MYSTERY CATERPILLAR OF THE AMAZON!
family Sphingidae, Manu Biological Station, Peru
Apparently, for years, the identity of this caterpillar has been a mystery. We may be very close to solving the mystery!
People have seen this large gorgeous caterpillar for ages, but have never been able to figure out what it grows/metamorphoses into... what species is it?
Entomologist Gwen Erdosh (Gwentomologist), currently the Volunteer Coordinator at the Manu Biological Station in Madre de Dios, Peru, has collected one, determined its host plant, and got it to pupate!
Luckily, I got to meet the larva before it pupated, and snap a few photos.
Hopefully, we will know soon, and the mystery will be solved!
- Paxon
THE MYSTERY HAS BEEN SOLVED!!!
The mystery caterpillar of the Amazon has been identified!
Gwen Erdosh has successfully raised the caterpillar, and it has fully metamorphosed.
We knew that it was a Sphinx Moth, family Sphingidae, but no on seemed to know what species it was.
This gorgeous caterpillar is the larva of Manduca neglecta!
photographs by Gwen Erdosh (Gwentomologist)
Have a look at some of the ID process on Inaturalist.
Watch Gwen's videos/posts about this on Instagram (1), (2) Instagram, and (2) Instagram.
whenever I see the occasional critic that the Dean (community) is problematic lgbtq representation I think of that scene in the last episode of the show where Britta tells her hypothetical pitch for a season 7 where she says if she made their lives a show she’d change the Dean from an insane queer man with a gender and sexual identity that is apparently so complex he refuses to explain it to anyone or identify with any particular lgbtq label to a cisnormative trans woman and cut out “all that other stuff” to make the Dean more positively representative of what most normal queer ppl r like and the Dean looks aghast and horrified as if he was just called every slur in the span of a minute bcus someone literally just casually said to his face that she would choose to make his identity and personality more palatable and easy to understand so that the lgbtq community won’t get a bed rep bcus in a show he’d be “bad representation”. Like lmfao 10/10 no notes. Community really said unproblematic lgbtq representation meant to make the community look good has so many more offensive implications then insane queer characters who don’t give a shit and that’s on period
i would love to read more destiel fics where cas and sam have a friendship/interact. not sastiel fics, just fics where they actually know each other and maybe help each other help dean? idk i just want good sam representation. if you want to self-promote PLEASE do
I combed through my bookmarks and here are some recs with either good Sam & Cas interactions, or Sam interpretations that really stood out.
Bunkers My go-to for positive Sam representation and an all-around excellent fic. No exaggeration: I have read all 277K words at least 5 times! It's my post-finale comfort fic.
The Cambion Cantrip It’s not that there’s a ton of Sam in this, but he is very much Cas’s best friend too. I wrote a rec of this on my side blog.
Redux (@valleydean) Another one for good Sam representation and a great story. I’ve read this one twice. It’s a future fic and I love Sam’s family; no blurry wife here!
Truth & Despair (@shallowseeker) Here's where I start veering into the interesting Sam interpretations category. This is the fic that opened my eyes to the concept of (as the tag says) 'Sam is a little gremlin who misses important things'. This story really influenced my own interpretation of Sam and this flavor of oblivious Sam is a lot of fun—and not mean-spirited at all: our guy is just doing his best!
And Then You Get Back Up Again Fair warning, this is actually the opposite of positive Sam representation at the start—he tries to murder Cas so—but then he gets better. (You might even say he gets back up again! 😊) I have so much affection for this Sam, and never miss a chance to rec this story.
Two Blades Series From the same author as The Cambion Cantrip (you can’t go wrong with Maldoror_Chant!) In this fic, Cas doesn’t care really care about Sam except as he relates to Dean. It's not mean-spirited—to Cas, we are all Sam: his world is divided into two categories: Dean and not-Dean. The 3rd and 4th fics are Sam-centric with the 4th fic basically Cas helping with Dean give Sam's new boyfriend (Mick Davies believe it or not!) the shovel talk, and it’s hilarious! (You really need to read these in order but, trust me, you won't regret it!)
And it turns out that I'm not above a little self-promotion: here's my crack fic where Sam's the one in the dungeon with Cas in 15x18 That Awkward Moment When, and it makes me laugh every time I re-read it so enjoy.
How much discourse do you think there is in the kpop demon hunters universe over Huntrix's breakup? I assume half the fans are analyzing every second of footage from the last three years looking for signs of tension and arguing about the whose fault it was and half the fans are posting that it's actually kind of fucked up to ruin the Idol Awards with a fake onstage breakup just to build up to dropping a new song, even if it is kind of a banger
@sagewiththyme You know that's a fascinating point because I figure the two options are a) no one really remembers what happened at the end because of magic bullshit or b) they play it off as a really elaborate but fully planned performance.
And the second one - can you fucking imagine.
Imagine one of the most popular bands in the world have this ongoing lore bit that they're actually demon hunters and they're always referencing it in their songs. And then one day a new boy band pops up and gets wildly popular with an over-the-top-cutesy hit. They're so soft and sweet and respectful. They're called Saja (Lion) Boys and they're all like "join the pride!" How cute!
And then they announce a new concert and you get there and it's fucking this. They're all dressed as demons/grim reapers. Surprise, "Saja" meant Jeoseung Saja all along! They're singing about how they're here for your soul and they relish in your pain, just a stunning 180 from their previous personas.
And then while you're trying to process the emotional whiplash the fucking demon hunter band bursts in and beats the shit out of them with the most insane pyrotechnic show you've ever seen in your life. They "kill" the boy band demons and then you never see them again. The whole band was a fucking psyop for Huntrix to play up the "demon hunters" bit.
I would never recover. The cheesiest fantasy power metal band has NOTHING on that level of commitment. I'd be stanning Huntrix for the rest of my life.
[ID: A comment by @sagewiththyme that says, "Didn’t they also say that the Saja boys were fighting onstage and that’s why they swapped time slots with the girls? Double breakup and makeup type thing". End ID]
"Yeah, the Saja Boys were a fake band. We paid them to steal the limelight for a little bit while Rumi's voice was out of commission. We thought it would be a cool setup for a triumphant return, you know? The cute little Lion Boys end up being secret demons trying to steal your souls, and Huntrix steps in and slays them in a triumphant return? ...Yeah. We planned it all, the songs, the heel-turn, the special effects, the whole shebang.
Except, uhhhh. We didn't expect them to get so popular so fast? They For Sure weren't supposed to make it to the final round of the Idol Awards. Like, for Legal Reasons. We were almost visibly panicking on stage when they announced that! I mean, do you know how it would look once it eventually came out that Saja Boys were working for us? "Oh, you planted a fake band so you could win the competition!" No joke. I mean, that is a pret-ty clear conflict of interest there. You know?
The Idol Awards are all about the fan's choices, and we just accidentally rigged the game.
The Saja Boys had to win the Idol Awards, now, but there was no chance. They only had two songs, Soda Pop and Your Idol. We couldn't have them push up the debut--I mean, we thought about it, Your Idol's a banger song and it totally would've given us a run for our money--but we'd have to follow it up with This Is What It Sounds Like, first off, and second, 'killing' the Saja Boys onstage would be like. The Media equivalent of announcing we won, like the Fans didn't have a choice in the matter. At the Idol Awards? Ha. Yeah. That's a no-go.
And I mean. Soda Pop is catchy but not that catchy guys, c'mon. We were totally gonna cream them with Golden.
So we were all scrambling. Rumi and Mira and I were trying to write and choreograph a brand new song, Takedown, something good but not Good Enough To Win, to maybe prolong the Rivalry, you know? To make our comeback all the more sweet. But it was all such short notice, and the song wasn't working, and Huntrix never gives a shoddy performance, on principle. We couldn't do it. But it was looking like the only way we were gonna legitimately lose was if something... happened during the competition.
And then Rumi had this brilliant idea..."
Memes
How I think I’m writing: Using eye contact, or lack thereof, to display emotions such as intimacy, shock, denial, or nervousness.
How I’m actually writing: She looked at me, and I looked away. I tried to look back, but she was already looking at the sky. “Look,” she sighs, looking back at me for a split second. “I don’t know how to say this.” We looked at each other and time stopped, but then she looked her lookers at something else to look at, looking tired.
Hi everyone, I'd like to bring your attention to Shehab and Ashour's family fundraiser again.
This is a legitimate fundraiser supporting two families who have been trying to raise funds for awhile now. As you may remember, Amal (@amal-ashour-new) recently had a baby. If you've been paying attention to the news coming out of Gaza then you'll understand that on top of continued violence and aggression from the Israelis, Palestinian families are having to deal with severe flooding, heavy winds, and temperatures that have already caused several infants to freeze to death just this past season.
Dana (@danashehab) has expressed that she doesn't really know what other people do to get their campaigns to spread and have traction, and I haven't been able to provide much help there because I'm not in the business of making posts that blow up on purpose. So all I can say is if you have been fortunate enough to spend this winter indoors with heating and food, please spare what you can for these families. And if you have nothing to spare, spreading these fundraisers around with some kind words will do a lot just to let people know they aren't being forgotten as the inhumane conditions they're subjected to persist into a third year.
Papuan Pitta (Erythropitta macklotii), family Pittidae, order Passeriformes, Cape York Peninsula, QLD, Australia
photographs by Laurie Ross
They should make a content label for ai posts like they do for mature content so I dont ever have to fucking look at it
okay nah but this is what I've been saying. everyone arguing over how to regulate AI and what it means for copyright and how do we account for AI without hurting creative industries and and and
Require it to be labeled. that's it. require every instance of AI output to be clearly and obviously labeled that it is AI. Every decision made with AI has to be disclosed in plain phrasing, every email, every paper, every image and video must be clearly and obviously watermarked. Make removing the label/identifier a procecutable offence.
Now everyone who doesn't want it can avoid it. Now everyone using it with intent as a bad actor has to jump through extra hoops (and is on the hook for additional charges when caught). Now every single person who has had their insurance claim or credit application or resume rejected or denied because of AI can point to it and demand a reconsideration. Make. Every. Single. Instance. Of AI use mandated to be legally disclosed. That's it!
I was just thinking about the old Japanese censorship laws that gave birth to tentacle porn...
So for anyone not in the know, the Japanese government decided to fight perversion with censorship.
Specifically you weren't allowed to draw penises.
So they drew things that WEREN'T penises instead. Like tentacles. Fast forward to today and tentacle porn is an entire standalone genre with thousands upon thousands of examples and enjoyers.
The attempt at censorship did not quell perversion, it only caused it to mutate.
And now I'm thinking about tumblr's decision to ban porn and of all the people leaving captions under videos of heavy machinery and industrial accidents like "I need someone to do this to me" and "this wouldn't fix me but it would help" or "everything reminds me of her"
All this to say that without porn on Tumblr
The perverts are mutating again
Take direct action, make a difference
Reminder that the entire trajectory of Tumblr over the last 8 years was a result of Tumblr being removed from the app store due to people posting CSAM, so this really could work
"do it scared" this "do it tired" that. well no one ever talks about the fucking insurmountable "do it with greasy hair"
you motherfuckers will argue about anything
I know I haven't posted regularly on this blog in years but I'm not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what's happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I'm genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I'm making a post about it.
A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:
2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.
2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.
November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.
December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)
Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.
1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)
Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.
The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.
ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.
It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.
Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.
And from today.
They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.
And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.
So that's a brief history.
Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.
It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.
I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.
Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.
Update- Minnesota republicans are taking this opportunity to try to impeach Govt Waltz, who has already declared that he will not seek re-election in November because of Republican death threats against him and his family. Because of the "fraud". But actually because Waltz is speaking very plainly about what is happening here.
St Paul has gone to partial virtual learning for anyone who doesn't feel safe sending their kids to school.
Every school I know now has safety patrols.
The school districts are not mincing words about the clear and present threat. Everyone in the area is completely clear that we are under violent occupation.
Most of the white people ICE grab, are released within days, because ICE can't even keep track of who was grabbed by who over what. However, they are still subjected to beatings, gassing, having their home and car windows smashes, etc.
Local police are advising compliance with the blatant human rights violations and total lack of due process, because they are cowards.
Even conservative Minnesotans are balking at the total lack of due process and open violence against unresisting people for doing things like taking videos. I know a guy who was in his house recording ICE, and they smashed his home window, dragged him out over the broken glass, beat him while screaming slurs, smashed his phone, and detained for three days.
We need your help to spread the truth about what is going on. Find the videos and share them on any platform you have. Make noise about what's happening. Get your "don't tread on me" relatives whipped up about it if you can.
We need republicans to be afraid, otherwise ICE plans to be here for half a year attacking us.
If human rights can be revoked because Trump doesn't like your state, then they aren't rights anymore, they are favors dispensed by your king.
maybe if we throw a wizard at the enemy with our trebuchet something amazing will happen
free reaction pic