my dad is so funny because if you actually asked him point blank if he's an ally i dont think he'd know how to respond but like a year ago he was talking about when he used to sell houses in the 90s and he was like "yeah we had a gay couple come in and i had to tell one of my coworkers to stop being rude to them. then they invited me to their housewarming party, i dont know why. after that i had a bunch of gay couples come in and specifically ask for me, isnt that weird?" and he legitimately had never connected the dots

when you download a pdf and it's called like 1328723486basdf12.pdf but then you gently rename it to what it's supposed to be. that's forming a bond with a hurt and wild mythological creature and reminding it who it is.

People are so stupid about snakes. If there's a little black racer chilling outside just leave it alone, you don't have to kill it, it's probably dealing with all your pests for you, jesus christ

Pigeon attempts to court falcon

Listen pal, the subtitles stay ON.

god I would be UNSTOPPABLE if I was capable of consistently initiating tasks. just you wait. you'll be waiting a while but just you wait

Id like to let you know that I recently lost my annotated and very well-loved copy of Fragile Things in the San Diego Airport.

Rather, I lent it to a goth kid who'd been sitting next to me and wanted to know if I had an Android charger. I did. She plugged her phone in, and a pinhole light on the screen blinked into life. We both looked at the otherwise dead screen for a moment, and I asked her where she was flying to. New York, she said.

Then she asked me what book I was reading - Fragile Things, I told her, by the same guy who wrote Coraline. What's it *about*, though, she asked again.

Im at best a mediocre writer, so I rather gave her the book than trying to explain things myself. I figure some folks get Hugos for writing stories, and I should let 'em do it.

She didnt seem to mind my scribbles in the margins, and it was fun, watching a painted face that looked so somber and serious just a few minutes ago smile. A Study in Emerald had its surprising share of humour. After a while, I stopped paying attention and scrolled absentmindedly through my phone.

Then I hear my flight called - San Diego to Philadelphia, the boarding now, group C, C as in Coconut. I grab my bag, my phone, my ticket, pat my pockets down for my passport, my overstuffed backpack, precariously balanced on my carryon luggage, my headphone wires tangled in the strap of my purse and jerked out of my ears. I trot hastily over to the gate check - a smile, a beep, and I'm shuffled down the gangway and into the plane. My things stowed, and myself cozy against the window.

This was when I went to reach for my book, and realised that it was missing - still nestled comfortably in the hands of a 15-odd goth.

I miss my book. It had many memories in it, beyond the stories told there. My grandfather was still alive when i first read Fragile Things, and he was the one who gave it to me. But I hope that the kid who has it now will also love the stories you wrote. I hope maybe she will remember me and our little story, that we now share. Maybe she will also keep other memories of her own in there.

It seems an oddly fitting way for me to part with this book. It was an old fragile thing, given to me by a fragile man, and left to a child with whom i had only a fragile, tenuous connection.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into things, i don't know.

At any rate, if you read all this rambling, thank you mister Gaiman.

I hope it was the book she needed.

Why does basil smell so fucking amazing

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- Blythe Baird

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.  Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly. The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S. This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  “What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

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my favorite scene in LotR as a kid was when Sam started miserably freestyling in the tower of Cirith Ungol and the only reason he ever found Frodo was because he deliriously tried to join in

Controversial take if I've ever heard one