«Heroes Don't Die» Is A Ukrainian Military Slogan. It Fuels Our Spirit And Keeps Our Fallen Comrades

Nice!

And we have XKCD about this 😅

I understand why alchemists invented, and modern fiction writers use, systems with a few understandable Elements like Earth / Fire / Air / Water / Light / Dark.

I understand why even most nerds don't bother to study the Elements in real life. There's too many of them, and they don't neatly correspond to meaningful aspects of macro-level existence.

But just once I'd like to read a worked magical system where the author has looked up the properties of the real Elements, has put in all the work to build up a system of plausible-sounding correspondences, and the protagonist is a rare dual-element Tellurium-Iodine wizard.

Baldur’s Gate (fan trailer)

I made this a long time ago, but I’m reposting directly to Tumblr because apparently YouTube has been giving people regional viewing issues.  Enjoy.

Yeeah, Elon lost it. Pay to read....

Calling this “extrovert timeshare”

THERE IS A PREQUEL, Y’ALL

original tweet

Lightning starts a forest fire, 1960s

most inspirational little book from all inspirational little books I've ever read – 'Art Matters' by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell. this little book contains four essays, my favorite is 'Make Good Art' it's really awesome.

'When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. THIS IS GREAT. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. YOU DO NOT. AND YOU SHOULD NOT. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. AND YOU CAN. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again. Yet.'

– Neil Gaiman.

УКР: Вітаю вас, хочу дати вам два посилання на чудові веб сторінки на яких є колекції артефакті з України. Там ви можете переглянути вбрання, прикраси, речі побуту і більше. Внизу під сами фотографіями можна дізнатися більше про саму річ. Переважна ті артефакти із кіньця 19ст. до початку 20ст. Гарного вам перегляду і далі вивчайте нашу файну культуру.

honchar.org.ua

Музейні колекції

Музейні колекції

Відкрита скриня: https://vskrynia.com.ua/collection/

ENG: Hello everyone, I wanted to give you two link that have photos of artifacts from Ukraine. There you can find clothing, accessories, household items and more. Under the photos you can find out more about that specific item. Most of these artifacts are from the late 19th century to early 20th century. The websites are in Ukrainian so you can use a translator if you need help. Have fun looking around and learning more about this beautiful culture.

Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #62

Brought to you by a marine biologist who has a pen…and has a pineapple…

CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST

Tell me if I’m referencing memes that are too old and watch me not care. Anyway, let’s go over the Sea Pineapple, because I bet you don’t know really what it is, and tbh, I didn’t for a second either. But it turns out it is a type of Sea Squirt, and therefore, of all the invertebrates in the game, we, as vertebrates, are most closely related to this thing. I’ll explain in a minute:

We here on Northern Hemisphere islands are able to dive for this thing all day and night, so if you haven’t caught one yet, just give it some time. Then, when you give your first one to Blathers, it’s put into the big coastal tank underneath the coral reef tank and it just…sits there. Which is totally understandable, considering this animal - yes, it’s an animal - lives a sessile life, meaning it attaches to something and stays there. It also filter feeds, so you see its little siphons opening and closing. 

The Sea Pineapple is a real animal, Halocynthia roretzi and it’s eaten primarily in Korea and less so in Japan, despite the fact that a lot people say it tastes like not-food. But, hey, humans will eat anything.

So, Sea Pineapples are a kind of Sea Squirt, aka a Tunicate, a soft, squishy that sits on the seafloor and filter feeds. But despite this thing not having a face or an interesting lifestyle, the fact remains we’re more closely related to it than we are to the cooler invertebrates, like insects, worms, or octopuses. They belong in the Phylum Chordata with us, the even-more-interesting vertebrates. Now, I’m gonna try REAL HARD not to go off on a nerd-tastic tangent, but this is one of my favorite topics - chordate phylogeny.  

So, what’s a Chordate? It is not synonymous with “vertebrate” although lots of us in the phylum are vertebrates. All animals in this phylum have 5 very distinct features that no other group has, either during our whole lives or part of our lives (that includes larval or embryonic stages). They are:

A post-anal tail, meaning our bodies extend past our anus.

We have a notochord, aka what my professor called “the stiffening rod of the body”. In humans, this is our spine.

A dorsal neural tube that, in us vertebrates, is the spinal cord, the main communication highway of the nervous system.

An endostyle/thyroid gland. 

Pharyngeal slits, which often become gills in adult stages of chordates.

Although the Sea Pineapple doesn’t look like it has any of these features, its larvae do, which puts them in the same phylum as us vertebrates. Wild, huh?And this list of features puts us together with some weird stuff, the weirdest has to be tunicates, as shown by this phylogenetic tree:

^From this site. This should look kind of familiar since a stylized one is on the floor of the fossil section of the museum. I’ll do a special fish-explained to talk about that and how to read one of these. But basically, every node, or intersection of the branches represents the last common ancestor of the groups at the end of the branches. Once you can read these, you start to find out some very interesting, and mind-blowing facts, like, we’re all just derived fish and that birds evolved from dinosaurs and whales are most closely related with hoofed mammals and we’re related to boring tunicates instead of cooler things, like horseshoe crabs. 

And there you have it. Fascinating stuff, no?