the twitter thread the artist created after this was one of the best situations i have ever seen in my whole life:
Somebody give this ignoramus a piece of actual shark skin and tell him to rub his face with it, let him find out just how “smooth” sharks really are.
Somebody did. I use it as a pillowcase because it’s so smooth.
But buddy.
Shark skin feels exactly like sandpaper. It is made up of tiny teeth-like structures called placoid scales, also known as dermal denticles. These scales point towards the tail and help to reduce friction from surrounding water when the shark swims. … In the opposite direction, it feels very rough like sandpaper.
(This post is from my old account, which I deleted. It happened a year ago, but the message is still the same, so I will reblog it again in his memory. If this can help anyone, It will be worth it)
For everyone that didn’t know me before hand, this little cuddle thing here is my boy, Jormundgandr.
Jor perished two days ago. There’s nothing that we could do to help him, I’m not asking for “likes” or “follows”, but I want to explain his story. I adopted him when he was barely 30cm long. He was a Python Regius, a specie around 165cm in his adulthood. He was a baby, but even then most people considered him dangerous. Because he was a snake. Because snakes have no feelings. Because pythons are stressed easily. Almost everybody told me to keep him in his terrarium almost constantly, but it seemed unfair to me. Instead of keeping the terrarium in the humidity and heat necessary to him, I heated the entire room, so Jor could roam all over the place. His favorite spots were in my lap when I was reading or around my headbed when we were sleeping.
The first time I put him in the bureau to sleep, he grabbed a plushie and threw it to the ground. Hearing the noise, I went to see what happened, and immediately he leaped right into my arms, so I had to put him in my headrest. It being summer in my city, the temperature was adequate to him, so I promptly began to go everywhere with him, as he wouldn’t let go of my hair or clothes.
I travelled with him in the subway, went to the bank, to the supermarket, to take a drink… He usually went around my neck like a necklace or entangled himself in my hair or around my ponytail.
While I sat, he would cuddle with me. Most people were curious about a snake in the subway or in a café, but instead of becoming stressed, as he had been in the streets since a baby, he let everyone pet and grab him, sometimes even prompting himself strangers to initiate the contact. His behaviour towards me was very expressive. He recognized me out of everyone. When he was sleepy, he came to me. When he was thirsty, he told me. Sometimes he didn’t want people to pet him and he literally jumped into my arms. Jor didn’t like people touching his head, but let me kiss him on the mouth every time I was very happy or a bit nostalgic. He promptly began to sense my mood-swings and came over to me when I was a bit sad. But the most surprising was the time he sneaked on my (pun intended) friend’s cat. He saw him and wanted to play. Of course, the feline scratched him, playfully. But he didn’t bite, he didn’t attack, only curled himself up very scared. We went running to the vet, and he was fine, only a bit scratched. Only then the man noticed a little bite in his neck, from the mice that he was supposed to eat. He was so fucking docile that his own food attacked him instead of the opposite! But his scales were very bright, sign of healthy and happiness, the wounds cured quickly. But that wasn’t the surprise. When I entered the room where jor was being examined, he was curled in a little ball of misery, and then I approached him, crying. When the snake sensed my touch, uncurled, stretched his neck and deposited his little mouth to my lips, as he ever did when he felt my sadness. Jor made this same movement every time he saw me cry… And not only this. He ate with me, bathed with me, and even slept with me. Three different vets said to me that jormundgander was convinced I was his mom. In the last comic convention in my city, where I had a little shop, he came and stayed with me all day.
He was on the table, playing with the merchandise, cuddling with people and letting us dress him in little cosplays.
When tired he would simply hide in my mobile case for an hour or so and then came out again (unless there was a cat, he was terrified of them after the incident).
That day he decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble to drink from a bottle cap and began to drink directly from my lips. But a few days ago, he couldn’t breathe. Only then we found out that the little bite in his neck had healed, but let a minor infection inside him that expanded to his lungs. He was so happy all the time that his scales never faded as it happens with sick serpents and none suspected anything. And even when he was dying, with me crying as I held him in my arms, even when he was barely moving and didn’t let anyone touch him (when capable of moving), he cuddled in my lap, searching with his head to touch my skin and made little movements as if to say that he was fine. So for all the dickhead people outta here that think those animals are dangerous by birth, that they had no feelings nor are they capable of getting attached. What about all the cuddling, the baths, the shiny scales? The kisses when I was sad? Am I supposed to believe that this all was a misinterpretation? That what all the fucking people around me saw was an illusion? So I will only say one thing to everyone that says and thinks that snakes have no sentiments: That’s BULLSHIT! Maybe his feelings are way more primitive than ours, or that of dogs, but those are feelings nonetheless, and they matter. So this is the story of Jormurgander, the evidence that if you show your love to them since youth, they will return your feelings, and will be as loyal and lovely as any other pet.
Rest in peace, little Jor. I’m sure noone that has met you in your life will forget you.
First off, I’m so sorry that you’ve lost your snake. Normally I wouldn’t do this. Normally I wouldn’t invade somebody’s grief with an agenda, but what’s gone on here is very much a cautionary tale and I’d be frankly remiss if this gets traction with so much misinformation about snakes. I don’t want somebody to see this post and do what you did. This post poses a danger to other first-time snake owners. Everything you did, everything you did for your snake was dangerous. The sad fact is that this wouldn’t have happened if you had followed the care sheets and paid attention to the natural history and lifestyle of the species you chose to own. Instead, you treated him like an animal he is not- a human. I don’t doubt for one instant the love you had for your snake, but there’s a reason he died young and that reason was totally avoidable errors in husbandry. You literally loved your snake to death. Everything in your story is dangerous to snakes. Everything. I was hoping that much of it was exaggerated because had you really seen three vets who knew anything about reptiles, they would have told you that what you were doing was dangerous.
Let’s start with your basic husbandry. Ball pythons are from tropical Africa. They need high humidity and warm ambient temperatures. I really don’t think your room could support that. The warm end of his thermogradient needed to be a constant 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you honestly tell me you maintained 60% humidity and 95 degree temperatures in your bedroom? There’s a reason we keep ball pythons in terraria. It’s so we can provide safe and healthy microclimates for them. It’s so that we can control their world so that they are healthy. By forcing your snake to sleep with you and interact with you so constantly, you were taking away his ability to choose what part of a regulated microclimate he was existing in; you were forcing him to exist in this strange, uncomfortably dry world. I don’t know if you ever kept him in his terrarium- you didn’t say- but I do know that forcing him to sleep with you (instead of letting him roam around a nice big terrarium as a nocturnal animal would like to do) was extremely unhealthy. I’m going to guess that even though you say it was summer where you were he was chilly most of the time. And uncomfortable. Most of the time ball pythons like to climb, but you say he was constantly on you, cuddling. The cuddling? That’s not cuddling. When humans touch, it triggers a wave of oxytocin, the “bonding hormone.” It makes us feel good and happy.
Snakes don’t produce oxytocin.
What was happening was that you were warm. Your body temperature is 98.6 degrees, which is very cosy for a ball python. He wasn’t hugging you, he was leaching your body heat.
You taking him out in public was dangerous as well. What if some café owner had seen him and panicked and called Animal Control? Even if he’s an emotional support animal (which you did not mention him being), you don’t actually have the legally protected right to take him anywhere except on an airplane. He could have gotten sick from all the public contact. You say he wasn’t stressed, but how do you know? What do you think the stress behaviors of a ball python are?
It was also dangerous to ever allow him around a cat. Cats have gram-negative bacteria in their saliva. This gets under their claws and multiplies as they groom. Gram-negative bacteria have a protective layer that makes it harder for the immune system to fight off. As for his mice biting him… Why weren’t you feeding him frozen prey? Did you try? Let me guess, he refused to eat the frozen mice. He wasn’t not eating because he was docile, he wasn’t eating because he was constantly stressed. Snakes don’t eat when they’re scared or uncomfortable with their environment.
The shiny scales? Your snake had stuck shed. It’s not healthy for a snake to have a stuck shed. Stuck sheds are a sign of improper humidity or temperatures.
The baths were also a mistake. Snakes can’t thermoregulate like we do, so whatever temperature the water is at is what they’re stuck with. And we humans tend to run water much hotter than a snake is comfortable with. In general, you shouldn’t run the water for a snake’s bath (which should only happen rarely and when necessary- like if they have a stuck shed or crawled through their poop) any warmer than lukewarm- it should only feel mildly warm on the inside of your wrist. Tub cleaning chemicals and the chemicals in soap are also toxic to snakes, and if he consumed any of the water, even by accident, he could have fallen ill- which could have contributed to his demise.
And now I need to tell you about anthropomorphism, which is the primary reason I’m reblogging this post. Bad husbandry is correctible, but what’s really dangerous here is this mindset that your snake is as emotionally sophisticated as you think he is. Snakes don’t feel love. They can’t. They’re physically incapable of feeling love. They have emotions- aggression, curiosity, comfort- but they don’t love. You have attributed distinctly human emotions to an animal that literally does not have the brain structure or hormonal presence to feel these things. Even a mammal wouldn’t display many of the behaviors you attribute to this snake’s conscious decisions. Snakes can’t read your mind. They can maybe pick up on some body language- if you’re big and threatening, the snake will be scared, for instance, but he wasn’t picking up on your mood swings. He was just a snake doing snakey things. But by reading into his behavior with these human emotions, you created this image of a snake in your mind that’s more akin to the behavior of a snake in a fantasy novel. Snakes have emotions, but not the ones attributed in this post.
That snake didn’t think you were his mum. Ball pythons have no interactions with their parents post-hatching and there’s no evidence that they even recognize their parents. Snakes scatter pretty quickly because adult snakes of many species will eat baby snakes. I don’t actually believe that three vets told you in earnest that you were his mum- and if they did, I’d like their names so that the reptile community can know that these vets support dangerous anthropomorphism and make their veterinary choices accordingly. Responsible vets would never tell you that it’s ok to free-roam a ball python in a bedroom.
The kisses? Weren’t kisses. They were just your snake booping you with his face. My snake does that too and it’s not because he loves me, it’s because my mouth smells interesting and he’s curious. Snakes are gloriously curious and that’s part of the charm of owning one- to see how their natural behaviors allow them to thrive in our care. That’s if we provide what they need for their existence. There are millions of happy, healthy pet ball pythons in this world and none of them are sleeping with their owners. Instead, they’re living in terraria. They’re not jumping into their owners’ arms or kissing them on the lips; they’re engaging in natural behaviors in an unnatural environment and exploring things to satisfy their own curiosity, not your emotional needs.
So, yes. This was a misinterpretation. This was you placing human emotions on a snake. Everybody makes mistakes, but I just feel that had you read a single care sheet and thought for a moment about why the widely-accepted care practices are so widely accepted, this tragedy would not have happened. I hope you take this into consideration before buying another animal because keeping a snake this way will only end in the same emotionally devastating results. I know this hurts to hear- I know you really, truly loved your snake and you did what you thought was best for him. But sometimes what we think is the best because of our emotions isn’t the best for their care. Their physical well being depends on us. They can’t make choices about their care- they are pets. They don’t have that agency. It’s up to us as pet owners to do what’s right, and sometimes that means putting our emotions and desires aside for the sake of their physical health. Trust me, nobody knows that better than me. I lived this.
This is Kaiju. The love of my life. The best thing that’s ever happened to me.
She’s an Argentine black and white tegu, and I thought that I could free-roam her safely and happily. I set things up so that she had humid hides, hot spots, everything. This decision was made with what I thought was her best interest in mind- I thought that because she’s a big, active lizard that free-roaming would be good for her.
And then I saw this.
And I almost threw up when I did. This is an x-ray of Rex, a tegu who had been free-roamed for much longer than Kaiju. His owners treated him like a king- they gave him what he wanted to eat and let him roam and live with them like part of the family. But this took a toll on Rex, a price paid by his arthritic joints and digestive system and kinked spine. A price he could have paid with his life. I knew then that even though I was trying so hard to take good care of my baby, she was going to suffer if I kept things up. So I went out and got an enclosure and got honest with myself about what she really needed and got over my own ego and ideas to provide what was best for her, not me.
I’m so sorry to be the bearer of this bad news, but it’s the truth. We choose to bring these animals into our home; we take them and we make them ours, and providing the proper environment for them to thrive is the least we can do. This is truly the danger of anthropomorphism; when you start attributing these impossible emotions to your pets, you run the risk of forgetting who and what they really are.
I’m really sorry for your loss, OP, but I’m afraid @kaijutegu is completely right. Everything you did for your snake out of misplaced love killed it. Even in the few pictures you’ve provided, I see layers of layers of stuck shed, he’s covered in bite marks from his mice, he’s horridly underweight…
The thing is? I do the things I do for my ball python out of love. It’s because I love Kirill like a son that I keep him in his enclosure, that I neurotically check his temperature and humidity, that I feed him frozen/thawed and I don’t touch him AT ALL for days after he eats, because I know what I want and what he needs are often different things.
If you’d taken your bap to even one reputable herp vet, they would have torn you a new one for the horrible husbandry practices you’ve been doing. You’ve consistently put your desires over the snake’s wellbeing - you had a narrative in your head about how he ‘really liked’ this or that, with no idea what he chemically is capable of feeling, let alone what his species actually needs. In spirit, this is very similar to vegan humans putting their cats on a vegan diet, and telling everyone how much little kitkit loves her tofu as the kitten slowly starves to death.
Please, don’t pat yourself on the back for doing a service to the public image of snake owners, or snakes-as-pets. You’ve been parading around a sick and dying animal and letting gross strangers put their germy hands all over him.
If you love your animals this deeply and this passionately, you need to be doing what is best for them, not what makes you feel the best. You had zero experience in the care and keeping of an exotic animal, and you ignored the advice of every expert in favor of what you wanted. And now you don’t have your friend anymore. And yes, that loss really sucks - but it sucks more for your snake, who was robbed of a happy, healthy life.
I’m gonna bring this back - we’ve shared it before - even though it’s often a catalyst for drama. It’s that important.
Yes, it’s a harsh set of responses to a death - but so many people were sharing the original post for the warm fuzzies and accidentally perpetuating husbandry myths that would kill so many more snakes. I stand by
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars 5.0 out of 5 stars A poetic and unusual perspective on marine invertebrates To say that biologists can learn about modern sea life from glass models made 140 years ago is to credit both worlds: the close observations of the contemporary scientist and the extraordinary skill of the late nineteenth century Dresden glassmakers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. In her book, A Sea of Glass; Searching for the Blaschkas’ Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk, Drew Harvell, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, has succeeded in bringing their glass models to life, searching to find their living counterparts. Each is a metaphor for the other. She sees the glass models as time capsules. Her favorite, the glass model of the common octopus, was carefully restored recently from many small pieces while its living counterpart also lives tenuously today, in its natural habitat. Thus this beautifully written, absorbing, purposeful and eye-opening book presents a time warp: late 19th century glass models and contemporary real specimens, studied on dives by the author in Indonesia, Italy, Hawaii, and the San Juan Islands, Washington State, as well as the low tide flats of Creek Farm, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.The author begins with a history of these Czech glassblowers, telling how Leopold’s 1853 sea voyage and his observations of jellyfish in the Atlantic, including the Portuguese Man of War, led to a fascination with invertebrate sea animals. This book restores to public view the importance of these invertebrate models which until now have been less well known than the Blaschkas’ glass flowers, notably those in the collection at Harvard University. With this book, the invertebrate sea creatures retake center stage, both for their art and for their contributions to the study of nature or, as the author puts it, the tree of life.Read more › Go to Amazon5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating in the discussion of both biology and art, jaw-dropping photos of the glass sculptures Drew Harvell’s A Sea of Glass: Searching for the Blaschka’s Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk is a braided work of non-fiction whose three strands focus on the creation of a 19th Century collection of exquisitely crafted glass replicas of marine invertebrates, the biology of the creatures themselves, and Harvell’s attempt through a series of dives to learn how these creatures, so plentiful at the time of their reproduction in glass, are doing in a world grown mostly more inimical to their existence thanks to overfishing, pollution, and most especially global warming.The Blashchkas, a father and son glassmaking team, ended up creating almost 800 of the finely detailed replicas as teaching tools for universities (they were actually more famous for their glass flowers, many of which were displayed in royal gardens). Their dedication and artistic ability can be traced through their letters and journals, through the painstaking notes they took, through the watercolors they created before attempting the same creature in glass, and through the incredible detail of the sculptures, of which experts at the Corning Museum of Glass declared that they could think of no peers, living or dead, who could have achieved the same fine work.Harvell is an excellent guide to the naturalist account of how these creatures live—what they eat and how, how they reproduce, their place in the environmental food web, etc. All of it, explained in precise, clear language is utterly fascinating, even when she describes what she acknowledges are often thought of as the more “dull” creatures, the worms.Meanwhile, her attempt to evaluate these creatures’ vitality in their current existence is highly personal and emotional.Read more › Go to Amazon
There is one very specific aspect of what’s going down in fandom right now that just boggles my mind, and that is very simply that even if I put aside my personal opinion on issues of the fandom-mainstream fourth wall and/or appropriate creator-fandom interactions, one of the first things I ever learned in my first writing class was that what I write does not belong to me.
So it was 2003, right? I was fifteen years old, almost sixteen, and I was taking an intensive fiction-writing class during the summer, for funsies, like the gigantic nerd I was (am). My class was given a new short-story assignment each week, and at the end of the week we each made enough copies of our story for the entire class and spent a full day editing and critiquing.
When it was my turn to have my story raked across the coals – and I think it’s worth noting, just so you understand that fifteen-year-old-me had uncommonly strong feelings about what she’d written, that my first short story was an extremely painful account of how my dad had died less than six months earlier, thinly disguised as fiction – this is what I, like every other teenager in my class, had to do:
I sat in a circle made up of professor, T.A., and about fifteen people my age (some of whom I liked and/or respected, and some of whom I sincerely believed had the reading comprehension and original thinking ability of banana slugs), and let those seventeen separate people talk to me and to each other about what I’d written. They went through this story that plugged directly into my heart (and which, by the way, nobody knew had any basis in reality), and talked about my grammar, my word choice, my plot arc, the humanity of my characters, how believable the story was, the subtext they read there, their speculations about what I’d been trying to say, and their recommendations for improvement…
…and I wasn’t allowed to say anything unless somebody asked me a direct question. No arguing. No corrections.
That was really fucking hard, okay? Aside from being hella humbling, it was excruciating. I had people telling me they didn’t really buy that the main character would act that way; or that such-and-such sequence of events didn’t make sense, narratively speaking; or that they really liked such-and-so antagonist; or that they found this symbolism unnecessarily convoluted or that subtext evocative. And it was my job, as a writer who had completed a text and given it away, to listen to what they were saying and take notes of my own and keep my mouth shut, even as part of my brain was shrieking stuff like, OF COURSE THE MAIN CHARACTER WOULD ACT THAT WAY BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I ACTUALLY DID! THAT IS THE ORDER THINGS ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN! THAT PERSON MADE MY LIFE A LIVING HELL AND I THINK IT’S FUCKING SICK THAT YOU LIKE THEM! I DIDN’T PUT ANY SYMBOLISM OR SUBTEXT IN THIS STORY, IT IS LITERAL AS FUCK!
But I did it, okay, and I got exactly what I wanted, which was a) some goddamn catharsis, b) what would eventually become a pretty fucking baller short story and c) to learn as much as I could about my own weaknesses and strengths as a writer.
Once you have written something and somebody else has read it or had it read to them or performed it or seen it performed, that thing does not belong to you anymore. This is Writing 101, guys. This is Creative Anything 101. This is SO BASIC. People will ask questions you think are irrelevant; they’ll fixate on details you threw in there on a whim; they’ll berate the characters you love and overidentify with and put the most effort into portraying, and they’ll love the characters you created as villains or cannon fodder. They’ll miss what you thought was the most beautiful part of your story, or the most important part. They’ll see symbolism that you think is bullshit and subtext that goes directly against what you intended to get across. They’ll see some oppressive bullshit you sure as fuck didn’t mean to put in there. They may even imagine things about you and what you were thinking and what you were trying to say. They will MAKE SHIT UP. And here’s the thing: they won’t be wrong.
It is not a good writer’s business to wade into a discussion of something they’ve created to ~correct~ people. Once you are done writing something, it stands on its own whether you want it to or not. You don’t get to get mad at your beta and/or your audience for not reacting exactly the way you wanted. If you find yourself feeling like you have to explain or correct something after someone’s made their own analysis of it, your first reaction doesn’t need to be “they probably read it wrong” but could possibly stand to be “maybe I wrote it wrong”. What you find yourself wanting to add or correct in the discussion is something that should have spoken for itself in the text. By all means, answer questions when they are put to you directly! But you can’t (and shouldn’t try to) chase down every copy of your text in the whole world and correct the notes people have made in the margins. That would be ridiculous.
So aside from the fact that I think that creators walking into fandom and throwing their weight around re: fans’ opinions of dialogue, characterization, plot arc, the actors’ talent, or anybody’s overall intentions is bullying, disrespectful, and almost sublimely missing the point of what fandom is, it’s also a fucking neon green sign of hubris, immaturity, and POOR AUTHORSHIP.
SERIOUSLY THOUGH SHE WAS MY FAVORITE BATMAN VILLAIN
Her physical condition didn’t allow her to age
No one took her seriously as an actress
And even when she was trying to get into a happy romantic relationship (albeit with another villain) he still couldn’t take her seriously as a consenting, sexually active and romantically interested adult
That’s a lot of blows to someone’s psyche
and Babydoll is both a sympathetic villain and a formidable one
I remember this episode fucked me up a a kid.
And man, do I wish we could see this Batman again: the Batman that consoles his villains, because the majority (if not all) of them are mentally ill people. And Batman knows this and wants them healthy again, not punished and GOD definitely not dead.
Baby Doll is so underrated as a Batman villain
but her episode was perfect
Batman: The Animated Series
The story of one fucked up, traumatized little boy, doing his best to help other fucked up traumatized people.
The Batman that cares about the inmates is my favorite. He doesn’t put up with their shit, but he does try to reach out here and there and he’s as human as he can be to them.
When Harley was re-institutionalized, he got her that dress she wanted.
In the comics based on B:tAS, there was a time during Christmas that there was snow and it was Mr. Freeze’s fault, and he was making it snow because Christmas was his anniversary with Nora and she LOVED it when it snowed on Christmas, so Batman let him finish mourning before calmly taking him back to Arkham.
He never, ever gives up on Harvey possibly recovering.
Sure, Batman is going to throw punches and do what it takes to take these guys down when they’re hurting or threatening people. And he’s not going be a complete bleeding heart; he has to protect the innocent. He’s going to take them down and take them back to Arkham, but it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being a bit human to the ones who deserve it.
Batman needs become human again
Because it needs to be here:
Remember that time a young girl with near god-like psychic powers threatened to destroy reality and the only one that could stop her was Batman because he had a previous encounter with her and was tasked with killing her to restore reality.
But instead, Batman sat with her on a swing and kept her company as the girl’s psychic powers slowly killed her.
[Video of venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough standing amid vegetation. On a near-horizontal branch above his head is a brown and yellow greater bird of paradise, about the size of a crow, with big floaty yellow plumage puffing out along its back.]
Bird: Pwuk. Pwuk. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: This, surely – Bird (hopping along the branch): WUKWUKWUkwukwukwukoooh. Oooh. Oooh.
[Cut. Same shot.]
Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: This, surely, is one – Bird: Kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: This, surely –
[Cut. Same shot but the bird is on the other side now and venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough has his hand on the branch.]
Bird (hopping up and down on venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough’s fingers): Eh-eh. Eh-eh. Eh-urrrr. Eh-urrrr. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: Close up – Bird (hopping away from him): Tiktiktiktik. Tiktiktiktik. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – the plumes – Bird (hopping around): Huek. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – are truly – Bird: Huek. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – exquisite. Bird: Huek. Eh-eh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: The gauzy – Bird (hopping and spinning on the spot): HukWUKWUKWukwukoooh. Oooh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: …
[Cut. Same shot but the bird is back on the original side of the branch.]
Bird: Aark. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: Of course, by the eighteenth century – Bird: Ehhh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – naturalists realized that birds of paradise – Bird (hops across to the other side of the branch) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – did have – Bird (hopping back again): Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – legs. Even so – Bird: WUKWUKWUKWukwukwukooh.
[Cut. Same shot.] Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough (apparently trying to tickle the bird’s tummy): – by about the eighteenth century – Bird (hops away and spins round) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – and so – Bird: AAAAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK aaak. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough (wearily): … Very well.
[Cut. Same shot.]
Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – but Karl Linnaeus, the great – Bird (vibrating rapidly on the spot and then flapping its wings): PWAAAAAAAK. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – classifier of the natural world – Bird: AAAAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAUUH. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – when he came to allocate a scientific name – Bird: … Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – to this bird – Bird: … Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – called it – Bird: Wooo-ooo. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – wooo-ooo – Bird (surveys the surroundings with a dignified turn of the head) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: ‘paradisia apoda’: the bird of paradise – Bird: Hoooo. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – without legs. Bird: Eh-eh.
I’ve been planning to teach students how to describe videos and write transcripts and I shall save this post for this very purpose.
Yes, I did reblog this yesterday too. It’s good.
For teaching: ???
I think I’ve skipped this video so many times in the past. Thank you, transcriptionist. Please do not skip this video again, friends. I am laughing til tears form in my eyes.
So, a little soliloquy towards the audio elitist out there. We all know, yes, that you only listen to complicated music because it’s a direct reflection of your complicated personality. Please, let’s have a long drawn-out discussion as to why your preferences are superior. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about your father. Oh, tell me about your vinyl collection. Allow me to reinforce your thoughts that I am intellectually inferior. Oh yes, the simple beautiful melody that I can dance to and makes the women swoon. Yes. Of course. How could I be so obtuse? It is inferior. You bonehead! Go masturbate to some Philip Glass. You see, in the fourth dimension it’s all about Ockham’s razor; simplicity rings supreme. Your type? Extinct, long ago. But please, tell me where you got those clove cigarettes, you emotionally retarded nerd. I’m sure you got it from a special place behind the counter at that second hand store. I’m sorry!; boutique.
Shall we listen to music together? Oh yes, you only listen to vinyl. Is it some sort of intangible audio quality that the rest of us plebeians can’t understand? Yes. I bet you turn every sexual interaction into some sort of artistic formula. (…)
Anyway, it’s not the fidelity, it’s not the 24/96K - it can be 8-bit as long as the melody is relevant. You need to stop being such a prick.
What a familiar, friendly logo, right? Truth is, it’s NOT. This is a warning to artists, freelancers, online sellers, and EVERYONE who uses Paypal at all.
Recently a family member who has been doing freelancing work for several years moved from Finland to Canada. All of his freelancing payments were made through Paypal. At the time when he moved, there were several thousands of dollars left in his Paypal account. To our astonishment, his account was frozen as soon as he tried to transfer money from his new location.
Paypal explains this simply as: ‘he looked suspicious because he was logging in, and acting from a new location.’ Which is fine, really, we understand that. But how do we un-freeze the money? Short answer: we don’t.
Long answer: due to the fact that his account was connected with a Finnish bank, which was deactivated when he left Finland (for obvious reasons), and his action of attempting to transfer money from a new IP address, all of the money in his Paypal account are now frozen and cannot be accessed. That’s it. The money’s stuck in his account, we can’t transfer it, we can’t withdraw it, we can’t use it.
But what happens to the money, then? Well, since Paypal has terrible custom service (don’t send e-mails, they won’t reply you for weeks, and even then you won’t get anything sorted), I guess whoever owns Paypal will just hope that you give up on the money eventually so they can take it.
The thing is, Paypal doesn’t tell you this is going to happen. Their prime objective, as I understand, is to gain profit. And frankly, they do it through despicable means sometimes. Our family is by no means rich, and who knows when might we need those few thousand dollars frozen in that godforsaken service? Right now, the only thing we can do is to either a) re-open a new bank account in Finland b) go to America and open a bank account there. Either way, things are looking pretty grim.
I know there are a lot of artists and freelancers and people who do business via internet and Paypal here on Tumblr. And I just want to get the word out: IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON MOVING TO ANOTHER COUNTRY IN THE FUTURE, CLOSE YOUR PAYPAL BEFORE YOU GO. And PLEASE, for the love of god, transfer your money out into your bank or something. Whether it’s university, or actually changing citizenship, once you’re settled in another country, your chances of getting to your money in Paypal is slim, it could be frozen, it will be lost.
You CANNOT change your location on your Paypal account. This means if your current location is in Finland, but you are planning on moving to Italy or some other place, you MUST apply for an new account. And PLEASE remember it’s best to deactivate your old account, or at least transfer all the money out before you move.
Remember that Paypal can freeze or block you if they ‘think’, or ‘consider’ you to be suspicious. Since nobody really knows what qualifies as suspicious, Paypal can pretty much freeze anyone. Once that happens, you can kiss goodbye to your hard earned money.
Also, Paypal actually has the following written on their webpage concerning changes in their policies (in this case privacy policies):
You do not need to do anything to accept the changes as they will automatically come into effect on the above date. Should you decide you do not wish to accept them you can notify us before the above date to close your account(https://www.paypal.com/fi/cgi-bin/?&cmd=_close-account) immediately without incurring any additional charges.
What it basically means is that they can change their policies at any time, and your account will automatically accept them, whether you like it or not, no matter how ridiculous the changes are.
There are many more problems and potential risks when dealing with Paypal, but I won’t cover them since I neither have the experience (thank god), nor the time. But there’s some further reading at the bottom of this post.
I’m sorry this turned out to be such a long rant, but honestly, I am terrified and furious at this ridiculous service. I hope that I made some sense in this rant, and hopefully it will help someone to not fall into the Paypal trap. (Once you’re in, though, nobody can help you). Please reblog and signalboost this. Having someone’s blood money lost like this is the last thing I ever want to see. It’s despicable of Paypal and more people should be aware of this fact.
TL;DR: if you are planning on moving to another country in the future, please transfer your money in Paypal OUT BEFORE YOU LEAVE. If you don’t, that money is as good as dead. Also maybe re-read their terms and conditions and be cautious of Paypal in general.
