something's fishy.

So Nikki, Mike's possible alter ego, is leaving "pizza one" listening to "Go Skate (Possessed to Skate '97), a song that came out in 1993, that has an older version called "Possessed to Skate" that came out in 1987, in a show set in 1985, and I should be chill about it?

EDIT

I should have finished the scene because than the song changes to the 1987's version so yeah.

This odd fish has 30 times as much DNA as humans—a new record for animals

Lacking key genes that control selfish bits of DNA, the South American lungfish’s genome just grew and grew.

A species of lungfish found in South America has claimed the title of the animal with the biggest genome sequenced so far. The DNA of Lepidosiren paradoxa comprises a staggering 91 billion chemical letters or “bases,” 30 times as many as the human genome, researchers report today in Nature. However, those 91 billion bases of DNA only contain about the same number of genes that humans have—roughly 20,000—with the rest consisting of noncoding, perhaps even “junk” DNA. By comparing this genome with those of other lungfishes, the researchers determined that L. paradoxa adds the equivalent of a human genome to its DNA every 10 million years...

In 2024, researchers Mussini et al published a new interpretation of the Burgess Shale organism Pikaia gracilens. Apparently, past descriptions of its fossils had been depicting it upside down the entire time (appendages assumed to be parapodia like those seen are the undersides of snails have now been interpreted as branching gills that would have pointed upwards).

Maybe not as exciting as when Hallucigenia (another Cambrian organism known from fossils in the Burgess Shale) got an updated description back in 2015, but it was still pretty cool news in the world of palaeontology :)

After I found out about the study, I felt inspired to start doing some sketches during the summer of 2024 based on the new description (plus feedback from a paleontologist I kept bothering):

I started a larger, more polished illustration based on the sketches, but I ended up setting it aside for a while due to focusing on activism and moving to a new apartment.

One year later, and I finally got around to finishing it:

Mixed media - pen-and-ink, watercolor paint, watercolor pencil, and the digital program Krita.