I care for things with fins and feathers.

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

“There have been lots of AI-generated articles, and those typically get noticed and retracted quickly,” Heiss tells Rolling Stone. He mentions a paper retracted earlier this month, which discussed the potential to improve autism diagnoses with an AI model and included a nonsensical infographic that was itself created with a text-to-image model. “But this hallucinated journal issue is slightly different,” he says.

OH NO NO NO, YOU GET A DELUGE OF SKINKINESS!!!

Peter’s Banded Skink (Scincopus fasciatus), family Scincidae, Morocco

photograph via: Amphibians & Reptiles of Morocco

Müller’s Forest Skink (Sphenomorphus muelleri), family Scincidae, found in Indonesia

photographs by Roots, Scoots, & Scales

Mainland She Oak Skink (Cyclodomorphus michaeli), mother with pups, family Scincidae, eastern Australia

photograph by Ken Griffiths

Northern Blue-tongued Skink (Tiliqua scincoides intermedia), defensive display, family Scincidae, Cape York, QLD, Australia

photographs by Brother-Nature

Fire Skink (Mochlus fernandi), family Scincidae, found in West Africa

* Also known by the scientific name Riopa fernandi.

Photograph by Miniformat65

Yellow-belly Three-toed Skink (Saiphos equalis), family Scincidae, found in eastern Australia

The only species in this genus.

Coastal populations reproduce by laying eggs (oviparity), and mountain populations reproduce through live birth (viviparity).

photograph by Rebecca Pyles

Three Toed Earless Skink (Hemiergis decresiensis), family Scincidae, found in SE Australia

Viviparous (live bearing).

photograph by Rob Valentic

African Red-sided Skink (Trachylepis perrotetii), family Scincidae, found in central Africa

photograph by Dick Bartlett

Rainbow Skink (Mabuya margaritifera), family Scincidae, Langano, Ethiopia

Photograph by Volker Sthamer

McCoy’s Elf Skink aka Highlands Forest Skink (Anepischetosia maccoyi), family Scincidae, Australia

photograph by @skinkmania__

Great Desert Skink aka Kintore’s Skink (Liopholis kintorei), family Scincidae, Kata Tjuta Nat Park, NT, Australia

These lizards live cooperatively in underground burrow systems, with siblings and offspring, as well as with unrelated individuals and pairs.

photograph by Gary Stephenson

Prairie Skink (Plestiodon septentrionalis), male, family Scincidae, Kansas, USA

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

In 1930, having diabetes type I would basically mean being hospital bound, being woken every few hours for regular injections.

In 1965, you'd be able to live at home and get by with a very strict diet and a few timed injections. You'd struggle with chronical side effects. Having children wasn't done - passing on your genes would be immoral, and it might not even be legal for you to marry.

In the year 2000, you'd have a device clipped to your belt that would measure your blood sugar and distribute insulin, you only need to change the needle a few times a day. You might even be allowed to join in P.E. class

In 2025, you stick on two patches that do the same thing. They're synchronized through your phone.

He's lived long enough that three of his grandkids have been born with the same condition, and he's been there to assist with the recovery after the laparoscopic version of the same surgery he had.

He has a scar from collarbone to waist that's as thick as my finger--thicker, in some places. My nieces and nephews have scars so tiny you could mistake them for being from a particularly bad cat scratch. And their recovery was measured in weeks, instead of months.

"Why are all crops Brassica?" is like asking "Why are all dogs wolves?": Because we found ONE very genetically manipulable species and pushed it into as many fun and exciting shapes as possible.

HOWEVER, Like how we also have Cats, Chickens, Horses, goats and Pigeons, we also have:

Nightshdes: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and every kind of pepper except black pepper. Like Brassicas, they need a lot of calcium, so you shouldn't put them in the same bed, and supplemmenting both beds with finely crushed eggshells will help.

Cucurbits: Summer and Winter Squashes, melons, cucumbers, Chayote, Pumpkins. Not as demanding about the calcium, do need the kind of sun that will literally Sunburn brassicas and nightshades to death.

Alliums: Garlic, Leek, Onion, Scallion. What are you doing if you don't have these???

Special shouthout here to CEREALS like Corn, Sogrhum, Wheat, oats and Barely, which *can* be grown in a backyard garden if you are insane.

BEANS: Look. There is some bean somewhere your family will like. Black beans, pinto beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, and PEANUTS. There's also Carrots and parsnips, but they have weird sandy soil requirements so they require a similar level of dedication and research as cereals do.

And that's just vegetables! You also have "fruits" which for purposes of this post are "assorted sweet-tasting plant parts", including but not limited to:

Strawberries, blueberries, Raspberries, apples, pears, peaches, plums, currants, cranberries, and cherries all of which I've grown in my yard before.

You've also go HERBS, which are generally not related, but you can interweave them between larger crop plants to keep your biodiversity up and help prevent disease outbreaks by acting as physical barries between plants: Rosemary, Thyme, Dill, Sage, Parsley, BASIL, Savory, lemongrass, and Mint if you're nasty.

No, you don't want that otter. No, that is not a pet. No, that up close encounter where you can pay to cuddle with an otter is probably not ethical. No, I'm pretty sure that channel with a guy and his pet otters is not a legitimate "animal rescue", stop recommending it to me.

Yes, the otter is cute. Please admire them either from a distance, or behind a barrier at an accredited facility. Thank you.

If you want a pet, you want a domesticated species. If you want a domesticated mustelid (the family otters belongs to), we have one: it's called a "ferret"

If you so desperately want an otter, get a ferret. Or stuffed animal, or symbolically adopt an otter from your local zoo.

Fantastic article!! The guys looking for it were fish researchers who saw it one time, knew instantly it was an undescribed species, and then tried for nearly 20 years to find and document it!

It's a type of ghost pipefish, related to seahorses, and it floats around coral reefs looking like a piece of algae and hunting unsuspecting prey

They are, of course, named after Snuffleufagus from Sesame Street!

Later on it the project, they got citizen science involved, and people across the Pacific started reporting sightings of snuffy fish from all over!