*pats askbox gently* there are more Thermoreceptors?
(I'm sorry ur dome was so hot; I hope its much cooler now!)
My bluff has been called! Hooray!!
I am not a neurologist, a biologist, or a scientist. If anyone with better credentials than "obsessed with emergent properties" contradicts me, listen to them instead.
Cell membranes include little portal proteins that open under certain circumstances based on the shape of the protein and let chemicals into and out of the cell. These portals are useful for all sorts of things: managing water and nutrients, sending messages to nearby cells, serving the whims of tiny intercellular cats. Science hasn't found the tiny intercellular cats yet, but we all know they're there; the existence of a door that can be opened necessarily implies an indecisive feline.
Some protein shapes open up if the temperature is within a certain range. This means that if a cell with that sort of protein in its membrane experiences a temperature in the right range, it will move some chemicals around. This is used to make nerve cells that send a message towards the brain whenever they experience a certain temperature.
Because evolution does all its best work the night before the deadline while on a Code Red Mountain Dew bender, the opened-by-temperature portal proteins are mostly copied from opened-by-a-specific-chemical portal proteins. All of them, in fact, still open for specific chemicals, which means there exist out in the world liquids you can put in a bottle that most animals will instead perceive as "a temperature between 8 and 26 degrees" So things can get a little weird.
Temperature-opening portal proteins:
TRPA1
Opens for temperatures below 12C (not air temperature, skin or body temperature, so you might be kind of in trouble when this happens). Used by hunting snakes to detect where heat isn't so they can find prey. Feels painful in an itchy sort of way.
This one also opens for allyl isothiocyanate. Many plants have evolved to take advantage of the existence of a chemical most animals perceive as itchy pain, especially horseradish and wasabi. Allyl isothiocyanate is harmful to plants, so they keep two separate components in tiny compartments. When an animal bites the plant, the compartments break open their contents mix to create allyl isothiocyanate.
"This plant tastes like itching" is a good defense against almost all animals, but some humans have taught themselves to appreciate the taste of itching.
TRPM8
Opens for temperatures between 8 and 26 degrees. Opens for menthol (peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen) and linalool (roses, orange blossoms, basil). Feels cool or cold.
"This plant tastes like cold" is a somewhat less effective defense against being eaten than "this plant tastes like itching" but it's a more widespread defense because TRPM8-activating chemicals don't harm plants and don't need elaborate two-part storage.
TRPV4
Opens for temperatures from 27-37 C. I'm not sure what this one feels like, or if even feels like anything, since it covers normal human body temperatures. Whatever feeling we get from this one, we're feeling it nearly all the time.
Plants do make a chemical that tastes like this temperature, and it can repel nonhuman creatures with different body temperatures: allicin, the flavour of garlic. Like allyl isothiocyante, it is stored in two compartments inside the plant, and combined when the plant is bitten.
Maybe this is why vampires abhor garlic. There is a feeling that, as humans, we always have. Something we don't notice, something deeper than touch. That feel disappears forever when you become a vampire, except those unbearable moments when garlic returns to you for a fleeting moment the experience of lost humanity.
TRPV3
Opens for temperatures 33-39 degrees. Opens for eugenol, found in cinnamon, nutmeg, bay leaf, holy basil, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Feels like warmth.
Plants with high quantities of eugenol, like holy basil and Japanese star anise, are sometimes sacred to buddhists because they smell nice and bugs don't like to eat them, so you can burn them as incense without worrying about all the little crawly guys.
Humans apparently think food that tastes like "warm" is comforting.
TRPV1
Opens for temperatures over 43 degrees. (The one I was experiencing in the overheated dome, which I had never felt from air before) Opens for capsaicin, the active chemical in hot peppers. Opens for the combination of temperature and acidity of fevers and infected wounds. This one we feel as pain, as burning, as flame.
TRPV1 says: Your flesh is failing, and your doom is very near.
Humanity says: This is incredible. We are going to breed plants that cause this sensation as much as possible, and we will spend thousands of years getting it right. We are going to dry this and powder this and flake it and grill it and ferment it and eat it with everything.
And when we leave earth and go into space, we take hot peppers with us. Without gravity, fluid builds up in nasal passages, and astronauts sort of have colds the entire time they're in space and can't smell food very well. But the Nearness Of Your Doom is not a smell and is not perceived by the nose, so - with their doom always on the other side of ten centimeters of insulated aluminum - astronauts can taste hot peppers. In 2002, Peggy Whitson, commander of the ISS, jokingly refused to let a replacement crew on board until they handed over the hot sauce.
So my Writing Mojo Finally returned from the war and I managed to write this up as a Family Lore story for Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40001114
It’s available to all patrons regardless of tier, as an apology for not updating for an appallingly long time, I’ve just... Kind of been having a mental meltdown with the everything going on.
Hi I'm rereading dolphins and ducks again and its still super fun, thanks! ( shocked Aziraphale in part 4 is particularly hilarious)
aah thankyou so much! ^-^ that was one of my favorite panels to draw, i tried to get the exact expression he makes when he’s double crossed in the church hahah.
May I also put forth, re: roach as Geralt demon, Jaskier wittingly spoiling roach because if Geralt won't take it then by God SOMEONE is going to get the love and care they deserve
Roach has never had such a shiny coat or such a well-combed mane or been so well-fed. Geralt KNOWS it’s Jaskier doing it but can’t catch him at it and it’s making him CRAZY. Roach is smug.
Ok, I’m too tired to give this the response it deserves, but basically that picture I put in that post:
Is the traditional breakfast, dating back from when we were colonies and everyone was a migrant brought over by the British, and you will see this everywhere, in all the hawker centers and kopitiams and food courts. There are entire franchises build around this basic breakfast set. It’s supposedly an adaptation by Chinese galley hands of the traditional breakfast served on British ships, and you can see the basic components: coffee/tea, jam on toast, eggs. But it was adapted to local ingredients (and by local ingredients I mean local ingredients available to labourers) and tastes.
The eggs, we soft boil even softer than the British do and add the perennial favourite Chinese ingredient, soya sauce (and sometimes pepper), for the taste (because let’s face it; plain eggs are bland as hell).
The kopi and teh is also different, because our ancestors weren’t going to get the kind of fancy quality beans and leaves that you had in European countries, so they leaned into it and just made the coffee/tea super thick (kopi packs a HELL of a punch compared to espresso), and then put a giant dollop of condensed milk into it so that it’s even thicker and also very sweet. The beans are also usually roasted in butter and/or margarine and sugar.
...There’s an entire code to ordering kopi/teh that spans at least two languages and three Chinese dialects and that deserves an entire post all on its own, so I’m not gonna go into that here.
And the KAYA TOAST.
The toast used to be done by hand-grilling thin slices of bread over charcoal, and some places still do, so it’s just the right level of thin and, uh, ‘crunchy’ is not the right word. ‘Crumbly’? Whatever; you know what I mean.
On this nice, hot, freshly grilled toast, they lay out regular slices of butter, which will then melt on and into the toast and combine nicely with the spread of...
KAYA. Kaya is an invention of the Peranakans (blended Malay-Chinese communities) and is basically a sweet coconut jam made from coconut milk, eggs, sugar, and usually also pandan, which is what gives it the green colour and fragrance. It’s... I really dunno what to compare it to, but basically, if you haven’t tasted it before, you are missing out. Like I said before in the tags of that post, there’s a reason why a visiting friend tried to bring back 3 jars of kaya jam with her (she was hilarious; in the 4 days she was here, she determinedly ate breakfast at a different kaya toast shop/stall every time because she was determined to find the best kaya toast; I don’t think even I love it that much XD).
And then you take that nice hot toast and you dip it into the soft boiled eggs, and then you get a nice blend of sweet and savoury, soft and crunchy. Omnomnom.
Figured I’d throw an answer under a cut to avoid problems. <3
Without getting too terribly into it: it’s horrifyingly fatphobic to the point that I almost stopped watching entirely in the first season and have had to bite my tongue in episodes since.
It’s great on many issues but it portrays incorrect ideas about how weight gain works, and is just absolutely awful in general about weight and making jokes about weight.
If u are the main character in a horror movie, petition for ur sidekick to be a quirky roomba- who will, at some point(for a daring rescue scene, perhaps), have a knife attached to its chassis.
