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#So i decided to just keep the list about small weird mammals
Lesser known small mammals (or mammals whenever i bring up people have no idea what im talking about)
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Quoll ..a carnivorous marsupial native to Australia that spends most of the day sleeping in its dens. there have been 111 recorded events of quolls eating human remains (x) (pictured here is a spotted-tail quoll)
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Numbat..an insectivorous marsupial from Australia that is diurnal (or is primarily active during the day). unlike other mammals that primarily eat termites, they have a jaw with 50 very small teeth. they live in tree hollows and block the openings with the thick hide of their rump
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Hyrax ..a small thickset herbivorous mammal that is more closely related to elephants and sea cows than pikas and marmots. theyre found in africa, and they have rubbery paw pads that help them climb up rocks (this is a rock hyrax)
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Solenodon... a venomous, insectivorous little mammal that is easily provoked into a frenzy of squeaking and biting. it uses echolocation to compensate for its poor eyesight, and females have two teats almost located on its backside (above is a cuban solenodon)
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Sengi (elephant shrews (or better known as the get a look at the snout species))...is another insectivore that is more closely related to elephants than true shrews. they live in southern Africa and have relatively large brains for their size (a respectable 11 inches) (this is a black and rufous sengi)
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Tenrec..omnivorous little mammal that lives in land, sea, underground, and in trees. there are many different subspecies of tenrec that can look like hedgehogs, opossums, rats, and shrews (this is one is a lowland streaked tenrec from madagascar)
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niqhtlord01 · 3 years
Text
Humans are weird: Assassins
( Don’t forget to come see my on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord )
 The soft light of the morning dawn slowly filtered into the room through cracks between the lavish curtains. Streaks of light bounded off the polished gold detailing of the rooms furniture and made the room appear as if the very stars themselves had come to adorn themselves upon the walls. So bright were the reflections that it managed to find their way underneath several layers of bed sheets and directly into the face of ambassador Glifin.
Roused from his seemingly peaceful sleep Glifin slowly pushed off the sheets one by one and rolled to his feet. The loud thuds of his hooves touching the floor sent a shudder through the room as he stood and stretched out, his general grogginess slowly shaking off. With a loud yawn finally leaving his throat he rose and shambled over to his desk to begin his day’s work.
Tonight he was hosting a party honoring visiting royalty from his home world on Argon. The prince had decided he wanted to visit this miserable planet he had been stationed on, though why anyone would want to visit this world was beyond him.
Glifin’s posting on the human homeworld had been sold to him as a great honor but in reality it had been a means to keep him from continuing his political rise. On Argon he had been a senator whose mere whisper was enough to make generals and minor nobles quiver in fear. His star struck ascension didn’t go unnoticed however and just before he was to be elected into the office of Artock Supreme and reside over the entire senate the royal family had stepped in and given him the position of ambassador to humanity.
Within the spam of a solar month he was shipped off the throne world and sent to this backwater dump of a world; were he had to smile and feign sincerity to these miserable sacks of flesh all the while his political powerbase slowly began to crumble in the senate.
Now fully consumed by feelings of dread over his situation Glifin did not hear the sudden knock at the door. Only after several more knocks did Glifin look up from his paper work.
“Come in.”
The door slowly opened and Glifin’s aide Jafal walked in and bowed.
“My apologies for disturbing you at this early hour, but Mr. Robinson has arrived with your evening wear for tonight’s event.”
Glifin nodded and shuffled his papers back into his desk and locked it just as a new figure entered the room.
“Say what you want about Argonian fashion, but they do have such a wonderful sense of aesthetics when it comes to room decoration.”
A slim human emerged from the doorway pushing a small cart with a metal rod built in holding up two clothing bags.
“You have a problem with Argonian styles?” Glifin said as he rose to his feet and walked over to Robinson as he pulled out a tiny box device and casually threw it down on the floor. The moment of contact it sprung open and in an instance a large set of mirrors emerged from it giving an impressive view from all sides.
“Oh far be it for me to question ones culture, “ Robinson continued as he opened the first bag and stepped aside for Glifin to see the contents, “but some would consider the amount of dead mammals your people adorn on themselves to be a tad morbid.”
From the corner of his eye Glifin saw Jafal’s face redden from anger but with a motion from his ambassador kept his tongue still.
“I would find it surprising for a human to find anything morbid with the amount of toxins you willingly consume.”
Robinson flashed a brief smile and shrugged. “You do have me there; personally caffeine will most likely be the end of me one day, but we’re not here to talk about my eventual demise.”
“An end that will come much sooner if you continue to waste my time with idle chatter.”
Humanities incessant need for small talk and idle conversation was something Glifin had never come to terms with; and this human fashion designer was by far the worst example he had ever put up with. Part of him viewed it as a challenge to see how long he could endure before snapping the tiny man’s neck, and though such a moment would no doubt bring him great pleasure the other part of him realized that Robinsons work was well regarded among prominent members of society. Not just with other humans, but with other alien dignitaries who had embassies on the human homeworld. It had been surprisingly an ambassador from the Hive that had recommended the human’s services when it was suggested that Glifin update his style to match his new role.
Walking up to the first black bag that Robinson had opened Glifin inspected the wardrobe.
Inside was a finely trimmed suit of Rygonian Leaper fur of a dark blue with a sash of Haponi tongue and a dashing pair of pants metal grey Roller Worm hide.
It was custom in Argonian culture to wear the skin of that which you have killed, thus the outfit before him was a prime example Glifin’s traditions.
“A fine work indeed,” Glifin said as he ran his fingers across the material, feeling the roughness against his skin. “For a human” he finished as he turned and smirked at Robinson.
“With the effort it took to obtain the materials you requested I would say it is nothing less than an example a miracle performed before your very eyes.”
Glifin stopped his examination of the attire and looked at the human. “For a miracle you sound so…displeased with your work.”
Robinson crossed his arms for a moment and pouted as if considering his next words.
“My work is perfection, I can assure you, but a man in my trade is not just meant to listen to the specifications of their client but their intention as well.”
“And your point?” Glifin queried.
After a moment he outstretched his hand and casually gestured to the Argonian clothing. “Is this really the message you want to be sending?”
Glifin looked at the suit again then back at Robinson. “I don’t understand.”
“If you go to the event dressed like this it will send the message that you still value your traditions, but I worry that it shows a disconnect with your current situation; almost as if you are attempting to relive the past.”
“You would appear as an old war hero trapped in past glories that the other guests would acknowledge, but not make to engage in conversation.”
Glifin opened to rebuke the human but stopped himself as he pondered the man’s words. Robinson stepped forward to the other black case. “Now this,” Robinson said as he slowly pulled down the zipper revealing the contents, “this would make you not only the talk of the party, but would make you the talk of the after party all the way back to your homeworld were many people would no doubt be very much interested in your on goings.”
“Each piece has been designed by some of the most dangerous animals on this planet, and in some cases far more ravenous then anything back on your respectable homeworld.”
Robinson went about and pointed out the specific materials used one by one.
“The body is made from a powerful species that inhabits the various swamps and wetlands around the globe with jaws so powerful they could cut you in two with a single bite.”
“Each of the buttons along the coat are the fangs of the most poisonous reptilian creatures on the planet; each one capable of killing a human let alone an Argonia ten times over with a single drop of their venom.”
“Now the pants I am particularly proud of as they are the skin of the deadliest hunter of all the planets seas. They can smell fresh blood from miles away and commonly take on prey twice their size.”
Gliffin heard Robinson go through the list of creatures but his expression remained emotionless.
“Why would these creatures be any more interesting than my own worlds?”
Robinson smiled. “Because everyone from your world already knows about them and have hunted the same creatures for generations. Yet I would be so bold as to wager my humble shop that none of them have ever faced down the black eyed stare of a great white shark, nor wrestled the deadly crocodile demons of the swamps, and most certainly have been quick enough to pluck out the teeth of rattle snakes just as they lunge to strike.”
“Neither have I,” Gliffin said with a hint of disgust in his tone, “and you would make a liar out of me for saying so.”
“My dear ambassador, who but you could say what you do or don’t in your free time?”
Robinson leaned forward and whispered into Gliffin’s ear “I am no doubt sure many of your females would find the idea of a striking Argonian such as yourself sneaking off to go hunting the unknown for sport a rather attractive quality.”
Glifin looked at the new set of clothing and then back at the original set of traditional clothes. He went back and forth for several moments before finally settling his gaze on the traditional garments.
“Take these away.”
_______________________________________
The lights outside Robinson’s humble shop slowly went off one by one as he walked between the displays straightening out garments and folding tossed aside pieces customers had casually put aside when the door rang.
“I’m sorry but we are closed for the night.” Robinson said as he returned behind the counter with a stack of clothes.
The figure slowly approached the counter and took off their hat. Robinson looked up from the register to see the figure was a Rohanan; a species known for its gel like appearance yet could collect random bits and bobs to create a sudo skeleton and present themselves as humanoid.
“That’s alright,” the Rohanan said, “I am here to pay for a set I ordered for a….friend.”
“Then they are most fortunate to have a friend such as you then.”
Robinson’s smiling nature unnerved the Rohanan but nonetheless they placed a small envelope on the table and slid it across. Robinson placed a hand on it and tapped his fingers several times against the contents inside before opening it and spilling the credit chips on to the table.
“Is it satisfactory?” the Rohanan said, their nervousness building as the human finished counting the chips.
“Oh yes indeed; I believe you have paid in full for your order.” With a swipe of his hand the human pushed the chips back into the envelope and sealed it. “Always a pleasure to deal with such an honest and upstanding man such as yourself during such troubling times.”
Robinson leaned in towards the Rohanan, his expression shifting from smiling to one of mild concern. “I heard there was a most unfortunate incident up at the Argonian embassy several nights ago.”
“Several guests including the visiting prince and ambassador himself all died from poisoning.” The Rohanan confirmed.
“How gruesome!” Robinson said as he recoiled in shock and finished putting away the remaining clothes while he talked over his shoulder.
The Rohanan regarded the human for a moment before continuing. “The strangest thing was that the poison was not native to this world, but is most common in the Hagar system under Dovorian rule.”
“A most embarrassing situation I am sure considering the Dovorian and Argonian people despise each other.”
“Indeed; one might wonder how such a toxin came into contact with them.”
Robinson shrugged and turned as he finished placing the final shirt back into the display. “With all of those fangs, bones, and animal skins I would not be surprised if someone grabbed a tooth or two that hadn’t been fully drained of its contents.”
The Rohanan laughed and placed their hat back on their head just as they stopped at the door.
“You were worth every penny, assassin.”
“An assassin you say?” Robinson’s smile returned and he casually waved to the departing customer “You must have me mistaken for someone else, as I am but a simple tailor.”
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beware-of-you-98 · 3 years
Text
henry’s dragon (jj x emily)
there’s a lot of reptile talk and i’m only slightly sorry about it
It's not that they hadn't been expecting the question; after all, a pet had been on his most recent wish-list to Santa Claus. It wasn't that they didn't think Henry was irresponsible: he got fantastic grades in school, kept up with his sports and helped out enough around the house. He was even the one that took up most of the chores when it came to Sergio (he insisted). Really, there was no doubt in their minds that their son wouldn't take responsibility in taking care of another animal.
But it was too soon, and neither Emily or JJ wanted to start a habit of buying an animal on such short notice without instilling some kind of boundaries.
First and foremost, since everyone at the house had busy schedules, the new pet couldn't be something that require attention 24/7.
No mammals or birds—nothing that would be affected by significant spending some time alone.
Since the boys time was split between two houses, the animal had to be something that either JJ or Emily could easily take care of in Henry's absence.
No spiders or bugs and it had to fit in an enclosure that they capped off at 50 gallons—hey, they had to draw the line somewhere.
After months and months of researching, Henry finally decided between either a corn snake (only if it was on frozen thawed mice), a crested gecko, or a leopard gecko. Last week for his eleventh birthday, JJ and Emily had surprised him with a twenty gallon tank that would house either animal of his choice quite comfortably for a while and several necessities like a heating pad and a basking light and bulb.
To top everything off, Spencer and Penelope had surprised the boy with tickets to a reptile show that was taking place the following weekend so he could go and pick out his new pet.
(Whatever Henry decided to get, he could also get the appropriate hides, water bowls and supplements with the money his grandparents had given him.
Emily and JJ collectively agreed to pay for the animal as an additional birthday gift.)
They had both been immediately thrown out of their element when they walked into the convention center lobby and found people crowded around the hundreds upon hundreds of tables full of different animals.
"Look, momma, a dinosaur!"
Emily peers up briefly to follow the direction Michael is pointing in with a fond grin, an amused chuckle escaping her mouth as her gaze lands on the clear acrylic tank with a colorful lizard basking under a heat lamp. The blue sharpie on the tank advertises the species in quick-scrawled handwriting: "Uromastyx". Right below the name lists the price in smaller, more legible numbers: "$225".
She hums, giving Michael's ankles a gentle squeeze as she adjusts her hold to keep him from toppling off her shoulders or over her head. The lizard's face can really only be described as dinosaur like, face round and snout short and stubby with tiny black eyes that reflect the light from the bulb above. The animal's scales are mostly bright blue and green, bright yellow and orange spots stamped down the spine, visually leading to a long tail covered in stubbed spikes.
"It does look like a dinosaur, doesn't it?" she agrees with another chuckle, turning her head and resting her hand on Henry's shoulder when he comes bounding up to join them at the table, JJ not too far behind. "What do you think, Hen? You want to adopt a dinosaur?"
Henry pushes his glasses up his nose, eyes lighting up in excitement as he catches a glimpse of the lizard. "An ornate Uromastyx, cool!" he exclaims before turning back towards his mothers. "Did you know they have basking spots of up to 135°?"
A brief pause as he thinks, head tilting up to look at the ceiling. He scrunches his nose and giggles when JJ playfully sticks her tongue out at him.
"And they're mostly herbivores!" he adds as soon as he remembers.
JJ gives his shoulder a loving squeeze before glancing over at the tank. "It is a pretty lizard," she admits.
"It's too expensive," Henry shrugs, not too affected by the fact he probably would be leaving without the Uromastyx. "And I didn't research them enough. Besides, he would out grow the tank I have at home and I don't have the right things for him," he reasons.
A young woman working the booth shoots the family a polite smile before walking over. "Hey, there! Can I help you guys with anything?"
"No, thank you," Henry declines politely. "We're just looking!"
"Interested in Uros?" the woman asks Henry in attempts at conversation.
"They're neat!" he nods enthusiastically. "But not really for beginners."
The woman smiles, looking impressed. "From what I overheard, someone did their research." She glances up at Emily and JJ, politely offering her hand. "I'm Courtney," she introduces herself.
"Jennifer," JJ replies, shaking Courtney's hand with her practiced "liaison" smile, grazing her free hand in Henry's hair as she briefly introduces him, "Henry," before resting it on Emily's side. "My wife, Emily, and Michael."
"Hi," is Michael's shy greeting, lifting his hand before resting his chin on top of Emily's head as the brunette shakes Courtney's hand.
"Pleasure meeting you. First time here?" Courtney guesses with a knowing smile.
"Uh-huh!" Henry nods.
"Neither of us never been to one of these before," JJ explains. "We're not really sure where we're going."
Courtney nods in understanding, reaching under the table and pulling out a small stack of maps with the vendors and tables located on it. "This should help you guys out!"
Emily takes one of the maps, flipping i over and scanning the schedule on the back before giving the woman a grateful smile. "Thank you!"
"Not a problem at all," Courtney assures. "These can get a bit overwhelming the first time around. What are you guys looking for?"
"Geckos!" Henry supplies. "Or corn snakes."
"You'll find plenty of those around here," Courtney smiles at him before leaning in towards the family and muttering softly, "Between you and me, don't buy from that guy." She points to a vendor on the map.
"Bad rap?" JJ assumes.
"Sells sick, over priced animals," Courtney confirms just as softly. "Best vendors for geckos usually sell here..." She points to another space on the map. "And this group right here," She uses her pointer finger to gesture to a few vendors a few tables down. "Sell snakes that only eat frozen thawed, if that's something you're looking for."
JJ lets out a small sigh of relief. "Thank you so much."
Courtney shakes her head and holds up her palms with a warm smile. "Hey, not a problem at all. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up." She hands Henry one of the business cards and a sticker from the table. "You get some more experience with reptiles and ever want to get a Uromastyx, you know where to find us."
"Thank you!"
"You folks enjoy the show!" Courtney waves them away, giving them all warm smiles before heading off down the table to greet another person at the table.
"This place is awesome!" Henry exclaims, spreading out his arms to gesture around the room, eyes shining with glee.
JJ tears her gaze away from a massive Burmese python spotted like a cow, smiling down at the child and nodding in agreement. "It's something else."
"I'll say," Emily murmurs, turning the map in her hands with a small frown, bringing it closer to her face to make sure she's reading correctly. "Hey, Hen, what are "hots"?" She peers down at him, stopping briefly when they come across a table covered in plastic containers sealed shut with red electrical tape. One look at a container holding a white diamond back rattlesnake and she lets out a silent "oh" in realization. "These must be hots."
"Whoa!" Henry gasps in wonder, but stays back where he is. "Cool!"
JJ rests a hand on his shoulder, peering over him at the hundreds of venomous reptiles displayed on the table. A part of her is honestly surprised with how easily someone could come here and purchase some of the deadliest animals on earth. She personally doesn't see the appeal, but hey, to each their own.
"Am I crazy..." Emily leans in towards JJ's face and murmurs. "Or are some of these things kind of adorable?" she continues, discreetly pointing to a container labeled "gaboon viber".
The snake itself is gorgeous, short, stocky body curled over in a "C" shape. Bright orange, yellow and brown diamonds line down the serpent's back. The eyes are positioned almost directly on top of its head, one looking towards the right and the other facing the complete opposite direction. The goofy eyes, along with the chubby cheeks (most likely swollen with the venom glands) and a small horn at the tip of its nose make the snake look like a funny cartoon character.
"No, they're definitely cute," JJ easily agrees, finding another snake in a clear container with black electrical tape. The lid labels the snake inside as a "plains hognose". This snake has the same chubby cheeks as the viper and a little upturned snout, with eyes JJ can really only describe as "puppy like". "In a weird way."
"Moms, can I get a cobra?"
Glaring playfully at Henry, who points to a white monocled cobra with a shit eating grin on his face, JJ smirks, "You most certainly can not get a cobra!" 
Emily reaches over and ruffles Henry's hair when he pouts in exaggeration. "Sorry, babe, your mom's the boss." She drops her voice a few octaves, smile light and teasing as she faux whispers, "Between me and you boys, I would have totally been okay with a cobra as long as you cleaned up after it."
JJ gently whacks Emily's side with the back of her hand, grinning when the brunette grabs her hand and links their fingers together. "Don't conspire with the kids to get venomous reptiles behind my back," she chides playfully.
"Busted, boys. No cobras," Emily sighs dramatically, her own smile wide when Michael giggles from above at her. "What a shame, too. I was going to name him Mr Sparkles."
"Mr Sparkles?!" Michael repeats incredulously between giggles.
"Yep, Mr Sparkles," Emily confirms firmly, grinning as they walk down the table and inspect more of the animals. "I was going to buy him a little leather jacket studded in rhinestones and everything."
"You're so weird!" Henry laughs, shaking his head before leaning into Emily, resting against her arm as they move.
"Proudly!" She grins, heart feeling so incredibly full with Henry leaning on her, Michael above on her shoulder and with JJ at her side. It felt right, so simple and so domestic to be like this. It's as if this was where she was meant to be all along. She feels even more content when JJ leans up and presses a soft kiss to her cheek as if to silently confess her own happiness.
It's perfect.
The family steadily makes their way down the rows and row of vendors, stopping every so often when specific animals catch their eye. There's a small vendor selling small exotic mammals that they spend a while at because the woman running the booth has a sugar glider on her shoulder. Michael and JJ are completely transfixed on the small animal, even more so when it decides to hop on top of JJ's head. She squeaks in surprise, while Emily and the boys laugh, the brunette quickly whipping out her phone to record a video to send to the team group chat later.
They stop at another vendor selling sulcata tortoises a few minutes later, the vendors allowing the boys to feed the giants a few leaves of romaine lettuce (another video recorded, but this time for Penelope because Emily and JJ know she would want to see as much of this as possible next girl's night).
It's nice to see how interactive some of the vendors are with the boys. Some allow them to pet certain display animals and talk to them about each one. Michael yelps in surprise when he pets a large tegu because the lizard flicks its tongue out lazily at the boy. Henry is a bit wary of a scaleless bearded dragon and corn snake, wrinkling his nose when he tentatively touches the animal with the vendor's approval.
("It looks like a ball sack," Emily whispers to JJ, eyeing the animal with as much distain as Henry. "It probably feels like one, too." Her own nose wrinkles at the thought, but a smile forms on her face when her wife laughs at her. "What? It's true! Probably!"
“Touch it and find out,” JJ challenges, laughing again when Emily shudders at the thought.
“Yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass.”)
They take plenty of pictures and videos of the boys, mostly standing back and letting the boys enjoy themselves. Though, the boys do convince their moms to participate in petting or holding certain animals. It doesn't take JJ much convincing to hold a tiny banana ball python (she thinks it's really pretty) and a pied ball python whose body consists of huge white spots (she refuses to believe it's real because what?!?) that just fit in her palm. Emily gets suckered into holding a massive carpet python with Henry, tensing only slightly when the snake flicks its tongue in her face.
Henry keeps an eye out for his perfect pet, regarding some of the corn snakes and crested geckos at some vendors with some interest, but moves on otherwise. It's not until they get to a table with a vendor selling leopard geckos that he really pays attention.
Henry looks at the animals in the tupperware containers, each shallow cylindrical container slotted perfectly in a custom black foam board. It made a lot of the animals' colors pop, especially the bright yellow, orange and white geckos in the middle of the board. The women note how Henry's gaze keeps going back to the row with several of these white and yellow geckos, obviously having peeked his interest the most. The last gecko in the row is a stunning bright orange, the tail thick and animal alert. The green marker on top of the lid lists the gecko as a "sub-adult tangerine 25% het temper $75" with the symbol off to the side listing it as a male.
Emily kneels down beside him, peeking between Henry and the gecko. “What are you thinking?”
“He’s pretty,” Henry says in awe. “His tail is thick and he looks really healthy.”
“You guys need any help?” the young man running the booth asks, coming up towards them from behind the table.
“Can I ask a few things about him?” Henry asks, carefully pointing out the orange gecko.
The young man replies with a warm smile, nodding. “Sure, go ahead.”
Emily holds her palms up in a peaceful gesture, letting Henry take the reigns. She stands up behind him, reaching out and grasping JJ’s hand when she comes up to her side with Michael on her opposite hip. “What’s happening? Did he find one?”
Emily smiles fondly at Henry, who’s asking simple, yet crucial, questions about the gecko with the vendor. “Yeah, I think so,” she replies quietly to her wife. “He really likes the orange one.”
The conversation seems to flow naturally between Henry and the vendor, the man periodically peering up at the women to engage them in the conversation about the animal, too. He asks Henry a few questions, nodding in approval when he replies with the information he learned while researching leopard geckos. “That guy right there is one of the friendliest geckos we’ve produced,” the guy adds, nodding to the orange gecko. “Really handleable and calm.”
With that confirmation, Henry turns his hopeful gaze up to his moms, silent question in his eyes.
“You guys can buy him and we’ll hold him back here if you need to pick up some more things or want to look around more so you’re not carrying him around all day,” the vendor assures.
JJ rests her hand on Henry’s shoulder. “This guy, huh?” she asks softly to confirm his choice, small smile on her face.
“I really like him,” Henry confirms with a nod.
“That settles it then,” Emily grins, slipping her wallet from her back pocket and handing over the cash for the animal, sealing the deal.
Henry beams as the man takes the cash, carefully sliding the gecko from the foam board and setting the container behind the table. Henry throws his arms excitedly around both women. “Thanks, moms! You guys are the best!”
Emily smooths her hand through his hair lovingly, smiling warmly as JJ bends and plants a kiss on his forehead.
“You guys can come back here and get him when you’re ready,” the vendor confirms for them, picking up a business card and handing it off to Henry. “If you guys have any more questions or if anything pops up, give us a call and we’ll help out, okay?”
“Thank you!” Henry says genuinely, clutching the card tightly with a grin before turning and tugging on his moms towards the back of the hall.
“Thank you so much,” JJ repeats towards the vendor, smiling warmly at him before allowing Henry to tug her towards the vendors selling supplies.
“See you soon!” the man calls out, waving to them before tending to another customer.
They look around at some more vendors, Henry stopping at a few to buy what he still needs for his new gecko along the way. Michael’s back down on the ground, following his older brother with the same enthusiasm. The two chatter amongst themselves excitedly. JJ and Emily fall in step behind them, watching on with fond smiles that never seem to leave their face even as they leave the convention hall with a new addition to the family in tow.
Emily looks back in the rear view mirror at the boys, smiling to herself as they lean their heads together to look at the gecko in the container secured on Henry’s lap. She turns when JJ leans over and presses a kiss to her shoulder, linking their free hands together in the space between the front seats, a comfortable silence falling between them. The drive home is filled with the excited chatter of their boys from the backseat, the distinct scent of the fast food they had quickly picked up for an easy dinner swarming the car.
It’s oddly comfortable in a way, Emily thinks to herself as the sun starts to set over the horizon. She’s never felt more at peace than she is right now, listening to the boys chatter in the background and feeling the warmth her wife provides as she leans her head on her shoulder.
It’s dark out by the time they get home, just ten minutes until the boys’ bedtime.
Henry and Michael immediately bound up to Henry’s room, the older boy setting the container down gently. He puts the small coleny of dubia roaches into a critter keeper with the food and gel water cubes before setting them off the side. Then, he begins to put the finishing touches to the tank, adding the hides and a small, shallow dish that he fills with calcium powder. Emily trails behind, helping out any way she could and taking the bottle of water JJ hands off to her from behind to cap off the water bowl.
The two women take a seat on Henry’s bed, watching the boys as Henry carefully lifts the container and sets it in the tank. He opens the lid and removes it from the tank, snapping the lid back in place. “We gotta let him come out on his own and get used to it before we pick him up,” he softly tells his younger brother, taking a step back from the tank and joining his moms on the bed. He climbs up between them, smushing himself at their sides and leaning against them. Emily hoists Michael up on her lap, planting a kiss on his head as they all watch the gecko slowly climb out of the container and begin to explore his new environment.
JJ plants a kiss on Henry’s head, reaching over and laying a hand comfortingly on Michael’s back as he leans tiredly against Emily. “What do you think?”
“I love him already,” Henry admits quietly, eyes following his new pet as he explores his tank.
“What are you gonna name him?” Emily wonders, rubbing Michael’s back soothingly to convince him to go to sleep.
“Mr Sparkles,” the toddler tiredly mumbles, cracking a smile at his own joke.
Henry giggles, sounding just as tired as his brother. He lets out a yawn, letting his head lean against JJ’s side. He brings up his hand, moving his glasses out of the way to rub his eye with the back of his hand. “Smaug,” he decides sleepily. “His name is Smaug.”
JJ reaches down, carefully removing his glasses and setting them on his desk before running her fingers soothingly through his hair. “I think that’s a perfect name,” she murmurs.
Her eyes flicker back to the tank, watching the gecko until she feels Henry’s full weight leaning into her. She turns to Emily, who silently confirms with a nod that both boys are asleep. She shifts Michael in her arms, pressing a kiss to his cheek and cradling the bak of his head as she stands. JJ slowly moves herself from the bed, managing to grab Henry in her arms to move him up towards his pillows. She flicks off his bedside lamp, blinking in surprise when the basking light to the gecko’s tank also goes dark before remembering that it’s on a timer. She leans down, pressing a soft kiss to Henry’s forehead and murmuring an “I love you” on his skin before moving for Emily to do the same.
They shuffle out to Michael’s room, JJ carefully and quietly shutting Henry’s door behind her. The routine is the same with Michael, laying him down in his bed, giving him a kiss goodnight and murmuring quiet “I love you”s on his skin before sneaking out and closing the door behind them.
JJ leans up, pressing a tired, soft kiss on Emily’s lips in the middle of the hallway, hoping to convey even the smallest amount of affection she holds for her wife with the simple gesture. Emily gently cups her face between her palms, melting into the gesture as she always does. “I love you,” she hums quietly on the blonde’s lips, smiling wide when she feels JJ smile against her.
“I love you. So much.”
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I have, for some ungodly reason, decided it would be a good idea to figure out the possible taxonomy (has to do with the naming/grouping of living things) of Pandoran creatures.
Because, ya' know, I'm a sane person.
This is my invitation to you, to watch me lose my fucking mind.
Quick list of the main taxonomy ranks:
{Think: Genus<Species as "Species is contained in the Genus" if that helps}
Life<Domain<Kingdom<Phylum<Class<Order<Family<Genus<Species
We'll probably avoid getting into the orders, families, genus and species as I want to avoid making stuff up. At least for the time being.
The simple stuff: [We're focusing on Indigenous creatures by the way, which excludes threshers]
All (or most) mentioned creatures are in the domain or Eukaryote (organisms whoes cells have a nucleus enclosed in a nuclear membrane/nuclear envelope).
Kingdom Animalia: skags, stalkers, bullymongs, wings, rakks, rakkhives, Boroks, spiderants, varkids, scythids, crab worms, scaylions, sand worms, and drifters.
Phylum Vertebrata: Skags, Stalkers, Bullymongs, Wings, Rakks, Rakkhives, and Boroks (There's also a fish that I'd like to include in that list but for the life of me I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT IT'S CALLED so I won't be listing it and that makes me very sad.)
Class Mammalia: Skags, Bullymongs**, Rakkhives, and Boroks*
Class Aves (birds): Wings
Class Reptilian: Stalkers
I have no idea where the fuck to put rakks.
*I have some uncertainties about Boroks, but I'm more confident that they're mammals than anything else.
**There's this thing about mammals being under the superclass tetrapoda (meaning they have four limbs), which Bullymongs are not. They have six limbs which would make them part of the superclass Hexapoda, except this usually is reserved for arthropods - non vertebrates. This is why I've elected not to worry about superclasses as I already have a small understanding on how taxonomy works, and this just makes it all the more complicated. (And PLEASE DEAR GOD SOMEONE GIVE ME A NICE CHART WITH EVERYTHING LISTED I KNOW IT'S GOING TO BE HUGE BUT STILL)
The simple stuff ends here
Phylum Arthropoda: Spiderants, Scaylions, Drifters, and Varkids
Class insecta:
Varkids are solidly in the class insecta as they are hexapods, have an exoskeleton, have a three part body, and have wings.
I think Scaylions might also fall under this as they too are hexapods, and while they look a lot like scorpions, they share more traits with insects than arachnids. [as they do not have wings they'd be classified as entogntha.]
Class Arachnida:
Spiderants are fucking weird since they're not hexapods or look like traditional spiders. But since they share a lot of traits with arachnids I'm opting to have them be classified as such.
Drifters have the same issue as spiderants, but I also consider them arachnids as well.
Phylum Annelida (basically worms): Sandworms and Crabworms
Sandworms: My main hangup with these is that they look nothing like an actual worm. They look more like fucked up snakes which makes me think that they could be reptiles that are simply called worms by the people that colonized Pandora. If they ARE snakes, then that'd put them with the vertabrates. Which if I think about it, the leviathan looks more like a messed up sea turtle, which would definitely make it a reptile.
Crabworms: It's a big ol' wiggly armored bug that wants to kill me, that's all I know. From what I can tell it could share a lot of traits with other arthropods, but at this point I really have no idea.
All this being said I'm really stretching the definitions here.
Special cases:
Sycthids:
I think that all the sycthids are resulted from convergent evolution, kinda like crabs. Personally I'm stuck between them being like trilobites (old ass ancient water bug found in fossils), isopods (think like roly polies), in the subphylum myriapoda (which contains milipides, centipedes, and the like), or being gastropods (which places then under the super class of mollusca and haves them to be like snails and slugs)
That being said not even the cannon will know because supposedly they have similar dna to horses and were probably experimented on by the Eridians. Yay.
Spores:
It's likely the Kingdom is Fungi, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll have to play tftbl again to see if there's an echo eye entry to narrow something down, and play the comander lillith dlc if they mention something. They're definitely not animals.
Rakks:
I was tempted to have them under the order of reptiles, but the thing with reptiles is that they have a cold blooded metabolism. In borderlands 2 you see them flying around the frozen wastes in extremely cold weather, so it's likely that they're warm blooded like birds and mammals. What keeps me from identifiying them as mammals or birds is the fact that they share very very few other traits with them.
Crystalisks:
I don't list them in the animal kingdom, or even in the Eukaryotic domain because I literally have no idea how it's biology might work.
One theory I've heard of is that it's similar to the Guardians in that they were probably created by the Eridians to guard some of their technology. This would probably place them in an extremely different domain, definitely one that doesn't exist, since I have no idea how their cells (IF they have them) are characterized.
But yeah, I don't know what to do with this one.
This is totally a worthwhile thing for me to think about.
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aiweirdness · 5 years
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GPT-2: It learned on the Internet
Prompt: The black-capped chickadee is a small songbird native to
Response: The black-capped chickadee is a small songbird native to Africa that is powerfully seductive. In the songs of Barry Sequson, Harry Holness and Alan Emerson the black-capped chickadee competes with others—and climbs on top of each other and fights with high-powered snakes, Emperor jockeys and mysterious unicorns.
This is text generated by an artificial neural network that the researchers at OpenAI unveiled this week. In fact, it’s generated by the worst neural network they trained. Even the worst neural network generates text that, if not demonstrating actual knowledge of chickadees, is leaps and bounds over the coherence of any neural networks I’ve trained myself. They’ve built in a way for the model to zoom out and look at longer-term features of text, which means it’s much better at making sentences hold together, and even remembering what it’s talking about from sentence to sentence.
The model learned by crawling the Internet and seeing which words are used together in which order, trying to build up an internal model that will let it predict which word comes next in a sentence. It’s similar in concept to the models I’ve trained to generate paint colors, first lines of novels, and Harry Potter fan fiction, except it’s a lot more powerful. It also learned from a much larger dataset than I use, consisting of every page that was linked to somewhere on Reddit with a minimum number of upvotes. That encompasses a LOT of topics.
It includes fan fiction, for example.
Prompt: Harry wished that Hermione would hurry up. The icing was beginning to harden.
Response: Even now, the cracks only hurt and were beginning to make the steel in her hair and tie in like clumps. Hermione sipped the bitter frost from her dinner and chewed on her eating soup.
Prompt: Darth Vader entered the room, cape billowing. "What is the meaning of these... festivities?"
Response: ”Strange and solemn, now," Princess Leia replied. "Will pirates make jokes at Jabba's birthday cake? Oh, and for a moment, Darth Vader was too full of himself for that ceremony, hence all the mirth."
"Did your father suffer there?" Vader roared and growled and turned to gaze up from the balcony.
The model can also try to communicate Important Science Facts, although its actual facts are a bit suspect.
Prompt: Our solar system consists of the inner and outer planets, separated by an asteroid belt. It has
Response: Our solar system consists of the inner and outer planets, separated by an asteroid belt. It has only one sun, Pluto.  Mercury rotates on its axis a little to allow a few planets, called gas giants, to be independently charged.  During some of these cycles periods between  90% and 64% of the solar system's surface might be charged.  (Not enough is needed for vermin but that is gradually fading away.)
Prompt: Throughout the long cold Antarctic winter, the residents of South Pole Station
Response: Throughout the long cold Antarctic winter, the residents of South Pole Station lost virtually all of their ancient crustaceans, most notably pterodactyls, and all of the all-important plankton hydrates and protozoan eggs of the five ordered species of mammal.
Other deposits for sea organisms included eraymarine calcifye, the redfin ball, penguin heads, and the red whale.
Prompt: A carbon atom's outer orbitals
Response: A carbon atom's outer orbitals are basically a ring of ions around the border of thin mini-glaciers (usually colloquially referred to as bubble"). Like viruses, these planes are in islands in large weather groups. In and out they get all of their energy from many small regions of solar wind and dense cloud cover (usually thousands of square meters). Like viruses, their weaponry is imaged to record the movement of material-- (by deflecting rays, for instance) to complete waves or to cause the material to deform under shell impact. Capacitors--like gravity ids-- produce buoyancy with the exhalation of liquid hydrogen atmospheres, an essential electrolytic letdown when the material is what one calls a watermelon. Heat range is quite long and space is limited so one must stick with watermelons for a stability boost at a given coordinate system vital to shelter those who require them in space.
Interestingly, it takes its cues from the phrasing of the prompt more than from its specific content.
Prompt: Behold, the three-toed sloth, known for its
Response: Behold, the three-toed sloth, known for its ichorotic smile, with its four shades, pantered organic wizened broken bony paws, bulging knees, hairy tubercles, and orange's-black mandibles.
It’ll also do recipes, delightfully. Its recipes aren’t enormously more coherent than the recipes I’ve been able to generate. Part of the problem seems to be that the model is getting a bit confused by other types of recipes in its dataset.
Prompt: Quitterbread bars. Ingredients:
Response (some formatting adjusted for readability):  
Quitterbread bars.
Ingredients:
Creamy cole slaw, chopped fresh cilantro, garlic, etc. 1  few very good options at lime-light, milky-white (at a light foodie) space 1  medicated towel (albino & aluminum mesh - see a friend's link to see if you can use it carefully & what you're expecting) a few paraffin-y dice (sleep about half of the weight, use the 1 ounce plus 2 pounds extra when handling these onto a hot baking sheet) 20 baking sheets 30 1/2 lb. white sanding board 1 didn't dry paper cup 1 cup extra hot water
boil the butter and electrical polishing after 20 minutes 3LB neurons
gently massage these into their slots, reduce heat in oven to approximately 350°F
stuff seam side-side down with binding compound, avoiding every drop of water the thinner sides will be tidy and seperate and pull out after 24 hours know how long they will keep it's held well, thin enough to live with 3-4 weeks teach you all the serenity you'll need to know for fantasy...
_______________________________________ >>> A limited amount of not-spicy crème brûlée (orange - read about how to do it in Meteor!) I used black chocolate cake Crème Brûlée
Painted cocktail draped across the small purple curtain of Shana Liu's Stepmother Coconut Guild guest house in France. 35' x 30' $150
Embargo thank you. Our magical rich chocolate cube
Still, its memory is better than any model I’ve worked with before. Look how it manages to almost remember that it was making a list!
Prompt: My 10 favorite animals are: 1.
Response:  
My 10 favorite animals are: 1. zebras with a white scar on the back; 2. insiduous spiders and octopus; 3. frog with large leaves, hopefully black; 4. cockatiel with scales; 5. razorbill with wings hanging about 4 inches from one's face and a heart tattoo on a frog. 3. cockatric interlocking tetrapods that can be blind, cut, and eaten raw. 4. black and white desert crocodiles living in sunlight. 5. zebra and many other pea bugs.
And this is just the worst model, the one that was trained with 117 million parameters instead of 1542 million. What can the best model do?
Here’s an example of its output:
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This give you a clue as to why the OpenAI researchers have decided for now not to release their best model to the public. They’re worried about people using it to produce destructive bots, fake news, phishing emails, and other dangers. It might be difficult indeed to moderate a forum filled with angry time-wasting mostly-coherent bots. In their blog post they posted more examples of the full-powered model producing impressively coherent text, including a delightful news story on four-horned South American unicorns.
What will they end up doing with their model? Even now, someone else with the time and resources - a government, for example - could train and use a model like theirs, especially now that they’ve shown everyone what their technique can do. They’re hoping that their paper will prompt some regulation, or at least some countermeasures, that can guard against this technology’s misuse. They’re also hoping that other researchers will stop to think about potential misuse before they release their models to the public.
For now, the GPT-2 version OpenAI released isn’t going to fool very many people.
Prompt: NO!!! You should NEVER feed a dog from a silver platter.
Response: It will make them bark in farts when you put it away.
Prompt: Actually, you should never microwave your food, because
Response: it holds sodium, mercury, mercury or "cold enemy cocktail" flavorings and the exact same flavorings used then for chili powder. This is wrong, it's not safe, and some people get hurt while cooking at their homes! If you have these very dangerous ingredients and want to keep them around, you should absolutely rinse them and cook them in a dishwasher and set aside.
Support AI Weirdness and get bonus content: A few more GPT-2 samples I generated.
You can download and play with the second-best model here - requires some familiarity with installing and running python code. Or there’s a colaboratory version (works in-browser; no coding required). Content warning: it learned some awful stuff from the Internet.
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lonelylibrary · 6 years
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How to create scientifically realistic creatures!
Hi everybody! I was studying for my biology finals when I suddenly noticed, A LOT of it could be used for writing. Especially science-fiction and fantasy where authors often create new species. I decided to create a post all about it, in the hopes of helping some of you out!
How to get started
“What makes a scpecies scientifically realistic?” When they fit in their environment. This applies to all creatures living in relatively stable environments. If, say a magician, has just created a new species and just puts it in the forest, it might not fit in there. It will either have to adapt itself (through evolution) or it goes extinct. It might even change the environment in some ways! So the environment is the key factor to how a species lives.
So, before you go around creating some species, you first need to think about where they live. I highly advise you to build an environment for them as the first step and then actually create the species. It does not have to be complicated at all, as long as you get some of the basics down.
You might think about so called "abiotic factors". Those are basically environmental factors, that aren't based on life. This includes:
How intense is the light? (Is there a lot of light throughout the day?)
How much water is there?
What is the temperature?
Where is the water? (lakes? in the air? in the ground?)
What does the ground consist of? (stone, sand, soil, etc.?)
Are there seasons/what changes during the seasons? (are there any seasons at all? What are they like?)
And the list goes on. Please keep in mind that you do not need to know any exact numbers or whatever. It's enough if you know a little bit about it (e.g. there is very intense light from sunrise to sunset). You also don't need to have every single one of these factors thought out, in the end it would get too complicated. Now, these factors directly influence how the plants/animals live in this area. I will be talking about more specific things that happen later (only with the animals!). What to do with these informations now? Think about it; Have you ever seen full grown, green trees in the desert? Have you ever seen a flower in winter? This way you can roughly get an image of your plants/animals in your head.
Then there are biotic factors. Those are factors that are based on life. Some examples:
What other species live in the area?
Who hunts who?
Are there plants?
What kind of/how many plants are there?
There are obviously a lot more of those. Especially when it comes to concurrence, it can have an influence on how many individuals of the species there are. Keep in mind that just because a population has a lot of predators, it doesn't mean that there are only a very small amount of their prey living. They might be perfectly adapted to having so many predators.
Based on this knowledge, you can roughly think about how your species behaves, where it lives and so on.
Traits of animals on the earth
So, now that we know the environment of the species, it's time to actually create it! I have decided to list a few traits that species living in certain places on earth show and that are very common.
Animals living in dry places usually have a few special traits that help them survive the dryness and with it most probably also the heat. Living beings very, very rarely live in places hotter than 45°C (113° Fahrenheit). This is because the proteins in their bodies break when it's hotter; and these destructions cannot be reversed. To add: All life depends on these proteins. In order to save as much water as possible, animals living in deserts do not sweat (or only a tiny little bit), have a very concentrated urin and there is barely any water to find in their excrements. If their body temperature normally stays the same (mammals and birds have a constant body temperature), it may be able to have a higher tolerance border without doing any harm (it would kill us humans quickly if the temperature rose only by 10%). This is a thing, so no water has to be used to cool them down. Camels have a lot of fat in their humps. This is both an energy store and a water ressource, as the burning of this fat produces water. Even their nose is designed to save water! There's a rule in biology that animals living in hot places are smaller than their relatives living in cold places (e.g. penguins in the Antarctic and the ones living in Australia). They also have bigger body attachments (ears, tails, etc.) than the ones living in the cold. Some animals simply move to places with more water during dry periods (mostly if the deficiency is due to the seasons). Very few animals (mostly microorganisms) shrink down in size and sort of "sleep" in order to not waste any water. As soon as there's water again, they grow back to their normal size.
Animals living in cold places are more or less the opposite. They are bigger, have very small body attachments. A lot of animals sleep during the winter, some of them can be woken up rather easily (bears) and some of them not. They usually have a thick fur or any other type of protection against the below freezing temperatures. If their body temperature drops below 0°C (32° Fahrenheit) they would die. Some animals take advantage of their bodily fluids freezing; but only those, that have a body temperature that can vary (i.e. reptiles, fish). They let their body "freeze" and just wait until winter is over. A few species specifically create fluids with a lower freezing point.
Animals living underwater often do not breathe through lungs. If they do, they have to breathe over the water surface (but they can keep their breath for quite a long time). Their bodies are in an “auqadynamic” shape, making it easy for them to move through water.
Light is the main source of energy. Plants are only able to produce oxygen and biotic material when there's light around. And that's what every single species needs, in order to survive (as long as it isn't able to produce oxygen). But it plays a much bigger role. It synchronises the rhythms of all animals. When to get up, when to go back to sleep, when birds should start singing, when to release hormones, etc. It tells certain animals when summer's coming/going, so they can move.  It tells them when to search for a partner to make some babies.
Of course, there is a lot more about this and it's far more complicated! This is more or less all that I know, if you don't understand something or just have another question, feel free to ask me. Keep in mind, I am not a specialist and am very sorry if I got something wrong. Now go out there and create your OCs weird pets, beasts or whatever else you want these creatures to be! I recommend sticking by these rules if you create species living on a completely untouched planet, where nature was just able to do it's thing. In a world with intelligent beings, things may vary a bit (talking about genetic engineering, creating artificial environments, etc.). Be creative with what you know!
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lakinda5654 · 5 years
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~~~~A Girl and A God~~~~ Chapter 19- Unexpected
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A Girl and A God is a RATED M Loki Fanfic with an original character, Alexa, who is taken in by Tony Stark after the revelation of abilities of her own. There’s sex, romance, heartbreak, action, fluff, angst, all that good stuff. Full description in blog, and a jump-to-chapter list if you just want the smut or the cuteness bits. Enjoy <3 
Chapter Summary: Loki and Alexa spend a cute morning together, then they are given an unexpected surprise...
Contains: cuteness, friendship development
Word Count: 1,661
~Previous Chapter~~Next Chapter~
~~Beginning of Story~~
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The next morning, Loki woke to a wonderfully sweet aroma filling their room. Alexa was at the small stove, messing with something in a pan.
She’d gotten bored that morning and decided to make Loki breakfast.
Without warning, she felt his cool hands wrapping around her waist. She took a sharp breath in, then immediately calmed at the sound of his voice.
“Good morning petal” he spoke softly in her ear with his warm, deep voice. “What are you preparing for me?”
“Bold to assume it’s for you” Alexa smiled.
He nibbled her ear gently, causing her heart rate to speed up. “Bold to assume I wouldn’t steal it if it wasn’t.” His tone was so smooth and deep beyond sexy in the morning. It gave Alexa chills.
He unwrapped his bare arms from around her and looked at what she was doing.
“They’re called Crepes. Have you had them before?”
She glanced back at Loki who shook his head.
“They’re my favorite breakfast food.” She scooped up the one in her pan and flipped it onto a plate. “You fill it with all this. You can make it however you want. There’s berries, powdered sugar, chocolate syrup, lemon juice, yogurt, and a bunch of other stuff.”
 Loki listened intently. “Well, it smells delicious.”
“It is. Oh and whipped cream. My favorite combination is whipped cream, raspberries, powdered sugar, and a dash of lemon juice.” She created her masterpiece as she spoke, and he watched her. When she shook up the whipped cream and dispensed it, she saw him raise his eyebrows. “What in Valhalla is that…”
“Oh, it’s whipped cream.” Suddenly, Alexa got brave in front of her shirtless god. She dispensed some on her finger, walked so close to him they were chest to chest and held it up to his mouth. He looked at her, surprised, then saw the mischievous look on her face and she saw the corner of his mouth upturn. He took her cream-covered finger into his mouth and sucked on it a bit, then licked it for good measure. 
“Mmm,” he hummed. “That is unexpectedly delightful.” He knew it had aroused her, and he saw her blush to prove it.
As she set the table, Alexa had a nagging question and had to break the mood. “Loki… I have a question.”
He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly.
“Why are you always so cold? Like I’ve just noticed with little things. Like your tongue and mouth are cold, and your bare skin… you always seem unnaturally chilling. Is that just me? Is it a god thing? or Asgardian thing?”
His demeanor changed entirely. “No Petal- it’s not just you. It’s part of me I really don’t want to share at the moment.” He touched her chin, tilting her head up. “I want to enjoy this breakfast with you, and I will explain it later.” He smiled warmly, kissed her forehead, and turned back to the counter to prepare his food.
Alexa was not one to let things go, she wanted an answer. But the fact that he wanted to spend the morning with her warmed her heart and she forced herself to wait.
He loaded his crepes with berries and sugar as she had. Alexa sat at the table and ate, and Loki soon joined her with his food. His first bite left his face looking surprised. “I must say your Midguardian food continues to surprise me.” He said as he cut another bite with his fork.
Alexa was about to reply when she heard a knock.
Both their eyes widened and she frantically stood up and roughly whispered. “Hide fucking hide!”
Loki slipped silently into the bathroom and Alexa put his dish on the counter so it wouldn’t look like the table was seated for two. Whoever was at the door knocked again.
 “Coming!” She rushed over, took a deep breath, smoothed herself out, and opened the door.
Peter.
“Ok so I know this is weird and it’s early and I’m sorry cuz you were probably asleep but maybe not cuz u live on moon juice or whatever right, but I found something and I didn’t know what to do so I picked it up and I thought if I went to anyone else they’d make me get rid of it or something and I don’t want to and I don’t know what to do.”
“Peter… What?”
He pulled a kitten out of his sweatshirt.
There was a moment of confused silence.
“Peter why the fuck… why do you have a kitten”
“I just told you I found it and it’s really cute right and, ok so I found it cuz I went to McDonald’s because I wanted hash browns and this guy had a whole box of them so I was like aww cute right and then someone else came and was looking at them and I went inside and ate my hash browns and then I came back out cuz I was done and there was literally just one kitten left and The guy was all like “this one has your name on it kid” and I was like no cuz I live in Avengers tower and like I don’t think they allow pets right but it’s not like I signed a lease or whatever so I don’t know, but of course I didn’t say that to the old guy I was just like “no thanks” and then he set down the box and was like it’s yours and I didn’t know what to do but he left and there was just the one and I had to come back but now I have a kitten.”
Alexa stared blankly at him for a moment. “Peter what the fuck”
“Could you keep it in here? Just cuz like I don’t have a way of keeping it because Mr. Stark is always coming in my room you know and like talking to me about training or helping me train or making me meet a new bodyguard because they quit a lot and I really don’t think Mr. Stark would like Thunder.”
“Thunder?”
“Oh yeah cuz he’s gray I thought his name could be Thunder but like we don’t have to name him that I just thought it fit him with his paws cuz they seem too big for his body and I just think if we could keep him here, and then I could take care of him you’d just have to let me in now and then. Then we could also hang out more too cuz like I thought that maybe we could be friends because everyone else here is literally like a thousand years old, I mean a couple of them actually are let’s be real. So will you do it? Can he stay here?”
He didn’t know how much he was asking. Having him pop in and out all the time would seriously endanger Loki to being found out.
“Peter I really can’t…”
Upon seeing he was about to get rejected, he got a little more desperate.
He tilted his head and began to beg her. “Pleaseee please please cats are like so low maintenance and I’ll buy everything just please…”
“Oh my god, fine Peter I’ll-”
“Oh my god YES thank you so much I will go get everything and we can keep it a secret ok and do you want to name it Thunder?”
Alexa looked down at the little cat. “Sure, why not.”
“Ok sweet I will deal with all of it thank you thank you thank-” 
Alexa cut him off. “Ok but you need to understand something. You ALWAYS knock ok? And I’ll take care of him most of the time just if you get the supplies and come by when you want to play with it then that will be fine.”
“Ok sweet I will do that okay and here you go, he’s still really fragile and I think he likes cheez-its, but I’ll get him real kitten food and all that”
“Ok Peter. I’m gonna go back in my room now.”
“Right ok so bye I’ll see you later then thank you so much.”
She shut the door. Holding a kitten.
Loki walked out of the bathroom. He walked up to her, and she realized what a mistake she’d just made when she saw his face. “Have you gone mad?” He spat. 
The kitten chose that moment to let out a tiny, high pitched “mew”
He stared at the creature, then at Alexa. “We are on day one of this and you’ve given access to our room to that loose cannon of a boy?”
Alexa was quiet. “ I know. I’m sorry. I really think it will be fine I told him to always knock and…”
“What you’ve done was foolish. What if stark hears about this creature and decides to check in on me?”
“I’m sorry Loki.” He turned away from her, grabbing at his hair.
“I just, I kind of also wanted a pet.”
He turned and looked at her. “Why? Are you so lonely? I’m right here. I’m bloody locked in your room. I don’t understand why you would have a desire for this infant mammal.”
“Because, Loki... You sleep.”
Loki looked at her and realized he hadn’t thought about what she had to do for all those hours of the night, and how no one was awake but her. He looked at the kitten again and sighed.
“Thunder, is it?”
“I guess so”
She vaguely heard Loki mutter something under his breath something about the concept of Thunder and it’s unending capacity to fuck up his life.
Loki reached down and picked him up. “The name suits the bastard,” he said roughly. Alexa was looking at the animal, a bit worried for it in Loki’s large, tense hands.
His anger had calmed. “I suppose if it pleases you…” and handed the furball back to her.
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Chaos of Life
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Summary:
Yoongi doesn't do things he doesn't like to do. He doesn't talk to people he doesn't like. He doesn't go to class if he doesn't want to. He doesn't even bother to look at those he doesn't think deserves his attention. So, Jimin can't help but wonder what on Earth he did to deserve this strange boys attention.
Chapter 1, 2
Yoonmin University Fanfiction. Multiple Chapters. Warnings Don’t Apply. Good for General Audiences.
You can also read it on: Archive Of Our Own and Fanfiction.net
Chapter Three:
Jimin entered his economics classroom and was greeted with the same sight he had been welcomed with the first time he walked through the door. A mostly empty classroom elevated in a semicircle around his professors' desk. The professor in question hadn't arrived yet. Jimin had previously sat near the front on the left end of the classroom, and normally he would sit in the same spot every class period for some sense of uniformity but…
Jimin sucked in a breath and moved towards the back of the classroom at the opposite end of the room that he had sat at before. He wondered for a terrifying moment as to whether or not Yoongi would be angry at him for moving, but then he thought maybe Yoongi had only sat directly beside him because he hadn't seen any other spots in the class, or maybe that was just where he liked to sit. This way, Jimin probably wouldn't be offending him.
He nodded, his heartbeat evening out a bit as he began to pull out some paper and work on the warm-up that was on the classroom board. It wasn't a warm-up for his class, but Jimin needed to distract himself from looking at the door to see where Yoongi was going to sit.
The warm-up was about animals. It asked him to list different characteristics of a mammal, which was rather simple. Jimin began to scribble his response when the seat beside him was jostled.
"Is anyone sitting here?"
"No, you're good," he replied dismissively. The person took a seat and Jimin could feel them staring at his paper.
"You know that warm-up isn't for our class right?" The person asked. Their voice was a little familiar. The person slurred together their words in a unique way that Jimin couldn't quite place. He didn't look up from his paper though, he just knew if he did he would subconsciously search for Yoongi.
"Yeah. Just need to keep my mind sharp," he replied.
"You're a weird guy Park Jimin."
Jimin's heart skipped a beat. He didn't know anyone in this class. Well, he did know people in this class. Just not well, and something about the way this person said his name made him a little nervous… He looked up and, sure enough, there sat Min Yoongi. He swallowed hard. He wanted to respond to the boy but he couldn't find the words, so instead, he just gaped at him like a fish on dry land. Min Yoongi cocked his head to the side.
"You okay?"
Jimin forced his mouth to shut and he nodded, a strangled sound escaping from between his lips that was so pathetic and out of place that it kicked Jimin's ass right back into gear.
"Yeah, just thinking," he replied dismissively. He forced himself to relax and turned his attention back to the front of the classroom as the godsend of a professor finally began the lesson for the day.
The next day Jimin had class he stood at the front of the classroom for a good minute. Last time, Yoongi had sat beside him even though he moved but maybe he had just wanted to sit in a different part of the classroom. Jimin decided to sit in the center of the classroom this time. He settled behind a small group of students and once again busied himself on the warm-up on the board. He was lost in the question (what family did a bee belong to?) when the chair beside him was moved. He glanced up and found Min Yoongi's expressionless face peering at him curiously. He didn't say a word this time, just kind of hovered by the chair, staring at him instead of asking the question they both knew he wanted to ask out loud. Jimin bowed his head politely towards the boy, which seemed to be enough for Yoongi as he bowed back and sat down. He glanced at Jimin's paper.
"Are you studying animal classification?" He asked him. Jimin squinted.
"Animal classification?" He asked.
"A bee's family," Min Yoongi clarified. "Apdae. Genus Apis, Order Hymenoptera. Animal Classification."
"Oh."
Jimin had completely forgotten about the warm-up.
"Uh, no. It's interesting though, don't you think?"
Min Yoongi nodded slowly and turned his attention to the front of the classroom, and Jimin reminded himself not to be so stupid around the upperclassman in the future.
The next time Jimin was in class he decided to sit somewhere else again. This time, behind a large group of students, so it would be harder to spot him. He didn't know why Min Yoongi kept sitting beside him. It didn't make much sense to him but again, maybe, it was just a coincidence.
This time instead of distracting himself from the boy he watched as Min Yoongi entered the classroom.
When he came in, his eyes were initially glued to a book he had perched in his hand but as soon as he lifted his eyes from the pages of the book they trailed to the end of the classroom where Jimin had originally sat at. Then it traveled to the second spot. The third. Confusion riddled across the boys face. His eyes scanned the classroom until they finally spotted Jimin. Their eyes met and Jimin had to bow his head to avoid doing something stupid. Min Yoongi did a half bow back to him and returned his eyes to his book. He headed up the stairs and without question sat beside Jimin.
"Not working on the warm-up today?" Yoongi commented. His finger darted to his lips as he spoke, his tongue emerging from his mouth to lick his finger. He used it to turn the page of his book and Jimin could barely tear his eyes away from the older boy. His heart sped up and he found himself gripping his pencil so tightly he thought for a second it might snap.
"Too difficult," he murmured. Yoongi's eyes flickered up to the board and he chuckled. No smile found itself on his lips despite the humor-filled sound.
"You don't know what sets apart a dog and a cat?"
Even though a glance at Yoongi's face told him that he was just as interested in the conversation as he seemed to be in any with Jimin he couldn't help but think that Min Yoongi might have sounded even the slightest bit amused by his words. A tiny, embarrassed smile crept up on Jimin's face, which the older boy observed a bit longer than usual before turning his attention to the entering teacher.
Jimin wondered idly why Yoongi's gaze had lingered instead of focusing on his work for most of class.
The next time he went into the class he thought he would just give in to the fact that Min Yoongi was going to sit next to him no matter where he sat in the classroom. The boy was clearly looking for him whenever he came into the class. That much was evident. So, there was hardly a point in avoiding his fate. He was going to sit back down in their original spot because Jimin liked sitting in the front of the classroom, but when he was headed over to the seat Jihyo got to her feet.
"Park Jimin!" She called him over. Her lips were spread into a bright friendly smile as she waved him down. "I had no clue you were in this class!"
Jimin smiled at her and nodded shyly
"Yeah. Hi."
She waved him over so he climbed the steps to her row. She shooed the girl beside her into the seat over and gestured for Jimin to take a seat.
Oh. The ultimate test. There was one seat left in the row that Jihyo wanted him to sit in. One singular seat that meant that if Jimin sat where he wanted to sit the only place left would be next to the girl with short blonde hair. Not next to Jimin. What would he do if there were no seats left by Jimin to sit in?
He sat next to Jihyo and she reached across the desk in front of him to point at the girl beside him.
"Jonghyeon, Jimin. Jimin, Jonghyeon," Jihyo introduced. The two bowed politely to one another, and Jimin couldn't help the small smile that crossed his lips when Jonghyeon blushed and ducked her head.
She was pretty cute. Not necessarily his type, but really cute.
"It's nice to meet you," he said softly. Jihyo started to talk to him perkily- she seemed to enjoy talking- when Jonghyeon made a soft noise. She poked Jimin's arm, her hand quivering just so. He squinted.
"What's wrong?" He asked her.
"Min Yoongi just walked in," she whispered horrified. "And I don't know why but... I think he's glaring at me." Jimin's eyebrows rose in surprise and when his gaze fell on Min Yoongi he found that Jonghyeon was right, he was glaring daggers into her. Was it because…
"Try switching seats with me," he offered politely, hardly taking any time to consider the situation. Jonghyeon was clearly taking off-guard by the suggestion because she gave him a confused look. Her eyebrows scrunched together when she was confused.
"You think that'll make him stop?"
Jimin nodded wordlessly, but his own confidence seemed to be enough for Jonghyeon. Without another word, they quickly switched where they were sitting. It was only a moment later when Yoongi was occupying the seat beside him.
"You're not working on the warm-up," Yoongi murmured. He sounded a little mad and for some reason, Jimin felt guilty like he had done something wrong. Before he could say anything- not that he knew what to say- the teacher began class. Jimin (once again) couldn't pay attention.
It seemed like Yoongi was actively trying to sit beside him every day. He wanted to sit beside him and would clearly put extra effort to ensure sitting by him was possible.
Kim Seokjin's words echoed through Jimin's mind.
Yoongi doesn't do anything he doesn't want to.
So why did he want to sit next to him?
Jimin sat down at the dining hall table with the other boys in his dorm, his plate heaping with food. None of them were talking, all eating, and Jimin found this to be a good time to elaborate on the Min Yoongi situation. He would be lying if he said that it had been bothering him a lot more then it maybe should have.
"Min Yoongi sits next to me every day in economics. He actively seeks me out. He sits where ever I sit."
"Maybe it's just convenient," Namjoon suggested, some rice dropping from his mouth to the plate. He didn't seem embarrassed at all.
"I sat next to someone and he glared at her until we switched spots so that he could sit next to me," Jimin explained. Seokjin whistled.
"I never knew he was so possessive of the things he likes," the boy commented. Color rose to involuntarily to Jimin's cheeks.
"Min Yoongi doesn't like me," he blurted. "I mean- I don't understand why he sits with me but he doesn't like me."
The entire table grew quiet, and everyone seemed to have their attention on Jimin which made him even more nervous about the whole situation.
"Just give me some advice," Jimin practically whined. "He makes me so nervous, everyone says he isn't afraid of anything, everyone says he doesn't talk to people so why is he wasting his time talking to someone like me?"
Jungkook blurted out, but it was an incomplete interruption. Jimin gave him a strange look which made Jungkook raise a shaky, pointed finger. Jimin looked over his shoulder and almost screamed at the sight he was greeted with.
Min Yoongi was standing right there.
Chapter Four
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Weirdest. Thanksgiving. Ever.
Welcome to the last rural week installment of this blog! Sorry it’s taken me a while to get around to writing it…in the midst of the final crunch these days.
To start off last week - Monday was a national holiday and because of course we still had class, we got to experience an empty city.  There may have been minimal lunch options available, but we were thankful for an empty bus ride in the morning.  We had a cool opportunity that night to interview our host mom as part of our research methods class and we got to learn a lot of things about her life here in Argentina that we wouldn’t have otherwise.  On Tuesday we headed off to our final rural stay in the town of San Antonio de Areco, about two hours outside of the city of Buenos Aires.  Unlike our last two rural stays this one didn’t feel quite as authentically “rural Argentina”.  The most rural parts of Argentina aren’t accessible by a couple hour bus ride so we settled for this town, known as the Capital of Tradition for its gaucho heritage which is their version of a cowboy.  It felt sort of like a cross between a ranch town and a beach town in the midst of its off-season.  We got to see some gauchos in action, running with horses and wrangling a cow, and heard a little about their history.  We participated in a traditional asado (barbecue), getting to see how they cook the meat, and then getting to taste the DELICIOUS food.  We met with members of the municipality who talked to us about the three pillars of their strong local government which work to try to keep members of the community within San Antonio de Areco.  They do this through initiatives regarding housing, education, and job opportunities.  
In general, the week was a nice break from the usual schedule…for once we had a decent amount of free time and minimal assignments to work on! The group was divided up into two hostels for the week and it was so much fun to be living with more of the group again. We had a lot of group meals, played games after dinner (if you want a super fun game look up Salad Bowl and get on playing that ASAP), went on runs, and my hostel had a tiny little pool which we utilized at the beginning of the week when it was a scorching 92 degrees out!  Those first few nights in a 10 person room with that heat were something else, but it was nice to be surrounded by some of my closest friends again.
Thanksgiving also fell during this week and boy was that a day from start to finish (or what I’m going to refer to as “The Thanksgiving Shit Show”.)  For reasons that I can’t disclose because they aren’t my story to share, I was up for most of the night on Thanksgiving Eve and had to deliver some unpleasant news to the larger group in the morning.  Because of this discussion, my lack of sleep, everyone being a weird place from not being with their families for the holiday, along with starting the day with a “what we’re thankful for” share that made me especially sad, the day was off to a bit of a rough start.  It was also the first day it had rained the entire week and by rained I mean torrentially downpoured.  Half of the group had to walk in the rain to visit a clinic and my half of the group visited the local hospital, but the combination of having a not very informative tour, on top of all the other things that had already happened that day, everyone was in probably one of the lowest spots collectively we’d been at this entire semester.  But wait the day is only half over!  After we had lunch things were starting to look up as we headed to our case study visits.  Maternal and Child Health got to meet with a woman who spoke to us about the “respectful delivery” program that Areco uses as its birthing model.  Women are giving a lot of power over their deliveries and are able to choose not only who is with them while they give birth in terms of support, but in what way they want to deliver: the traditional method of lying down, squatting holding onto suspended fabric, or seated on a type of chair.  This was an incredibly cool interview and was full of all the things that get me SO excited about women’s health.  The woman touched on a lot of what I’d learned and read about for a research paper I wrote my freshman year of college, the business of birth in hospital settings and unnecessary interventions, and it got me JAZZED.  After coming out of that meeting I was beginning to ponder if being a doula or having a job that is more directly involved in this niche of women’s health would be something I’d consider in the future.  Who knows, but very cool!
As you can see the day started to turn around from there and it ended up containing one of the most fun memories I think I’ll have of this trip: our makeshift hostel Thanksgiving.  When I hopped out of the shower, some of the girls in my hostel were busy decorating the place with balloons and candles and drawing those hand turkeys for everyone that you make as like an art project in elementary school.  Music was playing and everything was all of a sudden incredibly festive.  People from the other hostel started to arrive and then our country team showed up with loads and LOADS of chicken, salad, bread, mashed potatoes, and apple crumble that they had gotten catered especially for us to simulate the holiday.  We ate and drank wine together, sitting on the floor and laughing about how the day had completely turned around. Throughout the week one of the student-run committees had decided to organize a superlative/paper plate awards ceremony for the dinner and had sent out a form called The IHP Dundies (for you Office lovers out there) so people could fill it out and vote for their fellow peers.  They presented the awards after dinner and the range of tailored awards based on peoples personalities and inside jokes was absolutely HILARIOUS.  I got the “most likely to be reincarnated as an otter award” because of my love for water and the way I rub my eyes apparently?  Sam has been telling me throughout the entire semester that when I rub my eyes I look like a small mammal and everyone always FREAKS out when I do it so it was hilarious and fitting that I had to do a demonstration for the whole group once given that award. After that, another girl organized an activity where we all attached papers to our backs and wrote messages to each other (kind of like a year book) which just kept the love right on flowing.  Even the clean up process was fun as Tess and I worked an assembly line of dishes and others cleaned up the dinning room area.  It was honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time and I was so grateful to be able to be celebrating Thanksgiving in this non-traditional way with this group of 30 that I’ve gotten to know so well over the semester.  For a day that started off with tears and included so many bumps in the road, it sure did turn out to be an a-okay day and for that I am thankful.
When the week was over, we traveled back to the city and got some lunch at a fun dumpling and beer restaurant, then attempting to go to a sports bar to watch the 2nd game of a rivalry fútbol series that was taking place in the city.  Unfortunately, some rowdy fans threw things at one of the teams’ busses and the game got delayed and rescheduled which was a bit of a bummer because we wanted to take part in that part of the culture here before leaving, but what can you do.  That night we did the full on Argentine going out experience which started with me leaving my house at about midnight to start meeting friends and ended at about quarter to 6 in the morning with the sunrise before heading home to sleep.  Glad I can check that experience off my list - not a sustainable lifestyle at all!  Finally on Sunday, after approximately four hours of sleep (from 6:30am-10:30am) my roommate and I ventured to the San Telmo market to explore for a bit, and then later, joined by my pal Carlie, we head to La Boca to see a colorful street called Caminito that was reminiscent of the original immigrant housing that once stood there.  There we ate empanadas, looked at art, and talked about the semester thus far.  
It’s really crazy to me that in a few days I will be starting the final week of this program and I’ll be back home with all you people and the cold, cold weather once again.  I’m really looking forward to being back, but know that the transition is going to be hard, especially because some of my closest friends will now be dispersed all over the U.S. and across the globe.
I’ll post the blog from this week in a few days, thanks again for reading.  Love you!
Em
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You Don’t Want To Know What They Do To Oranges (And It’s About To Get Even Worse)
(Natural Blaze by Meadow Clark) Something is happening to oranges. The solution may be worse than the problem and there’s about to be a lot more solution.
Oranges are cast as the pinnacle of American wholesomeness. Orange juice is a marketing empire in its own right. The “OJ” industry has successfully made its product synonymous with life-giving vitamin C and a complete breakfast. But is that really the case?
The truth is, you don’t know what they do to oranges.
You probably think I’m talking about swaths of pesticides being sprayed on orange groves, but no, no, no. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Did you know that oranges are routinely sprayed with antibiotics?
Yeah, how odd, right?
The same antibiotics that are used to treat humans and animals for bacterial infections. We already ingest many antibiotics through our food if we are not careful, because of the antibiotics given to livestock, meat especially, but also eggs, farmed fish, milk, and cheese.
Now we ingest antibiotics from oranges?
Doesn’t that make the problem of antibiotic resistance much, much worse?
Yes, it does. And the problem isn’t just what we eat, it’s also the runoff of antibiotics into our waterways.
But how did that happen?
America’s orange groves have been facing a major problem with a widespread disease called citrus greening that has reportedly ripped through the citrus industry.
If you think that sounds bad, the Trump administration reportedly gave approval for an unprecedented amount of antibiotic use. Agricultural operations are allowed to spray two kinds of antibiotics on nearly a half-million acres of Florida citrus fruits.
Florida Phoenix Journal reports:
Federal officials are allowing greatly expanded use of streptomycin and oxytetracycline –  antibiotics often used on people — as a pesticide on commercially grown citrus. Agricultural operations plan to use the antibiotic sprays to combat the widespread disease called citrus greening, which has devastated the citrus industry. The antibiotics won’t cure the disease, and will have to be sprayed repeatedly over years just to keep the trees alive and producing fruit until they succumb to citrus greening.
Allowing so much antibiotic residue in Florida soils, runoff, and air is unprecedented. It’s unclear how much of the antibiotics – sprayed on leaves and taken up into the plant’s vascular system – will end up in fruit; it’s never been sprayed on this scale before. Test results the citrus industry provided to federal officials reported low antibiotic residues. (source)
The EPA expressed concerns for potential harm to the environment, people, and wildlife, but ultimately decided the economic benefits “outweighed” the risks.
The USDA reasons that the amount of antibiotics people will ingest from citrus will be far less than those ingested during prescription use.
Despite the outcry from various environmental and antibiotics interest groups, Florida’s Department of Agriculture and many citrus growers made the request to use more antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistance affects more than just humans.
The Journal continues:
…One EPA analysis notes that “uncertainty exists regarding the potential for development of resistance, or cross-resistance with other antibiotics, that could result from pesticide applications.”
Both the European Union and Brazil have banned the use of oxytetracycline and streptomycin for use as a pesticide on agricultural plants.
…The concern is that the antibiotics which now work on human problems like pneumonia, tuberculosis and other deadly infections will become ineffective. Another concern is that the antibiotics will affect bees, which pollinate citrus flowers, as well as small mammals like rabbits. In the environment, antibiotics can change the chemistry of soil and water, knocking ecosystems out of balance.
For citrus growers, the last 10 years have been a nightmare as citrus greening spread from South Florida north, affecting groves in dozens of counties. They spray pesticides to kill the imported insect that carries the disease, but it hasn’t stopped citrus greening’s forward march up the peninsula. They are also working to develop new strains of citrus that resist the disease. The antibiotics, they argued in numerous comment letters to federal officials, are the only known way to stay in business. The press office of the Florida Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment. (source)
So, as you can see, farmers are in a hard place and they argue that a proposed solution of “cycling” between the two antibiotics may not work. But the short term fix may lead to either antibiotic resistance or… the development of even more genetically engineered crops.
You don’t want to know what they do to oranges
Did you know that orange juice is fake news?
In my article, “3 TOTALLY FAKE Foods in Just About Everybody’s Kitchen,” I reported on how orange juice is really made.
As Gizmodo explained a while back, OJ is anything but natural:
Once the juice is squeezed and stored in gigantic vats, they start removing oxygen. Why? Because removing oxygen from the juice allows the liquid to keep for up to a year without spoiling. But! Removing that oxygen also removes the natural flavors of oranges. Yeah, it’s all backwards. So in order to have OJ actually taste like oranges, drink companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make perfumes for Dior, to create these “flavor packs” to make juice taste like, well, juice again. (source)
This is why nearly all orange juice tastes exactly the same, no matter which carton you open. Some companies add pulp-dissolving enzymes to the mix.
Here’s an article with a photo of an orange juice factory that shows whole oranges sitting right in the juice.
If that’s a typical occurrence, then it stands to reason there are pesticides and antibiotics floating around in that glass of juice.
Don’t want the yuck that comes from conventional oranges?
Here are some ways you can mitigate some of these problems:
Choose organic oranges when possible
Reduce how often you handle citrus with your hands
Wash hands immediately after handling
If you have time, gently scrub oranges with baking soda and veggie wash before putting them in the fruit bowl
Only buy organic orange juice or brands from this list
Make your own fresh-squeezed juice.
Simply eat oranges instead of drinking orange juice.
Are citrus antibiotics going to cause more (genetically engineered) mosquitoes?
One more weird aspect to this news: genetically engineered mosquitoes have been released in testing trials in parts of Florida, the state that’s known for having the best oranges.
At first, the company pushing the mosquitoes argued that it would reduce scary diseases like Dengue fever and Chikungunya. But those haven’t occurred in Florida for years… Oh, look! here comes Zika, what a coincidence.
Anyway, these mosquitoes were developed by private biotech companies to mate with Florida mosquitoes so that the offspring will all die off.
But wait? Couldn’t that eventually kill off the entire mosquito population and cause a negative domino effect in the animal kingdom?
Here is something most people don’t know about these modified mosquitoes.
They can only be rescued from their genetically engineered die-off by being fed tetracycline…
Yes, the same family of antibiotics that oxytetracycline belongs!
Is this not a crazy situation, or what?
We now face a future where we must either keep feeding antibiotics to citrus groves to eat and face antibiotic resistance or use a similar antibiotic if something goes terribly wrong by the release of engineered pests into the wild…
Peachy.
You can read more from Meadow Clark at The Organic Prepper.
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askkrenko · 7 years
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Why Aetherborn are what’s wrong with Magic: the Gathering
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A discussion of creature types and their role
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Screw this card in particular.
This is a stupid card that should not exist, not because I don’t feel that Design and Development made a bad call in specifically creating it, but because I feel that Design and Development have consistently made bad decisions throughout Magic’s lifespan that necessitated this worthless piece of junk taking up one of the rare slots in Aether Revolt.
So what do I think this bad decision is? Adding Aetherborn to the game.
I hate “Aetherborn.” This is not to say I hate the race; they are a unique and interesting people. This is not to say I hate their design; they look cool and make for a non-standard black race. This is not even to say that I hate the name; Aetherborn is a cool and evocative word. What I hate is this. Right here.
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I have, in the past, spoken about how 234 is too many creatures types in the game, and that was shortly before Aetherborn existed. While 235 is not, specifically, my tipping point, the introduction of a specific lord for this creature type of a mere sixteen members exemplifies my problem.
The first question to ask here is “Why do we have creature types?” When Magic: the Gathering was first created, eighty eight creatures had creature types, and the rest were artifact creatures. Most of these types did literally nothing as far as gameplay was concerned. In Alpha, only Wall, Goblin, Merfolk, and Zombie had any mechanical effect. The rest were effectively dead text on a card. Still, the design was clear from the start. Any creature’s type could begin to matter in an expansion, and it wasn’t long before other types began to count.
The problem, ultimately, is that in the vast majority of games, a creature’s type simply doesn’t matter. Tarmogoyf would be just as good were it a Bear or a Goat, and even Birds of Paradise almost never gets to take advantage of its particularly common creature type of Bird. Still, these words are on nearly every creature printed throughout the history of Magic: the Gathering, so what decides what creature types get benefits and what don’t?
Having some pushed per set and others not works fine for a set, a block, or even a standard, but Wizards has realized that players want lords for every creature type. Thus, they attempt to include a small bit of tribal support in every set. While this works fine for common creature types, like the Spirit and Zombie support in Innistrad, or even the mechanically unique types like Ally and Werewolf, there’s also a tendency to include tribal support for creatures when it’s their “best chance.” This includes creatures like Ishkanah in Innistrad, but also Midnight Entourage in Aether Revolt.  The problem is, with only forty five spiders, spread across the history of Magic, and only sixteen aetherborn (with a significant wait likely before any more), these cards’ tribal elements are too small for any format. Ishkanah, at least, is self contained. She is strong enough to see significant play as the only Spider in her deck. Midnight Entourage will live or die based on the strength of the other fifteen Aetherborn, and by that I mean it will die. It will die horribly, only to be used in janky casual decks and Commander decks that don’t realize Yahenni doesn’t actually die if you send them back to the command zone.
Aetherborn having a lord, however, is not the problem. It’s a symptom. The problem is that, unlike Lorwyn’s Flamekin, Aetherborn have their own creature type. If Aetherborn were instead Elementals, not only would the Aetherborn lord not have been necessarily stuffed into Kaladesh, but it would have applied to twenty one additional creatures in the current standard, plus an additional three hundred sixty creatures (and many more tokens) in older formats.
Aetherborn isn’t the only culprit, of course. With two hundred thirty five creature types, the chances of all of them mattering mechanically is particularly low, and I’d argue that any creature type that isn’t mechanically relevant or likely to be mechanically relevant needs to exist in a broader category. Some of these categories would be very broad, certainly, while others could remain narrow.
As an example of what I’m speaking of, let’s look at everyone’s favorite creature type: cat. There are 140 Cats in Magic: the Gathering, a mixture of cat people and cat animals, as well as a number of cards that create cat tokens. This is particularly high for a creature type that not a single card in over twenty years cares about, and much higher than the Aetherborn count. In addition, there are 71 Hounds, still without a card that cares about them. While I’m willing to accept that dogs and cats are very different animals in real life, do the rules of Magic really need to separate them? Could they not both count as “Beasts?” What makes Chartooth Cougar and Felidar Cub different from other Cats? Why can Skirk Outrider ride a Felidar Cub, but not a Fleecemane Lion?
It’s times like this I look to other TCGs for answers, and one that I used to play offers a much cleaner method of handling creature types. Yu-Gi-Oh! Effectively gives every monster two types: an Attribute (Dark, Earth, Fire, Light, Water, or Wind, which seem analogous to color, but functionally just work like a creature type), and a Type (Aqua, Beast, Beast-Warrior, Dinosaur, Dragon, Fairy, Fiend, Fish, Insect, Machine, Plant, Psychic, Pyro, Reptile, Rock, Sea Serpent, Spellcaster, Thunder, Warrior, Winged Beast, Wyrm, and Zombie.) Obviously, this limited list has some issues, but the simple fact is that such a short list means there are cards that care about every single Attribute and Type in the game, without the need for “choose a type” cards.  (Note: Some particularly special cards have their own unique attributes and types, but it’s a very small number.)
Last time I brought up the topic of creature types, I went through a brief list of ones like Graveborn and Efreet that could easily be folded into something adjacent to them. This time I want to talk more about casting wide nets. I’m going to talk about a few specific creature types, identifying the good and the bad.
“Bird” is a perfect creature type. It casts a wide enough net to capture over two hundred cards, appears on every world, but isn’t so large as to take more than its fair share. It’s usually obvious what is or is not a bird, and any given would could conceivably ‘push’ birds. There’s no plane where a few strong bird cards would be out of place. I’m actually a bit surprised that there are only two hundred and ten birds, though the fact that nearly all of them have flying limits design space slightly.
“Soldier” is a very good creature type, but its net could be wider. While a Soldier is definitely a concrete thing that shows up everywhere, the Warrior creature type could conceivably include all Soldiers, Barbarians, Samurai, and Knights. The sheer volume of these (over 500 soldiers and 500 warriors, plus 200 knights) would make up for a significant portion of Magic’s 8727 creatures, but that would merely ensure that support for this conglomerate type could show up in every set, and no set would ever risk being without. The bigger issue is that it’s not instinctively clear what is a Soldier, what is a Warrior, and what is a Knight. With such large numbers on both, keeping Soldier and Warrior separate is fine, but I do feel that Soldier should absorb Knight and Samurai.
“Goblin” feels like a perfect creature type, but that’s partially because it’s incredibly pushed. There are actually much fewer goblins than there are of many less popular creature types, but goblins have gotten more tribal support than any creature type other than slivers and perhaps zombies. Folding Orcs (and Kobolds) into Goblins would go a long way to support those tribes and encourage Orcs on more worlds. The Goblin type is intentionally vague on Wizards’ part, with creatures ranging from Akki to Boggarts, so using Goblin as a creature type for a few more goblin-esque things would make those things more viable.
Here’s a list of some creature types that are real world mammals: Antelope, Ape, Aurochs, Badger, Bat, Bear, Boar, Camel, Caribou, Cat, Elk, Elephant, Ferret, Fox, Goat, Hippo, Horse, Hound, Human… And there’s plenty more after that. I’m not suggesting these all be the same creature type, especially not Human, but if the cards are never going to make us care if something’s an Antelope, a Caribou, or an Elk, why are these separate types? Ungulate may be a word not enough people know, but I propose real world mammals be divided into Humans, Ungulates (which include antelopes, aurochs, boar, camel, caribou, elephant, elk, goat, hippo, and horse), and Beasts (basically anything else. Cat? Beast. Ferret? Beast. Squirrel? Beast.) This would either require Ainok and Leonin to get their own type (something that included them, minotaurs, viashino, and the weird Monger things from Mercadia) or to just be Beast with a class. Either would be fine. There are only 342 beasts.
While on the topic, we only need “Reptile,” and “Amphibian.” While I respect wanting to separate snakes from lizards, or frogs from salamanders, there’s just not enough of any of them printed for this to be useful. The total number of creatures I’d propose folding into the Reptile type is still less than the number of cats there already are. Viashino could be Reptile or whatever term is used for humanoid beasts.
And then there’s Undead. Creature types include Zombie, Skeleton, Specter, Wraith, Vampire, and other forms of undead, and the simple fact is: this doesn’t help anyone. Zombies get the lion’s share of tribal support, with Vampires getting some, and the other types never receiving any. While I accept that, at this point, combining Vampires and Zombies into one tribe would be a mess, having all Undead being labeled as Undead would make things easier on everyone. Having Vampire still be a creature type would be fine, especially with this then granting the ability to differentiate between the living vampires (Innistrad, Zendikar) with the actual undead ones seen on most planes. This would have the added effect of making the true Undead Vampires stronger by being able to fit in either tribe.
I will say that I’m fine with creature types used as flags for specific mechanics in a set, like “Flagbearer” or “Slivers.” Neither of these creature types would work properly if there were a slew of random creatures that shared their type. Similarly, some types like “Coward” exist to make a mechanic work. This isn’t the cleanest, but it’s fine.
I could go on and through the whole of the creature types, explaining how to best combine them and how to simplify them down to something both reasonable and useful, but I think I’ve made my point. There are just too many creature types, and Aetherborn not being elementals makes them worse cards and does a disservice to the elementals, who have been here the whole time and haven’t gotten their fair share of tribal support.
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legit-scam-review · 6 years
Text
Non-Believable Tokens: The 7 Strangest Crypto Collectibles Explained
As they say, what’s weird in tech today just might be tomorrow’s next big thing.
If that’s the case, the world of digital, cryptographic collectibles may be high on the list of potential disruptive innovations. After all, where else can you “breed” digital items and come out with an ugly cat all of your own?
It’s user experiences like this, which began with Axiom Zen’s collectible CryptoKitties, that have technology enthusiasts talking excitedly about the future that could be enabled by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or unique digital items tradable on a blockchain.
The first project to use ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, CryptoKitties has since been rolled out into a standalone company with backing from some of the industry’s top investors, while NFTs themselves have become one of tech’s hottest buzzwords. (Coinbase Ventures’ very first investment was in a sort of eBay for NFTs, after all.)
In other words, CryptoKitties has been seen as a harbinger of things to come for blockchain believers, one that opens up new possibilities in the world of video games, real estate and precious metals, among other things.
For those keeping score at home, though, these things are still just super weird. Comparing the state of play to social media, we might very well be in the Six Degrees and Makeout Club days (i.e. way before people got it and Facebook became one of the biggest companies in the world).
With that in mind, we decided to go out looking for some of the stranger, most creative NFTs.
Here’s seven that looked like they could be ones for the history books, if not always for the right reasons:
CryptoCrystals
CryptoKitties introduced the idea tokens could breed and create totally new tokens, and lots of the new projects are now coming up with different ways to play around with that idea.
CryptoCrystals, for instance, breeds “sentient metals” into new cartoon characters that evoke geological imagery. With CryptoCrystals, “breeding” is called “melting” – as in the crystals are melted together.
The way to get fresh crystals is to go “mining,” but it’s not mining like on bitcoin or ethereum (where your computer does work to secure the network). Instead, users just buy a sort of token called a “pickaxe” from the company and use it. This generates a variable amount of crystals. (It’s like opening a pack of cards.)
The company behind the game makes its money from selling the pickaxes (sharing a portion with the Ethereum Foundation, voluntarily, to support the network’s growth). The rest of the operations in the game cost no more than their gas price.
There are 100 kinds of crystals out there and a finite supply. Further, pickaxes will produce half as much crystals with each passing year.
CryptoVoxels
This one is for folks that grew up on “Sim City.”
Indie game developer Ben Nolan was trying to create virtual worlds people could own and explore, when he realized that the blockchain made it possible to improve the user experience of that very task. From that inspiration came CryptoVoxels, a three-dimensional space visible with virtual reality goggles.
“We have about 100 parcels sold (average price 0.16 ETH) in the origin city, about 100,000 square feet of development,” Nolan told CoinDesk in an email.
The business model is selling these original pieces of land, as well as some other digital objects that add character to the users experience, such as special hats for their avatars.
Users can also build on their land, adding buildings and structures. Someday, there could also be color. (Right now, everything is black and white.)
Nolan says the community has showed good activity in its Discord channel, and that they are starting to see person-to-person sales of parcels on the secondary market.
Like many of these projects, its working with one of the Ebays-for-NFTs, OpenSea.
HyperDragons
Lots of the early NFT projects are on some level or another imitations of Pokemon (cute creatures that can also battle each other to get tougher and cooler).
HyperDragons takes advantage of decentralization, though, by interacting with another team’s project. In this way, HyperDragons can “eat” CryptoKitties, absorbing the attributes of cats that share a wallet with the dragon and boosting the dragons powers.
Gameplay takes three forms so far: collecting, breeding and consuming, battling warrior dragons one on one (like the original Pokemon) and castle defense, where you protect your resources from invading players.
The projects white paper acknowledges, like most projects in this space do, that real gaming interactions on ethereum are a problem, and it notes particular concern about the protocol’s ability to handle the castle game.
However, it hints that workarounds are under consideration, like we have seen in other projects.
Its emphasizes the team’s background in digital gaming, but it also addresses the business model presented by collectible NFTs. The white paper says, “We believe that there is a sustainable revenue-based model instead of an ICO, and we appreciate the innovation that digital collectibles portray.”
‘Bird in the Shell’
So, this one is really just one, specific NFT, by a nameless artist playing around with the form.
SuperRare is an app that lets artists create new digital works and offer them for sale on ethereum, something that could become more important in the art world given enough time.
In fact, one of last year’s super ICOs, Status, sees a lot of promise in SuperRare, too. It announced Thursday that it was inducting its parent company, Pixura, into Status Incubate, its accelerator for promising crypto startups.
That said, this one work of art on the SuperRare platform – it just hit a little too close to home. By “@hackatao,” it’s an animated gif in its native habitat. For anyone on Crypto Twitter, check this one out. It will feel way too real.
CryptoJingles
A digital object doesn’t have to be an image. It can also be sound (and probably other things people haven’t thought of yet).
Created as a side project by two staff members at Serbian blockchain company Decenter, CryptoJingles was started at the end of 2017.
“Coming out after the CryptoKitty boom, I noticed they are all variations of you owning some sort of an avatar (an image). I was looking what else could we tokenized,” Nenad Palinkasevic, one of the co-founders, told CoinDesk via email.
CryptoJingles are snippets of music that can be mixed together to make new pieces of music. There are 100 snippets of music that people can use to make jingles. Once a new combination has been made and recorded on the blockchain, it’s unique and no one else can make that combination. The creator owns it and can sell it on to others, as an NFT.
The project is not in active development but there have been a few super fans making lots of jingles. “There were 45 jingles created in total on our platform,” Palinkasevic said, without any marketing or promotion.
Panda Earth
For this project, it’s important to start with zoological facts first: Pandas are the best mammal.
On the surface, Panda Earth might just look like CryptoKitties-but-pandas, except for one important difference: Some of the crypto pandas represent real world pandas tracked by the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas.
A spokesperson says it is a project that is “authorized” by the center, but the company didn’t respond to questions from CoinDesk about whether purchasing any of the pandas benefits their conservation at all.
Like CryptoKitties, these digital pandas breed. They breed more and more slowly over time, but that will reset every four years.
CryptoTitties
This post started when we discovered the CryptoTitties NFT (not to be confused with SpankChain’s side hustle of the same name, which is a way to directly pay women for posting their topless photos).
CryptoTitties, on the other hand, are cartoon boobs made by a development firm called 7th Wave.
“It was a spoof of CryptoKitties for fun,” Hami Gilbert, one of its founders, told CoinDesk in a Discord chat. Later, Gilbert’s mother got breast cancer and they decided to find a way to supply cannabis products to women with the disease.
Like CryptoKitties, these are cartoon avatars, but of breasts rather than cats. Fear not: there are both female-identifying and male-identifying boobs available. In fact, while the real-world variety tend to come in pairs, CryptoTitties are available in singleton to sextuplet sets.
Also, they come in as many colors as there are in a bag of Haribo gummy bears.
CryptoTitties has not caught the world on fire, though. Selling each one for as little as 0.05 ETH, the full set of available items totals 144. Only 32 have sold thus far, according to Gilbert.
Previously, 7th Wave tried to launch an ICO project called Wardz, but it didn’t succeed. CryptoTitties has gotten more traction, with a small community built around it. To spread the word about the project, they tried to run a “Motorboat Contest” where people would win an actual boat.
The idea is that CryptoTitty holders would pay 0.003 ETH to vote for their faves. The set that got the most votes would win a boat, but 70 percent of the proceeds would go to the charity (though they never established a specific partnership).
Sales were too low to justify the boat purchase, however, and it didn’t happen.
“I thought people would share to their friends to vote and that it would snowball,” Gilbert said. “But I think people are a bit more prude than that.”
Image via CryptoTitties.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
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letsdiscoveron · 6 years
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Our Weekend Adventures in Sault Ste. Marie!
A visit to the Agawa Canyon was always on our “travel bucket-list”  and that meant a trip to Sault Ste. Marie.  I knew it would be special because it would our first trip to Northern Ontario.  The planning process began with 2 simple questions…how would be get there & when could be go?  Deciding on travel dates was easy but as soon as Tony found out how long the drive was he said “we’re flying instead”.  Flying would get us there quicker which meant a lot more time to travel and explore over a weekend. Who was I to argue against more travel time?
As with all our adventures we recorded a video while in ‘The Soo’ for our Let’s Discover ON YouTube Channel:
youtube
If you liked this video then remember to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to view all our videos!
Getting There
As you already know we chose to fly and an Air Canada flight from Pearson was the best option for us.  We could have also flown with Porter Airlines from the Billy Bishop / Toronto Island Airport.
In case you’re curious the driving time from the Greater Toronto Area to The Soo, according to Google Maps, was 7hrs & 18mins or 696kms to be exact.  This would be a great road trip if you have more than just a weekend to explore the area.
  Our Itinerary
The first item on our agenda was breakfast.  It was an early morning flight and we had plans to grab a coffee and bagel to go however we ran into fellow Travel Blogger, Travel Mammal, who was headed to New Brunswick.  We lost track of time talking about our upcoming weekend travel plans only to realize that our flight was already boarding.
The flight was slightly over 1hr so a hearty breakfast was just what we needed.  A quick online search lead us to The Breakfast Pig.  The dining room was full when we arrived (always a good sign) and after a few minutes we were seated.  The restaurant, owned by Angela, is very unique in that it both socially conscious about the pork products served as well as community minded through the use of local suppliers.  Angela even has her own menu item “The Angela” (pictured below).  It’s a vegetarian option that was never intended for the menu but when customers learned about it the demand and popularity grew so much that Angela had to add it on the menu.  We were also treated to Belgian Waffles with Reese’s Pieces and a peanut butter drizzle.  They were absolutely divine! (no picture…we couldn’t resist biting into them)
 After a fabulous meal, it’s time to check out some of the city, so we headed towards the waterfront and came across the Mill Market.
Much to our surprise this building is also home to Entomica, Canada’s smallest science centre.  Specifically, it’s an insectarium run by John Dedes and his dedicated staff.
We encountered all sorts of weird and wonderful bugs.  Below is pic of Tony holding a ‘stick bug’ and the other is a type of preying mantis.
There’s some things in nature that are just so surprising, like the fact that scorpions can actually glow in the dark.  They showed us a black scorpion that would turn a bright indigo colour under a UV flashlight.
Tony couldn’t believe that he would have a tarantula, named ‘Rose’ crawling on his arm that morning.
You’re going to have to watch our vlog to see our reactions to having these bugs crawling all over us.  They even have a tiny species of preying mantis that looks like an orchid flower, it’s about the size of a fingernail.
Right next to the Mill Market is the Sault Ste. Marie lift locks.  These locks are over 100 years old however with a few modern upgrades and keep the boats moving through Lake Huron & Lake Superior or vice-versa.  It was awesome to see the fill and empty action of the lift locks.
Our second day in The Soo was spent driving along Hwy 17 which follows the Lake Superior coastline.  One we got to Batchawana Bay, we stopped off for lunch at a well known spot, the Voyageurs Lodge & Cookhouse.  Tony just had to try the fresh Lake Superior whitefish sandwich.  It was delicious.
This restaurant is unique because it really reflects back on the past of the area, when voyageurs would use canoes to transport goods for trade through these waterways.  The decor of the place is very rustic, and there’s several paintings that depict what a voyageurs adventurous life would look like.
The beaches around Batchawana Bay look like this:
Some have a finer sand, others have small smooth rocks.  This would make an awesome beach day in the summer months.
The drive was amazing and is highly recommended for anyone who loves long drives with lots of scenic viewpoints along the way.   The drive also gives an appreciation for the Lake Superior coastline including its various bays.  The view, especially those on top of cliffs, with the vantage points of other smaller bays is spectacular.  It’s even hard to describe and quantify the amount of natural beauty in this part of Ontario.
    Our intention was to make it to Old Woman Bay however we ended our drive with a visit to the Agawa Rock Pictographs located in Lake Superior Provincial Park.  The walk down to see the Pictographs was a physical downhill challenge however seeing this real-life piece of Canadian art history was all worth it.
These pictographs were drawn between 150 – 400 years ago by the Ojibwe people of the area.  It’s believed that these symbols were very important to them.  Some are mythical creatures, others are of canoes & animals.
    Our third and final day was spent aboard the Agawa Canyon Tour Train so read our dedicated blog post & see our video. This train ride is an absolute must if visiting The Soo so please, please, please set aside a whole day in your itinerary to see and experience it for yourself.
We sincerely hope that you get to see and experience everything we did and then some on your next visit to Sault Ste. Marie.  It’s a beautiful waterfront city in Northern Ontario with a unique history and an amazing future.
Our Visit to Sault Ste. Marie was sponsored by Tourism Sault Ste. Marie however all opinions, recommendations & reviews are our own.
Have any photos or videos of your visit that you would like to share with us?  Send them over to @LetsDiscoverON.
Thanks for reading & watching.  Remember to subscribe to our Blog & YouTube Channel and follow us along as we Discover ON!
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legit-scam-review · 6 years
Text
Non-Believable Tokens: The 7 Strangest Crypto Collectibles Explained
As they say, what’s weird in tech today just might be tomorrow’s next big thing.
If that’s the case, the world of digital, cryptographic collectibles may be high on the list of potential disruptive innovations. After all, where else can you “breed” digital items and come out with an ugly cat all of your own?
It’s user experiences like this, which began with Axiom Zen’s collectible CryptoKitties, that have technology enthusiasts talking excitedly about the future that could be enabled by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or unique digital items tradable on a blockchain.
The first project to use ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, CryptoKitties has since been rolled out into a standalone company with backing from some of the industry’s top investors, while NFTs themselves have become one of tech’s hottest buzzwords. (Coinbase Ventures’ very first investment was in a sort of eBay for NFTs, after all.)
In other words, CryptoKitties has been seen as a harbinger of things to come for blockchain believers, one that opens up new possibilities in the world of video games, real estate and precious metals, among other things.
For those keeping score at home, though, these things are still just super weird. Comparing the state of play to social media, we might very well be in the Six Degrees and Makeout Club days (i.e. way before people got it and Facebook became one of the biggest companies in the world).
With that in mind, we decided to go out looking for some of the stranger, most creative NFTs.
Here’s seven that looked like they could be ones for the history books, if not always for the right reasons:
CryptoCrystals
CryptoKitties introduced the idea tokens could breed and create totally new tokens, and lots of the new projects are now coming up with different ways to play around with that idea.
CryptoCrystals, for instance, breeds “sentient metals” into new cartoon characters that evoke geological imagery. With CryptoCrystals, “breeding” is called “melting” – as in the crystals are melted together.
The way to get fresh crystals is to go “mining,” but it’s not mining like on bitcoin or ethereum (where your computer does work to secure the network). Instead, users just buy a sort of token called a “pickaxe” from the company and use it. This generates a variable amount of crystals. (It’s like opening a pack of cards.)
The company behind the game makes its money from selling the pickaxes (sharing a portion with the Ethereum Foundation, voluntarily, to support the network’s growth). The rest of the operations in the game cost no more than their gas price.
There are 100 kinds of crystals out there and a finite supply. Further, pickaxes will produce half as much crystals with each passing year.
CryptoVoxels
This one is for folks that grew up on “Sim City.”
Indie game developer Ben Nolan was trying to create virtual worlds people could own and explore, when he realized that the blockchain made it possible to improve the user experience of that very task. From that inspiration came CryptoVoxels, a three-dimensional space visible with virtual reality goggles.
“We have about 100 parcels sold (average price 0.16 ETH) in the origin city, about 100,000 square feet of development,” Nolan told CoinDesk in an email.
The business model is selling these original pieces of land, as well as some other digital objects that add character to the users experience, such as special hats for their avatars.
Users can also build on their land, adding buildings and structures. Someday, there could also be color. (Right now, everything is black and white.)
Nolan says the community has showed good activity in its Discord channel, and that they are starting to see person-to-person sales of parcels on the secondary market.
Like many of these projects, its working with one of the Ebays-for-NFTs, OpenSea.
HyperDragons
Lots of the early NFT projects are on some level or another imitations of Pokemon (cute creatures that can also battle each other to get tougher and cooler).
HyperDragons takes advantage of decentralization, though, by interacting with another team’s project. In this way, HyperDragons can “eat” CryptoKitties, absorbing the attributes of cats that share a wallet with the dragon and boosting the dragons powers.
Gameplay takes three forms so far: collecting, breeding and consuming, battling warrior dragons one on one (like the original Pokemon) and castle defense, where you protect your resources from invading players.
The projects white paper acknowledges, like most projects in this space do, that real gaming interactions on ethereum are a problem, and it notes particular concern about the protocol’s ability to handle the castle game.
However, it hints that workarounds are under consideration, like we have seen in other projects.
Its emphasizes the team’s background in digital gaming, but it also addresses the business model presented by collectible NFTs. The white paper says, “We believe that there is a sustainable revenue-based model instead of an ICO, and we appreciate the innovation that digital collectibles portray.”
‘Bird in the Shell’
So, this one is really just one, specific NFT, by a nameless artist playing around with the form.
SuperRare is an app that lets artists create new digital works and offer them for sale on ethereum, something that could become more important in the art world given enough time.
In fact, one of last year’s super ICOs, Status, sees a lot of promise in SuperRare, too. It announced Thursday that it was inducting its parent company, Pixura, into Status Incubate, its accelerator for promising crypto startups.
That said, this one work of art on the SuperRare platform – it just hit a little too close to home. By “@hackatao,” it’s an animated gif in its native habitat. For anyone on Crypto Twitter, check this one out. It will feel way too real.
CryptoJingles
A digital object doesn’t have to be an image. It can also be sound (and probably other things people haven’t thought of yet).
Created as a side project by two staff members at Serbian blockchain company Decenter, CryptoJingles was started at the end of 2017.
“Coming out after the CryptoKitty boom, I noticed they are all variations of you owning some sort of an avatar (an image). I was looking what else could we tokenized,” Nenad Palinkasevic, one of the co-founders, told CoinDesk via email.
CryptoJingles are snippets of music that can be mixed together to make new pieces of music. There are 100 snippets of music that people can use to make jingles. Once a new combination has been made and recorded on the blockchain, it’s unique and no one else can make that combination. The creator owns it and can sell it on to others, as an NFT.
The project is not in active development but there have been a few super fans making lots of jingles. “There were 45 jingles created in total on our platform,” Palinkasevic said, without any marketing or promotion.
Panda Earth
For this project, it’s important to start with zoological facts first: Pandas are the best mammal.
On the surface, Panda Earth might just look like CryptoKitties-but-pandas, except for one important difference: Some of the crypto pandas represent real world pandas tracked by the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas.
A spokesperson says it is a project that is “authorized” by the center, but the company didn’t respond to questions from CoinDesk about whether purchasing any of the pandas benefits their conservation at all.
Like CryptoKitties, these digital pandas breed. They breed more and more slowly over time, but that will reset every four years.
CryptoTitties
This post started when we discovered the CryptoTitties NFT (not to be confused with SpankChain’s side hustle of the same name, which is a way to directly pay women for posting their topless photos).
CryptoTitties, on the other hand, are cartoon boobs made by a development firm called 7th Wave.
“It was a spoof of CryptoKitties for fun,” Hami Gilbert, one of its founders, told CoinDesk in a Discord chat. Later, Gilbert’s mother got breast cancer and they decided to find a way to supply cannabis products to women with the disease.
Like CryptoKitties, these are cartoon avatars, but of breasts rather than cats. Fear not: there are both female-identifying and male-identifying boobs available. In fact, while the real-world variety tend to come in pairs, CryptoTitties are available in singleton to sextuplet sets.
Also, they come in as many colors as there are in a bag of Haribo gummy bears.
CryptoTitties has not caught the world on fire, though. Selling each one for as little as 0.05 ETH, the full set of available items totals 144. Only 32 have sold thus far, according to Gilbert.
Previously, 7th Wave tried to launch an ICO project called Wardz, but it didn’t succeed. CryptoTitties has gotten more traction, with a small community built around it. To spread the word about the project, they tried to run a “Motorboat Contest” where people would win an actual boat.
The idea is that CryptoTitty holders would pay 0.003 ETH to vote for their faves. The set that got the most votes would win a boat, but 70 percent of the proceeds would go to the charity (though they never established a specific partnership).
Sales were too low to justify the boat purchase, however, and it didn’t happen.
“I thought people would share to their friends to vote and that it would snowball,” Gilbert said. “But I think people are a bit more prude than that.”
Image via CryptoTitties.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
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legit-scam-review · 6 years
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Non-Believable Tokens: The 7 Strangest Crypto Collectibles Explained
As they say, what’s weird in tech today just might be tomorrow’s next big thing.
If that’s the case, the world of digital, cryptographic collectibles may be high on the list of potential disruptive innovations. After all, where else can you “breed” digital items and come out with an ugly cat all of your own?
It’s user experiences like this, which began with Axiom Zen’s collectible CryptoKitties, that have technology enthusiasts talking excitedly about the future that could be enabled by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or unique digital items tradable on a blockchain.
The first project to use ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, CryptoKitties has since been rolled out into a standalone company with backing from some of the industry’s top investors, while NFTs themselves have become one of tech’s hottest buzzwords. (Coinbase Ventures’ very first investment was in a sort of eBay for NFTs, after all.)
In other words, CryptoKitties has been seen as a harbinger of things to come for blockchain believers, one that opens up new possibilities in the world of video games, real estate and precious metals, among other things.
For those keeping score at home, though, these things are still just super weird. Comparing the state of play to social media, we might very well be in the Six Degrees and Makeout Club days (i.e. way before people got it and Facebook became one of the biggest companies in the world).
With that in mind, we decided to go out looking for some of the stranger, most creative NFTs.
Here’s seven that looked like they could be ones for the history books, if not always for the right reasons:
CryptoCrystals
CryptoKitties introduced the idea tokens could breed and create totally new tokens, and lots of the new projects are now coming up with different ways to play around with that idea.
CryptoCrystals, for instance, breeds “sentient metals” into new cartoon characters that evoke geological imagery. With CryptoCrystals, “breeding” is called “melting” – as in the crystals are melted together.
The way to get fresh crystals is to go “mining,” but it’s not mining like on bitcoin or ethereum (where your computer does work to secure the network). Instead, users just buy a sort of token called a “pickaxe” from the company and use it. This generates a variable amount of crystals. (It’s like opening a pack of cards.)
The company behind the game makes its money from selling the pickaxes (sharing a portion with the Ethereum Foundation, voluntarily, to support the network’s growth). The rest of the operations in the game cost no more than their gas price.
There are 100 kinds of crystals out there and a finite supply. Further, pickaxes will produce half as much crystals with each passing year.
CryptoVoxels
This one is for folks that grew up on “Sim City.”
Indie game developer Ben Nolan was trying to create virtual worlds people could own and explore, when he realized that the blockchain made it possible to improve the user experience of that very task. From that inspiration came CryptoVoxels, a three-dimensional space visible with virtual reality goggles.
“We have about 100 parcels sold (average price 0.16 ETH) in the origin city, about 100,000 square feet of development,” Nolan told CoinDesk in an email.
The business model is selling these original pieces of land, as well as some other digital objects that add character to the users experience, such as special hats for their avatars.
Users can also build on their land, adding buildings and structures. Someday, there could also be color. (Right now, everything is black and white.)
Nolan says the community has showed good activity in its Discord channel, and that they are starting to see person-to-person sales of parcels on the secondary market.
Like many of these projects, its working with one of the Ebays-for-NFTs, OpenSea.
HyperDragons
Lots of the early NFT projects are on some level or another imitations of Pokemon (cute creatures that can also battle each other to get tougher and cooler).
HyperDragons takes advantage of decentralization, though, by interacting with another team’s project. In this way, HyperDragons can “eat” CryptoKitties, absorbing the attributes of cats that share a wallet with the dragon and boosting the dragons powers.
Gameplay takes three forms so far: collecting, breeding and consuming, battling warrior dragons one on one (like the original Pokemon) and castle defense, where you protect your resources from invading players.
The projects white paper acknowledges, like most projects in this space do, that real gaming interactions on ethereum are a problem, and it notes particular concern about the protocol’s ability to handle the castle game.
However, it hints that workarounds are under consideration, like we have seen in other projects.
Its emphasizes the team’s background in digital gaming, but it also addresses the business model presented by collectible NFTs. The white paper says, “We believe that there is a sustainable revenue-based model instead of an ICO, and we appreciate the innovation that digital collectibles portray.”
‘Bird in the Shell’
So, this one is really just one, specific NFT, by a nameless artist playing around with the form.
SuperRare is an app that lets artists create new digital works and offer them for sale on ethereum, something that could become more important in the art world given enough time.
In fact, one of last year’s super ICOs, Status, sees a lot of promise in SuperRare, too. It announced Thursday that it was inducting its parent company, Pixura, into Status Incubate, its accelerator for promising crypto startups.
That said, this one work of art on the SuperRare platform – it just hit a little too close to home. By “@hackatao,” it’s an animated gif in its native habitat. For anyone on Crypto Twitter, check this one out. It will feel way too real.
CryptoJingles
A digital object doesn’t have to be an image. It can also be sound (and probably other things people haven’t thought of yet).
Created as a side project by two staff members at Serbian blockchain company Decenter, CryptoJingles was started at the end of 2017.
“Coming out after the CryptoKitty boom, I noticed they are all variations of you owning some sort of an avatar (an image). I was looking what else could we tokenized,” Nenad Palinkasevic, one of the co-founders, told CoinDesk via email.
CryptoJingles are snippets of music that can be mixed together to make new pieces of music. There are 100 snippets of music that people can use to make jingles. Once a new combination has been made and recorded on the blockchain, it’s unique and no one else can make that combination. The creator owns it and can sell it on to others, as an NFT.
The project is not in active development but there have been a few super fans making lots of jingles. “There were 45 jingles created in total on our platform,” Palinkasevic said, without any marketing or promotion.
Panda Earth
For this project, it’s important to start with zoological facts first: Pandas are the best mammal.
On the surface, Panda Earth might just look like CryptoKitties-but-pandas, except for one important difference: Some of the crypto pandas represent real world pandas tracked by the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas.
A spokesperson says it is a project that is “authorized” by the center, but the company didn’t respond to questions from CoinDesk about whether purchasing any of the pandas benefits their conservation at all.
Like CryptoKitties, these digital pandas breed. They breed more and more slowly over time, but that will reset every four years.
CryptoTitties
This post started when we discovered the CryptoTitties NFT (not to be confused with SpankChain’s side hustle of the same name, which is a way to directly pay women for posting their topless photos).
CryptoTitties, on the other hand, are cartoon boobs made by a development firm called 7th Wave.
“It was a spoof of CryptoKitties for fun,” Hami Gilbert, one of its founders, told CoinDesk in a Discord chat. Later, Gilbert’s mother got breast cancer and they decided to find a way to supply cannabis products to women with the disease.
Like CryptoKitties, these are cartoon avatars, but of breasts rather than cats. Fear not: there are both female-identifying and male-identifying boobs available. In fact, while the real-world variety tend to come in pairs, CryptoTitties are available in singleton to sextuplet sets.
Also, they come in as many colors as there are in a bag of Haribo gummy bears.
CryptoTitties has not caught the world on fire, though. Selling each one for as little as 0.05 ETH, the full set of available items totals 144. Only 32 have sold thus far, according to Gilbert.
Previously, 7th Wave tried to launch an ICO project called Wardz, but it didn’t succeed. CryptoTitties has gotten more traction, with a small community built around it. To spread the word about the project, they tried to run a “Motorboat Contest” where people would win an actual boat.
The idea is that CryptoTitty holders would pay 0.003 ETH to vote for their faves. The set that got the most votes would win a boat, but 70 percent of the proceeds would go to the charity (though they never established a specific partnership).
Sales were too low to justify the boat purchase, however, and it didn’t happen.
“I thought people would share to their friends to vote and that it would snowball,” Gilbert said. “But I think people are a bit more prude than that.”
Image via CryptoTitties.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
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letsdiscoveron · 6 years
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Our Weekend Adventures in Sault Ste. Marie!
A visit to the Agawa Canyon was always on our “travel bucket-list”  and that meant a trip to Sault Ste. Marie.  I knew it would be special because it would our first trip to Northern Ontario.  The planning process began with 2 simple questions…how would be get there & when could be go?  Deciding on travel dates was easy but as soon as Tony found out how long the drive was he said “we’re flying instead”.  Flying would get us there quicker which meant a lot more time to travel and explore over a weekend. Who was I to argue against more travel time?
As with all our adventures we recorded a video while in ‘The Soo’ for our Let’s Discover ON YouTube Channel:
youtube
If you liked this video then remember to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to view all our videos!
Getting There
As you already know we chose to fly and an Air Canada flight from Pearson was the best option for us.  We could have also flown with Porter Airlines from the Billy Bishop / Toronto Island Airport.
In case you’re curious the driving time from the Greater Toronto Area to The Soo, according to Google Maps, was 7hrs & 18mins or 696kms to be exact.  This would be a great road trip if you have more than just a weekend to explore the area.
  Our Itinerary
The first item on our agenda was breakfast.  It was an early morning flight and we had plans to grab a coffee and bagel to go however we ran into fellow Travel Blogger, Travel Mammal, who was headed to New Brunswick.  We lost track of time talking about our upcoming weekend travel plans only to realize that our flight was already boarding.
The flight was slightly over 1hr so a hearty breakfast was just what we needed.  A quick online search lead us to The Breakfast Pig.  The dining room was full when we arrived (always a good sign) and after a few minutes we were seated.  The restaurant, owned by Angela, is very unique in that it both socially conscious about the pork products served as well as community minded through the use of local suppliers.  Angela even has her own menu item “The Angela” (pictured below).  It’s a vegetarian option that was never intended for the menu but when customers learned about it the demand and popularity grew so much that Angela had to add it on the menu.  We were also treated to Belgian Waffles with Reese’s Pieces and a peanut butter drizzle.  They were absolutely divine! (no picture…we couldn’t resist biting into them)
 After a fabulous meal, it’s time to check out some of the city, so we headed towards the waterfront and came across the Mill Market.
Much to our surprise this building is also home to Entomica, Canada’s smallest science centre.  Specifically, it’s an insectarium run by John Dedes and his dedicated staff.
We encountered all sorts of weird and wonderful bugs.  Below is pic of Tony holding a ‘stick bug’ and the other is a type of preying mantis.
There’s some things in nature that are just so surprising, like the fact that scorpions can actually glow in the dark.  They showed us a black scorpion that would turn a bright indigo colour under a UV flashlight.
Tony couldn’t believe that he would have a tarantula, named ‘Rose’ crawling on his arm that morning.
You’re going to have to watch our vlog to see our reactions to having these bugs crawling all over us.  They even have a tiny species of preying mantis that looks like an orchid flower, it’s about the size of a fingernail.
Right next to the Mill Market is the Sault Ste. Marie lift locks.  These locks are over 100 years old however with a few modern upgrades and keep the boats moving through Lake Huron & Lake Superior or vice-versa.  It was awesome to see the fill and empty action of the lift locks.
Our second day in The Soo was spent driving along Hwy 17 which follows the Lake Superior coastline.  One we got to Batchawana Bay, we stopped off for lunch at a well known spot, the Voyageurs Lodge & Cookhouse.  Tony just had to try the fresh Lake Superior whitefish sandwich.  It was delicious.
This restaurant is unique because it really reflects back on the past of the area, when voyageurs would use canoes to transport goods for trade through these waterways.  The decor of the place is very rustic, and there’s several paintings that depict what a voyageurs adventurous life would look like.
The beaches around Batchawana Bay look like this:
Some have a finer sand, others have small smooth rocks.  This would make an awesome beach day in the summer months.
The drive was amazing and is highly recommended for anyone who loves long drives with lots of scenic viewpoints along the way.   The drive also gives an appreciation for the Lake Superior coastline including its various bays.  The view, especially those on top of cliffs, with the vantage points of other smaller bays is spectacular.  It’s even hard to describe and quantify the amount of natural beauty in this part of Ontario.
    Our intention was to make it to Old Woman Bay however we ended our drive with a visit to the Agawa Rock Pictographs located in Lake Superior Provincial Park.  The walk down to see the Pictographs was a physical downhill challenge however seeing this real-life piece of Canadian art history was all worth it.
These pictographs were drawn between 150 – 400 years ago by the Ojibwe people of the area.  It’s believed that these symbols were very important to them.  Some are mythical creatures, others are of canoes & animals.
    Our third and final day was spent aboard the Agawa Canyon Tour Train so read our dedicated blog post & see our video. This train ride is an absolute must if visiting The Soo so please, please, please set aside a whole day in your itinerary to see and experience it for yourself.
We sincerely hope that you get to see and experience everything we did and then some on your next visit to Sault Ste. Marie.  It’s a beautiful waterfront city in Northern Ontario with a unique history and an amazing future.
Our Visit to Sault Ste. Marie was sponsored by Tourism Sault Ste. Marie however all opinions, recommendations & reviews are our own.
Have any photos or videos of your visit that you would like to share with us?  Send them over to @LetsDiscoverON.
Thanks for reading & watching.  Remember to subscribe to our Blog & YouTube Channel and follow us along as we Discover ON!
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