everyone go read the unexpected engagement of the marvelous mr penn IMMEDIATELY.. i'm pissed there's not even a tumblr tag for this book.. you freaks will love it i promise
In May, 1899, a hundred and fifty unassuming envelopes are delivered to households across the city. Most of them will be picked up by butler
Some of the math in quantum physics kinda makes me angry to be honest. Like. Ok sure, linear operators don't always commute. Fine. That's completely okay. Sometimes a*b isn't the same as b*a. And yeah, sometimes you want to describe how they don't commute with the commutator [a,b] = a*b -b*a. Fine.
But the commutator having physical fucking meaning?? What the fuck??
in case you were wondering how things went down at the pokemon world championships this weekend:
-during the top 8 of the TCG masters division, chilean player fernando cifuentes was running a gimmick deck that consisted exclusively of four iron thorns ex and a whole ton of control-focused trainer cards in a strategy that either completely shuts down opponents or shits the bed entirely
-through skillful play and some good luck, fernando made it through 2 days in a tournament with over 1100 players to get to the quarterfinals
-fernando lost 2-0 to ian robb, who was running regidrago vstar (widely considered one of the best decks in the current format)
-in an overexuberant victory celebration, ian did what can only be described as a jacking-off gesture, on a stream with tens of thousands of viewers run by a company with very firm player conduct expectations
-the judges determined that this warranted a penalty of game loss, but for some reason, rather than applying it to ian’s next game in the semifinals, they applied it to the one he had just won in the top 8
-(it should be noted that the prize money for making top 8 is $15k while top 4 is $20k, so this jerking gesture cost ian robb $5,000)
-nearly an hour after fernando came to terms with his loss and the end of an impressive run, he was told that he was to get back on stream because he’s now playing in the semifinals due to winning by default
-the player he was up against in the semifinals was playing a deck (miraidon) that happens to get shut down hard by iron thorns’s gimmick, so fernando wins the semifinals
-said player, jesse parker, had notably had an undefeated run throughout the whole tournament up to this point, and likely would have continued that streak had his intended semifinal opponent not gotten a game loss penalty for miming a lewd act on stream
-meanwhile, the other semifinal winner is japan’s seinosuke shiokawa, running a deck (roaring moon) that players had largely written off as underwhelming months ago
-the grand finals are on the following day, so saturday evening was abuzz with a lot of people baffled by the absurdity of the situation
-come sunday afternoon, the grand finals are set to begin, with fernando cifuentes running iron thorns and seinosuke shiokawa running roaring moon
-it should be noted here that the roaring moon deck doesn’t rely very much on abilities, so iron thorns’s gimmick has very little effect - this is basically an even matchup
-fernando wins the first game of the set, and seinosuke wins the second
-the third and final game of the set is a bonafide cheek-clencher, with both players reaching a state where a single KO will win the game, but fernando manages to clinch it at the last minute
-and that’s the story of how a guy pretending to jork it led to the first instance of a pokemon world champion who also lost the quarterfinals
Huge shout to my friend from an undergraduate philosophy program who started working out every single day, not for health benefits or to become conventionally attractive or whatever, but because – and this is a direct quote – he was concerned that otherwise he might “become lost in the world of signs and forget the things they signify”. I have thought about this every single time that I’ve worked out since.
the funny thing about molecular biology is there's only like twenty thousand human genes, and there's single-gene labs. Like we could have specialists on every part. We prioritize genes that cause cancer when they mutate or whatever but if there were enough molecular biologists we wouldn't really have to view any gene as unworthy of study.
how many molecular biologists would there need to be before there was a major annual conference for each gene? I guess tens of millions?
also, the number of genes roughly matches the number of words in a single person's vocabulary. So if you think about all the context and connections we have for each word, it seems feasible for a single person to know the whole genome, not just the names of the genes but how they relate to each other. The millions of specialists would be to discover this stuff, but one person could know it
I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.
Exactly! It's freaking annoying when I want to watch movies but I would have to subscribe to like 24 different services . Just to watch the shows that I like.
peeling those sour rainbow gummy strips into long thin strings and putting them into cheap energy drink to create something im calling battery acid spaghetti will update once ive finished it
I keep seeing this post going around so, for folks who want to know why not, here's a chemist's hypothesis:
-Human saliva has an average pH of ~6.7 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3800408/), which is pretty neutral.
-Monster energy has a pH of ~2.7 (https://patientconnect365.com/DentalHealthTopics/Article/Energy_Drinks_and_Your_Teeth_Should_You_Worry), which is quite acidic but not dangerous, except to your tooth enamel if consumed in large quantities.
-Rainbow sour belts contain malic acid (a common food additive as a potent acidifier and sour-flavor agent), citric acid (another common sour flavoring in pretty much everything) as well as ascorbic acid (aka vitamin C, used here mainly as a preservative). (https://candypros.com/products/sour-belts-bulk-rainbow)
-All of these acids when added to water would normally release their protons (H+ ions), thereby making the water solution more acidic. However, a chemical constant of these acids called the acid dissociation constant (pKa for short) indicates the pH of a solution at which acids are most likely to keep or release their protons. The pKa's* of these acids are higher (3.4, 3.1, and 4.2 for malic, citric, and ascorbic acids respectively) than the pH of the solution (2.7), which essentially means that the acids can't release their protons and all that acidic potential is trapped in the solid formulation of the candy.
-There's also some evidence that sugar decreases the solubility of acids in water solutions (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3411471/ only sorbic acid is discussed here but it's relatively structurally similar to the acids in discussion). The undoubtedly high sugar content of both the Monster and the candy therefore may contribute to the accounts of the sour crystals bubbling/floating on top of the solution instead of dissolving.
-Malic acid in particular is notorious for causing mouth irritation when eaten in high quantities.
-Thus, I can imagine that upon consuming the battery acid spaghetti, not only is the mix itself quite potently sweet/sour, but also the solid malic acid coming into direct contact with your mouth quickly becomes painful, and as the solution mixes with your (pH neutral) saliva the trapped acidity of the malic/citric/ascorbic acids is dumped into your mouth and esophagus, creating a sensation that I can only imagine is similar to consuming actual battery acid (pH = 0.8).
(*Each of these acids actually has multiple pKa's corresponding to number of protons they're able to donate, but really only the lowest pKa is useful here since once that one dissociates then all of the other ones are already dissociated too.)
String identified:
g t a g t t g t tg a ttg t t ca g t cat tg cag att ac agtt at c t
t t
a t t t a c acta t ct.
t a at t t a t t. t a gat tat.
tat a g acta. a a at t .
t t.
g t t gg a , at t t, ' a ct' t:
-a aa a a aag ~. (tt://.c…g/c/atc/C/), c tt ta.
-t g a a ~. (tt://attcct.c/taatTc/Atc/g__a__Tt___), c t acc t t ag, ct t tt a c ag att.
-a t cta ac ac (a c at a a tt ac a -a agt), ctc ac (at c ag tt c tg) a a acc ac (aa ta C, a a a at). (tt://ca.c/ct/-t--a)
-A t ac a t at a a t t (+ ), t ag t at t acc. , a cca ctat t ac ca t ac cat ctat (a t) cat t a t at c ac a t t a t t. T a'* t ac a g (., ., a . ac, ctc, a acc ac ct) ta t t t (.), c ta a tat t ac ca't a t t a a tat acc tta ta t at t ca.
-T' a c tat ga ca t t ac at t (tt://.c…g// c ac c t t' at tcta a t t ac c). T t g ga ctt t t t a t ca t a ctt t t acct t cta g/atg t t t ta g.
-ac ac atca t cag t tat at g att.
-T, ca ag tat cg t att ac agtt, t t t t tt t/, t a t ac ac cg t ct ctact t t c c a, a a t t t ( ta) aa t ta act t ac/ctc/acc ac t t a ag, catg a at tat ca ag a t cg acta att ac ( = .).
(*ac t ac acta a t a' cg t t t' a t at, t a t t a c c tat cat t a t t a aa cat t.)
ct t: * tat t t aa atg*
a: t at a tat t ta att ac a a t
Closest match: Wolffia australiana isolate 7733 chromosome 4
Common name: Water meal
It turns out a lot of animals can’t see the difference between orange and green! Elephants, for instance, have dichromatic vision (two types of cones, rather than three like most humans.)
Check out this diagram from ResearchGate. It deals with the color vision of horses, who are also generally dichromatic. (I think, though I’m not sure, that zebras would have the same color vision as horses.) See how orange and green look to them?
It doesn’t matter what zebras see, because tigers are not native to Africa and do not naturally hunt zebra. Tigers are Asian and mostly hunt animals like deer, elk, and buffalo. These aren’t animals with great color vision. They don’t need to have it because they don’t eat fruit and so don’t need to know when the berry is ripe vs when it’s not. Good color vision is too expensive to have if you don’t need it. Deer put their vision stats in a wide field of vision that is sensitive to motion, low light capabilities, and possibly seeing UV light. They don’t have great color and lack a lot of acuity, but have a great sense of smell and good hearing. That’s way more useful if you’re prey. Deer see well in the blue end of the color spectrum and less well in the red. This makes sense because deer are most active in the dawn and dusk periods, when there is more blue in the light. Tigers are taking advantage of deer eyesight by being orange.
We see tigers are being obviously colored because tigers are fruit colored to our tree ape brains.
I don’t know what the best part of this is: implying that deer chose their attributes on a character sheet, or the fact that we get to see tiger colors because they look like a snack.
Ok but like, I think you underestimate just how well they blend in when actually in the environment. Like, just using tigers as an example.
or how about a leopard?
It’s called ‘disruptive colouration’ because the markings help to break up the animal’s outline against the grasses or rocks. And the rosettes on leopards and jaguars? Sun spots shining through the trees and leaves on the ground.
And this is how hard it is to spot them WITH colour vision. Now imagine the above images but with the limited coloured mentioned above?