Fridgefanatic - The Gift Of Hope In A Thousand Fingerprints

I got tagged by @luneandbarbecue in another tag game :3 The prompt was to say some random trivia about you, roughly like 10 fun facts.

I've been to 3 conventions in my life, but only 2 of them were intentional. My introduction to anime conventions was a road trip where the hotel my family booked a room at, unbeknownst to us, was hosting one.

In high school, I carried around a whiteboard in my backpack and took pictures of it and made animations that way.

The only time I've ever broken a bone was by flapping my hands so hard that my finger hit the chair and fractured. I was writing a spy story from the POV of my cat when this happened.

I have a molar shaped mark in my left thumb from when I almost lost it to a horse as a toddler

Our local House of Representative's daughter preferred poisoning themselves over spending time at my place (I think?? Like they had allergies and knowingly ate a Valentine's candy containing their allergen after I told them not to)

Wish alumni, or the older sister anyway-- I'm not really involved atm, but the formative years of my childhood were spent volunteering for them (and drawing/playing on the Internet in hospitals and waiting rooms)

I've cosplayed one character to a convention and it was the green space dorito. I'm embarrassed to try wearing public costumes where I am identifiable after that XD

My first fanfiction ever was about Scooby Doo when I was 5.

I own a T-shirt of bleached Pythor from hit TV show Lego Ninjago drinking Starbucks.

Not sure if i want to tag anyone because i'm a little busy rn, this was about all I can manage, but @thatmaxcontent probably would appreciate it haha

Vox

Birds have co-opted our anti-bird weapons in a genius counterattack

Humans install spikes so birds will go away. Birds steal them and do this instead.

Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.

It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.

But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.

Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...

Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.

Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”

Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.

Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.

“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.

Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:

Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.

Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.

...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?

The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate

It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.

Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.

And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...

Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.

But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!

-via Vox, July 26, 2023

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

and one for Sora, too. [Riku] [Kairi]

nvm guys, I found the kiss button 👍

In my own little 'I can help *this* one' scream into the universe, I've been de-stringing the feet of the pigeons that live in the park across from my office.

Pigeons (rock doves) are feral, and they live in our cities. With our rubbish. They get string (human hair, fishing line, threads, etc) wrapped around their feet when they do their little circling dance, or from their nests, and they can't get it off themselves. So they limp along as best they can, for as long as they can. They're pretty tough little guys! If you start to look, you'll probably notice a lot of them are missing toes or have strictures holding their feet in painful positions. Some even have both feet bound together.

But the good news is - it's actually SUPER easy to help them!

This little guy had thread around one foot, and wire and nylon line around the other. I removed it on my lunch break on Monday, and now he's already walking easier and won't be losing any more toes.

The photo is from the next day, because he came back to hang out again without hesitation. They're very friendly.

People really hate pigeons, which is a bit unfair considering we are the ones who brought them in to our cities in the first place. If you want to make a world of difference to some lives that don't get a lot of love any more, check out the below for everything you need to know.

Stringfoot Pigeon Help

What is stringfoot?

What is stringfoot? A brief overview.

If Riku's canonically a Dream Eater, then it stands to reason he'd look like one in Monstropolis yeah?? (monster-Sora already looks like a Chirithy, notice)

Anyways some design notes

He's the same (or adjacent) species as Dean Hardscrabble from Monsters University-- though not a centipede taur for Reasons

(SquareEnix probably prefers consistent proportions across world specific models to make rigging easier, and therefore would not design him Like That)

His wings and elytra are at his waist since from my observation, they like to put things at waist length in Riku's designs. When folded flat against the thigh it looks like pockets.

He would use the lower wings mainly for gliding, to generate extra lift (given the length of his tail)

I'm debating moving the position of the Spirit sigil to his back, between his wings-- 1) that is consistent with its placement in DDD, plus 2) his wings would also contextualize it like a Nightmare

Clocktowers (Coldplay's Clocks x Xion's theme)

Coldplay's Clocks means a lot to me and I realized it suits Xion KingdomHearts VERY lyrically and rhythmically (no wonder I'm fixated with her 😅). So yesterday I thought I'd edit Xion's theme together with Coldplay Clocks in Garageband because they really are quite similar when transposed!

The tempo's stilted bc I couldn't figure out how to adjust the tempo at different points in basic GarageBand, only change the overall tempo for the entire track-- so I was splitting and clipping a lot to make sure the beats lined up. Same thing with the transitions, I smoothed them out to the best of my ability... (If you're more experienced than me and like the idea, PLEASE feel free to make a better version because I would EAT THAT UP)

Oh shi-- targeted 🤨

(jk I know this wasn’t intended for me)

Completely unintentional but... realizing yeah it really does look like him. lmao.

more rambly thoughts in the tags

Would this mean Emerald is Cass then...?

You ever see a drawing of Oscar and know exactly who op liked in Tangled: the animated series?

Sorry bro, I love you