#bubblelike

[k00294490]

Finished Painting

I brought it into the photography workshop to photograph. Paul helped me set up a back drop and light it.

I was really attracted to the colours in this, I picked up some pink hints and exaggerated them to compliment the green light.

When painting this, I made the choice to turn the bubble wrap more bubblelike. In the original photo, I was seperated by a veil of bubble wrap from the viewer. I think the bubbly veil I painted is more open, mischievous and fun. It still leaves enough of my form blurry and looking haunted.

This has led me to want to explore light, shadows and colour in a different medium and workshop.

If I were to do it again, I'd find a better way to paint a blurry effect and make my shadows even deeper.

[odyssej]

Dreamt an old high school classmate had just passed away from his alcoholism. It wasn't even someone I talked to at all, and he's the last person I'd expect to even touch a drop. But before this I kept thinking how Dr. Wanless should have Isaac (which my classmate was called) for a first name, and Morton can then be his middle. That way it'd read, Dr. I. M. Wanless. I deliberately chose this surname for its meaning: hopelessness; despair - there's even a debate that it could very well mean "free of sadness" actually. It could also be spelt as Wandless, hence "I am wandless". Much like how his patient, Ernst, thinks to finally let go of his conductor baton.

Anyway, I've been still very burnt out, obviously. Had to nap for a couple hours, this time dreaming of a rando, maybe American, in his shorts, white socks and sandals, with a white cap covering curly black hair down to his ears, Laying about morosely in his camping chair, on the lawn, and when he went for a smoke break inside his van, it seemed he used an e-cigarette (in fact he'd made his own business selling these), forest green with "MYSTERIOUS" printed on it. I saw stacks and stacks of it. Perhaps he wasn't having a good time 'cause people thought his cigs were crap.

When he went to lay in his chair again, a blonde little girl skipped over to him, and he scooped her up. Probably his daughter. He asked her how she was able to remember so many memories at her tender age, and she simply brought out this toy wand, with quite a few colourful buttons and a bubblelike globe on the top. "If you press this, and this, and this, you will remember what you want to remember."

I felt like the dad here - already that seemed easier said than done. But he still smiled, and took her back to the house. And then I woke up, still groggy as heck but cooked dinner. For once I felt normal.

Despite dreaming of depressed people doing depressing things.

[misakialter]

Entry:

Yesterday I had one of, if not the most strange thing happen to me, an encounter that is too bizarre to consider veridic but that I can assure it was very real happening I am describing right now.

It was about 9:02 PM or so and I was walking down the street getting some food on the go. Nothing too fancy, it's just that I don't usually mind walking a couple blocks away from home just to get the food warm and without the unecessary delays of delivery. I kept my smartphone besides me, occassionally chatting through discord when I got the notification and often with my eyes on the screen every now and then, paying attention to my surroundings.

Eventually, I cut corners a bit through an alley and I notice my phone buzzing for a moment. Something felt really wrong so I looked around just to be safe. There was nothing. Not one soul. Kind of unnerving but I asumed that at this time of the day it was gonna be the case.

But as I keep walking and reach the street corner, I notice something utterly jarring. A shadow creeping there, staring, preying upon me even. It wasn't moving, and I slow down my pace to a crawl. I stated back into the darkened shape of the creature in disbelief without making sense of it. But now that I look back, I can more or less vividly describe this living, terrifying being.

I more or less discern it's hind, slender legs, firmly holding it's spiderlike body which perhaps is its most fragile looking part, given it's many legs felt like they possessed such sharpness to bury into the pavement beneath us, in spite of it's odd segmentation, an odd round object right down the middle. It's idle sway was odd, it was expectantly breathing rather than standing still, almost as if awaiting orders rather than seeking a chance to strike whilst fully alert. That didn't stop it from trying to swipe with said legs, as if it felt threatened by my presence in spite of the distance between us.

The way that it stared at me though, it looked it wanted me to approach anyways. That's what got me to lock eyes with it, as many as I could with my own vision. There was more than two, yes. I could not count at the time. Five. Three. Not too sure. All piercing. All staring into my soul. It had an intimidating expression to booth, which is still not the strangest thing about this creature. That would be the bubbling, round layer of transparent membrane. Something I could almost call water, surrounding it's head, it truly felt like that something that shouldn't even exist in our world.

I had something on my bag, some grapes if I recall correctly. I wanted to feed it, as I rationalized it would let me go, perhaps in some absurd hopes of bargaining with a feral creature. I wasn't even sure if it could eat it, that with the bubblelike, liquid wrapping surrounding it's head. I failed to notice it's teeth poking out beneath it's jaw, pointy, unlike that of a spider, something that would make short work of the grapes or anything that didn't just suffocate within that wet membrane, or so I would imagine.

It ate the grapes quietly and became a little more docile, far less agressive. It was still difficult to approach it, considering it's size and demeanor, but at least, I managed to capture it without breaking much of a sweat afterwards. It stopped struggling with that one grape.

...

I fear calling it under it's species name, Araquanid, is a bit strange to me. Either way, I should think of a proper nickname for it soon... Though I still question what this creature was doing outside of it's natural habitat.

[washwashgalaxy]

JIGSAW PUZZLE By Meenu Lodha

Jigsaw puzzle When those fizzy thoughts bubblelike a soap opera trouble,fear in head behaves like an imaginary stew as jumbled jigsaw puzzle brew.All passion pleasure and pain in a criss cross battle of gain,want to enter this imaginary ground to protect those cirrostratus cloudsBullets of my poetry scream,lapis lazuli eyes dream a little dream.Deep in,I know my tears will bloom from the…

[metamoonshots]

[ad_1] The Israel-Hamas struggle makes traders nervous, however hasn’t sparked a headlong rush into lots of the property that historically see large inflows during times of geopolitical disaster. Whereas dwarfed by the tragic human penalties of the battle, the market response has left some analysts and traders struggling to elucidate why thus far only some conventional havens have benefited from a so-called flight to high quality. Inventory-market volatility, in the meantime, has risen, however at 20.37, the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, an options-based measure of anticipated volatility within the S&P 500 over the approaching 30 days is simply barely above its long-term common slightly below 20. Maybe, argued Marc Ostwald, chief economist and world strategist at ADM Investor Companies Worldwide, a scarcity of extra pronounced market volatility and subdued inflows into safe-haven property go hand in hand, reflecting a way of paralysis within the face of an amazing array of worries. “The complexity of the big quantity of occasion dangers, be that geopolitical, macro- or microeconomic which markets are confronted with on the present juncture borders on the thoughts boggling,” he stated in a Monday be aware. “The truth that volatility has not picked up much more than it has in all probability attests to a component of ‘being rabbits in entrance of the headlights’, in addition to the truth that a superb many conventional ‘secure haven’ or defensive property’ are something however,” together with the Japanese yen USDJPY, +0.02%, authorities bonds, utilities, client staples or well being care. In flip, he stated, that has created “bubblelike” flows into gold GC00, -0.15% and the Swiss franc USDCHF, -0.02% — the 2 havens which have rallied because the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on southern Israel. Gold was up greater than 7.5% from its Oct. 6 shut via Monday, whereas the Swiss franc strengthened greater than 2% versus the U.S. greenback over the identical stretch. However U.S. Treasurys, seen because the world’s risk-free asset, have suffered. Yields, which transfer reverse to cost, continued a pointy rise, with the 10-year price BX:TMUBMUSD10Y briefly topping the 5% threshold early Monday for the primary time since 2007. Rising Treasury yields and geopolitical angst are blamed for a tough October for shares. Equities have prolonged a pullback that’s seen the S&P 500 SPX retreat 8.5% from its 2023 excessive set on July 31, leaving it up 9.8% for the 12 months up to now. Since Oct. 6, the large-cap benchmark is down round 2.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Common DJIA turned decrease on the 12 months final week. The Japanese yen, sometimes the most important haven beneficiary alongside the Swiss franc during times of uncertainty, has been left on the sidelines. The greenback briefly fetched greater than 150 yen final week, a degree that dangers yen-buying intervention by the Financial institution of Japan. The central financial institution’s ultraloose financial coverage explains the yen’s lack of haven attraction, analysts stated. In the meantime, “even a struggle within the Center East will not be persuading traders to purchase US Treasuries, or authorities bonds, an asset class that's often seen as the last word haven as a result of they're priced on the planet’s reserve foreign money and include the backing of America, the world’s main financial and navy energy,” stated Russ Mould, funding director at AJ Bell, in a be aware. He supplied three causes which will clarify the continued Treasury selloff: It isn’t sure that inflation is cooling. If the battle forces crude costs to leap and stay elevated, it is going to make it harder to rein in inflation. Markets are pricing in multiple extra Federal Reserve price hike, however the first lower isn’t seen till summer season 2024 on the earliest.

A 12 months in the past, the rate-cutting cycle had been anticipated to have begun by now. U.S. federal debt continues to mushroom, with borrowing up $1.6 trillion since he April debt deal. On prime of that, the U.S. must refinance $15 trillion to $17 trillion of current debt within the subsequent two years. And the Federal Reserve is unwinding its stability sheet, which implies it’s not a “price-blind purchaser of final resort” with regards to Treasury provide. All of it provides as much as a laundry record of worries which will make for extra unsettled buying and selling within the close to future. Alongside the Mideast battle, the persevering with struggle in Ukraine, the “debacle” across the choice of the subsequent speaker of the U.S. Home, China’s property woes, and U.S.-China tensions tied to considerations in regards to the degree of public sector debt within the U.S. and developed and emerging-market international locations will possible present extra “key prompts for markets to react to, in what's going to stay uneven buying and selling situations,” stated ADM’s Ostwald. [ad_2]

[youressentialsblog]

UBS warns regulators could pop 'bubble-like crypto markets’

UBS warns regulators could pop ‘bubble-like crypto markets’

Swiss multinational investment banking giant, UBS, has warned its clients that crypto assets cbe unsuitable for professional investors if regulatory pressure continues. In a note sent to clients last week, the global wealth management team at UBS said China’s latest crackdown had hurt crypto prices and operators, cautioning that further regulatory pushback worldwide could exacerbate the downward…

[mloartware]

Details and finished work #penandink #flowerlike #bubblelike #fantasyworld#contemporaryart #abstraction #structural #osmosis #colorpencildrawing #goldandsilverink #metallicinks https://www.instagram.com/p/BuuCmSyh0UO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1nbq5w3fq8s7j

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Do you have thoughts on other star primal creatures? We know of obvious ones like zym and phoe-phoe to be connected to the sky and moon arcanum and amblers are confirmed earth connected. but I've racked my brain of what xadia's star primal creatures with look like. the closest I could think of are sphinxes, omniscient beings that could fit the checklist of a star primal creature. Other possible creatures I could think are unicorns but then again maybe not

I think the Pearl Unicorns from the Primal Source quiz are part of the path that leads to the Stars arcanum. But I’m not sure whether the outside of a creature is the best indication of what their arcanum is. Phoe-Phoe is a bird, and Ethari’s Shadowpaw is a giant cat. They could be Sky and Earth connected, but they’re both Moon instead. Janai’s mount, the Twin-tailed Inferno-tooth Tiger, also flies, but it’s got a Sun arcanum. So maybe it’s more about unique features that each creature has, rather than its general shape or species. 

We’ll probably see more creatures that have been domesticated or at least tamed, for transport purposes, in other arcana. They could be horselike, catlike, doglike, lizardlike, whalelike, bubblelike, who knows, but they’ll generally fit with their arcanum so their design matches its coloring and traits A Stars horselike creature (the pearl unicorn?) would look very different from an Earth horselike creature, but you can probably ride them both. If they let you. 

The Stars card says that Star creatures aren’t very common, so we may never see more than a handful of these interesting creatures. I’m still holding out hope for a Star dragon, too. But I think that TDP primarily embraces a more general functionality approach to their fauna--what do they need the creature to do within the storyline--and its form follows its function from there. If they really need a Star eel that exudes portal-inducing slime for a plot point, then we’ll get the starriest, gleamiest eel you ever did see. There will be no mistaking its arcanum on sight, whether it lives in the sea, a freshwater lake, or some creepy mountain cave or something. 

[halforc-mercenary]

ℑ𝔫𝔰𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔏𝔬𝔬𝔨

Rules: Briefly describe some of the notable scars of your muse. We get it - the “interesting scar” is one of the most abused tropes of fandom - so have fun with it and embrace the cheese factor if you want! 

As a Mercenary, who earns her money with fighting and war, she is always in risk of beeing wounded or killed. Mars skin is scattered with scars, from which the biggest would be the fistbig scar under her chest where she had almost pierced through by a lance and her own hauberk had cut deep into her flesh. The bubblelike pattern of the scarred skin still shows where her hauberk had cut into her and till this day the scar will stitch when the Halforc has to lean forward or back very fast and the scarpattern is naturally not as tough as her natural skin and will also react very sensetive to the change of temperatures or pressure. Since Mar usually covers up from head to toe the only people who would know about this scar are either Healers or people she had metwhen visiting the Balneae of cities.  When the lance had bored into her chest Mar had been thrown off her horse and crushed on the frozen ground beneath, breaking probably every single bone in her body in the process.  It is obvious that one of Mars greatest fears is to be wounded in a fight so bad  that she would no longer be able to continue her work for this would meant that she would nolonger be able to earn money and lose the one thing she had always been best at: Her talent for battle.  And this would mean that Mar would lose the one thing that had always made her useful and in her eyes gave her the allowance to be there and live and be useful for others. It is near a miracle that the Halforc healed almost completly after the incident in the tournament-fight and probably that is only thanked to the Talent fo the Healers of the Argent Dawn. The scar however stayed.  𝔗𝔞𝔤𝔤𝔢𝔡 𝔅𝔶: @wildname 𝔗𝔞𝔤𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤: @stonestridernerd @anierous-sunblade @olliehaldstan  @leavenohoofprints @curiouscodex @wanderersofazeroth @lady-proudmoore @grandpriestess @oathkeeperblackdawn @safrona-shadowsun @kaauloth-the-cursed @valerians-travels @thehumbleknight @farseer-danaael @renwyck @asharinhun @arcane-harbinger @obsidianprinxess @toomany-elves @verosmoonshine@brandstonethings @ceruleanelf @hannyandfriends @mwindaji  @boredofcinder @cosmicuncanny …and everyone else!

[eblogsposts]

Development/materials

My main focus of my bathhouse design is the scoria rock that is on the outside of the building and bringing this through indoors for the design of the bathhouse.

Research on scoria: Scoria is a type of volcanic rock that is full of tiny holes formed by bubbles of gas (bubblelike cavities). It is a dark-coloured, glassy, heavy, pyroclastic igneous rock and has a magic composition. 

The walls and posts of the inside of the bathhouse is all concrete and then there will be feature walls of scoria rock

From my previous research on materials I am still going to use the granite pavings for the floor of the inside bath house and cut them into the shape of rocks. Granite pavings have a flecked, sparkling appearance and its toughness and durability make it an ideal material for construction and decoration. Granite is common for pool pavings as it creates an elegant look with its natural shine and water resistance properties. Flamed or aged finishes are perfect for swimming pools because they are slip resistant.

[deunmundoraro-blog]

mariposa sin alas: a vida o muerte

“Call me Bursaphelenchus xylophilus. I’m a tiny, wormlike creature, a nematode, and I spend most of my time crunching the insides of pine trees. But my kin are as well-­traveled as any whaler sailing the seven seas. Stick with me, and I’ll tell you about some curious voyages.”

But wait: who would want to hear about the world from a worm? That was, in effect, the question addressed by Jakob von Uexküll in 1934, when he described the world experienced by a tick. 4 Working with the tick’s sensory abilities, such as its ability to detect the heat of a mammal, and thus a potential blood meal, Uexküll showed that a tick knows and makes worlds.

His approach brought landscapes to life as scenes of sensuous activity; creatures were not to be treated as inert objects but as knowing subjects. And yet: Uexküll’s idea of affordances limited his tick to the bubblelike world of its few senses. Caught in a small frame of space and time, it was not a participant in the wider rhythms and histories of the landscape. 5 This is not enough—­as the voyages of Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, the pine wilt nematode, attest. Consider one of the most colorful:

Pine wilt nematodes are unable to move from tree to tree without the help of pine sawyer beetles, who carry them without benefit to themselves. At a particular stage in a nematode’s life, it may take advantage of a beetle’s journey to hop on as a stowaway. But this is not a casual transaction. Nematodes must approach beetles in a particular stage of the beetles’ life cycle, just as they are about to emerge from their piney cavities to move to a new tree. The nematodes ride in the beetles’ tracheae. When the beetles move to a new tree to lay their eggs, the nematodes slip into the new tree’s wound. This is an extraordinary feat of coordination, in which nematodes tap into beetles’ life rhythms. 6 To immerse oneself in such webs of coordination, Uexküll’s bubble worlds are not enough.

Despite this sojourn with a nematode, I have not abandoned matsutake. A major reason for the current rarity of matsutake in Japan is the demise of pines that results from the habits of pine wilt nematodes. Just as whalers catch whales, pine wilt nematodes catch pines and kill them and their fungal companions. Still, nematodes were not always involved in this way of making a living. Just as for whalers and whales, nematodes become killers of pines only through the contingencies of circumstance and history. Their voyage into Japanese history is as extraordinary as the webs of coordination they weave.

Pine wilt nematodes are only minor pests for American pines, which evolved with them. These nematodes became tree killers only when they traveled to Asia, where pines were unprepared and vulnerable. Amazingly, ecologists have traced this process rather precisely. The first nematodes disembarked at Japan’s Nagasaki harbor from the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, riding in American pine. 7 Timber was a resource for industrializing Japan, where elites were hungry for resources from around the world. Many uninvited guests arrived with those resources, including the pine wilt nematode. Soon after its arrival, it traveled with local pine sawyer beetles; its moves can be traced concentrically out from Nagasaki. Together, the local beetle and the foreign nematode changed Japan’s forest landscapes. Still, an infected pine might not die if it is living in good conditions, and this indeterminate threat thus holds matsutake, implicated as collateral damage, in suspense. Pines stressed by forest crowding, lack of light, and too much soil enrichment are easy prey to nematodes. Evergreen broadleaf trees crowd and shade Japanese pine. Blue-­stain fungus sometimes grows in pine’s wounds, feeding the nematodes. 8 The warmer temperatures of anthropogenic climate change help the nematodes to spread. 9 Many histories come together here; they draw us beyond bubble worlds into shifting cascades of collaboration and complexity. The livelihoods of the nematode—­and the pine it attacks and the fungus that tries to save it—­are honed within unstable assemblages as opportunities arise and old talents gain new purchase. Japan’s matsutake enters the fray of all this history: its fate depends on the enhancement or debilitation of the Uexküllian agilities of pine wilt nematodes.

Tracking matsutake through the journeys of nematodes allows me to return to my questions about telling the adventures of landscapes, this time with a thesis. First, rather than limit our analyses to one creature at a time (including humans), or even one relationship, if we want to know what makes places livable we should be studying polyphonic assemblages, gatherings of ways of being. Assemblages are performances of livability. Matsutake stories draw us into pine stories and nematode stories; in their moments of coordination with each other they create livable—­or killing—­situations.

Anna Tsing, 'The mushroom at the end of the world'

Video: Compost Mentis Coop.

[perfectrebelpersona]

Scoria rocks

Scoria, heavy, dark-coloured, glassy, pyroclastic igneous rock that contains many vesicles (bubblelike cavities). Foamlike scoria, in which the bubbles are very thin shells of solidified basaltic magma, occurs as a product of explosive eruptions (as on Hawaii) and as frothy crusts on some pahoehoe (smooth- or billowy-surfaced) lavas. Other scoria, sometimes called volcanic cinder, resembles clinkers, or cinders from a coal furnace.

Composition: intermediate (andesitic) to mafic (basaltic)

Color: black or dark brown

Cooling Rate: rapid, extrusive

Intrusive Equivalent: diorite or gabbro

Other Characteristics: vesicular like pumice, but denser and darker with larger vesicles

Origin: Extrusive/Volcanic

Mineral Composition: Predominantly Glass

Tectonic Environment: Divergent Boundary or Intra-oceanic hot spots

Scoria has the meaning and properties of an amulet against evil. It is a gemstone to absorb and purify evil energy. It will prevent the accumulation of negative energy. It will also keep away from danger from sneaking up.

https://geologyscience.com/rocks/scoria/  

https://www.britannica.com/science/scoria  

https://www.gemstone7.com/631-scoria.html  

[birchtreedemon]

HEY, MORPHO.

Birch Bill grinned something sinister and drew close to the Shape’s traveling base. AREN’T YOU A LONG WAY FROM HOME.

The Shape retreated to the very center of the bubblelike pocket, shuddering and small, but their old Boss’ voice pressed in from the outside.

I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, MORPH. THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE TO HIDE.

The Shape screwed their eyes shut. They could see Birch Bill’s glow through the membrane separating the two demons. I’m not coming back. The Realm isn’t my home anymore. And I... I don’t want you to call me that.

HM? Birch slithered along the perimeter of the base, searching for any weakness. CALL YOU WHAT?

They curled up smaller. M-Morpho. That name’s only for my...friends...

Birch leaned and cackled viciously. OH, REALLY? YOU THINK THAT ANYONE WHO EVER CALLED YOU THAT WAS ACTUALLY YOUR FRIEND? He wrapped his roots around the base and pulled it closer, pushing his golden eye in to stare at the helpless Shape. YOU’VE NEVER HAD A FRIEND IN YOUR LIFE, YOU LITTLE FREAK. EXCEPT FOR ME.

His teeth showed around his eye in a ghastly parody of a friendly smile. I’M NOT HERE TO KILL YOU. NOT YET. I’M HERE TO OFFER YOU ANOTHER CHANCE. YOU AND I CAN BE FRIENDS AGAIN, MORPHO, WE WILL ALL WELCOME YOU BACK INTO THE FOLD, LIKE NOTHING EVER HAPPENED! I JUST NEED YOU TO PROVE YOUR LOYALTY FIRST.

I don’t believe you, said the Shape from where they were hiding.

NO? Birch replied. BUT I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU THE WHOLE TIME, PAL. EVERY TIME YOU WENT TO YOUR FRIEND THE GOD’S HOUSE, I WAS THERE, WATCHING YOU COME, AND WATCHING YOU GO, MAKING SURE HE LET YOU STAY IN ONE PIECE. AND NOW I’VE FINALLY CAUGHT YOU AWAY FROM HIS DOMAIN! AFTER ALL, WE DON’T NEED HIM LISTENING IN ON THIS. I MEAN, HOW MANY TIME HAS HE TRIED TO KILL YOU NOW?

He doesn’t do that anymore, the Shape said weakly.

YEAH, BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT MIGHT SET HIM OFF, DO YOU? Birch shot back. OR MAYBE HE’S JUST HAVING MORE FUN WATCHING YOU BECOME A SHELL OF YOUR FORMER SELF. Birch circled the bubble base like a vulture, with a voice that relentlessly corkscrewed into the Shape’s mind.

 YOU’VE BEEN GOING SOFT SINCE GETTING TO KNOW THE OLD FOOL, AND YOU KNOW IT. LIKE HE’S TAKEN THE TEETH FROM THE MOUTH OF A VIPER. YOU’RE LOSING YOUR FIRE, MORPHO, AND YOU MIGHT START LOSING YOUR MIND, TOO--DIDN’T HE SUCKER YOU INTO LETTING HIM HAVE A BIG PIECE OF IT?

The Shape trembled, still unable to look at their Cipher.

COME ON, MORPH, Birch said. YOU’RE SO CLOSE TO BEING FORGIVEN. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS FIND ME HIS WEAKNESS.

The Shape made a soft, frightened sound. So small, but enough to betray their thoughts.

Birch’s eye gleamed triumphantly. YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS.

I-- the Shape choked. I-I--

The membrane strained under Birch’s claws. TELL ME.

Th-there’s another child, they quivered. Not his daughter, another, only a baby...

AND DOES HE TRUST YOU WITH THIS CHILD? Birch asked hungrily.

Y-Yes. The Shape was showing dark grey. He does.

EXCELLENT. Birch moved back, releasing the base from his grip. IF WE HAVE OURSELVES A LITTLE HOSTAGE CRISIS, WHY, I IMAGINE THAT BOOKWORM WILL DO ANYTHING WE WANT HIM TO!

YOU WILL GET BACK EVERYTHING THAT WAS TAKEN FROM YOU. YOUR MEMORY. YOUR POWER. YOUR REPUTATION. AND MY FRIENDSHIP! YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT TO DO.

IT’LL BE GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK WITH US, MORPHO!

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/02/01/caution-and-distrust-go-hand-in-hand-as-m-l-b-negotiates-a-new-season/

Caution and Distrust Go Hand in Hand as M.L.B. Negotiates a New Season

The 2020 Major League Baseball season began on July 23, a day in which there were just over 70,000 new coronavirus cases reported in the United States. On Friday, when M.L.B. presented a proposal to the players’ union to push back the start of the 2021 season by roughly a month — and shave eight games off each team’s schedule — more than 165,000 new cases were reported.

Now, amid deep uncertainty about how and when the pandemic might be contained, the league and players are working on plans for the 2021 season — one that without modification would begin on April 1 with a full 162-game schedule and normal travel plans.

On Monday, after having considered the league’s proposal for a 154-game season, the players’ union issued a statement saying that it would not accept the proposal and would “instead continue preparations for an on-time start to the 2021 season.”

There are serious concerns about organizing the next season. Staging last year’s shortened, 60-game regular season proved daunting: It included two early virus outbreaks that threatened to derail the plan, a tightening of the health and safety protocols and the creation of bubblelike conditions that allowed the postseason to go off without a hitch — until the final day.

Recently, M.L.B., its team owners and some government officials in Arizona — where several spring training camps are based — have expressed concern about moving forward amid the current infection rates and the halting rollout of vaccinations.

All of this comes against a backdrop of disputed economics and fragile labor relations in baseball.

The league and players — whose collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1 — are increasingly mistrustful of each other, particularly after bitter monthslong negotiations last year led M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred to impose a shortening of the season when an agreement couldn’t be reached.

As a result of Manfred’s decree, players were paid at a prorated rate, only 37 percent of their 2020 salaries. But M.L.B. also claims to have lost money: Manfred has said M.L.B.’s 30 clubs took on more debt and sustained about $3 billion in operating losses last year. Fans were not allowed into stadiums until the neutral-site National League Championship Series and World Series were held in Arlington, Texas. The players’ union, which has long questioned some teams’ commitment to spending and winning, has challenged some of M.L.B.’s financial claims.

So when M.L.B. proposed subtracting a few games, compressing the schedule, installing a universal designated hitter, expanding the playoffs to 14 teams from 10, and pushing the World Series into early November, players were once again skeptical.

That skepticism led to Monday’s decision to reject the proposal.

The wheels for the season, though, were already in motion. Spring training is expected to start in two weeks. Pitchers have begun ramping up for the season. Some players are already at their spring training sites in Arizona and Florida, and clubs have been told by M.L.B. to proceed as originally scheduled, although several final details — like health and safety protocols — haven’t been finalized.

“That’s certainly created a little bit more of a challenge than you would normally have,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said on a video conference Friday. “Obviously the number of players, what protocols are or not going to be in place, how does that affect things, getting guys into camp and what are the quarantine rules — those are all things that we’re working through and being finalized. But I also feel like we’re very much in a position to be ready to roll right now. As late as yesterday, we’re told we’re on time still.”

That still appears to be the case after the players’ union statement. M.L.B. cannot unilaterally decide to delay spring training or the season, hence the need to negotiate with players.

Owners would also like to open games to fans, whose spending at stadiums, according to the league, makes up nearly 40 percent of its revenue.

M.L.B. players, for their part, believe staging a season during a pandemic is possible, especially after going nearly two months late last season without a known case. The N.F.L.’s ability to complete every scheduled game this season — albeit with some complications due to positive tests — is a sign that operations do not have to halt even amid outbreaks, as is the progression of the N.B.A. season despite the need to postpone numerous games for precautionary reasons.

M.L.B.’s proposal had called for players to receive their full 162-game pay if they played all 154 games, said people familiar with the negotiations who weren’t authorized to speak publicly because no announcements had been made.

The offer also codified Manfred’s rights to cancel or suspend games based on certain conditions, like government or travel restrictions, or if he, after consulting with medical experts and the union, believed that staging games would pose an “unreasonable” health and safety risk.

Players indicated concern that this could have led to fewer than 154 games, and that a compressed schedule with fewer days off could complicate making up contests postponed because of virus cases. But last year, even with similar powers given to him by a March agreement between the sides, Manfred didn’t suspend the season, despite outbreaks on the St. Louis Cardinals and the Miami Marlins. All but two teams — Detroit and St. Louis — played 60 games, using seven-inning doubleheaders to squeeze in some of them. The new practice was generally well received.

The union, which had already rejected expanding the playoffs, believed it deserved more than the playoff money pool that M.L.B. offered on Friday. It also feared that allowing more teams into the postseason would cheapen the regular season, de-emphasizing winning. Rosters, though, are mostly set, and the majority of top free-agent players have already signed with teams.

Last year, M.L.B. pushed to have the lucrative postseason wrapped up by the end of October to avoid another wave of coronavirus infections and a cluttered television sports schedule in November. Pushing back the 2021 playoffs, even a week into early November, would need approval from the networks that pay M.L.B. for the right to broadcast its games.

A deal could still be reached. Even though team owners and players never reached agreement on a schedule for the 2020 season, they agreed on opening day to a 16-team expanded postseason, which allowed them to tap into more broadcast revenue. In order to do that again, though, the sides would need to find increasingly fleeting common ground.

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Life on Earth may have begun in hostile hot springs

At Bumpass Hell in California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, the ground is literally boiling, and the aroma of rotten eggs fills the air. Gas bubbles rise through puddles of mud, producing goopy popping sounds. Jets of scorching-hot steam blast from vents in the earth. The fearsome site was named for the cowboy Kendall Bumpass, who in 1865 got too close and stepped through the thin crust. Boiling, acidic water burned his leg so badly that it had to be amputated.

Some scientists contend that life on our planet arose in such seemingly inhospitable conditions. Long before creatures roamed the Earth, hot springs like Bumpass Hell may have promoted chemical reactions that linked together simple molecules in a first step toward complexity. Other scientists, however, place the starting point for Earth’s life underwater, at the deep hydrothermal vents where heated, mineral-rich water billows from cracks in the ocean floor.

As researchers study and debate where and how life on Earth first ignited, their findings offer an important bonus. Understanding the origins of life on this planet could offer hints about where to search for life elsewhere, says Natalie Batalha, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It has very significant implications for the future of space exploration.” Chemist Wenonah Vercoutere agrees. “The rules of physics are the same throughout the whole universe,” says Vercoutere, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “So what is there to say that the rules of biology do not also carry through and are in place and active in the whole universe?”

At Bumpass Hell hot spring, cycles of wetting and drying at the edges of the geothermal pools are thought to promote the assembly of biomolecules.Joe Benning/Alamy Stock Photo

Lure of the land

At its biochemical core, the recipe for life relies on only a few ingredients: chemical elements, water or other media where chemical reactions can occur and an energy source to power those reactions. On Earth, all of those ingredients exist at terrestrial hot springs, home to some hardy creatures. Great Boiling Spring in Nevada, for example, is a scalding 77° Celsius, yet microbes manage to eke out an existence in water near the spring’s clay banks, researchers reported in 2016 in Nature Communications. Such conditions may reflect what it was like on early Earth, so these life-forms are most likely “related to some of the organisms that were originally on this planet,” says Jennifer Pett-Ridge, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Microorganisms at hot springs can form communities called microbial mats. Made up of layers of microbes, mats have been found in geothermal areas all over the world, including in Yellowstone National Park, the Garga hot spring in southern Russia and Lassen — home to Bumpass Hell.

Over time, microbial mats can form into stromatolites, structures of microbes and minerals that have accumulated on top of one another; the layered appearance of a stromatolite reflects the passage of time, like a tree’s growth rings. Researchers found evidence of stromatolites in the Dresser Formation, a 3.5-billion–year-old rock feature in the Western Australia outback, along with evidence of hot spring mineral deposits, describing the findings in 2017 in Nature Communications. These findings, plus other signs of past microbes, led the team to suggest that some of the earliest life on Earth flourished in a hot spring environment.

David Deamer, a biophysicist at UC Santa Cruz, has spent four and a half decades exploring how life on our planet may have begun. He started out studying lipids, oily molecules that make up the membranes surrounding cells. Deamer, a big proponent of hot springs as the source of life’s start, has shown that conditions at terrestrial hot springs can produce bubblelike vesicles, with an outer layer made up of lipids. Such structures may have been the ancestral precursors of modern-day cells (SN: 7/3/10, p. 22).

Bruce Damer, an astrobiologist at UC Santa Cruz who brings a computer science approach to questions about the origins of life, worked with Deamer to test whether conditions at hot springs could drive condensation reactions, which join two molecules into one larger composite.

When water splashes out of a hot spring and evaporates, molecules that were in the liquid could undergo condensation reactions and link up. A subsequent splash would add more molecules that could undergo additional condensation reactions as liquid dries again. Repeated rounds of wetting and drying could produce chains of molecules.

In 2018, Damer set up shop at an active geothermal area in New Zealand, named along the usual theme — Hells Gate — to test that hypothesis. He prepared vials with ingredients needed to assemble strands of RNA, a nucleic acid that acts as a messenger during protein synthesis and may have catalyzed chemical reactions involved in the origins of life on early Earth (SN: 4/10/04, p. 232). The concoction included two of the four RNA building blocks — the nucleotides that link together to form RNA chains.

In February, astrobiologists Bruce Damer and Luke Steller (shown) performed wet-dry cycling experiments in acidic hot spring pools at Hells Gate in New Zealand.B. Damer

Damer stood the open vials in a metal block, roughly the size of two CD cases stacked together, and set the contraption into a near-boiling hydrothermal pool. To simulate the sometimes-wet, sometimes-dry burbling of the primordial Earth, Damer squirted acidic hot spring water into the vials, let them dry out and then repeated the wet-dry cycle several more times. When he brought the vials back to the lab, he found that they contained RNA-like strands that were 100 to 200 nucleotides long.

These results, reported in December 2019 in Astrobiology, indicate that complex molecules can form at hot springs, supporting the hypothesis that life on Earth may have developed in such an environment. In 2020, Damer returned to Hells Gate with Deamer and colleagues to confirm Damer’s results and do more wet-dry cycling studies.

Nicholas Hud, a chemist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, studies the origins of life from a slightly different perspective: He explores how DNA and RNA nucleotides originated. He agrees that molecules are more likely to link together by condensation reactions on land, where wet-dry cycles can occur, than in the ocean. These reactions produce water; the formation of such a chemical bond isn’t energetically favorable when there’s already a lot of water around. “The best place to form that is in a hot, dry place,” Hud says. “The worst place to form it is in a wet, hot place.”

Bruce Damer has visited Hells Gate in New Zealand twice to test whether the conditions are right for linking nucleotides into strands of RNA.Joshua Hawley/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Underwater visions

Yet, wet, hot environs are just the place for life to originate, other evidence suggests. At hydrothermal vents on the deep, dark ocean floor, heated water spews into seawater that’s just a few degrees Celsius above freezing (SN: 7/23/16, p. 8).

In 2017, researchers found fossils in 3.77-billion-year-old rocks from Quebec that originated from the ancient ocean floor and had signs of hydrothermal activity (SN: 4/1/17, p. 6). The researchers claim that the distinct structures resemble those of microbes, suggesting that deep-sea environments may have supported some of the earliest life on Earth.

These environments can be extreme: Some vents belch dark plumes of water as hot as 400° C. However, if vents played a role in nurturing early forms of life, it likely happened at milder vents. For example, Lost City is a hydrothermal area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the fluid streaming from vents ranges in temperature from 40° to 90° C. The region is named for dramatic limestone chimneys that rise as much as 60 meters above the seafloor.

The chemistry of vents like the limestone chimneys found at the Atlantic Ocean’s Lost City supports microbial life.Courtesy of Susan Lang/Univ. of S. Carolina, NSF, ROV Jason/2018 © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

These spires are home to microbes that feed off the products of a chemical reaction known as serpentinization. “Hydrothermal vents are interesting because they are at the interface of water and rock,” says astrophysicist Laurie Barge of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

A chemical reaction between water and rock at sites like Lost City makes the water coming out of vents more alkaline than the water in the ocean, which has a higher concentration of positively charged hydrogen ions. The resulting gradient from alkaline to more acidic water is like the difference between the positive and negative ends of a battery and can serve as an energy source for chemical activity.

To study the conditions at underwater vents, Barge creates simulated environments in the lab that, she says, “can mimic what you see in the natural world.” To represent an ocean on early Earth, she fills an inverted glass bottle with an acidic mixture containing iron but no oxygen. One end of a plastic tube pokes through the narrow end of the bottle, connected to a steady supply of a basic, or alkaline, solution just like a vent.

NASA’s Laurie Barge simulates an alkaline hydrothermal vent in an acidic ocean to explore the chemistry of ancient oceans. The conditions produce chimney structures like the one above. JPL-Caltech/NASA

When Barge and colleagues injected an alkaline vent solution containing RNA nucleotides into an ocean-simulating bottle, individual RNA nucleotides linked up into short chains. These strands were only three or four nucleotides long, but the results suggest that the conditions at deep-sea vents could have supported reactions that led to the emergence of life on Earth, the researchers proposed in 2015 in Astrobiology.

Problems with both

To Deamer, there are big barriers to putting life’s pieces together near underwater vents: The vastness of the ocean would dilute molecules so they wouldn’t be concentrated enough to drive chemical reactions. Also, there are “no wet-dry cycles underwater.” In his view, repeated evaporation is needed to pull together enough molecules to bump into each other and react to form longer chains. Plus, unlike a hot spring’s freshwater, salty ocean water inhibits the formation of membranes and reactions that link together molecules, he says.

However, Deamer’s hot springs theory has its critics as well. DNA and RNA strands are composed of alternating phosphate and sugar molecules, but sugars “are profoundly unstable in hot spring environments,” says David Des Marais, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

And it may be too soon to rule out wet-dry cycles underwater. “You can have a little bit of water get stuck in a pore,” says Bill Brazelton, a marine microbiologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. And then, because the serpentinization reaction at a vent uses up water in making other molecules, “you can have these cycles of dehydration inside a rock underneath the ocean.”

It may be impossible to nail down how life truly began on Earth: Most geologic records of what actually happened during Earth’s earliest days have long disappeared. There are numerous alternative hypotheses for where life began, beyond terrestrial hot springs and deep-sea vents. Recent research, for example, suggests that asteroid impacts could have sent superheated seawater into the crust to produce hydrothermal systems resembling hot springs (SN: 7/4/20, p. 10).

“I think we have to admit that there might be more than one little torturous path that might have been traversed in order for life to begin,” Des Marais says.

The Bláhver hot spring in Iceland is one of many locations that Bruce Damer and David Deamer argue are the kind of environment where life may have formed on early Earth.imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

Life beyond Earth

Researchers are using what they’ve learned about how and where life may have originated on Earth to guide the search for biological signatures beyond our planet. There are several promising locales in our solar system.

“One of the things that NASA is really interested in knowing is whether or not there could be life in the subsurface oceans of the icy moons, like Europa and Enceladus,” says Batalha, of UC Santa Cruz. Scientists have evidence that the two moons, one orbiting Jupiter and the other, Saturn, have oceans of salty, liquid water beneath their icy shells (SN Online: 6/14/19).

These moons are intriguing because, along with liquid water, both have plumes of water erupting from their surfaces (SN: 6/9/18, p. 11), suggesting ongoing hydrothermal activity. NASA’s Cassini space probe even identified compounds containing carbon, nitrogen and oxygen within Enceladus’ plumes, some of the ingredients of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Europa and Enceladus fascinate astronomers because activity on their ocean floors may resemble the hydrothermal vents found on our own planet and may provide the chemical conditions to support life (SN: 4/18/15, p. 10).

Plumes of water vapor, plus compounds containing carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, spew from the frozen surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Hydrogen in the plumes is evidence of hydrothermal activity in the ocean beneath the ice, similar to deep-sea vents on Earth.JPL-Caltech/NASA, Space Science Institute, Planetary Science Institute

Icy moons may also promote condensation reactions. “Even if you were on an icy moon, you might have … freezing and thawing of ice,” Barge says. “So, I think it’s important to say, if wet-dry cycling is important, then we should look for any environment in the solar system that might be able to promote oscillating conditions of dehydration.”

But to find signs of past life, Damer and Deamer believe Mars is a more promising place to look. Mineral deposits indicate the presence of hot springs and hydrothermal activity in the planet’s past, which would have sustained the wetting and drying cycles that the two researchers see as crucial for condensation reactions to get life going.

Missions to the Red Planet are already under way. NASA’s Perseverance rover will be searching for signs of ancient life, such as telltale minerals in rock samples, at Mars’ Jezero crater when the mission lands in February 2021 (SN: 7/4/20 & 7/18/20, p. 30). Though at least 54.6 million kilometers separate them, Mars and Bumpass Hell may not be so different.

from Tips By Frank https://www.sciencenews.org/article/life-earth-origins-hostile-hot-springs-microbes