" get the fuck out

The power of atom turns out to be, yet again, the power of steam

I must not explain the joke. Explaining the joke is the joke-killer. I will face my followers who did not get the joke. I will permit them to pass over me and through me

you are making this so difficult