Ealasaid Has a Tumblr

Can you swap their heads ?

Let’s have technical difficulties with mama

i knew a surgeon and he once told me “nobodys insides look like how the textbooks say they will. you never know what you’re going to find in there once you open them up” and that was easily the most ominous thing anyone’s ever said to me

when i was taking my first year anatomy lab, we’d occasionally find a cadaver where things would branch off or attach in the wrong order, and when we’d ask our prof about it, he’d just shrug and say “they must not have read the book”

When my friend was in med school one of the cadavers donated for them to autopsy didn't have a belly button, just smooth skin.

....duuude.

Yeah, I don't discover the anatomical weirdness but I've had clients come in with extra ribs, missing ribs, extra vertebra, accessory muscles (that's when you have duplicates - sometimes fine, sometimes not), bones connected where they shouldn't be (spoiler: if your lumbar spine is connected to your hip, it Causes Problems), all sorts of stuff. Bodies are weird!

even the things you never think about are a spectrum

every time i read some ethnography stuff about villagers (h-g's, agriculturalists, it doesnt matter) i am reminded of how bad it is to live in a village. your PARENTS or your INLAWS get to TELL YOU WHAT TO DO (who to marry!!!). everyone is in your BUSINESS. if you try to just leave you will probably DIE. it sucks!!!!! i am so glad we don't live in villages!!! rootlessness SWEEP

I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.

"from biology to physics" is the most metal fucking phrase i've seen in a long time

Jonathan today is like "Ugh, there goes the stupid Count crawling down the stupid wall like a lizard again. Wish I could shoot him with a gun,"

Graced by Geckolepis typica from Madagascar. I love that they’re quite round creatures and then they have these dainty little toes. Also, their scales are full bone and both scale and skin come off when they get grabbed, which is…unpleasant. Consequently, catching these geckos for research without damaging them requires special techniques. 19th century researchers used bundles of cotton wool, but I imagine this wasn’t very effective, because cotton still has a lot of friction and the friction would pull the skin and scales off. In my (quite extensive) experience, the best technique is to carefully and quickly flick the geckos from their tree trunk or branch into an open dry plastic bag using a finger or stick.

Not only do they grow back, but they come back so well that we cannot even tell where they have ripped off before. This is very weird, because when a lizard loses its tail, it is very obvious where it has been lost and regrown. Not so these chaps. They seek out a humid place to hide, and within a few weeks, skin and scales have started to regrow. The fact that they can do this so well is the reason a team has just sequenced their genome. I believe it is hoped that the skin regeneration tech they have built into their cells could eventually be harnessed for human skin grafts.

Image description: Blackboard on grass. "No mask on your face. You big disgrace. Spreading your germs all over the place." Next to the last sentence is a drawn illustration of Freddie Mercury in a yellow leather military motorcycle jacket raising his fist.

certified door post

Sure... if by "explore their passions" you mean "pay their fucking rent"

Yeeeeep.

Uhhh sorry gen z but I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I haven’t had a full time employment job since 2004 and have been juggling multiple side hustles, gig work and part time jobs ever since. Uber was founded in 2009 and the gig economy was booming more than a decade ago.

Gig economy wasn’t a universal experience back then though like it is now

I don’t know whether or not it is now or ever has been a universal experience but there were a hell of a lot fewer labor protections in gig work when I started in 2015. It was terrifying and I actually talked to a labor organizer about it BUT they would not get involved because they would only organize physical workplaces. The book Gigged by Sarah Kessler is an excellent history of the gig economy.