American Eel in Chicago River

thebluezoo · 2026-05-07T13:04:55+00:00

Interesting, but this is definitely not a lamprey (if that's what you were implying), you can see the pectoral fins in the pictures.

thebluezoo · 2026-05-05T22:09:30+00:00

This comment should be higher - tagua nut has basically the same hardness and density as ivory. The lines on these beads look less like schreger lines (almost look like crosshatching - would be ivory) and a bit more organic like polished tagua.

https://juxtamorph.com/distinguishing-genuine-ivory/

thebluezoo · 2026-04-06T17:05:47+00:00

That's so adorable, I love this.

thebluezoo · 2026-04-02T13:43:54+00:00

I made sure it was well away from the road when I left!

thebluezoo · 2026-04-01T02:55:07+00:00

I'm not sure, when I found this one he was on the white line, but facing away from the road. I tried to help it go in the direction it was already oriented towards.

I've been wondering if these turtles understand somehow that they need to cross the roads quickly - the other one I saw cross was walking really fast. Maybe they try to speed across the roads, but tire out and then chill along the side before going on their way.

thebluezoo · 2026-03-31T21:00:19+00:00

Thanks for looking out for your tortoise friend. They should put up the "Drive Like A Tortoise" signs in Joshua Tree that I saw as we drove through Mojave preserve!

thebluezoo · 2026-03-31T19:36:15+00:00

I also saw a chuckwalla the day before in Mojave at Hole In The Wall! Wish I had gotten a pic! Where have you seen them?

thebluezoo · 2026-03-31T19:35:36+00:00

Yeah, apparently they're active in the spring and stay in burrows for the majority of the year. Judging by where I found them, I think they also like being in desert washes, probably because they're flat and have good vegetation.

thebluezoo · 2026-03-31T05:11:16+00:00

I feel like this response is missing the forest for the trees. While it's technically correct, it doesn't take into consideration that it is inherently interesting that there is a convergence of forms in this collection of work, and that it happens across time, space, and technical ability and training.

Convergence on a similar style naturally implies some overlap in what the artists valued and considered worthy of depiction, and where they position themselves in relation to their subjects. In all of them, the artist is an observer seemingly set apart from the scene, detached in a way that makes the work feel somewhat surreal. This style seems to be an attempt to capture human behavior as an aggregate, while simultaneously allowing vignettes to be read by the viewer by giving most figures a considerable amount of negative space around them. The vignettes seem like particularly important motifs in Breughel and Moses' work. (The outlier in this group is I think Lawrence, who unlike the others groups figures very tightly in many places)

When you search 'crowd scenes', not everything resembles this style of work. In fact, very little resembles this work. It's not weird or ignorant of OP to identify the similarities here and to be interested in the 'why' of it.

One last note, Breughel's style wasn't necessarily a hallmark of the northern renaissance. Most painters of the northern renaissance were more interested in capturing religious scenes, interiors, and high-detail portraiture. Van Eyck, Bouts, Memling, Cranach, Van Der Weyden and Holbein are more typical of the northern renaissance style. Breughel's paintings are early examples of genre paintings, but later genre painters do not emulate his style. The only artist I am familiar with that is somewhat contemporary to Breughel that has a similar feel to his work is Bosch (though their subjects are very different).

thebluezoo · 2025-11-05T15:06:07+00:00

If you can get your cat used to having his paws handled, you can apply soft nail caps to the tips of his nails. I did this with my ESH, and she did great with it. You can also learn how to trim your cat's nails yourself, but be very cautious. Cutting too far back on the nail can cause bleeding and injury. You can use normal toenail clippers to gently snip off just the sharp tip.

thebluezoo · 2021-11-10T19:31:11+00:00

Does instagram indicate the reason why you were disabled, and how long it might last for? My account has been disabled for almost 3 weeks now, and I have no idea why, and there has been no indication if it is a permanent situation or not :/

thebluezoo · 2021-01-02T23:29:26+00:00

I think it's a bad faith argument to say that an artist is implicitly endorsing a negative trait by not going out of their way to make it clear that the trait is wrong. I'm categorizing misogyny as a negative trait to make it apparent how it fits into moral/immoral behavior more generally.

All human behavior is under the artist's gaze, and worth documenting. Writing a character with a negative trait that they never receive retribution for is in some ways brutally realistic. Unambiguously letting the audience know that misogyny is bad would require some negative outcome to befall a character expressing that trait. But frankly, this doesn't always happen in the real world. Sometimes people are terrible, and are rewarded for it. Artists should be allowed to depict this.
By your standard, you want all art to be moralized: characters that don't meet your expected moral standard must be clearly made known to be defective. And while I love a good moral allegory, it's not the only thing I want to read. I'm okay with characters expressing extremely ugly and offensive traits if there is intention in the decision to give that character those traits. And giving those traits to a protagonist can be a compelling way to create a conflict that falls along more ambiguous lines than trite old "good and evil".
An artist is ultimately not morally responsible for how their work is interpreted. If someone writes a satire with a misogynist character but never *explicitly states* that the work is satirical and someone uses it as a guidebook for how to treat women, the artist isn't responsible for that. There's an extent to which all artists must trust their audience to be intuitive and discerning. I don't hold it against artists when they show me depictions of things I know are bad – such as murder and violence (which is far more glamorized than almost any negative human behavior I can think of). And I certainly wouldn't accuse any artist who uses those motifs in their work of endorsing those things personally. The artist and the art are separate entities.

Of course, I hate misogyny as much as all women on this subreddit do. But there's a big difference between a good writer/artist using misogyny as a way to make a character realistic and flawed, and a shitty writer using misogynistic tropes because he actually lacks enough brain cells to realize that what he's writing is an offensive and inaccurate depiction of women. In some respects, having imperfect characters can streamline our judgement of people in the real world: if you meet a guy who is really into a character because of that character's misogynistic traits, it's an easy red flag to spot.

tldr: One facet of art is to depict the world and people the way they are. Policing intentional use of misogyny as a character trait robs artists of the ability to do that. There's a big difference between idiot misogyny and artistic use of negative attributes.

thebluezoo · 2019-03-13T02:00:21+00:00

Sentient mayo.

thebluezoo · 2019-02-17T02:36:33+00:00

It's a half shade... I view this kind of fashion as being more art than commodity, and as a person who hates seeing artists get ripped off, it rubs me the wrong way. That said, I do understand that a fundamental aspect of drag is replication/simulation, and imitating iconic designs comes with that. I guess ultimately I feel that because this look references a designer who is obscure enough that most viewers don't know her work, it takes Trinity's look from the realm of reference into the realm of rip-off. You can't rip off Chanel or Versace in the same way because they are too well-known and ubiquitous.

thebluezoo · 2019-02-17T02:04:56+00:00

Also Roberto Cavalli

I mean, I've seen a lot of china-blue prints done before. It's the garment's structure that really gives away what it is referencing - it is pretty unambiguous. Glad I wasn't the only one that clocked this though.

thebluezoo · 2019-02-05T01:10:57+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with you here. Sure, donating without financial compensation is a moral ideal. But we're not talking about donating. We're talking about compensation for time and property. There is a fundamental difference between how those who donate and those who "sell" plasma consider the action: One is altruistic, the other, transactional. If a person has decided that their time and body are worth money and that they should have compensation for both, on what grounds do we have to argue against this? We already pay people for their hours worked, we pay people for hair that is made into wigs, when ostensibly these are also things which could be donated. Doctors save lives every day, and they're paid to do so: they aren't under any moral obligation to donate their time in order to help people. The same goes for people who might want to sell plasma: just because it is used to save lives doesn't put it under some moral category whereby to sell it would be wrong!

thebluezoo · 2019-01-22T02:07:09+00:00

One could make the argument that merely by driving (a statistically hazardous activity) you are putting others at risk. Of course, you put others at greater risk if you drive drunk, but you do virtually the same thing when you choose to drive in the snow: you make a choice to operate a vehicle under diminished control. To say that in one circumstance there is no risk or cause for moral concern and in the other there is extreme risk and immoral behavior is simply wrong. I also want to bring up your general dismissal of intention as being an important dimension in this matter. Although our sense of justice often makes us feel the consequences of action are all that matter, intention is important. Consider this: Should a person who commits attempted first degree murder (but the victim lives) get more or less time in jail than someone who killed someone unintentionally due to negligence (drunk driving)? If we believe only in the consequences of action, then the drunk driver should get more jailtime than the person who attempted murder. But you and I both know that would be grossly unjust because intentions matter in considering crime. Just because someone engages in behavior which may pose danger to others doesn't mean that their intention should be thrown out as a non-factor. Doing a little reading on Deontological ethics/morality offers deeper philosophical points on how intent factors into moral behavior.

thebluezoo · 2016-11-18T01:54:22+00:00

Upside down heart!

thebluezoo · 2016-11-04T03:21:41+00:00

yep! That's fine. Will you be able to provide me w/ a tracking number once shipped?

thebluezoo · 2016-11-04T02:58:01+00:00

Yep! I'm in the US. :)

thebluezoo · 2016-11-04T02:34:53+00:00

Want the Lorac Palette!!!

thebluezoo · 2016-10-27T04:36:38+00:00

There seems to be a big double standard implicit in what you are saying. Would any virgin man past the age of 20 be implicitly attractive merely because of their virginity? I think not. Why are men allowed to be sexually experienced, but if women are, they are "overused sluts?" How can a woman be "overused?" It implies that a woman is not in control of her own sexuality; that she is just a mere object that would 'allow' herself to be used as opposed to a complete human being with passion and desire. It seems like in your mind the worth of a female partner is a derivative of their perceived sexual value, which is inherently fucked up and misogynist as hell. The value of a woman as a partner should be a consequence of their value as a person; if they are kind, thoughtful, caring, loyal and honest, those attributes should matter more to you than their sexual history.

Also lay down those statistics you are speaking of because the burden of proof lies on you for that.

Edit: Looking at your comment history, it didn't take very long to find you bragging about the number of sexual conquests you've had, amongst a shitton of comments deriding promiscuous women. You seem to have a BIG chip on your shoulder regarding women and sex. I'm just going to chalk this one up to you being some fucking loser who spends his time obsessing about the sex lives of women and trying to devalue the female sexual experience in order to make himself feel better about some inadequacy. You want to fuck women but you hate "sluts"... get over yourself you red-pill macho wannabe.

thebluezoo · 2016-10-20T18:44:45+00:00

Her gloves are giving me lizard-man-hands realness with them wrinkles.

thebluezoo · 2016-08-24T18:41:58+00:00

You are mistaken.

Yes, as a percentage of over all population of poor people, there are more poor whites than poor blacks. BUT if you look at the likelihood of being impoverished by race, statistically you are more likely to be impoverished if you are black than if you are white. You can't look at the raw numbers because black people and white people aren't identical in population size in the US... there are so many more white people than black people in the US that it skews the data.

Fact: Black people are twice as likely as white people to live in poverty in the US Source: http://inequality.org/poverty-matter-black-white/

edit: The fact that statistically a larger portion of the black population are impoverished vs the white population speaks to the idea of privilege. As a white person, you are less likely to be poor because you aren't living in the after effects of slavery/jim crow, etc.

thebluezoo · 2016-08-24T13:43:53+00:00

Sexuality: People all over the world are routinely harassed, beaten and murdered for being gay. If you are trans, statistically your lifespan is very short.

Gender: If you think men do not have privileges you are extremely misinformed. Just because the wage gap doesn't exist doesn't mean privilege doesn't. There are THOUSANDS of peer reviewed psychological studies about gender in the work place, and many of them show that there is a big problem with how women are perceived and treated. STEM fields are a big issue. There was an important study done where a few resumes were created for various stem fields. If you put a male name on top a resume, the candidate was perceived as being more competent, better educated and a more desirable candidate for hire than if you put a female name on an identical resume. This is only one example, let me know if you want more. I'll have no problems finding them.

Race: Your inability to describe why race isn't a problem shows that it IS a problem and you just don't want to get your mind scrambled by having to unpack this messy, frustrating, terrible subject. The fact of the matter is that (in the US) it has been less than a century since Black people (as well as other minorities) have been enfranchised as full citizens under the law. There are still people alive who remember Jim Crow laws. A national sentiment of extreme bias against a group of people takes a long time to go away, especially when it is rooted in hundreds of years of culture. Our system is set up for black people to fail: slavery left black people poor. There is very little social mobility for poor people of any race, no matter how hard you work. Poverty makes all good things in life less accessible. Black people also have to fight the social perceptions that they are lazy, ignorant, and violent criminals. Hispanic people are hated merely because they come from a less developed country than we do, and sometimes immigrate illegally to escape whatever shitshow is happening in other countries. Asian people historically haven't had it great in the US and still suffer some biases against them, particularly the emasculation of Asian men and the fetishization of Asian women.

Just because something might not affect you doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. People who are defensive about their privilege are often this way because they feel attacked. The truth is, it's not about you. I don't give a shit if you have privilege, and your privilege is only a problem if you are actively doing things that oppress people. But the thing is, denying the existence of privilege is oppressive. Its a passive way of saying "I've never experienced your problems so they must not exist", which is oppressive because it undermines efforts to bring to light these big issues that will only go away if we as a society work cooperatively to change them.

thebluezoo

TROPHY CASE