nutterfly

[nutterfly]

[nutterfly]

cell bio professor closed out today's lecture on free-radical oxidation in mitochondria and programmed cell death by saying "you've probably all seen those commercials for fruit juice that says it's got antioxidants, which are said to prevent this sort of thing from happening, or at least slow it down. well, they don't work. this is an inevitable fact of life— this process that lets us live is also the thing that kills us, and it's why all of us will die someday. there's no escaping that. it's been with us since the dawn of eukaryotic cells; our pact with mitochondria is to the death. anyway, enjoy the rest of your friday, and remember, exam four is next week!"

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I survived because the fuck it we ball inside me burned brighter than the it's so over around me

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at the fishing tournament yesterday btw there were age categories bc it was all-inclusive and we didn't want like 60 year old anglers competing against 4 years olds obviously.

so anyway this 14 year old boy entered in the 11-15 age bracket and he saw a huge fish in the water he became absolutely determined to catch. i don't think he even wanted to win anymore. he just wanted that fish specifically. but his line wasn't strong enough for such a big fish and didn't have the ideal bait.

enter: two 15 year old boys who didn't know him. they saw what he was trying to do, and they were clearly experienced anglers, and they got involved in the chase. they got the right bait and the three of them spent hours with their lines in the water, until the first boy finally hooked the fish. they talked him through the slow challenge of endurance. he couldn't reel in all at once because the fish was too heavy for his line and it'd break.

he finally reeled it in, but they didn't have a net. it took all three of them, lying on their bellies, six hands on the fish, to pull it out of the water. they put it in a big bucket of water for the weigh-in (we just subtracted the bucket+water weight after), gave their new friend careful instruction on how to handle the fish so he could pose for a hasty photo without injuring its spine, and then carefully placed the fish back in the water.

in the end, he won first place in his age bracket. one of the other boys who helped him tied for second with a 12-year-old competitor, and he gave her the trophy.

then during the drawing, where participants won prizes randomly if I pulled their name from a box, I happened to pull his name and he got a great prize so it all came around.

Idk. the teamwork. the serendipity of friendship. the graciousness. the consideration for the fish. Just some things that made me happy.

[nutterfly]

[nutterfly]

tes THDPSSSSPS 💜

[nutterfly]

Fucking owned this goofster

[nutterfly]

I’m in the woods placing cardboard cutouts of morels in the leaf litter to trick and bamboozle people

[nutterfly]

Tom Thomson (1877 - 1917),

Summer Day, 1915

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Pausing a moment from swimming around its shallow coastal habitat to speak with reporters, a 14-month-old Atlantic tarpon admitted Tuesday that it was currently at a “pretty good place in [its] life” and “couldn’t be happier.” “I feel good. I’ve got my health, I’ve reached full maturity, the autumnal migration went great—I really can’t complain,” said the 5-foot Megalops atlanticus, stating that it had everything a pelagic fish could ask for, from abundant sources of crab and grass-shrimp to zero predators in its visual field.

Full Story

[nutterfly]

[nutterfly]

nothing makes me feel more well adjusted than hearing about the problems that straight people in the periphery of my life are always having

[nutterfly]

*puts a disk in u*

[nutterfly]

Odd Anole (Anolis dissimilis), family Dactyloidae, Manu Biological Station, Peru

photograph by Nick Volpe

[nutterfly]

moss campion silene acaulis

what a sweet little microworld!

[nutterfly]

Are you ever typing something that your phone autocapitalizes and you go back and re-type it just to force uncapitalize it. Like no sorry mcdonalds doesn’t deserve that level of respect from me