Upon the Distinction Between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos

wenzhou in ep 36

Р isnt P

"For decades, wolf researchers believed ravens followed wolf packs to find food. Every biologist who flew aerial surveys over Yellowstone saw the same thing.

Wolves moving across the snow with ravens overhead, black shapes trailing the pack like a shadow with wings. The assumption was simple. The ravens were following the wolves. The wolves would kill. The ravens would eat. A study published in March 2026 using GPS transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens in Yellowstone proved the assumption wrong.

The ravens were not following the wolves. They were remembering where kills had happened before and flying over those locations looking for new carcasses. The relationship between the two species is real. The mechanism is not what anyone thought it was.

Bernd Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist who spent years studying ravens in Maine and Yellowstone, first documented the scale of the association. His data showed ravens present near wolf packs 99.7 percent of the time during winter in Yellowstone. Not occasionally. Not frequently. Essentially always. On Isle Royale, researcher John Vucetich observed the same pattern from the air.

Every wolf pack had ravens with it. The birds were just always there.

The numbers at kill sites are staggering. The average number of ravens documented at a Yellowstone wolf kill is thirty. The maximum recorded at a single carcass is 135.

A wolf pack brings down an elk in the Lamar Valley, and within hours over a hundred ravens have materialized from across the drainage to feed. They do not wait politely. They land on the carcass while the wolves are still eating. They grab chunks of meat and cache them in the snow and in tree crotches for later retrieval. Research estimates that ravens can consume up to forty percent of a carcass, which means a wolf pack that kills a seven-hundred-pound elk may lose nearly three hundred pounds of it to birds.

That loss is so significant that one study proposed a theory that reshapes how we think about wolf pack size entirely. If a pair of wolves can take down an elk, why do wolves hunt in packs of four, six, eight, or more? The per-capita meat return decreases with every additional mouth. A pair gets the most meat per wolf. The answer may be ravens. Two wolves cannot eat fast enough to outpace a hundred ravens stripping the carcass simultaneously. A larger pack can post guards, feed in shifts, and physically dominate the carcass long enough to retain a greater share of the kill. Wolves may hunt in packs not because they need more teeth to bring down prey, but because they need more bodies to defend the kill from birds.

The ravens pay for their meals. Heinrich documented in his book Mind of the Raven that ravens serve as an early warning system at kill sites. Ravens are more vigilant than wolves. They perch in trees overlooking the carcass and scan the horizon in every direction. When a grizzly bear approaches, or a rival wolf pack, or a mountain lion, the ravens see it first. Their alarm calls alert the feeding wolves to the incoming threat before the wolves' own senses detect it. The wolves get airborne sentries. The ravens get an animal with the jaw strength to open a frozen elk carcass that no raven beak can penetrate.

That is the core of the mutualism. The raven cannot open the hide. The wolf can. The wolf cannot see a threat approaching from a mile away while its head is buried in a rib cage. The raven can. Each species fills a gap in the other's capability, and the result is a partnership so consistent that L. David Mech, the most published wolf researcher in the world, wrote that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other's capabilities.

The play behavior is the part that makes biologists uncomfortable because it implies something beyond transactional mutualism. Wolves and ravens play together. Not at kill sites. Not during feeding. During downtime. Yellowstone observers have documented ravens diving at resting wolves, pulling their tails, and flying away. Wolf pups chase ravens across meadows. Ravens steal sticks from pups and hold them just out of reach. The interactions look like the cross-species equivalent of two bored kids messing with each other because there is nothing else to do.

Doug Smith, the retired lead biologist of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, had watched this relationship from the air for decades. Wolf researchers have believed forever that ravens follow wolves, he wrote after the 2026 study was published. Every wolf researcher has seen it. I have seen it routinely from the plane while wolves are chasing an elk in Yellowstone Park, numerous times. Ravens are just always there. This is an age-old observation. But it has never been rigorously tested until now.

The 2026 study, which used 2.5 years of GPS data from transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens simultaneously, revealed that ravens were not tracking wolf movements in real time. They were patrolling known kill sites. A raven that fed at a wolf kill in a specific drainage in November would return to that drainage repeatedly over the following weeks and months, flying over the exact location where the carcass had been, checking whether a new kill had appeared. The ravens were not following the wolves. They were following the memory of where wolves had killed before.

That distinction matters because it changes the raven from a passive follower into an active strategist. A bird that follows a wolf pack is reacting. A bird that memorizes kill locations across an entire landscape and patrols them systematically is planning. The raven is not tagging along. It is running a surveillance network across hundreds of square miles of Yellowstone, checking sites where food has appeared before, and showing up fast enough when it appears again that every observer since the 1995 reintroduction assumed it had been following the wolves the whole time.

The wolf and the raven share almost identical geographic range across the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere wolves live, ravens live. The association is not a Yellowstone novelty. It is a continental relationship between two of the most intelligent species in North American wildlife, running continuously across boreal forest, tundra, mountain, and prairie, built on meat, memory, and a mutual awareness that neither species has ever needed to be taught."

"There was an excellent warrior, Thorir his name. He was fostered by Thorstein, who had a son called Thorgrim, but it was not an auspicious time for their farm, because there was a haunting there. When Thorir saw the dead man, he tied a withe around its feet, but it pursued him anyway. Then he performed the sword-feat, and cut the man into many pieces. He took his head and went back to Thorgrim mac Thorstein. 'O fosterbrother,' he said, 'I have killed the man who was haunting you, that is, the revenant.' Thorgrim said, 'This is a great deed.' And that is why that place is called Hill of the Dead Man."

And we will never find out who any of these people are or what was up with the revenant or what Thorir was trying to achieve with the withe -- or even who the revenant was before he was dead.

Before Steve got injected the serum, he suffered from a lot of diseases as you all probably know. But maybe you don’t know all of them or what they really mean for little Stevie.

At first I wanna say Steven Grant Rogers weighed 95 lbs or 43,1 kg. He was 5′4″ or 162 cm tall.

Now to his diseases. Many people seem to forget that he had more than only asthma and if you’re a writer like me (mostly fanfiction *cough* Stucky *cough*), you probably feel the urge to portray the characters as accurate as possible. So here’s a list of Steve’s diseases (of the MCU) so you can do that:

- He had scoliosis. This means his spine bends in a way that isn’t part of the typical S-shaped curve, so his spine would’ve bent to the side. It’s not a life threatening condition but it can be quite noticeable (like one shoulder is higher than the other, or one hip appears higher than the other one etc.). Pain isn’t a typical symptom.

- He was partially deaf. He could hear but his hearing was restricted so he might doesn’t hear you if you speak quietly…

- Steve had arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeart and he had also heart palpitations and the more generic heart trouble. All these have symptoms like shortness of breath, fainting, chest discomfort, dizziness or feeling light-headed, weakness and fatigue. 

- He had high blood pressure. Blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries as the heart pumps blood. High blood pressure, sometimes called hypertension, happens when this force is too high. It increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke and can also cause heart and kidney failure. When blood vessels in the eyes burst or bleed, the vision changes or it leads to blindness.

- This may is the reason of his astigatism. It means he had a poor eye sight.

- He had also rheumatic fever at some point. It is most common in 5 to 15 year old children. It can cause permanent damage to the heart (what Steve already had or the reason for his heart problems is the rheumatic fever) and can affect the brain. It is treated with aspirin (or was treated with aspirin at least in the 1930s) and unfortunately…

- Steve had also stomach ulcers. They are extremely painful and can be caused or made worse by drugs like aspirin. They occur when the thick layer of mucus that protects your stomach from digestive juices is reduced, thus enabling the digestive acids to eat away at the lining tissues of the stomach. The most common symptom is a burning sensation or pain in the area between your chest and belly button. Normally, the pain will be more intense when your stomach is empty and it can last for a few minutes or several hours. Other symptoms can be dull pain in the stomach, weight loss, not wanting to eat because of pain, nausea or vomiting, bloating, burping or acid reflux, heartburn (burning sensation in the chest) and the pain can improve when you eat, drink, or take antacids.

- He had another stomach complication as well: Pernicious arnemia, which until the 20s was basically a death sentence. It’s a condition where an protein called Intrinsic Factor, necessary to absorb vitamin B12 (which is important for cell devision, formation of blood, synthesis of hormones - it’s essential), is not produced and the patient becomes progressively more anaemic until they suffer complications such as neurological damage or simply die. Until 1928 the only treatment was to drink copious quantities of the juice from raw liver (more than a pint a day) or eat half a pound of raw liver a day. Poor Stevie!

- Steve had fallen arches. Also called flat feet. Less serious but I’m gonna list everything. Many people have flat feet and notice no problems and require no treatment. But others may experience the following symptoms:Feet tire easily, painful or achy feet, especially in the areas of the arches and heels, the inside bottom of your feet become swollen, foot movement, such as standing on your toes, is difficult or back and leg pain.

- He had scarlet fever as a child, which causes a sore throat, bright red rash and can kill - especially because it can cause heart complications. (Maybe another reason why Steve has them…)

- He had a higher risk for diabetes because his admission form states he has a parent or sibling with diabetes. As far as we know Steve had no siblings in the MCU, therefore it has to be his mother because his father has been a soldier (He couldn’t have enlisted with diabetes… well, except he has lied on his enlistment form…)

- Generally his respiratory system was struggling. He got sinusitis and frequent colds to go along with his…

- Asthma. Which is pretty dangerous for someone with heart condition since symptoms of a severe attack can include arrhythmia. In the 1930s, inhalers were difficult to use for one person (especially if that person was having an asthma attack), but asthma cigarettes were easily available and consideriably cheaper. But they were hallucinogenic. Beyond this, in the 30s, 40s and 50s asthma was considered a psychosomatic condition, so talking therapy was used as a treatment as well. Steve would have been considered both physically frail and mentally ill because of his asthma. 

- He had also “nervous trouble of any sort” and easy fatigability. That isn’t a surprise because it has to be tiring to be Steve. So many illnesses to fight with… It’s also no wonder that he’s so small, considering that his body was under so much sress while he was growing.

Steve always had been a hero. It hadn’t been the serum that had made him strong…

If the Please Do Not Eat That Professional thinks it's inconsequential enough to be funny, then the concerned caller knows it's no big deal. When I was a kid my mom called poison control because I ate not one but several crayons, and their advice was to make sure I didn't stray too far from a toilet for a few hours because suppositories are made of wax, too.

Also several years ago I ate half a sandwich while wondering why the hell it tasted so funny only to realize the Goo Gone I'd been cleaning with was leaking, and did so onto my sandwich. Poison Control now has an online form where you can put in what you ingested/how much/when/etc. and someone basically triages those out, so the kid who just drank a bunch of drain cleaner isn't in line behind the kid who ate a crayon. I got a call like twenty minutes later from a nurse who told me I was fine.

Oh! And if you want to know what the tool looks like, it now gives a "this is not a real case" option to let you test it out, so I became a hypothetical worried patient who accidentally took 1000mg of ibuprofen (max dose should be 800) instead of 1000mg of acetaminophen (which has a max dose of 1000) and ran the entire thing. It took me less than two minutes from this:

To this:

Below this screenshot I was advised to drink some water and that if symptoms developed in the next four hours, I should only be concerned in certain cases (e.g. nausea is normal, heart palpitations are a problem).

So what if it's a serious problem? Suddenly, hypothetical Nina was cleaning xir bathroom sink and got hit with some Drano splashback with xir eyes and mouth open! Here's what the tool suggested. As soon as I selected that I'd gotten Drano in my eyes, this popped up:

So I hypothetically went to rinse my eyes, came back, and indicated it'd also gotten into my mouth and onto my skin. Here was the result:

And finally, hypothetical!Nina made an extremely bad decision, then decided this wasn't how xe wanted things to end after all. So I selected the option that says I'd attempted self-harm, and this popped up. (I didn't get it in the screenshot, but there's a drawing of a sad snail at the top of the screen. I think it's supposed to remind you someone is there, this just isn't the best route to reach them.)

oh wow the glass-tower office buildings we constructed when we thought air conditioning and central heating would never have downsides...have downsides?

and we're still building them?

while the Victorian house museum where I work, with thick walls and small windows and big wooden shutters stays ~10 degrees above (winter) or below (summer) the outside temperature for days on end with no help at all?

uh. okay then