If you have ever been tempted by a Paleozoic Pal, like a a stuffed trilobite or a full size eurypterid body pillow, now's the time to buy one, before they and a really lovely little museum are gone for good 😭😭😭

This was the museum I went to often in my childhood. I'm no longer able to visit unless I visit family, but this place holds a special place in my heart.

As stated in the article, they hold around 7 million artifacts- many of which are orphaned fossils, with the museum taking in collections that otherwise would have been trashed.

Please consider buying a Paleozoic Pal, but I'll also leave a direct donation link as well.

THE GIANT EURYPTERID BODY PILLOW IS BACK IN STOCK

theres a shocking amount of years between 2019 and 2024

Me when I don’t check when ao3 scheduled maintenances are and am then caught offguard by a scheduled maintenance

scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple

the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

I'm obsessed with them.

What the sneef? I'm snorfin' here!

Hey? You doin alright @ghost--bot ??

Anyway, more verified reporting on Neil Gaiman is out and it's real bad, folks, it just is. I'm not going to link it here, but there are plenty of free links floating around.

I cannot stress this enough, if the topic of sexual assault and graphic details are going to be severely distressing for you, please do not read it. That is not something you have to do to yourself. You do not have to do penance for finding his work meaningful, previously praised it, or enjoyed interacting with him on Tumblr. This is not on you. No one needs that from you, no matter how it may feel.

If this is personally devastating, you can (and should!) take some time to process it. You don't owe the internet a hot take or force yourself to feel the right emotion. Just take a break until you find the right headspace to be in. Please take care of yourselves.

The older generation's fixation on forcing you to have kids is something they absolutely refuse to unlearn. You can give the calmest and most reasonable explanation for not having kids and the only thing they can think to say is, "But what of the heir to the lands?" "Who will inherit the throne?" "Please sire upon your barren death there will be a parochial schism that will soak our soils with brother-blood." They literally hate to see you happy with just a cat.

#this feels like it's going to be one of those posts where people skim it and miss the joke in the central part and respond to it seriously #like that one cottagecore post (via @fireburst-520)

There is a potent disregard for the plight of my feudal lands amongst the tags

Also remember that letting people cover their faces in public did not lead to everyone getting robbed

And also remember that letting people work from home, and attend virtual concerts, and go to meetings via zoom, and go to conferences virtually, and go to religious services virtually, and go to all kinds of other events virtually and thus, allowing for disabled and chronically ill folks to participate in society like never before…

But now, folks want to take so many of those options away all over again…isolating disabled and chronically ill folks from society again. It’s cruel…taking something beautiful like that away from us after showing us that something like that was possible this whole time since we have had the technology. And now that we know for a fact that the technology exists, non-disabled and non-chronically ill people want to take that away from us?

It’s beyond cruel.

If you’ve never been house bound or bed bound for months or years on end like I have? Or like others like me have? Then you have no idea what this feels like. None.

Ever wanted to know how to pronounce the name of our favorite Ur copper merchant, Ea-nāṣir? If you haven't looked it up, I can almost guarantee that you are saying it wrong, but fret not. I will share the secret with you (or at least the buest guess modern experts have).

The reconstruction of how to pronounce his name currently looks like this in the IPA:

[e.a.ˈnaː.t͡sʼiʁ]

If that looks daunting, keep reading.

Newsflash!!! If your doctor says your baby has "gonads" that need removal or that there is a genital "deformity" these words are code for intersex baby. REFUSE UROLOGY SURGERY FOR YOUR INFANT UNLESS THEY CAN PROVE IT WILL EFFECT YOUR BABY IN THE NEXT YEAR. sometimes urethras are blocked or there's legitimate impact to functionality. Otherwise almost always surgery can wait till your child is old enough to understand what is happening. As someone who went through pediatric urology- you don't want them operating unless it's 100% necessary. The procedures are gruesome and traumatic (and often not anesthetized) most people use it as a first resort when surgery should ALWAYS be a last resort especially for minors.

This is badass: Medieval Nubian Fashion Brought to Life. Click through to the link because there’s more replica clothing and it is all stunning!

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.