#danbensen

[etirabys]

@danbensen said re: the liancourt rocks post

Did you hear the Japanese gnashing over the desert served at the Moon/Kim summit?

I’m not 100% sure you addressed this reply to me or to xhxhxhx (tumblr is bad), but I googled this and my god it’s funny.

Tokyo has lodged a formal protest about the mango mousse planned for the dinner between President Moon Jae-in and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un because the dish features a map of the Korean Peninsula that includes a contested island that is claimed by Japan.

also, the linked CNN post on what each meal course was, what it meant, and from what regions the food was sourced is very cool (and has delicious looking photos!) – octopus from a South Korean democracy activist’s hometown, Swiss potato rosti because Kim Jong Un studied in Switzerland, greens from the DMZ, tea from the northernmost mountains and cake from the southernmost island, etc.

[dailycognates]

What is an oblique stem?

A stem that is used for cases other than the nominative (and vocative in the languages that have them)*, a trait found in a number of Indo-European languages.  For example, in Latin, the word for “foot” was pēs in the nominative, however all other forms used the stem ped- to attach case-endings.  The genitive, for example, was pedis, the accusative pedem, etc.  So, ped- would be referred to as the oblique stem, from the older use of oblique to refer to non-nominative cases.

*Or the accusative where that’s homophonous with the nominative

[rubendevela]

The Spike-Pointed Tree Gorgon

A creature design assignment for Kunkka's class! After assembling the habits and anatomy, we put the creature into a poster layout. After that, I tried going for a Speculative Evolution angle on the poster! Here's my Permian fishing cat+bird+insect ambush predator. Big thanks to @danbensen for help figuring this animal's ancestry and bits of anatomy. Going for the gastralia + gorgonopsid angle was his input Full view to read the text. You can look below to see the detail shots and a version of the poster without the text.

[gardenvarietyunique]

tag yourself: time traveling cyborg scientist edition

[entanglingbriars]

@danbensen replied to your post “One of the fundamental differences between Jewish and Christian...”

Huh so what further creation is supposed to happen?

Well, some of it is the removal of metaphorical scaffolding (e.g. the inclination towards evil is seen as necessary for our moral development and the drive to create and work, but won’t be needed in the world to come) that won’t be needed once we’ve realized how to be fully human. There’s also the institution of world peace and all people beating their swords into plowshares so that we can always work for the betterment of ourselves and others.

[edge-lorde]

i made some fan art for @danbensen‘s story Junction.

 i  wanted to draw Anne and i wanted to make this dumb anime joke

EDIT: fixed a typo...

[alphynix]

@danbensen reblogged your photo: Westlothiana lizziae from the Early Carboniferous...

Huh. Do we know anything about the intermediate stages between amphibian and amniote eggs?

Not a lot. Transitional amniotes seem to have all been small animals that would have laid tiny soft eggs (at most ~1cm in diameter), which aren’t great candidates for fossilization.

We know they must have evolved the various characteristics of amniote eggs step-by-step -- laying in terrestrial environments, a shell, extraembryonic membranes -- but we can only guess about the order in which those things actually happened.

In fact, we know more about live-bearing in early amniotes than we do about the ancestral eggs!

[friendlyfrankenstein]

danbensen replied to your post: Does anyone remember these old Jello ads where...

I remember it. They said “j. E. L. L. Oooh! It’s alive!”

OKAY SO IM NOT CRAZY. lemme tell you guys i’s tricky trying to search for ‘jello ad jello attacks child’.