עזרא

The trendiness makes it more pervasive, which makes it easier to fall into echo chambers that validate those who believe it, and the algorithm is certainly part of the shape that takes now, but people tend to have actual internal reasons—even if they’re bad or fallacious ones or don’t actually make any sense when picked apart—why they consider their politics/beliefs are true or moral.

For my project, we were trying to identify microbes that could use partially treated plastic as a food source and break it down further. The carbon bonds in our daily plastics are really hard to get at and break, hence the bad degradation, so breaking some of those bonds through heat and chemicals first can help microbes get access to them. Once we identify a microbe that can do this, we could test giving them slightly less degraded plastic to live on until they develop a way to eat it and go until they either get back to normal plastic or hit a wall where the microbe can't progress anymore (which may be likely).

An alternative approach to breeding (although you don't 'breed' most microbes since they reproduce asexually but instead find strains with mutations that lead to desired changes) would be trying to predict an enzyme that could break the bonds in plastic, engineering it, and putting it in microbes to test if it works. On one hand it could overcome any natural halt selection has but would be initially harder to discover.

The best solution would probably be to find the microbe that can eat the partially degraded plastic, figure out what enzyme is doing the work, then see how the enzyme could be improved to work through plastic in its default state.

Once you have that, the next consideration would be what byproducts are created from eating plastic? Part of the project was hoping that the microbe that could eat plastic would produce a useful byproduct that could be harvested, as an unfortunate reality of our current world is that if it's not profitable it probably won't take hold. But if we wish to put this in a living organism, we need to make sure it won't produce a harmful byproduct, or if it does, then ensuring the organism can quickly turn it harmless before it builds up.

Once all of that is figured out, the next hardest thing would be ensuring that whatever gut microbe you put the plastic eating gene in continues to express it. Since plastic is so hard to use it would probably prefer to use any glucose lying around first, and if that runs out then switch to eating plastic. We could try removing its ability to eat glucose (or whatever other compounds it lives off of), but then it would be less competitive in the gut environment and would require a steady source of plastic in order to not die off.

Like we have so many animals dying because their stomachs are filled with plastic. Cleaning all that shit out of the ocean is a worthwhile goal, but the truth is there will probably always be some plastic.

crowley posting again because sketching him is my comfort

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

I was sent to a neurologist for headaches and she looked at my blood tests and said my iron is low even though it's just on the lower side of the normal range, I took iron pills for 3 months and did another test 2 days ago and my iron is still the same, so I was like "wait what even are the symptoms of iron deficiency" so I googled it and it's literally all the problems I've had for years that came with my UC but seemingly had no relation to it. I check my blood test history and my ferritin (iron reserves in the body) have been consistently low since goddamn 2015, when I was first diagnosed with UC, and is a common to have with UC.

fatigue, muscle weakness, chest pain, dizziness and headaches, poor sleep, all of these have a high chance of being from the iron deficiency that I had for an entire DECADE and none of the dozens of doctors I've seen bothered to comment on??? it's even linked to cold intolerance???

1 year update, that doctor was shit and never even believed my symptoms, my iron levels were fine, they were on the lower end but in range for what's considered healthy.

Nishimoto Ryota

Evening Dress

Girolamo Giuseffi

c.1912

''The founding of Israel was based on displacement of Palestinians''- Look, I don't want to minimize that at all because people losing their homes is fucking terrible but that doesn't mean the solution is expelling Israelis now. There was a population exchange between Greece and Tuurkey in 1922. Both sides ethnically cleansed people. It was a terrible thing to do. But both Turkey and Greece exist now as two seperate states with clearly defined borders (if you ignore some shit erdogan tries to pull in the agean). And you don't question Greece's or Turkey's right to not be wiped off.

''Israeli identity is fake because it was based on smth that happened 3000 years ago!!!''- Ok sorry to break it to you but us Greeks have made our entire national identity revolve around who we were 3000 years ago. And if you want to argue abt fakeness of identity I would argue ours was a less organic one. Jewish people maintained the same religion and basic belief systems for 3000 years. They continuously felt the connection with Eretz Yisrael. We switched to Orthodox christianity from whatever 12 god shit we had, we lost most of our literacy that allowed us to keep tpuch with ancient texts, we embraced so many customs from the Ottomans and YET it was still valid when we tried to reclaim our ancient greek identity to build a nation partly on the basis of that

''European colonial powers helped prop up Israel which means it is an imperialistic state!''- Do you think Greece got independence or gained more land purely through OUR military strength lol?

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

He was a one eyed muscle man hairy Grecian people eater….