amserpand reblogs stuff

Gold Weight: Fish, 1800s, Cleveland Museum of Art: African Art

The wealth and power of the Asante kingdom was derived primarily from its massive gold resources. Since at least 1600, small weights in brass and bronze were used to weight gold dust and nuggets. The royal court had the most elaborate store of weights, while commoners often had about a dozen. Their imagery falls into two broad cateogries: geometric and representational. The latter often refers to proverbs, which used judiciously, marked a wise person. Size: Overall: 2.8 x 6.6 x 0.4 cm (1 1/8 x 2 5/8 x 3/16 in.) Medium: brass, bronze

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Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Hemlocke Springs (alt rock/new wave revival),

the Noisettes (indie),

Skunk Anansie (hard rock/metal),

Tamar Kali (rock/punk),

Valerie June (country/blues),

Santigold (indie),

Bloc Party (post punk revival/indie rock),

O Children (goth),

Lord Scary Black (goth),

Cemetery Sex (death rock)

deepincision (heavy metal)

zulu (metal)

black pantera (rock, metal)

winter wolf (punk, metal)

erzulie (punk, rock)

youth man (punk)

the 1865 (punk)

crystal axis (punk)

pleasure venom (post-punk/hard rock)

the rack (they describe their sound as “hard pop rock”, blends punk vocals and rock)

danny denial (indie punk/rock, queer)

gloom east (alt/indie rock, moody pop blend)

big joanie (synth punk + some more melodic, blues-like tones)

madame st beatrice (gothic, moody and melodic)

shadow age (goth)

saccharin (goth)

the ire (goth, punk)

bastet (goth punk)

Stilletto (Glam Metal - I haven't been able to find them on Spotify so EP on youtube)

Mother's Finest (Funk Glam Metal)

People's Choice (Funk rock)

Straight Line Stitch (Nu Metal)

Grace Jones (Disco, Reggae, Rock)

Buddy Miles (Blues, Funk Rock)

Robert Cray (Blues) and the Robert Cray Band

Chaka Khan (Soul, Blues, Rock)

Body Count (Thrash Rap/Rap Metal)

Ghost Hounds (Country Rock Blues)

Thin Lizzy (Hard Rock/Classic Heavy Metal)

King's X (Rock)

Zulu (Nu Metal/Death Metal)

Suicidal Tendencies (Heavy Metal)

Buddy Guy (Blues)

BB King (Blues)

John Lee Hooker (Blues)

Lucky Peterson (Blues)

Skindred (Reggae Metal)

Keb'Mo' (Country Influenced Blues)

Stuck Mojo (Rap Metal)

Overthrust (Doom/Death Metal)

Arka'n Asrafokor (Death influenced Folk Metal)

Dividing The Element (Death influenced Folk Metal)

Fishbone (Ska, Funk, Punk, Rock)

Michael Burks (Blues)

Living Color (Funk Metal)

Prophets of Rage (Punk Rap Metal Supergroup)

Wrust (Thrash/Death Metal)

Vale of Amonition (Death? Doom? Nu Metal)

April Kae (Bassist and singer)

A Band Called Pain (Blues Rock, Blues Grunge?)

Bad Brains (Punk)

Shemekia Copeland (Blues)

Skinflint (Folk influenced Heavy Metal)

Cypress Hill (Rock influenced Hip Hop)

George Clinton and Parliment Funkadelic (Funk)

Ida Corr (Dance, Electronica, Disco Influenced)

War (Classic Rock, Reggae Rock)

Johnny Nash (70s rock)

OH MY GOD

That is a monster (respectful) If it was a lizard it would be a dragon.

They can be bigger than the biggest grizzly bears. They are about the size of a horse, just without the stilt legs. And their faces are hiding teeth like this (sorry it's kind of gross but it shows the teeth best)

Here's a leopard seal skull next to a horse skull

they can get as big as 12 feet and can weigh like 1,200 pounds. They can swim 35 miles an hour and eat only meat - regularly eating giant penguins that weigh more than 100 pounds each, and anything else they feel like they can kill. And they're pretty smart. Only an Orca is a more dangerous hunter in arctic waters, and even they usually leave a leopard seal alone.

it's 1pm at the marsh! come on down, we've got

so thank you for this ask for 3 reasons. one, i have now spent over two hours looking at pictures of hagfish and selecting my favorites, which is one of the best uses for my time i've yet experienced. two, in the course of looking up pictures of hagfish i have found several detailed marine biology websites which were finally able to provide sources and details on hagfish sexual function (answer: there are at minimum reports of some sort of bipotential gonad situation in some immature hagfish of several species but the actual details of their adult reproduction are fairly mysterious and the claim that they're bidirectional serial sex-changers has not been proven to current standards such that many researchers are unwilling to count them among known species that do that). three, i have now learned that there are over 70 known species of hagfish, which is information that somehow escaped me until now. and quite probably more species than that, given as they live at depth and mostly aren't that visually distinct from each other, because they are the perfect animal.

anyway let's go. content label: i am going to describe the basic mechanics of how they eat but i promise i am holding back.

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i like this one because it shows the way they tie themselves in knots. it's specifically an overhand knot from the tail to the head, though i don't know if this behavior has been observed in every species (probably not) so it would be interesting to know if they all do overhands.

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this is objectively adorable.

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another hagfish in a sponge but this time you can see their tooth plates. smiling at us. often people assume the 'o' in their face is their mouth but that's actually their nostril. they have a unique and powerful chemoreceptor system that majorly incorporates their nostril but also takes in information from all over the body. (x) and they have a mouth but no jaw. the two tooth plates pinch together when retracted, which grips onto their prey. for larger prey that they can't swallow whole they grip onto the flesh with their tooth plates and then tie themselves in that overhand knot which they move down their body from their tail to their head, pushing against their prey and pulling a mouthful of flesh free.

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i like that they seem to just kind of hang out together. i don't think anyone's specifically studied how social they are? they seem to show up in high density and pacific hagfish at least seem to share burrows a fair amount. can i please have infinite budget to study every single detail of hagfish forever. what are they doing down there.

honorable mention to the museum of new zealand footage of their bait trap and multiple animals failing to predate on hagfish and an instance of successful predation by a hagfish

the pictures are just pacific hagfish because it's difficult to find pictures of the other species, particularly pictures where they're alive. but you get to see different species of hagfish in the video! and i don't have a favorite species currently but possibly i will in the future.

Showing off the Arapaima I made! (Pattern also made by me)