@whilst-farting-i / whilst-farting-i.tumblr.com
August 2, 1971: In a tribute to Galileo, Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott performs the hammer-and-feather drop. The feather is 44 times lighter than the hammer, but with no air resistance, the objects fall at the same rate.
well that’s proving a simple result in the most stubbornly over the top manner ever
Futuristic!
By weaving popsicle sticks together in a specific pattern, there is a build up potential energy (stored energy) in the bent and twisted sticks. When released from one end, this stored potential energy is converted into kinetic energy (energy of motion) as the sticks rapidly unfurl and fly through the air in a chain reaction.
An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.
But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.
You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.
That's a "you" thing, not a "we" thing.
In her infinite wisdom mother nature gave the humble pistol shrimp a delightfully colorful shell and a plasma cannon to destroy its enemies
mother nature did this to samus aran too
"pasta only fills you up with empty calories" have you considered that it also fills me with love
love and warmth and happiness and most importantly pasta
pasta rant. pasta fills you with strength and diet culture is based in junk science
I did sports in college and the day before every tournament we'd go to Olive garden and eat as much pasta as possible. carb loading.
and literally every year the freshmen were like "you want us to eat carbs? Bc this was peak diet culture days. And yeah bc carbs make you strong the next day. You can do high intensity anerobic exercise for a long ass time after eating carbs. it was like having pasta superpowers
We'd be bringing sugary drinks to competition to keep up the energy and getting burgers and milkshakes after to recover. And all that was healthy af
You need protein to repair damaged muscles, and fats to break down vitamins and give you energy so anything that tells you any of the macros are bad for you? It's eating disorder shit, macros are literally the 3 nutrients your body needs in large quantities to survive. and sugar? That's the shit you need when you need energy Right Now.
One of the most horrifying conversations that I've ever heard, was when my (then under ten) niece and nephew told my mum that pasta, potatoes and rice were all unhealthy foods and that she shouldn't be making them dinner with them. Because they were Bad For You.
Apparently the school they were in at the time had told them All About The Evils Of Carbs. And how they should be avoiding them all.
Carb loading has it's place definitely (I used to do it a lot pre-days where I knew I was going to be doing it a lot of heavy lifting for work). But honestly so does just eating carbs.
But we really need to get people to stop saying terrifying things like "pasta only fills you up with empty calories"
Because OP is right, it fills you with love and warmth (and most importantly pasta).
But it also fills you with energy. And, if you are still growing, it fuels your growth.
imagine two mated wyrms twisting around each other, possessing an uncountable number of limbs, each claw of good or evil interlocked with its opposite, the coil twists further around itself into a skein of flesh. how i would describe DNA to a wizard
So basically, Dolly the sheep was an accident. They were trying to clone sheep cells, and they ended up unintentally generating an embryo, which turned out to be viable, hence we got Dolly.
The method they used proved unsuccessful in primates, and the risk of cloning primates (and thus humans) outweighs the benefits (because there really aren't any real benefits, scientifically speaking), so they don't do it.
Where it's most likely to be used is in agriculture, cloning livestock embryos.
What they use cloning for is stem cells. Cloning adult cells to create stem cells means they don't need embryonic stem cells, which is probably the most important thing that came from cloning research in the past 25 years.
The reason it was so important was that it proved that you didn't need an embryonic cell to clone live animals. The nucleus of an adult cell contains all the DNA you need to clone, because Dolly was cloned from an adult cell, which was previously unheard of. Now they know that adults cells can be reprogrammed back to an embryonic stage, and was a major breakthrough for stem cell research.
So basically, we don't hear about cloning anymore because they aren't doing anything that is so exciting it will capture the world's interest, like Dolly did. But it was a major scientific breakthrough that is still very important.
One of my favourite cloned animals is Kurt, a Przewalski's Horse who was cloned from the preserved samples from a horse that died in the 90's so that he can hopefully introduce some additional genetic diversity into the Przewalski's Horse population. Oh hey there's actually two clones of this one horse now, the second one is Ollie who was born last year. Kurt is now about four years old. Last I checked he was at the San Diego Zoo.
We don't tend to clone animals that are more common because we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it's called sheep.
"don't go grocery shopping when hungry" doesn't work for me because Not Hungry Me cannot conceive of a universe in which food is needed so she buys like a cup of pomegranate seeds and some fancy cheese and thinks that'll get us through the week.
FUN FACT the scientist who said that made it the fuck up! he's also the same dude who said that if kids made eye contact with the character on food boxes they wanted it more. so now all the cereal mascots/kids mascots look downwards to a child height. but THEY MADE IT UP and it's allllllll bullshit and bad science to the point cornell deleted the fuckin cereal eyes study from the face of the earth and modern research is saying you SHOULD shop when ur hungry because it makes you put more value on food that would give you more nutrition and actually sharpens your ability to feed yourself well
So I think the cereal box guy was Brian Wansink and honestly that tracks. If Wansink thinks we should be grocery shopping when full then we should definitely be doing it when hungry. Bruh is an absolute joke.
THAT'S THE BASTARD
IT'S HIM
imagine being so bad at science that your university forces you to stop
things he also came up with that are BULLSHIT:
also he committed kickstarter fraud in 2018 and is a massive fatphobe who thinks fat people recruit others to become fat by just existing. fuck him lmao
Here's a few articles by Stephanie M. Lee about Wansink's multiple p-hacking scandals. Initially I just found these looking for more information but now I'm also extremely amused by how much she was on this guy's ass for his shitty science.
[Image description: a screenshot from a Wikipedia article.
values), incorrect and inappropriate statistical analyses, and "p- hacking". [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] As of 2020 Wansink has had 18 of his research papers retracted (one twice). Seven other papers have received an expression of concern, and 15 others have been corrected. [8] On September 20, 2018, Cornell determined that Wansink had committed scientific misconduct and removed him from research and teaching activities; he resigned effective June 30, 2019. [6] end description]
Oh, the P-hacking guy! I remember him. He's the one who said kids will pick fruit over cookies if the fruit has Sesame Street stickers on it even though that was definitely not true.
i think that the "i do not control the ____" memes are generally tame and do not lend enough credence to the genuine absurdity of the original line that is
I saw this and remembered that I had this thread saved in a folder and figured this would be a good time to bring it out
READ THE WHOLE THING. I cannot garuntee that you will be pleased, but I can guarantee that it is one HELL of a rollercoaster.
fursona research
the giant armadillo is the land mammal with the most permanent teeth at 74
sea slugs go through 750,000 teeth in a lifetime
orcas have the sharpest teeth of all animals
the water deer has retractable saberteeth and is classified as a deer despite not being true deer
there is a species of duck with a sawbill that has been nicknamed the tooth duck
the hyena and the titan triggerfish both have teeth and jaws strong enough to crush bone
mosquitos have 47 teeth
walrus and elephant tusks are teeth. so are narwhal "horns"
the phrase "long in the teeth" meaning that you're getting on in years is because horse gums recede as they get older, thus making their teeth look longer
giraffes and humans have the same number of teeth
lobsters and crabs have teeth in their stomach. minnows have teeth in their throats
the paraya fish has fangs that can grow up to 7 inches long that they use to impale their prey
the crabeater seal has teeth that work as a sieve to filter out things larger than the krill they eat
naked mole rat teeth are on the outside of their lips to keep dirt out of their mouths while they dig
you can tell the age of both dolphins and horses via their teeth.
dolphin teeth have rings similar to the ones in trees that you can see when their teeth are bisected horizontally.
horse gums recede uniformly over the years, so you can see how old they are based on how much tooth is visible. this is the origin of the phrase "don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
pangolin do not have teeth
beavers have orange teeth
echidnas don't have teeth OR nipples
dragonfish have evolved transparent teeth so that fish can't see them behind their bioluminescent lure
lamprey eels have no jaws, just a circular mouth with very strong suction
i got so caught up in teeth facts i forgot to make a fursona
i love you and your fixations but this post feels like a cry for help
It's very funny to me that the stereotypical gelatinous cube is bright fucking green when the monster itself is almost perfectly transparent. Like its gimmick is that it's a monster that imitates an empty 10x10 hallway. How many people have fallen victim to gelatinous cubes because they "know" that the ooze is bright green and so don't bother to check the suspiciously clean corridor in front of them.
The cube is green because oh my god do you know how hard it is to draw a perfectly transparent cube? Especially in isolation, like in the monster manual? Even if you put debris in, it reads as "floating skull ft. helium sword." Awful. Absolutely wretched.
I'm picturing it appearing in in-universe bestiaries with a little caption like *specimen dyed for visibility.
Dungeon naturalists sneaking up on a cube with a bucket of green dye so they can see it well enough to study it.
peeling those sour rainbow gummy strips into long thin strings and putting them into cheap energy drink to create something im calling battery acid spaghetti will update once ive finished it
dont do this
I really hope its not too bad bc i actually love both components.
it forms a dry skin at the top made of the sour pellets. not a great start.
tastes really good actually. i also feel like i am about to explode.
do not do this.
Unanimous consensus: Do not do this
Other people: Hold on I’m about to do this
I keep seeing this post going around so, for folks who want to know why not, here's a chemist's hypothesis:
-Human saliva has an average pH of ~6.7 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3800408/), which is pretty neutral.
-Monster energy has a pH of ~2.7 (https://patientconnect365.com/DentalHealthTopics/Article/Energy_Drinks_and_Your_Teeth_Should_You_Worry), which is quite acidic but not dangerous, except to your tooth enamel if consumed in large quantities.
-Rainbow sour belts contain malic acid (a common food additive as a potent acidifier and sour-flavor agent), citric acid (another common sour flavoring in pretty much everything) as well as ascorbic acid (aka vitamin C, used here mainly as a preservative). (https://candypros.com/products/sour-belts-bulk-rainbow)
-All of these acids when added to water would normally release their protons (H+ ions), thereby making the water solution more acidic. However, a chemical constant of these acids called the acid dissociation constant (pKa for short) indicates the pH of a solution at which acids are most likely to keep or release their protons. The pKa's* of these acids are higher (3.4, 3.1, and 4.2 for malic, citric, and ascorbic acids respectively) than the pH of the solution (2.7), which essentially means that the acids can't release their protons and all that acidic potential is trapped in the solid formulation of the candy.
-There's also some evidence that sugar decreases the solubility of acids in water solutions (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3411471/ only sorbic acid is discussed here but it's relatively structurally similar to the acids in discussion). The undoubtedly high sugar content of both the Monster and the candy therefore may contribute to the accounts of the sour crystals bubbling/floating on top of the solution instead of dissolving.
-Malic acid in particular is notorious for causing mouth irritation when eaten in high quantities.
-Thus, I can imagine that upon consuming the battery acid spaghetti, not only is the mix itself quite potently sweet/sour, but also the solid malic acid coming into direct contact with your mouth quickly becomes painful, and as the solution mixes with your (pH neutral) saliva the trapped acidity of the malic/citric/ascorbic acids is dumped into your mouth and esophagus, creating a sensation that I can only imagine is similar to consuming actual battery acid (pH = 0.8).
(*Each of these acids actually has multiple pKa's corresponding to number of protons they're able to donate, but really only the lowest pKa is useful here since once that one dissociates then all of the other ones are already dissociated too.)
citrus fruits: *develops sour taste to deter animals from eating*
humans: ok but what if i made that into literal battery acid and drank it
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
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.
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.
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!
This wasn't scientists playing God, this was God playing with scientists
Unjustly maligned! This is in fact a pretty chill dude who just told one too many lies.
Triprion spatulatus. Here's another one.
Actually a different species altogether! The first is Nyctimantis arapapa. There are quite a few casque-headed or shovel-headed frogs in South America, and, as far as I know, only in South America. Pretty crazy!
can they receive kisses on the snoots
kermit getting ready to stab gonzo with super venomous spines if he doesn’t cool his jets.
