trying on a metaphor
we're not kids anymore.
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DEAR READER
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
RMH
Jules of Nature
d e v o n
Three Goblin Art
⁂
hello vonnie
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
if i look back, i am lost
YOU ARE THE REASON
No title available
Game of Thrones Daily
art blog(derogatory)
Monterey Bay Aquarium
cherry valley forever
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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@dndspellgifs
magical girl shows are good because their attacks will be something like "super love sunshine friendship beam" but make no mistake, super love sunshine friendship beam WILL end you. super love sunshine friendship beam will leave a crater in the ground where you once stood. you cannot understimate the power of super love sunshine friendship beam.
@wearemagicalchild
Movies that use sunlight to highlight character development and emotionally important beats so much it almost acts like another character in the scene:
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Superman (2025)
one-shot idea: the enemies are undead cultists serving nefarious incorporeal undead, but they label themselves as "Wight Supremacists" and believe in "Wight Power"
Carolus Linnaeus vs. Diogenes would be an amazing sight to see
Being in a country with diverse but related languages is funny because you're gonna by talking to a lot of people who are like what do you mean that word means "penis" where you're from? What do you mean that word is "bird" and not "ant"? "Leprosy"???
Kaladin Stormblessed, The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Does Kaladin Stormblessed from The Stormlight Archive eat pussy?
Yes
No
wow dude Lirin is such a fuckin liberal
For those close to him, Jinwoo suddenly becoming unrecognizably tall, dark, handsome, and FLUSH with cash from a job he is famously the Worst In The Entire World at, should all seem very suspicious.
But I am dedicated to the vision that there is a completely logical and sensible explanation to all this if you simply assume Jinwoo started an OnlyFans.
The US military has done thousands of unconscionable things, each one more evil than the last, but on top of all of those things, on a minor but more spiteful level, I'll also never forgive them for what they did to Lithium
@clova-nova @communist-mannyfesto
The more that I think about it the more I realize this probably wasn't a USA only problem it's more of a nuclear arms race problem but let's be honest at least half the blame for that is because of the USA.
So basically you know how when you're in high school chem you come across the concept of Average Atomic Mass, which you might also know as Atomic Weight? Each chemical element has one - you'll find it in the periodic table. It tells you how heavy an atom of Hydrogen is compared to that of, say, Carbon. (On average of course. An atom of ¹²C isotope is gonna be lighter than one that's a ¹³C isotope. We'll get to that)
Well, if you look up the atomic weight of Lithium in any up to date periodic table, you'll see a difference between it and other elements.
That's right, it's weirdly so imprecise compared to other elements. Just 3 digits, while for the others, even though they abridge them to 5 digits here, they can usually narrow it down way more. So why do we have such an imprecise idea of what the atomic weight of lithium is? That's because of the Nuclear Arms Race.
So basically when the US, followed by other countries, were developing and stockpiling hydrogen bombs, they realized that they can utilize that One Weird Trick™ that Lithium does where it's particularly good at absorbing neutrons and making Tritium (...I think? don't quote on this, i didn't really grasp the nuclear physics of it). But the thing is, this only works for the isotope, ⁶Li.
So the people who were making these bombs got a lot of Lithium. Then, they used separation procedures to make their desired samples enriched with ⁶Li. Now they have what they need to make enough god damn bombs to end civilization hundreds of times over. Hooray.
But what do they do with the wasted Lithium? The lithium which is now sans a lot of ⁶Li and has more ⁷Li than normal? Well, it's still pure lithium, so we'll just distribute them to be sold as chemical supplies. Without telling people where they came from. Cause making world ending bombs was Top Secret.
So now there's this huge supply of Lithium being used by everybody which unbeknownst to anybody has been depleted of ⁶Li, and thus doesn't have the right atomic weight anymore. We eventually found out about it, but by then it had gradually made its way everywhere and now you can't tell just by looking how much of your Lithium is from an old stock that's been depleted of ⁶Li.
And that's why we can't really have a very precise figure on the atomic weight of lithium. It could be ⁶Li-depleted, it could be not, could be half and half. Who knows. You better buy the overpriced ones from the fancy chemical supplies store so you can ask how they sourced it.
So now, we're CURSED with having only 3 digits in the atomic weight of Lithium. All because people wanted to make world ending bombs. Smh
My source for this is the DeGruyter article by Norman Holden. You can download the PDF for free here.
wish fulfillment isekai but the wish fulfillment is that the people I look up to are nice to me. No they don't turn out to be secretly dicks i just get to know them and they're nice :)
The US military has done thousands of unconscionable things, each one more evil than the last, but on top of all of those things, on a minor but more spiteful level, I'll also never forgive them for what they did to Lithium
Mean Girls (2004) // Conclave (2024)
Summon Fey
3rd level conjuration
Druid, Ranger, Warlock, Wizard
masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved
these are all creatures to me
Angel of War, angular and strange, gleaming silver and gold, Angel of Wonder, pure and one-eyed, looking to stars new and old, Angel of Harvest, simple and hidden, bring nature's sweetness to all, Angel of Health, mysterious and fine, beacon when life starts to fall, Angel of the Deep, crooked and cage-like, guide us across the sea, Angel of Solace, protect us from evil, lead us to where we are free.
Was inspired by the previous post a while back, and had been working on this on and off for a long while.
You can see the full-resolution versions on My Patreon.
I love all of these. The angel of the the deep's wings are canvas, held up by an anchor. The angel of war's wings are blades, and its shield is a coffin. The angel of solace is a mutant, its arms deforming into wings. Geiger counter in hand, it guides us through the danger only it knows. Was this angel once a man? Corrupted now beyond hope, he can at least save others from the same fate.
this shit is so incredibly cool that i cannot and refuse to attempt to properly articulate it
An upgrade from the holy hand grenade. The Holy Mangrendade
“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.
Blood is what now?
It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing
#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
Thank you that’s…very disturbing
It’s not my fault you’re human.
Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.
You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.
#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”
“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”
“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
And that’s what a human is!
Well, there’s another few steps, of course.
Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.
A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,
and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“
“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)
“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”
“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”
And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“
“Like an egg.”
“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”
“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”
“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”
“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”
You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.
“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.
“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.
“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”
Everyone waits.
“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”
Everyone looks uncomfortable.
“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”
You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.
The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”
And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”
That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.
