#and over an animation of a FOSSIL

[kylermalloy]

November 27, 1940

Fandom: Attack on Titan

Characters: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith

Word Count: 1713

Summary: Trapped in a cellar while their bombed home burns above them, Levi and Erwin have only each other in what could be their last moments. Inspired by the Triassic Cuddle.

Shadows flicker from above, flowers of fire blooming, no doubt burning their few possessions. The few they’ve acquired in their time here, the even fewer they were able to bring across the channel.

Levi coughs. The movement rattles both of them, pressed close enough together to feel their synchronized heartbeats.

“Breathe,” Erwin soothes him. He works hard to smooth the ragged edge to his own voice. The smoke scratches at his lungs, but he refuses to let it claw up his words. Levi will not hear that.

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[savage-rhi]

💙🫂🍰

[captainmvf]

🦴⛏️ [WIP]

[cbdinodoodlez]

I FEEL LIKE POSTING SO HERE’S A REF OF MY PROFESSOR LAYTON OC, MR DUNKLE

HERE’S THE CRAPPY LIL DESCRIPTION FOR DUNKLE I SPEDRAN FOR ARTFIGHT: “He is my Professor Layton oc! He's a silly paleontologist antagonist who wears the head of a Dunkleosteus. He's seen causing havoc to London and stealing fossils from museums. He's also seen to be able to get along with the main characters actually! He's helped them before and will sometimes appear in the background, prob wearing a hawaiian shirt, lol. [Think abt dr doofenshmirtz and perry the platypus being enemies but are able to get along with each other kind of like friends but not idk lol] HE'S HUMAN AND IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE HIS HEAD IS, WELL, UR NOT GETTING AN ANSWER MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”

[randomalistic]

You ever feel sad after a hyperfixation goes away… i used to love dinosaurs so much as a child but it sorta just went away and I still think they’re so cool but I feel like I lost something.

I guess there was a tradeoff cuz now I love birds, which are still technically dinosaurs lol

Recently went to a museum with an awesome dinosaur exhibit and got a big book, I wanna read it sometime so I can learn about them again

[watercolor-wings]

Boomers would hate this but playing video games has actually made me good at money management.

[zooophagous]

So why do you hate the advertising industry?

Hokay so.

Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.

I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.

I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.

Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.

Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.

Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.

I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.

And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.

Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.

Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.

And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.

Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.

It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.

It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.

And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.

Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.

Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.

However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.

I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.

Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.

[fixomnia-scribble]

WOW.

Scientists found an amazingly well-preserved village from 3,000 years ago

Text below, in case article access dries up:

LONDON — A half-eaten bowl of porridge complete with wooden spoon, communal rubbish bins, and a decorative necklace made with amber and glass beads are just a handful of the extraordinarily well-preserved remnants of a late Bronze Age hamlet unearthed in eastern England that’s been dubbed “Britain’s Pompeii” and a “time capsule” into village life almost 3,000 years ago.

The findings from the site, excavated in 2015 to 2016, are now the subject of two reports, complete with previously unseen photos, published this week by University of Cambridge archaeologists, who said they cast light onto the “cosy domesticity” of ancient settlement life.

“It might be the best prehistoric settlement that we’ve found in Britain,” Mark Knight, the excavation director and a co-author of the reports, said in an interviewThursday. “We took the roofs off and inside was pretty much the contents,” he said. “It’s so comprehensive and so coherent.”

The reason for the rare preservation: disaster.

The settlement, thought to have originally consisted of several large roundhouses made of wood and constructed on stilts above a slow-moving river, was engulfed by a fire less than a year after being built.

During the blaze, the buildings and much of their contents collapsed into a muddy river below that “cushioned the scorched remains where they fell,” the university said of the findings. This combination of charring from the fire and waterlogging led to “exceptional preservation,” the researchers found.

“Because of the nature of the settlement, that it was burned down and its abandonment unplanned, everything was captured,” Knight added.

“As we excavated it, there was that feeling that we were picking over someone else’s tragedy,” he said of the eerie site in the swampy fenland of East Anglia. “I don’t think we could smell the fire but the amount of ash around us — it felt close.”

Researchers said they eventually unearthed four large wooden roundhouses and an entranceway structure, but the original settlement was probably “twice as big.”

The site at Must Farm dates to about 850 B.C., eight centuries before Romans came to Britain. Archaeologists have been shocked at “just how clear the picture is” of late Bronze Age life based on the level of detail uncovered, Knight said.

The findings also showed that the communities lived “a way of life that was more sophisticated than we could have imagined,” Duncan Wilson, head of Historic England, the public body responsible for preserving England’s historic environment, said in a statement.

The findings unearthed include a stack of spears, possibly for hunting or defense; a decorative necklace “with beads from as far away as Denmark and Iran”; clothes of fine flax linen; and a female adult skull rendered smooth, “perhaps a memento of a lost loved one,” the research found.

The inhabitants’ diet was also rich and varied, including boar, pike and bream, along with wheat and barley.

A pottery bowl with the finger marks of its maker in the clay was also unearthed, researchers said, still containing its final meal — “a wheat-grain porridge mixed with animal fats” — with a wooden spatula resting inside the bowl.

“It appears the occupants saved their meat juices to use as toppings for porridge,” project archaeologist Chris Wakefield said in the university’s news release. “Chemical analyses of the bowls and jars showed traces of honey along with ruminant meats such as deer, suggesting these ingredients were combined to create a form of prehistoric honey-glazed venison,” he added.

Skulls of dogs — probably kept as pets and to help with hunting — were also uncovered, and the dogs’ fossilized feces showed they fed on scraps from their owners’ meals, the research found.

The buildings, some connected by walkways, may have had up to 60 people living there all together, Knight said, along with animals.

Although no intact sets of human remains were found at the site, indicating that the inhabitants probably fled the fire safely, several sheep bones were found burned indoors. “Skeletal remains showed the lambs were three to six months old, suggesting the settlement was destroyed sometime in late summer or early autumn,” according to the university’s news release.

Ceramic and wooden vessels including tiny cups, bowls and large storage jars were also found. Some pots were even designed to nest, stacked inside one another, Knight said — evidence of an interest in aesthetics as well as practicality.

A lot of similar items were found replicated in each home, Knight added, painting the picture of completely independent homesteads for each family unit rather than distinct buildings for shared tasks — much like we live today.

Household inventories often included metal tools, loom weights, sickles for crop harvesting, axes and even handheld razors for cutting hair.

The roundhouses — one of which had almost 50 square meters (nearly 540 square feet) of floor space — had hearths and insulated straw and clay roofs. Some featured activity zones for cooking, sleeping and working akin to modern-day rooms.

The Must Farm settlement has produced the largest collection of everyday Bronze Age artifacts ever discovered in the United Kingdom, according to Historic England, which partly funded the 1.1 million pound ($1.4 million) excavation project.

The public body labeled the site a “time capsule,” including almost 200 wooden artifacts, over 150 fiber and textile items, 128 pottery vessels and more than 90 pieces of metalwork. Some items will go on display at the nearby Peterborough Museum next month.

Archaeologists never found a “smoking gun” cause for the fire, Knight said. Instead, they suspect it was either an attack from “outside forces,” which may explain why the inhabitants never returned to collect their possessions from the debris, or an accidental blaze that spread rapidly across the tightly nestled homes.

“Probably all that was left was the people and what they were wearing; everything else was left behind,” Knight said of the fire.

But the preservation has left a window for people to look back through in the future. “You could almost see and smell their world,” he said.

“The only thing that was missing was the inhabitants,” Knight added. “And yet … I think they were there — you certainly got glimpses.”

[sakizm]

me 13 yrs ago at ashfall: *took many pics of the fossil beds and info posters*

me yesterday at ashfall: *proceeds to take 27372936 pics of the native prairie flowers*

me: oops but at least i took a pic of the rhino statue?

[headspace-hotel]

Coelacanth fish are considered to be living fossils, meaning they exist in pretty much exactly the same form as they did millions of years ago.

But if you went back in time and brought a coelacanth fish from 100 million years ago to the present day and introduced it to a modern coelacanth fish, they would not be able to breed, because even if the visible form of the animal has not changed, its DNA is nonetheless so different as to be incompatible.

Over millions of years, mutations accumulate in the genetic code, inevitably changing it. Thus it is impossible for a creature to stop evolving. This makes sense but it makes me really existential for some reason

[killdeercheer]

Today Marks 200 Years of Dinosaurs!!

Photo by Paul Barrett (image link here).

On this day, February 20th, 1824, bones from the Stonesfield Slate in Oxfordshire, England were described by William Buckland. Dinosaur fossils have likely been known since time immemorial, but that day was the first time a dinosaur had been described by western science (being the predatory Megalosaurus). Two decades later, Richard Owen would use the three fossils shown above - belonging to three separate animals Megalosaurus (leg), Iguanodon (tooth), and Hylaeosaurus (spine) - to formally recognize Dinosauria as a lineage of animals. Today over a thousand Mesozoic dinosaur genera are known, with many being described on a monthly basis, and our understanding of these animals has grown tremendously since the 1820s. We now recognize that dinosaurs were sophisticated, highly active reptiles with diverse behaviors of which one lineage survived the great Cretaceous Mass Extinction Event: the birds. Paleontologist Darren Naish has said that dinosaurs are popular "because they look neat, because they're awesome in every sense of the word, because they ruled a vast, chaotic, complex wilderness, and because they're the source of a myriad of big, really interesting questions". And I'm sure we all couldn't agree more.

So here's to 200 Years of Dinosaurs! How will you celebrate one of the world's most popular and incredible animals?

[golvio]

I was struck by how the entity’s growths formed in a spiral pattern, almost like a double helix you’d find in a strand of DNA. Oil is made from the fossilized remains of ancient plants and animals. It’s a sort of geological memory, just like how DNA is an evolutionary memory that allows the body to build and rebuild itself. And the primary thing that it affects when it touches people is their memories, whether random flashes of nostalgic images or deeply personally significant memories.

Going off of the DNA analogy…I don’t think the entity held any malice towards the crew. I don’t think it could hold malice to begin with, or goodwill, or any other more complex emotion. DNA is a chain of chemicals, and we have no conscious control over its transcription. The only thing it “wants,” as far as a chain of chemicals wants something, is to stay alive and to replicate itself. Its connection to oil also makes it feel like whatever dead, fossilized organic matter was trapped beneath the surface of the earth very mindlessly trying to return to life. The assimilated crewmates looked like cancerous lumps, growing out of control and endlessly dividing, not out of ill will, but because the cellular mechanism for growth had broken and was replicating out of control, only writ large, across the body of a whole person. The growths, like DNA writ large, a strand of chemicals trying to reassemble itself from whatever chemical matter from the rig and the crew it could use.

There’s a strange “humanity” to the entity, too, though in a very primal, instinctual sort of way. It wanted to be one with the rig and everyone on it, and it kept dredging up memories where Caz and the others felt especially close to their loved ones, even if they weren’t always happy ones. Caz, too, wanted to be one with his family again, but had that dream dashed by a selfish, individualist action. He wanted to keep his fellow crewmates together, and was increasingly devastated as assimilation or death cut them off from each other. The ending was beautiful, and felt like a barely comprehensible sort of kindness despite everything that had led up to it. For a moment, it felt like Caz reached an understanding with the force that had consumed him and that he in turn had destroyed, at least enough to forgive it and let go. In exchange, he got to relive the last time he and his wife were truly together, the morning he left for the rig. And then, over the empty ocean, we hear Suze’s tearful plea to Caz to come home, to reconnect with her, to be part of their family again. The letter felt like a summation of what Suze, Caz, and the entity itself wanted—to return home, to connect with others, to feel “whole” again.

[tibli]

as a huge fan of paleontology, that one borealopelta fossil makes me so fucking emotional. just look at this

this isn't just fossilized bone. this is a fossilized body. it looks less like a several-million-year-old specimen and more like a living, breathing animal that simply fell asleep.

also of note, this particular fossil was preserved in three dimensions, rather than having been flattened over time like the majority of fossils that you would typically find. a lot of specimens look more like an imprint than anything else. but this has depth, and volume. and its so detailed that researchers have been able to determine its skin color based off the compounds found on the surface.

idk it just really makes me want to burst into tears. so much of paleontology relies on making inferences from bones and a variety of trace fossils, and there are likely several details about prehistoric fauna that we simply don't know because they dont fossilize well, and fossilization is already an incredibly rare process as is.

for example, if spiders all died out before humans ever saw any, and all we had left were fossils, would we know they spun webs of silk? would the spinnerets be enough to tip us off?

there are so many things we still don't know about prehistoric life, and likely never will know because it wasn't preserved. can you imagine how many species we just don't know about because they never fossilized?

but here, with borealopelta, we have such a well-preserved specimen that it looks as though it could wake up at any second. It just makes me feel something inexplicable.

[reddpenn]

I got a Geiger counter!

Let’s look through my collection for some Spicy Rocks!  I’ve never deliberately collected radioactive specimens, so I have no idea what I’m going to find.

First, though, let’s test the baseline level of radiation in my house.

It’s fun to hear the Geiger counter click as it detects radiation.  20 counts per minute.  Nice!  You’re unlikely to ever see a count of zero, as pretty much everything in the world, including the human body, gives off a little bit of radiation. 

20 is a normal baseline, nothing to be concerned about.  Standing in my house, I’m getting a radiation dose of about 0.00013 milliseieverts per hour - or a little over one mSv a year.  This is an average yearly dosage of radiation for people in my country, and is something my body can easily process.  For context, a dosage of 100 mSv would slightly increase my risk of cancer, and a dosage of 1000 mSv would immediately give me radiation sickness.

But enough about these boring, safe amounts of radiation.  I want to see some spice!  Let’s check over by the Rock Wall!

Hm, I’d expected the CPM to be noticeably higher around my rock collection, but I’m getting nothing!  Even testing each individual rock, nothing’s more than a few ticks above the baseline.  So far, my fancy new toy is looking like wasted money.  :c

WAIT!  THERE!!  62 CPM!  That’s three times higher than the base reading in the rest of my house!!!  YESSS!!  THIS ROCK IS SPICY!!!!

Here’s the rock that’s setting off my Geiger counter.  (Yes I’m touching the spicy rock with my bare hands, don’t worry about it.) 

This fossil, which is as big as my head, is part of the femur bone of a Megalonyx, a North American giant ground sloth!

These huge animals could grow as big as ten feet tall.  They lived alongside humans during the last ice age, and it’s theorized that humans may have hunted them to extinction.  This particular fossil was found in a phosphate mine!

Why is it radioactive?  Because... sometimes fossils are just radioactive!  They spend a lot of time in the ground, which is full of radioactive minerals, and often radiation just gets all up in there.  There are some fossils on display in museums which are so radioactive that they have to be coated with lead paint for the safety of curators and museum-goers!  Compared to those, this femur bone is barely radioactive at all.

So is it really safe for me to have this in my house, much less handle it with my bare hands?  Well, yeah!  Remember, despite having this spicy rock in my collection, the radiation baseline in my house is completely normal.  Here’s why.

Even just a few centimeters away from this specimen, the Geiger counter’s reading is halved.  A few inches away, and it can’t detect any radiation at all.  It basically has to be directly touching the rock to get an abnormal reading.  Which means I also have to be touching the rock to receive a meaningful amount of radiation exposure.

But even holding this rock in my hands, I’m only getting a dosage of about 0.0004 mSv per hour.  If I never let go of this rock for an entire year, I would get a dose of about 3.5 mSv.  Which is... still completely within the safe threshold for my body to process.  Nothing to worry about!

Man, I gotta start collecting some spicier rocks.

[sunflowerwinds]

pulling you in | e.w

summary: the next day, new tattoo and all, you try and distract yourself from your overwhelming feelings and focus on the activities set for the day. your heart and mind are all over the place and you don’t know what to do anymore. ellie apologizes in a way that makes you even more stuck on who you want to turn to.

pairing: ellie williams x fem!reader

contains: mature language, reader being so confused with what she wants (bare with me), adorable pining!, more oblivious!reader: it’s painful atp

word count: 3.2K

a/n: first of all, the support for this series makes my heart soar. second of all, i’m almost to 2k follows which blows my mind. i am forever grateful for the support my writing has gotten from the little gay people on this app <3

under the summer stars masterlist

It was safe to say that you had screwed up any chance of being with Ellie. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be or in the stars for you. Whatever saying that referred to being made for each other did not apply to you and Ellie.

Maybe saying Abby was a good thing; bring you down from this fantasy world and move the hell on. You were leaning back in a lawn chair, slathered in sunscreen and wearing sunglasses to protect your retinas from the burning UV rays (and shamelessly staring at a certain somebody). The children in your cabin were playing some good old-fashioned duck-duck-goose before they had their big Tug-O-War match between all the cabins.

You could see Ellie from a distance with her own group digging in the sandbox for some ‘fossils’. Your eyes were practically formed into hearts seeing her enthusiastically explain all the dinosaur bones and which deceased animal they belonged to. Her geekiness made her even more attractive to you if that was even possible.

No. Enough.

You shook your head and found yourself glancing over at Abby’s group who were running through the extra-large bubbles, giggling happily. The tall blonde had admiration written all over her face at how much fun the kids were having; bright smile and all. You would be lying to yourself if you hadn’t been checking out Abby’s muscular arms and legs when she would break out her athletic shorts and shirts.

“You know just because you like girls doesn’t make your staring any less creepy?” You hear from beside you which causes you to jump a little.

You smack Dina’s leg for scaring you. You’re beyond glad you were wearing sunglasses as you didn’t want him to be right. Could everyone tell that you were gawking at Ellie’s fingers gently caressing the rocks like she was touching your thigh last—

My god, you needed help.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you shrug your shoulders, grabbing your handheld fan from the tote bag next to you on the ground and shaking it in front of your face.

“Come on. You don’t think I know you’re eye-fucking Ellie?” She mutters close to you as you both glance around but neither of your groups were paying attention to you guys.

“Not Ellie,” you state simply.

Dina audibly gasps and kneels down next to your chair, peeing over the direction you were.

“Wait, are you gawking at Abby?” She questioned with a soft chuckle.

“Maybe?” You say unsure of what you are truly feeling.

“I mean, yum, but I didn’t you were serious about moving on from Ellie,” Dina emphasized as you both stared at Abby grabbing one of the large coolers and moving it to where the kids were.

You sighed as your eyes flickered over at the one that held your heart before fixating on Abby once again.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m going to do anything about Abby either. Just admiring from afar.”

“And where has that gotten you over the past three years?” Dina deadpanned, raising her brows at you as she patted her sweaty upper lip with the back of her hand.

You remained silent as she got you there. Dina stood up from her position next to you, patting your shoulder before jerking her head towards the Tug-O-War makeshift arena.

“C’mon. Enough pining. We gotta get the kids for Tug-O-War. It’s mine against yours first,” Dina cheekily responded before jogging over to her campers.

You shot up from your seat and grabbed your whistle that was dangling around your neck, slotting it into your mouth to blow to get everyone’s attention. All of your campers froze their game of Duck-Duck-Goose, immediately scurrying over to you.

“Alright, campers! You guys ready to do Tug-O-War?” You shout with enthusiasm in your voice.

The kids started screaming with excitement, matching your energy times a million. You winced a little bit but kept your smile.

“I said,” you pause for dramatics. “Are you ready for Tug-O-War?” You over-enunciate every word which resulted in an uproar of cheers.

You chuckle softly and motion for the kids to follow you to the makeshift arena. There, a few feet across, was your friend and opponent, Dina and her campers. The brunette had her arms crossed over her chest with a playful narrow, motioning that she was watching us. You mouth that she was going down to which she scoffed and rolled her eyes.

The mediator, Jesse, cleared his throat as he explained the rules of the game. Basic no-cheating, no pushing, shoving, etc. He had one hand on his hip with a megaphone in the other.

“Lookin’ good, mediator,” Dina calls over to Jesse who points warningly at her.

“You know the rules, Miss Dina. No sweet talking.” Jesse gave her one more glance before clearing his throat.

You snort to yourself before instructing your kids to keep their feet planted and wide and to tug as hard as they can. As soon as Jesse shouted ‘Go!’, everyone in your team began pulling with all their might. You watched as Dina’s team was completely thrown off guard and slipped over the dry grass beneath their sneakers. You kept shouting that the kids had it and to not let go.

After one final tug from your team, the ribbon in the middle of the rope moved past the white indicator line. You gasped as Jesse shouted, ‘One point to the Daisies!’. You huddled in with the kids, bouncing up and down with glee at the victory. In good spirit, the opposite teams gave each other high fives just like after a little league baseball game.

This went on for about an hour; each winner fighting against one another until it came to the last two. Not your surprise, you and Ellie’s campers came neck in neck with the points. On the sidelines, all of the other campers and friends of yours were cheering for both sides to not show preference for either team.

Ellie’s green eyes were narrowed at you with a taunting eyebrow raise while you scratched at your nose with your middle finger to discreetly flip her off. She caught it almost instantly and shook her head, prodding her tongue into her inner cheek.

“Our finalists, the mighty Daisies and the strong Dinos are about to have their final throw down. The winning team gets this highly expensive, one-of-a-kind trophy!” Jesse announced which caused the entirety of the camp which resulted in an uproar of cheers.

It was a trophy off of Amazon that read ‘#1 Champions’ that was 7 bucks but Jesse knew how to get the kids more and more competitive and eager to win. You locked eyes with Ellie from a few feet away, a shiver sliding down your back when she licked her lips before tightly gripping the thick rope.

The veins on her arms and hands protruded out, her sweat making them glisten under the hot sunbeams. You just needed a photo of what you were looking at and you would be content forever. Distracted by her annoying good looks, you tripped over your own feet when Jesse announced that the final Tug-O-War was on.

But you quickly held your ground and began tugging the rope as aggressively as possible, trying not to get overwhelmed by the amount of cheering coming from your friends and other campers. It took a few minutes before the Dinos did one final tug that caused the flag in the middle to move past the white line.

You glanced down at your hands, sighing at the sight of a few burn marks as you released the rope. Ellie was surrounded by her campers, all excitedly jumping up and down with her. You couldn’t even be sad about losing seeing her so happy. She had rubbed every single one of their heads, telling them how cool and strong they all were.

“Our winners; the Dino cabin!” Jesse shouts into the megaphone, jogging over to hand Ellie the medium-sized trophy.

Ellie snatched it from him to hold it up over her head to show it off. She then grabbed the megaphone from Jesse as well, clearing her throat as she began to give a speech.

“I just want to say thank you to my amazing group of campers. I couldn’t have done it without all of these Incredible Hulks over here,” Ellie smiled like a maniac as the campers started clapping. “But it’s getting too hot out here guys so let’s head over to the Arts cabin to make our bracelets with some snacks and drinks. Let’s go, everybody.”

You told your campers to follow you to the Arts cabin, making sure to let them know how great they did regardless of not being in first place. They all agreed but told you they were excited to get bracelet making. That eased your worries. As much as you enjoy these competitive activities, you are terrified that the kids will begin to feel bad about themselves.

As your group entered the cabin, you instructed your kids to wait in line to get snacks and drinks. You watch them all carefully make their way over to the four lines when you feel a hand rest on your clothed shoulder.

“I didn’t think Ellie could beat you,” Abby’s low voice mutters.

“She’s toned, Abs. I think it was a fair one so,” you shrug your shoulders as you check the list of activities on your clipboard.

“Yeah, I guess so but I was rooting for you.” Abby gave your shoulder a soft squeeze.

You turn to her with a friendly smile, raising your eyebrows at her own slightly frizzy braid.

“Well, I mean we all know why you were winning your Tug-O-Wars,” you eye her biceps, reaching one hand forward to touch the heated skin from being out in the sun.

Abby seemed to just let you touch her, the muscle tensing under your fingers. You look at her and notice how obvious you are with this weird attempt at flirting. You retract your hand and clear your throat.

“So, later when we take our campers to the campfire for s’mores, can I save you a spot?” Abby blatantly stares at your lips before flickering up to your eyes.

From across the room, you make eye contact with Ellie who seems more confused than anything. Jesse was rambling to her about something that you weren’t able to hear as she was helping him set up the bracelet-making table, twiddling with the strands.

“Yeah, Abs. That sounds good,” you nod after forcefully tearing your eyes away from Ellie’s tense posture.

“Yeah?” Abby asks once to confirm.

You hum to ease her mind, nodding with a kind smile.

“Okay, I’ll do that,” Abby nods more so to herself before jerking her head over to her group of campers.

As Abby left you by yourself with your hammering thoughts, you felt a nudge to your hip. You look down to see one of your campers holding up a string to you.

“Can you help me make a bracelet for Beth?” Carter questions, adjusting his baby. blue glasses on his face.

“Yeah, of course, bud.”

“I sorta got mad at her earlier and I want her to know that I’m sorry for doing that,” the little blonde boy expresses, shyly messing with the string.

You thought it was so adorable to see kids express their emotions differently. You’ve noticed as people age, emotions become harder to express. There was no fear in his eyes; a little timid, sure but he knew he had to express it somehow. Yes, people are complicated but children are so open; so innocent.

“I’m sure you didn’t mean it, Carter.”

From across the room you spotted Beth, giggling with Vanessa quietly as they made their own bracelets. Carter quietly told you that he noticed how much she wore the color purple so you helped him pick out the different shades of purple beads to slide onto the bracelet.

The crowd of kids chattering was a weird comfort to you. You couldn’t express it enough how much you loved this job.

After the children had their snacks and finished up the crafting, Tommy and Joel escorted everyone’s campers to their assigned cabin. The counselors cleaned up the art room during that time period. You had no desire to clean so you snuck out to sit on the steps as you waited for everyone else to be done.

As you doodle on your clipboard, you hear the door open behind you and you pretend to make notes instead. That is until you look over your shoulder to see Ellie standing with her arms crossed behind her back.

“Hey,” you grinned at her.

Ellie reciprocates the gesture, looking away from you for a moment.

“Hi,” the auburn-haired girl tilted her head at you. “I was wondering where you went.”

Was your back sweating from anxiety or the heat?

“Sorry. I… didn’t really feel like cleaning,” you weakly chuckled before focusing back on your scribbles and doodles.

“It’s not a lot to clean so you’re good. I just wanted to, uh,” Ellie cleared her throat before making her way closer to you, the boards beneath her feet slightly squeaking.

Before you knew it, an object hit your clipboard right underneath your graphite nonsense. Your eyes drop to it and your brows furrow in confusion.

“What’s this?”

You question as you stare at the bracelet that Ellie has now thrown on the clipboard in front of you resting on your knees. It was a mixture of beads of your favorite colors with your initial smack dab in the middle.

“An apology in a way. I noticed you’ve been kind of distant today so if it was something I did or said,” Ellie scratched behind her ear as she grinned weakly at you. “I’m sorry.”

So that’s why she had been making bracelets earlier. You would be lying if you said you hadn’t been acting weird or distant all of today. You hadn’t talked to Ellie on your own once, which clearly didn’t go didn't go unnoticed by the freckled girl. You felt like an insensitive ass acting this way.

“Els, it’s a personal thing. I’m sorry for being weird,” you stated as you fiddled with the bracelet.

“It’s okay. Just… wanna make sure my favorite girl doesn’t hate me,” Ellie nervously chuckled.

What the hell was she doing to you?

”I don’t think I ever could,” you admit as you admire the slightly too-big bracelet.

Ellie nodded, her green eyes darting from the apology in your hands to your expression. She seemed so antsy to give it to you; secretly afraid that you would hate it or think it was strange or pushing a boundary.

“How’s your tattoo?” Ellie questioned.

“Oh, um, all good. You did amazing, Els.” You reassure her.

“Can I see it to double-check? For… irritation.”

You stare into her wide green eyes, noticing how dilated her pupils are. There was the smallest ring of green due to how much the pupils were taking up her eyes.

“Sure, yeah,” you carefully lifted up your shorts leg to show her the small sun.

It was a bit splotchy but adorable nonetheless. You had put on soothing shea butter lotion and washed it gently this morning so it was good as new. Ellie reached her fingers forward to carefully trace over the detailed spiral in the middle. Goosebumps rose instantly to the surface of your skin despite the drastic heat outside.

“Looks good. It suits you.” Ellie confesses to you, grinning as her thumb traces over the inked section of your upper thigh.

“I might visit you again to get more. Maybe some finger ones?” You suggest, holding your hands out to her.

Ellie carefully takes your hands in hers.

“It’d be pretty hot, honestly,” Ellie murmured like she didn’t want her comment to be heard.

“Yeah, I thought so too,” you add on with a cheeky smile, nudging her shoulder.

Ellie’s entire face flushed at your words, releasing your hand as she muttered a soft ‘shut up’. You simply chuckled as you rested your head on her shoulder.

“Well, I’ll see you later at the campfire. I just wanted to give that to you before I forgot.” Ellie scratched behind your ear with a chuckle, moving on from her slight mistake.

“Mmm, I would take a shower first though,” you tease.

Ellie shook her head and scoffed.

“Really? After I gave you a gift?” She muttered as she leaned down to place her sweaty front side over your seated back.

You let out a string of groans and ‘get off’ before Ellie reluctantly lifted her body up and off of you. She stood up on her feet and nudged your leg with her Converse-covered feet.

“I’ll see you in a bit.” Ellie nodded before turning on her heels.

You sigh as you twiddle with the sweet gesture from the freckled girl. You silently watch her make her to her own cabin, probably wrangling for the children to quiet down so that she can do a headcount.

“Getting over her, huh?” You hear from behind you which causes you to nearly jump out of your skin.

Dina’s standing there with her arms folded across her chest, the wooden door behind her shutting softly.

“I don’t want to hear it, D,” you sigh as you stand up on the chipping blue wooden staircase.

Dina continuously tries to voice her opinion on how she feels but you make a noise of protest every time. She walks up to you and places both hands on your shoulders, forcing you to listen to her at this point.

“I just don’t know why you’re forcing yourself to fixate on Abby and why you don’t just tell Ellie how you feel.”

You’ve heard this twice now and you can’t help but feel like maybe they’re right. It’s high-risk, high-reward explaining how you feel to Ellie. You would give anything to know exactly how she felt about you so that you could ultimately just either push the crush away or finally open your mouth to tell her you want her more than you needed oxygen.

“You think I should?” You question curiously, your eyes pouring into Dina’s heartfelt ones.

“Yes. 99%” Dina replies.

You groan at her answer, trying to move away from her. She chuckles and shakes your shoulders to refocus your attention on her.

“I’m kidding. Seriously, 110%. I don’t think you see how Ellie looks at you, dude.” Dina emphasizes this with complete sincerity.

Steve’s words, too, echoed in your brain as you took in what Dina said to you.

“I’m just saying if I know flirting,” he leaned down to mutter to you, “and I think I do, she wants you just as badly as you want her. My personal opinion is to go for it.”

Should you? You were making your head hurt with the constant back and forth. Ellie was the lucky one. She had no idea what was going on in your head and this you were thankful for. The sun was setting and it was nearly time for the campfire.

You walked away from Dina with a pounding question in your head: Abby or Ellie?

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[bogleech]

Many parasites takeover the minds and bodies of insects, spiders or other creatures, making them like zombies. You’ve listed some in spider-ween and other places. Do you know any parasites that take over bees? I know wasps lay their eggs in their larva, but haven’t really found anything about those that pilot a bee’s body.

Strepsipterans! Also frequently just called "Stylops"

These are the weirdest most alien insect group in existence. What you're seeing are the head ends of the mature females; their bodies are just bags of tissue that absorb nutrients from the host, so they no longer have any trace of limbs or wings and their flat little heads no longer have mouths or eyes.

The only reason the female's heads stick out of the host at all is because the head evolved into the end they mate with. The short-lived mature male is a very tiny flying thing (whose anatomy is unlike any other insect alive today - a totally unique type of wing, unique eye arrangement, we have NO idea what these evolved from, except for some loose connections to beetles!) who mates by breaking through the female's featureless armored face with his bladed genitalia and then he dies. And Strepsiptera can be found infecting all sorts of arthropods, even apparently some arachnids, but none of those arthropods really tend to sit still when a little tiny flying man tries to land on them, so the females usually do something to their hosts (we aren't sure what exactly) to make them slower and more complacent. Social Hymenoptera like bees are especially common hosts though, and when a worker bee or wasp is infected by stylops, she actually abandons her colony and her duties for extended periods of time to just perch in one place while the parasite broadcasts its mating pheromones. This is especially eerie from the bee's perspective; a worker bee is a female bee that wasn't allowed to become a queen and isn't "supposed" to be going around mating, but now she's sitting around waiting for a male just like any other bug that wants to be a mom. It's just not a male of her species and she's not the one who gets to reproduce. Is the parasite tapping into buried queen behavior? Does the bee's little brain think it's calling for a drone to help it start a new hive? Or does the parasite just make the bee a lazy slob who stops caring about her hive and just feels like chilling out on a flower all day? We might never know.

Here are those unique eyes of the male for anyone wondering. Not set in a fine multifaceted grid like in other insects, but clustered, still set in their own individual "sockets" like we see in much more ancient arthropods like trilobites! This suggests that Strepsipteran eyes date back to when insects were first beginning to evolve towards true compound eyes, but there still aren't many insects in the fossil record that have anything else in common with these animals. EDIT: oh yeah I forgot to include that these are in the children's book made by @revretch and I!

I did the rough pencil sketch of this page while Rev did the beautiful inks! I felt kids should know about these animals but I tried to explain it in the most kid-friendly way possible.