Does the black moon howl?

this asks more questions than it answers. they don’t really have vestigial legs, like those aren’t even motile fins, so why do they still have fully formed hips, why hasn’t the pelvic bone changed significantly? and where did the tail come from?



[proto whale]



[orca skelly]

whales as we know them evolved from land animals that went back out to sea, and it’s all spine all the way down to the tail fin. the pelvis is vestigial to the point of being tiny and unrecognizable, and the rear leg structure is //gone//. and by the time they evolved all that, their forelegs had turned into proper fins and they didn’t have hourglass figures, because they built up walls of insulating fat and blubber where it was needed most - around the vital organs.



[walrus skelly]

which brings us to the walrus. as you can see the skeletal structure and the external appearance are fairly ursiform - the rear legs are basically still in there forming the tail, and the pelvis is intact, and above that it may as well still be a land animal. if mermaids did exist, as hominids who went back out to sea, and if they hadn’t evolved into basically dolphins, then a walrus skeletal system, complete with vestigial thigh bones inside a kind of muscle skirt, and with significant fat and blubber deposits //on the main body// would be most likely. which is to say, mermaids with human torsos and seagoing lower bodies would waddle around on their tails, have clearly defined thigh structures, and would be a hell of a lot rounder above and about the waist than they’re usually depicted.

which begs the question, then, if you see a mermaid and it’s a skinny little thing with a slinky waist and an eel-like tail and a perfect bosom and a coy smile, //why does it look like that//? because whatever that is? it is not a land animal that readapted to the sea. it is not your distant kin. it is a sea creature that adapted //to get your attention//.

maybe it’s all an illusion, a frilly mane, an hourglass shape, and narrow antennae that mimic the shape of human arms, waving lonely sailors into the water, only to realize too late the bioluminescent patterns of lipstick and pert breasts are to distract from what lies behind them - viselike jaws and row after row of stiletto teeth.

or maybe it’s all soft tissue, the gelatinous bell of a jellyfish folded into a pleasing shape, luring the unwary down to be caught up in a tail that is nothing more than thousands of barbed lines of stinging neurotoxin cells.

or it could be that the tail goes deep into a shadowy well, and the beautiful woman is a mask for a single enormous jaw, the internal skeleton just the endless spine and ribs of a vast and hungry sea snake.

or, perhaps most terrifyingly, the face is real but not the face of the eyes looking out of it - a human mask for an intelligence both cold and calculating, wearing an inviting smile to bring you within reach of the dagger behind it’s back. waiting to slice the skin off of you because it needs a new disguise, because it is shaped like you but does not look like you, because it must pass as you so it can go among you, so that by starlight it may go on land and into town, where your kin are sleeping, unsuspecting.

Jesus Christ back up a minute buddy
I am 100% on board with eldritch horror mermaids.
Can I set up something to just reblog this every time I see it? Like automatically? Because this is perfect and I love this.
Like I needed more reasons to be afraid of deep water..
My phobia of the ocean thanks you.
Dont be afraid , theres always a bigger fish that eats mermaids .

Side note I hate the term “person of colour (POC)” Can we not divide the world up into white and not white? It’s just the term coloured making a comeback but this time it’s the “progressives” using it. If we keep focussing on skin colour it’s just going to keep dividing people. It’s the most nonsensical way to divide up people who don’t always fit neatly into the category of coloured and not coloured. It’s why people have bizarre fights over are jews white? What about Greeks and the other ethnically ambiguous regions of europe? What if you are from a background not considered white but you look very white like that racist diversity officer Bahar Mustafa? What if you are mixed race? What about asians? Some have very light skin and some have fairly dark skin are some asians people of colour and others not? Or do they get automatically included because they are not white?

The Duluth model defined who is the aggressor in domestic abuse cases.

1 lb bacon
cut pieces into 1 inch squares
bake at 375 for 15 minutes to make bacon chips

Shred rotisserie chicken
pour in 1 cup hot sauce
put in 8 ounces of cream cheese (softened)
pour in 1 cup of ranch
Add 1 cup of cheese
Mix well

Pour it all into a crockery dish
Bake in an oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes
Serves with bacon chips, tortilla chips, celery stalks and carrots.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/janet-bloomfield/2014/08/5-legal-rights-women-have-that-men-dont/

Stages of Deterioration in the Human Body

The Moment Of Death:
1. The heart stops.
2. The skin gets tight and ashen in color.
3. All the muscles relax.
4. The bladder and bowels empty. 
5. The body temperature begins to drop 1 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit per hour.

After 30 minutes:
6. The skin gets purple and waxy.
7. The lips, fingernails, and toenails fade to a pale color.
8. Blood pools at the bottom of the body.
9. The hands and feet turn blue.
10. The eyes sink into the skull.

After 4 hours:
11. Rigor mortis has set in.
12. The purpling of the skin and the pooling of the blood continue.
13. Rigor continues to tighten muscles for another 24 hours or so.

After 12 hours:
14. The body is in full rigor mortis.

After 24 hours:
15. The body is now the temperature of the surrounding environment.
16. In males, the semen dies.
17. The head and neck are now a greenish-blue color.
18. The greenish-blue color spreads to the rest of the body.
19. There is a pervasive smell of rotting meat.

After 3 days:
20. The gas in the body tissues forms large blisters on the skin.
21. The whole body begins to bloat and swell grotesquely.
22. Fluids leak from the mouth, nose, vagina, and rectum.

After 3 weeks:
23. The skin, hair, and nails are so loose they can easily be pulled off the corpse.
24. The skin bursts open on many places on the body.
25. Decomposition will continue until the body is nothing but skelital remains, a process that can take a month or so in hot climates, and two months or more in cold climates.

Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire, through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought and a whole terrible wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex - monsters are real.

I won't lie, I'm sick and fucking tired of people fishing for excuses to hit children, especially the tired old saw that "Kids don't have any respect for adults these days. I got an ass whooping and I turned out fine!"

You are LITERALLY DEFENDING YOUR RIGHT TO HURT CHILDREN.

So, this is my masterpost about all the studies, articles, videos and the like that show mountains of evidence proving that hitting your child is a STUPID THING TO DO.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and The American Psychological Association oppose striking a child or adolescent for any reason.
(http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/101/4/723.full)

35 developed nations have banned corporal punishment at home.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/us-states-legal-to-hit-kids_n_5829732.html)

Children who were physically punished were more likely to endorse hitting as a means of resolving their conflicts with peers and siblings.
(http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx)

As 5-year-olds, the children who had been spanked were more likely than the nonspanked to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, become frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against other people or animals.
(http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983895,00.html)

2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.
(http://www.livescience.com/7895-children-spanked-iqs.html)

Participants who experienced physical punishment were 59 percent more likely to have alcohol dependence, 41 percent more like to have depression and 24 percent more likely to have panic disorder, compared with those who received no physical punishments.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/spanking-children-linked-to-mental-health-disorders_n_1643422.html)

Injury Prevention & Control : Division of Violence Prevention
(http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/)

Violence – a family tradition | Robbyn Peters Bennett | TEDxBellingham
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLMJHdySgE8)

Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
(http://www.alfiekohn.org/unconditional-parenting-dvd/)

Spanking Kids Can Make Them More Aggressive Later
(https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Spanking-Kids-Can-Make-Them-More-Aggressive-Later.aspx)

Spanking Linked to Mental Illness
(https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Spanking-Linked-to-Mental-Illness.aspx)

The scientific evidence against spanking, timeouts, and sleep training
(http://qz.com/310622/the-scientific-evidence-against-spanking-timeouts-and-sleep-training/)

How Spanking Harms the Brain
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201202/how-spanking-harms-the-brain)

Ending Corporal Punishment: Why you should never spank a child
(http://mobile.philly.com/blogs/?wss=/philly/blogs/birth-breath-death/&id=257392161)

The Science Of Spanking: What Happens To Spanked Kids When They Grow Up?
(http://www.upworthy.com/the-science-of-spanking-what-happens-to-spanked-kids-when-they-grow-up)

Circle of Security Animation
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wpz8m0BFM8)

Neglect In Childhood Leaves Marks On Brain
(http://www.iflscience.com/brain/neglect-childhood-leaves-marks-brain)

The First Real-Time Study of Parents Spanking Their Kids
(http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/28/would-you-record-yourself-spanking-your-kids/)

How Child Abuse Primes the Brain for Future Mental Illness
(http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/15/how-child-abuse-primes-the-brain-for-future-mental-illness/)

Childhood abuse hurts the brain
(http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/05.22/01-brain.html)

Social Justice for Children: To End Child Abuse and Violence Against Children
(http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/childrensstudies/conference/pdf/Straus_transcription_8_16_12.pdf)

How child abuse and neglect damage the brain
(http://www.snapnetwork.org/psych_effects/how_abuse_andneglect.htm)

Why Spanking Doesn’t Work
(http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/06/why-spanking-doesnt-work/)

Some things hugs can’t fix: Parental warmth does not remove anxiety that follows punishment
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150316165949.htm)

Two Universities 50-year Spanking Study over 150k Children: Turns out Spanking is ineffective.
(http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/04/27/50-year-study-finds-spanking-doesnt-work/) )https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5xin1GErsVTaE1LQjFRczBBc0E/view)



“RESULTS: Forty-four percent of the mothers reported spanking their children during the week prior to the study and they spanked them an average of 2.1 times that week. The more spanking at the start of the period, the higher the level of ASB 2 years later. The change is unlikely to be owing to the child’s tendency toward ASB or to confounding with demographic characteristics or with parental deficiency in other key aspects of socialization because those variables were statistically controlled. CONCLUSIONS: When parents use corporal punishment to reduce ASB, the long-term effect tends to be the opposite. The findings suggest that if parents replace corporal punishment by nonviolent modes of discipline, it could reduce the risk of ASB among children and reduce the level of violence in American society.”

-

** ASB stands for antisocial behavior which is deviant, disobetiant and destructive behaviors - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9265876/

“ The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.”

- https://news.utexas.edu/2016/04/25/risks-of-harm-from-spanking-confirmed-by-researchers

“The use of physical punishment to discipline children has been linked to a range of mental health problems and is strongly opposed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

- https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/Spanking-Linked-to-Mental-Illness.aspx

"According to research, people who suffered corporal punishment as children are more likely to engage in violence with their adult romantic partners."

- https://spr.confex.com/spr/spr2017/webprogram/Paper25446.html

STOP HURTING CHILDREN.

The power in words is given to them by the people who give them power. Nothing else.

When I die, I want a closed casket funeral.
Halfway through the ceremony, I want them to start playing 'Pop Goes the Weasel' at increasingly louder intervals until everyone is sitting there in horrified, expectant silence, waiting to see if I pop out of the casket.
Because I can.

What is 'Social Justice'?

Justice is a legal concept. Defining it in a legal sense is a simple matter, we need only look at what is written within the body of the law itself and ask “Do the rights, privileges and duties outlined here apply equally to every individual?” The legal definition of justice is straightforward. The idea of “Social Justice” however takes this concept out of its original legal context and attempts to apply it in an area for which it was not designed: society in general. While legal justice is easily defined as the equal application of the law (whatever that law may be) Social Justice is a sort of phantom for which no clear objective definition truly exists. The most dangerous type of idea is a vaguely defined one; for it is never known what may ultimately lie behind it, and in addition to this, it may be adapted and exploited for all sorts of purposes. There is safety in specificity. But while we may not know precisely what Social Justice is, we understand what it seeks to accomplish in principle. Its premise is the notion that there is some species of “injustice” within the private actions of individuals in the civil society that must be rectified by state  laws and policies.

To put it another way, it is about the state regulating morality within the civil society. But the use of the word “morality” (in the phrase “regulating morality”) is extremely unappealing from an aesthetic standpoint. Therefore the word “justice” is borrowed from its legal context and applied metaphorically here to the civil society. The government getting involved in a matter of “justice” sounds far more appropriate than the government getting involved in a matter “morality”. Unfortunately, it is this case a distinction without a difference.