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me and Zayne core :3

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Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.  Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly. The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S. This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  “What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

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"Stop comparing where you’re at with where everyone else is. It doesn’t move you farther ahead, improve your situation, or help you find peace. It just feeds your shame, fuels your feelings of inadequacy, and ultimately, it keeps you stuck. The reality is that there is no one correct path in life. Everyone has their own unique journey." - Daniell Koepke

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“Is it okay if I draw fanart of your fanfic?👉🏼👈🏼”

My brother in Christ we shall have a spring wedding

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“Is it okay if I draw fanart of your fanfic?👉🏼👈🏼”

My brother in Christ we shall have a spring wedding

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i need feminism because when jesus does a magic trick it’s a goddamn miracle but when a woman does a magic trick she gets burned at the stake

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this is potentially really important:

I have someone staying in my hotel tonight that made me think that this would be worth sharing here.

If you are running away/trying to hide from someone that is frightening, abusing, harassing you, and you find yourself staying in a hotel to avoid being found, there’s an extra precaution you can take.

When you check in, ask the front desk clerk to put you as “Unlisted”. They’ll know what you’re talking about. What this means is that as far as anyone other than you and the front desk clerks are concerned, you’re not there. If someone tries to call for you and your room, “I’m sorry. I don’t have anyone registered under that name.” Same thing goes for it someone shows up at the desk. “Unlisted” means you’re untouchable.

Please, please, if you find yourself in trouble and seeking refuge in a hotel, do this. It’s really quick, easy, and painless for the front desk clerk to do, and they are not going to judge you for it. 

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Hello!

I've been reading your story Pursuit for about 9 years now ( I started when I was about 12 years of age and I am almost 21 lol ) I was wondering if you were still planning on finishing it?

If not that's completely okay I understand life has its turns and I genuinely hope eveything is okay! <3

Hello!!

Not gonna lie, I had knee-jerk reaction of "OH NO." to a 12-year-old reading my E-rated fanfic. 😅 Regardless, thank you for reading Pursuit. That gives my tired, salty soul the fuzzies.

I've known how the story ends pretty early on in the fic. It's just figuring out all the pieces in between. I also need to put myself through re-reading the fic to find all the loose ends, and that in itself is a painful process and it's made me try to decide whether I should just scrap the entire thing and rewrite it to be more concise and condensed. (Because I absolutely left it at the mother of all cliffhangers, and there's a special place in hell for me with the other fanfic writers who also did similar crimes against their readers. 😆) I've also debated just uploading a chapter with bullet points for the rest of the story, but it made me wonder that if I can outline the remaining plot, why shouldn't I just write it?

So. I can't say I've given up. Because I hate not finishing things. But I also can't promise that I'll be able to finish it any time soon (yes, I know it's been years) because I'm drowning in life and work responsibilities at the moment. I do want to finish it, but I just don't how likely that'll be. I'm sorry I don't have a more hopeful answer.

But seriously, thank you for thinking of Pursuit, even though it's been nine years. It's a story that got me through one of my most difficult years and all the people who read it made it special for me.

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Hilda by Duane Bryers

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No need for explanation.

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Pardon me as I enter my ATLA phase…

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Boys (Unmute !)

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in recognition of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21

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dark academia isn’t just for the humanities: i bring you STEM academia.

observatories. stargazing. biographies of scientists. filling the board end to end with equations. hand-drawn anatomical diagrams. the hazy euphoria after finally finishing an assignment. oppenheimer & frankenstein. the uniformity of a circuit board; the chaos of a programming window. ibm’s a boy and his atom. event horizon telescope’s black hole photo. the wonder of studying anatomy and knowing that’s happening within you. sketching organic compounds that may as well be sigils. studying latin for medical terminology. doing problem sets to classical music.

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That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.

It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.

The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.

It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.

The like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.

They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.

They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.

It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.

Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile - and for that purpose, you count as a cat.