thatstudyblrontea
Sara
Hi! This is my bookblr • uniblr • teablr, mainly focused on literature & linguistics || Header quote is from poet Anna Akhmatova, and means: «"And could you put this into words?" And I said: "I can."» ||
(main blog - may be following you for my fandom sideblog)
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Ash glazed flower gaiwan.
Made by Emilio del Pozo (@thejadeleaf on Instagram).
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Cozy Interior Aesthetic Pictures PSA (only if you care about not reblogging ai generated images)
This goes for all images really but I am seeing a sudden influx of mutuals reblogging ai art that I very much know do not want to be reblogging ai art. And it's almost entirely because, "Cute kitchen! Look at this lil cottage! Fits my aesthetic, saving that." Which is an attitude I love.
The problem is 90% of the images are clearly ai. I won't say obvious bc if you're not someone like me who just happens to have seen enough of that very specific ai imagery to recognize the vibe on sight, it isn't obvious until you do a doubletake and some fact-checking.
So!
What do we do? We want to keep sharing cute interiors! For our aesthetic! For our dream homes! But nobody likes being taken in by fakes. Knowing it is ai generated bc it is noted on the image is one thing (this never happens but pretend it does). Bc who hasn't played with a computer program to design a cute house? I have! But it's a different beast all together when the images are passed off as real places and we love those little places bc we haven't noticed what is wrong with them.
What do we do?
Keep reblogging cute interior/exterior/setting images! But before you hit the rebagel button do this one tiny, four second check: click to the original poster. Minimum 80% guarantee you will immediately find a blog filled with ai, unsourced, probably untagged art. What was hidden before now becomes wildly obvious.
And then! If you still like the image, that's fine if you want to reblog it anyways - but you are no longer taken in by it and you can do yourself and your followers after you a favor by making some little note on the post: "this is ai fyi but still cute." A little blogger beware and you're on your way!
TLDR - briefly click to op accounts before reblogging unsourced art: this is an almost foolproof way of detecting ai without having to play mind games with an image. 👏
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Please don't forget Armenians
Today is Armenian genocide remembrance day. On april 24, 1915 started mass deportations of hundreds of Armenian intelectuals and community leaders, who were (most of the time) eventually killed. Armenian women and children were systematically r//ed and forcibly converted into islam. There were more than 2 milion Armenians in ottoman empire prior to ww1, 1,5 milion of them were viciously killed. Three millennia of Armenian civilaziation in eastern Anatolis was fully destroyed. Turkey today refuses to acknowledge genocides of christian minorities in early 20th century.
Do you know that mass ethnic cleansing of Armenians in ottoman empire inspired Lemkin to coin the term 'genocide'?
Last year in september azerbaijan allied with turkey initiated a war against Armenia. More that 5000 Armenians were murdered, thousands of Armenia families had to live their ancestrial land to not get murdered. There are hundreds of vids on internet where armenian p.o.w.s are tortured. Recently azerbaijan opened a "museum" displayind dead or dying Armenians and kids were allowed to visit it.
Please educate yourself on Armenian genocide. You can also donate here to help Armenia. Thanks for reading!!
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“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
– Henry James
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The next story from The Faery Reel is… The Night Market by Holly Black!
Holly Black is one of my favorite writers and I can’t wait to see what she has included in this short story collection 🤩
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Just finished kitchen by banana yoshimoto!!
I struggle with the idea of de*ath in the last few months so this book actually comforted me a lot. If i di*e i wont feel or now it but i will float in the empties of the world, inside of nothing, feel nothing - cause i don’t exist anymore. My whole self will be gone, i wont know that its gone cause again- i wont exist anymore. At least that’s what i thought until 2 months ago. I turned my heart to religion, at least it soothed me a little. To think there is an existance outside of de*ath kept me going.
The older i get, i appreciate the ones that i love more and more everyday. I get scared even for a second to think that i wont - they wont exist anymore. This is a book to find comfort in grieving of lost loved ones. The lives we’re going to live after they’re gone.
This truely feels like a warm hug from a dear friend who is comforting you. Truly a gem.
Until this book, i never thought that i would want to read a book some other time in my life. But now, i think i found my new comfort book.
So thank you banana yoshimoto, thank you for giving me comfort which i usually find it hard.
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03.1.2024
First post of the new year! Here are some of my notes so far. I also took a trip to Cambridge and bought these cute things. The water bottle is so pretty!
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Matcha Latte cookies from NYT Cooking
From this recipe . Made without the ermine frosting. They're nice, need some color before you take them out otherwise they will be a bit underbaked. I wonder if I would be even better with almond butter instead of peanut butter? I weighed them into one ounce balls, did not press into pucks before baking.
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Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views
Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:
That is not what a happy gator looks like.
That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.
Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.
Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)
So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!
Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.
How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!
Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.
For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?
Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.
By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.
Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:
It is doing a threat display.
It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.
It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)
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It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.
There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.
In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.
It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)
Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator
So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.
Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)
Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.
As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.
Why Should I Listen To You?
Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?
Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!
But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.
Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:
Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets
The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt
Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk
Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet
Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang
Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)
Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson
Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul
Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.
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29.01.2023—i have no idea how im still going. like im honestly just impressed with myself. like you’re doing great sweetie
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'Did you hear that? That is us. That is our ancestry, our history, our story. We were never commoners, you see, we were members of the staff of the Royal Palace.' The moment passed in a heartbeat. But it did not matter. What mattered was that it existed. To be present in history, even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from being written out of it altogether. A chuckle, after all, could become a foothold in the sheer wall of the future.
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
#Arundhati Roy#The Ministry of Utmost Happiness#transgender#queer history#trans history#queer representation#cultural representation#book quotes#quotes#bookblr#books#currently reading#booklr#representation
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Shop Update - Sunday, April 21st at 4pm EST
Some more desk buddies! There are seven different kinds, all of them eager to keep you company in your humble abode! <3 They will be available in my shop on Sunday, April 21st at 4pm EST!
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1/3/24 | Wednesday
Visited the City Lights Bookstore in SF today.
Former stomping ground of the Beatniks, and where Kerouac’s novel On the Road was published in 1957.
I got lost in here for hours. The store is so well curated and I ended up getting way too many books (if such a notion exists).
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17.01.2024
it’s so snowy outside! we had a snow day today, so my friends and i got on a discord call (we were so productive. aiden was playing half-life, abe sang Soul Sister karaoke because apparently that was his “choir homework”, and ollie c. insulted my hair.) (lily did math though, so go her!) (oh yeah and i sang wonderwall)
and nothings better on a snow day than reading so i’m attempting to finish The Waves since i started it so long ago but i never had the time to finish it… ㅠㅠ… we had testing yesterday which SUCKED so i’m pretty glad to have the day off after all that. :)
🌟🎧🌟: starman by david bowie 💛
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