NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

I KNOW that playing God is morally wrong, but holy HELL, it looks fun.

Why is it playing God? We aren’t violating any natural laws. God set the parameters of the universe to allow these things. There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s no hubris in learning more about how to manipulate the universe around us.

We made a whole-ass fish.

The reason this was accidental BTW is because they used paddlefish eggs as a negative control group for a breeding experiment on sturgeons because the scientists, quite naturally, assumed that they were SO unrelated it would be genetically impossible for them to mate. Like. I cannot stress enough to you how these creatures last related ancestors were

140 MILLION YEARS BACK.

If you don't know how far that is, that's basically the start of the cretaceous. Let me simplify that for you even further. Chimpanzees and humans seperated, what, 5 or 6 million years ago?

This is basically like if humans could hybridise with THESE THINGS.

This is the sort of thing that should be impossible. They used those eggs to be ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN.

And then THEY GOT FISH OUT OF IT.

Like. You can quite clearly understand why they didn't think anything would happen. WE ARE MORE RELATED TO BLUE WHALES THAN THESE THINGS.

THE AMERICAN PADDLEFISH AND THE STURGEON ARE SO COMPLETELY UNRELATED THAT THIS IS NOT PLAYING GOD. IF ANYTHING THIS IS AN ACT OF GOD.

THE SCIENTISTS HAD NO BLAME IN THIS BECAUSE NOTHING LIKE THIS HAD EVER HAPPENED BEFORE

It sort of goes against the rules of genetics a bit.

Oh i forgot to add

THESE THINGS, FOR HYBRIDS, HAD A REALLY HIGH SURVIVAL RATING. LIKE 70% OF THEM SURVIVED.

To put that into perspective, getting a blue whale and a squirrel and trying to hybridise them is more sensible, and that wouldn't produce anything but getting you banned from science. Most animals that aren't plants can barely hybridise two degrees away from each other.

BUT THESE TWO ENTIRELY UNRELATED FISH create PERFECTLY HEALTHY HYBRIDS.

the scientists literally had to do the tests AGAIN just to be like "okay this is real right. This is actually like, not a fluke, this works right" and it worked again. They just Can!

It clearly wasn't a fluke. This is a fluke.

Yesterday my little brother told me something very sweet and touching, that when he was a kid and had nightmares about monsters chasing him or whatever he would be able to end the nightmare by finding me in the dream and I would protect him by fighting off the zombies, or carrying him away. This is adorable, and makes me feel like the greatest older sibling in the world, but the hilarious thing is that when I was a kid I had nightmares of needing to save him from zombies and such. so many dreams where he was in trouble and I needed to save him. Like my nightmares began where his ended. Low key I think he mastered the ability to psychically transfer his nightmare to me as a child and I'm kind of annoyed with him.

i think 'I trust you with my life but not your own' as a trope is one of the ones that can always fuck me up no matter what

"I trust you with my life because you are good and kind and noble--I know you will not hesitate to do everything in your power to save me.

I do not trust you with your own life because you are good and kind and noble--I know you would not hesitate to sacrifice yourself to save me."

THAT is where it's at!!!!!

Here, have some (mildly cursed) bumper stickers for all your Dracula needs.

people should stop acting that way about mathematics to mathematicians and start acting that way with business majors instead

this is why we need STEM-humanities solidarity

🎶Capitalist training! Looney Tuner!🎵

locusimperium:

So I tried this recipe.

And it is GREAT.

It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.

Life hack: add white chocolate chips and sea salt

I made these today for the equinox with sea salt caramel chips and they are simply amazing. Let’s see how long they last with six people in the house!

Noting for later (as we need more butter for this, and probably won’t do a grocery shopping till the weekend).

The OP version of this has become my go-to cookie for basically all things and I have a whole cohort of friends and colleagues who would murder each other to get them. Haven’t tried any add ons yet, since the base recipe is SO GOOD.

I’ve reblogged this before and I’m reblogging it again because I’m about to make it again tomorrow and I wanted to add my own tale of just how amazingly delicious it. it was SO incredibly simple to bake and with an extra dusting of brown sugar on top and served warm and soft they gift you with the taste of the nectar of the gods when paired with a small glass of milk. this image is from when I first made them a couple years ago:

GO. MAKE THESE !!!!

Needed to make a dessert in a hurry to bring to Thanksgiving, and this recipe worked excellently. I did not have the right kind of sugar for the topping, so instead I used a packet of lemonade powder, which gave it a nice citrusy zing.

Ideal ship dynamic is “person whose love language is acts of service” and “person who has never been cared for before”

I think it's a common misconception that domesticating animals is somewhat like enslaving them. It really is more of a symbiotic relationship. No wild animal would have willingly put up with early humans if they didn't get something out of it. Wolves wouldn't have stayed with us and become dogs if they weren't getting food and safety out of it. Many large herbivores that are now domesticated could and would have easily trampled their early human captors or broken their enclosures open if they didn't have a reason to stay. Sometimes individual animals still do if we don't give them what they need.

The animals that have stayed with us for thousands of years have evolved to cooperate with us better. Dogs have additional facial muscles around their eyes that wolves lack in order to mimic human facial expressions. Sheep grow their wool perpetually while their wild counterparts don't because a bigger fleece means they're more likely to be allowed to breed and be kept around. Domestic dairy cows produce much more milk than wild bovine species and domestic hens lay more eggs. Do you know how energy costly producing eggs or milk is for an animal? It's pretty intense! They wouldn't be able to do that if we hadn't given them the food and safety from predators and the elements to.

And we really need to show these animals respect and gratitude for what they give us by taking excellent care of them. They gave up a lot to be with us, often including the means to take care of themselves in the wild. That's a huge reason why I'm not against using animal products, but I hate factory farming. They are still living, breathing creatures with needs and feelings. They deserve a comfortable life and, when the time comes, a humane death.

Fun fact! Not only is everything here correct, it's the reason we haven't domesticated bears!

This is a bit to the left of my area of expertise, so bear with me (heh), but there had been attempts to domesticate brown bears several times in human history! Vikings were the first ones we have records of (that I know of) and also in the Roman empire, India and even the Victorians. There were absolutely a few generations of tame brown bears, from pets to zoo performers to hunters and war bears. They did have a chance of being domesticated like the wolves had been.

And all of that effort? Resulted in jack shit. Level of domestication remained zero. The bears got out of that domestication experiment with zero genes altered. There is several reasons for that, one of which being that they live too long and don't breed as fast, and also they are very individual animals as opposed to wolves, so they don't play well in groups, which is kinda necessary.

But the biggest reason? BEARS DON'T NEED HUMANS. There is absolutely no point in a bear's life cycle where it's survival would be immensely impacted for the better by human intervention. They can hunt and forage on their own, no help necessary. They have no trouble surviving harsh climates, so human houses weren't a temptation. They're solitary, so they didn't seek out companionship when alone. They occupy a similar dietary niche as humans so were more competition for resources that an opportunity for mutualism. They certainly didn't need protection.

So even though humans (being human) tried to domesticate bears, bears weren't really playing ball with that. They were just fine on their own, and saw no sufficient incentive to change themselves to fit into a relationship with humans. Sure there are some weirdoes who got fairy-napped as cubs and are happy living with humans, but their genes aren't useful enough to bring into the pool. They saw what happened to the wolves who got too close to the human fire and missionaries are mauled on sight.

The bears are bears, and bears they will stay.

@mediterranean-ground-cuckoo you have activated a sleeper agent I didn't know I had in my brain.

Because it's kinda already happened, but not really? The thing about cheetahs is that they are very, very endangered, part of the reason being that cheetah cub mortality rate is something like 80%, which is abnormally high even for wild animals. Cheetahs don't make dens where they can stash their cubs, so they have to sort of drag them around with them and hope predators mistake them for a badger and don't attack them (cheetah cubs have very fluffy fur on top of them as camouflage).

Add in the fact that tjey're basically horse software running on cat hardware? These guys are an anxious wreck, every single one of them. And if left on their own they will absolutely form a positive feedback loop of scaring each other half to death and be too stressed to breed.

Enter wildlife conservation scientists.

These guys really want cheetahs to stay around, and stay wild animals. They are very fucking careful to let cheetahs be wild animals while making sure they don't perish entirely to enviroment, starvation and predation, and that they preferably breed.

Cheetahs see humans staying back and keeping a respectful distance but helping whenever they need it. Everyone who knows cats knows this is basically a marriage proposal done right.

So humans want cheetahs to be proper wild animals. Cheetahs have tried being wild animals and said 'Fuck that shit! That's hard! Come pet me and keep me safe!'

Add in the fact that cheetah gene pool is so fucking limited they can basically all be each other's organ donors, you also gotta bolster their diversity, preferably with healthy cheetahs from zoos, and those are so used to humans some of them will just come up to you and demand to be petted. If it's one of those that was raised with helper dogs? That's basically an oversized housecat, or at least it really wants you to think it is.

And there is also a historical precedent for this! Fucking pharaos kept cheetahs as pets, and if taken young they can be tamed in, like, a year. Tame cheetahs were noble gifts in the Ming dynasty. The Mughals used them as hunting animals (though it might have been carcals or leopards).

Quite frankly, the only reason cheetahs HADN'T been domesticated so far is because getting them to breed in captivity is real fucking hard, and consistent sucesses were achieved only in the seventies. The males need to have their bromance packs (pardon, coalitions) and females need to have a large area to roam. Kinda hard to arrange without a whole lot of land.

So this is, in fact, the exact reverse of bears.

say what you will about the intransigence of cats, those guys LOVE getting ahold of someone with thumbs

hey so i've had a lot of ppl here in the us asking me lately For Obvious Reasons what they should do to start joining/building community. i'm obviously nowhere close to perfect, and i've seen lots of folks give good advice, much of which i have shared on this blog. but something i haven't seen as many people talking about yet as an extremely simple way to start taking care of the people around you is masks.

covid never ended, it's still here, it's still causing a lot of harm. yes, there exist better vaccines and medication which is wonderful, but anyone with any immune complications and many other types of chronic illnesses/disabilities is basically permanently isolated from public life now due to the lack of masking regulations. even many able-bodied folks do not have access to existing vaccines/medication/the ability to take time off when sick.

you want to take better care of everyone around you? mask up. at the very least, mask up in public places, ESPECIALLY indoors. wearing a mask (a kn95 or better) to the grocery store or when you go out or while you're at work is such an easy way to protect others. it's such a small inconvenience, you can do it, i promise it's not a big deal. i know you feel Weird being the only one sometimes, but i never stopped masking indoors and i rarely if ever even have people remark upon it, let alone give me shit about it. take on a little discomfort for the sake of love, care, and community.

for your elderly neighbors, your disabled and chronically ill neighbors, your neighbors just scraping by who can't afford sick leave, your uninsured neighbors, your houseless neighbors, your very young neighbors who can't be vaccinated yet, the folks whose caregivers won't let them access vaccines, hell, even for the people who willfully refuse vaccination, do it for all of them. no one deserves illness or death. if you want to get more involved, see who is organizing your local mask bloc chapter. https://maskbloc.org/. see if you can donate some time, energy, or even just money to them. if you can't access/afford good masks, get in contact with your local mask bloc for that as well, and they will be happy to help you and your people get good masks for free. encourage the people around you to wear masks, hand out extras if you can. let people know that you care, in this one little way. we take care of each other.

Ms. Frizzle *in a star fleet uniform* “battle stations everyone”

We never violated the Prime Directive at my old school…

I did the thing…

Yes this is exactly what I had in mind

[ID: An edit of Ms. Frizzle standing in the TNG bridge, wearing a red Star Fleet uniform with star earrings and shoes. She throws her hands into the air and smiles, “Battle stations, everyone!!!” Tim and Phoebe are wearing gold uniforms, and Tim has Geordi’s visor. Phoebe says nervously, “We never violated the Prime Directive at my old school…” End ID] (image description via @princess-of-purple-prose)

i was meant to be someones spoiled and mischievous house cat

what do you MEAN i have to complete tasks tomorrow

i already completed tasks TODAY

Me: You know how when you were a kid and you’d wish that you’d get sick or injured in a way that would justify why you didn’t live up to your potential?

Everybody, apparently: No?

“How to Respond to Criticism” by Danny M. Lavery for The Toast

seems like plenty of people are lacking the Vitamin

I have never had an original experience. Except now I actually do have chronic pain and diagnosed mental illnesses that explain why I do not live up to my potential and people are like "why don't you just power through? Why don't you just fix it? Why did you do it to yourself by not taking care of your body? Isn't this just your own fault? Do you even have a right to complain? Lots of people have it worse." so I occasionally find my mind still hoping that I have something even more wrong that explains why I ever ended up like this even while remembering that people will never be sympathetic even if you have one or one million reasons why you can't live up to your full potential and one or one billion reasons for those reasons. It's trying to justify why you're so "worthless" to people, with reasons upon reasons upon reasons, but they never really, actually cared about the why. They never cared about the explanation at all. It's wanting to be cared for by the people around you who have never or rarely shown any care for you.

Happy Partially Muscled Skeleton Stands By The Perimeter Fence And Screams For Thirty Seconds Before Vanishing day for all who celebrate

If you're having a bad day, just remember that it's going to be winter soon and imagine what will happen to all the Cybertrucks ❤️

Salt-rusted unprotected steel panels... Meltwater getting into poorly constructed and poorly isolated electronics... Stuck in snowdrifts that a real truck would have been able to deal with... Oh, those are indeed happy images. Yes indeed...

It's winter in the US is anything happening to all the cybertrucks

No snow here yet. Lots of Cybertrucks in my area, so I’ll keep an eye out.

Keep us updated I am so curious to see how they handle Normal Weather

There should be Cybertruck Winter, like Fat Bear Week. Where we see which cybertrucks fall first and which ones make it to the end in usable condition.

Dispatch from the far northern hemisphere and have witnessed a Cybertruck in the winter wilds.

We're early enough into the snow season in that the damage isn't obvious. My guess is that exposure to road salts are really going to destroy these ambulatory dumpsters, but we won't start to see that until spring. Road salt is difficult to impossible to get off in a regular car wash, and we know that Cybertruck can't handle even that.

On the one I saw, any metallic shine that the Cybertruck had was completely lost in a combination of cold winter temps, light street grunge, and lower ambient sunlight. It was the same color as my friend's early 2000s silver pickup truck. One of the big draws, imo, is that stainless steel panelling and to see it turn into the same shade of grey as one of the most popular truck colors twenty years ago would be disappointing to me. It's not special anymore.

Local Cybertruck enthusiasts who are salty dogs at winter driving have started vinyl wrapping their automotive basket cases. The trend seems to be to go from the door windows down, which gives them a beach cooler vibe that is similarly underwhelming.

They’re already having issues! The head lights are sunken in for some reason. This means there is a shelf to hold snow in front of the lights and block them.

Now, every car has to have the snow cleared off the headlights before you drive, but this is way worse. That shelf collects snow as you drive. People have to pull over and clear the snow off mid-drive because they lose their headlights.

WHY ARE THEY BUILT THAT WAY

needed this on my blog

HELP!

THE HUMANS

ABOUT TO ESCAPE!

GET YOUR PAWS OFF ME YOU, DIRTY APE!

HE CAN TALK!

HE CAN TALK HE CAN TALK HE CAN TALK HE CAN TALK

I CAN SIIIIIINNNNGG!!

OH!

HELP ME DR ZAIUS!

Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius,

Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius

Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius,

OooOoOOoooh, Doctor Zaius!

Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius!