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And it only made the latter worse actually.

My favorite observation I've made about how certain heroes/hero media is treated

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Talk about missile toe! I watched this back then!

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Half of the celebrities and other news-worthy terms these days sound like obscure internal organs: “I ruptured my zoosha! Ow, my scotus!”

Poob has it for you

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I absolutely adore the fan art of aura the guillotine such as this one by @Sibakame on Twitter

And this one by @tayamainurouX on Twitter

And probably lots of other ones I haven't seen.

Because it just shows how perfect the demon's mockery of human emotions is. Everyone can't help but believe that the cute girl can be redeemed (with brainwashing which is uhhhh problematic). Despite the fact that the story just got done explaining that their emotions and their words are merely fabrications to draw trick humans. Aura doesn't understand the word friend, and she would never stop wanting to kill Frieren.

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Also:

* Gratuitous fish death

* Fat black women

* The letter “F”

Things cartoon writers seem to think are VERY VERY FUNNY that I never found funny even as a small child:

Hippies

Inflation

Drill sergeants

Anybody meditating and making that “ommmmmmm” sound

Cross dressing even before I was old enough to know it was also just mean

Imitations of celebrities with no additional joke about why they’re there

lol only weird boring dumb old sissies get that into art and especially ugly nonsense modern art, right kids????

That same joke but with poetry

That same joke but with interpretive dance

That same joke but with musicals

Actually aren’t all those things also gay stereotypes? Is that how they became comedy cliches? Jesus.

Any “battle of the sexes” episode

The nerd uses a “science word” that honestly most of the audience probably knows but we’re supposed to think they’re lame and weird and the other characters are like “….IN ENGLISH PLEASE”

Diapers

Bagpipe music

A character getting attached to a pet to a degree we’re supposed to find excessive and sometimes it’s supposed to be funny that it dies

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We gotta find this clip.

framing is everything

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- Liu Feilin after defeating Zazie Muhaba, Karnov’s Revenge / Fighter’s History Dynamite (Data East)

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Hoooo!

let’s hear it for the world’s smallest whale (the vaquita) you guys!!

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Indeed, Frieren’s portrayal is more medieval when it comes to “wild animals”, really.

dungeon meshi: oh the monsters are just like regular wild animals with their own unique habits and desires that dictate how they respond to stimuli! we can form mutually beneficial relationships with them as long as we properly understand their nature

frieren: oh the demons are just like regular wild animals (lacking the divine spark of consciousness, impossible to communicate with, morally allowed to kill on sight)

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I am so back!!

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Same with pelicans, starfish, house cats, baleen whales, pangolins… a lot of predators get no respect because they’re gulpers who swallow prey whole.

Sharks, orcas, wolves, mongooses, hawks, owls, eagles, big cats, snakes, piranhas, centipedes, preying mantises, scorpions, spiders, squids, komodo dragons, polar bears, sea lions, crocodilians: entire groups of life adapted to eat absolutely nothing but the raw flesh of other creatures. Our society recognizes all of these as iconic killing machines. They all occupy a position in our collective consciousness that teeters between majestic warrior hunter and grim terrifying murder monster. Embodiments of nature's ferocity. Agents of death.

Frogs: an entire group of life adapted to eat absolutely nothing but the raw flesh of other creatures. We think they're silly guys who ought to wear floppy hats perhaps

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Starfish are technically edible though. They just have awful taste and texture, so they’re unpalatable and not very nutritious. So they are inedible.

Sharks, orcas, wolves, mongooses, hawks, owls, eagles, big cats, snakes, piranhas, centipedes, preying mantises, scorpions, spiders, squids, komodo dragons, polar bears, sea lions, crocodilians: entire groups of life adapted to eat absolutely nothing but the raw flesh of other creatures. Our society recognizes all of these as iconic killing machines. They all occupy a position in our collective consciousness that teeters between majestic warrior hunter and grim terrifying murder monster. Embodiments of nature's ferocity. Agents of death.

Frogs: an entire group of life adapted to eat absolutely nothing but the raw flesh of other creatures. We think they're silly guys who ought to wear floppy hats perhaps

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Now I wonder how the platypus got a bill?

Why did the avian dinosaurs lose their teeth and get beaks?

It’s almost certainly not, as is commonly claimed, to “save weight” - after all, teeth really aren’t that heavy, and a beak carries weight that teeth don’t, as it consists of sheets of keratin. Some studies even suggest that a beak is heavier than teeth!

Beaks do have several other benefits, though - they can be very useful when one is an herbivore, because they provide a continually-growing scissor-like surface to slice plants off (or to crack seeds!). This seems to be a driver behind the evolution of beaks in many other dinosaur groups, like ornithischians:

(Edmontosaurus regalis, an ornithischian with a beak at the tip of its snout. image by Julius Csotonyi.)

This is likely partially the case for birds - but can’t be entirely the case. After all, we know of lots of beaked mesozoic birds that were fish-eaters:

(Ichthyornis dispar skull. Image from Field et al, 2018)

Note that these birds had both teeth and beaks, but in different parts of the mouth. It doesn’t seem that the beak extended to the area where the teeth were, and was instead restricted to the tip.

There have been several other hypotheses put forward for the evolution of beaks, and I’m not sure that either is especially more likely than the other.

One hypothesis, put forward by Lautenschlager et al (2013) posits that beaks strengthen the skull. Although they focused more on non-avian dinosaurs, their findings could be applicable to birds. Their models suggest that beaks help to more effectively distribute the forces involved in food processing around the skull, reducing overall stress and strain.

(Mechanical stress in the skull of Erlikosaurus in response to forces in various locations (rows). Columns represent different models of soft tissue - increasing beak size correlates with reduced stress. From Lautenschlager at al, 2013.)

Erickson et al (2017) looked at fossil dinosaur embryos to determine their incubation periods. By looking at the teeth of various dinosaurs preserved still within their egg, they were able to find daily growth rings reflecting cycles of mineralisation of the teeth. These are known in modern animals, and allow us to determine a minimum for the incubation periods of these dinosaurs. 

(Daily growth rings in the teeth of Hypacrosaurus and Protoceratops embryos. From Erickson et al, 2017)

These authors also noted that the size of these growth rings has an absolute upper limit of 30 micrometres - not just in dinosaurs, but in crocodilians, mammals, and everywhere else they’ve been studied. This means that teeth can lead to a longer incubation period. Yang and Sander (2018) took this a step further and suggested that the pressure for faster incubation may have been a driver for the evolution of beaks in birds.

The earliest birds largely herbivorous and omnivorous; I think it’s likely that beaks evolved both to act as a shearing edge and to strengthen the skull. After a beak-and-teeth arrangement was around for a while, an increasing pressure for shorter incubation may have led to the loss of teeth and switch to beak-only jaws. It may even be that a shorter incubation period is what allowed modern-type birds to survive the extinction that spelled the end of all other dinosaur lineages 66 million years ago.

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Going Brisket Mode

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Nice job, it’s good to see Shermie get shipped with other characters. I personally see her with Iori Yagami, however. King is still a nice choice for her.

Shermie appeared to hesitate for a fraction of a second before she broke into a wide smile that was slightly menacing.

"Touché, mon ami," she drawled. "Nous ne sommes pas amis." "But we could be."

The younger woman suddenly stepped in front of King, gently grabbed hold of her necktie with one hand and, with her other began to run her finger down the front of the silky fabric.

"In fact," she said, her voice taking on a seductive tone, "we could be a lot of things…" From my fic, Thirst Trap, which can be found here (FFN) and here (AO3).

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"Kyokujuji Seiken" Training Progression

- Liu Feiyan & Liu Feihe

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Beard right from birth… then you lose that beard.

African elephant calves vs Asian elephant calves