#i'm cool and collected

[illiana-mystery]

So I just lost my damn mind.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At the start of this project all I wanted was to 'learn how to draw' using comics as a medium and the MDZS audio drama as inspiration.

I've come *very* far from making simple, 3 panel black and white comics, and I truly do intend to go even further. Thank you to everyone who cheered me on throughout 2023, it has been an incredible year in so many ways I never could have imagined. I look forwards to drawing throughout 2024 B*)

[stick-by-me]

Mrs. Grossman's 40 year anniversary bears :D

[tapakah0]

JUST WHEN I MANAGED TO CALM DOWN ABOUT THE UPDATE YOUR ANIMATIC IS MAKING MY SEROTONIN LEVELS RISE AGAIN (not really complaining it’s so good)

That's the only job I would have been happy to work if it was possible

Don't calm down, be serotonined, feed Cass I need material

[reddpenn]

Your whole rock collection is a slay. Show me some funky pieces you haven't been asked about yet!!!!

Here’s a rock I’ve been dying to talk about! This little guy is orthoclase feldspar! You might be familiar with the feldspar family, as it contains gemstones such as sunstone, moonstone, labradorite, and amazonite. What’s really, really interesting about this piece of feldspar is its shape. This cool formation is called a Carlsbad Twin. Let me tell you about it!

Feldspar crystals often form as flat-topped, six-sided prisms which are strongly skewed sideways. Here’s an example of another feldspar in my collection, amazonite, which shows off this crystal habit really clearly!

The two crystals in my piece of orthoclase are making that common feldspar shape! But you’ve probably also noticed how they appear to be mirror images of each other, and also growing through each other.

That’s Carlsbad twinning!! It’s a type of penetration twinning, which means the crystals appear to be penetrating or passing through each other. But looks can be deceiving; what's ACTUALLY happening here is much cooler. These crystals are conjoined twins! One hasn’t penetrated the other; they’re actually sharing some of their molecules like human conjoined twins might share organs.

This can happen because of the shape of feldspar’s crystal lattice - the orderly arrangement of its molecules.

The crystal lattice won't match up perfectly throughout the entire structure, but it WILL match up right along the C axis, where we flipped it. Along this line the grid of molecules aligns, and our twin crystals can share them. The place where lattice points are shared is called the composition surface.

Simply put, molecules don’t know what shape they’re making on a macro level. The shapes they make are by complete accident, because that just happens to be what shape you get when you arrange molecules in that kind of grid. The only thing the molecules know is how they can connect to other molecules. It doesn’t matter to them which direction the crystal is growing in, or which direction the crystal lattice is facing. If they can connect up in a way that completely flips the crystal lattice, well... they don't know they're doing that! They're just doing what molecules do!

And that’s how you get Carlsbad Twins!

[choochooboss]

CHOO CHOO!! Preorders for these Pkmn Black & White themed stickers open on Saturday March 9th!!

I had the honor of participating in one of @cecilioque's epic sticker projects, contributing these two designs!

This is but a taste of all the submas & Pkmn BW games sticker goodness you can find in this tweet, go check them out soon!!

[shrews-things]

Things about top surgery that I didn't expect (double incision)

It hurt so much less right after waking up than I thought it would, it was similar to pneumonia lung pain like kind of a burning sensation

Wasn't hard or upsetting to get used to my new look!! Also there isn't an ounce of regret in me, I thought I'd have some at least in the first few weeks

I had the posture of a shrimp for like two whole weeks from that compression garment

It itches as it heals which is fucked up bc I can't feel shit in any of it and also when I try to gently pat it to make the itch go away, I can't feel that either so it doesn't help :')

I'm like 5 weeks post-op and I still can't raise my arms above my head gdkdhskhdn

Still reaching for a bra or binder out of habit when getting dressed

It still feels like I'm somehow??? Hiding my chest???? Like when I was still just binding, I still go like "oh this is a good outfit, it hides my chest well" boy you haven't got a chest to hide

The urge to pull out the loose ends of my dissolvable stitches,,,,

[macabresque]

🚨🚨🚨percabeth is PERCABETH-ING 🚨🚨🚨

[majimasleftasscheek]

insert coin out here with some new merch, Saejima parka and Majima socks ✌ notably the parka has the typical tiger on the back but also Saejima's clan emblem on the right shoulder

[markscherz]

I swear you would get along super with my previous evolutionary biol prof (Dr. Bulte) from Canada (CU). He loves turtles and I remember him as a kind, humble dude who resembled a french lumberjack of sorts. Does that sound Canadian enough?

Keep up the great blog! 🐸

I am sure we would get on swimmingly! Who doesn't love a good turtle—or a french lumberjack, for that matter‽ I spent some of my afternoon today reorganising a bit in our turtle shell collection at the museum, after returning a specimen that was recently used for a talk. Such fascinating and beautiful animals.

[kedreeva]

So, I've been playing phasmophobia with a friend of mine, and "playing" is a loose term really. My controls do not work well since I don't even OWN a computer mouse (and the live ones object to being plugged in), so I'm mostly good for dying if I go into the houses much.

But what I AM good at is standing outside of the house fetching items and throwing them over the threshold for her so she doesn't have to walk to the truck. I'm also good at monitoring things inside the truck, and watching the door to alert her when the ghost is hunting if she's where she can't tell, as well as when it's over so she can come out. I can also look up stuff online if we have questions, without her having to stop paying attention to the dangerous ghosts.

And, importantly, if we load the game under my name, it doesn't matter if she dies. She doesn't lose any items, because it's my load. We can still make a guess and go home safely.

She's taken, lately, to finding random objects to hand back to me. I take screen shots when she does this, and name them things that seem logical at 10pm in the dark, but by the light of day are less so when I don't remember putting them there. These are titled "Potato Face" and "Dogframe" respectively.

[stardestroyer81]

It's true— she told me herself! 💞

(Blank template under the cut!)

[ryllen]

*just thought how the slight exposed leg was cool  when i let my farmer ride the horse to the festival with long skirt

[llatimeria]

i signed up for 4dopt today and im havin fun check it out but also I discovered that the default names each critter is generated with pulls from a user-submitted list of words and there doesn't seem to be any kind of limit to how many words I can submit at once and. Oh god. The hyperfixations. The devs did not consider the hyperfixations. I love words, looking for words, learning new words, and sharing new words with other people. I have a list of words on one side of me and the word submit page on the other and I've never been more actualized in my life. i have submitted over 130 words

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Olympus Coliseum

[reddpenn]

What makes a rock a rock and not a crystal?

Ok SO

A mineral is a naturally occurring non-organic solid with a defined chemical composition and an orderly molecular structure. This means the molecules throughout the entire structure will be exactly the same, and be arranged in a symmetrical, geometric, repeating pattern called a crystal lattice.

Quartz is a mineral. Its chemical formula is silicon dioxide, and its crystal lattice forms a repeating tetrahedron.

Ice is also a mineral. Its chemical formula is dihydrogen monoxide, and its crystal lattice forms a repeating hexagon.

Obsidian is not a mineral. It is a mineraloid, a mineral-like substance. Its chemical composition can vary wildly, and instead of a crystal lattice, its molecules are jumbled up in an amorphous solid, meaning there’s no nice repeating pattern to them.

A crystal is any solid material with a crystal lattice.

All minerals, by definition, have a crystal lattice. So all minerals are crystals! Some things that are NOT minerals are also crystals!

Sugar is a crystal. It has a crystal lattice made from molecules of sucrose. But it is not a mineral because it is organic.

Often, these repeating geometric patterns in the crystal lattice cause the substance to naturally form big geometric structures with distinct faces - such as the points formed by quartz. These larger structures are colloquially also called crystals, and their shape (called a crystal habit) is determined by the shape of the crystal lattice. The same crystal lattice can produce multiple different crystal habits, and it’s all very cool and complicated but I won’t go off on a tangent about it right now.

A substance does not have to form big structures like this to be scientifically considered a crystal. It just needs a crystal lattice!

A rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. It can be made of a single mineral, or a bunch of different minerals. But when made from a single mineral, it will not be one solid block of that mineral with an unbroken crystal lattice. Because it is an aggregate, it will be a bunch of micro- to macroscopic grains of that mineral all compacted together, each with their own individual crystal lattices.

Granite is a rock. It is made of grains of minerals such as quartz and feldspar.

Limestone is a rock. It is mostly made of grains of calcite.

So rocks can be made of crystals, but rocks are not crystals - in the same way that a house can be made of bricks, but a house is not a brick!

And this is just a very quick overview of these terms, because the scientific definitions can get increasingly pedantic and there are tons of weird exceptions! It is all very fascinating.

But of course, the word rock also has a colloquial definition, which is just… a chunk of that hard stuff the planet is made of! A mineral, a crystal, a fossil or a bio-organic solid… whatever! This is a rock collection and these are my rocks!