Oh, thank you! I found the page here in case others are interested, I don’t know if viewing is free or geolocked but I’m sure I can find it elsewhere as well if need be.

This reminded me – I didn’t think most of my Starbuck ancestors actually went to sea, but now that I know Hezekiah the Quaker shipped on a whaler, I was wondering if the other side of the family, with the notorious Mennonite Pirate Niehls, was out on the water at the same time. I went in and checked and the dates don’t quite line up – Hezekiah was in his 30s in 1770, and Niehls wasn’t born until 1774, but what this means is that I was more or less correct that I should set the pirate-whaler novel around 1790.

I did find a document that sadly contradicts the story that Niehls immigrated by abandoning ship and sneaking ashore in Pennsylvania – there’s an immigration record of him coming from Amsterdam through Salem, MA. It was attached to the wrong member of the family, which is why I hadn’t seen it before. Not surprising – his father was also called Niehls Peter. Niehls who immigrated had a lot of aliases including Niels Peter, Niehls Peter, Peder Niels, and Cornelius Niehls Peter. I suspect his actual birth name was Cornelius Peder, and “Niehls” was a nickname. In addition to his father Niehls Peter, he had sons named Niels and Peter, and if my sense of humor is inherited then he definitely did that because he thought it would be funny.

I also found out his mother’s name was Mette Jensdr, which I cannot stop reading as Miette Gender.

You gender Miette? You assign them pronouns like a birth certificate? Jail for the cis! Jail for the cis for one thousand years!

derinthescarletpescatarian:

gallusrostromegalus:

the-muse-of-many-more:

snarkasaurus:

gallusrostromegalus:

symphonyofmars:

gallusrostromegalus:

gallusrostromegalus:

This is Arwen, she’s a Husky/Kelpie mix and a little Asshole:

• “I wonder if she can jump?” my dad asks the first five minutes we have her.  She perks up at the word, and clears a six-foot fence form sitting on the ground.
  “Oh.”  Says dad. “Shit.”
  
  Later that night she got up on the counter and ate three pounds of corned beef in roughtly 68 seconds but this was considered part of the learning curve of having a new dog.
  
  
• I wake up at 4 AM to the sound of the toilet being flushed repeatedly in the hall bathroom, and assume plumbing is now posessed by angry and wasteful ghosts.  
  I get up to disconnet it and find her in the Bathroom, standing to flush the bowl, then shoving her head in to drink the running water.   I’m not totally awake, so I stand there like an idiot trying to understand this, and my sister gets up to see what the noise is, sees the same thing and also stands there.  Fiance notices my absence and does the same.  
  Mom eventually wakes up and finds us standing around like very confused zombies and almost joins the parade of baffled zombies before shreiking “THE WATER BILL!”
  We got her a circulating water bowl after that.
  
  
• My parent’s don’t have AC, but they haveone of those “fridge on top, pull-out-freezer below” fridges.  Last summer, we were remarking that we might need to shave her so she didn’t get heatstroke, to which she looked up and made a disgusted noise at us.
  …Then got up, used the dishrag to pull open the freezer and climbed on top of the frozen vegetables, stretching out and sighing contentedly.
   “Arwen,” Mom began, but was interrupted by a loud ‘WHAAAaaaaarrr?” from Arwen.
   “Ok you can stay there for now but we’re getting you a kiddie pool so you have to get out when we get back.  Don’t eat anything.”
  She ate a bag of frozen green beans and farted for three days straight.
  
  
• Took her walking along the lake with the long lead so she could sniff things to her hearts content.  She went about shoving her head in the undergrowth, usually coming up with her head covered in leaves and pollen.
  
  Except for the bush where she came back out with a 7-foot Bull Snake wrapping itself around her ehad and neck, trying it’s best to strangle her before she can eat it.   She immediately ran back to me, the parts of her face not occupied with the snake arranged in a gleeful expression of “Look!  I found Snacks!”
  
  I screamed, not immediately regognizing that it wasn’t a rattler, and fell, splitting my knee on a rock.  The screaming made her let go of the snake, but I still had to grab her and wrestle the snake off her because it lacked the sense to just scuttle away.  I finaly got it lose from her (Despite her best effort to continue trying to eat it and turned around to fling it off the trail- 
  
  -And directly into the face of one of my 90-year-old neighbors who’d come out to see what the screaming and profanity was, making her collapse.
  
  I’m pretty sure being told “I accidentally threw a snake at my neighbor.” was the highlight of that EMT’s day.  Dottie was unharmed but she still doesn’t speak to me.
  
  
• One day, we left her in a Harness and overhead tether in the (at the time) unfanced back yard so she could enjoy some relatively free-range outdoors time.  I walked by the window not a minute later to find her completely GONE, and race out to the yard to find her.  It took me a good heart-pounding five minutes to realize the overhead tether was goign UP into the ancient silver maple and realized that 
  1. Arwen can apparently do something really weird with her shoulders where they pop out sideways, allowing her to bear-hug the tree and 
  2. climb a good 40 feet into the three to fight
  3. A porcupine, which i didn’t even know LIVED out here.
  
  Fortunately, Porcupines weigh considerably less than Awen and she couldn’t get a good enough foothold to get all the way up to it, but I still had to climb up there and lower her down, barking dog profanities at the porcupine the whole way.
  
  
• My parents recently acquired a mechanized recliner which has been instumental inmom’s hip surgery recovery.  Execpt that Awen Also likes lounging on the furniture, and is more than capable of hitting a large, elder-friendly button with her paw.  So now when she gets back from a walk or the dog park she makes a beeline for the living room, get in the recliner and pushes the button until it’s flat and stretches out in it. 
  
  My parents didn’t have a problem with this because she gets out of the chair when they ask her (Mom even tells her “Go get my chair ready” in winter because she does a good job pre-warming it), until last winter when Arwen taught my dog Charlie, another devoted couch animal how to do this.
  
  One afternoon there was a tremendous outburst fo barkign and snarling from the living room and we rished in to find both dogs in the recliner, Charlie on the fully-reclined back and Arwen on the elevated seat and foot rest, bellowing at eachother for control of the recliner, thier movments having pitched it back to it’s two hind feet, the device swaying to and fro like a leather covered boat upon the high seas, a furry mutiny on board.  Neither dog was willing to yeild the plush throne, nor to listen to the humans yelling at them to knock it the hell off, until Arwen tackled the usurper, kocking him off and managing to cantaleiver the recliner clean over, flipping it into the hall, both dogs and all humand miraculously unharmed.
  
  She still doesn’t let him sit in it.

I love her so much.

---

(If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Tip Jar or Paypal to get Arwen (and Charlie!) nice treats)

Evening reblog with an additional Shenanigan I just remembered:

One of the regulars at the dog park was an unfixed basset hound with an obnoxiously indifferent owner.  “Brad” shows up pretty much to smoke weed and let “Bojangles” harass the other dogs, in spite of regular complaints about Bo starting fights and trying to mount every dog, leg, and toddler in sight. 

One evening, Bo was particularly interested in Arwen, aggressively following her, nipping her heels and trying to mount her, even after her usual wolverine-like Snap’n’Snarl, which has tended to discourage unwanted suitors before.  Brad was Too Damn High to notice, as usual, but mom knew that if Arwen actually bit Bo, Arwen would be the one in trouble and was trying to call her when Bo made yet another attempt and Arwen finally had it.

Instead of rightfully tearing his face off, Arwen instead did what Mom described as “A Judo-style front-flip” that pulled Bo clean off the ground and threw him on his back, Arwen landing on her feet like a cat.  Bo’s stubby little legs didn’t allow him to right himself before Arwen  jumped on him, front paws slamming into his saggy basset balls, squatted over his face, and peed on him.

“ARWEN NO!!” howled my mother as nearly everyone else present laughed, but having made her point, Arwen daintily got off Bo, and trotted to the gate, ready to go home. Bo yelped but got up and skulked away, only moderately bruised, cowering under the bench by Brad, who finally noticed something might be amiss.

Mom remembers hearing “Dude, why is my dog all wet?” right as they were leaving.  Apparently nobody told him what happened, becuase Brad still brings Bo to the park, but Bo has much better manners now.

I read this whole thing to my mom and upon reading the end part she was like “OH MY GOD! Our dog Lady once flipped another dog and I didn’t know it was a thing dogs could do!!” 

So there’s that.

Update: Arwen was at the vet’s office for a check-up and daycare, and decided partway through the afternoon that the other two kelpies were annoying her, but she didn’t want to go inside to be kenneled for a nap, so she instead…

…ninja’d her way onto the vet’s roof despite there being three people in the yard watching the dogs and no clear way up there. She had a pleasant hour of watching the vet staff try to figure out how she did that and how they were going to get her down before mom came to pick her up.

“Arwen, get your furry butt down here!”

At which point Arwen obidently got down by jumping into a nearby tree that’s technically inside a neighboring house’s yard, shimmied down that like a bear, then walked out of their side yard and back around the block to come sit at Mom’s feet, putting her paws up like she expected a treat.

That tree is not accessible from the daycare yard. We still have no idea how she got up there.

Shine on you beautiful bitch.

This just gets better and better every time i see it

I…

I have fostered doggos for a good majority of my life and my brain simply cannot process half of the bullshit in this post…

What the actual fuck?

Arwen was trained as an Autism Service Dog by inmates as part of a prison rehab/service dog charity program.  So like, 90% of her Bullshittery comes down to:

1. She’s a mix of two extremely smart breeds
2. She’s a mix of two extremely energetic breeds
3. The inmates trained her to do lots of “Extracirriculars” like veritcal leaps, how to climb chain-link fence, agility courses, physical-comedy type tricks becuase they finished teaching her the regular Service Dog Cirriculum and wanted to keep working with her.  
4. Due to said Extrcirriculars, she doesn’t have any fear of heights, strangers, animals, or the nonsense of other dogs.

She does do the Professional Service Animal thing when we put her vest on, but then she’s working and has things to do like teaching social skills to people or being a living stress ball to someone having a bad time, so all that brains, energy and training can be put towards a productive end, but if she hasn’t got an active job, Shenanigans Ensue.

As soon as I ready husky/kelpie mix I knew this dog was gonna be up to Some Bullshit.

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

I have not played the new Animal Crossing yet, but based on the posts that have crossed my dash, the principal activities of play seem to involve:

• Planting trees
  
• Picking flowers
• Trying on pretty dresses
• Hanging out with colourful animal friends
  
• Travelling by night to a secret island to fight giant scorpions for money
  

Like, I recognise that the whole “is Tom Nook a capitalist or a comrade?” debate legitimately hinges on whether his relationship with the player character is that of a landlord or that of an independent contractor, but the fact that he pays people to fight giant scorpions is also cause for concern.

Also, apparently the island has been cursed by a wizard and everyone is an egg now?

You can also invest in short-term junk bonds, agricultural futures, and real assets, in the form of turnips you can buy low and sell high. 

They call it, I shit you not, the Stalk Market. 

It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are.

A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening.

Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily.

You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth.

You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later.

Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage.

Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything.

I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.

You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it.

Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?

We shall see.

dboybaker:

thedreadpiratejames:

theothercogirl:

tatmanblue:

Amazing

Awww

Wow. That took guts.

At first I was like okay why are we throwing away a ladder and then my heart melted.

True story.

koryos:

According to a new study, Mimosa pudica, also known as the sensitive plant, can learn from experience.

The sensitive plant is famous for its ability to rapidly close its leaves in response to touch (as well as light and heat) by reducing the turgor pressure in its cells.

During the study, researchers dripped water on the leaves of the plant at a steady rate. The plant quickly learned to ‘ignore’ the harmless stimulus and keep its leaves open in a type of learning referred to in animals as habituation. In fact, the plant behaved similarly to animals in another way: in a more stressful (light-deficient) environment, it habituated faster.

What’s even more amazing is that researchers do not yet know the mechanism with which the plant is recording these memories- after all, plants do not have brains.

Similar work by the same research team has also shown that chili plants can differentiate between kin and nonkin seedlings when communicating with them.

Also, if you hadn’t heard about it, it’s well-documented that tomato plants send out signals to attract parasitic wasps when they are being eaten by tomato hornworms. The wasps then lay their eggs in the hornworms like plant-contracted hitmen.

Basically, plants make me really nervous.

One more reason not to eat vegetables. 

rustybuckett:

baschfire:

well fuck me sideways

My eyes just fucking widened that my eyelids broke.

whittingtonb:

Tiny bird bros.

ADORBS

kevinwada:

Spider-Woman

Redesign 2013

I’ve never seen all of superhero comics so neatly encapsulated in a single frame.

[From Rocketeer The Spirit - Pulp Friction! #4, 2013.]

yaranyarai:

nosy neighbors > lakelandhaze

archatlas:

Scotland John & Tina Reid

Mads: Why the heck do they just have a spare dead tribble onboard?
Arch: They actually have like a trillion dead tribbles on board.
Sam: McCoy breeds them for show. 
Mads: It would be more of a feat to NOT breed them, really.
Sam: Think about it though, they mature fast and breed easily — keeping the bloodline pure and breeding new and fancy types of tribble would be both challenging and efficient.
Fira: Though I wonder, how did the tribble die?
Sam: Once you win best in show you have to kill it. Only way to keep things interesting. 
Arch: Eventually, once the Klingons join the Federation, they take to this whole process INTENSELY.
Sam: Klingon tribbles are especially fluffy and beautiful.
Mads: They use their bioengineering expertise to give them head ridges.
Sam: The scandal at that year’s all-galaxy Tribble Show is unequaled in the history of the club.

I’m not even in this fandom but as far as I’m concerned it’s canon that McCoy has bred tribbles since he was a child, and is well known on the tribble show circuit for his dedication to breed purity and also his delicious tribble stew.