wasp haters will cry and cry about how you "can't exist anywhere near a wasp" and how "they're aggressive" as if i didn't get right up in this Polistes dominula's face to get a good look at its little severed antenna with no trouble whatsoever. they could technically also cry about how it's "clearly a male anyway due to its yellow mandibles, relatively pale eyes and curly antennae" and "therefore harmless due to lacking the modified ovipositor that constitutes the stinger" but they refuse to learn anything about the things they hate, so they won't
floppy (August 28th, 2024)
merry-go-round
This edit grabbed me by the throat and made me realize that Kamen and Jimmy share a ridiculous amount of similarities so. of course. I had to do this
Speedpaint under the cut
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
Metric Paper Wasp (Polistes metricus), taken April 18, 2025, in Georgia, US
A beautiful, sleek wasp in the afternoon sun! This individual was an extremely good sport and let me get in very close for photos! Typically, paper wasps are a bit skittish and prefer to keep their distance, but this one just seemed curious. It's always a good day when a wasp stops buzzing around and lets me get some nice pictures! They're usually so busy that it's impossible to get anything!
the egg bar is coveted as fuck
amyways some images i made a bit ago to be used in your melic appreciation posts . at your leisure
hey. me again.
Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.
Super inspired by @weevildead 's michael painting! I hesitate to post this bc it was super experimental, and i hate the hair and how unblended the edges are w the obvious layers and weird blurring and stray marks...but idc im posting it.