the peppershrike

australian chemist/biologist. this blog will contain science. and spiders. and random crap, too.

[photography-cnl]

Glowworms Illuminate New Zealand’s Caves

Photographer Shaun Jeffers traveled to the Waitomo area to capture its limestone caves, which are illuminated by glowworms. The alien-like critters emit a phosphorescent turquoise light.

Keep reading

[bughaze]

Glow Worms !?!

[bogleech]

They are the predatory maggots of a fungus gnat and the strands are made of a (in some species) poisonous mucus.

When moths, mosquitoes or other tiny insects enter the cave they will normally look for the sunlight or moonlight of the cave entrance to escape, but the collective glow of the maggots fools them into thinking they’re already outside. They’re basically imitating a sky together!

[peppershrike]

Fun fact, depending on the specific cave/location/conditions, sometimes the maggots' diet is mostly their own adults.

[tw-koreanhistory]

California's coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: 'The devil is already here'

California's coronavirus strain is more transmissible than its predecessors, is more resistant to vaccines and may cause more severe cases of COVID-19.

In a UCSF lab, scientists found that the L452R mutation alone made the California strain more damaging as well. A coronavirus engineered to have only that mutation was able to infect human lung tissue at least 40% more readily than were circulating variants that lacked the mutation. Compared with those so-called wild-type strains, the engineered virus was more than three times more infectious.

the engineered virus? what does this mean?

[peppershrike]

To answer your question:

L453R is one specific mutation - at position 452 in the amino acid chain, what was originally a leucine (L) has been changed to an arginine (R). In the California strain, there are multiple mutations, not just this one, but researchers wanted to find out the effect of just this one by itself. Since there is no naturally-occurring form of the virus with just this mutation, they took the wild-type OG coronavirus sequence and simply changed the code at that one location to produce an engineered form of the virus which is all original EXCEPT for that one mutation. This way they can directly compare the effects of that single mutation on its own, rather than trying to guess which mutation causes which effect in the California strain. These engineered viruses are kept under the strictest of safety protocols if they are actually produced (as seems to have happened here), and are not released into the world.

As a side note, a mutation from leucine (nonpolar) to arginine (positively charged) in the binding region of the protein would indeed be something which could drastically affect the virus's ability to infect cells. Spooky 😱

Hope this helps!

[unpretty]

the older i get the weirder it is that not a single p.e. teacher in my entire school career was able to recognize the difference between “a child who doesn’t get enough exercise” and “a child with serious health problems impeding their ability to exercise in this particular way”

[unpretty]

you know what else is weird? we had to do that fitness test every year but like… we never actually… learned how to do the things they tested us on…

like, now that i am an adult i have learned how to build up my strength so i can do pushups, but that seems like something they could have taught us? in school? in the class where they tested our ability to pushups? they never taught us how to work our way up to actually doing a chin-up, or whatever. even if i had just been “out-of-shape” (as a CHILD), nothing they did would have solved that problem. i did not learn how to exercise in a functional way until i was out of school and teaching myself, so i’m not sure what those p.e. classes were even intended to accomplish, really.

[unpretty]

people are adding a lot of horror stories to this post that are really similar to mine (exercise-induced asthma, running the mile every friday, coughing nonstop for hours afterward and never actually getting any faster or building up any endurance, fainting at least once and not even getting sent to the nurse) but

to add something to the “really obvious shit any idiot could have told me” list

they taught us that the average walking speed should be 3mph, and i consistently tried on treadmills to walk at 3mph, and that always seemed really fucking fast to me and i never understood why

i’m 5′2″

i was in my twenties before i realized that i cannot go that fast because i have short fucking legs

why did grown-ass adults with eyes try to teach my short ass that i should be able to walk an easy mile in 20 minutes

[defydamage]

It’s like they say.

If you can’t do, teach.

If you can’t teach, be a gym teacher.

[vivid-escapist]

It never occurred to me until reading this notes the utter ridiculousness that PE teachers held all kids to the same benchmark standards for like number of pushups and sit ups, time of mile, etc. even though everyone is at a different level athletically and has different body types and heights

[scullytheannihilator]

Can we all agree that PE was a traumatic experience for non-athletic kids? It dented my self confidence for a decade and it probably played an integral role in my developing an eating disorder that nearly killed me two years in a row –too busy comparing myself to the CHILDREN who had been taught to be athletic to consider myself worthy of anything else than starving myself to death.

My mum had a similar experience in 8th grade when her PE teacher asked her to demonstrate how to do hurdles, then asked another athletic girl to demonstrate after her –only to say “see class: do it the way Tammy did it. NOT how Cheryl (my mum) did it.”

It wasn’t until I got a fiercely feminist fitness teacher in grade 10 did I realize I was actually capable of LEARNING this shit. Fuck elementary PE.

[killerchickadee]

I hated P.E. the entire time I was in school, and it didn’t occur to me until well into adulthood that if I’d have been taught properly or not pressured the way kids are pressured, I might have actually enjoyed sports. Cause like, I’d love to build muscles, or play volleyball, or tennis, or what fucking ever, but gym class ruined it for me.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Anyone looking to learn what PE class totally failed to teach, Anatrik’s videos on strength workouts are very good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dF1DOWzf20&t=3s

He’s also worked with a friend to create this great strength routine:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommended_routine

What I love about Anatrik’s stuff is that all of his exercises not only describe proper technique very clearly, but come with suggested progressions – if you’re not strong enough for an exercise, there are several levels of easier exercises designed specifically to build up your strength over time until you can do it.

[imfemalewarrior]

Also what a majority of gym teachers do can actually cause serious health problems. 

At my school on day 1 of gym they would make the whole class do full push ups (girls were allowed to do “””””girl push ups””””””” on our knees , but that is actually the 3rd step to developing the strength and coordination of a full push up and is also sexist) and hold full planks on our elbows for over a minute, and would shame the class and add pushups/time if too many people couldn’t keep up with the athletic boys. Super fun /sarcasm. 

Anyway, the reason this is dangerous is because if you go too hard too fast on a core work out, you run the risk of doing things improperly as your body runs out of strength  to maintain proper form, or if you never developed proper form in the first place. This can cause your abdominal muscles to strengthen unevenly, leaving a weak spot in one part of your abdominal wall that can result in a hernia. Hernias require surgery to treat. 

So yeah gym teachers teach you nothing except how to injure yourself. If you don’t want to exercise because of gym class, I understand. However, I recommend you try out some stuff that was probably not offered in your gym class with actually qualified professionals who know what they are doing and how to teach you proper form. Stuff not offered in your gym class probably won’t be tainted by bad memories. 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

[neomikey]

Major kudos to the good gym teachers out there.  Thank you for properly teaching EVERYone, teaching us about our bodies, the importance of proper stretching and working out, trying to make sports interesting for those not interested, to hold people to different standards depending on their body, and to make things accessible for those who are not athletically inclined.  You are the real MVP and you’re appreciated.

For those gym teachers who don’t?  You made me ashamed of myself as a child, and SO many others, and have given many people issues later in life.  I hope that you either learn and become better educators or you get replaced.

That’s it.

[peppershrike]

Not defending bad teachers, but part of the problem is - have you ever tried to actually teach 30+ children who don't want to be there doing that thing? Because I teach physical activities to groups of 8-9 children who DO want to be there, and it is very taxing to try and customize for each child even at that ratio of staff:children. Most of my time is spent strategizing how to split my attention evenly but also offering more support to those who need it, designing different exercises for those who are ahead, those in the middle, and those behind, without anyone feeling talked down to or diminished, as well as trying to keep it fun and entertaining enough that I can hold their attention. It's exhausting. I love it, but 5x 1-hour lessons with 8-9 students each in one day leaves me wrecked and unable to do much else for the day from sheer mental fatigue.

I do it, and I think and have been told I'm good at it, but part of the problem here isn't simply crappy teachers, it's classes that are far too big to allow individualized attention even when the teachers are good and want to do their best. And as has been pointed out, every body is very unique and needs different speeds, different methods, to avoid injury and anxiety and the aversion to exercise that results. Smaller class sizes, or simply a better ratio of instructors to students, would help a lot to alleviate this.

[columbidaae]

when did we as a society decided that asthma was a nerdy embarrassing thing, as opposed to, like,,,, a genuine chronic illness?

I don’t know how many times I’ve just sat and pushed through an asthma attack because I didn’t want to pull out my inhaler in class. i was already socially ostracized, I was already a ‘nerd’- I didn’t need people seeing my inhaler.

can we talk about this?? why is every representation of asthma I’ve ever seen some nerdy kid in a sweater vest and glasses, using his inhaler as a visual gag? laugh at the nerdy kid, laugh at his potentially dangerous chronic illness.

[madasthesea]

I would also add allergies. Apparently it's the height of pathetic comedy to have someone swell up with hives after being exposed to something they're deathly allergic too? Not to mention how often allergies are paired with asthma to make the nerdy, lame, socially awkward character even nerdier, lamer, and more socially awkward. Because that makes sense. Allergies are definitely a chosen trait, just as much as asthma is :/

[horse-on-a-porch]

Can we talk about how asthma is usually depicted by overweight kids and media has always pushed that being overweight caused asthma? Or like if you have asthma, suck it up and run thirty laps anyway? Or like cardio is not the only dang way to exercise but kids aren't given any other option? And how all of it is a cycle constructed by able bodied people who've never experienced disability? CAN. WE. TALK. ABOUT. THAT.

[peppershrike]

I do have a theory about this, actually. I believe it's because asthma used to be far more serious and life-threatening than now (which is not to underplay its seriousness today, only to say that the availability of good treatment and management has improved). Thus, a child with asthma (or severe allergies) was usually highly "medicalized;" their life, their family, and their identity revolved around their life-threatening condition, and therefore to an extent that's all they knew how to talk about. The only way they had learned to socialize was within the confines of either the medical establishment or trying to avoid harm or death while interacting with other children.

Unfortunately, children are not kind, and when someone tries to interact but only in relation to their illness/disability/experiences therewith, it quickly becomes a focal point for stigma and bullying. It's the combination of othering via the actual illness and othering done by the one with the illness by defining themselves in the frame of that illness, which obviously is not the child's fault nor an attempt at victim-blaming, just the natural result of a life which is genuinely endangered on a daily basis.

Compare to today, where kids with asthma are just normal kids who don't spend vast amounts of their lives being medicalized and having their socialization stunted by being stuck in hospital frequently for long stretches.

[saturniidays]

I just found what I think is a dying great diving beetle in the middle of campus for some reason so I brought it back to my dorm and stuck it in my freezer

I’m gonna try to pin it but I have never pinned an insect before so this is not going to be pretty 

but I gotta learn somehow 

[saturniidays]

Yeah broke sound about right I just tore apart an old slipper for the foam sole

This is gonna be great

[entomologyfrassposting]

Pinning is the best! Here’s the best spot to pin a beetle in just in case you didn’t know. A little tip I wish I knew when doing beetles, especially large ones, be careful where you pin in relation to the oegs because you could accidentally take a leg off when the pin goes through

[saturniidays]

Thank you so much you all are saving my life. As a little update the beetle, besides a bit of guts coming out from the bottom of it, was in pretty good condition: wings and legs and head nicely intact. I put it in a cutout bottom of a plastic cup legs down but now the beetle is frozen to the bottom of the cup by its guts. Marvel at my professional 12am handiwork. I should have froze it upside down. Ahh the things we learn through trial and error.

[saturniidays]

I’ll have a look. I can already hear the distant screams of those who have done this for years as I eventually subject them to watching me destroy this poor bug.

[nanonaturalist]

This site (Purdue Entomology [link]) has some great info and tips for pinning and displaying all sorts of insects (use the table of contents over to the left of the page to navigate). When you start pinning with labels, there is a special pinning block with various heights that allows you to have the labels all exactly the right distance apart so you can read all the info from the drawer.

April 8, 2019

[saturniidays]

You know I’ve been joking around a lot but I really do mean it when I say that the bug side of tumblr is my favorite part of tumblr. Everyone has been so helpful, maybe it won’t turn out as bad as I think. Thank you!!!

[the-study-of-arachnology-comic]

Now im kinda curious…. could you pin a weevil or are thwy simply too small?

[saturniidays]

According to that site @nanonaturalist gave above, you can pin small insects, but you have to attach them to a card and then pin the card

[nanonaturalist]

ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE! You can buy those empty pill capsules, put your small insect in them, and then pin through the capsule. Bioquip sells the caps [link], but you can also buy them from the pharmacy for pretty cheap. 

I use them to store my tiny caterpillar head capsules (when I don’t have them just laying around in a jar lid somewhere ugh).

If you use these things, make sure YOU DON’T GET THEM WET!!!!!! (they dissolve!!)

April 18, 2019

[peppershrike]

Re: weevils, even if they're not tiny, do not try to pin them. Seriously, those little beasts are so tough you end up smashing them to bits rather than getting the pin through nicely. I might try again someday with a very tiny drillbit to make a "pilot hole" for the pin, but never again otherwise!

[parliamentrook]

I’m already getting the brain zaps from my half dose of lexapro today ugggh

[peppershrike]

That's such a stunningly good name for this phenomenon that I almost just had one myself, the memory of the last time I came off it came back so hard. Brain zaps. This is amazing!

[bogleech]

‘Bug Bombs’ Are Ineffective Killing Roaches Indoors

Bug bombs don't effectively remove cockroaches indoors, according to a new NC State study.

Gassing your own home with poison not actually a good idea it turns out

[heedra]

i love shrikes because they’re horrible little carnivores whose feeding habits are grim enough to earn then the nickname ‘butcherbird’ but they look like this

[spectacularuniverse-blog]

Sphaerodactylus nicholsi, one of the smallest geckos in the planet. (x)

[thotidiot]

This is amazing. Look how small it is. It has a heart and a stomach and a brain. And it’s this small

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

And a skeleton!

[catlogicdefiesall]

And a reproductive system to produce even tinier versions of itself! 

And two other species in the genus (S. ariasae and S. partnenopion) are listed as the smallest reptiles in the world, according to Wikipedia.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Teeny libble eggs!

[arrghigiveup]

Thames eels 'left hyperactive due to high levels of cocaine in water'

Eels in the Thames are becoming hyperactive because of the high levels of cocaine in the city’s waste water, scientists say. New research by a team at King's College London found that Londoners are using the class A drug consistently throughout the week, not just on weekends, with fears that it is hurting the river’s wildlife.

That… sure is a headline.

[thebibliosphere]

I miss home. I miss walking down the street and being able to see the span of three different centuries in a block of skyline. I miss standing in the middle of the city and being able to look so far out over the horizon you can see the wind farms turning against the blue haze of open waters and the end of the world beyond.

I miss the way the concrete towers and endless night lights give way to country roads laid down by Romans, carved out through the passage of time to wind endlessly around and over rolling hills that lend their shape the form of slumbering giants with the weight of mythology in their burial mound bones, jutting out of the greenery like sign posts from another time. Post cards from between worlds. Here lies the dormant dreams of ancient gods and a people whose language time forgot.

I miss my family. My friends. I miss the language. I miss the braw wit and the cheerful bleakness that only eleven solid months of grey skies and intermittent roaring sunshine can culture. Like penicillin in a petri dish.

Gods help me, I even miss the rain.

I miss home, even when I have found and made another. I love it here. But I miss the green.

[peppershrike]

What really messes you up is when you realize you've lived in the new place long enough that you'll never not be homesick for one of the two, even if you go back to the first.

[parliamentrook]

ugh

I’m getting a sleep study, but that’s not going to diagnose a circadian rhythm disorder, and he just ordered it to humor me and ease my anxiety. I kept asking that if it won’t help with what I have, then who can, and never got an answer. So I’m going to go do it so I can talk to people who actually know about sleep and get their help. Depending on when it’s scheduled I may be wide awake the whole time. 

I’m giving him one last shot to see how this and the follow up play out then I find a new doctor. He is a cardiologist which is helpful though.  

[peppershrike]

Sleep disorders are often diagnoses of exclusion, rather than something you can pinpoint easily. So even if a sleep study only shows you don't have apnea and your sleep architecture is normal and your breathing is not occluded, that's progress - they know for sure it's not because of those things. Yes, it's incredibly frustrating and I hardly slept through mine (they expected me to go to bed/sleep at 10pm - HAH), but all they need is about 90 minutes of sleep in order to see all stages. Even if they don't get that, if you sleep at ALL they'll likely be able to tell you whether you've got narcolepsy or no (narcolepsy is diagnosed based on entering REM sleep immediately rather than going through other phases first).

All of this is to say: don't despair entirely. Once you've done the test, you can forever after say, "It's NOT a result of apnea (and whatever else)," which is useful and good. It probably won't get you answers yet, but it's the starting point.

I have idiopathic hypersomnia combined with delayed sleep-phase disorder, which is just all kinds of fun. Good luck to you.

[silod]

305 Million-Year-Old Fossil A Glimpse Into The Origins Of Spiders

Scientists have discovered a well-preserved 305 million-year-old arachnid that is “almost a spider” in France. In a new journal article, they say the fossil sheds some light on the origins of “true” spiders.

The main point of distinction: This newly discovered arachnid very likely could produce silk but lacked the spinnerets used by true spiders to, well, spin it, the scientists say. The researchers say it belongs to a “sister group” to the real-deal spiders.

The species, which they described in a new article in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is named Idmonarachne brasieri. That’s after Idmon, the father of Arachne in Greco-Roman mythology. Appropriately, Arachne was a master weaver who was transformed into a spider.

The paper says Idmonarachne “does not fit comfortably into the established orders.” National Geographic reports that it “acts as a bridge between early spider-like creatures brewing up blobs of silk and the skilled weavers that we see today.”

“While delicately constructed webs seem synonymous with spiders, we know from the fossil record that the ability to secrete silk came before the ability to carefully control it. Spider relatives called uraraneids, which lived from 385 million years ago through the time of Idmonarachne, could produce silk but could not build webs.”

[adhdedrn]

Ableism in post apocalyptic fiction

I had an interesting series of thoughts at work today.I started off thinking of a solarpunk zombie apocalypse story - society has collapsed, survivours rebuild from the ashes with solarpunk tech and the like while dealing with zombies, marauders, bandits and other threats. I was enjoying the idea until I realised something:

The post apocalypse genre is inherently ableist.

How often do you see disabled people in post apocalypse fiction anyway? Not very - off the top of my head I can think of Eli from The Book of Eli, Tomonaga Ijiro and Joe Muhammad from World War Z (the book) and Davis, Jodie and Jennifer from Dead State. Everyone else, able-bodied and neurotypical, with nary a chronic illness in sight - anyone who isn’t 100% mentally and physically “normal” is left behind or dragged along with reluctance and openly considered “dead weight,” with no consideration given to that person’s skillset or other qualities they might have that could come in handy. Even people with PTSD - a perfectly understandable thing to have after the apocalypse - are often looked down on as being “weak” or “unable to handle it” and are rarely given any decent help or support from those around them.

The entire genre feels like it’s designed with this ableistic outlook in mind and while I acknowledge there is limited realism to it - a lot of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities do need support to work at their best ability, and most post apocalypse settings won’t have anything like this in place which will put many of them at risk - that doesn’t mean we have to drag it all along in our stories with no questioning of why. Just because some may not make it through doesn’t mean every single person who has a condition that isn’t 100% curable is going to vanish with them.

We can do better than stories that tell disabled people that they’ll be better off dead so they don’t drag everyone else down; that tell people with chronic illnesses that they are worthless; that tell people with mental illnesses that they are a drain on resources; that tell the neuroatypical that they are nothing more than liabilities. Even people that stay behind to care for their loved ones who have such a condition are seen as noble but naive and generally condemned by the narrative as unfit to survive unless they leave the person “holding them back.”

Given that (in my opinion) post apocalypse stories are about how we’d like to rebuild society if we had to start over, the fact that disabled and neuroatypical representation is so rare in the stories across this genre says so much about society, and none of it positive. Neuroatypical and non-able bodied people aren’t all magically going to go away just because society has, and their absence in your story just says more about your attitude than about any “harsh realities” of the setting you’ve created.

[watsons-solarpunk]

This is such a great observation, and I definitely think a big part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction for a certain kind of reader and writer is that you get to wipe out huge swaths of human complexity with “They all just die but it’s not eugenics because the zombies did it.”

But I don’t think it has to be that way, and I think a solarpunk approach could be a great way to bring that out. It would be harder to write, sure, because if the nature of a setting is to say “any shortcoming is a justification for letting someone die,” then it’s got to be a much bigger deal to the protagonists to resist that kind of thinking.

But that also makes it a great kind of story to showcase exactly the kind of values it’s often used to condemn: to show a group retrofitting their friend’s wheelchair with a solar powered motor and all-terrain wheels, or using precious power and backpack space to keep a supply of insulin refrigerated, or all learning sign language to accommodate their deaf teammate. 

You could show people not failing because they chose compassion over pragmatism — maybe even succeeding because of it. All three of those accommodations have advantages, too: the group member with a powered wheelchair can probably carry more than other group members,* if you’re hauling a fridge you can refrigerate more than just insulin, and sign language is a valuable silent form of communication if you’re in a world filled with hostile zombies.

The important thing is to show groups choosing to stick up for their disabled or neurodivergent** members and not be punished for it. Those group members don’t need to ultimately be the climactic key to success — in fact, that’d probably be a problematic way to take it, because it would end up re-emphasizing the idea that their value comes from their ability to be useful.

But showing them as fully realized contributing characters in the story, whose teammates care about and support them (and vice versa), and showing them all make it out alive, flies in opposition to the ableist nature of apocalyptic fiction.

Of course, fiction where the world as it exists doesn’t have to end for things to start to get better is also important. But I can see a lot of value in post-apocalyptic fiction that isn’t a thinly veiled excuse to start gleefully describing the tragic deaths of everybody not optimally equipped to serve the new libertarian/military grim utopia.

* I’m not actually sure about this point — if anyone reading has personal experience with the physics and practical concerns of using a wheelchair re: carrying capacity, and wants to correct me, please do.

** I know I don’t actually have any examples of neurodivergence in the post. I’m gonna keep thinking about that aspect of this but I don’t have anything atm.

[impulsiveingenue]

This is all spot-on and speaks to an understanding of the genre I’ve developed, having formerly been part of the problem. 

I used to be really into post-apocalyptic fiction, especially zombie-apocalypse settings. I actually had discussions with one of my coworkers about the suitability of our workplace for survival during such an event (conclusion: too many windows, we were probably screwed). From the perspective of where I was in my life at the time, it seemed like a good bit of fun and, hey, if it did happen, at least I’d be ready, right? 

Then I became medication-dependent. Now, when I thought about the logistics of survival in a post-apocalyptic situation, I had to consider where the hell I would be getting my anti-androgens and estrogen from. I didn’t think about it before, even though I knew I was trans, because I didn’t realize how fundamentally I needed to be on the right hormones. These meds doesn’t exactly grow on trees, and I’d hardly be the only trans woman who needs the stuff and, well… suddenly it’s not as fun as it used to be. 

Moving from one category to the other really soured me on the genre. I still watch it, read it, hell, I even write it, but it doesn’t have the same appeal to me that it used to. I think that’s the problem, really. Cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical people don’t think about this sort of thing because it doesn’t affect them personally, just like I didn’t think about it when I didn’t think it affected me. To them, survival is a bootstraps thing — if you’re HARD and MAN enough (but not TOO MAN, as Walking Dead’s perfectly shaven ladies helpfully illustrate), you are rewarded with continued life. At least, until the writers decide there’s too many black men on the show and whoops, time for one to get bitten. If you’re not HARD or MAN enough? Well, that’s your own problem! 

If we could get post-apocalyptic media to a less relentlessly heteromasculist and individualist place, I think that would improve things immeasurably. Right now it basically exists to soothe the fears of men that they are not, in fact, HARD or MAN enough, and if the world would just give them the chance they could prove it. I don’t think this is the cause of the ablism in the genre, but it sure feeds into it. 

All this to say that an inclusive community-oriented solarpunk post-apocalyptic setting sounds amazing and I would read the hell out of it. 

[adhdedrn]

Self-reblogging to add that there’s an anthology about this very subject!

“Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive – it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.

In stories of fear, hope and survival, this anthology gives new perspectives on the end of the world, from authors Corinne Duyvis, Janet Edwards, Seanan McGuire, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Stephanie Gunn, Elinor Caiman Sands, Rivqa Rafael, Bogi Takács, John Chu, Maree Kimberley, Octavia Cade, Lauren E Mitchell, Thoraiya Dyer, Samantha Rich, and K L Evangelista.”

It’s going to be out on the 30th of May (two days from now) and you can get it from Twelfth Planet Press or Amazon.

[jazzybot4]

This. Is. My. JAM.  When the apocalypse comes (And it WILL come, someday, I’m 100 percent sure) we need to be able to account for the survivors. All of them.  Some mods that I’ve dreamed up:  The ATV chair. A wheelchair-type control system on an ATV setup. Or even better, taking RC controls and giving our wheelchair-bound packmate the ability to pilot their chair with a remote. With that kind of motor, you now have TOWING CAPACITY, so that fridge you wanted? Your wheelchair buddy now has that rolling behind them.  For someone with a prosthetic: That is now a perfect place to keep things like emergency survival tools, medical supplies, and electronics. A thermal imaging camera? HELL yes.  As for the zombies? Well. What you really need is a way to get rid of them right? I’ve got devices and machines that can be run by the more stable-location needing members of the group. So you’d have the supply outriders, and the home base members.  (No band of people numbering less than fifty can survive for any length of time to rebuild. Ten people cannot create a stable self sustaining camp setup. There’s just not enough eyes to stay awake that long.) Because once the cataclysm event (be it zombies, war, fallout etc) happens? Then it’s just the aftermath.  The aggro man-dudes, the lone wolves out for survival of the fittest? They’re actually a warning. These guys don’t get a happy ever after. They don’t get a community of support and mutual survival. They don’t have people to watch their backs.  And I say that if Chirruit Imwe can be blind and still dangerous? Most other blind folk have something that makes them extra helpful during the zombie apocalypse. Hello my favorite alarm system, how are the bells ringing today?  And that’s just the physical disabilities. 

[peppershrike]

I know this is talking about post-apoc, but I want to just chime in and say that cyberpunk has had this jam down for decades, and it is fantastic. There's a disabled character in Snow Crash who quite literally built himself (into) a massive humvee vehicle to serve as his home and transport. He is not able to speak or move within his body but can use the vehicle to do whatever he needs and get where he needs to go.

One of the first characters the reader meets in Neuromancer has an ancient prosthetic arm and teeth.

Another absolutely has PTSD and it's not a great thing but it doesn't hinder their usefulness or awesomeness, and isn't written as a weakness.

These are just off the top of my head. And no, these aren't postapoc, but they're not exactly cheery great situations where life is peachy and everyone's middle-class, either. Just wanted to chuck that in there, fwiw.

[telesilla]

I (partially) Blame Nostalgia

The power of nostalgia is terrifying. It’s one of the things that I’ve fought the most as I’ve gotten older and I totally understand on a gut instinct level why we become more conservative as we age.

I was just thinking about how much I miss the old Northern California vibe from before the tech bros ruined it, but do I really? Do I miss the Giants crappy stadium and a team that wouldn’t spend? Do I miss the feeling that LA had all the political power? Do I miss a Sacramento that had maybe two or three decent restaurants? Do I miss life before all the exciting tech innovation that happened right in my little corner of the world? Do I miss the way we couldn’t breathe every year when they burned the rice fields off? Do I miss a time when this town was nothing but a government, insurance and aerospace company town? Do I miss shitty weed?

Or do I just miss my porch and my creek and my hot tub? Do I just miss that funky Victorian in midtown we lived in for a while? Do I just miss trips into the City to visit the in-laws? Do I just miss the Novato Renn Faire and the three night show the Dead did every year at Cal Expo right around my birthday? Do I just miss the slower pace of life?

Or do I really miss being in my late 20s and thinking I’d found the best place for me? Do I really miss being as healthy as I was ever going to be?

Nostalgia folks. It’s a hell of a drug.

[isopodde]

I was reading about Japanese seafood and came across a type of conger eel called Anago ( 穴子 ).

Literally translated from Japanese into English, the name means “Hole Child”.

I was a little confused until I saw this image.

[bananapeppers]

“strange heads” in spider subfamiliy Erigoninae