oozey mess
The Bowery Presents
Monterey Bay Aquarium
pixel skylines
Sweet Seals For You, Always
$LAYYYTER
trying on a metaphor
Sade Olutola
No title available
Cosimo Galluzzi
Love Begins
sheepfilms
KIROKAZE
almost home
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
ellievsbear
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official daine visual archive
Misplaced Lens Cap
seen from Türkiye
seen from Vietnam
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Togo
seen from Uzbekistan
seen from Uzbekistan
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
@shilotus
typicallotus -> shilotus
you can call me shiloh, or lotus
he/him | adult
slowly trying to put together some writing stuff + a proper intro post…
original posts should be tagged with #shiloh rambling
wip directory here!!
character directory here!!
Oldest human footprint discovered, made 153,000 years ago in South Africa.
Oldest human footprint in North America, made 21,000 years ago in New Mexico, USA.
Oldest human footprint on the Moon, made July 20, 1969 on the Sea of Tranquility, Earth's moon.
Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.
If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.
Um. Yikes
5 0 Y E A R S A G O
By @iamrenhollow
Get back here
Prints
"okay, but are you a nonbinary woman or a nonbinary man" im going to nonbury you in a fucking hole.
By Jocelin Carmes
a couple months ago someone sent me an ask asking if I’d ever heard of Boquila trifoliolata and I was like ‘no way. this can’t be real’ and i looked it up and it was and I forgot about it until just now when my supervisor and I got sidetracked and I looked it up again to prove to her that it’s real and found out that not only does this plant vaguely mimic the leaves of whatever plant it’s vining on, it does it when it climbs on fake plants too so any theories about how it does it that include gene transfer or chemicals or touching it in any way are just out the window and those were like, the only theories the original researchers had about how it might be doing it. so anyway I am screaming and crying and whatnot
The more you read the better this gets – from Krulwich, Nat Geo 2016:
Boquila feels more like a cuttlefish or an octopus; it can morph into at least eight basic shapes. When it glides up a bush or tree that it’s never encountered before, it can still mimic what’s near. And that’s the wildest part: It doesn’t have to touch what it copies. It only has to be nearby. Most mimicry in the animal kingdom involves physical contact. But this plant can hang—literally hang—alongside a host tree, with empty space between it and its model, and, with no eyes, nose, mouth, or brain, it can “see” its neighbor and copy what it has “seen.”
(Artifical plant modeling & c. discussed in White & Yamashita, Plant Signaling & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2021.1977530)
Don’t like this at all! Thank you!!
One theory from that above White & Yamashita paper is that Boquila does this using plant ocelli—a very basic type of eye! If you’re interested in a brief infodump about ocelli: Many animals have ocelli, like jellyfish and insects. Here’s a picture of a wasp head—you can see its two main eyes to the side, and those three dots in the middle are ocelli.
(Photo cred: Assafn, Wikipedia)
These ocelli don’t form sharp images, but instead probably detect light and shadow for sleep patterns, directionality, flight stability, etc.
Some reptiles and amphibians also have a light-sensitive third eye called a parietal or pineal eye! It’s similarly right on top of their heads. Again, they’re not forming complex images, but instead use general light information to regulate other things. It’s also why even tame reptiles may bolt if you reach at them from directly overhead, out of range of their normal eyes—that third eye sees an incoming shadow and goes HAWK, RUN.
So with that in mind, plant ocelli…Basically they think the upper epidermal cells have evolved to have a particular convex dome shape that focuses light. I don’t know what proportion of cells are ocelli, if it’s just some or all, but basically the leaf itself IS the “eye”.
Plant ocelli were first proposed over a century ago but they haven’t been well studied since then. Cyanobacteria (a photosynthetic bacteria) focus light. Arabidopsis thaliana has been documented to recognize other Arabidopsis plants…basically when competing for resources, if the Arabidopsis recognizes it’s competing with other Arabidopsis plants, they’ll cooperate and move leaves so that they don’t shade each other, ensuring each plant has access to nutrients. But if the competing plant isn’t Arabidopsis, screw ‘em, they’ll shade it. Crepy & Casal narrowed this down to a light-based response, not just chemical identification, so it’s possible Arabidopsis is visually identifying friend from foe. At any rate, that’s about the extent of plant ocelli research that I was able to find. So this Boquila thing is cool and weird.
What we don’t yet know is how precisely Boquila is seeing the world. Boquila is clearly getting some level of resolution in order to be able to copy shape, size, AND color. Unlike an insect’s 2-3 ocelli, it has tons, so even crude data over a lot of inputs might lead to a pretty good picture. The paper also says the mimicry gets more accurate over time, so there appears to be some learning involved. I would also love to know if it has some equivalent of depth perception! If the target plant is near vs. far, does Boquila produce the same appropriately sized mimic leaf? Does it adjust? They’re going to keep studying it so hopefully we have some answers in a few years!
Anyway here’s a picture of the variation of Boquila mimic leaves.
(Photo cred: Gianoli figure)
👁 🌱 👁
irritating as fuck when people get mad at Black people existing in premodern historical fiction/fantasy media. like first of all, you're racist. and second of all, you are acting as though Black people didn't exist in premodern Europe which is simply false. especially when we're talking about the Mediterranean, like what the fuck do you people think is along the southern half of the Mediterranean Ocean?? everyone's on boats, there are GOING to be interactions with Black people in Northern Africa, and there are GOING to be Black people in Mediterranean Europe. stop being stupid. your imagined homogeneous white European past is not historical reality, get over it you massive losers
there are historical records of black knights/nobles/people of influence in medieval britain and germany
if you're still whining about "woke media" when there's a lack character in your medieval fantasy setting gtfo
Erika Toliusis (b.1969) - Pacific Angel. 2022. Oil with palette knife on canvas.
Reblog daily for health and prosperity.
I often think about that post that was a fake dating profile for a cat that was all about chickens, like wanting someone with posable thumbs for opening chickens.
This is one my favourite things the internet has ever made.
!!!!!!
This remains one of the great art objects of modern times and nobody will convince me otherwise.
Happy Fucking Moon Day
“People should pass a test before being allowed to have kids.” “Isn’t it scary how white people have this inborn capacity for evil?” “I’ll never pass because males and females have different skull shapes.” “Autistic people have a stronger sense of justice than anyone else.” “I don’t want AMABs in my space because they’re dangerous.” “You shouldn’t have access to hormones if you dress like THAT.” “Anyone who does something that awful isn’t human.” “Some people really shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”
This is eugenics. This is phrenology. THIS IS NAZI SHIT, YOU ARE A LEFTIST BUYING INTO NAZI SHIT. YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO NAZI SHIT.
Shout out to the phrase “I’m going to become the joker” for capturing a very specific and real emotion
Embrace your inner Jimothy!✨🦝
