me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit
mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters
me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU
it was really heartening to learn that the purpose of creating such a thick uterine lining during the menstrual period was to prevent the implantation of embryos rather than encourage them, and that our uterus is basically flushing out anything it deems unworthy during the period itself rather than “punishing” us for not being pregnant (which is how it’s usually framed). it’s almost as if your female body is more concerned with the protection and continuation of itself rather than being used as a procreative vessel.
the fact that we’ve come to accept the idea that our reproductive organs are punishing us for not being continuously pregnant is proof of how deeply patriarchal brainwashing has convinced women that we are nothing but broodmares for ‘their’ children.
so the best thing about this is that bobcats, like just about every feline besides lions and domestic cats, are pretty solitary. they don’t really have friends. they aren’t really equipped to make friends.
domestic cats, on the other hand, do know how to make friends. they are friendly to the point that lots of feral cats live in colonies— the females hang out together, even raise kids together, and the males like to spend nonsexual time with their baby mommas. they groom each other, play around, and have a particular tail position to signal to one another— straight up with the tip curled— that they’re friendly and happy to see each other. cats learned how to be chill with each other in order to take full advantage of human food sources: an ancient granary supplies enough rats for a lot of cats, as does a modern lady with a big bag of frisky bits, so it would be a waste of time and energy for any one cat to try and stake the entire foodsource out for exclusive use. less fighting means more eating and resting which means a longer, nicer life and a lot more kittens.
so this stray cat, she obviously has no colony if she’s wandering around and sneaking into zoo enclosures, so she’s like ‘hey! there’s food here! what up, other cat, let’s be friends, let’s be friends and share that food’. and the bobcat is like ‘??????’ because actually wild cats are pretty cautious about initiating hostilities and anything new and aggressive makes them very worried. and the domestic cat is like ‘haha cool, ok, we’re friends now, big guy. no problems.’ and the bobcat is like ‘????? well…?? ok?’ and then they are friends.
the super interesting thing about most wild cat species is they don’t really have the capacity to make friends on their own, especially outside of sibling bonds, but, if someone comes along and does all the friend-making themselves, they’ll totally roll with it. zoo cats can get really attached to their caregivers— or, in this case, a very confident little calico demonstrating exactly why her species has been so darn successful over the last nine thousand years .
so anyway that is the best thing: bobcats are not equipped to make friends, but luckily for this bobcat this homeless lady did not give any shits and made friends anyway. and now they are both happy.
“genitalia associated with cis women are harshly stigmatized and policed as part of misogyny, which can lead to violence” and “not all women have vaginas and not everyone with a vagina is a woman” and “trans peoples’ bodies are harshly stigmatized and policed as part of transphobia, which can lead to violence” are not mutually exclusive factsx and in fact all of these things are very much interlinked, and should not be used as gotchas! against each other
the fact that placebos can work even when you know they’re placebos is so fucked up. what the hell is up with the brain
like some kind of fucked up wrinkled goblin that won’t unlock the chemical secrets if you just ask politely, you have to give it some kind of pill. you can tell it that the pill doesn’t do shit, but it doesn’t care, it just wants the pill
A few years ago I had the privilege of proof-reading a dissertation on drug addiction interventions which touched on the placebo effect (because it turns out successful addiction interventions share the basic elements of the placebo effect: a desire to get better, a change in one’s beliefs about one’s condition, and a positive relationship with a trusted authority figure).
How the placebo effect works, in terms of feedback between the brain and (presumably) the inflammatory system, is still unknown. But the logic of why the placebo effect should happen is not that mysterious. There are two basic principles.
One, pain is protective. A lot of the conditions we take medicines for are in fact interim defence mechanisms. Pain stops us doing things that damage our bodies. Fever kills pathogens. Vomiting gets rid of poisons. Fainting cuts the work-load on the heart.
Two, healing takes resources. Before the body commits to expending those resources fully it needs to be certain they’re not needed for something else, like fighting off a secondary bacterial infection. And of course the circumstances in which we get sick in the first place are the same circumstances in which we might want to hold resources in reserve for dealing with further assaults on the body.
This means that our healing systems will stay in the interim condition until they get a signal of some kind to let them know that our circumstances have changed and full healing is a good investment now. What part of our body processes that kind of complex information? The brain, that’s what.
The information basically needs to take the form: “Something external has changed and we have confirmation that as a result we are going to recover from this condition.” Apparently our healing systems can tell when we’re just making it up to jolly them along.
The logic is presumably the same in most species, but in humans, being language-users, that external change can take the form of someone whom we trust to know what they’re talking about saying “These pills will do the trick. Drop into the pharmacy on your way home and hand them this bit of paper.”
Most likely the signal from the brain takes the form of some kind of hormone, triggered by a new emotional state.
The word for the subjective experience of that emotional state? Hope.
one of the most important things ive learned from upper level biology education so far is that dna isnt the god-like all-powerful beacon of similarity between all living beings on the face of the earth as high school science textbooks will lead u to believe but actually is, in fact, the molecular equivalent of a smoldering dumpster fire that’s in a constant state of chaos and cellular scandal like some highlights:
-the parts of dna that just casually detach on a physical level from the main strand, do some sick skateboard tricks in the cytoplasm, and land somewhere else with 43552342 copies
-the parts that would do A Thing if they wern’t physically spooled up so tightly that the Make Thing Happen machinery couldnt get to them
-the dna thats in ur mitochondria bc the mitochondria used to be a bacteria that our bigger, buffer cellular ancestors just vored in the primordial ooze
-the dna that’s in chloroplasts in plants for the same reason
-rna….bitches be crazy like what is she gonna do next?? o she gonna act like a protein now and do shit?? im on the edge of my seat
-sometimes u just gotta make more chromosomes man like sometimes u just be hanging out and u gotta make ur genome 64 sizes larger and then change ur mind only 100,000 years later and delete half of it and thats just how it is on this bitch of an earth
-random shit from like 5 BCE is just casually left over everywhere like no susan i told u to leave that gene alone we might need it to fight dinosaurs again u just never know!!!!!
dna is earth’s biggest and brightest train wreck and honestly i wouldnt trust a dna molecule to water my plants let alone run my body but here we fucking are
it is pretty hard to find solid statistics on wolf attacks, but as far as i can tell, wolves in north america kill way way way less than one person a year, which means that forces more deadly to us than wolves include: dogs, ice fishing, and getting crushed by a falling flat screen tv.
…further complications to trying to write non-ridiculous angst into a werewolf story
“you don’t understand…i’ve done things under the full moon that i can never take back…one time i ate a squirrel”
“I SNIFFED MY OWN BUTT. THE INDIGNITY HAUNTS ME STILL.”
“i have pooped in the woods and now must go brood about it. don’t try to follow me.
…and seriously, be careful around your flatscreen, it is probably heavier that you think.”
European wolves (before they were hunted into extinction in most areas) attacked humans purposefully a lot; it’s in the historical record.
North American gray wolves have a natural fear of humans and attack people very rarely, really only when threatened or starving.
So like, imagine, like, a divide between people who got infected with Old World and New World lycanthropy. One makes you this dangerous beast that sees humans as a viable food source an another makes you perceive humans as a threat. Imagine people getting it wrong!
Some shady paranormal group capturing a werewolf to use as security but it just runs away when people trespass.
Some hunters go deep into the woods to murder a werewolf clan for their pelts but it turns out they’ve isolated themselves so deeply because they have the European strain and none of the hunters survive.
New werewolves are so confused because the websites give conflicting advice: get yourself to your nearest national park when you’re about to turn and just let yourself run free; if you try to cage yourself the claustrophobia and the smell of people will make you panic and you could really hurt yourself or someone else.
vs
If you’re anywhere near human civilization you must make sure you turn in a closed space that you can’t escape from in wolf form or you’ll definitely kill someone. Just try to take a nap during the full moon, OK.
And they’re like, WHAT DO I DO WHICH ONE DO I HAVE?
case in point, the global werewolf cultural divide!
on the subject of the global werewolf cultural divide, another update, per wikipedia:
Wolves from different geographic locations may howl in different fashions: the howls of European wolves are much more protracted and melodious than those of North American wolves, whose howls are louder and have a stronger emphasis on the first syllable. The two are however mutually intelligible, as North American wolves have been recorded to respond to European-style howls made by biologists (x)
1 human, 3 bears. i’m assuming they can also use the terrain.
id pick the human and the ten thousand rats. the other creatures are mostly predators, who look cool but are by nature cautious and easily spooked by prey species fighting back and would thus be freaked into running away after a couple good nips— and if they didn’t, they’d be skeletonized. and even angry bulls cant do much against a swarm of tiny opponents: they could trample a couple by sheer luck, i guess, but, again, TEN THOUSAND RATS. a swarm of ten thousand rats is enough to win against anything. the human with a gun would just be there so i had someone to chat with during the clean up.
I don’t know man, if the five gorillas are organized, they can beat a fuckin’ tank
sure, but rats aren’t a tank. a tank is one slow, solid enemy with very limited mobility. you can punch a tank. a rat swarm, like pretty much any other kind of swarm, has pretty much infinite mobility, and can attack you from every direction all at once. the gorillas would have the best chance against the rat swarm to survive, since they have hands and can climb and are smart and their top speed is a disturbingly zippy 20mph, but how the hell would they win? swat the ground with branches? anywhere they touch the ground, rats can run up and start biting them. have you ever tried to fight a swarm of wasps? this would be like that except the wasps are eating you. and there’s ten thousand of them.
fun fact – the human uterus automatically rejects and flushes out/kills around 70% of all fertilized eggs, so defining life as beginning at conception essentially makes it illegal to have functional reproductive organs.
The human uterus is one of the most hostile places for an embryo to implant. Guess all of our uteruses are potential serial killers.
And it’s hostile because human pregnancy is incredibly dangerous by all accounts compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, so bear that in mind whenever someone says “Just go through with the pregnancy and give it up for adoption”
And not only is pregnancy in the US Particularly Dangerous, it’s even more so for the Poor and Rural, and even more for Black Women, most often as a result of stress-related illnesses and lack of prenatal care.
Oddly enough, the self-professed “pro-life” don’t seem to give a damn about any of this, and actively support a political party whose policies have 1)created this problem, 2)actively prevent fixing it, and 3)frequently deny it even exists.
The fact that the location of the world’s oldest tree has to be kept secret encapsulates everything that’s bad about humanity.
There’s a story about that, actually.
According to the smithsonianmag.com, the world’s oldest bristlecone pine was a nearly 5,000 year old tree later named Prometheus. In 1964, a man named Donald Rusk Currey decided to use an increment borer to determine its age (a process that cuts a small hole into the center of the tree trunk, and is not intended to kill the tree). Unfortunately, the borer got stuck. He and a park ranger cut the tree down to remove the equipment, and when they counted the tree rings, they realized their mistake. Oops. This incident lead to better protection of the remaining bristlecone pines.
There’s some wiggle room about what can be called “the world’s oldest living tree.” The world’s oldest living single tree is the tree that the OP is referring to. Its name is Methuselah,and it is also around 5,000 years old. Since its location is unknown, nobody knows what it looks like. But it might be this tree here:
But technically, it isn’t the oldest living tree. Let me explain.
It turns out that root systems of trees can send up genetically identical saplings (aka clones) via their root systems. Like so:
Which means the original trunk can die, but since the root system is attached to other trees which give it nutrients, it lives on. The root system can theoretically do this indefinitely. So the tree trunks could be fairly young, but the roots could be large and very, very, very old. So the oldest “tree” isn’t a small grove, it’s a logic-defyingforest.
I’d like you to meet Pando.
This male quaking aspen covers 106 acres and is ancient. I’m talking an estimate of 80,000 years. The trees you can see are just “shoots” he sent up, and their average age is 130 years old. He is his own forest. If trees could talk, I’d love to hear what he had to say.
He might be dying, due to insects and drought (hmm, wonder what could have happened to cause that). A section of Pando is being studied in an attempt to find a solution. But in the meantime, we can enjoy him for his beauty.
just moving along like everyone else 