Porple

I'm making a fancy title page for the RP. This is the progress so far!

drawing for my friend yippee

Would being called big dog fix me? Who knows?

Mixed reviews

“How’s life?”

Me:

im reading a lot of research about the mycorrhizal network because this is a HUGE emerging area of research and there is so much new stuff coming out its sooooo neat

So basically "the mycorrhizal network is how trees send each other nutrients and help each other" is wrong,

but the main reason people were mad at it—because they thought everything in the ecosystem is selfish and competitive acting for its own interests—is much wronger.

How come?

Well...fungi aren't just a postal service for trees. They have lives of their own! Plants aren't just controlling the mycorrhizal network to send nutrients where they want, they are communicating with the fungus and negotiating the terms of that relationship.

The genetic basis in plants for forming the mycorrhizal symbiosis is old. REALLY old. Like, "before plants even came onto land" OLD. Other forms of symbiosis, like what legumes have going on with the Rhizobia, are using the same genes to do their thing. There's a LOT of genes involved with creating the symbiosis, including some redundancies just to be safe, and we're only just now starting to understand them.

Why so many genes? What are all these genes for? Everything! Communication chemicals, hormones the other partner will respond to, flipping switches in the other partner's genes. There was a lot of arguing over which partner, the plant or the fungus, was "controlling" the partnership, but this question turned out to be total nonsense. Both symbionts have to recognize each other, respond to each other, prepare for symbiosis by adjusting how their genes are expressed, form the symbiosis, and continuously negotiate the relationship by exchanging chemical signals. Both can actively select the partner that offers the best benefits. There's even experiments where it's been shown that if the fungus turns parasitic, the plant will start secreting fungicidal chemicals. (But also the mutualist fungi in the experiment outcompeted the parasitic one when the pots were seeded with both.)

Mycorrhizal symbiosis is an incredibly intimate relationship. Like, the fungus produces special organs that literally grow inside the plant's cells, and the plant is actively participating in allowing this to happen. The plants and fungi have genes for hormones used by the other species, they have soooooo much stuff encoded in their DNA for interacting with their symbionts, it's like, blurring the lines for whether they're even separate organisms. There are SO many chemicals involved in communication between them and we only understand a few of those chemicals.

This is SO MUCH COOLER than if the plants were just using the fungus as a passive conduit to communicate with and support each other. The fungus is actively participating!

We were fools and assumed there had to be one partner that was "in control," but both plant AND fungus have to initiate and to some extent they're each engaging on their own terms! Or maybe it's better to think of them as one and the same organism?

We're also finding out that there's a lot more types of mycorrhizal symbiosis than we thought (at least five) and a lot more variety in how it works.

And that's not even getting into fungal endosymbionts—fungi that live inside plant cells completely instead of having part of them be outside and in the soil. They aren't considered mycorrhizae because they're fully inside the plant cells and not connected with any soil fungi network but they do a lot of complicated things we don't understand and interact with the plant's other symbionts.

Fungal endosymbionts produce a lot of chemicals that are useful to the plants in some way, and it turns out, that a lot of them kill cancer. Seriously, we've gotten a LOT of anti-cancer drugs from these guys. I think it's because they have to bypass the plant's immune system, but they also fight each other/other little guys that get inside plant cells, so they kind of...are part of the plant's immune system?

And what's MORE

Is that plants and fungus aren't the only things part of this system! There's also bacteria that are symbiotic with the plants and fungi! Even the endosymbiont fungi have bacteria that are endosymbionts inside THEM. Double endosymbiosis.

I think I read one paper saying the bacteria use the fungi to get around? Like that's how Rhizobia find their way to the legume roots in the first place? Have to double check that one

the things that are reported matters. the language used matters. what is left out of the story matters.

This is very important. Systemic problems trump individual action all the time.

And they look out so hard for the well being of the spiders AND the dolphins

@moss-wizard of course this isn’t how we serve it!!

It has to be in a dish with much higher sides, so when we go to cut it and it tries to sliiiiiide away it doesn’t escape and blorp blorp blorp across mom’s nice tablecloth

SLICE YOUR CANNED BOGBERRY GOO INTO DISCS BEFORE SERVING, YOU FILTHY HERETICS.

NO. IT WILL BE SERVED IN PROPER CAN SHAPE, AND WILL HAVE ITSELF SCOOPED INTO WEIRD SHAPES THE WAY THE GODS INTENDED

YOU STAY OUTTA THIS, GOD-QUEEN-EMPEROR. AND TAKE YOUR CERVID STALKERS WITH YOU.

It's supposed to be served in can shape with two discs already sliced and laying tastefully in front

I have consulted the scriptures and this is variation is still within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Mash the can shape up. We giving the table what they want, chaos in a dish, with a serving spoon.

Not to derail the escalating heresy, but what do dolphins have to do with cranberry bogs?

cranberry is served in its can shape in the can direction, not on its side but on its cylinder

Right but you guys know that ocean spray also sells like. Cranberries. Which you can use to make an actually edible cranberry sauce on the stovetop in 10 minutes of unattended cook time

actual cranberries? ew no thank you. The unprocessed chunky stuff is GROSS.

Look, in my house, we mix it with whipped cream and freeze it in a graham cracker crust for dessert!

@oft-goes-awry

what the actual fuck?

@somethinginterestingithink

Behold, my grandmother's recipe for Cranberry Surprise:

For the crust, combine 2/3 cup crushed ginger snap crumbs (put them in a large plastic bag and crumble with a rolling pin, or a mug if you don't have one) with 2 T. of sugar. Press into a 9" pie plate.

For the filling, pour a half-pint of regular whipping cream into a bowl, and beat until stiff. Mix in 2 T. of sugar and 1/2 tsp. of almond extract.

In another bowl, take a 14 oz. CHILLED can of jellied cranberry sauce and mash it with a potato masher if you've got one, or a fork if you don't. (My mom bought me a potato masher specifically so I could make this dessert at holidays without having to borrow hers.)

Once the log is goo, fold the cranberry sauce into the whipped cream mix. Yes, it's supposed to be THAT pink.

Pour the pink cream-and-cranberry mix into the crust and freeze for at least 24 hours. Cut and serve immediately upon removal from freezer.

American Horror Food is one of my favorite tumblr post types.

(I make it from real cranberries but if I decide to go with Goo Log, I mash it like the unorthodox godkiller that I am.)

I can only add that I worked in a deep freeze warehouse for a little bit when I was younger. The cranberries would come in loose around Halloween. This big machine would clean, sort, and dump them into 1000 lb wooden bins that would be forklifted and stacked to freeze in the warehouse.

One time, somebody lost control of a bin and broke it open. I would like you to picture a dozen warehouse workers slip sliding around on frozen cranberry ball bearings for hours, trying to clean them up, while you play Yakety Sax in your head. It was a nightmare.

Doesn’t everyone have a special cranberry-from-the-can serving plate and slice-cutting tool! What, are you all just living live Neanderthals?!?!

Oh my ZOD I love that

my brother is a culinary artist. one year he made some amazing cranberry sauce that nobody touched. the next year he made the same sauce, added a thickener, and set it in a ribbed can (he reused a pumpkin can iirc), and it was a hit.

we like the vague can-shaped fruit gelatin. i personally like it even more when it’s home-made.

Ah, in my house we serve this standing up on a plate, and we call it Invisible Can. It is not a holiday dinner without Invisible Can.

What the fuck about the dolphins and spiders, though ? The one reblog which pretended to explain the dolphins just... Didn't ? Help a gal from the other side of the Atlantic

The dolphins are a joke. There are no dolphins in the bog, that was made up for a meme.

The frog, in accordance with the “frogs and cranberries must be fall” meme, is very much a bog denizen.

They probably feed on the spiders, who are very, very real.

Cranberry bog ecosystems are AWESOME.

yall the comedy wildlife photography results are coming out atm and

look

LOOK AT THIS LIL MAN

THANK YOU BRIAN MATTHEWS HOLY SHIT HES GOT SUCH A CASE OF THE MONDAYS

It's a crime not to link the whole thing, they are all fantastic! https://www.comedywildlifephoto.com/gallery/finalists/2023_finalists.php

Bonk

Personal fave

Jessie what the fuck are you talking about

Personal fav - so spherical

whenever you feel sad simply google ptarmigans

they are a perfectly shaped being

Hopper is actually not always mean, only most of the time :) The scarecrow got the brunt of her attitude here.

The Swordfish and Hopper Heraldic pins are still here for a week! They’ve found almost 400 homes by now, which I am so grateful for. Here’s the link if you’d like to grab the pair too:

Heraldic Duo Pin Pack

People in badly written fantasy stories will usually talk about the major historical events of their world and how magic has affected the lives of everyone, but ask a person in the real world to describe the effects of WWI and the invention of the combustion engine on modern life and they’d probably couldn’t tell you.

Broke: every character seems to know everything about the history and lore of the world

Woke: most characters can’t tell you much besides the basics but there are some that can tell you more complete but specific parts

H Y P E R W O K E: Every character tells you a wildly different version of the past and what effects it has on the present, ranging from the government is an imperialist, colonizing body obsessed with power to the one true ruler was sent by the gods and has smote down anyone who got in his way to “Oh you mean Jeff, the quote unquote tyrant of the west? I knew that guy! He was alright, never did anything wrong really just wanted some soup.” And there’s no way to tell what actually happened

I like your thinking

really sorry to all my followers but I’m reblogging this every time it’s on my dash

um actually china is bad and this is easily verifiable:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badness_In_China

This shit is scary

Idk what trans man needs to hear this but you're NOT evil or disgusting for being a man. You do NOT have to suffer for the sins of the patriarchy committed by cis dudes. Being a man doesn't invalidate the misogyny you experienced growing up or experience now. Being a man doesn't mean you deserve to be isolated. Being a man doesn't mean you're inherently predatory or scary. You didn't "choose" this, and finding your true self is NOT "betraying the community" because you happen to be a man and/or masculine rather than a woman and/or feminine. You ARE allowed to be upset when people "affirm" your gender by malgendering you.

You DO deserve a community that uplifts you. You DO deserve to experience trans joy. You DO deserve to have your voices heard and your struggles recognized. Wanting the bare minimum of solidarity is NOT "making everything about trans men".

Cursed Christmas decoration (Savers in East Providence, RI)