#to memorize the geologic time scale

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[defendglobe]

one of the most absurd parts of the "emma lives with a bunch of sheltered christian girls" saga was that time my special interest in paleontology was in full force

at the same time as my devout creationist roommate was taking a biology class and would rant for hours about how the prof was promoting "the lies of the enemy" for mentioning something related to evolution

[bteezxyewriter12]

Love Motel/ 12

Pairing- Changkyun x Named Reader

Word count- 2.5k

Includes- Fluff, oral, pussy eating, cum swallowing, fluff

Tag List- @90s-belladonna @mingtina

@direitobulando @honey-zip @chansbabydoll

@anthropologymajorkpopmultistan @jaxxmine @yeosayang

@delightfulmoonbanana @itsshaydeekaydee @seokwoosmole

@rpkth @tannie13 @wisejudgedragonhairdo @itstyraaxx

Series Masterlist

⭐ Gifs are from google

Changkyun POV

"I don't know if I can Kyun. I have to study for the final tomorrow. It's my last one and I'm freaking out", she texts

I frown at the text

I haven't been able to see her as at all this week because of all her finals

I miss her

And I just got through a boring dinner with my grandmother, Daseul and her parents

I almost fell asleep at the table, I was so bored

Then I was forced to speak to Daseul as her parents and my grandmother left us alone to eat dessert

I didn't know what to say to her

She knows I'm only doing this because I have to

And I know that's why she's doing it

But she's acting like we're an actual couple getting married

She spoke to me all about the wedding and the new things she chose

Like the color of the napkins

Like I care

All I did was nod while I thought of Joanne

Wishing I was with her

Planning on seeing her

After Daseul left, I texted Joanne

And I'm not mad that she's saying no

I understand that school is important to her and she has to pass if she's going to Mongolia next semester

But I'm frustrated that I can't be with her

Unless....

"Bring your books. You can study at the motel. I'll help you"

I wait for her text back

"Really? Isn't that boring for you?"

"No jagi. It doesn't bother me"

"Well ok", she answers

"Great. I'll pick you up in half an hour"

That gives me enough time to drive home, change, pick a hotel and go get her

"Great. I'll get ready", she texts back

I send her a thumbs up emoji then go find my grandmother to say goodbye

---------------------------------------------------

"Uh the Cambrian period?", I ask her, looking at the flash card she made

"First geological period of the Paleozoic era and Phanerozoic Eon. Lasted 53.4 billion years"

Christ, she's a memorization machine

We already went through twenty cards and she got all the information on them right

I don't know what she's so worried about

"Proterozoic Eon"

"Geological eon spanning 2500 to 538.8 million years ago. Most recent part of the Precambrian "supereon." Longest eon of the Earth's geologic time scale. It's subdivided into three geologic eras the Paleoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, and Neoproterozoic"

"Uh yeah", I say, my eyes following the words she's saying

"Next", she orders

"What's the longest era of the Earth's geological history?"

Didn't she just answer this?

Wasn't it the proto something?

"Paleoproterozoic Era. 2,500 to 1,600 million years ago. First of the three sub-eras of the Proterozoic Eon. During this era that the continents first stabilized"

"Right", I say then go to the next card, "What are the subdivisions of the Paleoproterozoic Era in order?"

"Fuck. Uh Statherian Period, Orosirian Period, Rhyacian Period and....uh...and ..Ectasian Period"

I raise my eyebrows at the card breathing out

She's gonna freak out

"They're all right but the last one. Is it the Siderian Period? Am I saying that right?"

"Fuck", she yells, frustration on her face

"Baby it's ok"

"Give me the card and go to the next one", she growls

Uh ok

Wordlessly I hand her the card, which she slams down on the bed, and I just look at the next one

"The Archean Eon and its uh eras in order?"

"Second of four geologic eons of Earth's history, from 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago. Continents formed and the earliest known life started. Eoarchean, Neoarchean, Paleoarchean and Mesoarchean"

"You um got the order of the eras wrong"

"Goddamit!"

She takes the card from me and reads it to herself, "Eoarchean, Paleoarchean, Mesoarchean, Neoarchean. Eo, Paleo, Meso, Neo. Why can't I fucking remember it?"

I watch her whisper the order to herself over and over

She's really hard on herself

And really stressed

"Jagi, maybe you should take a break"

"No. Keep going"

"Jagi-"

"Just read it Kyun!", she snarls, making me jump

I've never seen her this worked up before

I take her hand, lacing our fingers and kissing the back of hers, "Ok baby"

I look at the next card, "Hadean and lunar divisions"

"Hadean", she says shakily, "Started with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended 4 billion years ago. The lunar divisions are.....uh...um...pre....pre.

Uh pre-n something....I..I can't remember"

Tears form in her eyes as she tries to wipe them, "I don't fucking remember. Goddamn it. Why can't I remember?"

"Jagi, when was the last time you slept?"

She looked so tired when I picked her up and now she looks even more exhausted

And it's only 8 pm

"Uh....not last night....I took an hour nap at seven..."

AM?

It has to be AM

It was seven when I got her

"The night before last night? I don't know. I finished my bio final then I went right to studying for geology."

"Baby you're exhausted. You can't remember the answers because you need to sleep"

"I can't sleep Kyun! I need to pass. If I don't I can't get into the study abroad program and I'm going to have to re-take the class and wait six months before I can apply again"

Her hands are shaking and she's on the verge of completely losing it

"When is the final tomorrow?"

"At four. I have to get the rest of the cards right, then go over my notes and the text book and fuck there's not enough time"

She bursts into tears in a panic and I grab her, hugging her to me

"Baby, it's ok. You're just overtired ok? You need sleep"

"I can't"

"Yes you can Jo", I tell her, running my fingers in her hair, "Jo, you're so smart ok. You know all this stuff. I'm one hundred percent sure you do. You're just messing up because you're exhausted and your brain can't think. If you keep going like this until tomorrow, you will fail."

"Kyun don't say that!", she sobs

"Then lay down with me and sleep ok? I'll set an alarm to wake us up at eleven. I'll bring you food and I'll help you study again ok? You already know all this stuff. It's just a review. And you'll be able to take your final after a night's rest and you'll ace it. I know you will. Just please try to sleep"

I know what it's like to be up for hours with no sleep

It feels like you're going crazy

You're mind is running a million miles a minute, all your thoughts are out of order and everywhere, you can't get a clear thought

That's what's happening to her and if she doesn't sleep it'll just get worse

"But..how long do you have the room for? We didn't plan on staying over"

"All night baby. Don't worry about that ok? Can you lay down with me?"

"I..I don't think I can sleep though"

"I'll help you relax ok?"

She nods, "Ok"

Kissing the top of her head, I let her go, moving all her stuff to the table

Getting out of my hoodie, I stay in my shirt and sweatpants, getting in the bed next to her

I kiss her softly, moving her to her back

Kissing her neck, I move on top of her, pulling her pants and panties down as I kiss down her body

"Kyunnie"

"Shh baby. I'm helping you relax so you can sleep ok?"

She bites her lip, nodding

Once I get her bottom clothes off, I open her legs and slowly lick up her pussy

She gasps, moaning softly

I run my tongue up and down, slowly, letting her feel all of my tongue

Her legs shake as I slowly eat her pussy

While she gets so much pleasure from this, I have to admit I do too

I love having my face, my mouth between her legs

I ate other girls out but I never enjoyed it as much as I do with her

Fuck, I'll gladly do it to her for hours, feeling her pussy against my tongue, tasting her, sucking her clit, tongue fucking her

I always liked getting blow jobs and even though she's amazing at it, I'd rather eat her out

If it's a choice between a blow job or going down on her, I'm eating her cunt

Moving my tongue over her clit, she gasps in pleasure as I keep the flat of my tongue against her bump, massaging it

Feeling it throb against my tongue

That feeling sends pleasure down my spine and I lick her faster

Her fingers move in my hair, holding on softly, her breathing becoming more labored

Gently taking her clit in my mouth, I suck softly, slowly, tugging on her, absolutely loving having it in my mouth

"Kyun", she whimpers, her legs trembling

Her other hand moves down, taking mine, lacing our fingers together and holding on

And it feels right

It feels like her hand belongs in mine, like it's supposed to be there

She moans my name, coming with the next suck of her clit

Her hand squeezes mine even harder

I play with her, sucking her through it until she finishes

Moving my tongue down, I taste her sweet cum, licking and cleaning everything up

And I can't help but moan as I do

"So good baby. Fuck you taste so good"

Moving one of her legs over my shoulder, I slip my tongue inside her, pushing in as far as I can with her clenching as hard as she can

I wiggly my tongue around, hearing her moan softly, then slowly pull out and lick up, between her pretty pussy lips

Sliding back down, I dip my tongue in again, slowly fucking it into her hole

"Kyunnie, please"

"Tell me what you want baby girl"

"Faster"

I oblige, tongue fucking her faster but still going as deep as I can

"Baby", she whines, her hips moving slowly, sliding her cunt up and down my tongue

Moaning softly, I continue to dip my tongue into her, feeling her clench around it, sending pleasure down my spine

"Kyunnie", she moans as another orgasm overtakes her, her hand in my hair keeping me against her pussy

Swallowing, I go back in for more until there's no more of her sweet cream left

Her legs start to close but I stop her

"One more. Please. Keep these gorgeous legs open for me jagi"

Her legs open for me again and I suck on her perfect clit, sliding my fingers inside automatically finding her spot, pressing on it and rubbing softly

She whimpers, her body shivering as I move my fingers in and out, my mouth tugging on her throbbing bump

Fuck I love it

Sucking a little faster, she moans, clenching on my fingers

Almost

Squeezing her thigh, I brush her spot and her orgasm starts, pussy fluttering around my fingers

I don't stop playing with her clit, helping her ride it out as she softly calls my name

"Kyun. Kyunnie"

After, I pull my fingers out, sucking her off them, then licking her pussy until her cum is gone

I sit up, moving next to her, taking her in my arms

She leans against me, her head on my chest, her forehead against my neck

"Ggg..give me a minute", she yawns

"No jagi", I tell her, lifting her hand and kissing the back of it, "Just stay"

"But you don't want-"

"No baby. I didn't do it to you to get something back", I tell her, running my fingers in her hair, "I wanted to help you relax and you are"

"But-"

"You need to sleep jagi. There's plenty of time for us to be together after your final"

"Are you sure?", she asks sleepily

"Absolutely", I assure her, "Sleep baby. I'm right here with you ok? I'll hold you all night"

She snuggles into me more, her hand gripping mine tight

It doesn't take long before her breathing evens out, her cute little soft snores the only sound in the room

She needed to sleep

It's evident by how fast she fell asleep

She's so hard on herself when it comes to school, working herself to death

I get it, she wants to do good, she wants to go to the dig site but she can't keep going like this at the expense of her health

She never would have made it through the night, staying awake

And she definitely wouldn't have done well on the final with next to no sleep

This way she can rest, I'll get her food in the morning and I'll help her study the rest of whatever she has to study

Which reminds me

I grab my cell from the dresser, opening the clock app and setting an alarm for 11 a.m.

Putting my phone down, I close my eyes, holding her tight

I'm not tired but I'm not getting up

I promised her I'd hold her all night and I will

---------------------------------------------------

"You got this jagi", I tell her as I pull up to her school

After a good night's sleep, food and her tea she was able to finish studying, blowing me out of the water at how much she knows about these time periods, I never heard of

And how easily she recited all the information

How detailed she is with what happened in each one

I teased her about being right about sleep and she stuck her tongue out at me

It was adorable

She really didn't need to study much, finishing early

So I gave her good luck sex, making her cum six times before her final

Needless to say she's relaxed and confident about the test

"Thanks Kyun. For helping me"

I smile at her, "Of course jagi"

She smiles back, so fucking gorgeously

Reaching out, I run my fingers in her hair, a cute blush appearing on her cheeks

"Remember baby, if you do good I'll eat your pretty pussy and fuck you until your cunt is numb"

She swallows hard but nods, "I'll do better than just good. Good isn't good enough"

I just smile wider, "I know you will baby. Text me when you're done and I'll come pick you up ok?"

She nods, "Yeah Kyunnie"

Moving my hand from her hair to the back of her neck, I pull her in for a kiss

Her arms move around my neck, kissing me back

I don't know why I want to kiss her so much

I shouldn't

I shouldn't be doing any of this

Going out with her, helping her study, dropping her off at school

Acting like a normal boyfriend when I'm anything but

And I'm not even her boyfriend

I'm just her sex buddy

I know that for me, it's more than that

I have feelings for her

Fucking Jooheon was right

I like her, she's funny, she's so smart and she's interesting

The fact that she's amazing in bed is such a huge bonus

I can't let these feelings get any stronger

I won't

I can't have her and that's the end of it

I have to eventually tell her I'm going to be married and stop this

Soon

But right now I'm just going to enjoy being with her

She pulls away, immediately pressing another kiss to my cheek

"See you later baby"

I nod, watching her get out of the car and go inside the building

Then I drive back to the hotel to wait for her

[wanderingchocolateeclair]

um. well. this is just. yeah. (neon souls au, the teenage training™ [ttt™?])

--

“Again.”

He almost protests. Almost says no, he’s done, he can’t do it anymore. But then every time he opens his mouth nausea strikes him and he’s reminded where he is.

No-one says no here. The instructors’ words are law. Tsunagu is not a person here, he is not… there is a lack. He is a someone, but he’s also very much not. A something, maybe. An asset. For a cause- he's not an idiot. There's just no time to think. No time to do anything else other than what he's supposed to do.

He runs another lap, legs burning and breath coming short.

Tsunagu cannot stop. He cannot fail. It is not a possibility. It is a fact- as real as the four fundamental and unknown forces.

One: gravity. This is the easiest one to know about. The easy definition would be the force of attraction that exists between two sources of mass.

But no-one really knows how it works. It is defined by itself, a mystery in motion.

Second, third, and fourth are electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces.

Tsunagu isn't very good at physics. But what he does know is that he has to be.

Correction: does not have to be. He doesn't need to be good at it, he doesn't have to understand- Tsunagu just needs to know the facts. He needs to memorize them. The fact that there is no passion in it doesn't matter.

So: the four fundamental forces. Gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear force that holds atoms together, and the one that cannot hold nuclei together.

Using the latter of the four forces, one can theoretically estimate the geological time scale. Which is a representation of the rate of decay of the rocks around them.

He does not know how it works. Tsunagu's memorized the equations, run the simulations -they place the world they live in at around four point sixty three billion years old-, and he doesn't understand.

He doesn't have the energy to care. Tsunagu thinks about this as he floats above the ground and flings himself forward, going faster and faster-

There's a change in the air and he almost trips, almost falls and he doesn't. Like always.

Three minutes and thirteen seconds. He's gotten slower from the start. (Two minutes and twenty-one seconds.)

"Again. Watch your posture. It gets in the way."

This instructor -they never give names, the higher-ups don't want anyone getting attached- is not unnecessarily cruel. He does not belittle for the sake of it. He does not set Tsunagu up to fail. He does not push trainees until they break as a 'test'.

It is only a test if the person in power believes in the testees' ability to pass it.

Sometimes, this instructor even tells him- "Good job. Two minutes and forty-three seconds. Take a break."

Oh. He didn't notice- how much time had just slipped through his fingers? Tsunagu takes a look at the clock on his wrist. The praise lightens his steps, brings a small smile to his face.

Lunchtime.

He'd blanked out for almost twenty minutes. His legs ache from exercising and stretching, in this never ending loop of training. After lunch is studying- the Skyracers-in-training can't be completely unknowing of the world around them.

And then there will be sparring.

He walks to the cafeteria. Today's meal is spaghetti and Tsunagu eats without tasting anything.

Someone sits next to him. It is the red-streaked trainee, in contrast to Tsunagu's own blue. They are carrying a tangerine. (He can't ask for a name.)

This has become a little ritual of theirs- the sharing of a snack. Last time it had been him, and he'd brought grapes. This is a little touch of sweetness in a world of the same, dull, routine.

They hand the fruit over, and Tsunagu peels it, setting the segments aside- one for him, one for them. Like always.

They eat the fruit together in silence, under the ever-watching eyes of the cameras and instructors. A precious moment, something he can have to himself, something Tsunagu can tuck under his ribs and next to his heart.

He is the first one to leave.

And as always- the sickness crawling up his throat at… not failing. This is not failure. This is at most… toeing a line.

(This is personhood.)

Tsunagu had stumbled upon a document of old writings from when humanity had lived above. It was filled with the words of writers, poets, the dreams of people that once were.

Among them had been a single word: Unperson. Originally, he had thought this was a word for a killing.

It was, in a way.

Unperson: a person regarded as nonexistent and having no rights; a person whose existence is systematically ignored, especially for ideological or political reasons. A human who has been stripped of rights, identity or humanity.

It had rung a bell. Several bells, in fact. The word had repeated in his head until he'd forced it out to focus.

Unperson. (He is an unperson. His existence is being used to-)

The document, when he'd gone to look at it again, to read the words of writers, had been deleted. Taken offline.

Half-heartedly, Tsunagu hopes that someone had managed to hide a copy somewhere. But he doubts it.

(Thinking about this feels… it is walking on unsteady ground, the ground of a bog- where one wrong step will send you straight through the peat and into the water. It feels like he is breaking an unwritten law. It does not feel wrong. It- he- it feels immoral. It is not immoral.)

(Tsunagu does not have the energy to focus on these emotions, and that may be the worst thing of all.)

He blinks up at the celling from where he had been flipped onto the tatami mats.

"Again," An instructor orders.

Tsunagu gets back up, and does it again.

There is no other option.

---

so i am projecting a little bit. what about it /lh

the whole thing about personhood and dehumanization of people and the whole *gestures at bits of society* is something i think about a lot and youve given me the perfect opportunity to elaborate more on it. this is so different from the lemon/banana snippets LMAO

im not sure how much this makes sense... if it doesnt im sorry

also fun fact the word 'unperson' comes from oscar wilde, i think? not sure if this is true so take it with a grain of salt.

-story anon (hi, eclair! i wrote this,,, a lot faster than i thought it would get written)

MMMM I LOVE THIS-

It perfectly captures the stress and pressure that they would be under to get everything perfect and work so hard to avoid, well, death or Worse.

also- sharing food with one another my absolute beloved <333

[galaactic]

new level of wacky. i made a 43-piece flashcard set on quizlet so i could memorize almost the entire geological time scale. took me nearly 5 hours. i didnt do or turn in my homework because i was busy doing this. each flashcard is incredibly in depth. my brain is broken

[subhgem]

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[taruntravell]

7 Exciting Facts About Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour

A Grand Canyon helicopter tour is an exhilarating way to experience the breathtaking beauty of one of the world's most iconic natural wonders. Here are seven exciting facts about Grand Canyon helicopter tours:

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[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Real Dinosaurs Versus Reel Dinosaurs: Film’s Fictionalization of the Prehistoric World

by Shelby Wyzykowski

What better way can you spend a quiet evening at home than by having a good old-fashioned movie night? You dim the lights, cozily snuggle up on your sofa with a bowl of hot, buttery popcorn, and pick out a movie that you’ve always wanted to see: the 1948 classic Unknown Island. Mindlessly munching away on your snacks, your eyes are glued to the screen as the story unfolds. You reach a key scene in the movie: a towering, T. rex-sized Ceratosaurus and an equally enormous Megatherium ground sloth are locked in mortal combat. And you think to yourself, “I’m pretty sure something like this never actually happened.” And you know what? Your prehistorically inclined instincts are correct.

From the time that the first dinosaur fossils were identified in the early 1800s, society has been fascinated by these “terrible lizards.” When, where, and how did they live? And why did they (except for their modern descendants, birds) die out so suddenly? We’ve always been hungry to find out more about the mysteries behind the dinosaurs’ existence. The public’s hunger for answers was first satisfied by newspapers, books, and scientific journals. But then a whole new, sensational medium was invented: motion pictures. And with its creation came a new, exciting way to explore the primeval world of these ancient creatures. But cinema is art, not science. And from the very beginning, scientific inaccuracies abounded. You might be surprised to learn that these filmic faux pas not only exist in movies from the early days of cinema. They pervade essentially every dinosaur movie that has ever been made.

One Million Years B.C.

Another film that can easily be identified as more fiction than fact is 1966’s One Million Years B.C. It tells the story of conflicts between members of two tribes of cave people as well as their dangerous dealings with a host of hostile dinosaurs (such as Allosaurus, Triceratops, and Ceratosaurus). However, neither modern-looking humans nor dinosaurs (again, except birds) existed one million years ago. In the case of dinosaurs, the movie was about 65 million years too late. Non-avian dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago during a mass extinction known as the K/Pg (which stands for “Cretaceous/Paleogene”) event. An asteroid measuring around six miles in diameter and traveling at an estimated speed of ten miles per second slammed into the Earth at what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The effects of this giant impact were so devastating that over 75% of the world’s species became extinct. But the dinosaurs’ misfortunes were a lucky break for Cretaceous Period mammals. They were able to gain a stronger foothold and flourish in the challenging and inhospitable post-impact environment.

Cut to approximately 65 million, 700 thousand years later, when modern-looking humans finally arrived on the chronological scene. Until recently, the oldest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, dated back to just 195,000 years ago (which is, in geological terms, akin to the blink of an eye). And for many years, these fossils have been widely accepted to be the oldest members of our species. But this theory was challenged in June of 2017 when paleoanthropologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reported that they had discovered what they thought may be the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens on a desert hillside at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. The 315,000-year-old fossils included skull bones that, when pieced together, indicated that these humans had faces that looked very much like ours, but their brains did differ. Being long and low, their brains did not have the distinctively round shape of those of present-day humans. This noticeable difference in brain shape has led some scientists to wonder: perhaps these people were just close relatives of Homo sapiens. On the other hand, maybe they could be near the root of the Homo sapien lineage, a sort of protomodern Homo sapien as opposed to the modern Homo sapien. One thing is for certain, the discovery at Jebel Irhoud reminds us that the story of human evolution is long and complex with many questions that are yet to be answered.

The Land Before Time

Another movie that misplaces its characters in the prehistoric timeline is 1988’s The Land Before Time. The stars of this animated motion picture are Littlefoot the Apatosaurus, Cera the Triceratops, Ducky the Saurolophus, Petrie the Pteranodon, and Spike the Stegosaurus. As their world is ravaged by constant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the hungry and scared young dinosaurs make a perilous journey to the lush and green Great Valley where they’ll reunite with their families and never want for food again. In their on-screen imagined story, these five make a great team. But, assuming that the movie is set at the very end of the Cretaceous (intense volcanic activity was a characteristic of this time), the quintet’s trip would have actually been just a solo trek. Ducky and Petrie’s species had become extinct several million years earlier, and Littlefoot and Spike would have lived way back in the Jurassic Period (201– 145 million years ago). Cera alone would have had to experience several harrowing encounters with the movie’s other latest Cretaceous creature, the ferocious and relentless Sharptooth, a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Speaking of Sharptooth, The Land Before Time’s animators made a scientifically accurate choice when they decided to draw him with a two-fingered hand, as opposed to the three fingers traditionally embraced by other movie makers. For 1933’s King Kong, the creators mistakenly modeled their T. rex after a scientifically outdated 1906 museum painting. Many other directors knowingly dismissed the science-backed evidence and used three digits because they thought this type of hand was more aesthetically pleasing. By the 1920s, paleontologists had already hypothesized that these predators were two-fingered because an earlier relative of Tyrannosaurus, Gorgosaurus, was known to have had only two functional digits. Scientists had to make an educated guess because the first T. rex (and many subsequent specimens) to be found had no hands preserved. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was officially confirmed that T. rex was two-fingered when the first specimen with an intact hand was discovered. Then, in 1997, Peck’s Rex, the first T. rex specimen with hands preserving a third metacarpal (hand bone), was unearthed. Paleontologists agree that, in life, the third metacarpal of Peck’s Rex would not have been part of a distinct, externally visible third finger, but instead would have been embedded in the flesh of the rest of the hand. But still, was this third hand segment vestigial, no longer serving any apparent purpose? Or could it have possibly been used as a buttressing structure, helping the two fully formed fingers to withstand forces and stresses on the hand? Peck’s Rex’s bones do display evidence that strongly supports arm use. You can ponder this paleo-puzzle yourself when you visit Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition, where you can see a life-sized cast of Peck’s Rex facing off with the holotype (= name-bearing) T. rex, which was the first specimen of the species to be recognized (by definition, the world’s first fossil of the world’s most famous dinosaur!).

T. rex in Dinosaurs in Their Time. Image credit: Joshua Franzos, Treehouse Media

Jurassic Park

One motion picture that did take artistic liberties with T. rex for the sake of suspense was 1993’s Jurassic Park. In one memorable, hair-raising scene, several of the movie’s stars are saved from becoming this dinosaur’s savory snack by standing completely still. According to the film’s paleontological protagonist, Dr. Alan Grant, the theropod can’t see humans if they don’t move. Does this theory have any credence, or was it just a clever plot device that made for a great movie moment? In 2006, the results of ongoing research at the University of Oregon were published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, providing a surprising answer. The study involved using perimetry (an ophthalmic technique used for measuring and assessing visual fields) and a scale model T. rex head to determine the creature’s binocular range (the area that could be viewed at the same time by both eyes). Generally speaking, the wider an animal’s binocular range, the better its depth perception and overall vision. It was determined that the binocular range of T. rex was 55 degrees, which is greater than that of a modern-day hawk! This theropod may have even had visual clarity up to 13 times greater than a person. That’s extremely impressive, considering an eagle only has up to 3.6 times the clarity of a human! Another study that examined the senses of T. rex determined that the dinosaur had unusually large olfactory bulbs (the areas of the brain dedicated to scent) that would have given it the ability to smell as well as a present-day vulture! So, in Jurassic Park, even if the eyes of T. rex had been blurred by the raindrops in this dark and stormy scene, its nose would have still homed-in on Dr. Grant and the others, providing the predator with some tasty midnight treats.

Now, it may seem that this blog post might be a bit critical of dinosaur movies. But, truly, I appreciate them just as much as the next filmophile. They do a magnificent job of providing all of us with some pretty thrilling, edge-of-your-seat entertainment. But, somewhere along the way, their purpose has serendipitously become twofold. They have also inspired some of us to pursue paleontology as a lifelong career. So, in a way, dinosaur movies have been of immense benefit to both the cinematic and scientific worlds. And for that great service, they all deserve a huge round of applause.

Shelby Wyzykowski is a Gallery Experience Presenter in CMNH’s Life Long Learning Department. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[willisthelaw]

“ maybe  swearing  will  help. ”

꧁𝘼𝙣𝙬𝙨𝙚𝙧꧂

Pinterest Prompt from @debelltio (thank you for the ask)

(̸ “ Phanerozoic Epoch is part of the Cenozic Era which includes the…Jurassic Period…no, no, no. That’s wrong!!!” )̸

Thin fingers pressed to temples, willing herself to focus. Her memory was eidetic: terminology, properties of rocks, minerals and crystals came effortlessly. But the geological time scale was an utter roadblock. Flashcards scattered, writing the chronology down repeatedly until her hand ached, even resorting to making up mnemonics to restart the quintessential part of her identity. An acute awareness of the cause for refraction in her memory cache.

-̸ “ Girl, it’s blasphemy to read them science books. The Good Book says that the Earth was created by God Himself six thousand years ago. ” -̸ Talking about dinosaurs was worthy of Momma’s backhand across her face.

“ Having a hard time? ” A voice drifted across her periphery, a dark haired man standing tentatively to her side, her his yellow shirt tasting of spun sugar. “ The GTS is tough to memorize, maybe swearing will help? ” A cautiously goofy smile of commiseration.

Frustration notwithstanding, a diffident smile emerged, a tiny spark a giggle, a flush of bashfulness. “ I don’t swear… ” Courage found, she stammered, “ But this goddamn GTS is f-fucking me up. ” Fingers smeared with graphite from her pencil clasped over her mouth (̸ “ I said the name in vain! ” )̸

His grin grew wider, showing freckles bridged across his face. “ Feels better, right? You’re that girl with the amazing memory…how about we get coffee? I’ll give you tips on memorizing the GTS and maybe you can help me with the Moh’s Scales? ”

Blush grew grew crimson, (̸ “ Coffee? With a man? And without a chaperone? Momma would explode if she knew…but I’m far removed from Momma… ” )̸ She cautiously held out her hand, a titter of laugh escaping.

“ I’d like that. My name is Roslyn. ”

[lhs3020b]

“Nightfall”, by Asimov and Silverberg

I haven’t picked a book apart in a while, so have some mildly-disjointed thoughts on Asimov & Silverberg’s 1989 novel, mostly focused on the somewhat-ropey astronomy, but looking at a few other things as well...

"Nightfall" is a late-1980s novel-length expansion of the 1950s story of the same name. The basic premise is, "what about a world with no night?"

The planet Kalgash (Lagash in the short story - no relation to Ur or Sumer insofar as I know!) orbits the G-type star Onos, which is in turn one part of a complex multiple system containing six stars in total. With that many stars, there is always one in the sky somewhere. The other five suns are Trey and Patru (a co-orbiting pair of A-type stars), Tanu and Sitha (another co-orbiting pair, this time B stars) and lastly Dovim, a red dwarf. You can see several oddities immediately - note that the stars have neatly sorted themselves by spectral type! And there's only the one red dwarf (Dovim, implied to be an early-M-type object), when you'd expect loads as a) star formation is an efficient machine for making red dwarfs and b) ~75-80% of all stars are red dwarfs.

As for the system architecture, I've struggled to come up with anything sensible. The below scribbling would make (some) sense, but fails the "always a sun in the sky from anywhere on Kalgash" test, as Dovim will often "fall behind" Onos on its orbit around the barycentre:

Presumably Onos has to pass quite regularly between the Patru/Trey and Sitha/Tano pairs - what this implies for Kalgash's climate and thermal balance I'll leave as an exercise for the reader! Also, the formation history of this system must be weird. Kalgash's complex biosphere implies an age of several billion years, but A and B stars have far shorter life expectancies. Is Onos actually a star that formed elsewhere, which was captured into the system later on?

Anyway. Kalgash orbits Onos, supposedly alone, and there is no night - even if it's only reddish inadequate Dovim, there's always a sun in the sky. Always. Forever. And this sentence is 100% certified to contain no lies, evasions or elided truths of any kind. *Ahem.*

The native Kalganians - supposedly some sort of non-terrestrial non-humanoid life, though the book flip-flops this many times - apparently cope very poorly with darkness. Even as little as 15 minutes in complete dark is apparently enough to induce permanent psychosis. This makes it just as well that Kalgash is a loner object, with no moons or nearby planets or other local bodies that could cause eclipses ... ooops.

Basically, the plot of the novel concerns some scientists who discover evidence of Mass Effect-style periodicities in the collapses of historical civilisations on Kalgash. About every 2000 years, *something* happens that seems to cause people to go collectively go mad and burn down any settlement they might be living in at the time. It seems to be sudden - it stops as soon as it starts - but the destruction is near-complete. And guess what? It's almost 2000 years since the last time civilisation toasted itself.

Meanwhile, Kalganian astronomers have recently developed a theory of universal gravitation, based on studying the motions of the suns (plausible; you'd have a lot of data to work with there). Only there's a problem. Kalgash itself is stubbornly not-quite-conforming to the predictions of the models, and in fact the deviations seem to be getting larger. The theory seems to be wrong - what horror! what sadness! gravity fails!

Or does it? In fact some Kalganian theorists notice something odd - you can explain the planet's motion perfectly if you assume the presence of a second planetary-mass object. Once you plug this in, you can figure out where this body would have to be. The results are ... worrying. You see, this hypothetical Kalgash Two is apparently closing in on Kalgash-Prime. It won’t collide with Kalgash Prime, but it will get close enough to block out sunlight.

Now, the book isn't 100% clear whether Kalgash-Two is a moon or another planet. I think it has to be a planet - its orbit apparently takes 2000 years, which would certainly take a moon entirely outside Kalgash's Hill sphere; Onos would have "snatched it away" onto a stellar orbit. Another oddity is that no-one can see Kalgash-Two - even here on Earth you can see the Moon clearly by day, and given what we know of the dynamics of this system, Two would present a large disk when it enters opposition with Kalgash-Proper. In the book it's speculated that Two's surface rock might be bluish in colour, which might "camouflage" it against the sky. I'm dubious about this - yes, Turquoise-The-Mineral Is A Thing, but an entire planet made of it? To me, this feels a bit "off", geologically.

Anyway, the astronomers realise that if it exists, Kalgash-Two is only a matter of weeks away from by-passing Kalgash itself. And when it does, it will arrive when half the planet has a rare "one-sun" day. That sun is, of course, the red runt Dovim itself, and Two will pass between Kalgash and Dovim. Depending on how big Two is, it could entirely block the sun out. Things are about to get dark! The other five suns will all be on the other side of the planet, but Kalgash rotates, so the other hemisphere will apparently get a taste of darkness too.

Now, note how odd the dynamics of this eclipse are. Apparently the umbra - the region of full shadow - is bigger than Kalgash itself, and the eclipse takes an entire Kalganian rotational period to pass. The book never - IIRC - tells us how fast Kalgash spins. It's certainly possible that a Kalganian "day" is far shorter than a terrestrial one, but it's implied to be at least a dozen or so hours. (The suns don't "move" fast enough against the sky for anything less.) So just how big is Kalgash-Two? To create an eclipse lasting multiple hours, it must be large. Honestly I think it would be hard to do this at a size smaller than that of a gas giant. Is something bigger than Jupiter swinging by, just outside the Roche limit? (No-one on Kalgash notes any seismic events - there's no upsurge in tremors, no disruption to tides or odd behaviour from gravimeters, like you would expect if a super-Jovian body was closing in on you, which is an inconsistency.) Anyway, sure enough, Kalgash Two shows up on queue. Suddenly the reddish gloom of a one-sun day starts to darken, and the horrified masses look up to see a massive bite eating into the side of Dovim! Rapidly and with maximum fuss, the sun goes out! Basically what happens next is like "Pitch Black", except with mad people instead of cannibalistic alien monsters. You'll note I haven't said a lot about the characters yet. There's not a lot to say - they're all very much "straight from central casting". They aren't objectionable, but they're not particularly memorable either. The plot itself has two threads - the astronomers' growing concerns about the impending disaster, which in turn puts them into conflict with a politically-influential cult, who claim to be preparing for the imminent return of "the stars". While the book is formulaic and the characters are fairly-average, it is a fun read; the pages turn without too much difficulty!

In case anyone's wondering about where exactly the authorities are in all of this, well, on eclipse night they prove completely useless. If I remember correctly, the government fails to take any warnings seriously and officials dismiss the astronomers as cranks. Basically they’re running on “January to March 2020″ rules - sadly I can no longer dismiss this pattern of behaviour as unrealistic, depressing as that is! When the night itself arrives, IIRC, the staff at the local power company manage to go mad ahead of almost everyone else (apparently there were no bulbs inside the turbine hall, or something) and their rampage plunges Saro City into the worst-timed power outage ever. Also, making matters worse, Saro probably didn't have any municipal lighting (because why would it?) and apparently most people don't have much in the way of torches or candles at home. So the darkness-maddened people react by torching everything that will burn (fire = light = MASS PYROMANIA!). How they're all able to find matches while a) utterly-demented and b) fumbling around in the dark ... yeah, that never gets explained.

Now we arrive at another oddity: on the night itself, people actually are able to see. They can see the stars without any trouble - which makes no sense. Why would their eyes be evolved to function in low-light conditions? But see the stars they do. There are several pages of the astronomers (those who survive the first few hours of the eclipse-chaos) boggling at the sheer scale of the universe they find themselves in. (In fairness, this is quite a cinematic moment ... basically the ~400 years of the Copernican revolution, which wasn't really "complete" here until Hubble demonstrated that the Great Nebula of Andromeda was a physically-separate galaxy in the 1920s? Kalgash's scientists get the entire thing, mainlined into their stunned brains in about 1 hour.

Their disorientation is certainly understandable.

Incidentally, there's another astronomical oddity here. Kalgash Two should be visible - a dark disc blocking out the sky in the direction where Dovim "should" be - but no-one remarks on it. Also, Two seems to have no atmosphere at all, because Kalgash-Proper doesn't experience any total-lunar-eclipse style blood-Moon. (What exactly is Two? It has to be at least as large as a gas giant, but it's also airless? What is this thing? Is it a planet at all?) Anyway, the eclipse does eventually end, after a few hours. While there are survivors, society has essentially collapsed. The damage is roughly the same as a median-scenario Great Powers nuclear exchange would be here on Earth (except minus the craters and radioactivity).

Just think - if the utilities provider for Saro City hadn't pulled an ERCOT, it's quite possible they could have got through the night without a mass casualty event. While people would have been frightened, if they'd had working lights to huddle around while Two passes by overhead, they might have been able to ride it out. But that didn't happen, of course. (If I was a cynic, I might say the real story of "Nightfall" is the cost of inept/crony-coddling infrastructure policies when the once-in-a-century event pays you its rare-but-inevitable visit.) Anyway, the ending of the book, unfortunately, is pure Silverberg. That is to say, it's rushed, lazy and addresses none of the themes, character-development or even some of the earlier plot-events of the book. On the last two pages of the book, the surviving scientists decide to join forces with the menacing theocratic star-cult, because apparently religious totalitarianism is somehow the only way to save the world, post-nightfall. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaah. Incidentally, here we see some of the typical narrative ticks of a certain sort of mid-century SF writer. Note how any sort of change (nightfall! social chaos!) just *has* to be BAD and SCARY, and they instantly seek refuge in anti-democratic authoritarianism. You see this tick a lot in so-called "Golden Age" writers - it's almost a trope of their behaviour. (It's also interesting given the cross-links between people like Heinlein and the military/industrial complex, or Pournelle and the GOP.) So the TL;DR summary ... "Nightfall" is a novel that follows the spirit of hard SF (if not the letter, as seen above) and has some iffy ideological/mimetic moments ... but, it works as a potboiler and (disappointing ending aside) is definitely a fun read. Just don't expect the celestial mechanics to be in any way workable.

Oh, and here comes Kalgash Two...

[nasa]

Greatest Hits — Craters We Love

Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.

1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than Texas

Mercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.

For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.

2. Venus: Tough on Space Rocks

Venus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off most meteors before they reach the surface. The planet’s volcanic history has erased many of its craters, but like almost any place with solid ground in our solar system, there are still impact scars to be found. Most of what we know of Venus’ craters comes from radar images provided by orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA’s Magellan.

Mead Crater is the largest known impact site on Venus. It is about 170 miles (275 kilometers) in diameter. The relatively-flat, brighter inner floor of the crater indicates it was filled with impact melt and/or lava.

3. Earth: Still Craters After All These Years

Evidence of really big impacts — such as Arizona’s Meteor Crater — are harder to find on Earth. The impact history of our home world has largely been erased by weather and water or buried under lava, rock or ice. Nonetheless, we still find new giant craters occasionally.

A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.

This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile (31-kilometer) wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth’s ice sheets. 

If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles (35 kilometers), is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.

4. Moon: Our Cratered Companion

Want to imagine what Earth might look like without its protective atmosphere, weather, water and other crater-erasing features? Look up at the Moon. The Moon’s pockmarked face offers what may be humanity’s most familiar view of impact craters.

One of the easiest to spot is Tycho, the tight circle and bright, radiating splat are easy slightly off center on the lower-left side of the full moon. Closer views of the 53-mile (85 kilometer)-wide crater from orbiting spacecraft reveal a beautiful central peak, topped with an intriguing boulder that would fill about half of a typical city block.

5. Mars: Still Taking Hits

Mars has just enough atmosphere to ensure nail-biting spacecraft landings, but not enough to prevent regular hits from falling space rocks. This dark splat on the Martian south pole is less than a year old, having formed between July and September 2018. The two-toned blast pattern tells a geologic story. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave on ice. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, blasting the dark sand underneath in all directions.

6. Ceres: What Lies Beneath

The bright spots in Ceres’ Occator crater intrigued the world from the moment the approaching Dawn spacecraft first photographed it in 2015. Closer inspection from orbit revealed the spots to be the most visible example of hundreds of bright, salty deposits that decorate the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. Thanks to Dawn, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time — processes indicative of an active, evolving world.

7. Comet Tempel 1: We Did It!

Scientists have long known we can learn a lot from impact craters — so, in 2005, they made one themselves and watched it happen.

On July 4, 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft trained its instruments on an 816-pound (370-kilogram) copper impactor as it smashed into comet Tempel 1.

One of the more surprising findings: The comet has a loose, “fluffy” structure, held together by gravity and contains a surprising amount of organic compounds that are part of the basic building blocks of life.

8. Mimas: May the 4th Be With You

Few Star Wars fans — us included — can resist Obi Wan Kenobi's memorable line “That’s no moon…” when images of Saturn’s moon Mimas pop up on a screen. Despite its Death Star-like appearance, Mimas is most definitely a moon. Our Cassini spacecraft checked, a lot — and the superlaser-looking depression is simply an 81-mile (130-kilometer) wide crater named for the moon’s discoverer, William Herschel.

9. Europa: Say What?

The Welsh name of this crater on Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa looks like a tongue-twister, but it is easiest pronounced as “pool.” Pwyll is thought to be one of the youngest features we know of on Europa. The bright splat from the impact extends more than 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) around the crater, a fresh blanket over rugged, older terrain. “Fresh,” or young, is a relative term in geology; the crater and its rays are likely millions of years old.

10. Show Us Your Greatest Hits

Got a passion for Stickney, the dominant bowl-shaped crater on one end of Mars’ moon Phobos? Or a fondness for the sponge-like abundance of impacts on Saturn’s battered moon Hyperion (pictured)? There are countless craters to choose from. Share your favorites with us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

[defendglobe]

its one of those listen to cascada and get nostalgic about 2009 evenings

[katieblooming]

okay but I’d be like 50% less stressed about geo oceanography if I had any idea what I was walking into but she won’t! tell! us! anything! (except that we’ve gotta memorize most of the geological time scale which is annoying but also not unexpected)

[fromthelibrary]

In that vanishing point, neither of us speaks. Language is crushed. We are anyway too busily engaged building structures within ourselves that might house our spirits, for the pressure here is immense, a weight of rock and time, bearing down upon us from every direction with an intensity I have never experienced before, turning us fast to stone. It is a fascinating and terrible place, and not one that can be borne for long.

Robert Macfarlane, Underland

I have read non-fiction which fascinated me, and non-fiction that transported me, allowed me to see through the eyes of another, but I cannot remember a time when I was so thoroughly enchanted by a work of non-fiction as I was by Robert Macfarlane’s Underland. It reads like a strange blend of science, travel memoir, poetry and fairy tale. The term “Underland” used as the basis of this work refers to all the world below the earth’s surface, both natural and man-made. I feel like I’m still struggling with the concept of “deep time,” but it seems to be referring to time scales so large that they dwarf all of human history, such as the formation of glaciers and the hazard of nuclear waste. This book covers a huge breadth of times, places and subjects, including:

Burials, both ancient and modern

Caving

Mining

Physics research which can only be carried out deep underground in a chamber made of salt

Neolithic cave art

Use of underground passageways, trenches, sinkholes and cave systems by the military, revolutionaries, and refugees

Storage of nuclear waste and the daunting task of communicating its hazards not only to future humans but to the possibility of a post-human future world

The secret cities which lie underneath European cities such as Paris and Odessa in the form of catacombs and abandoned quarries.

Fossilisation of human remains and material culture

Oil drilling and the ocean floor

The innumerable layers of history trapped within sea ice and glaciers

One thing I loved deeply about this book is the approach to science which is very accessible for Arts and Humanities type people like myself, who are curious about science but woefully under-educated in these fields. He explains dark matter and neutrinos, fungal networks and the ecology of the forest, marine biology and geology, glaciology and other scientific concepts and research fields with ease and elegance. He blends these subjects into a narrative of his journeys through the underland which is deeply emotional, almost spiritual. I feel like this mix of science and spirituality should be uncomfortable, but for this subject matter it feels intensely appropriate. After a long and dangerous journey to a remote, isolated part of Norway’s coastline in winter, days alone among the rocks and snow and ruins of an abandoned village, I feel like I too would sit down and actually cry upon encountering paintings left on the wall of a cave by people who lived so long ago I can scarcely imagine, but who feel close and alive still in the darkness and otherworldly time within the cave. To me, this is a rational response to such an experience, but in his approach to this journey and his retrospective writing about it, the archaeological, anthropological, geological and even historical and literary contexts of the paintings, the cave that houses them, the landscape in which they are situated and the journey to reach them are all considered and explored. Many parts of this book read like poetry, or like a dream sequence, some passages are also very reminiscent of the parts of folk tales where the hero is told how to reach Fairyland and what the crucial rules are to ensure he makes it back out alive. For me, the entire work came across as a love song.

I think part of what pulled me into this book was not just a preexisting interest in this subject matter or the enjoyable writing style, but the places to which Macfarlane journeys. I have read books in the past which irritated me because the subject matter was obscured under the author’s personal anecdotes and attempts at travel writing. Macfarlane writes so much life into his landscapes and describes his underland guides, companions and interview subjects in a style which makes them appear almost like characters from a story. His descriptions of his journeys often draw on imagery of darkness and light to evoke the feeling of passing between one world and another: “I feel the snap of the black stone’s jaws at the empty air below my toes, and then I am out of the swallet and into the hollow, and warm air is rolling around me, and my bones grow again in the storm of light and ferns furl their green over and into me and moss thrives on my skin and leaves teem in my eyes, and Sean and I sit laughing, knowing for those few moments that to understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark.” Colour is also frequently invoked to bring the concept of deep time to life, such as the red ochre paste on the wall of the cave. The passage about the memory of ice encapsulated within the blue of time is particularly memorable and it would have been worth reading this book just for those few pages alone. In researching and writing this book, Macfarlane traveled far off the beaten path, occasionally alone, and often at great risk of injury or death. These are the parts of the narrative which grabbed my imagination and really ran with it. Much like Caroline Van Hemert’s book, which I read a few weeks ago, the retelling of these journeys, and particularly his adventures on the ice struck some chord in me that I don’t really know how to interpret. As I read I began to think that maybe stories about travel into the Arctic, the deep wilderness, caves and abandoned underground cities, affect me this way because of subconscious knowledge that unlike Middle Earth or Roshar, these are places which exist in the world I inhabit, that I could conceivably make a series of choices that would lead me to these places. I believe that the idea of these places captivate me in this way because they are seen so infrequently and through such great peril to the viewer, but are so wild and so alive. I have come to think of them as places of probable death but certain wonder. 

I cannot urge you enough to give this book a shot. There were so many beautiful passages in it that I eventually gave up on copying them into my notes and had difficulty choosing one to include in this review. If you have any interest in adventure, the environment, natural sciences, or just want to experience things few humans will ever see through the pages of a book, read this one. Normally, if I am going to recommend a book, I like to think not only about who the book is for, but also for which readers the book might miss the mark. The only thing I can think of here is that the dreamlike prose combined with the breadth of subject matter (and being made to think about deep time, which hurts my brain), can be a lot to chew on and made me feel a bit disoriented within the world. It took me nearly three weeks to read it in its entirety. Not because the language or subject matter was difficult but because I felt the need to occasionally put the book down and turn everything over in my mind for a bit. That said, I would urge anyone with an interest or curiousity in any of the topics covered here to pick it up. Macfarlane wrote, “Occasionally - once or twice in a lifetime if you are lucky - you encounter an idea so powerful in its implications that it unsettles the ground you walk on.” Perhaps some of those are waiting here for you.

[cocomoraine]

guess who is the lil shit who multitasks creating gifset, types into her fic, reads geology textbook, and memorizes the geologic time scale. 

my life is just a series of me procrastinating don’t become like me. 

[winebleeds-a]

Liz’s Skills Base On School(ish) Subjects

Math:   perfect Engineering:  that is some good shit Computer Science / IT:  that is some good shit. Chemistry / Physics:  they’re basically math courses. that is some good shit. Business:   even without math she loves it. that is some good shit. Law / Politics:  she almost went this route. since she likes fussing at old white men. that is some good shit. Biology:  good at the math & equine stuff. surprisingly good at genetics, since it’s all coding. doesn’t give two cents about animals kingdoms or ecology though. but will research when needed. Geology:   can remember rocks for a test, but doesn’t care to remember afterwards. might refresh her memory of the geological time scale to impress someone. Astronomy:   who cares. it’s her guilty pleasure because of the astrophysics don’t lie. Mechanical / Vocational:   could actually be good at it if she cared to learn. especially on the mechanical side. like she can probably figure out how to fix a car during the apocalypse... after a few failed attempts. if she thinks about it like math. History:  it’s all memorization, for her, so she’ll take it. Geography:  knows more than she lets on. Anthropology:  just give her the statistics. PE / Gym:  good at the fitness aspect. even better to seduce. not the the best at sports. her lowest point is volleyball & basketball, because of her height. get it? get my pun? English / Literature:  any abstract stuff goes out the window. probably shouldn’t write her own novel. her writing style is literally a math equation. Foreign Language:  don’t let her write it. has to study for hours to memorize a language. can easily tell she’s an american speaking it, except for french maybe. Arts / Music:  a better consumer than producer. might know a couple chords on the guitar because maddie  taught her for sister bonding time. but has probably forgotten them at this point. Medical:  wtf is a band-aid? gets half a golden star for trying.