Messing With The New Base Brushes On Procreate

That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.

It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.

The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.

It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.

They like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.

They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.

They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.

It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.

Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile - and for that purpose, you count as a cat.

Elon Musk's N*zi Salute at the Trump Inauguration Rally. The US government will attempt to censor this or shift your perception of it.

You Saw, What You Saw.

:( au where siffrin tries to end a loop early but someone sees in time to stop/heal him. and they’re desperately trying to figure out why he did that and convince him life is worth living, and in that discussion someone suggests traveling together after the loops. and then ofc they’re keeping a very close eye on him after that, so, he doesn’t get another chance to reset. then they beat the king! so! conditions met! that’s the last loop! the one where they all saw siffrin try to kill themself! the one where the party surely only agreed to stay with them out of guilty obligation. but he’s selfish so of course he won’t do the right thing and refuse to go along with it. :( :( :(

You know, from what we saw with the inspector, Basilisks can get pretty big. Makes you wonder if Vee could get even anywhere near that size in her basilisk form. Given the last we saw of it, she was still likely growing like the rest of the Hexsquad. If so, Masha is in for some really big basilisk cuddles.

Masha using their big snek gf as a beanbag chair, also at that size I thought of that one scene in Spirited Away with Haru and Chihiro and just had to (try) draw it

My friend blocked me because I wouldn’t stop sending him this picture

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people are really fucking clueless about generative ai huh? you should absolutely not be using it for any sort of fact checking no matter how convenient. it does not operate in a way that guarantees factual information. its goal is not to deliver you the truth but deliver something coherent based on a given data set which may or may not include factual information. both the idolization of ai and fearmongering of it seem lost on what it is actually capable of doing

I feel like the big push for AI is starting to flag. Even my relatively tech obsessed dad is kinda over it. What do you even use it for? Because you sure as hell dont want to use it for fact checking.

There's an advertisement featuring a woman surreptitiously asking her phone to provide her with discussion topics for her book club. And like... what. Is this the use case for commercial AI? This the best you could come up with? Lying to your friends about Moby Dick?

government is trying to ban tiktok meanwhile millions of poor and disabled americans are about to completely lose their internet access at the end of april because congress wont renew funding for the affordable connectivity program

hell fucking world

happy International Asexuality Day from me and Start Again’s ace characters🖤🤍💜 have a wonderful day fellow aces