#State of Extremes

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I love you Safety Wizard.

(Inspired by @keroascrazy)

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[analog-television]

So like. Not what you'd consider "cold" just in general, but rather specifically for where YOU live (for example: 6c/43f might be considered "cold" if you live in Florida). I see a lot of Tumblr users defending the cold on here, so I'm wondering what temperatures they're actually talking about. For me anyway "cold" automatically translates to be anything below freezing - but I'm not fully convinced that 90% of Tumblr is Actually yearning for below freezing temps.

(My ideal temperature range is around 10c-20c, but a bit below 10c can be nice and refreshing as well. Above 20c depends on what I'm doing - and anything above 25c is too much.)

[reasonsforhope]

Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds

Article | Paywall free

When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”

Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors, despite being defoliated [aka losing all their needles], mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.

“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.

Mild fires strike coastal redwood forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark, up to about 30 centimeters thick at the base, which contains tannic acids that retard flames. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames that consume vegetation on the ground. But the fire in 2020 was so intense that even the uppermost branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize went up in smoke along with their pine needles.

Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates, which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Still, scientists weren’t sure these reserves would prove enough for the burned trees of Big Basin.

Visiting the forest a few months after the fire, Peltier and his colleagues found fresh growth emerging from blackened trunks. They knew that shorter lived trees can store sugars for several years. Because redwoods can live for more than 2000 years, the researchers wondered whether the trees were drawing on much older energy reserves to grow the sprouts.

Average age is only part of the story. The mix of carbohydrates also contained some carbon that was much older. The way trees store their sugar is like refueling a car, Peltier says. Most of the gasoline was added recently, but the tank never runs completely dry and so a few molecules from the very first fill-up remain. Based on the age and mass of the trees and their normal rate of photosynthesis, Peltier calculated that the redwoods were calling on carbohydrates photosynthesized nearly 6 decades ago—several hundred kilograms’ worth—to help the sprouts grow. “They allow these trees to be really fire-resilient because they have this big pool of old reserves to draw on,” Peltier says.

It's not just the energy reserves that are old. The sprouts were emerging from buds that began forming centuries ago. Redwoods and other tree species create budlike tissue that remains under the bark. Scientists can trace the paths of these buds, like a worm burrowing outward. In samples taken from a large redwood that had fallen after the fire, Peltier and colleagues found that many of the buds, some of which had sprouted, extended back as much as 1000 years. “That was really surprising for me,” Peltier says. “As far as I know, these are the oldest ones that have been documented.”

... “The fact that the reserves used are so old indicates that they took a long time to build up,” says Susan Trumbore, a radiocarbon expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Redwoods are majestic organisms. One cannot help rooting for those resprouts to keep them alive in decades to come.”

-via Science, December 1, 2023

[shushmal]

"I think it's sweet," Steve says.

Robin wrinkles her nose. "Nothing about Eddie Munson is sweet. He's a sewer rat, at best. Or like twenty opossums in a trench coat."

"Opossums are cute."

"He probably has rabies."

"You say that about me all the time, so I guess that's good. We'll have rabies together."

"He gave you a rock."

"You give me rocks all the time," Steve says, rolling his eyes. He runs his thumb along the textured edge of the rock Eddie'd handed to him.

"Yeah, good rocks." Robin scoffs. "That one sucks."

[todaysbird]

‘we’re using our votes to protest without throwing to Trump’ Well. Looks like everyone did a great job and nobody got hurt

[zuzu-romeave]

super interested in this stuff especially after this episode because i really think they are using one of these on irving at the end of it. theres not a chance in hell they’re just waking outie irving up and letting him see the aftermath of everything that just happened especially not when the other innies are there!! they have to be using one of the other overrides

[randomfandomss]

New recruits have landed at the non-celibate seminary folks!!!🫡

[beif0ngs]

I’m so sorry about your mother. I’m sorry I can’t bring her back, but please just…

[veinsfullofstars]

🌅 MetaDede Week 2024 Day 5 & 6: AU & Secrets 🌅

(ID: Kirby series fanart comic of a moment in King Dedede and Meta Knight’s youth, when - during a trip to the beach with their friends - the teenaged penguin realizes that he might feel more than just friendship for his little winged buddy. Transcript in Alt Text. END ID.)

Oh.

Previous Day | Next Day | Prompt List (made by @/mtddweek)

Started 08/20/24, finished 08/24/24. | Childhood Friends AU Masterpost

[arrowmntic]

looks like new leaf is the last place on earth that can get us out alive

[huginsmemory]

The one thing led to another night is very much likely hinting at Bill and Ford fucking, but considering Stan's penchant for getting married while drunk, LITERALLY at one point to ol' Goldie, a horrifying gold panning statue souvenir dispenser(?), may mean that Ford would also have a penchant for that. So Ford marrying Bill that night, instead of them fucking (or marrying and fucking) is actually plausible, and also EXTREMELY FUNNY to me. Both of them have such terrible romance track records.

Also like, I know there's a lot of jokes going around about Stanley being like YOU FUCKED A TRIANGLE? Which I love btw, but like. SIR YOU MARRIED A MAYBE CURSED SOUVENIR DISPENSER THATS A STATUE OF A HORRIFYING OLD MAN GOLD PANNING, DO YOU REALLY HAVE A LEG TO STAND ON?

[smorzinc]

the government pinged @everyone

[screwpinecaprice]

Oh oof I slipped and hit them with dark and serious beam. 😣

[blackflash9]

Beware Project 2025: A Disaster in the Making

This is Project 2025, and America's future hinges on the people's vote this November. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. WAKE UP AND GO VOTE PEOPLE!

[karenandhenwilson]

I think I've figured out why the insistence on including Eddie in pride posts and the systematical exclusion of Tommy grates on my nerves even more this year than it did last year.

Because every time I see people complaining about Eddie — who has now been declared straight on our TV screens by himself and his best friend — not being included in pride posts (which are coincidentally always the same people excluding an actual gay character from their pride posts) I feel the exact same way as when people protesting the existence of any pride event ask "When will we celebrate straight pride events?"