The Possum Zone

If you didn’t know, on the night the Titanic sank, it sent out many distress signals. One of the ships that received them was the RMS Carpathia.

The Carpathia was asleep. Her wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had ended his shift and shouldn’t have been listening in. Luckily, he was. He caught a message from Boston, MA stating there was traffic on the wireless for the Titanic. He decided to be helpful and reach out to tell them. He received a distress signal back, and rushed to tell the bridge. They were skeptical, and didn’t really believe him. This is the Titanic, you know? Largest ship, marketed as unsinkable, etc. He rushed the message to the captain since he wasn’t being taken seriously, and woke him up. The captain, Arthur Henry Rostron, after being convinced of its legitimacy, rushed to answer the call.

The Carpathia was 58.22 nautical miles away (107.82km), with a top speed of 14 knots. This put the expected time of arrival 4 hours out.

They arrived in three hours. The top speed reached was about 17 knots. They’d turned the heating and hot water off to make as much steam as possible, and doctors were set to wait for the influx of injured. He sent out a message to the Titanic, telling them they’d be there in 4 hours, and left the airways clear for her distress signals. Going faster than possible in the ship, and dodging the very same ice that had brought the Titanic to heel in the first place, they made it to the site of the Titanic after she had sunk, and saved as many as they could.

To put the speed and effort into perspective, the odds of them reaching the Titanic when they did is like a normal everyday sedan winning an f1 race. The engine was tearing itself apart. Fourteen knots was do or die, last resort speeds. The engineers were covering gauges and physically holding valves closed to keep the pressure needed.

Even the passengers assisted, handing out clothes, food, and warm drinks as the survivors were rescued. The Carpathia decided to bring the survivors to New York City, the original destination. They were speeding there at their original top speed of fourteen knots, and the Carpathia was never able to reach that speed again.

With how fast they got there, it is heavily suspected that Carpathia actually hit 21 knots. Her speedometer only went up to 17 knots, and they covered the pressure gauges anyway so they wouldn't be put off by the sheer speed they were going.

Just the previous day, he had gone on a rant about how women need to be Cautious in this Dangerous World and have a Responsibility to Keep Themselves Safe.

You’ve heard of employee unions using collective bargaining to force the bosses to provide better pay and better working condiditions. But did you know if you rent an apartment in an apartment complex, you can do something similar?

It’s called a Tenant Association, and it’s basically a union for renters.

Here’s an overview of the why and how of forming a tenant association

Here’s a more thorough organizing manual

The fact I can tell that's actually from before the Greek dark ages/the collapse of the Greek bronze age (can't say with certainty if that's Minoan or Mycenaean) which is when we think the myth of the Labyrinth was meant to take place.

A lot of artists just shove Ariadne in a chiton and leave it at that

Seriously, look up Mycenaean & Minoan clothing, as well as sketches and mock ups made by archeologists.

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid, can only infect cells expressing a certain protein called ACE2

ACE2 is expressed widely in nasal cavity epithelial cells but not in olfactory sensory neurons. 

Seo et al. (2021) studied potential nasal targets for SARS-CoV-2 using golden hamsters as a model organism (commonly used as a proxy for humans in virology studies)

They found ACE2 expression in the main olfactory bulb epithelium (MOE, your “normal” nose organ) as well as the vomeronasal organ (VNO)

Several cell types in the VNO were able to be infected and they also found significant inflammatory activity (macrophage activation, apoptotic cells, etc) 

The specifics of how covid actually causes dysosmia are not known for sure but epithelial damage by local inflammatory immune responses likely plays a role, especially because sensory neurons themselves are not affected (Bilinska, & Butowt, 2020). Therefore I would suggest a potential similar effect of VNO dysfunction as we see in the main olfactory bulb

From Seo et al.: “Considering the function of the VNO, infection and subsequent pathologic changes may affect the behavior of Syrian hamsters”

If it stands to reason that omegaverse individuals have functioning VNOs similar to members of the animal kingdom, then it is more than reasonable to conclude that covid may cause them to lose not only their main olfactory function, but also their VNO function as well

 References: (1) (2)

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.