Somitic

obsessed with crabs, spreadsheets and hollow knight

[charlesoberonn]

Imagine showing somebody the first episode of Steven Universe and then telling them that the sarcastic convenience store clerk is getting his own spin-off

[somitic]

Bad Cherries, 2021

Bad Lemon, 2020

Bad Peach (Bite), 2022

Bad Strawberry (Chocolate Dipped), 2022

Bad Melon (Double Rainbow), 2022

Screwdriver, 2023

Deluxe, 2023

Works with Kathleen Ryan

[somitic]

Semi-Precious Bone, 2018

Sour Pearls, 2018

Fool's Mold, 2018

Pleasures Known, 2019

Bad Grapes, 2020

Bad Melon, 2020

Bad Cherries, 2021

Jackie, 2021

works by Kathleen Ryan

[headspace-hotel]

the idea of protists is really funny. Ah yes, the kingdoms of life: Animals, Plants, Fungi, and Don't worry about it:)

[man-cave-chronicles-stan]

i just started taking my first botany course and politely op what the fuck is this supposed to mean

[headspace-hotel]

Well

Um

...

All creatures with cells that have the fancy stuff like nucleus and mitochondria are Eukaryotes. That picture is from the Wikipedia page for Eukaryotes.

Long ago there was just the Bacteria and Archaea. Then something weird happened and an Archaean ate a bacterium but the bacterium was not consumed, instead they became friends. By "friends" I mean "permanently merged together into an entirely new kind of life form that can do all kinds of fancy stuff with its cells." This life form is your ancestor and the ancestor of all Eukaryotes.

One of those new, fancy life forms ate a cyanobacteria and made it into chloroplasts. This created the plants.

A few others decided to go multicellular and form tubes out of cells that could wriggle around, and they became animals.

A few decided to also go multicellular and team up into big networks of interconnected thread-like tendrils, and they became fungi.

But most of them just kind of went off and did their own thing, going about their single-celled business, evolving into all kinds of weird stuff without doing anything multicellular. And all of those guys got called protists. Every eukaryote that didn't become multicellular is a protist.

The guys that went multicellular are just a few weirdos in these random corners of the tree of life, but they get all the attention cause we multicellular organisms are kind of self-absorbed (and we had to do some strange things to sand to turn it into lenses to see the single-celled organisms).

If each of those multicellular clades counts as a "kingdom," how many kingdoms do the single-celled guys make? Good luck with that one. We keep finding more of them.

Every time we look at some more pond water, the taxonomists collapse into sobbing again. There are too many ways to be a little guy. Every time there's a cilium or a flagellum somewhere it's not supposed to be, or there's something suspicious going on with microtubules or zoospores or helical structures something, or god forbid two guys get freaky and do another endosymbiosis again, they have to rewrite everything and there's at least two fistfights and one brawl.

Protists: Just don't worry about it.

[headspace-hotel]

Also I lied and there are plenty of eukaryotes that are multicellular and not animals, plants, or fungi, such as giant kelp

However those get called protists half the time too because with kelp, it's easier than trying to explain what the fuck it is if it isn't a plant, and with everything else, talking about it just starts an argument about what counts as a "cell" and what counts as "multi" for that matter and nothing good comes of it.

[drafty-castle]

Wait wait wait. Hope do you argue what counts as multi. Anything larger than one, right? Anything larger than one?

[headspace-hotel]

Well

Xenophyopores found a cool hack to be unicellular but still get 20 centimeters long—they just have lots and lots of nuclei in their single cell.

They look like this. Of course it is in the ocean where all kinds of freaks are.

Behold, a single celled organism

Maybe it is cheating though.

[headspace-hotel]

Don't worry, though, the squiggly thing isn't really its body, it's more of a shell they secrete. Yes, you see they take in minerals from their surroundings, like for example, uh...

...Okay, maybe worry a little bit.

[headspace-hotel]

wikipedia article btw

They really like radioactive isotopes and collect radioactive materials in their bodies at high concentrations.

But this is exactly what i'm talking about, these guys are totally different from plants, animals, or fungi, just like they're totally different from kelp and amoebas, they are Their Own Thing.

[headspace-hotel]

@ayoungparent Well apparently slime molds are a polyphyletic group (a bunch of unrelated organisms that happened to look similar).

The Myxomycetes are the ones known as plasmodial slime molds and basically they form spores which hatch into single-celled haploid guys (basically like sperm or egg in humans) and when the spores meet each other they become a diploid cell with more and more and more nuclei until they can be one cell several meters in area and several kilograms in weight. Despite being one cell technically and having no brain, they can learn and have some form of intelligence. They are good at designing the most efficient railroad system.

The big green ball I assume you refer to is Valonia ventricosa. It has some complicated structures inside and lots of nuclei to make it work, but it is just one really big cell.

Yeah. It does mitosis and everything like a regular cell.

This guy is actually much closer related to regular plants than kelp or anything else we've discussed.

[ecdykesone]

ah yes, Parakaryon myojinensis

we, uh....we don't like to talk about that one

they're the definition of Doing Their Own Thing

[bogleech]

Yeah, two identical looking amoeba crawling around in a drop of dirty water can be less related to each other than you are to a tomato, and we consider you and a tomato to belong to two entirely different kingdoms of life. But figuring out how to categorize single celled animals is like being handed a garbage bag filled with the crumbs of 100 bakeries and being asked to determine whether each came from a donut, an eclair, a cookie, a cake or a pie.

[albabbgg]

🔮⚔️💀 CURSED RELICS 2024 OFFICIAL LIST 💀⚔️🔮

AYOO LETS GO ☝🏻🌝 so excited again !!! Cannot wait to see what we’ll create together this year 🪲 Let’s get dungeonish 🔮⚔️ grab your potions and choose your weapons we’re going on a quest together ‼️⚔️

👽 Info in the second slide

[twinprime]

when i die i hope i come back as a beautiful microscopic granule of sand

[twinprime]

these are all me in my next life btw

[revretch]

Feel a need to point out these aren't mineral formations--these are all dead organisms, with maybe a few exceptions.

[ellanmwebb2]

Sketchbook paintings,

Ella Webb

[exmellivorinae]

OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT

[a-windsor]

NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU. Also: Dear ______: Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future]. Sincerely, @mellivorinae

[exmellivorinae]

THIS IS A LIFESAVING TEMPLATE

[a-windsor]

YOU ARE WELCOME

[emeraldboreas-deactivated201809]

My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.

[suaimhneas-peace-deactivated202]

should it be an email? or like a physical letter?

[daminwayne]

email, you want to send it within a few hours at max after the interview if you can so it’s fresh in their mind who you are. 

[khirsahle]

Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

Either way, those letters are important.

[neurofancier-deactivated]

Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it. 

Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.

[oaky-dokey]

Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)

[cricketcat9]

As a former professional recruiter and recruiting manager, I confirm, especially for entry-level positions, where you are competing with oodles of people. This little thing can make a difference. Also the fact that, maybe, you took time to google the “interview etiquette”.

[boogiewoogiebuglegal]

SIGNAL BOOST

[ironswordandstarshield]

The post-interview thank you notes can be a good way to recover in case you got asked a question whose answer you either didn’t know or felt was super weak. So if you follow the above given template, jump in with something like “upon further thought to your question, here’s my revised answer.” 

But yeah always send a thank you note after an interview. It’s a small thing but it makes a hell of a difference. And def send thank you messages to any recruiters who may have helped. And also after you get the job. Small things like that really go a long long way.

[heckofabecca]

GO READ ASK A MANAGER RIGHT NOW.

AAM is an AMAZING resource for all work-related questions. This is a good starting place—basically the Big Questions people tend to have. (And some weirdness.) Job searching, negotiating for raises, performance issues, living through toxicity, recognizing toxic situations, dealing with coworkers, managing people, helpful starting-point scripts for all of the above… Do yourself a favor and check it out!

[myurbandream]

JFC no one ever told me any of this!!!!

[queer-disaster-academic]

i used to be so good at writing strong, thoroughly-researched, thoroughly-edited essays.

as a kid in hs, my teacher literally came up to me, holding my 40 page essay on the intersection of the European witch hunts and capitalism/exploitation/gender roles (it was supposed to be 7 pages...whoops) and went like "this is literally a master's-degree level thesis. what are you doing?? you could literally use this as your final dissertation in a master's program, what the fuck."

NOW??? NOW?? you'd think I'd be oh so skilled. but alas. i can barely piece together two ideas. adhd skill-regression is so so real. im SOBBING

[revenantscholar]

The skill can come back and it often does. It is not unusual for it skill recedes during stressful and painful times. Maybe you just need more stability/safety/kind people around you.

I have been through something similar a few times in my life with writing, yoga, studying...

Admittedly, my life is always financially and socially precarious, so my notion of stability currently just means "enough money to pay the rent and food for the next few months."

It is hard to hold onto anything when you have to fight for survival all the time, either materially or emotionally.

[queer-disaster-academic]

Wow, uh. Okay, I'm gonna need a minute to process "It is hard to hold onto anything when you have to fight for survival all the time...". You're genuinely rewiring my brain is we speak.

Thank you, this means a lot to hear. <3

[revenantscholar]

Thank you as well. We have to help each other in this hellscape whenever we can.

[isometropia]

[ellanmwebb2]

Old work for The Plant Magazine,

Ella Webb

[ellanmwebb2]

Lassen Volcanic National Park,

A set of geological features.

Ella Webb

[ellanmwebb2]

Land of fire and ice.

[memories-of-ancients]

Snuggle up in this cozy apartment in catalhuyuk, circa 7000 BC.

Catalhuyuk was a prehistoric city located in what is now Turkey. At it's height around 7000 BC it had a population between 5000 and 7000. The image above is a recreation of a common dwelling.

[everydaylouie]

Church of Whale Fall

[tenderlovebite]

@bogleech this seems like something you’d like

[thenyanguardparty]

hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him

[lilaccccc]

yeah umm actually everyone kinda lives, inside.. the walls yeah. no yeah theres not any surrounding farming communities or villages to levy taxes from so we're pretty much just in a stone pit all together. Theres a massive stone castle tho! where did the infrastructure for the stone quarring come from? I dont know... Evil wizard maybe?

[elbiotipo]

If you actually want to know how medieval (and overall pre-industrial) cities interacted with its rural enviroment, check out these articles:

Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City

This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city,

Collections: The Lonely City, Part II: Real Cities Have Curves

Last week, we looked at a model for what the countryside around an ‘ideal city’ might look like. Today we’re going to introduce some complic

Long story short, cities weren't islands in the middle of nowhere. If you're a generic fantasy character approaching a city, you wouldn't find a lonely Shining City Upon A Hill (hmm, interesting imagery there, wonder what it means...), but actually a highly populated area of farms, orchards and all that feeds and maintains a city.

[skull-bearer]

[the-evil-clergyman]

Battle at the bottom of the sea off Daimotsu Beach by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1847-52)