excentricat1 reblogged
does it still count as qwerty if you change how many letters are in each row 🤔
excentricat1 reblogged
the happiest dog i’ve seen in my life
excentricat1 reblogged
Ok, to prove to my husband that this is more a European device than a U.S. device I am going to need more non-US people to reblog this.
Do not reblog for science. No science will be happening. Reblog to help me prove a point!
(If I am right I will show him this poll. If I am wrong he will never know this happened)
OP, I hope you use this poll to spread knowledge of this superior device when the poll is over. Too many people from everywhere don't know what it is.
excentricat1 reblogged
museums should be open till like midnight, i don't want to go to the club i want to go look at art or fossils.
excentricat1 reblogged
The holotype specimen of Liophidium pattoni. Yes, it really is pink in life! Usually the color red fades the fastest in preserved specimens, yet this species has retained its pink lines and tail while the yellow belly has completely faded away. No one knows whether the pink is due to a pigment or the structure of the scale and the way it reflects light.
Photo from Vieites et al. (2010)
Vieites, D.R., Ratsoavina, F.M., Randrianiaina, R.D., Nagy, Z.T., Glaw, F. & Vences, M. 2010. A rhapsody of colours from Madagascar: discovery of a remarkable new snake of the genus Liophidium and its phylogenetic relationships. Salamandra 46: 1–10.
I am convinced that the colouration is from a pigment, because it does not change depending on the way you tilt the animal. But this is one of the most beautiful animals in our collection here.
excentricat1 reblogged
dead
I mean, yes, this is funny, but mostly I’m just struck by how AMAZING language and its capacity for evolution and elasticity is. This would be incomprehensible to an English-speaker living in any other time.
it honestly looks like a different language
Whoa
[the picture of this post is a screencap of one the final scenes of the movie “Gone With The Wind”. Clark Gable’s character, Rhett Butler, addresses Vivien Leigh’s character, Scarlett O’Hara. Text in the image, implied to be captions for what the Rhett Butler is saying read “tbh bae idgaf”]
What I think I love the most here, is that this version keeps the same exact intended message as the original, including the tone, but translates it to a much modern codification, while still being technically the same language.
The original phrase in “Gone With The Wind” is (iirc) “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The phrase here has the same structure, and the same implied meaning in the message!
It’s made up of the same elements: [i am being honest with my message] + [term of endearment for a romantic partner i am close to] + [very strong disinterest + use of profanity to accentuate the weight of my message] (plus, both in the spoken message within the film and in this caption, the tone of voice conveyed by the speaker is flat, disinterested (which is partly implied in the caption by the lack of punctuation!))
Like, this is actually a very faithful translation of the original phrase in the movie!!! And at the same time, it could not possibly look any more different!!! Almost a century apart, the sentence in this caption was made using a specific form of English, and it has the same meaning as the sentence used in the film.
But the form of the sentence looks completely different, and if the reader is not used to reading the kind of abbreviated English used in it, and is not familiar with the implied meaning behind it (”bae” as a term of endearment, “tbh” and “idgaf” as both acronyms for “to be honest” and “i don’t give a fuck” and also ways of saying something slightly more specific than those expressions (such as “i care so little that i can’t be bothered to write my response in full’)) it can be entirely incomprehensible.
This caption is a translation of the original message to a more contemporary use of the same language (English), and a faithful one at that. But at the moment it was made, because of the kind of language used, it was such a specific kind of translation that people not familiar with its language would likely have strong issues not only understanding it and its message, but even recognizing it as what it is (again, a contemporary translation into a specific form of contemporary English).
Language is fucking amazing and I love it.
excentricat1 reblogged
biologists will be like this is a very simplified diagram of a mammalian cell
chemists will be like this is a molecule
goldhornsandblackwool
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.
excentricat1 reblogged
Boss politics antitrust
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Xi Jinping inaugurated his second term with an anti-corruption purge that ran from 2012-2015, resulting in a massive turnover in the power structures of Chinese society.
At the time, people inside and outside of China believed that Xi was using the crackdown to target his political enemies and consolidate power. Certainly, that was the effect of the purge, which paved the way for reforms to Chinese law that have effectively allowed Xi to hold office for life.
In 2018, Peter Lorentzen (USF Econ) and Xi Lu (NUS Policy) published a paper that used clever empirical methods to get to the bottom of this question:
Working from the extensive data-files published during the corruption trials of the purged officials, Lorentzen and Xi Liu were able to estimate the likelihood that an official had really been corrupt. They concluded that overwhelmingly, the anti-corruption purges did target corrupt officials, some of them very highly placed.
But when they considered the social graph of those defenestrated officials, they found that they came from blocs that were rivals of Xi Jinping and his circle, while officials who were loyal to Xi Jinping's were spared, even when they were corrupt.
In other words, Xi Jinping's anticorruption efforts targeted genuinely corrupt officials – but only if they supported Xi's rivals. Xi's own cronies were exempted from this. Xi did use the anticorruption effort to consolidate power, but that doesn't mean he prosecuted the innocent – rather, he selectively prosecuted the guilty.
Donald Trump will be America's next president. He campaigned against "elites" and won the support of Americans who were rightly furious at being ripped off and abused by big business. The Biden administration had done much to tackle this corruption, starting with July 2020's 72-point executive order creating a "whole of government" approach to fighting corporate power:
Trump will have to decide what to do about these efforts. It's easy to say that Trump will just kill them all and let giant, predatory corporations rip, but I think that's wrong. After all, the Google antitrust case that the DoJ just won started under the last Trump administration. Trump also sued to block the absolutely terrible merger between Warner and AT&T.
Hey yall this is important. Stay informed.
The Machiavelli caveat... The enemy of my enemy is my friend... Except when they are also my enemy.
Better to ask TrAmp to get onto the ones he's ignoring. It might avail nothing yet, but TrAmp won't be around forever...
(TrAmp - explainer: Imagine you speak Italian, and try it again)
excentricat1 reblogged
The beloveds.
excentricat1 reblogged
dash is dead im teleporting to the past
BEFORE YOU CLICK A LINK!
Reblog this post :) Especially if you’re on mobile, you’ll lose the post if you click the link without thinking. Take a note from your elders before you
excentricat1 reblogged
Well, that was unexpected.
s-burb
Pop goes the weasel
excentricat1 reblogged
mariah carey is nearly defrosted and they're playing christmas music in shopping malls
excentricat1 reblogged
Thinking about how wild it is that enshittification starts as a way for the rich to squeeze the populace for more money but ends up infecting everything so even luxury products decline in quality. They’ve got more money than fucking God now and for what? Literally they can’t even buy fun nice stuff for themselves because they killed craft.
Anyway this post is about Dhaka muslin but it’s also about everything.
excentricat1 reblogged
@elodieunderglass I feel like this is up your alley
Pilates!
excentricat1 reblogged
The Soldier and the Solicitor Redraw: Finale
Oh and credit to @a-lilac-lyric for letting me know about the medals Quincey should have!
Anonymous asked:
🔮CRYSTAL BALL Share one thing you think happens after the end of the novel.
Thanks for the ask!
I don't have the elaborate post-cannon world that some people do. I haven't thought about it as deeply. But Arthur definitely moves much of the family business to Jonathan's firm. It gives him the excuse he needs as a lord to be spending time with his good friends, inviting Jonathan to the estate to consult on this or that plan and keep him updated. And of course, since it is so far from Exeter to Ring, he simply must bring Mina along.
I like the idea that Jack goes in for investigating some of the other crazy things that Van Helsing was on about. Hypnotism and vampires and mesmerism were real. How many others of that long list have enough evidence for Jack?
Ask game here for anyone who wants to join.
Anonymous asked:
⌨️KEYBOARD What modern technology would you use to fight vampires?
🖊️ PEN Have you ever created any Dracula fanworks? If so, which one are you proudest of?
Thanks for the ask!
We have so much communication these days! Texting and phones and emails. We could email our notes. They'd be easy to refer to and impossible to destroy completely. We have the internet. We can research and find the experts and ask them questions. We have plane flights with travel times so much faster than anything they could imagine. If communication and travel is the key to destroying Dracula, the modern age has it down.
I have written a couple of fics. This one is my favorite. I love the exploration of what Renfield might have done with a little more exploration and understanding and a little less force.
Ask game here for anyone who wants to join.