BasiliskFree

i'm genuinely having so much fun writing a jock protagonist. can't believe i never tried this before. all these years i've been limiting myself needlessly

i've created an extremely elaborate magic system based on linear algebra and not once does the narrator ever explain how it works. he doesn't know. he doesn't care. that's nerd shit. he is going on a lad's night out and if you try to tell him anything about equations he'll put his fingers in his ears and go "lalalala"

i feel it's important to add that my other protagonist is an academic and does know how the magic system works, but he doesn't get a POV chapter until halfway through the story. which means that over the course of 40,000 words we gradually build up a solid working idea of this world and its laws, as understood by Jock Protagonist - and then it switches to Nerd Protagonist, who's like, "just so we're clear, he was wrong about basically all of that."

This is genius

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell

chemists will be like this is a molecule

okay but this is what the best render of a human cell looks like

They are not kidding

We are full of so many fuckign guys

This is actually a full on interactive map! You can put your cursor over any structure to focus on it and see its name, you can focus on all the structures that are part of a specific pathway and, when you click on proteins, you open it up on PhosphoSitePlus, which is a curated database of proteins and their post-translational modifications. It has a helpful description and summary for each protein!

This is a HUGE complementary resource for learning molecular biology! It really helps to make sense of each individual pathway and it puts everything into perspective. It only focuses on human, rat and certain other animal cells, so it won’t have all the pathways one would wish to see… But for the pathways it does include, consider opening the image and accompanying it as you learn or revise them!

oh wow, thank you for the additional information, i had no idea, that’s so much cooler than just the flat picture.

One of my favorite things about learning about traditional textiles is the little ghosts they left in the language. Of course the ghosts are there, now that I know to look for them. Once upon a time, half the population spent a majority of their day making textiles. Spinning, at the very least, has been a part of humanity since the Neanderthals. That kind of knowledge doesn't just disappear.

A heckle was a device with sharp metal spikes, and people drag flax through the spikes to separate out the fibers from the chaff. When you say someone heckled a performer, you think you are being literal but you're speaking in an ancient metaphor.

When my grandpa says "spinning yarns" to mean telling stories, he knows that one's not quite literal, but its vividness is lost to him. There is no image in his mind of rhythm, muscle memory, and the subtle twist that aligns clouds of fibers into a single, strong cord.

When a fanfic writer describes someone carding their fingers through someone's hair, that's the most discordant in my mind. Carding is rough, and quick, and sometimes messy (my wool is full of debris, even after lots of washing). The teeth of my cards are densely packed and scratchy. But maybe that's my error, not the writer's. Before cards were invented, wool was combed with wide-toothed combs, and sometimes, in point of fact, with fingers. The verb "to card" (from Middle English) may actually be older than the tools I use, archaic as they are. And I say may, because I can't find a definitive history. People forget, even when the language remembers.

official linguistics post

One of my favorite trees due to year round interest. Birch bark cherry or Tibetan cherry. Prunus serrula.

shut up

This man is actually willy Wonka and he needs to be stopped. Someone needs to stop him. This is out of control.

Posca xeno xperiment

Caramelldansen turns 20 this year and frankly I am not prepared for that.

So it’s settled? When November 2 rolls around, we’re all laying facedown and blasting Caramelldansen?

no we’re gonna put our big boy pants on and do the goddamn caramelldansen dance for once in our lives

Well I know what I’ll have to reblog on the 2nd

they r sightseeing

glimpse into my beautiful imaginary world where arthropods are really big and we domesticated them

edit: people are starting to say some "my worst nightmare" or "eeeww no that one is yucky and scary" comments on this like they do on any bug post and id like to say. it's fine if you don't like bugs it's fine if you're scared of bugs but don't put that on MY post clearly talking about how much i like them and how cute i think they are. you can make your own damn post about how much you hate wasps or spiders or whatever. i'm blocking people who make these kinds of comments.

fruit posting

i love not using latin or greek letters for math. more people should do it

bird up

I put some thought to the palindrome writing system. Or, at least one of them.

There are a few different writing systems used by palindromes, but by far the most widespread one is this "reverse abugida" developed by grassland palindromes some time ago.

(an abugida is a writing system that uses mostly consonants, and then uses some kind of other notation to imply what kind of vowel is attached to said consonant. like a small symbol on the consonant, or changing the orientation of the consonant, and so on. Here, it's the other way around, with vowels being the base and consonants being the additive thing.)

Vowels use large lines that connect together.

Consonants are smaller symbols like dots, circles or dashes that punctuate those lines.

Palindromes don't have access to as many consonants as we have because air doesn't travel between their palate and tongue, but instead over/under both of them. So, they don't get to obstruct air coming out of them in the same ways that we do.

Put them together, and you get words!

Now for the hard part....... to figure out *what* those words are.

I know this isn't ninjago guys but I finished this 17 hour painting for my art class and I was proud of it so...enjoy.

I love Egypt fun fact about me. :)

A PAINTING????

obligatory

SCROLL BACK IT'S ART