Tastes Like Key Lime Gogurt

LFG HOLYOKE!!! 🎉

some other gems from fisk bot

and my personal all-time favourite:

Tim... my video game...

Rocky thinks this is stupid stupid stupid -- what if a scientist who's in the control group would have been the key to keeping Grace alive, question?! However, Grace insists that at least some attempt be made to let the Eridian scientific method operate unaffected by human influence first. Rocky badgers a concession out of Grace in turn that if Grace's health looks to be in extremely serious danger, Erid can abandon this "control group" nonsense and bring all claws on deck to preserve Grace's life.

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Later, when Rocky and Grace are tossing around some ideas for places on Erid that Grace would like to visit in person if at all possible, Grace brings up Eridian zoos. His Eridian care team are just a little concerned that Grace might see the zoos, draw the parallels himself, and get offended -- instead, Grace goes back to his biodome all fired up with ideas to make his Eridian home more accessible and educational for his Eridian visitors.

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There are bad apples in every bunch; despite very strict requirements and interview processes to determine which Eridian scientists get to join Grace's care team, there are one or two who make it onto the team who actually do view Grace more like a rare animal specimen than as a fellow scientist. This accidentally leads to the discovery of an extremely popular form of human enrichment: Trolling. Specifically, spite-motivated trolling.

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

A seriously injured Canadian checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice for the sole reason of 'saving on medical bills' (we don't have those).

A South Korean man reflects on his high school prom as a major formative event in his life (prom isn't a thing outside of america, and definitely not in South Korea).

A professional hockey player in the NHL was described as scoring an average of 60 goals per game (the world record for most goals scored by an entire NHL team in one game was 21 goals from the Montreal Canadiens). That same fic also at one point had the main characters show up to a game late, and were met with their very distressed teammates informing them that they were barely holding on, it was the third period and they were only up by fourteen points (kids hockey usually stops counting goals once a team is up by ten, because at that point it's a brutally one sided massacre). Only way any of that fucking madness made sense was if the author was trying to apply football scoring rules to hockey.

Jewish characters being mentioned as 'observing the sabbath' on Sundays (jewish shabbat starts at sunset on friday and ends on saturday at sunset).

Non-American characters mentioning 21 as the legal drinking age (it's 18-20 literally everywhere else).

Characters having to go through customs and border security while travelling between two countries in the EU (not a thing).

Characters in Japan that are canonically speaking exclusively Japanese having a big conversation about what pronouns people should use for them (gendered pronouns are first person in japanese, so the character wouldn't have to tell anyone how to refer to them).

A fic from the mid 00's where the author truly, genuinely believed that Christmas and 'Kurisumasu' were two completely different holidays celebrated in Japan.

Ok I put this on FB but it can't hurt to put here too. We need help with Fantine!

Dog location: Northeast Georgia, just outside metro Atlanta and near the NC/TN/SC borders. TL;DR: Really sweet stray dog has ringworm; current foster is immune compromised; need someone to help by housing her for the duration of her treatment. Only need a short-term foster (approximately a month is the estimate for ringworm treatment? up to six weeks, I guess) and we can help find a permanent placement for her when her treatment is complete.

Details: Fantine is a stray dog we have been fostering for about the last month, she has a wonderful temperament (very sweet and trusting with people, quite resilient, friendly to all the dogs she has met) and is about a year and a half old. She has had all her vaccines and flea/tick/heartworm treatment and was spayed almost three weeks ago. and is healing up from it really well.

She's also ringworm positive, and I have some serious immune-related health conditions. The vet who diagnosed her was worried about her staying in the house with me even though she has been in quarantined in the laundry room and we are being very cautious about biosecurity.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri, commonly known as the chameleon semi-slug, and an unidentified species of semi-slug from the genus Sheldonia

The term "semi-slug" is used to describe an intermediate stage of evolution that occurs as snails evolve into slugs. Nearly 1,000 different species of semi-slug are currently known to exist, and these bizarre little creatures can be found on at least four continents.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri and Varadia amboliensis

Each species of semi-slug is technically still classified as a snail, but its shell is noticeably reduced, becoming smaller and more internalized as the species evolves. A semi-slug officially becomes a regular-slug once its shell is no longer visible at all.

As this article explains:

If life were simple, there would be snails and slugs. Snails carry their homes on their backs; slugs are naked and embarrassed. But life isn’t simple, so of course there’s secret option #3 – the semi-slug, a bizarre creature that sits exactly between the snail and the slug.

Above: genus Satiella and genus Euaustenia

This article describes the distinction between a snail, a slug, and a semi-slug:

In contrast to snails, which have an external shell large enough to accommodate the body, or slugs, in which the shell is completely internal or absent, semi-slugs have an external shell, but the shell is too small to accommodate the animal’s entire body.

Above: Megaustenia siamensis

The evolutionary process that causes the shell to recede is known as limacization, and it's especially common in moist, low-calcium environments where a snail's shell may be more of a burden than a benefit:

Terrestrial slugs are not a monophyletic group, but a case of convergent evolution in which the slug form evolved from different lineages of land snails that gradually lost their shell through a process called limacization. Limacization resulted in adaptive radiation in land snail lineages, as slugs became adapted to diverse moist and protected spaces, such as crevices in rocks and wood debris. The loss of the shell also allowed for more movement and less calcium dependence, making slugs more successful as pests.

Above: Gaeotis nigrolineata, also known as the Puerto Rican semi-slug, has a neon green shell that is almost completely internalized, but the shell is clearly visible through the semi-slug's translucent body

Some semi-slugs have shells that are still opaque and largely visible, with a patch of flesh covering only the outer edges of the shell, while others have shells that are more significantly reduced, transparent, and/or concealed.

Above: Ibycus rachelae, commonly known as the green-shelled semi-slug, and a species of semi-slug from the genus Durgella

This topic was mentioned in my previous post about Ibycus rachelae, but I wanted to write a more detailed post about semi-slugs, because they're just so fascinating and weird.

Above: a black-and-white semi-slug from subfamily Sheldoniinae

Above: Fastosarion brazieri again, but this one is especially spiky for some reason

Sources & More Info:

Australian Geographic: Meet the Semi-Slug, a Snail without a Home

Carnegie Museum of Natural History: What's So Good about Being a Slug?

Frontiers: Terrestrial Slugs in Neotropical Agroecosystems (PDF)

iNaturalist: Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, & 12

The Shell-Makers: Introducing Molluscs: On Becoming Sluggish

Land Snails and Slugs of Sabah and Labuan, Malaysia: Semi-Slugs

So that’s why a bunch of parents rubbed jalapeño juice on their elbows