#source: me right click saving like a fiend

[whisky-soul]

Booted up an old laptop last night and it is a gold mine of fan photos from 2014-15.

[laurelnose]

monster! parasites!

you know how a few days ago i said we weren’t going to talk about monster parasites? that was a fucking lie.

the basis of my monster parasite thoughts are: every organism comes with its own internal ecosystem that goes with them everywhere. it’s like having built-in friends! ergo, when monsters crossed over to the witcher dimension during the Conjunction of Spheres they must have brought many new and delightful parasites with them. you know what fiend manes are full of? MITES. you know what drowners got on their skin? COPEPODS. what can we do with this information? anything we want.

i promise there are no pictures below the cut. i have tried to put warnings on all my sources but click any of the links below at your own risk. warning for internal and external parasites of animals, monsters, humans, and witchers; parasites altering the behavior of their hosts; and probably general body horror. if you read the eating-liver-flukes post that’s probably a decent baseline for how revolting you will find this post. 

also, super obvious bias towards aquatic parasites as referents. my degree is fisheries science not terrestrial ecology so that’s primarily what i’m drawing on even though nearly all of the witcher monsters are terrestrial. there is a TON i’m missing here bc of that bias! specifically i really wish i could talk about how parasites of invasive species often act as co-invaders with their hosts and monsters definitely count as invasive species and would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent but i don’t know enough about terrestrial ecosystems to speculate properly. (ETA: while i still think monsters would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent, I don’t actually think they’re invasive species anymore!)��hopefully you enjoy it anyways!

it is, hilariously, canon that parasites are used for alchemy. according to The Last Wish, the Temple of Melitele’s grotto grows a bunch of different “rare specimens—those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philters and a sorcerer’s decoctions” and some of those specimens are, uh, “clusters of nematodes.” nematodes being parasitic roundworms. this is really funny because it’s so fucking weird. also everything else in this description is a plant or a fungus and nematodes are definitely animals? i choose to believe the world makes sense and nematodes aren’t plants in the witcherverse. therefore parasites are alchemical ingredients, it’s canon, give me more witchers digging through monster intestines in search of worms and put a nematode colony in the basement of corvo bianco please and thank you

this actually leads right into my personal favorite drowner headcanon (hello yes i’m tumblr user Socks Laurelnose and i am always thinking about drowners)—you know those bits where drowners kind of have red blotches in their skin? those are nematodes, actually, because i said so. the reference is Clavinema mariae, a nematode that infests English sole. the worms are basically harmless but they’re dark red and you can see them through the skin. it freaks people out and makes it hard to sell sole. (IMAGE WARNING: a picture of an infected flatfish. it looks mostly normal but there’s a dark red lesion near the fin.) said lesion is probably a coiled-up Clavinema. sole have so many of these, it’s not even funny (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING for worms visible underneath skin of flatfishes. relevant images pointing out exactly how many worms on page 5). “but the red parts of drowners could just be flushed from blood”—no. worms. 

okay that was my main specific-parasite-for-specific-monster headcanon (except also succubi probably have a unique species of lice for their hairy legs. but that’s barely even a headcanon, basically all terrestrial vertebrates have a unique species of lice.) i wanted to start with it because i think that everyone should feel free to arbitrarily assign a totally benign but conceptually gross worm to their favorite monsters. why not, yanno? also it probably sets the tone for the rest of this post. 

carrying on: “what monsters might have nematodes, besides drowners,” you may be wondering? probably all of them! all of them are full of nematodes. nematodes are fucking everywhere. allow me to share a deeply unsettling quote from nematologist Nathan Cobb: 

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

jesus christ! thanks nathan, I hate it. nematodes are usually both benign and microscopic, but we’re talking witchers, we want some parasites we can fuckin get our hands on. sperm whale placentas are sometimes infested with nematodes up to 28 feet long but only a centimeter in diameter (Wikipedia link, no images). like an incredibly awful spaghetti! we don’t really seem to know if this bothers the sperm whales. also, i unfortunately do not know enough about the size of whale organs to tell you how big the placenta is in relation to this worm. the point is: real big monster? REAL BIG NEMATODES.

moving on from nematodes—okay, you know, since i mentioned eating deer liver flukes at the start of this post, let’s just go there. real life flukes max out at about 3 inches long, but hypothetical monster flukes could be much bigger and equally edible if desired. (if you’re wondering what a liver fluke would taste like: the flukes feed on the liver and they have very few organs of their own, so they would taste basically just like liver, just also long and flat like a fruit roll-up. if you’re going there, a witcher should not eat any flatworm live. if they’re digging them out of cockatrice livers or whatnot they should kill them before munching or save to cook later. it would probably be safe to eat one live, but you know that cliche “their tongues battled for dominance”? handling a live flatworm is like a handling very strong and energetic tongue complete with slime, okay, it wouldn’t be nice.)

parasites often need more than one host to complete the life cycle—for instance, Leucochloridium paradoxum (VIDEO WARNING: you may have seen this, it’s the one that makes snail eyes pulsating & green) has a bird stage and a snail stage, and it makes the snails look and act really weird in order to attract the birds. parasites altering host behavior to attract the next host in the life cycle is pretty well-documented; for instance, there’s an eye fluke that can make fish swim near the surface where predators can eat them (New Scientist article link, images of a microscope slide & a normal-looking fish) and a tapeworm that does the same and makes the dark silver fish turn white (JSTOR article, no images). i posit that at least some monsters are accompanied by “ill omens” of animals looking or acting strangely because they become infected with a stage of one of the monster’s parasites—usually, the mechanism is that internal parasites lay eggs that are passed in feces & transmitted that way. witchers who are up on their parasite ecology might be able to identify what monster is hanging around by observing exactly what kind of freaky-looking animals or animal behavior is going on around the area!

(if geralt is involved you may desire to have him explain this totally non-supernatural mechanism for abrupt animal appearance or behavioral changes at excruciating length to the chagrin of all present. or maybe that’s just what i desire. it would be funny okay)

potentially even more hyperspecific application of dual-stage parasites: there’s a dinoflagellate parasite that, when it infects crabs, makes the meat chalky and bitter like aspirin (Smithsonian link, images of healthy crab and microscope slide). geralt hunts down dinner, digs in, and immediately sighs and grabs jaskier’s portion away from him to the poet’s complete bafflement before going to get his swords because judging by the flavor there’s definitely a shishiga nest in this forest. 

like. parasites are one of THE most hyperspecific things in biology. the majority of them have very specific hosts and life cycles, many of them are completely unique to a species, if you think a fictional parasite is too specific to be plausible you’re probably wrong, make it even more specific. “the witcher monster lore is so hyperspecific lol” IT AIN’T TRULY HYPERSPECIFIC UNTIL YOU CAN IDENTIFY EACH MONSTER SPECIES BY ITS UNIQUE PARASITIC LOAD, OKAY.

and, with regards to behavior-affecting parasites, before anyone brings up Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps, as of 2008): yeah that sure is a thing! if you weren’t aware, just a couple of years ago we found out it actually is not a mind control fungus!! it bypasses the brain entirely and affects the muscles (Arstechnica article, Atlantic article—photos of fuzzy ants and electron microscope pictures of fungi). or as Ed Yong puts it, “The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver's seat, but the fungus has the wheel.” which is. significantly worse than the brain thing. awesome!! i bet there would absolutely be similar fungal parasites of endrega and arachasae. real Ophiocordyceps still very much does not affect humans, but you know what, if plants can be cursed into becoming archespores and cultivated by mages i see no reason why mages could not also curse endrega fungus to affect humans, just saying

aaaand quickly back to hyperspecificity: monsters in different geographical areas having different abilities because of their symbionts. forktails in vicovaro acquire a bioluminescent symbiont in their diet that forktails in other parts of the continent can’t get, and they can create flashes of light? that’s sure gonna fuck a witcher on Cat up when he comes in the cave expecting a normal forktail. (geographic location affecting bioluminescence is a thing that actually happens in midshipman fish—Wikipedia link, no parasites.) geographically-dependent symbionts can also produce different toxins and such for their hosts! this isn’t exactly a parasitism thing per se (although parasites are also symbionts because ‘symbiosis’ refers to two organisms in close association not two organisms in positive association) but like. it’s cool okay ecology is so cool

writing fic and tired of all these same-old monsters-of-the-week? quick and easy way to spice up either the horror factor or just make the hunt stand out slightly: just add parasites!! i know i’ve read fics where monsters were described with distinguishing old wounds. you can do the same with parasites! i would fucking swoon over a detail like an ancient water hag’s eyes glowing in the dark, one of them marred by a dangling parasite—geralt notes the blind spot and presses his advantage. (Wikipedia link, no images: this one is referencing an aquatic copepod called Ommatokoita.) also, please put barnacles on skelliger drowners, i want it so badly. just—some percentage of monsters should be Extra Grody on the inside and/or the outside, that’s how nature works. spicing up a mundane hunt by making the monster a little extra gross for its species is Valid, is what I’m saying.

also, every single time frozen specimens with obvious fungal/ectoparasite infections come into the lab we absolutely always take extra close-up pictures of those suckers and make sure everyone else gets to see them. witchers bringing field sketches and notes of the weirdest shit they found on the path back for winter. lambert declares they’ll never know if this alleged fiend tumor was a fungus or mange because geralt sucks at drawing. eskel, the man who hauled a katakan corpse all the way up the mountain so he could dissect it, produces actual skin samples of his own encounters for examination, possibly in the middle of dinner. this elicits mixed reactions.

quick detour into preservation, since I went there—witchers are probably immune to parasites that infect humans by virtue of having pretty different biology to begin with, and probably immune to parasitic infections from other sources by virtue of superhumanly boosted immune systems and all the poison they put into their bodies on a regular basis. picking up a monster parasite would probably not be a big deal for witchers, either in that they have total immunity or that they would only be minimally and briefly affected, but the field of monster biology is likely such that they probably just don’t actually know what would happen to them in the majority of cases. this has potential as a source of battle stories and/or stories intended to freak out trainees, i think. therefore, out of caution, a witcher harvesting/preparing parts for alchemy might want to be sure to treat them first. personally i think all monster parts should be preserved immediately anyways to avoid attracting necrophages, and given that alchemical concoctions in witcherverse are alcohol-based, preservation in strong alcohol is probably the best way to maintain potency and kill basically everything. (cons: alcohol is SUPER heavy and jars are fragile. tissues or organs which are thicker than perhaps half an inch or an inch require additional preparation for the alcohol to penetrate properly. other preservation methods are more efficient for travel. depends on how soon your witcher intends to use or offload their stash.)

also, here’s an absolutely wild marine parasite that would make it worth a witcher’s while to make certain everything was dead! pearlfishes are long eel-like fishes that live inside the anus and respiratory organs (which are attached to the anus) of sea cucumbers, and they have pretty nasty teeth (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING: dissected sea cucumbers literally stuffed to the gills with pearlfish). the highest number of pearlfish discovered in a single sea cucumber was sixteen (ResearchGate article, free PDF; no images). a different fact: we discovered tiger sharks eat each other in the womb because a researcher got bitten by a fetal tiger shark while he was dissecting the mother (NYT link, no images or parasites). what i’m saying is: parasites are often very small relative to the host and usually harmless to things rummaging around inside, but what if the monster’s parasites were also monstrous. give me a monster that has to be very dead or when you start rummaging around for alchemy ingredients the things in its intestines will lunge out and bite you. 

what happens if a human becomes infected with a monster parasite? bad things, probably, i mentioned before that parasites in the wrong host, if they don’t just die, often super fuck things up internally (if you get tapeworms outside of the intestine where they’re supposed to be... it’s not good y’all. CDC link, no images). host-jumping for parasites is actually fairly rare since most of them are highly specialized for their hosts, but it does happen. humans are very not my strong suit so i’m not going to dwell on this but it is entirely possible that something like necrophage infestations or monster-contaminated water sources or just being a little too involved on a witcher’s monster hunt could produce strange parasitic diseases in humans. up to you how well-known and/or how clouded in superstition these effects might be! opportunities for hideous whump? gross body horror? messy and horrifying parasite-driven behavioral changes? terrifying and potentially prolonged uncertainty over what the issue actually is because of minimal information about parasites? the decision whether or not to dose with a witcher potion? excellent possibilities.

okay last one, just because i think it would be fun: myxosporeans and sirens. Myxos are a parasitic relative of jellyfish that produce whirling disease in baby salmon. whirling disease causes neurological and skeletal damage and has a pretty high mortality rate, but it also makes infected fish do this, well, whirling behavior and it’s honestly fascinating. (video link: a pretty normal-looking young trout spinning like a fuckin top). imagine a siren doing that in the sky. i just think myxos are neat!

tl;dr: extra grody hyperspecific biology of monsters!!!

[siliconwebx]

What is that Smiley Face Doing in your WordPress Footer?

Designing a website is tedious, and there’s nothing more frustrating than finally finishing up and then noticing something out of place. The WordPress smiley is just that sort of thing – a teeny, tiny smiley face that came out of nowhere and is now taunting you. Here it is, the fiend (I included other elements of my website and desktop in this screenshot to help show the scale of the smiley face):

That smiley is so small that I didn’t see it even when I purposely went to look for it. However, it’s the kind of thing that you can’t un-see once you’ve seen it – like an itsy bitsy, adorable horror movie scene. If it’s driving you nuts or you think it makes your website look unprofessional, we can get rid of it.

Note that you may only be able to see the smiley if you’re logged out of WordPress. If you think it’s there but you can’t find it, make sure you’re logged out, then refresh the web page and check again.

Where Does the Smiley Come From?

Ahh, the question of the hour. You may see the WordPress stats smiley if you use Jetpack or the defunct WordPress.com Stats plugin. Both plugins insert the WordPress footer smiley in order to effectively run site stats and to show you that it’s working. The image has to load in order to track your stats, but you can still hide it.

Jetpack and the WordPress Smiley

Jetpack comes pre-installed with your WordPress website, and it has all sorts of functions to pick and choose from. One of Jetpack’s features is Site Stats. You may not use most of Jetpack, but for some users, it’s worth it for the stats feature alone. You can disable the features you don’t want to use so they don’t get in your way.

Site Stats is like a diluted type of Google Analytics, and you can view everything right from your WordPress dashboard. You can see information like keyword searches, page views and traffic. The way you know Site Stats is working is thanks to that little smiley face.

Source: Jetpack.com

How to Get Rid of the WordPress Smiley in Jetpack

Getting rid of the WordPress smiley in Jetpack couldn’t be easier. If you have Jetpack version 3.1 or later, the smiley shouldn’t even be on by default.

Login to your website, hover over Jetpack in the left-hand menu and then choose Site Stats from the menu that automatically pops up.

Next, click the “Configure” link at the top of the page.

About halfway down the page, you’ll see the “Smiley” heading. To the right are a checkbox and an option to hide the smiley. Click the checkbox, then click “Save configuration” at the bottom of the page. This section also reiterates the point that you technically need the smiley, but hiding it (instead of getting rid of it entirely) will be just fine.

Log out of WordPress and then go to your website. The smiley face should be gone:

If it’s not, clear your cache and reload the page, or open up a different browser (Chrome if you usually use Safari, for example) and check it there.

To toggle the smiley on, follow these same steps and just uncheck the checkbox when you get to the Configure screen. When you’re just starting to use Jetpack Site Stats, you may want to keep the smiley face enabled for a couple of weeks to make sure it’s running properly.

WordPress.com Stats Plugin and the WordPress Smiley

A note on the WordPress.com Stats plugin page says it was closed on March 30, 2019, and that it can no longer be downloaded. Since the plugin has merged with Jetpack, this section is strictly for those who are still using the original plugin – you shouldn’t be, but in case you are, these CSS changes will help you get rid of the smiley the right way.

Since the merge with Jetpack, there’s no way to upgrade the original plugin, which means its ineffective and unsafe to use at this point. If you continue to use WordPress.com Stats, it may not function properly now or in the future because it won’t get updates. If you’re still using the plugin, you’re encouraged to switch over to Jetpack.

Hide the Smiley, Don’t Delete It

The nice thing about the Jetpack smiley on/off checkbox is that it correctly hides the smiley without deleting it entirely. With the old plugin, though, you have to make CSS changes to hide the smiley.

Don’t use display:none.

In order to display the stats, the image still has to load, so you don’t want to use a code that will get rid of the image completely. (You also don’t want to use the WP Stats Smiley Remover plugin, because it’ll add the display:none CSS.)

Instead, find this code on the stylesheet:

img#wpstats{width:0px;height:0px;overflow:hidden}

Change it to:

img#wpstats{visibility:hidden}

By using visibility:hidden instead of display:none, the smiley will still be able to load and take up space, you just won’t be able to see it.

Get Rid of the Gray Bar

Depending on the layout of your website, you may notice a light gray bar in the footer after adding the new code. Even though the smiley isn’t showing, its background color is. This code should take care of that:

img#wpstats{position:absolute;top:0;width:0px;height:0px;overflow:hidden}

Wrapping Up, Smiley-Free

When you’re deep in the web design vortex, there’s nothing worse than seeing something you don’t want there but have no idea how to remove. Irregularities can also make you think you’ve been hacked – is that smiley face truly happy or is that, like, a “got you” evil smile? This anomaly at least has a simple explanation and a quick fix. That’s much different from what the smiley reminds me of, which is the sad Mac – remember that? Terrifying.

Did this little hack leave you wanting more? Here are 11 online places to learn WordPress inside and out.

The post What is that Smiley Face Doing in your WordPress Footer? appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐ElegantThemes

[valerieryleigh]

Internet Marketing Timewasters You MUST Avoid to Be Successful

Another day goes by and what have you accomplished in your business? If the answer is nothing, or not as much as you would have liked, here are several ways to reclaim your own time so that you are spending it wisely on your business, rather than frittering it away on meaningless activities.

Remember – time is the ONE commodity you cannot get MORE of, so you use wisely.

1. Stop wasting time on Internet marketing forums. Yes, you want to go there when you need help, when you have a question, when it’s something that will further your business.

But you also want to minimize the time you spend simply answering questions, agreeing or disagreeing with the threads topic, and generally joining in just for something to do. Forums can become an avoidance tactic when you’re stalling about working on your business. Use forums wisely and they can help you to succeed, rather than robbing you of valuable time you need to work in your business.

2. Minimize the time you spend on emails. Sure it’s addictive to see what the latest greatest offer is, or to see what Joe Marketer is up to. But the more lists you are subscribed to, and the more emails you open and read, the less time you have to do the things you SHOULD be doing instead.

If you need to, pare down the number of marketers you subscribe to, and only stay on the lists of those you really want to hear from. This tactic alone can save you as much as an hour a day.

3. Make a list of every IM product you’ve purchased in the last six months, and note beside each one whether or not you’ve read the product and used the product. The results may surprise you.

Add to that list how much you spent on each product and then add them all up. How much did you spend? How much of it was a waste of your money? Look at the money you could have saved and calculate how long it takes you to earn that much money.

The point I’m getting to should be obvious – unless you’re going to actually USE the product, then you shouldn’t be wasting your time or your money on it.

4. How many webinars do you attend each week? Again, unless the webinar actually has something to do with whatever it is you’re working on right now, don’t spend your time on it. Many webinars are simply glorified sales letters. Others do give great info, but unless you’re going to use it, then it’s simply a waste of your time.

5. This one is so important I just HAVE to say it twice. It’s a reiteration of what I said before – Only Buy Those IM Products That You Are Going To USE.

Here’s why: First, let’s say you purchase a 12 video package on list building. You make the transaction, you navigate to the download link, and you download, clicking on each file one by one and placing them in the folder you must made. How much time did this just take you?

Now then, you never watch the videos, never use the product – you’ve just spent that time AND money for nothing. It’s not just a waste, it’s a DOUBLE waste.

Don’t get me wrong – I am NOT saying you should never buy another Internet Marketing product. Whether it’s a plug-in, a program, whatever – if you’re going to use it within the next 30 days to build your business, then BUY IT. If not, then pass.

Once I started following these rules I wasted far less time and spent less money – AND I enjoyed less stress because I wasn’t constantly pulled in several different directions at once. I was able to focus on the task at hand, rather than running off to see what was happening on the forums, or buying a product with the intention of ‘maybe someday possibly’ using it.

Try it – and see if you don’t have more time for your Internet business AND for the other things in life – like your family and fiends.

The post Internet Marketing Timewasters You MUST Avoid to Be Successful appeared first on Online Business Opportunities.

source http://www.nta-connect.ca/internet-marketing-timewasters-you-must-avoid-to-be-successful/ from https://onlinebusinessopportunities2.blogspot.com/2018/04/internet-marketing-timewasters-you-must.html