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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
garrettauthor
garrettauthor

D&D IS THE BEST GAME

We had two first kisses in tonight’s game.

TWO

PC “A” and PC “B” have had the SLOWEST burn romance building for the entire campaign (a year and a half so far).

Meanwhile recently PC “C” just returned home and for the last several months (a couple of weeks in-game) has had a slow burn romance going with NPC “D.”

And THEN.

And THEN my wife Meg joined the game. And she is an absolute shit-starting chaos gremlin.

So she sees both these things going on.

And her character talks to A. And she’s like, “Hey, you’ve got to make a move. You’ve got to. This is painful.”

Now A is autistic. So all the subtle hints and everything that B has been dropping, he has missed all of them because of where he’s at on the spectrum.

So he’s like, “Really? Does B want that?” And Meg is like, “Trust me, she does. But ask her first. Obviously. But then when she says yes (AND SHE WILL!) please kiss her for the sake of all the gods.”

So he asks her. And she’s super hesitant because B is just that way.

And then D uses the message spell to say, “Please god please say yes. It’s killing all of us. Say yes. If you do, I’ll kiss NPC D.”

So B kisses A. And I have them both roll performance. And they both roll really well. And they’re both like … “Holy shit. Um. Wow. That. Um.”

Now C did NOT think that B would kiss A even with her encouragement. But now she’s like, “Fuck. A promise is a promise.”

So she grabs D and kisses her.

Again, performance checks.

C rolls like an 8 or whatever. And she’s like, “Fuck, I guess I’m just super nervous or whatever. It’s a bad kiss.”

AND THEN I (AS D) ROLL A NATURAL 20.

AND D PULLS C INTO A DIP AND RUNS ONE HAND AROUND HER WAIST TO THE SMALL OF HER BACK AND CURLS HER OTHER FINGERS THROUGH HER HAIR AND PRESSES THEIR BODIES TOGETHER.

AND C (the player not the character) GOES ABSOLUTELY CHERRY FUCKING RED.

HIDES HER FACE IN HER SHIRT

AND GOES “Holy shit, if I’d ever been kissed like that in real life I’d be fucking married to her right now.”

AND MEGHAN AND I CANNOT STOP CACKLING

IT WAS AMAZING

Then of course because the dice gods know What The Fuck They’re Doing™️ they roll all above 20 for their next day of travel in Survival, Perception, and Stealth checks.

And the players are like, “Yeah, of course. We’re all riding high on a wave of horny endorphins. Enhorphins, if you will.”

D&D is the best fucking game.

wheremyscalesslither

Wait, why is “The Dodo” bad?

zookeeperproblems

I got quite a few questions and responses about why the online brand / website / Facebook page “The Dodo” shouldn’t be supported. Here’s a quick rundown:

  • Misguided Anti-Captivity. They are often blatantly anti-captivity, or use anti-captivity language and/or promote anti-captivity views. They use language such as an animal is “trapped” in a zoo or an animal was “saved” from a zoo. They actively support and often get quotes from representatives from ZooCheck, an anti-zoo and anti-captivity organization, and support HSUS (Humane Society of the United States). Their reports on tragedies of animals being injured or dying at zoos are overwhelmingly full of blame, toxicity, and disrespect. Their ideas of anti-captivity are incredibly limited and misguided – they are often pro “sanctuary” with the idea that all sanctuaries are better and they rarely discuss any kind of conservation.
  • Anthropomorphism over Accuracy. They are wildly, ridiculously, inaccurately anthropomorphic. For example, a picture of a bear leaned against a wall is captioned as: “He looks desperate, depressed, despondent. He stares up, seeming to search for a way out.” They described an owl resting on someone’s shoulder as “missing the man who saved her so much she couldn’t stop hugging him.” A kitten “looks at his rescuers face to be reassured everything is okay.”  One of their most recent articles is about a cow “shedding tears” and crying because it is sad. Overall, they are much more concerned with ‘tugging on heartstrings’ of animal lovers than with being accurate about animal behavior. 
  • Unsafe Animal Interactions and Inappropriate Pets. Despite being anti-captivity when it comes to zoos specifically, they have often published videos of exotic pets and/or inappropriate free contact with wild/dangerous animals. 
  • Lack of Primary Sources and Information. They often lack any resources to accurate information about their “news”. Recently they made a 45-second video which claimed that basically any elephant on display (from a Ringling Circus to a rural south Asian performance) was automatically and certainly being abused and tortured. There were no sources or proof to back this up, no resources to explore, nothing. They rarely have any kind of scientist or animal care worker as a source for any video or article, just activists. 
  • Stealing and Editing Videos. You’ll notice almost every video on their site is made by them and hosted there, not shared from somewhere else. They take videos from other sources, add music and text, and call it their own. They almost never link to the original source. 

Overall, “The Dodo” is not a news site. It’s a brand. It’s a website designed to get views and make money - it will do anything just to get those clicks. But it tries to sell itself as news, and therein lies the issue. They use strong language, buzzwords, and clickbait titles in order to push a vague, biased agenda that hurts those of us who work in zoos and other animal facilities.

Here is another strong, detailed breakdown of some of their common practices written by Why Animals Do the Thing

Source: zookeeperproblems
wheremyscalesslither

How to help your reptiles through a heat wave

kaijutegu

If you’re on the west coast of North America right now, you’re melting and your pets are probably just as miserable. Heat stroke can kill herps, and many are a lot more heat-sensitive than you think. Here’s some tips to help stabilize them and keep them cool!

1. Turn off the heat source; however, if you have a herp that you light, remember that they still DO need UV to digest their food and process their vitamins. Consider cycling the UV on and off at more frequent intervals so that it doesn’t heat their cage up too much.

1A.  consider NOT feeding them for a few days. Most reptiles will be absolutely fine with a fast of a few days, and then you can keep the UV off. Is it ideal? No. Will it keep them alive? Possibly. Use your best judgment- you know your animal’s feeding schedule.

2. Provide unlimited fresh water. Even if your animal doesn’t drink from a water dish normally, provide one anyways- they may want to sit in it.

3. Do NOT let your animal have direct contact with ice! However, you can definitely wrap a frozen water bottle in a towel as a cool thing for them to sit upon.

4. Keep your terrarium away from the windows. If you have a basement, maybe put it down there until the heatwave passes. You can also remove them from the terrarium/vivarium/whatever caging you use and put them in a temporary smaller container.

5. Know the signs of heat stroke. Gaping, shaking, staggering, disorientation, falling, or loss of consciousness are all signs of heat stroke in reptiles. Snakes will start corkscrewing or stargazing, and will have a hard time righting themselves. If you see these, call your vet IMMEDIATELY and start cooling them down by gently pouring cool- not cold- cool water over them, starting with their legs. (if they have legs)

5A. I cannot stress how important it is that you do not use water that’s too cold here. It will kill them. Cold water will cause the blood vessels closest to the surface will constrict, drawing blood down into the core of the animal where it will not cool down at all. Cool water will gently lower the temperature of the blood closest to the surface, which will be carried to the brain and other major organs. You must cool them GRADUALLY.

6. Use the glass of your viv as a heat heat exchange. Even if you have PVC or wood, odds are good you have some glass in the doors. Drape wet towels over the glass and point a fan at it. If you don’t have glass, this works… kind of ok with PVC/plastic, but it’s basically useless for wood. 


7. If your animals are outdoors, provide shade and a sprinkler. 

8. In the wild, animals escape the heat by burrowing. Because you have a much smaller environment, you can’t really provide a much cooler soil layer- but you can provide hide box with really wet substrate.

9. Try and get your reptile to drink. Being sprayed with water will stimulate them to drink. If they don’t respond to being sprayed with water, call the vet immediately.

10. Consider getting one of those portable AC units and getting all your herps in one room- the room with the portable AC units. Unfortunately, this might be hard to do because those are sold out in a lot of places.

Source: kaijutegu
computationalcalculator
burninglights

my internal monologue when Ancient Egypt is mentioned: [don't talk about imhotep and the first codified diagnostic manual. the fact you know so much about it is deeply weird and nobody cares about medicine that much]

hellolovelyscientist

That sounds fascinating and I want to know. Please.

burninglights

@karmaphone @hellolovelyscientist @lamiabelladonna

I have been enabled, and By Jove I Will Deliver.

The year is 1862, and antiquities dealer (and forger) and self-made Egyptologist Edwin Smith steals a papyrus from an antiquities seller in Luxor. I could go on a whole separate rant about European colonialists treating culturally significant artifacts like grab 'n go bags and have done so here.

Anyway, Edwin's pilfered scroll gets translated in 1930, and it turns out have been a transcript from about the 17th century BCE of a papyrus written by a man named Imhotep, a vizier in the court of King Djozer who practiced neurosurgery, and made forays into astronomy and architecture too.

Now, Imhotep was wicked smart. As in "when the Greeks met him they incorporated him into the pantheon as a magician of Ascelpius because they couldn't figure out how he had such a comprehensive understanding of the human body and treating it's ills" smart. His scroll was a record of treatment of 48 cases, ranging from fractures of the hand to open abscessed wounds to trauma injuries to the skull. Side note: a lot of medicine during this period was considered to be the work of occult phenomena, and so a lot of treatments involved charms to ward off malignant spirits and incantations to aid in curing them.

What's remarkable about the Edwin scroll is that it is the first recorded account of medicine without the attachment of spiritual or occult phenomena as the root cause or a means of treatment; it's a purely scientific endeavour, complete with an anatomical glossary, diagnosis, summary, method of treatment and prognosis for each injury and illness.

It's the first evidence-based, scientific diagnostic manual.

The most significant case is Case 45, concerning a patient with “bulging masses — they may be compared to the unripe hemat fruit which is cool, and hard to the touch” in the breast. These masses are malignant tumours, the manifestation of breast cancer, and provide us with the first ever recorded case of cancer.

Imhotep knew that a tumour that has hot to the touch was a sign of infection (the inflammatory immune response produces tumor (swelling), rubor (redness), dolor (pain), and significantly to this calor, or heat). Infected abscesses could be treated with draining and a topical poultice. In the section for therapy for Case 45, though, there's one single, haunting line:

“There is none.”

In 2500BCE, well before germ theory, aseptic technique, chemotherapy and antibiotics, a surgeon picked up a scroll of fresh papyrus and provided us with the first ever codified, scientific diagnostic manual for injury and illness, and the first written record of the emperor of all maladies that we call cancer.

That's pretty fucking dope.

(If the cancer aspect is something you're interested in, I highly recommend The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It's a record of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer from the days of Imhotep to the present day, and it's a fascinating read)

Source: burninglights
wheremyscalesslither

TUSCON REPTILE EXPO

i-m-snek

Good evening, afternoon, morning or night! Whatever time it is where you are. i am happy to say that the Tuscon Reptile expo is happening this year!! And not only that, but @wheremyscalesslither​ and I plan on getting a booth there and selling our wares! Examples of things I will have there:

Navi’s babies if they haven’t sold by then
Dragon scale glow in the dark sea dragons
Pop sockets
Stickers
Replica raven skulls
Decorated coyote skulls
Aeriths clutch if they haven’t already sold
The last baby of Raina’s clutch if he hasn’t sold 

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(An example of what Navi’s babies will be like, this is Navi herself as a baby.) 

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Aerith on her eggs, which will hatch in the next month or so

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The last male left from Raina’s clutch

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Heather’ll reblog with what they have available as well!

We hope to see you there!

wheremyscalesslither

AND I WILL HAVE

Uhm

Uhm

Uhh

STUFF AND THINGS lol

Idk like snake shed tumbler cups, snake shed coasters, maybe notebooks

And obviously enclosure decor!

piperderg

Yes excellent!! I need another snobin hood pop socket. Time for me to make gabby hands at things, yes gooood

Source: i-m-snek
wheremyscalesslither
wheremyscalesslither

Happy payday! Buy my shit.


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Heather Hyena Handcrafted on Storenvy
See what's for sale by Heather Hyena Handcrafted on Storenvy, the home of independent small businesses all over the world.
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wheremyscalesslither

Please please please help me out. Im a teacher, which means i dont get paid during the summer. I also dont qualify for unemployment. Please buy my goods so i can survive this summer.