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why do coffee makers growl at you. What's the point of all that

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A Lich Lord covered his head with rags and disguised himself as a cleric, then joined the heroes' party. His reasoning? He was bored and wanted to see the world without instilling fear.

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Bacteria do have souls, but binary fission doesn’t produce new souls 99% of the time, so most single celled organisms share these sprawling souls that just get bigger every time they divide. Over time they compact down into these big mats of soul get compacted into geological layers that gradually accrete to the world soul. Sexual reproduction creates new souls but they’re much shorter lived as a result, and rarely make it into the bedrock, so most of the world spirit is from the Proterozoic.

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Medblrs, who's still around?

I'm aware that it's been some years since my previous medblr list and previous medblr roll call posts. Over the years we've built a thriving and supportive medblr community, which we've been really lucky to have. I'm using medblr in the widest sense, here - nurses, PAs, pharmacists abd all sorts of other professions are welcome.

Years have passed. Many of us have continued to live offline lives or post less frequently because work, kids, other interests and just life got in the way. Some have changed specialties. I know that there have been years I've been fairly quiet because life was busy! But even if you post infrequently, youre still a valued part of the community. Please feel free to reblog and add yourself to the list.

Some left the sphere of medicine, that's cool too - if you ever identified as a medblr, there's still a place for you here.

New medblr friends have joined - why not introduce yourselves? It would be great to make some new connections in this sphere.

I'm also curious about non medblrs who lurk here for fun.

I'll start first. I'm @dxmedstudent (she/her, late 30s), I also go by Tink (that predates my blog here and is somewhat unrelated). I started my blog here over 10 years ago when I was a UK med student writing med student comics which can still be found over at @dxmedicalstudent .

I spent some years in hospital medicine before becoming a GP this past summer. I haven't changed my name or icons in that time so if you think you remember me, you're probably right.

Lovely to meet you all, and to say hi to old friends.

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would you still love me if i was a worm?

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my watery friend... are you too brushed with the pattern of the dappled light...?

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What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?

.. i’m palestinian

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What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

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so Rangiku's Bankai is named Haineko Asama, and since Haineko means "ash cat" and Mount Asama is a volcano in Japan, does that mean her Bankai can create a pyroclastic cloud? Or does "asama" mean something else in this context?

Got in in one!

Haineko: Asama is a Bankai that creates a Vesuvius-like eruption of 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) Hot Gases and Burning Tephra and a REALLY FUCKING LOUD KABOOM. The Pyroclastic cloud can travel up to 430mph and destroys everything in it's path- opponents closer to the epicenter are the luckier ones- the sheer kinetic energy for the explosion incinerates them immediately. Those farther away may find their bodies punctured with molten shrapnel, crushed by flying boulders, or suffocated and cooked alive as they are encased in ash like the victims of Vesuvius.

It's not an easy Bankai- the energy output is catastrophic, and the longer the 'Eruption' goes on, the greater Rangiku's risk of falling into a coma or straight-up dying from expending too much energy increases. It's also not an easy Bankai to train- For a while, Rangiku wasn't 'wielding' her Bankai so much as just 'releasing' it and learning about the damage when she woke up a week later.

In the end, the ONLY person who could help her with training Asama was Yamamoto himself, because of his Literally Divine resistance to fire, and a millennium's worth of practice at dodging to deal with the rocks and ash. He had to take her out to the ass-end of nowhere in South 80 to find somewhere deserted enough to practice without mass causalities, and the practice STILL effected the weather in the rest of Soul Society. He still spent almost a month in the 4th after they returned from The Year With No Summer, getting the burns, lung damage and broken bones treated, while he waited for his pupil to wake up again.

Yamamoto is now Very Fond of Rangiku because she's the first person in a LONG time that proved to be an actual challenge for him as an opponent, was an interesting student to teach and the first person to even begin to comprehend the problems he faces as an Avatar of Destruction.

Like most Volcanoes, Rangiku spends a lot of time sleeping. Nobody who knows what she's capable of when she 'awakens' complains about her nap schedule.

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In your general appreciation of nature, I am curious about your take on this - do you believe nature has reached "peak complexity"?

There was a time without flying animals. There was a time without land animals. There was a time without vertebrates, without segmented exoskeletons, without fur, without feathers, without complex social structures, without eyes. There was a time without plants, or any kind of photosythesis. There was a time without multicellular life.

But at this point, do you feel nature on planet Earth has evolved all "milestones" there are (and from now on, all additional complexity will have come from civilization, one way or another)?

I mean in terms of potential, assuming for a moment "nature" of some kind still exist during the next billion years or so.

Yes or No would be enough (lol), but of course spec evo ideas would be even cooler!

Nah I think there's absolutely infinite things nature could evolve some day that we can't even imagine. You really never know. Like it's 100% biochemically possible for something to "breathe fire;" there just has to be a sequence of mutations and the right competition to gradually make it happen, possibly starting with something that sprays boiling hot compounds like a bombardier beetle. I could also imagine a whole class of animals evolving like the modular people from All Tomorrows, because we already have Siphonophores. It's just a matter of something evolving to be a colony that can also come apart and keep functioning. I'm also obviously obsessed with the concept of a creature that weaponizes its own little symbiotic bugs, since I've used that a million times. Like maybe millions of years from now, a descendant of sloths will have upgraded from being full of moths to being full of tiny wasps? And then what if that's so effective they actually start diversifying like crazy and there's a whole era dominated by mammaloid wasp nest beasts ranging from grazers merely cleaned and guarded by their insects to predators who hunt with their assistance. Plant/animal physical symbiosis is also another thing that's not really taken off outside a few insects. Why shouldn't a plant some day decide it likes growing on some kind of animal's body? It's not a plant, but lichens grow on a species of weevil. It's so rare there aren't even photos, but I swear I saw video of one on BBC when I was a kid:

What if a moss adapts just to the shell of some big reptile and eventually the reptile starts to derive sustenance from it too?? I know I'm mostly pointing to things that have already kinda evolved at least once, but hopefully they're suitable example about how far something can be pushed. Furthermore you never know if all life as we know it will die out one day while there's still a couple billion years left of the planet's physical existence. Then a whole new line of life could evolve that we can't conceive of at all, from the ground up. Like crystalline mineral trees that start talking to each other with laser light. Or maybe only bacteria are left but for some reason bacteria develop what they need to start sticking together and building a new kind of multicellular organism. What the heck would an equivalent to "animals" look like if the ancestor was a bacteria????? Holy fuck I'm mad I won't see it. Fuming and seething actually.

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The One Trainer Who Has a Reason For Catching Shiny Pokemon

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Pokemon headcanon that once Absol are studied and people realize they prevent disasters instead of causing them, particularly dangerous workplaces get themselves a workplace Absol and it also decreases accidents.

Construction sites and fishing ships and factories will have one that pretty much just lazes about until it just gets up howling one day and knocks a dude down. They almost never figure out what would have happened but they're always like "yes absol thank you absol I am so grateful to be on the floor right now. Can I offer you a treat in this trying time"

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sometimes I think about how red is the first color in the visible light spectrum to be absorbed in ocean water

and how many deep-sea creatures evolved to be red as a stealth adaptation, making them near invisible when there’s little to no light present

and it makes me think. If there’s never any visible light present in these animals’ lifetimes, if no ROV shines a little flashlight in depths that would otherwise not have light, would these animals ever get the opportunity to actually be red? that might be a stupid question.

imagine being a little deep sea creature and having no idea you’re red until something comes along and shines a light on you except you still wouldn’t be able to tell because you’re probably colorblind. anyway. I don’t know where I was going with this post

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So You Need To Buy A Computer But You Don't Know What Specs Are Good These Days

Hi.

This is literally my job.

Lots of people are buying computers for school right now or are replacing computers as their five-year-old college laptop craps out so here's the standard specs you should be looking for in a (windows) computer purchase in August 2023.

PROCESSOR

Intel i5 (no older than 10th Gen)

Ryzen 7

You can get away with a Ryzen 5 but an intel i3 should be an absolute last resort. You want at least an intel i5 or a Ryzen 7 processor. The current generation of intel processors is 13, but anything 10 or newer is perfectly fine. DO NOT get a higher performance line with an older generation; a 13th gen i5 is better than an 8th gen i7. (Unfortunately I don't know enough about ryzens to tell you which generation is the earliest you should get, but staying within 3 generations is a good rule of thumb)

RAM

8GB absolute minimum

If you don't have at least 8GB RAM on a modern computer it's going to be very, very slow. Ideally you want a computer with at least 16GB, and it's a good idea to get a computer that will let you add or swap RAM down the line (nearly all desktops will let you do this, for laptops you need to check the specs for Memory and see how many slots there are and how many slots are available; laptops with soldered RAM cannot have the memory upgraded - this is common in very slim laptops)

STORAGE

256GB SSD

Computers mostly come with SSDs these days; SSDs are faster than HDDs but typically have lower storage for the same price. That being said: SSDs are coming down in price and if you're installing your own drive you can easily upgrade the size for a low cost. Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for you for the initial purchase.

A lot of cheaper laptops will have a 128GB SSD and, because a lot of stuff is stored in the cloud these days, that can be functional. I still recommend getting a bit more storage than that because it's nice if you can store your music and documents and photos on your device instead of on the cloud. You want to be able to access your files even if you don't have internet access.

But don't get a computer with a big HDD instead of getting a computer with a small SSD. The difference in speed is noticeable.

SCREEN (laptop specific)

Personally I find that touchscreens have a negative impact on battery life and are easier to fuck up than standard screens. They are also harder to replace if they get broken. I do not recommend getting a touch screen unless you absolutely have to.

A lot of college students especially tend to look for the biggest laptop screen possible; don't do that. It's a pain in the ass to carry a 17" laptop around campus and with the way that everything is so thin these days it's easier to damage a 17" screen than a 14" screen.

On the other end of that: laptops with 13" screens tend to be very slim devices that are glued shut and impossible to work on or upgrade.

Your best bet (for both functionality and price) is either a 14" or a 15.6" screen. If you absolutely positively need to have a 10-key keyboard on your laptop, get the 15.6". If you need something portable more than you need 10-key, get a 14"

FORM FACTOR (desktop specific)

If you purchase an all-in-one desktop computer I will begin manifesting in your house physically. All-in-ones take away every advantage desktops have in terms of upgradeability and maintenance; they are expensive and difficult to repair and usually not worth the cost of disassembling to upgrade.

There are about four standard sizes of desktop PC: All-in-One (the size of a monitor with no other footprint), Tower (Big! probably at least two feet long in two directions), Small Form Factor Tower (Very moderate - about the size of a large shoebox), and Mini/Micro/Tiny (Small! about the size of a small hardcover book).

If you are concerned about space you are much better off getting a MicroPC and a bracket to put it on your monitor than you are getting an all-in-one. This will be about a million percent easier to work on than an all-in-one and this way if your monitor dies your computer is still functional.

Small form factor towers and towers are the easiest to work on and upgrade; if you need a burly graphics card you need to get a full size tower, but for everything else a small form factor tower will be fine. Most of our business sales are SFF towers and MicroPCs, the only time we get something larger is if we have to put a $700 graphics card in it. SFF towers will accept small graphics cards and can handle upgrades to the power supply; MicroPCs can only have the RAM and SSD upgraded and don't have room for any other components or their own internal power supply.

WARRANTY

Most desktops come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty; either of these is fine and if you want to upgrade a 1 year to a 3 year that is also fine. I've generally found that if something is going to do a warranty failure on desktop it's going to do it the first year, so you don't get a hell of a lot of added mileage out of an extended warranty but it doesn't hurt and sometimes pays off to do a 3-year.

Laptops are a different story. Laptops mostly come with a 1-year warranty and what I recommend everyone does for every laptop that will allow it is to upgrade that to the longest warranty you can get with added drop/damage protection. The most common question our customers have about laptops is if we can replace a screen and the answer is usually "yes, but it's going to be expensive." If you're purchasing a low-end laptop, the parts and labor for replacing a screen can easily cost more than half the price of a new laptop. HOWEVER, the way that most screens get broken is by getting dropped. So if you have a warranty with drop protection, you just send that sucker back to the factory and they fix it for you.

So, if it is at all possible, check if the manufacturer of a laptop you're looking at has a warranty option with drop protection. Then, within 30 days (though ideally on the first day you get it) of owning your laptop, go to the manufacturer site, register your serial number, and upgrade the warranty. If you can't afford a 3-year upgrade at once set a reminder for yourself to annually renew. But get that drop protection, especially if you are a college student or if you've got kids.

And never, ever put pens or pencils on your laptop keyboard. I've seen people ruin thousand dollar, brand-new laptops that they can't afford to fix because they closed the screen on a ten cent pencil. Keep liquids away from them too.

LIFESPAN

There's a reasonable chance that any computer you buy today will still be able to turn on and run a program or two in ten years. That does not mean that it is "functional."

At my office we estimate that the functional lifespan of desktops is 5-7 years and the functional lifespan of laptops is 3-5 years. Laptops get more wear and tear than desktops and desktops are easier to upgrade to keep them running. At 5 years for desktops and 3 years for laptops you should look at upgrading the RAM in the device and possibly consider replacing the SSD with a new (possibly larger) model, because SSDs and HDDs don't last forever.

COST

This means that you should think of your computers as an annual investment rather than as a one-time purchase. It is more worthwhile to pay $700 for a laptop that will work well for five years than it is to pay $300 for a laptop that will be outdated and slow in one year (which is what will happen if you get an 8th gen i3 with 8GB RAM). If you are going to get a $300 laptop try to get specs as close as possible to the minimums I've laid out here.

If you have to compromise on these specs, the one that is least fixable is the processor. If you get a laptop with an i3 processor you aren't going to be able to upgrade it even if you can add more RAM or a bigger SSD. If you have to get lower specs in order to afford the device put your money into the processor and make sure that the computer has available slots for upgrade and that neither the RAM nor the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. (one easy way to check this is to search "[computer model] RAM upgrade" on youtube and see if anyone has made a video showing what the inside of the laptop looks like and how much effort it takes to replace parts)

Computers are expensive right now. This is frustrating, because historically consumer computer prices have been on a downward trend but since 2020 that trend has been all over the place. Desktop computers are quite expensive at the moment (August 2023) and decent laptops are extremely variably priced.

If you are looking for a decent, upgradeable laptop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

14" Lenovo - $670 - 11th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD

15.6" HP - $540 - 11th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD

14" Dell - $710 - 12th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD

If you are looking for a decent, affordable desktop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

SFF HP - $620 - 10th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

SFF Lenovo - $560 - Ryzen 7 5000 series, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD

Dell Tower - $800 - 10th-gen i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD

If I were going to buy any of these I'd probably get the HP laptop or the Dell Tower. The HP Laptop is actually a really good price for what it is.

Anyway happy computering.

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The Need to Stay

(Thought I’d upload my recent comics to Tumblr! I totally forgot it only lets you upload 10 pics at a time, and this is 11, but fingers crossed it works!)

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You run a Bakery, just a normal bakery, the only problem is that your customers at midnight to 6AM are mythical creatures who pay with gemstones and ancient gold and silver coins