Of Paper and Ponies (and Science!)

“Eye of Juno” - Buphthalmos

Buphthalmos (literally “ox-eye”), or “The Eye of Juno”, is a clinical sign that can signify infantile glaucoma, and most often occurs in children between birth and 3 years of age. It is an apparent enlargement of the eyes, but is really just the increased ocular pressure pushing the sclera outwards.

my mom is friends with this trans woman, who was really sweet and she was super cool, but then i tried to come out after my mom expressed how much she liked her trans friend and how amazing she is. i told my mom about my crippling chest dysphoria and how much i’d love to be called by he/him pronouns and my preferred name. i told her about how i’ve always felt this way and i’ve known since eighth grade.

well the thing is, her friend is a transmed.

my mom is an uninformed person on trans issues, because she didn’t really care about them until recently. she took resources from her transmed friend and it ruined my life. she went off about how i’m not really trans because i didn’t come out sooner, i have piercings, my hair is always a crazy color, i still like girly things, and my glasses are weird. she kept yelling about how i didn’t have dysphoria before, so i obviously have the wrong definition. she told me if i was trans it would’ve been diagnosed by my therapist already, and it was just a cult bandwagon phase. i was locked away from the outside world for a month.

when my next year of high school rolled around, i was out as trans. my partner provided me with a binder and all was well. i came out to all my peers at the beginning and about halfway through the school year to my teachers. it was quiet, under the table. i told them my mom didn’t know and under our school guidelines, they were not allowed to tell my mom that sort of thing. well, one of my teachers ended up being lgbtphobic and i didn’t know, and announced to the class that she didn’t “agree with the lifestyle” and that “gay marriage isn’t what god wanted.” my mom got an email that day about me being out as trans at school. i wonder who could’ve sent it?

my mom blew up. she was sending me treat after threat because i was a trender, all i did was lie for attention, that i chose to be trans because it was trendy and that real trans people wouldn’t flaunt their transness. of course, she got these resources from her transmed friend. she pulled me out of public school and cut my contact with the outside world for three whole months. i didn’t get back into school until february.

We got super gatekeepy and “you must be THIS GAY to ride this identity” and we complained at length about it being “trendy” and how girls only did it to be “cool” and to get attention.

And so among other things I know one person I love is, for example, only JUST getting to have her FIRST relationship ever with a woman at slightly older than me because this shit got into her head and she didn’t think she was “allowed”.

So watching people turn the same bullshit on even more vulnerable kids?

Bug of the Day

A small selection of ToothpasteFish.

marvel women in suits:👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼

Acquired Chronic Internal Hydrocephaly

Patient was 60 years old. At one point possessed considerable intellect as well as musical ability and ability to work. Later in life became blind, partially deaf, with some spasticity of lower limbs. Never had convulsive attacks, fair health aside form brain disease.

Brain 1,240 g when emptied, contained 2,400 cubic centimeters of fluid.

You can see here the extreme results of the blockage of the cerebral aqueduct connected to the fourth ventricle.

This man’s hydrocephaly developed later in life, when his skull was fully formed, so outwardly he did not show deformity (aside from a slight bulging of the eyes). However, the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) caused his optic chiasma to become flattened, shrunken, and greyish in color.

Interestingly, though this man lost many of his basic functions due to the increasing severity of his hydrocephalus over the last part of his life (as more and more CSF became stuck in his fourth ventricle), he actually retained a fair amount of intelligence and ability to reason and speak. This is because his frontal and prefrontal cortex (his frontal lobe) were almost completely spared the effects shown in the central and posterior cerebrum (parietal, temporal, limbic, and occipital lobes).

If you look at the position of the fourth ventricle in the brain (just above the cerebellum, behind the brainstem, lower than the other ventricles), you can see why the occipital lobe, which processes sight, would be affected before the other regions of the brain, and why this patient experienced those specific symptoms, yet still retained his intelligence.

Illustrations of the Gross Morbid Anatomy of the Brain in the Insane. I.W. Blackburn, 1908.

Bharal or Blue Sheep - Ovis nahoor [now Pseudois nayaur]

Bharals, also called naur in their native Himalayas, are a large (35-75 kg) sheep, and aside from the dwarf blue sheep (Pseudois schaeferi), which is endangered, are all relatively prevalent in their territory. 

However, similar to the mountain chinchilla, their population is still monitored, because they’re the primary food source for one of the critically-endangered snow leopard populations - any change in their population can lead to snow leopards turning to livestock in the region (leading to poaching) and population decline.

The Anatomy of the Human Head and Neck graphically illustrated by means of superimposed plates with descriptive text by Dr Schmidt English Edition by William S Furneaux 

“Hey guys, got some spare blood? Promise it wont hurt!”

Animals that consume blood for sustenance are sanguivorous. Sanguine means “consisting of, or related to, blood”.

Vampire bats are the only purely-sanguivorus mammals, and have razor-sharp teeth and numbing saliva to keep their food sources asleep. The blood thinners in their saliva keep the blood flowing for several minutes after the initial bite.  Despite their blood-sucking nature, vampire bats are some of the few mammals that will adopt another bat’s young should the mother die of disease or from predators. The young cling to their mothers for over three months, and rely upon their mother’s milk to supplement their diet for between five to six months, until the young learn to hunt sufficiently well on their own.

100kg Meteorite Impacts

Shockingly my paper couldn’t handle 45000 circles so here’s the 304 recorded meteorite impacts over 100kg. Printed with a pen plotter.

Transformations of Ophiderinae [most “Ophiderinae” now fall under subfamily Calpinae, family Noctuidae]

The owlet moths are hardy and robust, and exist throughout the world. The caterpillars of the family are largely toxic, thanks to the plants they feed upon.

Cross-section of a human tooth-germ

You can see all the layers of the developing tooth here. All the way to the right (i), you can see the tooth-sac that the developing tooth is surrounded by and nourished by. In the center (f), you can see the developing enamel (though it’s still gelatinous at this point) - h signifies the outer epithelial cells of the enamel, which will comprise the outside of the tooth when it’s fully formed. To the left, b signifies the odontoblasts (the cells that are precursors to the inner tooth structures), and a signifies the tooth-papilla, that the odontoblasts will expand into.

The tooth-germ starts like a cup, basically, and then expands both outward (to form enamel), and inward (to form the dentin and inner structures) at the same time.