@sequintial / sequintial.tumblr.com
i understand why writers keep their alien worldbuilding relatively simple for story practicality reasons but its always a lil funny to me when a sci-fi series is like "this alien species is a culture of bounty hunting warriors" like damn all of them? the whole planet? a whole planet-scale society built on bounty hunting? that seems highly impractical but i'll believe it for you bestie.
One thing that's so underrated about PHM is Eva Stratt's appearance. She doesn't have the lipstick, sleek bun, pencil skirt (or even pantsuit), and heels look that is so often the uniform of female characters in similar roles. She doesn't wear makeup (as much as any other actor). She wears her hair down or in the simplest ten-second buns. She wears softs, easy to move in clothes that are weather appropriate. Why would she spend extra time making her physical body less efficient?
I think we should figure out what age we’re living in now so we can say how it’s collapsing to each other
Our age of plastics is collapsing
So for those of you not familiar with my recent descent into fishkeeping, about 2 months ago a friend of mine who does Hazardous Waste cleanup (specifically cleaning up hazardous places like meth labs) called me up and asked:
"You have fish, right?"
"...Why?" I asked, having become aware that the Fish Distribution System is even more aggressive than the cat one.
"I found a fish in the back of an abandoned trap house. Alive." She clarified.
I could feel my fate settling upon my soul.
"...Send me a pic so I can ID the species and I'll see what I can do."
She sent me a picture of a small purplish squiggle in six inches of fetid green muck. But when I arrived to collect the sludge creature he turned out to look like this:
He's difficult to photograph in focus, but he's a deep wine-dark creature with an iridescent blue sheen. The red patches on his fins mirror where the fins of a Plakat/wild Betta splendens would be, and the rest of his fins are a ghostly shimmering white. This fish was in six inches of toxic green shit.
Naturally, he needed the finest tank I could put together that afternoon.
I think I did alright.
He's so fucking cute. He always swims up to watch when anyone approaches. I've got him trained to do a little dance when I feed him. He likes watching me doing anything in front of his tank.
That's all actually pretty typical of Bettas- they're very intelligent and curious creatures and like learning, which is more than I can say for some of my relatives.
Where Upstairs Kevin (so named because his tank is in my upstairs bathroom) really shines is that a lot of Bettas are... Not sociable. They often eat shrimp, attack other fish in their tank (or get stressed out of they can't commit enough violence to maintain their personal space) or constantly harass and nip the snails in their tanks. Most Bettas are genuinely happier being alone.
Kevin fucking loves his snail (Bluebert) and will shimmy as fast as he can over whenever Bluebert falls off something (it's fine, this is a normal way for mystery snails to get from one place to another).
When I had my Nego D'Aguas in the holding tank, I had to put three of the smallest ones in with him because they were being harassed in the small tank, and he was a perfect gentleman with them. He was trying very hard to shoal with them, but they're very zippy. He was visibly upset (lethargic, dulled colors) when I moved them back to the big tank.
Today was the real acid test: I'm going to move him from his 5 gallon to the 10 gallon so I can use the 5 as a hospital/spare plants tank, and I needed to know if I could have shrimp in with him. Even Betta that are cool with other fish can still see a shrimp and decide they're at the buffet. Unfortunately, there's no real way to know without putting shrimp in with the Betta.
So earlier today, I got half a dozen super-discounted Rilli shrimp (LFS has a massive overstock of them for some reason) and added them to his 5 gallon. There are a bunch of hiding places for shrimp in there and if he was aggressive with them I'd move him to the 10 gallon immediately (I don't want to do that just yet because I need to move the furniture around in there a bit).
Friends.
The shrimp are fully swimming in the open and Kevin is just following them around, curious, but only curious. No gill-flaring, no posturing, no lunges or snapping. Some of them are red, a color that normally triggers aggression in Bettas, and he's just. Hanging out, watching them eat biofilm off the moss. One of them accidentally landed on his head and stayed there for 3 seconds and he only went "???" Until it took off again.
My beautiful and perfect and son who is so kind and gentle with his tiny friends.
One of the most photogenic tornadoes in history
South Dakota, June 2025. Video by eye.of.ty
potentially controversial but i don't think "male sexuality is inherently predatory (and so if you don't want to be predatory, you're probably a girl)" is a winning feminist take. i actually think it's exactly the opposite and we should really be avoiding the implication that predatory misogynistic behavior is biological and not social in nature
this is just “boys will be boys” used to defend misogynistic behavior under the assumption it’s biological and not a choice resulting from misogyny never being socially punished, but with a coat of paint on it to sound woke
socialized behavior argument aside i just also do not think this is true beyond shitheads who are obviously not representative of the general population. some boys just had good parents idk what to tell you
this is one of those things where it’s like, “damn that sucked and shouldn’t have happened to you but it does seem like you’re turning your bad experience into political beliefs and you can’t be doing that”
[obediently] I Will Follow 1kg Bag Of Citric Acid On TikTok
real question i just had to answer for my top surgery screening
“The authors find that, following transition, a statistically significant earnings decrease is experienced by MTFs (-11%) while there are no significant changes to the earnings of FTMs.”
Geijtenbeek and Plug (2018)
“They found that there was a statistically significant decrease of -12% in earnings following MTFs transitioning from male-to-female and an insignificant increase of +7.5% for FTMs following their transition from female-to-male.”
Schilt and Wiswall (2008)
“these papers provide evidence consistent with a traditional cisgender pay gap, with ‘maleness’ enjoying an earnings premium over ‘femaleness’ in the workplace. These findings also jibe with qualitative research on FTMs experiences of transitioning while in the workplace, where they report feeling more respected and their human capital more highly valued following transition to male”
Connel (2010), Dozier (2005), Schilt (2006).
“The wider social science literature has documented greater negative feelings and prejudice against MTFs compared with FTMs, particularly by cisgender men.”
“The incomes of MTFs who begin living full-time as female at a younger age are lower than those who wait, while the incomes of FTMs who begin living full-time as male at a younger age are higher. These findings are consistent with the wider research on the differences in labour market returns experienced by cisgender men and women.”
Matthew Shannon (2022)
These are all important studies! They also all have their flaws, and some are being misrepresented within the context of this post.
For example, the Schilt and Wiswal 2008 study only consists of 18 MtF workers and 25 FtM workers. This is an incredibly small sample size that cannot be used as representative of larger trends.
In the Geijtenbeek and Plug 2018 study, they find that "FTM workers earn significantly less than other men and MTF workers earn significantly more than other women." This contradicts other wage pay studies that show trans people of all genders earn less than cis people.
Also, important to note that this study only observes, "those transsexual individuals who go through hormone replacement therapy, sex reassignment surgery, and the legal process of changing one’s administrative gender." This is absolutely not representative of trans people in general. Particuarly in a country such as The Netherlands - where this study takes place - and where medical and legal transition is more accessible than in many other countries.
Your third paragraph is a quote of a paraphrase, making it hard to determine where exactly it came from.
The Matthew Shannon 2022 study I feel is the most misrepresented within the context of this post. The quote you gave is accurate, but the same paper says, "those who were assigned female at birth have significantly lower incomes and are more likely to work part-time than those assigned male at birth." So even with the advantages gained by transitioning young for FTMs, the overall trend is still that they earn less than those assigned male at birth.
These studies do show some interesting patterns! It's undeniable that being legally male and being percieved as male in the workplace has its benefits, and that includes for some FTM workers. But the context with which you presented these studies was dishonest, making it appear as is this is a trend that applies to trans people more broadly, when in reality is applies to much more particular groups. It also leaves out the fact that trans men are still disadvantaged in comparison to cis men.
I recognized the Matthew Shannon one and remembered I had a screenshot showcasing some of the data
The weighted average yearly income of trans women in this study was $53,550 and $38,130 for trans men
Researchers found that their first hypothesis in "Cultural and Personally Endorsed Stereotypes of Transgender Men and Transgender Women: Notable Correspondence or Disjunction?" (Link)— that "the cultural stereotype of transgender women was expected to be significantly more negative than that of transgender men based on previous research[…] was not supported." Instead, they note that "transgender men were found to be subject to a more strongly negative cultural stereotype than were trans women." It also notes that there are studies that found trans women face more prejudice, while another had found no difference. The second hypothesis, the theory that participants personal endorsement of stereotypes against trans women would be stronger, was also not supported by the data. However, there is an overrepresentation of cis women in the sample (75%)
oh hey this mirrors some similar results found in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
crunching the numbers (with a few variations; obviously since we don't have the raw data we can't 100% rely on these estimates, but there are still certain conclusions that are mathematically impossible. I just took the low and high ends of each category. the distribution might look totally different, but based on one of the tables towards the beginning that shows the full income breakdowns, it seems like every category skewed to the lower ends in a fairly even way, so I don't think this kind of estimating is going to be dramatically inaccurate. just don't take these numbers as gospel. which you shouldn't be doing anyways)
some other notable income-related parts:
this video has been going around for a while but the English subtitles didn't match the energy of the spoken French at all. i had to fix it.
reblog to spread this version
The amount of slavery in Ancient Rome was legitimately terrifying tbh
Y’all know that I’m into ancient Roman history and I do a lot of research on it but even though I should be used to it by now sometimes I read an anecdote about how an individual slave was treated and I’m hit with the realization that like a third of the population was living like that and I just need to put my head in my hands for a second
Emperor Hadrian randomly stabbed a slave in the eye in a fit of rage and he was supposedly unusually sympathetic to slaves.
There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.
And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.
People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.
Like how many people throughout history were beaten to death because some rich asshole was angry and there was no legal or social consequences for doing so? We don’t know.
When you study ancient history you’re reminded that slavery has never once been kind or justified. It just takes on different forms of evil in every time and place that it infects.
Hey idk who needs this but helpful reminder that "virgin blood" in any witchcraft shit that requires that means "virgin" in the same sense as "virgin hair" means hair that hasn't been dyed or processed in any way, natural in the default sense. So no, "virgin blood" doesn't mean blood from a virgin, just blood that hasn't been used for any other kind of witchy shit earlier.
Whether nor not someone has fucked before is completely irrelevant. Any act of fucking doesn't instantly make someone contaminated or un-magic any of their shit. You're just not supposed to re-use blood for blood magic. That's just not. Just do not. Like that's just weird who does that.
