Big fan of whatever this genre of conversation is
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Andulka
trying on a metaphor
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Janaina Medeiros
No title available
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Cosmic Funnies
Show & Tell
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@theartofmadeline

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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

Discoholic 🪩

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
noise dept.
Not today Justin
DEAR READER
wallacepolsom

#extradirty

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@thoughtsformtheuniverse
Big fan of whatever this genre of conversation is
I'm watching a talk by Svante Pääbo from 2014 and drowning in my emotions.
Did you know that the first Neanderthal DNA sequencing we did was of a sample taken from the humerus of the type specimen, Feldhofer 1 (also called Neanderthal 1)?
because I did not know that
What I did know is that the Neander Valley (Neanderthal in German) where the fossils were found was named for Joachim Neander, whose surname is a Greco-Romanization of Neumann, which yes, means "new man"
the New Man was found in New Man Valley in 1856
and in 2010, we found fragments of mitochondrial DNA in the New Man's bones
Pääbo brings up that a question he and his team got asked a lot was "is 1-2% Neanderthal DNA a lot or a little?" and his response is going to haunt me for weeks.
He shows a diagram and explains that, well, you share 50% genetic similarity with your parents, and 25% similarity with your grandparents... roughly 12% with your great-grandparents, and 6% with your twice-greats... 3% with your thrice-great grandparents, and 1.5% with your fourth-great grandparents
So, he says, if you look at it quantitatively, it would be as if one of your ancestors six generations ago were a Neanderthal.
I need to express how utterly insane that is to think about.
It's been ~40,000 years since the extinction of the Neanderthals and the end of any fresh influxes of genetic material from their species.
Every time in the last ~40,000 years that human chromosomes have recombined and divided into sperm and egg cells, some of our inherited Neanderthal sequences were, statistically, going to get lost. They would have ended up on a sperm or egg cell that was not used in the creation of offspring, and fall out of the lineage. And yes, lost sequences could be "added back" by someone from a different lineage who still carried them, but...
It's been, again, roughly forty thousand years since we had the chance to get new Neanderthal DNA, or get back "lost" sequences from one of them.
Assuming 20-year generations, that's two thousand generations of humans.
And yet, quantitatively, the average person alive today is six generations' worth of genetic similarity away from a Neanderthal.
You know, as much as I'm a fan of horror and time loops, the absolute funniest interpretation I've seen of Dracula Daily is the one that goes that Jonathan Harker is fine and healthy and happy, he's just telling this story to his grandkids. Again. Because they love hearing the Vampire Story.
Also on age verification: I have been on this website since 2011. Unless you think I started blogging at age 2, you KNOW I'm an adult.
#the fact that 'can prove access to an online account at least 12 years old' or even 'account to be verified is itself fully 18 years old'#AREN'T accepted methods of age verification is such a telling sign of what the real purpose of age-gating laws is:#data harvesting and deanonymization and the buildout of state-controllable ways to restrict both content and internet access itself en masse (via @shinelikethunder )
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Came to the terrible realization that if the Old Kingdom was a romantasy being written today Mogget would probably be a sexy shadow daddy of some kind. Luckily instead he is a little cat and a hater
There is a blurb from Sarah J Maas on the back of my copy of Goldenhand saying Garth Nix is "part of the reason why I began writing fantasy" so it is possible she also had this thought but considered it a missed opportunity
maybe Bilbo giving the Arkenstone to the Elvenking is the heart and core of Tolkien's entire mythos actually.
it contrasts in one strike the whole history of the First Age - the bloody wars and betrayals over precious gems no one could bring themselves to give up or let go of - and it foreshadows, even sets up, Bilbo's renunciation of the Ring.
Bilbo takes the Arkenstone, knowing it's a theft against his friend, but then he takes it to the Elvenking and gives it to him for peace. And then Thranduil follows his example to trade it back to Thorin, for peace. Mirrors of Feanor and the Nauglamir and I don't even know what else because I'm not that well up on the First Age - but brought into being by one little hobbit standing at the brink of other people's wars.
And then it builds a path toward the fate of the Third Age. Because if Bilbo hadn't been able to renounce the Arkenstone then, I don't see how he would have escaped the Ring sixty years later.
So yeah. This is the moment that stands at the center to me, maybe.
Echoes Of The Path: Yeah Wang
We’re raising funds to print a brand new book of compiled SMBC comics on Kickstarter right now! check out our project for Parenting - An SMBC Collection
"Everything" is one of the comics that will be included!
Original comic : https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-09-08
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SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE
Once Running Out of Water, San Diego Now Manages Their Water So Well They Can Assist Other States
Image and information from this New York Times article:
After spending half a decade ravaged by drought, San Diego has invested significant time and money in decreasing its reliance on water imports. By building desalination plants, strategically acquiring water rights, boosting dam storage--and increasing water use efficiency even to the point of now recycling sewage water--they have now thoroughly accomplished that goal.
In fact San Diego has done so well that they can now have water to spare to help other drought-ravaged states through their own water crises.
we've heard of top surgery and bottom surgery, but what about charm surgery, strange surgery, up surgery and down surgery
Hedy Yang, On the Horizon
Man, I officially don’t know what the hell a deconstruction is. I mean I knew that but I’ve been reminded. “Deconstruction is when it’s a particularly grounded example of the genre”? Like man, I don’t think those things are deconstructions but I can’t give you a definition that excludes them either. Deconstruction is when you show something that somebody else telling a similar story didn’t. I fuckin guess.
What’s the difference between a parody, a satire, and a deconstruction? 3 minutes no cheating.
the difference between a parody and a satire is that a parody does not have to have an underlying thesis, while a satire does not have to be particularly funny.
the categories are not mutually exclusive, but that doesn't mean they're synonymous.
a parody that has nothing in it of satire is relatively unlikely to qualify as a deconstruction, due to not containing enough intellectual meat, but exceptions certainly exist. particularly when the thing being parodied is literary in nature.
meanwhile not all satires are deconstructions, because you can satirize things like 'the recent political drama' in ways that don't really involve deconstruction per se. (a lot of the time you will do this via parody.)
the distinctive element of a deconstruction is that it arises within the context of interpreting things structurally. this is a very common intellectual framework nowadays so this distinction can get lost, but the shift away from the platonic view, where any given sort of thing was assumed to have a single true self that you were trying to find or reach or understand, rather than arising through the interaction of contextual forces, was a big deal when it was happening, and opened a lot of new doors in terms of how to conceptualize...everything, but especially everything we now categorize as a 'social construct.'
which is why there's a sort of assumption that to 'deconstruct' something is necessarily to approach it in an intellectually complex or rewarding way.
not true. can have stupid deconstruction that technically qualifies. arguably can even have trite one. (can also just say something is a deconstruction when it isn't but that's another issue lol.)
this is because in the context of literature and related art forms this assumption disappears up its own ass fairly quickly, since writing about writing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. that doesn't mean you can't deconstruct a genre, or convention within a genre, etc, in an interesting and philosophically profitable way. just that being metatextual doesn't actually guarantee you have anything of value to say, either.
which is why saying you're doing a deconstruction while actually just engaging in sophistry and light satire is really easy, and thus attractive to people trying to look and feel intellectual without having to try too hard.
meanwhile literary deconstructions don't have to be remotely like either satire or parody, because the only thing they actually have to be doing is engaging directly with the structural assumptions of a genre in a way that draws out something about their constructed nature and. does something with that. basically.
it's just easiest to make this engaging to an audience (especially one already at least mildly accustomed to thinking in structural terms and thus less impressed by it) in the parody/satire/subversion format, so they tend to occur together and thus get balled up together a lot.
and so people who want to sound intellectual increasingly say 'deconstruction' and 'subversion' where they only very dubiously apply.
so...yeah, none of these are mutually incompatible, and you can stack them all at once but also find them separately, because they're talking about different things.
that was way more than three minutes let me go again.
'Parody' emphasizes the stylistic engagement with the subject; the main thing you say by classifying something as a parody is that an unflattering depiction, arrived at through exaggeration of some kind, and usually oversimplification as well.
'Satire' describes the...ideological engagement with the subject, is i think the most accurate generalization i can make. the main thing you say by categorizing something as satire is that it is making an argument about something through the way in which that subject is depicted. a critical argument.
parody is a technique you can use in creating a satire, but is not mandatory, and if it's the only technique you're using your satire is necessarily rather cartoonish.
'Deconstruction,' finally, describes the intellectual engagement with the subject. the main thing this label says is that you are applying certain specific critical lenses to a thing (that doesn't physically exist) which explore how it is made, at least in part by taking it apart to look at the metaphorical gearwork.
they're hard to distinguish because they aren't separate silos of Things, but operating at different conceptual strata.
I think a lot about the architecture ideas drawn by Étienne-Louis Boullée
They're sketches from the 1780s and they look like the end of the fucking universe
I like ichthyosaurs, they are like if a lizard was also a tuna