Hi! I'm saving up for a VERY expensive trip to meet my online friends in Munich. Some of them I've known for 3+ years! It's really important to me to save up as much as possible until the end of the year.
I'm currently at £150 out of £350 raised to place an order for Belos plushies to get made :3 (this is the price for the deposit the manufacturer asked for to start production, not the full price to manufacture the plushies)
DM me if you want to commission me ! Prices are £25 per character for sketches, £50 per character for colored/shaded Backgrounds are free if I re use one I've already done, if you want a custom one price depends on complexity !
Opening commissions!!! I’ll make a price range page if anyone is interested but rn I’m think 3-5$! Trying to save up for the gorillaz book “Rise Of The Ogre”!! :3
Hi my names tyler and i’m a black autistic trans guy with two cats attempting to escape an unsafe housing situation, my mother is verbally, financially, and physically abusive and has started making violent threats on my life as well as threats to make me homeless or harm my animals
It’s been so severe that im staying at my partners house currently to avoid her but I cannot stay here permanently and need secure housing so that my mother does not hurt me or my animals.
While I’m mostly looking for financial help to get an apartment if anyone knows people looking for roommates or with housing they can offer for rent in the areas around north philadelphia, lower bucks county PA, and burlington county NJ please feel free to reach out to me, id be able to afford up to 1k in rent and I am looking to move immediately, I have a secure job housing is the only issue.
If you could spread this i’d appreciate it greatly, my gofundme link has essentially all the same info so that can be spread alone if possible, I also have my links for venmo and paypal below if that’s easier to use, In addition I draw and can do kofi sketches for donations (examples of art here) I am incredibly desperate to move as none of my family members are offering adequate help regarding the situation so anything at all helps, thankyou for taking the time to read this
hi, an update as of may 5th, I was approved for the apartment I was looking at however the roommate I would’ve share the lease with was unable to finish their application for personal reasons, because of this im unable to finalize the application i submitted because I would need a roommate to afford this apartment, if you or anyone you know is looking for a roommate in north east philly for $847 a month water and electric included and in unit laundry please dm me for more info, they would get their own private room and bath in a newly renovated townhome, i can cover the application fee, no additional pets can be added to the lease unfortunately, Im hoping to get this apartment by may the 15th otherwise I may lose my chance to put a security deposit down, please continue to spread this and thankyou for reading!
edit: getting closer to the legal deadline and haven’t had any leads yet, so if this falls through im back to essentially square one in needing stable housing if this unit gets taken within the next 30 days, plz help if you can v_v
https://ko-fi.com/izzyartz Hey guys!! If you’d like to support me on Ko-Fi, anything helps!! You can also commission me or take part in monthly memberships there as well!!
Kickstarter now live for the Leucochloridium plush! I had this smaller prototype made already, but the final plush is going to be BIGGER and more realistically proportioned!
You can preorder a plush, an enamel pin, or a combo of both for the next 30 days. The plush will need a couple thousand dollars in factory costs alone, but if successful, there’ll be at least 100 of them made with some left over that I’ll put up on etsy by fall/winter!
16 days to go, needs another $1200 to meet production!
With 10 days left and $600 to go, I’m going to reblog this once a day with a new and different fact about this beautiful animal!
FACT 1: we aren’t really sure what they do to snail behavior
The conventional wisdom surrounding Leucochloridium is that it alters the behavior of its snail host to seek light instead of shade, making it more visible to its bird hosts. Recent studies, however, find that the difference is more subtle; uninfected snails of the host species are already active in well lit areas, however, the infected snails were found to spend “moderately” more time in the open. The biggest difference in behavior was that they spent more time at higher elevation than uninfected snails, where they would be seen by predators first. What we still don’t know is exactly how the parasite causes this particular change.
FACT 2: the “brood sac” stage is like a multi-headed hydra
Leucochloridium is a member of Platyhelminthes, specifically a trematode flatworm. Trematodes go through various life cycle stages as they pass from one host to the next, sometimes including a “sporocyst” stage that exists to just keep replicating larvae. In Leucochloridium, the sporocyst is essentially one flatworm that continuously branches, fractal-like, in a radiating blob that continuously produces the famous “brood sacs.” These have a “staggered” development so that only two to three are mature at a given time, but why does it need to keep making them?! That will be Fact #3! yay!
The thing about Platyhelminthes, including planarians, flukes, tapeworms and marine flatworms, is that their life functions are pretty much evenly distributed throughout their body mass. Cut a piece off, and that piece is just as alive as the worm it came from.
As the parasite continuously grows its “brood sac” bodies, the oldest and largest can eventually get pushed right out of the snail’s skin, break off, and crawl away. They don’t live long without their host, but now their resemblance to caterpillars or maggots is even more convincing, and we aren’t certain, but this may be the “real intention” of the parasite; not necessarily to sacrifice the snail to a bird, as much as that does happen, but to use the snail as transportation for the false caterpillars it keeps making. This could also vary by species, or it could be that the parasite evolved first to alter the appearance of the snail, and breaking off these “extra” sacs came incidentally.
This all sounds increasingly cruel to the snail, but it’s not as bad as you think, which I’ll get into tomorrow!
FACT 4: most of the snails are kind of okay??
If a snail is uncomfortable or in pain (or whatever it experiences like pain), it tends to retreat into its shell, it doesn’t eat, and it very quickly dies. “Stress” alone kills snails, as anyone can tell you who keeps snails at pets! The fact that they go about their usual snaily business indicates that they barely notice the presence of Leucochloridium at all, and even when the brood sacs break out of the host, snails are quite good at regeneration.
The parasite is only really deadly if it gets the snail completely eaten by a bird, but in many cases, birds still get away with only the “brood sacs,” and there may be enough left of the snail to grow back.
The infection only lasts a few months, from spring to late summer, and snails harboring the parasite otherwise live what seems to be a normal lifespan. As near as we can tell…becoming a caterpillar-faced zombie is more an “inconvenience” a lot of the snails never realize ever happened.
FACT 5: we thought they infected only one group of snails
For decades, Leucochloridium’s sporocyst stage was officially known almost exclusively from snails of the family Succineidae, or “Amber Snails,” but a 2010′s survey of gastropod parasites in Chile discovered a case of Leucochloridium paradoxum - the same species found in amber snails around the world - in the partially shelled (semi-slug) gastropod Omalonyx gayana:
The parasites are easily spread to new environments by the migration of bird hosts, but it was thought they needed to find populations of amber snail to actually develop. The discovery in O. gayana could be because these half-snails are related to the amber snails, but it could also mean that these parasites are able to adapt to a wider variety of gastropods than we thought, as long as they’re an appropriate size.
Also, THE PLUSH HAS BEEN FUNDED! You can now preorder with a guarantee they can be made and that you’re owed one! I’ll keep posting facts though!
It has been brought to my attention that the link might not be working on mobile. I think I might have fixed the problem by adding a link in my description. But just in case here is a link to my commission info on deviantart, it’s the same information I have on my tumblr.
So, while I've talked about this in other posts, I figured I may as well compile it in one post with this nifty propaganda poster (more on that later)
Long story short, they're bringing back KOSA/the Kids Online Safety Act in the US Senate, and they're going to mark it up next Thursday as of the time of this post (4/23/2023).
If you don’t know, long story short KOSA is a bill that’s ostensibly one of those “Protect the Children” bills, but what it’s actually going to do is more or less require you to scan your fucking face every time you want to go on a website; or give away similarly privacy-violating information like your drivers’ license or credit card info.
Again, it doesn't work unless you do it en-masse, so make sure to call ASAP and tell them to kill this bill, and if they actually want a bill to allow/get sites to protect kids, the Federal Fair Access To Banking Act would be far better.
Also, this poster is officially, for the sake of spreading it, under a CC0 license. Feel free to spread it, remix it, add links to the bottom, edit it to be about the other bad internet bills they're pushing, use it as a meme format, do what you will but for gods' sake get the word out!
Also, shoutout to @o-hybridity for coming up with the slogan for the poster, couldn't have done it without 'em!
A story about depression, anxiety, trauma, that which leads to crises and how one recovers from it, the sort of advice I’ve learned over seven years of therapy to help with these issues and the ever pervasive question of “Can this actually help?” It is the first time I’ve thought maybe I could help people with a book but that wasn’t the intention. The intention as always with me was to give something personal and emotional. And there is probably not going to be a more personal work of mine than this. Not for a long while at least.
Thank you all and one final link as well as the number to the National US Crises Prevention Hotline. Please remember to reach out for help when you find yourself struggling. It’s never showing weakness or cowardice to seek help, not when what you face is always so terrifying. It only makes you all the braver for being willing to confront it as you must when seeking help.
1-800-273-8255
Hi- er, this is my first-ever writer's strike, how does one not cross a picket line in this context? I know how not to do it with things like Amazon and IRL strikes, but how does it apply to media/streaming?
Hi, this is a great question, because it allows me to write about the difference between honoring a picket line and a boycott. (This is reminding me of the labor history podcast project that’s lain fallow in my drafts folder for some time now…) In its simplest formulation, the difference between a picket line and a boycott is that a picket line targets an employer at the point of production (which involves us as workers), whereas a boycott targets an employer at the point of consumption (which involves us as consumers).
So in the case of the WGA strike, this means that at any company that is being struck by the WGA - I’ve seen Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC, Paramount, and Sony mentioned, but there may be more (check the WGA website and social media for a comprehensive list) - you do not cross a picket line, whether physical or virtual. This means you do not take a meeting with them, even if its a pre-existing project, you do not take phone calls or texts or emails or Slacks from their executives, you do not pitch them on a spec script you’ve written, and most of all you do not answer any job application.
Because if this strike is like any strike since the dawn of time, you will see the employers put out ads for short-term contracts that will be very lucrative, generally above union scale - because what they’re paying for in addition to your labor is you breaking the picket and damaging the strike - to anyone willing to scab against their fellow workers. GIven that one of the main issues of the WGA are the proliferation of short-term “mini rooms” whereby employers are hiring teams of writers to work overtime for a very short period, to the point where they can only really do the basics (a series outline, some “broken stories,” and some scripts) and then have the showrunner redo everything on their lonesome, while not paying writers long-term pay and benefits, I would imagine we’re going to see a lot of scab contracts being offered for these mini rooms.
But for most of us, unless we’re actively working as writers in Hollywood, most that isn’t going to be particularly relevant to our day-to-day working lives. If you’re not a professional or aspiring Hollywood writer, the important thing to remember honoring the picket line doesn’t mean the same thing as a boycott. WGA West hasn’t called on anyone to stop going to the movies or watching tv/steeaming or to cancel their streaming subscriptions or anything like that. If and when that happens, WGA will go to some lengths to publicize that ask - and you should absolutely honor it if you can - so there will be little in the way of ambiguity as to what’s going on.
That being said, one of the things that has happened in the past in other strikes is that well-intentioned people get it into their heads to essentially declare wildcat (i.e, unofficial and unsanctioned) boycotts. This kind of stuff comes from a good place, someone wanting to do more to support the case and wanting to avoid morally contaminating themselves by associating with a struck company, but it can have negative effects on the workers and their unions. Wildcat boycotts can harm workers by reducing back-end pay and benefits they get from shows if that stuff is tied to the show’s performance, and wildcat boycotts can hurt unions by damaging negotiations with employers that may or may not be going on.
The important thing to remember with all of this is that the strike is about them, not us. Part of being a good ally is remembering to let the workers’ voices be heard first and prioritizing being a good listener and following their lead, rather than prioritizing our feelings.
y'all heard about the WGA strike? here's how you can support us if you're not a member.
writers with the WGA have access to a strike fund that will help them out, but there are many other hollywood employees, assistants, and crew members who will need financial aid during the strike. you can donate to the entertainment community fund (tax deductible!) and help ease their burden. choose "film and television" in the drop-down menu under the gift designation.
if you can't donate, please at least boost and spread the word! and thank you to everyone who's been showing solidarity and asking how they can help us out, it's been overwhelming in the best sense of the word ♡