#ed -> whale article

[edenswhale]

ceci / eden | any pronouns | interests

☆ minis sideblog

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Object permanence

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on THURSDAY (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

#20yrsago Canadian MP blogs from Parliament’s floor https://web.archive.org/web/20050514023619/http://www.montesolberg.com/2005/05/voting.htm

#20yrsago Journal of Ride Theory amazing zine is now an amazing book https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/11/journal-of-ride-theory-amazing-zine-is-now-an-amazing-book/

#20yrsago Everything Bad is Good for You: How TV and games make us smarter https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/13/everything-bad-is-good-for-you-how-tv-and-games-make-us-smarter/

#20yrsago Broadcast Flag back from the dead https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/13/broadcast-flag-back-from-the-dead/

#15yrsago Words that are excluded from “secret questions” https://simonwillison.net/2010/May/14/sacramento/

#15yrsago Barbie-themed hotel rooms for three year olds that cost €1,600/night https://web.archive.org/web/20100513074929/http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2010/5/10/21912/7175/hotels/What_Would_Carrie_Say_The_Plaza_Athenee_Is_Getting_Barbiefied

#15yrsago FOR THE WIN launches today https://memex.craphound.com/2010/05/11/for-the-win-launches-today/

#15yrsago IT in developing nations makes women and poor people happier https://www.bbc.com/news/10108551

#15yrsago Heinlein freaked out at “invasive” review of STRANGER IN A STRANGER LAND https://web.archive.org/web/20100514220628/https://thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/05/robert-a-heinlein-algis-budrys-and-me/

#10yrsago Copyfighting, jailbreaking legend Ed Felten is the White House’s new deputy CTO https://web.archive.org/web/20150512045054/https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/05/11/white-house-names-dr-ed-felten-deputy-us-chief-technology-officer

#10yrsago Finance deserves its corrupt reputation https://web.archive.org/web/20150618083908/https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/luigi.zingales/papers/research/Finance.pdf

#10yrsago Librarians: privacy’s champions https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/librarians-versus-nsa/

#10yrsago Teacher forced into retirement for showing archival queer-scare movie https://www.nydailynews.com/2015/05/07/retiring-missouri-teacher-suspended-after-showing-1959-anti-gay-boys-beware-video-to-class/

#10yrsago John Deere: of course you “own” your tractor, but only if you agree to let us rip you off https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/13/john-deere-of-course-you-own-your-tractor-but-only-if-you-agree-to-let-us-rip-you-off/

#5yrsago Senate Dems want to ban internet disconnection https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#sanders-wyden-merkley

#5yrsago NSO Group tried to sell malware to US law enforcement https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#nso-group

#5yrsago Restaurants, hotels and bars cut the cord https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#cordcutting

#5yrsago Feds want national snitchlines for bosses whose workers don't want to die https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#snitchlines

#5yrsago Corporate Dems want to bail out lobbyists and dark money orgs https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#thanks-nancy

#5yrsago Red states prep for postal vote https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#postal-vote

#5yrsago How Marcus Hutchins saved the world and lived to tell the tale https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#malwaretech

#5yrsago Gadget that adds steps to your Fitbit https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#restepper

#5yrsago University requires students to buy nonexistent webcams https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/malwaretech/#unobtanium

#5yrsago Facebook's "supreme court" https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#star-chamber

#5yrsago Podcast of "Rules for Writers" https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#turkey-city

#5yrsago NLRB nukes Hearst's union-busting https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#rosebud

#5yrsago The bailout is working (for Wall Street) https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#guillotine-watch

#5yrsago Shanghai Disneyland re-opens https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/11/delete-facebook/#splash-mountain

#5yrsago 80% of Britons want happiness, not growth https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

#1yrago AI "art" and uncanniness https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

[1rakus]

since the atlantic has since archived this article, here's a link without the paywall :)

also found some recent articles on hagfish breakthroughs! looks like we've found that hagfish slime is extremely efficient at clogging pores (think the holes of a kitchen sieve, not your hair follicle containers) and preventing liquid from going through and the silk fibers in hagfish slime increase staying power (here), and the cells that create those silk fiber threads for the slime get physically larger depending on the size of the hagfish itself (here). this is mega bizarre because generally in vertebrates, bigger animals don't get bigger cells, they just get more of them. like one of the hypothesized reasons whales don't die from cancer is because no matter if cancerous masses grow in their body, they're made of SO MANY cells that they don't even notice since the vase majority are healthy and normal. so the fact that hagfishes' threadmaking cells just get bigger with the physical size of the hagfish species is mega weird

unrelated but the journalist who wrote the original article is named ed yong and has a really delightful face shape. love the kind eyes and big ears on this dude

this article is so crazy like whoa

[cinquecolonnemagazine]

Tiktok, come si trasforma il social

Il social TikTok alla ricerca di una nuova immagine. Non parliamo di restyling grafico o un rebranding visivo, bensì l'introduzione di una nuova gamma di contenuti. A seguito delle polemiche e dei problemi incontrati di recente, il noto social network di origine cinese sta lanciando un'iniziativa che segna una svolta radicale rispetto alle strategie adottate in precedenza. Questa importante iniziativa, che ha già fatto il suo debutto con successo negli Stati Uniti, si appresta a fare il suo ingresso anche sul mercato italiano. Sarà indirizzata principalmente ai giovani utenti, ma non è esclusivamente limitata a loro. Il nuovo Feed STEM La novità sul social cinese sta nell'ampliamento dei feed con l'inserimento del tasto STEM. Il nuovo feed, dunque, metterà a disposizione dei suoi utenti contenuti divulgativi sulle materie STEM: scienze, tecnologia, ingegneria e matematica. Il tasto STEM sarà evidenziato automaticamente nei profili degli utenti under 18 che potranno decidere di non evidenziarli più modificando le impostazioni nell'apposita pagina. Operazione inversa per gli utenti maggiorenni che dovranno modificare le impostazioni per vedere evidenziato il feed. Quest'area conterrà video sulle discipline scientifiche realizzati in lingua inglese e con sottotitoli tradotti automaticamente. In un secondo momento sembra che compariranno anche video realizzati da creator italiani. I video non conterranno pubblicità. TikTok, la svolta divulgativa del social Il feed STEM, che è stato lanciato ufficialmente negli Stati Uniti durante l'anno 2023, ha riscosso un notevole successo. Secondo quanto riportato da fonti interne di TikTok, dall'inizio della sua attività, il feed è stato installato da circa un terzo degli utenti della piattaforma. Ha ottenuto una solida base di frequentatori regolari rappresentato da un terzo della popolazione adolescente. Questo spazio dedicato alle materie scientifiche ha registrato una significativa crescita del 24% nell'interesse per i contenuti STEM, e ha stimolato la creazione e la condivisione di quasi 15 milioni di video incentrati su tali tematiche. Al momento, il feed incentrato sulle discipline scientifiche e tecnologiche è stato esteso anche in Europa, con una presenza attiva sia nel Regno Unito che in Irlanda. Per quanto riguarda il territorio italiano, è prevista l'attivazione di questo servizio entro la fine del mese di aprile. Non solo balletti e sfide Nato con finalità di intrattenimento, TikTok è uno dei social network più controversi. E' diventato subito famoso per i video con i balletti e per le sfide al limite. Ricordiamo la blu whale o la cicatrice francese che hanno messo in allarme genitori ed educatori in tutto il mondo. Solo in un secondo momento sono emerse le sue potenzialità e i professionisti hanno iniziato a usarlo come strumento di lavoro. L'introduzione del feed STEM rappresenta un'ulteriore svolta del social e arriva in un momento difficile. Solo poche settimane fa, infatti, in alcuni Paesi europei è stato multato dall'Antitrust perché accusato di diffondere contenuti che minano la salute dei più giovani incoraggiandoli a sviluppare atteggiamenti di dipendenza mentre negli Stati Uniti rischia di essere messo al bando. In copertina foto di Solen Feyissa da Pixabay Read the full article

[theinternetgavemebraindamage]

Tales From A Self Check-out.

If I could possibly not spend over a 150 bucks on basic ass groceries, I might just keel over, and die from excitement. I'd really enjoy it a lot more, if it didn’t remind me of the shit on a stick state of the economy. Currently, I experience the weekly grocery run in a pool of flop sweats, deep breathing exercises, and a perpetual state of shock. They're charging 15 bucks for a slim bag of jerky?! It's a no for me, dawg. Though, I did pay 2.99 for one single purple onion recently.

On the average grocery run, it's also inevitable that you'll be exposed to the general public. I've actually been a lot more chill about this recently. Yes, my friends, you've heard it announced here, on the internet. For the very first time, I am embracing the general public. I may smile at strangers and say, "Hello there," when our shoulders pass and brush up against each other playfully. I may even strike up a conversation about the general state of banana ripeness in the fruit iles, because I'm very lonely.

The self check out is my holy grail. The final boss. I like the self check out. It makes me feel important, and in control. I'm earning these goddamn groceries. I also like to ring in my organic fruits and veggies under the non-organic prices. I'm under the impression that everyone else does this, too. We're all in silent agreement as we ring in items under their cheaper counterpart, together.

As I'm going through self check out, this dude comes over to the one next to me. He says hello to me, but in a weird elongated way that implies his attraction. "HelloOoooooO." I'm wearing giant obtrusive earmuff headphones. I'm not even listening to anything because my phone died in the car on the way here. Though I still wear them just in case a situation like this happens. I dont usually enjoy chatting with strange men. I know I said all that stuff earlier about embracing the general public. While this may be true, in this particular situation, the vibes were off. After I pretend not to hear him, he scoffs, and I hear him say "okaaayyyuuuuahhh". I go about my business, and he continues to talk out loud. "Wow, 22 dollars, not bad!" He's very proud of the monetary value of his purchases. I, however, have met a problem. I've never been good at estimating prices or basic 5th grade level math. I may look at my cart, and see a hundred dollars worth of items, but as I'm scanning them in I'm watching the number go way above the 170 dollars cash that I brought into the store tonight. I'd usually just use my debit card at a time like this, but I lost it about a week ago. The average normie might panic and block the card right away, thinking it could've been stolen. The ADHD in combination with the copious amount of weed smoking I did in my early 20s, shot my short-term memory to shit. Losing my debit card is a regular occurrence. In the meantime, I just survive off loose cash and wait for it to fall out of a random article of clothing. I just watched this documentary on the migration of whales from Hawaii to Alaska. It's the longest migration journey that a mammal takes. It fascinates me that they just KNOW where to go. They don't have a compass or Google maps. The documentary says that they tap into the Earth's natural magnetic field to help them navigate. Humans are mammals, too. So, with that being said, is it possible that I could reach the force that leads me to my lost debit card?

So, I'm there at the self check out. 200 dollars (worth?) of groceries, and only 170 to spare. The fluorescent lighting glares in my eyes a little bit sharper than it did before. I feel sweaty. I raise my hand like I'm a middle schooler desperate to ask for the bathroom. Not because I actually have to pee, but to exercise a little freedom from the educational prison and wander the halls. One time, in the fourth grade, I excused myself from math class and found a cozy closet in an empty special Ed room. I hid there for two hours until a random teacher opened it. "What are you doing?" She asked, naturally, in a sweet southern accent. I panicked, "uhhh, I'm looking for the bathroom." To this day, I kick myself for not coming up with a better excuse. She politely showed me the bathroom anyway, even though she totally knew I was full of shit. Then, I rejoined the kids at recess time, and nobody noticed I was gone.

The Safeway worker comes over to me, and I explain to him the situation. Just as I do, the dude from before starts making exasperated noises, as if he's suddenly insecure about his once joyful amount of grocery to price ratio. He alerts the Safeway worker that's in the middle of helping me. "Once you're done with that, I need your help. Though, it's not NEARLY as bad as her problem." Screw you, random strange man. Was he not just trying to get my attention 3 minutes ago? Now I'm the girl with the problem.

I take off some of my items to dwindle the price down to match the amount of scratch I hold in the zipper head of my pink teddy bear purse. "...And I'll take the beets off." It was my last request. My sweet ginger pickled beets. They were the hardest to see go. "Ahh. Beets." The random strange man comments from the sidelines. In a way, that didn't express cheer or disgust. It was more of a statement. The meer acknowledgement of beets existence. Finally, I turn my head to give this guy a look. His feature prove exactly how I pictured them in my head. A cross between a fast fashion version of Liam Nesson and one of those ginger kids on South Park. He gave me a twitchy smile that reminded me of the moment before my first kiss. I was thirteen, with my first boyfriend, in a dark theater watching the Blind Side. I remember feeling nauseous afterwards. As the random strange man smiles at me, I resist the natural urge to smile back. I read somewhere about a serial killer who would smile at women in public and then target the ones who would reciprocate the friendly gesture. Then, I feel a particularly wave of sadness that comes when you live in a society on the brink of a SiFi dystopia. One where kindness from strangers is lost, and I pay twice as much as I need to for basic ass groceries.

[scienza-magia]

Trasferiti 4,8m$ di dollari in bitcoin dei 41m$ hackerati

Hacker responsabili della rapina da 41 milioni di dollari trasferiscono BNB e MATIC. Un totale di 4,8 milioni di dollari di fondi sono stati spostati dall'hacker su Bitcoin e Avalanche. Secondo la società di sicurezza blockchain CertiK, gli hacker responsabili della violazione di 41 milioni di dollari del crypto casinò Stake verificatasi il 4 settembre hanno trasferito altri 328.000$ di token Polygon. Il recente trasferimento ha riguardato 300 BNB (per un valore di circa 61.500$) verso un indirizzo esterno "0x695", successivamente collegato l'11 settembre in bridge alla blockchain Avalanche. Altri 520.000 MATIC per un valore di oltre 266.000$ sono stati trasferiti su Avalanche sette ore prima, alle 7:18 UTC. #CertiKSkynetAlert Stiamo assistendo a un ulteriore movimento di fondi da parte dell'exploiter di Stake. 520.000 MATIC sono stati scambiati e trasferiti su Avalanche per poi essere convertiti in BTC, così come gli altri movimenti dei fondi effettuati dall'exploiter. Per saperne di più su Skynet Stando alla società di sicurezza blockchain Arkham, i 520.000 MATIC e i 300 BNB – corrispondenti a un totale di 328.000$ – si aggiungono ai 4,5 milioni di dollari di fondi trafugati, che sono stati successivamente trasferiti sulla blockchain di Bitcoin (sotto forma di BTC) il 7 settembre.

I 4,8 milioni di dollari trasferiti rappresentano solo l'1,2% dei 41 milioni di dollari sottratti dagli hacker. Nelle ultime 24 ore, l'hacker ha gradualmente trasferito i fondi sulla blockchain BTC utilizzando una serie di nuovi wallet su Polygon e Avalanche. Finora hanno trasferito 4,5 milioni di dollari agli indirizzi BTC, mentre i restanti 36 milioni di dollari sono ancora detenuti su ETH/BNB/Polygon. Si ritiene che l'hacker abbia ottenuto l'accesso alle chiavi private degli hot wallet Binance Smart Chain ed Ethereum di Stake per perpetrare l'hacking il 4 settembre. Il Federal Bureau of Investigation degli Stati Uniti ritiene che dietro l'exploit ci sia il Lazarus Group della Corea del Nord. Stima dei fondi sottratti a causa di hacking e truffe: superato il miliardo di dollari Con 41 milioni di dollari sottratti a Stake, nel 2023 gli operatori malintenzionati del settore hanno portato il bilancio delle truffe e degli hack a ben oltre 1 miliardo di dollari. A fine agosto CertiK aveva comunicato che la cifra ammontava a 997 milioni di dollari, ma i numerosi attacchi avvenuti nelle ultime due settimane hanno spinto la cifra oltre il miliardo di dollari. Il 6 settembre una crypto whale ha perso 24 milioni di dollari in Ether (ETH) in un attacco di phishing, mentre il 9 l'account X (ex Twitter) di Vitalik Buterin è stato compromesso, con l'hacker che ha totalizzato 691.000$ tramite una truffa di token non fungibili. Questi tre episodi porterebbero la cifra di agosto di CertiK ad almeno 1,04 miliardi di dollari. Nel 2023 gli hack e le crypto truffe hanno raggiunto quasi il miliardo di dollari! ⚔️ThreatSlayer è il tuo compagno di sicurezza che ti tiene al sicuro! Altri recenti episodi includono il prelievo di Pepe PEPE €0,000001, che ha fatto perdere agli investitori 13,2 milioni di dollari, l'exploit da 7,3 milioni di dollari di Exactly Protocol e una vulnerabilità di sicurezza esposta su Balancer, che ha causato danni per 2,1 milioni di dollari. Read the full article

[louisupdates]

A lucky collector will be able to purchase one of Louis’ white label vinyls through auction to benefit the Brit Trust. [Article]

The White Label Auction in Aid of The BRIT Trust – the world’s only known auction of “white label” test pressings – takes place next week on Tuesday, 6th June 2023. This year it will have more than 200 lots of highly collectible ‘white-label’ test pressings – the most offered in the four editions of the auction to date since it began in 2019.

The online/on-site auction is once again being hosted by music memorabilia and vinyl records specialists Omega Auctions from their Newton-Le-Willows (Greater Manchester) base. The full catalogue can be accessed here.

Fans and collectors can bid from a huge selection of white label test pressings that rarely come to market, with some even signed by the artists such as The Cure, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, New Order, and Wilko Johnson.

The UK’s record labels led by Universal Music UK, who founded the event with the BPI, along with BMG, Domino Recordings, Cherry Red, Sony Music Entertainment UK, Warner Records and others, each year join forces to curate a broad selection of white label auction lots to raise funds for the vital work of music industry charity The BRIT Trust – which promotes education and wellbeing through music and the creative arts to support causes that include the BRIT School and Nordoff and Robbins.

In January the BPI reported that vinyl albums had recorded a 15th year of consecutive growth in the UK, with over 5.5m LPs purchased in 2022. This rising demand for vinyl has in turn resulted in a growing archive of white label test pressings – so called because there is no sleeve artwork at this early stage – which record labels produce ahead of the full release of an album to ensure its audio quality. With only a handful produced, these first-off-the-press copies are snapped up by collectors on the rare occasions they become available, as evidenced by the huge interest in the three White Labels Auctions to date, which between them have raised around £100,000.

White label test pressings by the following artists:

Arcade Fire / Beth Gibbons, Portishead / Black Grape / Blind Faith / Blossoms / Brian Eno / Bryan Ferry / Budgie / Buzzcocks / Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa / Calvin Harris, Katy Perry & Pharrell Williams / Calvin Harris & Sam Smith / Camel / Caravan / Celeste / The Charlatans / Chemical Brothers / Christy Moore / Corinne Bailey-Rae / Cream / The Cure / Daryl Hall & John Oates / Deep Purple / Derek and The Dominoes / Dexy’s Midnight Runners / Diana Ross / Dio / Dirty Pretty Things / Donovan / Doves / Duffy / Dusty Springfield / Ed Sheeran / Emeli Sandé / Eric Carmen / Eric Clapton / The Ethiopians / Eurythmics / The Fall / Fairport Convention / Frankie Goes To Hollywood / ightened Rabbit / Gary Moore / Gaz Coombes / Genesis / George Ezra / Graham Parker / Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five / Gregory Isaacs / Helloween / Inspiral Carpets / Iggy Pop / J Hus / Jacob Collier / Jake Bugg / The Jam / Jamie T / Joe Cocker / John Martyn / John Martyn & Beverley Martyn / John Mayall / Joni Mitchell / Julian Cope / Justin Hayward and John Lodge / Karl Hyde / Kate Nash / Katie J Pearson / Kelis / Kid Creole / Kings of Convenience / Koffee / The LA’s / Laura Marling / Level 42 / Led Zeppelin / Lindisfarne / Linton Kwesi-Johnson / Louis Tomlinson / Ludovico Einaudi / The Lumineers / McAlmont & Butler / Madness / Manic Street Preachers / Marianne Faithfull / Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus / Mark Knopfler / Meat Loaf / Melt Yourself Down / The Members / The Mighty Diamonds / Mike and The Mechanics / Mike Oldfield / MJ Cole Moby / Monty Python / The Moody Blues / Motorhead / Mott The Hoople / Nathaniel Rateliff / Nazareth / Neneh Cherry / New Order / Nicholas Briteli / Noah and The Whale / Nothing But Thieves / Nova Twins / Orchestra Manouevres in the Dark / Pale Fountains / Paloma Faith / Paul Weller/ Penguin Café Orchestra / Pete Townshend / Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane/ PiL / Pulp / Quincy Jones / Rag ‘n’ Bone Man / Rainbow / Rhys Lewis / Richard & Linda Thompson / Rick Wakeman / Rizzle Kicks / Robbie Williams / Robyn / Roger Waters / Ronnie James / Rory Gallagher / The Ruts / Sam Cooke / Sandie Shaw / Sandie Shaw & The Smiths / Sandy Denny / Scissor Sisters / The Scorpions / Scott Walker / Selecta’s Choice Series / Sex Pistols / Shed Seven / The Silvertones / Simple Minds / The Skatalites / Sparks / The Slits / Soul II Soul / The Specials / The Spice Girls / Squeeze / Status Quo / Stereophonics / Steve Winwood / The Stone Roses / Supertramp / T-Rex / Tame Impala / Tangerine Dream / Teardrop Explodes / Tears For Fears / The Teskey Brothers / Therapy? / Thin Lizzy / Tom Speight / Travis / UB40 / The Undertones / Underworld / UNKLE / The Vaccines / The Vamps / Van Morrison / Various: Blue Note / Various Folk / Various Dance - John Morales and others / Various – Little Big Lies / Various – NOW Yearbooks 1980 - 1985 / Various – The Wanderer / Various – Soul / Various – Sound of the Suburbs / The Verve / The Wedding Present / The Who / Wilko Johnson / You Me At Six

See here for full Omega Auctions catalogue list of featured titles.

[medusasbush]

read in february 2023

articles (ones behind a paywall are linked through webpage archive):

I'm Intersex. Here's How I Have Sex.

What Is a Nepotism Baby Anyway? (reminded me of the hollywood inbreeding 101 portion of Carrie FIsher's Wishful Drinking)

Your Stuff is Actually Worse Now: How the cult of consumerism ushered in an era of badly made products.

If You Think Tacos Aren't Healthy, We Have News for You

Deeper into Movies: What Have I Been Watching

How Dolly Parton became a secular American saint

Springtime for the Confederacy

Comedy movies rarely make it to theaters today. Here’s why.

A Short Guide to Living More Pointlessly

Another Side of Rupert Grint

What Is a Narcissist?

Videos of Police Brutality Against Black People Are a Futile Spectacle in White America

Trump proposes genocidal national ban on transgender existence if he wins 2024

The super-kinkeepers (& kinkeeping matrix)

The soothing, slightly sinister world of productivity hacks

We're Already Living in the Metaverse

Doc Filmmakers Reckon with the Industry's Murky Ethics

The Band That Best Captures the Sound of the ’70s

The Number One's: Blondie's Rapture

Meat Loaf Owned the Power Ballad

Dating apps have created a culture of entitlement

America's Dangerous Obsession with Innocence

The War on Bollywood

Restoring the Sex and Rage to Jane Austen

Modern Porn Education Is Totally Unprepared for Modern Porn

Parents Need to Talk to Their Kids About Porn

The Porn Crisis That Isn't

Why Porn Has Gotten So Rough

Memoria and the Limitations of Ebert’s Empathy Machine

Is it Possible for a Fanboy to Be a Good Critic?

The people weeding out first dates with a questionnaire

The Anxious Style of American Parenting

Big commitments loosely held

The Junkification of Amazon

The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

From Tokyo to Paris, Parents Tell Americans to Chill

I guess this turned into a love letter

'Lord' of racism?

The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero’s Journey?

AMC is about to make paying for theater seats more like booking an airline ticket

The mounting, undeniable Me Too backlash

Lucky girl syndrome and the endless rebranding of “The Secret”

Stuck in 2020, pretending it’s 2014

No Sex for You: Life in the metaverse will be tacky, prudish, and dull

Sarah's Day in the Life

The Last of Us: Perspectives from an epidemiologist and a plant scientist

Marriage Is Not a Replacement For the Social Safety Net

Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande, Madonna: The Holy Trinity of Famous Italian American Culture Vultures

How Christopher Columbus Became an Italian-American Icon

Everyone Is Grotesque and No One Is Turned On

Madonna's Face is Not Subversive

The NYT Op-Ed I Just Took A Kill Fee For.

The Whale does all but "giving a voice" to fat people

I Tried Jane Fonda’s ‘80s Workout Tapes To See How They Hold Up.

De-Influencing De-Influencing

TikTok’s De-Influencers Tell You What Not to Buy

The Curious Tale of the Midsize Queen

The Tragedy of Woke Shakespeare

books

the names up on the harp: irish myth and legend by P.J. Lynch, Marie Heaney (reread)

bitten: dark erotic stories by susie bright (started)

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi! I hope you’ll answer this question bc it bothers me quite a lot.. https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-now-that-BTS-are-partial-owners-of-Big-Hit-Entertainment do you think it is true what the second person (Christine Herman) said? After reading this, i started to wonder…what if BTS does really have only profit in mind while doing new projects these days? Maybe they don’t really care anymore about creative and meaningful lyrics and sound? With Butter and PTD…all this generic music sung in English. Of course they say “we wanted to make fans feel good”, “butter and ptd represent who we are” and all these things fans want to hear but.. do you really think it’s true? moreover, don’t get me wrong, i don’t find product placement in their reality shows as something terrible, i believe this is a normal thing, however, nowadays the members really film ads and do marketing a lot. so yeah, for some reason i began to question their integrity dhsjjss i hope you will understand from where my concerns come from and won’t find this ask stupid sjdjjdjd

After reading that persons answer I can immediately tell you that I basically don't agree with an overwhelming majority of what she said (even more so since a lot of it just makes her sound like a manti that hates the company and basically would want them to make music for free or something). Generally I don’t agree with most of the opinions this person holds, and also Quora really isn’t a good source for info or good opinions, most of it is written by mantis, haters, and toxic shippers with an agenda so most ARMY will tell you to stay as far away from that website as possible.

Anyway, her focus in that answer was on money, since BTS are shareholders (and how that’s a conflict of interest despite other artists doing the exact thing but no one really cares or ever thinks about it), but what she failed to consider and note was that Big Hit Music, so BTS' label, isn't part of HYBE in the sense that shareholding has no baring on it since BHM is private. So while BTS profit off of HYBE doing well, and have a small percentage of a voice as shareholders, that has nothing to do with BHM in the classical sense, even if BHM's earnings reflect well on HYBE numbers and the shareholder money. 

BHM was made private to ensure their artistry would remain untouched, that was the whole point of that.

Even if they weren't HYBE shareholders, take Namjoon as example. He has more than 170 KOMCA credits, is among the top 3 Korean artists with the most credits and is also the youngest of them all. It is said that his earnings from that alone can sustain his family for 3 generations over. Look at Hobi and Chicken Noodle Soup, that song was a hit and he paid the original creator of that song 2 million dollars upfront and earned a lot back due to how successful it was. Same goes for Hope World which, again, was and is still immensely successful. Look at Yoongi and his work both as prod. SUGA, featuring artist SUGA, and as Agust D, as well as the credits he holds for his work on BTS songs (giving him as well a total of over 100 KOMCA credits, just like Hobi). Bangtan have worked and continue to work extremely hard for their music, put their heart and souls into it, and it shows even if their style changed as they grew older and more mature.

Yes, money is a major motivator, but looking at the above paragraph, do you really peg the members as these corrupt money hungry sellouts with no music related integrity? Who would need to sign major deals and would throw away their passion to just release empty shells of music for the sole reason of money? Am I naive enough to believe that they don't care about money? Of course not, we live in a capitalist society and even if BTS wouldn't care about money anymore at this point, HYBE very much does, and yet still I can't find it in me to agree with any of what was said in that answer that person wrote.

More below the cut:

And that point about how Hyundai cars were sold out because of BTS, isn't that the point why literally any company ever hires celebrities to advertise and endorse their product? And sure, again, I'm certain they earned a lot on these deals, they aren't the first or last or only ones in the history of ever to do so. Besides, look at JK and what he's done for small companies, or Tae who wore a brooch made my a small creator at the airport which catapulted that creator into the eyes of millions of ARMYs enough so that they could move to a proper studio and earn money with their work. Or the modern hanboks JK wore which led to the brand being able to move into actual stores in malls because of their sudden new popularity and demand. Or him wearing a bracelet that helps whales with a percentage of the money from the sales of said bracelet. And for all of that JK and Tae didn't earn any money at all. JK himself said that he's more conscious of the brand he wears now because he wants to help smaller businesses in these trying times, not because they pay him to do so (especially since they would never be able to afford that), but because he's aware of the influence he has and how he can use it to help others. Sound very much like a capitalistic villain, right?

As for the product placement bit, have you been on YouTube recently? Have you noticed that many, if not most, YouTube videos by “bigger” creators (and by that I mean even people who are around the 100k subscriber mark) begin with them thanking whoever sponsored that particular video and give you a scripted minute to two minute long ad before getting into the actual topic of the video? And In The SOOP featuring Chilsung Cider, FILA clothes and the random mention of how good Samsung phones are isn’t much different from it, though really, if you’re not someone interested in fashion much, would you really notice or care that they wore FILA? It’s just...clothes? If it weren’t a BTS related show, would you even notice it much? And it’s not even like they mentioned those brands every five minutes or anything, just a few times, which sure sounded a bit out of place at times, but personally I thought it was easy to look past. That’s just how things work nowadays and it’s odd for people to behave like somehow BTS are the first and only ones to use product placements despite literally every movie and show doing it in subtle and less so manners.

The answer by that person you sent also mentioned the Hyundai song for their car IONIQ and, unsurprisingly, that person wrote it off as just some commercial jingle but I’d actually disagree with that. Not to sound like a Hyundai and Samsung stan, which I am neither of, but I actually think those two knew best how to utilize the artist they have spent millions on signing a deal with. Hyundai didn’t just write them off as pretty faces with a millions strong fan army behind them and that’s it, they remembered that they are musicians so they gave them a song and made a whole music video for it as well. And say what you will, it is a good song. Then, just a few days ago, Samsung stepped up their game and we were given Over The Horizon Prod by SUGA of BTS. For those who aren’t Samsung users, Over The Horizon is their signature ringtone and basically their company sound, and over the years different artists were asked to make their own version of it. And this time they reached out to Yoongi and asked if he’d like to do it as well. It’s kind of a big deal. Sure, Butter is used in one of their commercials much the way Dynamite was last year, but that’s beside the point. Would that person make the same claim about Imagine Dragons whose song Believer is also part of the ads for the new Samsung phones? I have my doubts.

Furthermore, and I don't want this to come across as mean toward you but, I think it is uncalled for to question their artistic integrity based on a total of 3 (three) English songs when last year alone we received 50+ songs, most of which were in Korean, among them the entirety of BE which was, according to the members, the album they were most involved in ever when it comes to both music and everything around it.

You can dislike their English songs, that’s more than fine, they have a very extensive discography you can listen to instead, but questioning their integrity based on them doing something that most, if not every, artist on their level does (as in sign ad deals with brands etc) is a bit much if you ask me. Does that mean indie artists whose songs get picked up for commercials (or for Netflix shows or movies) and thus it catapults them into the mainstream are also just money hungry people with no integrity and ones who don’t care about their music? Or is that, again, just a standard Bangtan is held to (as in that their integrity is questioned based on everything, even the most trivial/normal things) that only applies to them and no one else?

In the recent Weverse Magazine article about how Permission to Dance came to be there is a lot of talk about not only that song but also Butter and Dynamite, among the things being discussed and talked about they mentioned how the original lyrics for Butter were much more materialistic but that the members didn't like that so they asked for that to be changed. Likewise the original lyrics for Permission to Dance, as you'd expect from the penmanship of Ed Sheeran, were much more romantic, almost proposal like, which wasn't what the members wanted either so it was, again, adjusted in a way that would fit what they, as well as the A&R team, wanted. While you may not like these songs, they still had a say in them to a certain degree, could say yes or no and ask for adjustments. Why else would PTD take eight months?

While they might outsource their English songs, their main focus, so their Korean (as well as Japanese) discography is still centered around them, their lyrics, their songs, their sound. Of course you’ll also find outside producers and some lyricists on those as well, because that’s how music works these days, as in collaboratively, that doesn’t change anything at large. Their integrity is still very much there, their hearts are still in it, what other reason would any of them have to say that they want to continue for a long time, for Yoongi to say they want to figure out how to make their career last as long as possible, for JK to say that he wants to sing forever?

Admin 2 also wanted me to add that in their opinion, to a certain degree (though not fully of course), their English songs are like a way to laugh at and expose how shallow the English-centric music industry is. As in, while they made music in Korean with deep and meaningful lyrics, the US industry didn’t care but once they switched to easy to listen to sound with easy to understand English lyrics, they suddenly paid attention, are played on the radio, and even received a Grammy nomination which they wouldn’t have gotten for a Korean song ( A1: regardless how much Black Swan or Spring Day really would’ve deserved it...). 

[rjzimmerman]

I debated whether to post this photo, because it’s gruesome and sad, but decided to do so because it’s part of a larger, interesting story. Like grandma used to say, “That’s nature.” But nature, as it changes with changes in the climate.

The photographer, Don Gutoski, won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015 award for his image “Tale of Two Foxes,” showing us the consequences of the struggle for survival in subarctic Canada.

But the larger story is part of an Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled, “3,000 Miles From Glasgow, a Town and Its Polar Bears Face the Future,” about Churchill, Manitoba, which calls itself the “Polar Bear Capital of the World.” The story is about how Churchill is adapting the climate change, and how climate change is affecting the local ecosystem.

The photographer of the foxes photo explained his photo in an article about his photo published by the Nature History Museum:

Gutoski, an emergency-ward doctor, was on a photography trip in the Cape Churchill area. Here, in Wapusk National Park, the ranges of the red fox and the Arctic fox overlap. He saw the red fox chasing prey and soon realised it was hunting an Arctic fox.

'By the time I got close enough to capture the event, the fight was over and the victor was feeding', said Gutoski. He took several photos of the hunter feasting on its prey, and eventually the red fox dragged away the remains to store for a later meal.

Jury member and National Geographic magazine’s senior editor for natural history projects, Kathy Moran, said of the winning image, 'What might simply be a straightforward interaction between predator and prey struck the jury as a stark example of climate change, with red foxes encroaching on Arctic fox territory.

And this, from the New York Times Op-Ed, about the effects of climate change on the Hudson Bay ecosystem:

Warmer weather is endangering Arctic species, in part by opening the gates for other animals, like red foxes, wolves and brown bears, as well as a host of smaller species, to move north. “We haven’t found anything that isn’t changing” in the Hudson Bay ecosystem, said David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba who studies climate change as scientific director of the Churchill Marine Observatory. “From the viruses and the bacteria right up to the whales, every single thing is being affected by climate change.”

One immediate impact of global warming is that the [polar] bears are spending more time around Churchill as the sea ice forms later in the year and melts earlier. On land, polar bears lose about 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of their weight each day. As ice season shrinks, the bears face the double pain of fewer days of hunting and more days of fasting. Between 1980 and 2019, the weight of the average pregnant polar bear in the Churchill region declined by 15 percent, according to Nick Lunn, a Canadian government scientist. New births are in decline. The number of polar bears in western Hudson Bay fell by 30 percent from 1987 to 2016, and some experts think the population already is in terminal decline.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

#20yrsago Ed Felten’s radical technology agenda https://web.archive.org/web/20021127140640/https://www.chronicle.com/free/v49/i14/14a02701.htm

#20yrsago Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker/Frodo Baggins https://craphound.com/images/frodoharryskywalker_furymix.jpg

#15yrsago How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook https://web.archive.org/web/20071128035044/http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204203573

#15yrsago Facebook privacy meltdown: company removed opt-out prior to launch https://web.archive.org/web/20081202155556/http://www.news.com/the-social/8301-13577_3-9823063-36.html

#15yrsago Voice of the London Underground canned for blogging funny fake announcement audio https://www.metafilter.com/66883/The-Voice-of-the-Underground-is-silenced

#15yrsago Mr Splashy Pants in the lead for Greenpeace whale-naming competition https://web.archive.org/web/20071121164456/http://vote.greenpeace.org/11/12/results

#15yrsago Universal Music CEO: Record industry can’t tell when geeks are lying to us about technology https://www.vulture.com/2007/11/universal_music_ceo_doug_morris.html

#10yrsago Toronto mayor Rob Ford is out https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mayor-rob-ford-will-fight-removal-ruling-tooth-and-nail-1.1187334

#10yrsago Internet of the Dead: the net’s collision course with death https://locusmag.com/2012/11/cory-doctorow-the-internet-of-the-dead/

#5yrsago Reverse-engineering a connected Furby toy, revealing its disturbing security defects https://web.archive.org/web/20171124134624/https://www.contextis.com/blog/dont-feed-them-after-midnight-reverse-engineering-the-furby-connect

#5yrsago Rightscorp finished Sept 2017 with $3,147 in the bank, warns investors it will likely have to shut down without more cash https://torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-revenue-from-piracy-settlements-down-48-in-2017-171125/

#5yrsago Arrogant overreach: Ajit Pai’s plan to totally destroy net neutrality may doom him in court https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutrality-fcc.html">

#5yrsago A generation after American “libertarians” helped with mass disappearances, torture and murder of left-wing activists, Frente Amplio surge in Chilean elections https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/from-street-protests-to-kingmaker-chile-s-new-left-comes-of-age

#5yrsago Investigators claim that Oxbridge and other top UK universities are operating a massive, illegal surveillance dragnet aimed at students/alumni and their friends and families https://qz.com/1133808/universities-including-oxford-and-cambridge-are-accused-of-illegal-spying

#5yrsago For the next year, TV, newspapers, and the web will run massive ads from tobacco companies admitting that their products kill people, that they were engineered to be addictive, and that they covered this up https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-26/big-tobacco-forced-to-advertise-admissions-in-us/9194960

#5yrsago Melt a Nazi with the Major Toht candle https://web.archive.org/web/20171204030654/https://firebox.com/Melting-Toht-Candle/p6706

#1yrago UK ICO: surveillance advertising is dead https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/26/ico-ico/#market-structuring

[laurelnose]

monster! parasites!

you know how a few days ago i said we weren’t going to talk about monster parasites? that was a fucking lie.

the basis of my monster parasite thoughts are: every organism comes with its own internal ecosystem that goes with them everywhere. it’s like having built-in friends! ergo, when monsters crossed over to the witcher dimension during the Conjunction of Spheres they must have brought many new and delightful parasites with them. you know what fiend manes are full of? MITES. you know what drowners got on their skin? COPEPODS. what can we do with this information? anything we want.

i promise there are no pictures below the cut. i have tried to put warnings on all my sources but click any of the links below at your own risk. warning for internal and external parasites of animals, monsters, humans, and witchers; parasites altering the behavior of their hosts; and probably general body horror. if you read the eating-liver-flukes post that’s probably a decent baseline for how revolting you will find this post. 

also, super obvious bias towards aquatic parasites as referents. my degree is fisheries science not terrestrial ecology so that’s primarily what i’m drawing on even though nearly all of the witcher monsters are terrestrial. there is a TON i’m missing here bc of that bias! specifically i really wish i could talk about how parasites of invasive species often act as co-invaders with their hosts and monsters definitely count as invasive species and would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent but i don’t know enough about terrestrial ecosystems to speculate properly. (ETA: while i still think monsters would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent, I don’t actually think they’re invasive species anymore!) hopefully you enjoy it anyways!

it is, hilariously, canon that parasites are used for alchemy. according to The Last Wish, the Temple of Melitele’s grotto grows a bunch of different “rare specimens—those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philters and a sorcerer’s decoctions” and some of those specimens are, uh, “clusters of nematodes.” nematodes being parasitic roundworms. this is really funny because it’s so fucking weird. also everything else in this description is a plant or a fungus and nematodes are definitely animals? i choose to believe the world makes sense and nematodes aren’t plants in the witcherverse. therefore parasites are alchemical ingredients, it’s canon, give me more witchers digging through monster intestines in search of worms and put a nematode colony in the basement of corvo bianco please and thank you

this actually leads right into my personal favorite drowner headcanon (hello yes i’m tumblr user Socks Laurelnose and i am always thinking about drowners)—you know those bits where drowners kind of have red blotches in their skin? those are nematodes, actually, because i said so. the reference is Clavinema mariae, a nematode that infests English sole. the worms are basically harmless but they’re dark red and you can see them through the skin. it freaks people out and makes it hard to sell sole. (IMAGE WARNING: a picture of an infected flatfish. it looks mostly normal but there’s a dark red lesion near the fin.) said lesion is probably a coiled-up Clavinema. sole have so many of these, it’s not even funny (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING for worms visible underneath skin of flatfishes. relevant images pointing out exactly how many worms on page 5). “but the red parts of drowners could just be flushed from blood”—no. worms. 

okay that was my main specific-parasite-for-specific-monster headcanon (except also succubi probably have a unique species of lice for their hairy legs. but that’s barely even a headcanon, basically all terrestrial vertebrates have a unique species of lice.) i wanted to start with it because i think that everyone should feel free to arbitrarily assign a totally benign but conceptually gross worm to their favorite monsters. why not, yanno? also it probably sets the tone for the rest of this post. 

carrying on: “what monsters might have nematodes, besides drowners,” you may be wondering? probably all of them! all of them are full of nematodes. nematodes are fucking everywhere. allow me to share a deeply unsettling quote from nematologist Nathan Cobb: 

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

jesus christ! thanks nathan, I hate it. nematodes are usually both benign and microscopic, but we’re talking witchers, we want some parasites we can fuckin get our hands on. sperm whale placentas are sometimes infested with nematodes up to 28 feet long but only a centimeter in diameter (Wikipedia link, no images). like an incredibly awful spaghetti! we don’t really seem to know if this bothers the sperm whales. also, i unfortunately do not know enough about the size of whale organs to tell you how big the placenta is in relation to this worm. the point is: real big monster? REAL BIG NEMATODES.

moving on from nematodes—okay, you know, since i mentioned eating deer liver flukes at the start of this post, let’s just go there. real life flukes max out at about 3 inches long, but hypothetical monster flukes could be much bigger and equally edible if desired. (if you’re wondering what a liver fluke would taste like: the flukes feed on the liver and they have very few organs of their own, so they would taste basically just like liver, just also long and flat like a fruit roll-up. if you’re going there, a witcher should not eat any flatworm live. if they’re digging them out of cockatrice livers or whatnot they should kill them before munching or save to cook later. it would probably be safe to eat one live, but you know that cliche “their tongues battled for dominance”? handling a live flatworm is like a handling very strong and energetic tongue complete with slime, okay, it wouldn’t be nice.)

parasites often need more than one host to complete the life cycle—for instance, Leucochloridium paradoxum (VIDEO WARNING: you may have seen this, it’s the one that makes snail eyes pulsating & green) has a bird stage and a snail stage, and it makes the snails look and act really weird in order to attract the birds. parasites altering host behavior to attract the next host in the life cycle is pretty well-documented; for instance, there’s an eye fluke that can make fish swim near the surface where predators can eat them (New Scientist article link, images of a microscope slide & a normal-looking fish) and a tapeworm that does the same and makes the dark silver fish turn white (JSTOR article, no images). i posit that at least some monsters are accompanied by “ill omens” of animals looking or acting strangely because they become infected with a stage of one of the monster’s parasites—usually, the mechanism is that internal parasites lay eggs that are passed in feces & transmitted that way. witchers who are up on their parasite ecology might be able to identify what monster is hanging around by observing exactly what kind of freaky-looking animals or animal behavior is going on around the area!

(if geralt is involved you may desire to have him explain this totally non-supernatural mechanism for abrupt animal appearance or behavioral changes at excruciating length to the chagrin of all present. or maybe that’s just what i desire. it would be funny okay)

potentially even more hyperspecific application of dual-stage parasites: there’s a dinoflagellate parasite that, when it infects crabs, makes the meat chalky and bitter like aspirin (Smithsonian link, images of healthy crab and microscope slide). geralt hunts down dinner, digs in, and immediately sighs and grabs jaskier’s portion away from him to the poet’s complete bafflement before going to get his swords because judging by the flavor there’s definitely a shishiga nest in this forest. 

like. parasites are one of THE most hyperspecific things in biology. the majority of them have very specific hosts and life cycles, many of them are completely unique to a species, if you think a fictional parasite is too specific to be plausible you’re probably wrong, make it even more specific. “the witcher monster lore is so hyperspecific lol” IT AIN’T TRULY HYPERSPECIFIC UNTIL YOU CAN IDENTIFY EACH MONSTER SPECIES BY ITS UNIQUE PARASITIC LOAD, OKAY.

and, with regards to behavior-affecting parasites, before anyone brings up Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps, as of 2008): yeah that sure is a thing! if you weren’t aware, just a couple of years ago we found out it actually is not a mind control fungus!! it bypasses the brain entirely and affects the muscles (Arstechnica article, Atlantic article—photos of fuzzy ants and electron microscope pictures of fungi). or as Ed Yong puts it, “The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver's seat, but the fungus has the wheel.” which is. significantly worse than the brain thing. awesome!! i bet there would absolutely be similar fungal parasites of endrega and arachasae. real Ophiocordyceps still very much does not affect humans, but you know what, if plants can be cursed into becoming archespores and cultivated by mages i see no reason why mages could not also curse endrega fungus to affect humans, just saying

aaaand quickly back to hyperspecificity: monsters in different geographical areas having different abilities because of their symbionts. forktails in vicovaro acquire a bioluminescent symbiont in their diet that forktails in other parts of the continent can’t get, and they can create flashes of light? that’s sure gonna fuck a witcher on Cat up when he comes in the cave expecting a normal forktail. (geographic location affecting bioluminescence is a thing that actually happens in midshipman fish—Wikipedia link, no parasites.) geographically-dependent symbionts can also produce different toxins and such for their hosts! this isn’t exactly a parasitism thing per se (although parasites are also symbionts because ‘symbiosis’ refers to two organisms in close association not two organisms in positive association) but like. it’s cool okay ecology is so cool

writing fic and tired of all these same-old monsters-of-the-week? quick and easy way to spice up either the horror factor or just make the hunt stand out slightly: just add parasites!! i know i’ve read fics where monsters were described with distinguishing old wounds. you can do the same with parasites! i would fucking swoon over a detail like an ancient water hag’s eyes glowing in the dark, one of them marred by a dangling parasite—geralt notes the blind spot and presses his advantage. (Wikipedia link, no images: this one is referencing an aquatic copepod called Ommatokoita.) also, please put barnacles on skelliger drowners, i want it so badly. just—some percentage of monsters should be Extra Grody on the inside and/or the outside, that’s how nature works. spicing up a mundane hunt by making the monster a little extra gross for its species is Valid, is what I’m saying.

also, every single time frozen specimens with obvious fungal/ectoparasite infections come into the lab we absolutely always take extra close-up pictures of those suckers and make sure everyone else gets to see them. witchers bringing field sketches and notes of the weirdest shit they found on the path back for winter. lambert declares they’ll never know if this alleged fiend tumor was a fungus or mange because geralt sucks at drawing. eskel, the man who hauled a katakan corpse all the way up the mountain so he could dissect it, produces actual skin samples of his own encounters for examination, possibly in the middle of dinner. this elicits mixed reactions.

quick detour into preservation, since I went there—witchers are probably immune to parasites that infect humans by virtue of having pretty different biology to begin with, and probably immune to parasitic infections from other sources by virtue of superhumanly boosted immune systems and all the poison they put into their bodies on a regular basis. picking up a monster parasite would probably not be a big deal for witchers, either in that they have total immunity or that they would only be minimally and briefly affected, but the field of monster biology is likely such that they probably just don’t actually know what would happen to them in the majority of cases. this has potential as a source of battle stories and/or stories intended to freak out trainees, i think. therefore, out of caution, a witcher harvesting/preparing parts for alchemy might want to be sure to treat them first. personally i think all monster parts should be preserved immediately anyways to avoid attracting necrophages, and given that alchemical concoctions in witcherverse are alcohol-based, preservation in strong alcohol is probably the best way to maintain potency and kill basically everything. (cons: alcohol is SUPER heavy and jars are fragile. tissues or organs which are thicker than perhaps half an inch or an inch require additional preparation for the alcohol to penetrate properly. other preservation methods are more efficient for travel. depends on how soon your witcher intends to use or offload their stash.)

also, here’s an absolutely wild marine parasite that would make it worth a witcher’s while to make certain everything was dead! pearlfishes are long eel-like fishes that live inside the anus and respiratory organs (which are attached to the anus) of sea cucumbers, and they have pretty nasty teeth (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING: dissected sea cucumbers literally stuffed to the gills with pearlfish). the highest number of pearlfish discovered in a single sea cucumber was sixteen (ResearchGate article, free PDF; no images). a different fact: we discovered tiger sharks eat each other in the womb because a researcher got bitten by a fetal tiger shark while he was dissecting the mother (NYT link, no images or parasites). what i’m saying is: parasites are often very small relative to the host and usually harmless to things rummaging around inside, but what if the monster’s parasites were also monstrous. give me a monster that has to be very dead or when you start rummaging around for alchemy ingredients the things in its intestines will lunge out and bite you. 

what happens if a human becomes infected with a monster parasite? bad things, probably, i mentioned before that parasites in the wrong host, if they don’t just die, often super fuck things up internally (if you get tapeworms outside of the intestine where they’re supposed to be... it’s not good y’all. CDC link, no images). host-jumping for parasites is actually fairly rare since most of them are highly specialized for their hosts, but it does happen. humans are very not my strong suit so i’m not going to dwell on this but it is entirely possible that something like necrophage infestations or monster-contaminated water sources or just being a little too involved on a witcher’s monster hunt could produce strange parasitic diseases in humans. up to you how well-known and/or how clouded in superstition these effects might be! opportunities for hideous whump? gross body horror? messy and horrifying parasite-driven behavioral changes? terrifying and potentially prolonged uncertainty over what the issue actually is because of minimal information about parasites? the decision whether or not to dose with a witcher potion? excellent possibilities.

okay last one, just because i think it would be fun: myxosporeans and sirens. Myxos are a parasitic relative of jellyfish that produce whirling disease in baby salmon. whirling disease causes neurological and skeletal damage and has a pretty high mortality rate, but it also makes infected fish do this, well, whirling behavior and it’s honestly fascinating. (video link: a pretty normal-looking young trout spinning like a fuckin top). imagine a siren doing that in the sky. i just think myxos are neat!

tl;dr: extra grody hyperspecific biology of monsters!!!

[bookclub4m]

Episode 121 - Biology

This episode we’re talking about Biology Non-Fiction! We discuss epidemiology, genetics, microbes, kissing, sex, and more! Plus: using physical bookmarks when reading ebooks!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

Acquired Traits by Raissa Berg

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us by Sheril Kirshenbaum

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

Clean: The New Science of Skin by James Hamblin

What Happens When You Quit Showering? 

Don't Just Sit There: Transitioning to a Standing and Dynamic Workstation for Whole-Body Health by Katy Bowman

Foundation: Redefine Your Core, Conquer Back Pain, and Move with Confidence by Eric Goodman 

The Cure for Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness by Timothy Caulfield

Other Media We Mentioned

After Man: A Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon

Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future by Dougal Dixon

The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution by Dougal Dixon

30-Second Biology: The 50 Most Thought-Provoking Theories Of Life, Each Explained In Half A Minute

Know It All Biology: The 50 Most Elemental Concepts in Biology, Each Explained in Under a Minute

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

If Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining a Human Body by James Hamblin

Links, Articles, and Things

Possum Every Hour

Cégep (Wikipedia)

Why Is Poop Brown?

RJ’s Instagram post

Plague doctor (Wikipedia)

Naukograd (science city) (Wikipedia)

Lamarckism (Wikipedia)

Lysenkoism (Wikipedia)

Genetics and The Modern Synthesis: Crash Course History of Science #35

Cybernetics (Wikipedia)

Biology Non-Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide by Alondra Oubré

The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female and Intersex by Hida Viloria and Maria Nieto

Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution by Anurag Agrawal

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, 16th we’ll be talking about Bad Book Reading Habits!

Join us again on Tuesday, April 6th we’ll be talking about the genre of Psychological Horror! (With a special guest co-host!)

[rhgeog2260]

Why Do Whales Beach Themselves?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-do-whales-beach-themselves

Key message

The article that caught my attention this past week is the National Geographic post titled “Why do whales beach themselves? We’re partially to blame”. This was written by Melissa Hobson, and published in the NatGeo journal on March 29, 2021. 

The article starts with a profound quote - “Every year thousands of whales, dolphins, and other marine animals wash up on beaches around the world. This phenomenon—called beaching or stranding—occurs among both healthy individuals as well as injured (or dead) animals that are driven ashore by prevailing winds.” 

Several potential answers are offered up by this article. First, topography - some areas of the ocean “trap” wildlife, including events such as tidal risings and lowerings. Second, natural causes - the article cites research that suggests that animals who are in pain, elderly, or otherwise compromised might not have the strength to fight against the currents, and allow themselves to wash up naturally. 

Finally, human causes are explored. One example includes noisy oceans from naval travel, which can effect marine mammal’s ability to echolocate, and futhermore making them unable to equalize their ears while diving. Pollution is of course explored as well - chemical traces in water can affect an animal as much as physical plastic. This leads some to beach themselves in the aforementioned method, as they are too sick to keep swimming. 

Sources   

Hobson references several professional organizations in this article. Sources include the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP), the Cetacean Research and Rescue Unit, and The British Diver’s Marine Life Rescue. These are experts in the field, who have hands on research experience. I am therefore comfortable saying that Validity and Authenticity is the main method used in this article, as we discussed in Week 9 of GEOG*2260 (Hooykaas, 2021).

Additionally, the textbook has taught us about legitimacy (Hay, 2016). Considering the sources are directly “on the front lines” of this issue (sometimes even SCUBA diving underwater to take part in the daily lives of these amazing creatures), I can confidently say that they are legitimate in nature. 

Consumer expectations

After reading this article, readers may be inclined to reflect on their personal contribution to both noise and physical pollution of the oceans. Personally, with my love of marine biology, I am intrigued by this beaching behaviour and am inclined to look further into the subject. 

References

Hay, Iain. Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Fourth ed., Oxford, 2016

Hobson, M. (2021, March 28). Why are whales beaching themselves? We’re partially to blame. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-do-whales-beach-themselves

Hooykaas, (2021). Week 9 and 10. GEOG2260, W21. University of Guelph.

[norsereadalong]

Eyrbyggja Saga Prompts Week 11

Welcome to Week 11 of Eyrbyggja Saga! This week (Dec. 7th 2020) we’re reading chapters 52-58, as laid out in Hermann Pálsson’s translation. This week’s section starts off as follows:

 The farm at Frodriver had a large living room with a bed-closet behind it, as was usual in those days….Three of Ospak’s men were killed in the fight and one of Thorir’s, while a good many on either side were wounded.

Að Fróðá var eldaskáli mikill og lokrekkja innar af eldaskálanum sem þá var siður….Á þeim fundi féllu þrír menn af Óspaki en einn af Þóri en margir urðu sárir af hvorumtveggjum.

 Below are some prompts to invoke discussion. You don’t have to answer them (unless you want to), and you’re welcome to ask questions of your own for the group to discuss! We ask that you participate at least once a week in one form or another, be it through a response paragraph, fanart, etc., but you’re free to choose whatever topic you’d like. Remember to DM a link to your responses to @edderkopper so we can find them!

Alright, hope y’all are ready to talk a lot about ghosts, seals, and whales! Oh My!

1.     Right, so. Weird phenomenon galore! Urðarmáni, also known as a moon of destiny (weird moon), is an astrological omen that foreshadows death. Specifically, this is in relation to the people at Frodriver that take ill. What common theme can you find with regards to all these past omens? Are they all supernatural? Morally ambiguous? Meant to punish, correct, or just forewarn?

2.     Tis’ a cold season these Icelanders are enduring—what about the setting and timing is important for this particular string of haunting?

3.     How does the author describe haunting and how do others get dragged into being ghostly specters? So far, we’ve seen draugr-like behavior born out of miserly mean behavior, and revenge. Is this the same protocol as before or is it weirdly parasitic? Where exactly might these ghosts have come from?

4.     In your opinion which haunting of a “creature” has been the spookiest—and does that supernatural creature represent anything or speak to the Old Norse culture in some significant way? (It’s okay, you can admit that the seal scared you a little, happens to the best of us).  All answers and considerations welcome, and remember, this saga was written during a time of internal strife! 

5.     Thorodd and his men wash up on shore, having drowned the night before and Thorir Wood-Leg and his buried friends join them from the grave—how does the community eradicate the ghost problem, and what does this say about the structure and values of Medieval Iceland at the time? In what did people readily put their faith in when faced with unwanted ghoulish guests?

6.      Why might driftage rights (washed up lumber, beached wales, etc.) be so crucial to Icelanders’ way of life and something that one is willing to die over? 

Further Free-Access Reading Below Pertaining to these chapters, and remember--you can DM @cousinnick and I’ll try to get you personally-tailored articles related to topics you’re curious about!

Ármann Jakobsson. “Vampires and Watchm: Categorizing the Mediaeval Icelandic Undead.”  Journal of English and Germanic Phi 2011, Vol. 110.3., pp. 281-300.

Ármann Jakobsson. The Troll inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North. Earth, Milky Way: Punctum Books, 2017.

Ármann, Jakobsson. “The Taxonomy of the Non-Existent: Some Medieval Icelandic Concepts of the Paranormal.” Fabula, 2013, vol. 54, pp. 199-213.

Kanerva, Kirsi. The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja Saga. 2011.

Kanerva, Kirsi. “Restless Dead or Peaceful Cadavers? Preparations for Death and Afterlife in Medieval Iceland.” Dying Prepared in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe. ed. Anu Lahtinen and Mia Korpiola, Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Laurin, Dan. The Everlasting Dead: Similarities Between The Holy Saint and the Horrifying Draugr. Scandia, 2020. N. 3.

Maraschi, Andrea. The Weird Story of an Icelandic Ghost Named Þórgunna. Medievalist.net   

Phelpstead, Carl. Ecocriticism and Eyrbyggja Saga. 2014. 

[f107group3]

Shipworm

I. Classification

Animalia

     Bilateria

         Protosomia

             Lophozoa

                 Mollusca

                     Bivalvia

                         Heterodonta

                             Myoida

                                Teredinidae

                                    Teredo

                                         Teredo navalis

Source: Integrated Taxonomic Information System, Teredo navalis (Linaeus, 1758)

II. Biology

Where WOOD we find them? The shipworm or the Teredo navalis can tolerate low salinity levels but usually flourish in marine environments, for both temperate and tropical regions. 

Basically known in all the oceans of the world, except for the Antarctic, most probably because this species can only tolerate temperatures ranging from 15 to 25 degrees Celsius (Didziulis, 2007). Shiver me timbers am I right? 

These animals are usually found living in submerged wood like in piers, ships or driftwood. 

Image retrieved from https://www.waterwereld.nu/shipworm.php

More often than not, shipworms deal a significant amount of damage to submerged wooden structures as they bore themselves into the wood, creating a series of holes that make the structure less stable.

Image retrieved from https://kids.wng.org/node/4220

WORM or NOT WORM… that is the question

Image retrieved from scholararchive.ohsu.edu Yes this species does look like a worm BUT it is actually a type of bivalve! There are two tri-lobed shells covering its head, using them to bore into the wood. The shells themselves have small teeths on it’s valves and are used as the main tool for boring (Mann & Gallagher, 1985). At the posterior end of the shipworm are two retractable siphons, the incurrent one act as another method of feeding, filtering planktons, and a way to obtain oxygen (Lane, 1959), While the excurrent one act as a waste and sperm exit (Didziulis, 2007). T. navalis can grow up to 20 - 25 cm, sometimes even 35 cm (Paalvast, P. and van der Velde G., 2011). How do they DO IT?

It is not clear but researchers inferred that the reproduction of T. navalis is polygynandrous, where the males would release the sperm and the females use their siphon to obtain it. (NIMPIS, 2011)  

 After being fertilized, the larvae of the T. navalis is incubated in a brood pouch found at the gill chamber of the female. After 2 weeks, they are released. These larva then proceed to feed on planktons, then they settle and form a shell which at first is singular but would later on be bivalved. They then reach sexual maturity at around 6 - 8 weeks after settlement (NIMPIS, 2011). 

T. navalis alternate sexes during the entirety of their life, half of their gonads are spermatocytes while the other half are ovocytes. (Coe, 1943)

What’s the grub?

Image retrieved from: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/mystery-5-foot-long-shipworm-just-got-stinkier/

T. navalis is known to mainly feed on wood, as they produce enzymes from nitrogen fixing bacteria that help them consume the nutrients found there. With the absence of wood however, shipworms feed on planktons by filtering them using their siphons (Paalvast and van der Velde, 2013).

The Invasion

Ever seen that Spongebob Squarepants episode where Bikini Bottom was attacked by worm-like organisms eating everything in its path? The one where they called them nematodes?

GIF retrieved from https://gifer.com/en/3aqX

Well we hate to break it to you Bikini Bottom fans, those aren’t nematodes, but actually shipworms! Obviously they over-exaggerated the episode for comedic effect, but they did get one thing right, the organism is indeed INVASIVE.  

It is believed that the shipworms came from the hulls of wooden ships that usually came from Europe (Carlton, 1999). These molluscs then proceeded to establish themselves and repopulate in different areas of the world, annoying ship-builders and dock workers alike for generations to come.

Image retrieved from: https://seahistory.org/sea-history-for-kids/ship-worm-clam/

III. Humans and Shipworms

The Shipworm or the Ship-Sinking Clam as known by many seafarers plagued docks and dikes in the early 1500s. It was in 1503 when two vessels of world renowned explorer, Christopher Columbus, sank because the common shipworm, Teredo navalis, decided to burrow in its hulls. Among other ships sunk by this pesky mollusk are: Essex (the Nantucket whaling ship that inspired the novel Moby Dick) and the Spanish Armada.

Because of their plague-like existence, early seafarers tried to counteract them with chemical concoctions that polluted waterways; dynamite in water; and even so far as deforestation in the hunt for finding repellent wood.

In other related news, Dan Distel and Reuben Shipway, specialists studying shipworms from Northeastern University believe that enzymes found in the shipworm can be utilized for biofuels from wood waste and that the antibiotic found in shipworms that help them maintain certain bacteria in their gills may offer treatment to human diseases.

IV. Interesting Facts

According to Britannica, the species under the genus Teredo are the most destructive among the shipworms.

Today, only some regions in Southeast Asia, notably in the Philippines and Thailand, harvest and consume shipworms. In these parts, shipworms are a delicacy (Willer David F., Aldridge David C. 2020).

In a news article by BBC News, it was reported that the first live specimens of the giant shipworm were found in the Philippines. The shipworms were found in Mindanao, Philippines but the exact location is kept a secret.

The jet-black color of the shipworm surprised the scientist since most bivalves are cream in color. And the shipworm was also very muscular despite being in the shell its entire life.

Kuphus polythalamia or the giant shipworm burrow in marine sediments rather than wood. Specimens have also reached 155 cm in length and 6 cm in diameter (Distel et al., 2017).

The Zachsia zenkewitschi is the sole representative of the genus Zachsia. These species bores in seagrass rhizomes. They also exhibit sexual and size dimorphism. They maintain large harems of male dwarfs within a specialized cavity of the female mantle. The species also have specialized brood pouches within the gill where they give maternal care for the larvae (Shipway et al., 2016).

Diagram showing the life stages of the rhizome-boring bivalve Zachsia zenkewitschi.

Image retrieved from:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155269

 V. Sources

Carlton, J.T (1999). Molluscan Invasions in Marine and Estuarine Communities, Macologia. Vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 439-454.

Coe, W. (1943). Development of the primary gonads and differentiation of sexuality in Teredo navalis and other pelecypod mollusks. Biological Bulletin, vol. 84: 178-186.

Didziulis, V. (2007). "NOBANIS-invasive alien species fact sheet, Teredo navalis". NOBANIS-European network on invasive alien species. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from http://www.nobanis.org/files/factsheets/Teredo_navalis.pdf.

Distel, D. L., Altamia, M. A., Lin, Z., Shipway, J. R., Han, A., Forteza, I., . . . Haygood, M. G. (2017). Discovery of chemoautotrophic symbiosis in the giant shipwormKuphus polythalamia(Bivalvia: Teredinidae) extends wooden-steps theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(18). doi:10.1073/pnas.1620470114

Gilman, S. H. M. (2016, December 5). How a Ship-Sinking Clam Conquered the Ocean. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tunneling-clam-bedeviled-humans-sank-ships-conquered-oceans-180961288/

Lane C.E., (1959). Some aspects of the general biology of Teredo. In: Marine boring and fouling organisms, [ed. by Ray DL]. Seattle, USA: University of Washington Press. pp. 137-144.

Live, long and black giant shipworm found in Philippines. (2017, April 18). Retrieved October 18, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39626131

Mann R., Gallager S.M., (1985). Growth, Morphometry and Biochemical Composition of the Wood Boring Molluscs Teredo navalis L., Bankia gouldi (Bartsch), and Nototeredo knoxi (Bartsch) (Bivalvia: Teredinidae). Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, no. 85, pp. 229-251.

NIMPIS (2011). "Teredo navalis, general information". National Introduced Marine Pest Information System. Retrieved October 17, 2020 from http://adl.brs.gov.au/marinepests/index.cfm?fa=main.spDetailsDB&sp=6000016293.

Paalvast, P., van der Velde G., (2013). What is the main food source of the shipworm (Teredo navalis)? A stable isotope approach. Journal of Sea Research, vol. 80, pp. 58-60.

Paalvast, P., van der Velde G., (2011). Distribution, settlement, and growth of first-year individuals of the shipworm Teredo navalis L. (Bivalvia: Teredinidae) in the Port of Rotterdam area, the Netherlands. International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 379-388. Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964830511000035

doi: 10.1016/j.ibiod.2010.11.016

Willer David F., Aldridge David C. (2020) From Pest to Profit—The Potential of Shipworms for Sustainable Aquaculture. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. Vol 4 p 164  https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.575416