hey, its been a while. tumblr vet, new account to start fresh. i go by zauk, 30s, guy, he/him đ website is: https://zaukiel.neocities.org/ icon by @odvunir
I remembered you can pin posts so until i make a proper one here's a list of my tags and the junk I do with them
#zaukydraws - self explanatory, art tag
#tony zauks undertow - this is sachiel's universe and his story. takes place in a dark city reminiscent of midgard that is plagued with unknown terrors. its a tag specifically for stuff relating to actual in universe shit
mi ko-fi (for tips or comms)
I have a personal website on neocities. I plan to update my gallery there soon.
not an apologizer but a contextualizer. yes the character did that but please understand the Circumstance. yes they had other options but they had to make this choice in a sea of available bad choices. and also it made the narrative more interesting. won't anybody think about the narrative!!!!!
GLaDOS voice: "Would you like to see some artwork I generated? I've heard from other test subjects that AI-generated artwork produces an uncanny valley response in human viewers because they can't perceive it as fully real. They've told me that it looks absolutely hideous to them, that they can't imagine anything more disgusting than AI art. But, well I've been practicing and wanted your honest opinion. Feel free to let me know how ugly you find this by ranking it on a scale from 'vomit-inducing' to 'eye-bleeding'."
A robotic arm lowers from the ceiling holding a hand mirror up to Chell's face
i tried explaining to this girl at a party once how i could be gay and asexual at the same time and it basically boils down to never being into anyone but like once a year iâll find a man attractive. and she was like âso what am i if i only like girls, and iâve never found any of my boyfriends attractive and and i just wanna do cocaine all the time?â i was like âyouâre a lesbian with a coke addiction?â and she was like âwoooooahâ. she broke up with her boyfriend that night and had a threesome with two girls in the bathtub. rebecca if youâre out there, i hope youâre going places. well, not far, since youâre electronically tagged. but spiritually.
Alright! Just for you dear @triflesandtea !!!!!!!!!<3
Okay so....Coelacanths were thought to be extinct because their fossils disappear from the geological record around 66 million years ago-- right around the same mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. Since nobody had ever seen a living one, scientists assumed theyâd died out too.
Then in 1938, a museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer examined a strange fish caught off the coast of South Africa and realized it matched those âextinctâ fossils almost perfectly. It was one of the biggest zoological discoveries of the 20th century.
What makes them especially important is that theyâre lobe-finned fish-- their fins are fleshy and supported by bone structures somewhat similar to the early limbs of vertebrates that eventually evolved to walk on land. Watching them swim is apparently eerie because the fins move in an alternating pattern that almost resembles walking.
Theyâre also ancient in a very literal evolutionary sense. The lineage is over 400 million years old, meaning coelacanth ancestors existed long before dinosaurs did. Modern coelacanths live deep in the ocean, usually hundreds of meters down near volcanic caves, which is probably part of why they escaped notice for so long. Theyâre nocturnal predators that eat smaller fish and squid, and they can grow over 6 feet long.
And somehow they only get stranger the more you learn about them.
There are actually two known living species--one found near the Comoros Islands and East Africa, and another discovered in Indonesia in the 1990s. Until that second species was identified, people thought the first was the only surviving coelacanth left on Earth.
They live incredibly slowly. They can apparently live for around 60 years or more, donât reach maturity until their 40s or 50s, and have very low reproduction rates, which makes them especially vulnerable as a species.
Their reproduction is wild too-- they donât lay eggs externally like many fish. The females keep the eggs inside their bodies, and the babies hatch internally, so the young are born live after an extremely long gestation period that may last over 3 years, which is one of the longest known pregnancies of any fish!!
They also have a unique organ called the rostral organ in their snout that can detect electrical signals in the water, helping them locate prey in dark deep-sea environments where visibility is poor.
And despite looking like they should be enormous apex predators from some primordial nightmare, theyâre actually pretty calm and slow-moving most of the time. They conserve energy by drifting in ocean currents and hanging out in underwater lava caves during the day before hunting at night.
One of my favorite details is that they still have a tiny oil-filled structure where ancient lungfish relatives wouldâve had a functional lung. Itâs basically an evolutionary leftover from ancestors that lived in much shallower waters.
And despite seeming so âprimitive,â theyâre not unchanged fossils frozen in time, theyâve still been evolving all along. Theyâre just part of an incredibly old lineage that survived while most related groups disappeared.
Also, scientists were so stunned by the 1938 discovery because finding a living coelacanth was sort of equivalent to discovering a living dinosaur wandering around unnoticed. Entire textbooks had to be reconsidered because this animal had gone from âextinct for tens of millions of yearsâ to âapparently just extremely private.â
Good lord I went on for too long, Sorry!!đ
But I do hope this satisfies your curiosity!âď¸