space forest

Cormorant fishing in Yangshuo near Guilin, Guangxi, China. Christian Vaisse

Most cormorant fishermen are essentially historical re-enactors, who post for photos for money. Sort of like the Elmo guys in Times Square, if they dressed up as pilgrims.

Lao Huang, photographed here by Peter Yan, actually grew up doing real cormorant fishing for a living. He's now retired, and does this more as a hobby (although he does make a good income from breeding the birds). As such, he's one of the few remaining authentic links to this pre-industrial fishing technique.

More photos and an interview with the photographer

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

the concept of star-eating microbes causing a crisis and the solution being the introduction of space wolves to space yellowstone to control the space elk population. i love a good trophic cascade

dr ryland grace immediately pitching "turn the spaceship into a giant centrifuge to generate gravity" and then not balancing his actual centrifuge later on

the entire "life is reason" scene really

grace forgetting to open the mystery alien container in a fume hood AND immediately sticking his nose in it. if we did this in chemistry lab we were executed on the spot

academia drama being one of the cornerstones of grace's character

grace switching through every spectrum setting on the microscope to try to see into the astrophages and not being able to (relatable)

also: the astrophage dying and grace going "ohhh it died..." (very relatable)

grace having his not-scientist buddy Carl to give him frank solutions when he's overthinking. yes, often the solution is just to put the box in another box

copious duct tape usage

just sticking a filter into the path of the petrova line to collect astrophage goop

eva going "so it's alive" when grace tells them the astrophage are moving, and him being like "WELL ok that could be for a lot of reasons" in the tone of someone who doesn't even know where to start explaining why that's a hasty assumption

grace referring to the first new astrophage as his and carl's baby multiple times (HIGHLY relatable)

Bonus: