#birds can apparently also see ultraviolet

[cauldron-of-oddities]

Many birds, including owls and crows, have better vision than humans. Very useful when you're out looking for spare parts, or when you want to find a cool trinket to gift to your love friend.

Love the idea of Powder flying about looking for a perfect gift, afterall gift giving it is one of her love languages.

Summary Powder sets out to find a perfect thank-you gift with her newly enhanced sight. She finds it, and she and Ekko have their first date outing after her birthday.

I spy with my little eye

She sees things just a little differently as a crow. It's all just a bit brighter, a bit more colourful (which she loves), and a bit sharper. actually much sharper. And she thinks finally now she has an up in finding all the good things.

Perched in the Entresol. A mix of Zaunites and those few ‘brave’ and ‘adventurous’ pilties who would come down to see the sights or do ‘business’ walk by. The first came in two sorts, generally the ‘oh how novel’ and ‘look at what I dare’ in the sunken city of birds, and the second usually greed driven, their fancy coats did not make up for that.

How the Pilties never realised many of the birds of Zaun were actually its people continued to amaze her. She cackled, spooking someone passing by. Oh yeah, being a crow meant she could mimic sounds. Thus far, it had been a right hoot. Speaking of hoot, she was on a mission.

Gift. Ekko. Now what? Would he like it? She thanked the stars that the birds couldn't blush. She was still feeling all fuzzy. His words from her birthday happily bounced in her mind, leaving her wondering just how she could share how that had made her feel. How it made her feel like a swarm of sparrows wanted to escape her, how it had left her warm. How thankful she was, how she lo…liked him. He gave her the most wonderful things both in objects and words, and she really wanted to return the gesture, so that was what she would do.

Looking down at the streets again, she thought there was one thing those obtuse pilties were good for, namely dropping things. The value of the object really didn't seem to matter to them. Or it mattered way too much. With that, she scans her potential victims.

There! Something glints, not on a person or one of the stalls but on one of the piles of discarded mechanical pieces. It's piled high, and most wouldn't be able to pick anything useful out. But there in the pile is something blue, really, really blue. Blue, which she saw so much better these days.

Buried under all sorts of scrap metal was a little container holding something that was sparkling blue.

With her beak and small talons, she carefully removed pieces of scrap until a small metal and glass container, holding a shard of blue crystal, appeared. It buzzed with energy. Could it be something to power their projects? A battery? It was pretty, probably useful. It was perfect.

“Hey there, nice birdy, hold still birdy.” She hears from behind her. There's a rather tall and boring looking pilty creeping up to her.

Who did this jock think he was? And was he reaching for her hard sought gift? With an angry cawing and pecking at this dullard's too large hands, she quickly picks up the little vessel in her talons and flies away.

In the distance, she thought she heard a dismayed “Shit! My test shard” Well, tough, it was on the discard pile. It was fair game.

Up in the air, she wondered what to do. She has her gift. Should she go wrap it? She's close to Benzo's shop, though, and she's way too excited by the potential of what she found. Lost for a moment, she gets caught off guard by a gust of wind and tumbles down. Luckily, not far enough to do damage, she shifts as she hits the roof of Benzo's shop.

“Hi Pow!” Ekko's suddenly in front of her, and of course, she looks like she'd been through a turbine. To distract from her mortification, she shoves the little bright container to him.

“Here!"

“Wow, what is it?”

“No idea, but it has some sort of energy in it, a battery maybe and it's pretty and you like blue and I thought um, it's for you.” Could she get any more awkward, rushing out her reply like that? She peaks up at him.

Why does he look bashful now? “Thanks Pow” His voice is soft and pleased. He's quiet for a moment before a grin splits his face.

“Want to get a bite at Jericho's and brainstorm?” He asks.

She scraped enough of her senses together to enthusiastically nod.

Jericho greets them and sets them in a corner with a small plate of snacks. Powder thinks they must have been sitting there for hours, their heads close together throwing ideas about what the pretty crystal could be, about how to use the energy it clearly could make. “You should see it with your owl eyes. It'll be spectacularly glowly then.” she tells him.

Too soon, it's dark and getting cooler, and their ideas start to slow. A breeze passed, and she rubbed her arms as a shiver ran through her. She's not ready for today to end. It's too much fun, and she will not give in to being a little chilled. “Here.” is all she hears as warmth enveloped her. She realises Ekko had slipped his hoodie over her. Before she realised it, she nuzzled into it. He holds his hand out to her. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

He walks her back to the Last Drop. Ekko pocketed his gift in his pouch and wrapped in a scrap of fabric, and took her hand. That was nice. Almost home, he squeezed his hand around hers and told her thanks for the gift. She really feels fluttery now and really doesn't want to let go, but suddenly she's home and her hand is instantly cold when he lets go.

Powder kicks her toes a few times and bites her lip. It feels wrong to just say bye and go inside. When she looks up at him, an impulse takes her. She leans up and kisses him on the cheek. “Bye” she rushes out and runs inside past a bemused Vander at the bar and down the stairs to her bed before she can burst into flames.

It was late but not late enough for the others to be sleeping. Luckily, the bedroom seemed to be empty. Alas, it was not.

“Soooooo, how was your date?” Eying her little sister's red face cuddling up in what had to be Ekko's hoodie.

“It wasn't a date!” How she wished it was.

“I just wanted to say thank you…” her voice sounded bashful even to her own ears.

“Sure looked like a date from where I was perched.”

“Wait! Were you spying on me!?”

“What can I say, Powpow you need to start looking a bit further.”

With that, Powder launched herself at her sister with a pillow.

Outside with burning ears and a delighted grin, Ekko stands for a moment, fingers running over his cheek. It seemed he would need to up his game if this was the result.

#timebomb #ekko x jinx #the owl and the crow #ekkojinx #powder is learning her feelings #thank you for the prompt #the potential was too cute #birds can apparently also see ultraviolet

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

So I found out that blue is apparently rare in nature but I want it to in fact be relatively abundant in my world. Honestly for no apparent reason than it's my favourite colour and I want it to work in it. What would I need to change from real life in order to do that? Preferably from blue pigments but reflected light would also be great.

Tex: Blue is rare in nature because in order to produce what we perceive as blue, the red wavelengths of light need to be absorbed and not refracted out, so physical structures are usually relied upon instead (The University of Adelaide, Live Science). A lot of the work for this to be naturally-occurring was also covered in a previous ask.

However, there can be a shortcut to this - shift the wavelength band a little to the left and use ultraviolet. Flowers communicate with insects in UV light as a form of coevolution (Wikipedia), and when colour-corrected to a wavelength we can see, it comes across as blue.

Some examples:

Photo by Debora Lombardi (My Modern Net)

Photo by Craig Burrows (CPBurrows.com)

Feral: As Tex points out, nothing is going to appear blue if the people of your world cannot perceive the wavelengths of blue light. Even without UV, this trick of light is a popular option. Bluejays (and all birds with blue plumage) actually have feathers that are pigmented brown where we perceive blue because of a specific way air gets trapped in them.

However, another way to manipulate the proliferation of blue in your world is through geology and mineralogy. Tweaking the abundance of certain elements and how they are incorporated into the biochemistry of your world will change certain colors found in nature.

You can make certain blue rocks and minerals more prevalent. Basalt, slate, limestone, and sandstone are all common rocks that can appear blue. The mineral glaucophane can be mixed with basalt to create the metamorphic rock blueschist. Thus, the earth itself can appear more blue, rather the generally brown color we tend to associate with dirt, rocks, and sand. 

But metals and minerals are also very important in biochemistry as cofactors, nutrient minerals, and trace elements. Most people will know that iron is an important metal for humans because it carries oxygen in our blood stream, and this is why our blood turns red when it’s oxygenated - that’s what iron does. But crustaceans have a greenish-blue blood because the oxygen-carrier is hemocyanin, containing copper. Cobalt, important to Vitamin B12, is a nutrient mineral that comes to mind when I think of blue.

So what about the flora of the world?

Flowers and fruits get their coloration from two types of molecules: carotene and anthocyanin. Carotene pretty exclusively produces reds, yellows, and oranges. Anthocyanin generally produces reds and purples, but in the rare occasions a blue flower is produced, it can be due to a chemical complex called metalloanthocyanin, which contains magnesium, aluminium, or iron (or a combination). 

For a more scientifically robust look at coloration in flowers, including options other than metalloanthocyanin, check out this article, “Natural Blues: Structure Meets Function in Anthocyanins,” in the National Library of Medicine’s Center for Biotechnology Information Journal.

#google submitted #nature #colours #colors

[codgod-moved]

I can tell you a bit about evolution/ natural selection for that. Humans have 3 colour cones in their eyes, red green and blue, to see colour because that had an evolutionary advantage. Our ancestors were heavily reliant on betties and fruits and such and so we can tell when things are red because ripe berry tasty. A lot of prey animals don't have red cones because they don't need it, and they specced into a wider field of vision sensitive to movement (predators) instead. If there's no evolutionary advantage to having red cones there's less chance of a random mutation of that occuring to spread through a population, even if it's technically benign. We are predators with front facing eyes to better judge dept. Modern day humans don't rely on full colour vision at all really. Colourblind people don't disproportionately die which is why those traits still occur in the population. But colour vision isn't exactly dissappearing either, because it's just kind of benign. Natural selection based on environmental pressure doesn't really occur in the current human population at large like it would for most other populations. As an addition to that, 10,000 years is a relatively short time in the scheme of evolution. As I understand it in this au netherborns were originally humans that settled down in the nether, and based on the above I'd say that for the most part they'd still have the normal range of colour vision, but that is a bottleneck event (a small non-representative portion of a population getting seperated from the rest) so it's perfectly possible the rate of colourblindness to normal vision is totally skewed in either direction. Or maybe the dna altering mushrooms messed with them idk. That's really up to you I just like biology

Also pigs itl have dichromatic vision (2 cones) but they apparently see red green and blue in varying amounts bc their cones are a bit different than humans, but they mostly see in large swatches of colour, less detailed. Piglins appear to be predators however with front facing eyes and with what you're saying, omnivores like humans. However thry also originated in the nether where green isn't really a thing at all for the most part, so maybe they just see red and blue? Maybe they can see ultraviolet like birds and such I feel like the mushrooms have some of that kind of colour.

Tldr; I think netherborns have a normal human range of vision and piglins see red and blue and maybe ultraviolet. Sorry this is so uh. Long and technical

do NOT apologise for this being long and technical that just made it fun to read. though my eyes did kinda glaze over reading this so thank u for the tldr at the end LOL

so i’m thinking based on All That. that maybe netherborns do generally have full colour vision Yeah but colourblindness is far more common among netherborns than it is in humans 🤔 especially taking into account the dna altering mushrooms (maybe they can see shrimp colours lol) and the fact that they’re almost all some varying level of piglin hybrid anyway

and yeah as rose mentioned in the tags it’d probably manifest similar to tritanopia considering the colour scheme of the nether

#.asks #nptau #i need to do more just regular mc worldbuilding tbh this is so fun #we are working together *holds everyone’s hands* #long post

[biology-geology-beaches-india]

Beach birds winging their way over the lustrous liquid silver of the Gosthani River.

The glare here is so intense and must be borne by these birds for such sustained stretches, essentially the entire day, that one marvels these birds do not develop an avian version of snow blindness!!.

We need sunlight to see but sunlight is also detrimental to sight!!!. The ultraviolet rays present in it can cause an opacity of the eye lens - cataract - a serious matter considering that this causes blindness in about 25 million people worldwide. And if there is one species that truly needs ultra-sharp vision for its livelihood it is the high-flying bird!!! Birds don’t peer!!!.

The UV glare from the mobile mirror-like surface of these water apparently cause photo-oxidation of the crystalline proteins in the eye lens, not to mention the generation of superoxide and other reactive oxygen species that do further damage.That the eye lens contains one of the highest concentrations of the antioxidant Ascorbic Acid does not now surprise us!!!

The eye lens is especially vulnerable not only because its proteins are held at super-saturation, making them very vulnerable to precipitation by any chemical or mechanical injury, but in addition do not undergo any molecular or cellular turnover. The lens proteins you are born with are all that you will have for life, and upon reflection it is little short of a molecular miracle that they stay clear and crystalline as long as they do - seven decades.

Cataracts due to relentless sun exposure and glare while out at sea in low-lying boats  - that shortens the distance between the shiny surface and the eye - beset the 50,000 fisherman of Srikakulam district  - about 130 kilometers from here - many of whom develop lens opacities in their forties precluding many of them then from making a living, a serious matter in a people who essentially live from hand-to-mouth..

How these birds - doubtless long-lived, and fishermen in their own right!! - manage to keep their eyes and vision intact over a lifetime - assuming they do, they well might not - is a puzzle that needs explication.

The puzzle is further accentuated by the fact that reflected light is mostly polarized light, and as the pharmaceutical industry has known for a long time, polarized light is far more potent in producing molecular damage than un-polarized light.

May 10, 2010, Gosthani River confluence, Bheemili, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

#cataract #fishermen #opacity #eye lens #srikakulam #tryptophan #photooxidation #supersaturation #crystalline proteins #ultraviolet #glare #snow blindness #beach birds #avian #vision #reflection #catoptric #polarized light #superoxide #reactive oxygen species #antioxidant #ascorbic acid #reflectivity #andhra pradesh

[homunculus-argument]

I was at a skincare specialist today, and while working she off-handedly mentioned that someone she knows has a parrot who hates sunscreen. He's not a talking parrot, but whenever his owner has sunscreen on, he makes a distinct "I do not like this"-scream (which, if you own a bird, is apparently something you'll know) and starts swooping at her. The dermatologist shrugged as she said that maybe the sunscreen smells like chemicals and the bird doesn't like that.

As a trader and collector of useless random knowledge, I remembered that apparently birds don't really have a strong sense of smell, they rely on sight. Birds also see ultraviolet colours, and sunscreen is visible in UV light. It's probably not the smell of the sunscreen that he hates, but he can see it on her face, and hates that his favourite person looks weird.

So we both just shrugged like "huh, that's interesting."

[subterfugespecialist]

Led to You

As a child, everyone finds their "soulmate guide," an animal meant to lead your soulmate to you. And one morning, Janus and Remus wake up to see a stranger's guide in their homes.

Written for Day 3 of @dukeceitweek​ : snakes/bugs

AO3 link

Pairings: Dukeceit, Familial Creativitwins, Platonic Loceit, Moceit, and Dukexiety

Warnings: Some Remus-typical violent thoughts, scorpions/tarantulas/snakes

Word count: 4228

Janus woke up to something brushing against his hand. He groaned and batted Dusa away while muttering "Five more minutes"

But when it brushed against his hand again, he noticed it was definitely not the headbutt from a snake. His eyes snapped open and he glanced down to see a fucking scorpion on his bed holy shit-

If his roommate asked if that was him that made the high pitched squeal that morning, no it wasn't.

He scrambled out of bed to look around for something to try and trap the scorpion under, but he didn't want to get near it what the fuck-

Janus paused. The scorpion was staring at him. At least, it looked like the scorpion was staring at him. It at least didn't look like it was trying to attack him.

Did... did it wave?

Now that Janus had calmed down, he noticed the scorpion was a deep, emerald green. Janus didn't know much about bugs, never had a reason to, but he never heard of a green scorpion before.

Could it be...?

"Hey, Logan?"

Footsteps came from the kitchen down the hallway.

"I was wondering when you were going to call me in," Logan said as he opened the door, his deep blue raven perched on top of his head, "What happened?"

"Can scorpions be green?"

"Why would I know that, Janus?"

"Because you know everything."

"Why are you asking?"

Janus pointed to his bed, and when Logan looked down he jumped back with a startled shout, disturbing the raven on his head.

The scorpion turned towards Logan and, yeah, the scorpion definitely waved.

After calming himself (and his bird), Logan slowly approached Janus' bed.

"...While I have heard of scorpions glowing green under ultraviolet light-"

"Oh, so you did know, you asshole-"

"I haven't seen a scorpion that looks like this, no," Logan said, crouching down next to the bed, "Is Dusa here? She was not under her heat lamp."

"Dusa? Come here, darling."

Dusa didn't crawl out of hiding, and Janus' room and the living room under her heat lamp were the only places she liked to be first thing in the morning.

"I guess she isn't."

Logan's raven, Minerva, hopped off his head onto the bed to examine the scorpion. She leaned down and the scorpion gently bumped heads. Minerva let out a happy chirp.

"My soulmate guide is a scorpion."

"Fascinating," Logan muttered as the scorpion and Minerva playfully chased each other around the bed, "I haven't heard of a bug guide before."

Janus glanced at the clock and put his hand down on the bed. The scorpion immediately ran onto his palm.

"I have class in an hour," he said as he cupped his hands and lifted the scorpion, "So how do you feel about business, corporate, and commercial law?"

 ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Remus woke up to Roman screaming. After a moment of debating whether to go back to sleep or not, he decided that, yeah, he probably should go check on the well being of his brother. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Remus trudged towards the living room to see a snake curled up on the couch, with Roman's robin perched on its head.

"Peter, please come here!" Roman pleaded. But the little bird seemed perfectly content on top of the snake. The snake started to slither off the couch, making roman shout again. The robin flew onto Roman's hand and he relaxed a bit as he held the bird to his chest.

Roman took his gaze off his brother back to the snake and- oh look at that it. It was headed towards him.

"Remus stop standing there what is wrong with you-"

The snake was around four feet long with yellow-and-black stripes. Quite gorgeous, really.

Remus decided he wanted to pick it up.

He knelt down and outstretched his arm (as Roman continued to shout at him), letting the snake crawl up and around his shoulders. The snake nuzzled its head against Remus' cheek.

Roman stared at him, eyes wide and mouth opened.

"What?"

"You're insane."

"And you're a chickenshit. You've lived with a scorpion as a roommate your whole life and you're gonna freak out over a snake guide?"

"How was I supposed to know it was a guide!?"

Remus stepped over and placed a hand on Roman's shoulder. "...You're a moron."

Roman shoved him.

"Peter was fine. And we should be expecting to find strange animals in our apartment at this age."

"Oh, piss off to find your soulmate and stop bothering me for a while."

"Gladly."

Remus turned to go back to his bedroom.

"...I'm really happy for you, you know."

Remus stopped and groaned. "Roman, no sentimental bullshit before nine."

"But I mean it. You deserve this."

"...Thanks, you idiotic bastard."

Roman gave him a gentle smile as Peter hopped onto Remus' head and nestled into his wild mess of bedhead.

"Also you screamed like a little girl."

"Fuck off-"

Remus cackled as Roman shoved him again. Peter gave Remus a petulant little peck on the top of his head.

Peter flew back over to Roman while Remus held out his arms go guide the snake in front of his face.

"Are you gonna lead me to my soulmate?" Remus asked with a large grin, which only grew wider when the snake nodded.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Janus was very much enjoying having a scorpion on his shoulder. People instinctively stepped away from him, even more so than with Dusa, meaning he didn't have to fight his way through the crowded sidewalks.

The scorpion had been upset that Janus didn't follow its directions. It scuttled frantically from one shoulder to the other. It calmed only when Janus explained he had to go to class, but would follow its directions immediately after.

Janus was stopped in his tracks, though, by a corgi running up to him and jumping on his knees.

"Hi, Peachy," Janus said as he scratched behind her ears. The scorpion crawled down his arm in curiosity.

if someone's guide was a common house pet like a dog or cat, they were issued a special white collar to show they were a soulmate guide to be allowed in public places along with service animals.

But this dog didn't have such a collar. She was just a dog.

"Hey, Janus!" someone called out. Janus looked up to see Patton jogging down the sidewalk, his guide right beside him.

"Hello, Patton. Hello, Cookie," Janus said to his friend and the capybara standing next to him.

Patton had been Logan's friend first, and Janus hadn't been too keen on his... optimistic personality at first. But dammit, the guy's too sweet.

"Miss Peachy! What have I told you about running off?" Patton said with a light scowl as he reattached her leash. But of course, unlike a guide, she couldn't actually understand. She jumped off Janus' legs to go lick the capybara's face.

Janus didn't understand the appeal of keeping animals that weren't your guide, but to each their own, he supposed.

Patton's eyes fell to Janus' shoulder, and after the instinctive fear vanished a large smile took over his face.

"Oh! You've got your soulmate guide!!"

"Yep," Janus said as he resumed walking down the sidewalk. Patton followed.

"Ohmygosh, this is so exciting!" Patton exclaimed, practically bouncing as he walked, "How long have you been out trying to find them? Do you think you're close?"

"I'm going to class, actually."

"Really? Gosh, you've got more self control than me," Patton laughed, "I don't think I'd be able to wait."

"I've got exams soon, Patton. I can't risk missing anything."

"Oh, I'm not trying to change your mind! You do what you think is best. But aren't you excited?"

Janus was convinced Patton was smiling so hard his face was going to get stuck like that. But when Janus didn't answer immediately, his frown dampened.

"Hey, are you okay, Jan?"

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, honey. You're nervous, aren't you?" Patton asked as his smile turned empathetic, which Janus thought was almost worse than excited.

The scorpion nuzzled against his neck, which was an odd sensation for sure, but Janus appreciated the sentiment.

"Of course I'm not nervous. I have no reason to be."

Patton tilted his head down slightly and gave him that look. The soft-smile dad-friend look that meant you were about to be comforted, whether you like it or not. Janus sighed.

"Okay, fine. A little," he conceded. He probably should be worried about how close that scorpion and its stinger was against his neck as it cuddled closer. But he'd never heard of a soulmate guide killing anyone, so he chose not to.

"Oh, sweetie," Patton said in that annoyingly soft tone. He wrapped an arm around Janus' and led him over to a bench. Peachy promptly hopped up to sit on Patton's lap while Cookie plopped against Patton's legs, giving Janus a soft nudge with her nose.

"It's not a big deal," Janus huffed, "I just think its reasonable to be nervous about meeting some stranger I am now expected to spend my life with."

"You have every right to feel what you're feeling. Such a big life change can be scary. But I'm certain your soulmate will understand your reservations and will go at any pace you're comfortable with."

While yes, the idea of a soulmate was a pleasant one, it was also a bit... concerning, to say the least. Janus was quite happy with where he was in life, and he wasn't too keen on the idea of something changing it all completely.

He was a bit surprised Logan wasn't his soulmate. He was the perfect roommate: neat, consistent, punctual. And Janus felt enough fondness for Logan that he was sort of expecting to wake up one day and have their guides just push them into each others' arms.

Alas, apparently not.

Janus bit his lip, debating. It would be good to talk about his worries. And as much as Janus pretended, he was actually quite fond of Patton.

"Patton, what if we don't work?"

"What do you mean, hon?"

"This person is supposedly meant to complete me. To make me better. But I'm perfectly fine the way I am now. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. What if I meet them and they just want to... to fix me? Because I'm expected to change for them?"

"Janus, your soulmate is meant to compliment you. Not complete you. You aren't missing any parts of yourself, because you're already your own complete person. And you certainly don't need to be 'fixed.'"

The scorpion crawled down to Janus' hands, and Janus ran his thumb over its back to pet it.

"But what if... what if we meet and nothing happens? Everyone always talks about their 'immediate romantic connections' but I don't buy it. What if we're doomed to always be strangers? After all, I'm not particularly good with people, Pat. What did I call you when we first met? A-"

"An annoying, self-righteous, dependent puppy with no boundaries?"

Janus winced. "Yeah. That."

A gentle smile grew on Patton's face as he held his arms out for a hug. Janus hesitated for only a moment before accepting.

"You don't need to worry about anything. Soulmates don't always mean romantic. Even if you don't feel romance at first, even if you never do, you two are going to share a tight bond and a special relationship different from anyone else you know. Nothing gets to take that from you."

"...Thank you, Patton. For taking the time to talk to me."

"Of course! What are friends for?"

Patton gave him a soft smile, and Janus gave him a rare, genuine one in return.

"Oh! I hope I didn't make you late for class!"

Janus looked at his watch. "I'll be fine if I hurry. Thank you. Again. Goodbye, Cookie. Bye, Peachy."

Peachy didn't react. Cookie gave him one last gentle nudge.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The snake in Remus' arms couldn't guide in front of him like Roman's bird would or any sort of animal with wings or legs. While he could let it slither on the ground, it would be dangerous with how busy the sidewalk was. And Remus really didn't need to return the snake to his soulmate all squished.

So it was wrapped around his shoulders, reaching down his arms, and rested in his hands, guiding him down the street like a compass.

The snake turned back to look at Remus.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked as he kept walking, the snake shaking its head urgently. Only for someone to grab the back of his jacket and yank him back, pulling him off the street and narrowly missing oncoming traffic.

"Watch where you're going, asshole," the person muttered. Remus turned, ready to start shit, but instead broke into a goofy grin when he saw Virgil.

"Hey, emo!"

Besides Roman, Virgil was Remus' only friend. Most people were too put off by Remus', well, everything.

And Virgil had been too, at first. But the two bonded over their soulmate's guides being creatures most of the public feared and the stigma that came with that. And now he was used to Remus' bullshit.

"And hey, Helena," he said to the tarantula sitting on Virgil's shoulder.

"So. You found your soulmate guide," Virgil said. The snake reached over to inspect Virgil and he scratched under its chin, the snake then nuzzling against Virgil's cheek.

"On your way to find your soulmate?" he asked as the snake and tarantula started inspecting each other.

"Yep!"

"Are you nervous?"

"Nope!"

Virgil squinted at him, searching for any sign of dishonesty, but all he saw was the normal, excitable Remus.

"Shit, you're lucky, man. I've been psyching myself out over meeting mine."

"But aren't they, like, made for you?"

"Supposedly. But you know me. I can't stop thinking about all the bad things. Like what if they don't like me?"

"Well, that would be a them problem."

Virgil let out an amused huff. "Really? You wouldn't be bothered?"

"Well, yeah," Remus said as he watched the snake and Helena play peekaboo behind Virgil's neck. "But like, it's not like I'm not used to people not liking me. And if I don't know this person, what would I lose, really? So actually, this can only go up for me."

Virgil cast him a sad smile. Remus hated it.

"It'll be good for you," Virgil said as the two crossed the street. "You are a strange fucking creature, but you're a good dude. Mostly. Partially? Mostly."

"It'll be good for you, too, then. Cause you're better than me."

Virgil nudged him with his shoulder.

"Ultimately, I know it will be. My brain just hates me."

"You and me both, emo."

The snake curled back against Remus after booping Helena and resumed its role as soulmate compass.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Remus ended up on his old school campus.

Ew.

He had dropped out, and he had hoped he would never have to step foot back here again. Oh, well, C'est la vie, or whatever the fuck.

Though you needed to swipe a student ID to unlock the doors, Remus knew if he yanked hard enough the doors would give. He had managed to make it through a whole semester without his ID after he lost it.

A grimace grew on Remus' face as he walked back into the Taylor Building for the first time in over a year. It was named after his least favorite professor, and he had a lot of bad memories in this building.

Time to find his soulmate and get the fuck out.

He was just about to head upstairs when someone shouted at him.

"Excuse me! Only students and faculty are allowed in this building."

Yeah, Remus supposed he didn't look like the typical law majors that took up a majority of the classes here. Not with his spiked leather jacket and ripped jeans. He turned to see who had yelled at him.

And speak of the devil.

"Hey, you're Taylor!"

The man straightened his shoulders.

"Yes, I am. Were you a student of mine?"

"Yeah! I hated your fuckin' guts."

The man looked like he had been slapped before a sneering look of recognition appeared on his face.

"Remus Kingsley."

"Aw, I'm flattered you remember me. Especially since I dropped out. You encouraged me to, remember? Right after you called me a, what was it, 'moronic good-for-nothing- imbecile that would never amount to anything?'"

"You need to leave immediately."

Taylor had reached out to grab Remus but he bolted up the stairs, making sure he had a tight grip on the snake.

He wasn't about to give up on his soulmate that easy.

As they ran down the upstairs hallway, Taylor continued to shout at him. But Remus wasn't worried. He was clearly much faster.

He turned to see the disheveled man chasing behind him and laughed. This was kinda fun!

Then he had to turn around and run face first into the chest of a campus officer.

Well, bitchtits.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Janus' class was nothing out of the ordinary, except that his surrounding classmates had inched as far away from this as they could, and Janus was enjoying the extra space.

The scorpion had been still on his shoulder for the most part, settling in where Janus' neck and shoulder met. But now it stood, rushing down Janus' arm to the desk and running around in circles.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Right after he asked that, shouting was heard down the hallway. The professor and students all turned their heads in time to see someone running past the door, laughing, with Professor Taylor chasing after them.

"...Okay, then," The professor said, "Now back to your review material."

Janus hardly listened as the professor spoke. He was more focused on the scorpion that kept switching between running in circles and scuttling onto Janus' hand.

When the professor dismissed the class, Janus hung back. He preferred to let the crowd of students leave before him instead of trying to fight his way through.

By the time he walked into the hallway, it was mostly empty. Janus was holding the scorpion in the palm of his hands and it jumped to get his attention. It gestured with its body to go down the hallway.

"Alright, let's go."

The scorpion led him down a couple of hallways, and Janus heard shouting and the sound of running footsteps against the tile.

A man ran around the corner, his neon green combat boots skidding on the floor as he tried to stop. He had a mustache above a wild grin, with a streak of white through his hair.

He also had Dusa wrapped around his neck.

Janus stared. The man stopped in front of him.

"Fluffy!" he said to the scorpion in Janus' hands, who was alternating between running in circles again and hopping in excitement.

He looked up at Janus with a manic grin. "Hey! I'm Remus. I'd love to stop and chat but I'm afraid I've found myself wrapped up with something."

Two campus officers rounded the corner.

What the fuck.

Janus took the scorpion - Fluffy - in one hand and held it against his chest, grabbing Remus' wrist with the other and bolting.

Remus let out a delighted laugh as he let Janus pull him down the hallway and down a set of stairs.

Jesus, what did Janus get himself into?

He was heading towards one of the student parking lots, cutting through the Union. There would be lots of students and he hoped they could get lost in the crowd. But with two idiots running across the yard with a snake and a scorpion, people were parting a path for them. Which made them more obvious but at least let them through.

When Janus looked behind him, he couldn't see the officers, but he didn't want to risk it. It wasn't exactly hard to identify them: one with a large scar on the left side of his face and the other, with, well, a lot of fucking identifiable traits.

Logan would probably get mad at him for this, but Janus was sure he would be forgiven that same day if he made Logan thumbprint cookies. So Janus let go of Remus' hand to dig in his pocket, finding the spare key to Logan's car he gave Janus only for emergencies. Janus would consider this an emergency. Logan probably would not.

Janus unlocked the car and Remus got in without question. Remus hardly stopped laughing.

Great. So his soulmate was a maniac.

Janus pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street, gunning it out of there as Remus shouted in excitement.

"Fuck, yeah, dude!" he yelled. His seat-belt was not on, by the way.

"What the hell did you do?"

"Trespass, technically. But it would've been fine if that bitchass Taylor hadn't come along. And then I maybe assaulted an officer, but could it really be assault if I just whacked him when he tried to grab me? Anyways I already have three offenses - I guess four now - and I didn't want to go to jail or anything so I started running-"

"God, I'm going to miss my next class," Janus groaned, "What if they try to find me tomorrow?"

"How's your track record?"

"It's clean. Unlike someone, I don't get caught."

"Psh, then you're probably fine. you're a white law student."

Janus took a deep breath as he tried to collect his thoughts. What was even happening right now?

"...Okay, I may have fucked this up," Remus started, and he at least had the decency to sound sheepish, "I didn't mean to drag you into this mess, even though I was purposefully... searching... for you... Shit, I didn't even think about that. I don't think a lot, actually. I mean, I wasn't even paying attention on the way to find you. I almost got hit by a car. Could you imagine, Fluffy leading you to me only to find your soulmate and guide squashed by a car and our blood and guts everywhere-"

"Remus."

"Sorry, sorry," he groaned as his hands went to grab his hair, "I was really excited to meet you, and even when being chased by police my dumb brain only wanted to focus on finding you because I don't have many friends cause most people get weirded out since I can't control my thoughts or my mouth so, like, all the weird shit that pops int my brain just comes right out and I was really looking forward to meeting someone who wouldn't leave-"

"Remus, it's okay," Janus interrupted, "Deep breaths, okay?"

Remus took a couple deep breaths.

Then Janus let out a short laugh. He felt bad for laughing, but he couldn't help it.

"...What?"

"I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you. The situation just caught up to me: You're my soulmate, we just ran from the police, and we just took my friend's car and wow. Can't say this is how I expected this to go."

Remus grimaced. "Sorry."

"No, actually. This is better than the sappy shit I was thinking about."

Remus perked up a bit. "Yeah?"

"Is it always like this with you? Am I sentenced to spend my life digging you out of trouble, now?"

"Yeah, probably."

Janus laughed again as he pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center. He had no clear idea where he was going, and at least this place had plenty of people and plenty of parking. When he stopped, the scorpion hopped off his shoulder and scuttled to Remus.

"Hey, Fluffy," he said with a smile as he put the scorpion in his lap.

"Hey, actually, let's talk about that," Janus said, "You named your scorpion Fluffy?"

"Yeah. I named him that to trick people. Scared the shit out of my mom when he first showed up. 'Hey, meet Fluffy,' then I pull a scorpion out from behind my back. It never gets old."

Janus couldn't stop smiling, and he was sure his face was disgustingly close to Patton's in terms of fondness, but he couldn't do anything to help that.

"I'm Janus. The lovely lady on your shoulders is Dusa."

"Janus. That's a badass name," Remus said as he scritched Dusa under her chin.

"Thank you for your help today, Dusa," Janus said with a grin as she slithered back over to wrap around Janus, "And you, too, Fluffy."

"Fuck yeah. Thanks guys. Shit, Dusa was awesome. I'm pretty sure that while I was running, she flicked her tail to open a door and it hit one of the officers in the face."

Janus glanced down at her. "You are an enabler."

She stuck her tongue out.

"Well, since we're already here, would you like to go on a date or something? It seems like you have stories to tell," Janus said as he gestured to the mall in front of them.

"Yeah," Remus said with a fond grin, "Are you hungry? I'm starving. Wanna go to the food court. On me. We'll have to be careful, though. I'm pretty sure I'm banned from this mall."

Janus stared at him before bursting out laughing again. This was his life now, and how exciting that thought was.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to."

.

.

Thanks for reading! Requests are open in my inbox. Hope you enjoyed <3

#sanders sides #dukeceit week #janus sanders #remus sanders #dukeceit #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #platonic loceit #creativitwins #platonic moceit #platonic dukexiety #janus fic #remus fic #dukeceit fic

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2021 - Day 5 - The Invisible Ray (1936)

Doesn’t that just sound like a bad magician? “Ladies and gentlemen, introducing...The Invisible Ray!”

Ah, this takes me back. Back in year 0 of this horror marathon business, before this blog was a thing, it was kinda heavily skewed towards the ‘classic’ period; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy..all that Universal 1930’s type stuff. Amongst that first run were a pair of films starring both KARLOFF and Bela Lugosi;  The Black Cat and The Raven. I remember them both being quite good, both having this sort of rivalry between their two characters. The Black Cat moreso with a young couple caught in the middle of a heated feud between KARLOFF and Lugosi’s characters. Whereas The Raven has KARLOFF as more of a de-facto good guy as he plays a reluctant henchman to Lugosi’s character. Not that that level of power translated off screen, with Lugosi’s star beginning to fade but I remember reading something about KARLOFF insisting on some parity in pay between the two in one of their movies when the studio tried to lowball Lugosi so good on you, KARLOFF.

Neither have much to do with the Edgar Allan Poe stories they take their names from, outside of Lugosi’s character in The Raven having an obsession with Poe and adapting various means of torture from Poe stories. There have been plenty of Poe adaptations throughout the years but the other big uptick in them was in the 1960’s with a series of films directed by Roger Corman, often starring Vincent Price but with other big names sprinkled in like KARLOFF, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr. Plus a relatively early Jack Nicholson appearance in The Raven, which was shot at the same time as The Terror. That bloody bird!

So, yeah, it’s good to see one of these KARLOFF/Lugosi films again. Apparently there are eight films that featured both of them so I’ll be halfway there now on them. This also has Carl Laemmle Jr’s name attached, albeit in a minor way as he’s listed as ‘presenting’ the movie. I’m not sure if that ever means anything. It’s like when Tarantino ‘presents’ something, did he have any actual input on the film or was he just shining a light on something he personally liked because he has so much power and influence?

The movie’s foreword is an early indicator of the more science-fiction leaning nature of the movie which catches you off guard a little with the people involved and the timeframe we’re working in. Feels like the 50’s was more when the whole sci-fi thing took off. Also, since when was science a verb?

Certainly has the feel of that classic ‘old, dark house’ horror thing early on as we start with the Rukh household awaiting the arrival of some of Dr Janos Rukh’s (KARLOFF) peers who are to bear witness to his new discovery.

KARLOFF has clearly been eating his crusts to get curls like that, normally he’s a slicked back kind of guy. And it’s kinda weird seeing both of them with facial hair. Oddly though this is one of the rare times that Lugosi plays a good guy, this is a clear violation of the parallel universe protocol:

Normal universe – clean shaven – good guy Parallel universe – goatee – evil

This early version of Dr. Doom is a bit naff. Are you making a great scientific discovery here or doing a spot of welding?

Apparently Dr Rukh’s invention is a telescope that is able to see into the deepest reaches of space, but can also pick up on vibrations left by the events that have taken place and he can then project that as a moving image that shows an asteroid crashing to Earth millions of years ago that can help him pinpoint the crash site and allow him to discover new elements inside the asteroid...wait, what?! Is this like that time on CSI when they solved a murder by getting sound out of something someone made in pottery class because the grooves could be played like a vinyl?

We then pivot sharply into the great plains of Africa where our team have set off in search of what will become known as ‘Radium X’. Oh yes, I think that’s on the periodic table next to Hardtoobtainium. And I’m specifically trying to avoid animal cruelty by not watching Cannibal Holocaust, don’t come around here with your dead leopards and talk of how many rhinos you’ve shot. I must say I’m a little wary of this sudden introduction of all these natives carrying spears and wearing bone necklaces, I just don’t feel like I can trust a movie made in the 1930’s to be sensitive on it’s portrayal of other cultures.

Thought it does present us with the best actor in this picture, look at those bug eyes! He’s like Africa’s answer to Marty Feldman.

And that’s just his reaction to a piece of scanning equipment going off, him and his mates are definitely going to be worried when this white devil makes a demonstration of his new found Radium X and it’s ability to melt pure stone. Looks like a portajohn backing up...

He then promptly turns his cosmic ray gun on all the locals when they tell him they want to go home. Sure, you can leave, you’re not going to get very far though. Dude, there’s like 12 of you and he’s given some of you rifles. Just jump him when he’s asleep.

Dr. Rukh finds that evening that he’s suddenly turned an interesting shade of neon yellow and can be seen by anyone in a three mile radius so either this Radium X is highly poisonous or Rukh has been running in opposition to Vladimir Putin. This poisoning leaves him so irradiated that merely touching another living thing is enough to kill it. Dr. Benet (Lugosi) is able to make a serum for him but can never truly cure him, he must regularly take this serum or otherwise he will revert to this killing machine type state.

But, in his eagerness to not spread this poison to his wife, and his general upholding of the man code to never air ones medical problems, he generally acts a bit surly and tells her to piss off which see views as him not loving her anymore so he promptly shacks up with the young explorer type who came with them to Africa. Worse yet, Benet and crew have taken a sample of Radium X to show at a scientific conference in Paris. Between losing his missus and thinking that other people are taking all the credit for his work, Rukh is just slightly annoyed.

It’s not all bad though, he is able to use this new element to cure his mother’s blindness. I like how his first reaction upon learning that Radium X has irrecoverably changed his life, leaving him one missed injection away from imminent death, is to shoot it directly into his mother’s face.

“Patients won’t like being shot in the face.” “They’ll like what I tell them to like.”

Whilst sulking outside of the church that his ex is getting re-married in, he spots a series of statues of saintly figures and imagines them representing each of the 6 people on the African expedition, vowing to destroy each of them until only he is left. Marvelous invention this Radium X, it can melt statues and cure blindness. Do you have to put special filters on that ray gun of yours depending on the situation? That’s a malpractice suit waiting to happen if you mix those up.

Dr. Benet is a little suspicious when one of their party dies suddenly for no explainable reason so takes a few ultraviolet photos of the victims eyes in order to study. And wouldn’t you know what he finds?

Bullshit! Nevermind the ultraviolet camera, this is more like the dues ex machine camera. I know this is science fiction and all but what is this, 1936 or 2036? Or maybe they’re just able to make the most detailed contact lenses known to man.

Eventually, when Rukh finds himself unable bring himself to kill his former love, he is confronted by his mother who smashes the serum and condemns him to death as, going unchecked, the Radium X within him will destroy his body. Sensing the end coming, Dr. Rukh dives out of the nearest window and promptly erupts bursts into flames, now left as little but a pile of ash on a damp Paris street. It’s a shame really, dozens of people spontaneously combust every year, it’s just not widely reported.”

This one was okay, definitely a different vibe compared to other Universal stuff at the time with all the science fiction and Africa based stuff but it does still travel down that ‘descent into madness’ thing that they often fall back on and it’s always fun to see KARLOFF and Lugosi, especially when they’re together. But, if we’re strictly talking about the KARLOFF/Lugosi pairing, I’m definitely leaning towards one of their other outings like Black Cat, Raven or Son of Frankenstein. There’s just something not right about Lugosi playing some normal, if he’s not being unhinged then you’re not really getting what you came here for.

#Halloween 2021 #The invisible Ray #KARLOFF #Bela Lugosi

[unidentifiedflyingfks]

Movie: FINAL GIRL (2015)

Cast: ABIGAIL BRESLIN of Little Miss Sunshine and Zombieland

WES BENTLEY of and The Hunger Games, Yellowstone, and my personal favorite P2

ALEXANDER LUDWIG also of The Hunger Games and Vikings

This movie has literally kept me up all night with questions. Mainly how did they get Abigail Breslin, Wes Bentley, and Ragnar Jr. all to agree to be in this awful movie? Then, answering my own question, can literally anyone with $$ make a movie and pay reasonably well known actors to play in it? Then, is everybody fucking with me?

***Side note: the term ‘final girl’ is a common trope in horror referring to the last girl left alive, or the survivor. (Ex. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween)

The director, Tyler Shields, is better known for his photography career and before that professional inline skating, funnily enough, where he worked alongside the likes of Tony Hawk and other pro skaters. His photography seems to be centered around shock value with works including items like black guys lynching a KKK member, Lindsay Lohan as a vampire, a crocodile biting a crocodile skin purse, and more recently a photo of Kathy Griffin holding what looks like Donald Trump’s severed head. (Spoiler alert: Donald didn’t take it well) Basically all playing off of easy to reach social issues that will exploit controversy without offering anything other than surface level discomfort IMO. Final Girl was his debut film and while I will credit its high production value and actors I soo wanted to like, that’s where it ends.

(Tyler shields and his infamous photo)

The movie begins with Wes Bentley’s character interviewing a child (young Breslin) who just lost her parents under seemingly violent circumstances. She demonstrates puzzle solving skills and seemingly photographic memory as well as a apathetic view of death—as when she says “death happens” right after the death of her parents. So Bentley recruits her for **something** hard that most people can’t do. He also reveals his wife and child were killed by **someone** (not the villains the whole plot centers around because if they’re seniors in high school at the time they would have been about 6 when his wife was killed assuming it was recent to the death of Breslin’s parents since we’re…. ah doesn’t even matter. Too stupid.)

First of all, I love Abigail Breslin. She’s beautiful, funny, and I especially like her as #5 on Scream Queens. Buttttt, let’s keep it real she was horrible for this role. It was never believable that she was an elite agent trained since childhood to mirk people with her bare hands. That being said, her training basically consisted of talking yourself up, choking Bentley, and taking DMT (Also, what?) so it’s not all on her. I would have even been with it if she used her aforementioned puzzle solving skills and smarts to beat the boys, but instead were treated to unrealistic fights scenes with Breslin’s character takes multiple punches to the face while looking the daintiest I’ve ever seen her.

Stop there if you’d like, you have the jist, but there is a little more.

Anyway it all starts when she’s launched on her mission. Is it the first mission of many, or what she’s been training for her whole life, we don’t know. Breslin befriends a girl in a 50’s style diner with instant milkshakes and they start talking about their love interests. The girl has the hots for a guy other than her boyfriend, and Breslin has the hots for her mentor/dad (basically, right? It’s Wes Bentley I get it, but it’s still kindaaa weird right?) That encounter amounts to very little then Breslin meets Jameson, Alexander Ludwigs of ‘Vikings’, who dresses for prom and invites her out. (Yeah, that’s all I got too)

They meet up with Jameson’s three dumb friends and they’re all wearing their prom garb too. Then they drive out into the wilderness to some teenage drinkin and fuckin couches in the woods—again, not that you’ll see any fuckin’ inthis movie, killin’ motivated crimes only for these teen boys. Breslin’s pops out some DMT laced liquor for the boys and they start playing a game of truth or dare out of a bag for some reason. After a weird spiel from Jameson about a rabbit he feels bad about letting die slowly, Breslin conveniently draws ‘get tied up’ from the truth-or-dare bag. She’s tied behind the back, not that it really matters because she gets out instantly. Then they tell her their plan for the four of them to hunt her down ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ style. They give her five minutes to run, but one guy is too eager to kill her and runs off before the five minutes is up. Luckily he’s tripping balls by now in the way only people who have never tripped any balls imagine tripping balls is like, so while he’s battling two deadmou5e-like apparitions Breslin can steal his axe and kill him with it. Now she’s armed, oh never mind she left the axe in that guy’s chest.

Then she kills another hallucinating guy after taking a couple blows, then she goes after the third guy. Number 3 is also clone kid #7 from UltraViolet, his worst fear is that his girlfriend, the one from the 50’s diner, is fucking Jameson—which she is—and also that she will find out about their “hunting trips” and he will have to kill her for it. After hallucinating all of this, including a fist fight with Jameson who apparently isn’t even there, it is revealed to be Breslin’s character encouraging his hallucinations the whole time. She then kills UltraViolet-child-actor with a rock to the face in the the best kill scene of the film.

(See?)

The only one remaining at this point is Jameson, who incidentally is the only boy who didn’t take the DMT laced drink. Breslin is beat up and exhausted by the time Jameson encounters her. Before THEIR fistfight they engage in a game of wits (not For realz). They each answer each other’s questions with Breslin revealing she enjoyed killing the boys and Jameson AKA Ragnar Jr. admitting they’d already killed 20 women the same way. He then asks her to join him and continue killing together, but she declines, they fist fight, she chokes him like she choked Bentley in the beginning, and drugs him.

(This is the high school goof supposedly responsible for 20 murders. I just can’t get over this. As an avid reader of true crime, numbers like this are unheard of for a guy of his age. Also are we supposed to believe 4 guys in Tuxedos in this seemingly small town have killed 20 women and no one noticed? GTFO)

When Jameson wakes, he’s in a noose on a stump teeter tottering for his life as he starts to hallucinate. He satisfactorily begs Breslin for mercy, then is overtaken by his worst fear—the ghosts of his victims who startle him off the stump and to his death by strangulation.

After Ragnar Jr’s dead, Bentley walks out of the forest with a sniper rifle and I almost freaked TF out. I don’t feel good about comparing it to LOTR, but it’s like Gandalf calling in the giant eagles to take Frodo home after he’s travelled a third of the world to get there ON FOOT. What. Was. The. Point. Seriously. (Actually seriously—would the birds have been corrupted by the ring of power, or is that just like a major plot hole? And was Breslin on hard drugs for a little while and I didn’t hear about it?)

Anyway, after that Breslin and Bentley go to a diner, order pancakes, agree that they taste terrible, and that’s it. The end.

I know you may be thinking ‘yeah unidentifiedflyingfks, but your missing the deeper meaning—they all took the DMT and it made them face their worst fears!’ Yeah—I get that, but it still doesn’t mean it works. I would have literally rather it be magic than DMT. They’d probably all have different reactions and probably not even be incapacitated in the ways depicted in the movie. For it to expose everyone’s ‘worst fears’ is fucking magic anyway so let’s go ahead call a spade a lazy, half baked plot line, m’kay?

What really irks me about this movie though, is it could have been good. Have Breslin act within her skill set and find ways for her to use them that make sense, or at least give her some boxing classes and have her lift weights for Christ’s sake. Also these teens have killed 20 girls already? Where did they even come from? Also Bentley knew and this was the best way he could come up with to take them down? And who told him to act like a total weirdo creep in every scene? I don’t expect much. If you can’t make it good make it funny and this was neither. I wanted to like this movie, I still like Breslin and Bentley, but for as many reviews I read that wanted to give it 0 stars and couldn’t, I will. Never forget…. Oh never mind forget it all.

***0/5 FF’s, first certified TERRIBLE MOVIE!!

Here’s some user comments I found 😂😂 ->

#funny #final girl #abigail breslin #wes bentley #alexander ludwig #film #movies #bad movies #movie rant #movie review #film analysis #horror comedy #bmovies #b horror #horror movies #bad horror #film review #2000s horror #cameron bright #cinema #horrorgeek #horrorjunkie #scream queens #final girls #serial killer #killer #teen horror #freemoviesonline #tubitv #shitpost

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

ESA’s Solar Orbiter ducks behind the Sun What happens when the Solar System's No. 1 source of violent energy interferes with spacecraft communication? Name? Solar Orbiter, or ‘Solo’ as the mission control team fondly call it, is one of the European Space Agency’s pluckiest missions and is now cruising toward the Sun. Age: One year old! We launched on 10 February 2020. Granted, it was first powered up on Earth at some point during construction, but launch is ‘when it came alive’. What’s it doing out there? It’s imaging our star, observing the solar wind and unravelling mysteries of the solar cycle. It’s already returned some of the best images of ol’Sol ever, revealing omnipresent miniature solar flares, dubbed ‘campfires’, near the surface. Anything else? Well, it uses prehistoric cave pigment as a coating to withstand temperatures up to 520°C. The Sun’s pretty darn hot, you know. So, what’s happening now? The spacecraft’s orbit is taking it behind the Sun, and starting a few days ago the apparent angle, as seen from Earth, between Solar Orbiter and the Sun started falling below 5 degrees. It’s called ‘conjunction season’ and runs until mid-February. Ohhh, will it melt? No. See the bit about cave pigment above. But the Sun’s energetic and unpredictable nature will start making it hard for radio dish antennas on Earth – which will also have to point close to the Sun when pointing at Solar Orbiter – to reliably send or receive signals, or do so very fast, at any rate. Sounds bad. It is – the Sun’s energy can disrupt communication in both directions. Mission controllers will only be able to receive data at about 255 bits per second, or send signals at about 7.8 bits per second. You’re likely too young to remember dial-up modems. Not fast enough for Netflix, but it’s something, isn’t it? Perhaps, but even these piddly data rates aren’t reliable – the radio link might be lost entirely if the Sun so much as even sneezes. If the bit rate is so low due to interference from the Sun, why not simply turn off the instruments and coast through the worst part of conjunction? That’s what happens with other, older missions using simpler technology, not to mention Mars Express. And not that there’s any friendly competition between mission control teams. OK, what’s the good news? Our mission planners knew this would happen, so Solar Orbiter was designed to endure long periods of no contact with Earth. The spacecraft can even keep its scientific instruments running autonomously, and simply store all the collected data on board for download later, away from the Sun. I bet there was a rush to get ready for this. We’re spacecraft engineers; we never panic, but we are very good at dealing with contingencies. Which this is not. But, yes, many of us at ESA worked with a ‘sense of urgency’ to prepare and upload three week’s worth of onboard instructions, in case we had no contact at all during conjunction. All while dealing with the critical Venus flyby manoeuvre in December, while uploading a complete new operating system and all while working from our kitchen tables. Now that your bird’s on autopilot, there’s not much to do? Au contraire. We’ve got ‘remote science checkout during solar close approach’ coming up, as well as a special ‘thermal characterisation’ campaign requiring ‘new telemetry modes’ followed by more testing of the radio communication link. Then there are the Venus and Earth flybys later this year, after which we have to get ready for the final science orbit at the end of cruise. Phew! TOP IMAGE....The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft took these images on 30 May 2020. They show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees. EUI takes full disc images (top left) using the Full Sun Imager (FSI) telescope, as well as high resolution images using the HRIEUV telescope. On 30 May, Solar Orbiter was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that it was closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. This allowed EUI to see features in the solar corona of only 400 km across. As the mission continues, Solar Orbiter will go closer to the Sun and this will increase the instrument’s resolving power by a factor of two at closest approach. Even before this, however, these images reveal a multitude of small flaring loops, erupting bright spots and dark, moving fibrils. A ubiquitous feature of the solar surface, revealed for the first time by these images, have been called ‘campfires’. They are omnipresent minuature eruptions that could be contributing to the high temperatures of the solar corona and the origin of the solar wind. The colour on this image has been artificially added because the original wavelength detected by the instrument is invisible to the human eye. The extended grey shape visible in the top left part of the central image is not a solar feature but is caused by a sensor artefact. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL LOWER IMAGE....A visualisation showing how the trajectory of Solar Orbiter takes it within 5° of the Sun, as seen from Earth (indicated with red lines). This marks the start of Solar conjunction, lasting from about 29 January until about 14 February 2021. In the image, the Sun is shown much, much smaller than it should be so as to not cover up the spacecraft. Earth is the dark blue orb in the foreground. You can spot Solar Orbiter at any point in its journay via ESA's Where is Solar Orbiter? visualisation tool: https://solarorbiter.esac.esa.int/where/. ESA

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #news #solar orbiter #esa

[ukyogaretreatsblog-blog1]

When it comes to goats, their square pupils are the focus of most attention, with people not realizing that this is not the most impressive point regarding their vision. In fact, the most impressive is that they can see at a 330 degree angle in comparison to humans who can only see at around a 185 degree angle.

Moving to the wild, horses, zebras and other such mammals have eyes which actually point sideways so that they can see peripherally. This gives them a far better chance to escape from predators; yet also gives them the disadvantage of a blind-spot directly in front of their noses. They also mostly see the world in shades of grey. In contrast to humans who see two images as one merged vision, these animals always see two separate images.

Bees and insects are really interesting where sight is involved. They see the world as a sort of mosaic owing to eyes which are made up of anything from ten to 30,000 tiny lenses, each one giving a different image to the overall picture that they see. When it comes to what colors they can see, this differs according to each insect. For example, butterflies can apparently see more colors than humans can; while bees cannot see the color red and mostly only see yellow, green and blue. The interesting thing about bees is that they are able to see ultraviolet light - a level of sight to which humans cannot even desire to reach.

Birds can also see this ultraviolet light, as well as many more colors than humans. Researchers also say that birds see color far more vividly than humans do. In the case of birds of prey, their binocular vision is excellent, and so they can spot prey from thousands of feet away.

Snakes have long been thought to have no or very low vision and operate according to smell. This is incorrect. In general they see worst before they shed their skin and best just after but snakes also have two sets of eyes - one for day use and one for night use and they use both. The difference is that snakes see things according to movement and so will often not notice, or pay attention to a motionless object. On the other hand, they have the ability to pick up infrared heat signals from warm objects.

[spiritualesoterichighlevel]

Myths of the Brain

                                                                                             1. We use only 10 percent of our brains.                This one sounds so compelling - a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive - it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults. Evolutionarily, it would make no sense to carry around surplus brain tissue. Experiments using PET or fMRI scans show that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks, and injury to even a small bit of brain can have profound consequences for language, sensory perception, movement or emotion.          True, we have some brain reserves. Autopsy studies show that many people have physical signs of Alzheimer's disease (such as amyloid plaques among neurons) in their brains even though they were not impaired. Apparently we can lose some brain tissue and still function pretty well. And people score higher on IQ tests if they're highly motivated, suggesting that we don't always exercise our minds at 100 percent capacity.

   2. "Flashbulb memories" are precise, detailed and persistent.          We all have memories that feel as vivid and accurate as a snapshot, usually of some shocking, dramatic event - the assassination of President Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attacks of September 11, 2001. People remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what they saw or heard. But several clever experiments have tested people's memory immediately after a tragedy and again several months or years later.

The test subjects tend to be confident that their memories are accurate and say the flashbulb memories are more vivid than other memories. Vivid they may be, but the memories decay over time just as other memories do. People forget important details and add incorrect ones, with no awareness that they're recreating a muddled scene in their minds rather than calling up a perfect, photographic reproduction.

                3. It's all downhill after 40 (or 50 or 60 or 70).          It's true, some cognitive skills do decline as you get older. Children are better at learning new languages than adults - and never play a game of concentration against a 10-year-old unless you're prepared to be humiliated. Young adults are faster than older adults to judge whether two objects are the same or different; they can more easily memorize a list of random words, and they are faster to count backward by sevens.          But plenty of mental skills improve with age. Vocabulary, for instance - older people know more words and understand subtle linguistic distinctions. Given a biographical sketch of a stranger, they're better judges of character. They score higher on tests of social wisdom, such as how to settle a conflict. And people get better and better over time at regulating their own emotions and finding meaning in their lives.

   4. We have five senses.          Sure, sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch are the big ones. But we have many other ways of sensing the world and our place in it. Proprioception is a sense of how our bodies are positioned. Nociception is a sense of pain. We also have a sense of balance - the inner ear is to this sense as the eye is to vision - as well as a sense of body temperature, acceleration and the passage of time.          Compared with other species, though, humans are missing out. Bats and dolphins use sonar to find prey; some birds and insects see ultraviolet light; snakes detect the heat of warmblooded prey; rats, cats, seals and other whiskered creatures use their "vibrissae" to judge spatial relations or detect movements; sharks sense electrical fields in the water; birds, turtles and even bacteria orient to the earth's magnetic field lines.          By the way, have you seen the taste map of the tongue, the diagram showing that different regions are sensitive to salty, sweet, sour or bitter flavors? Also a myth.

   5. Brains are like computers.          We speak of the brain's processing speed, its storage capacity, its parallel circuits, inputs and outputs. The metaphor fails at pretty much every level: the brain doesn't have a set memory capacity that is waiting to be filled up; it doesn't perform computations in the way a computer does; and even basic visual perception isn't a passive receiving of inputs because we actively interpret, anticipate and pay attention to different elements of the visual world.          There's a long history of likening the brain to whatever technology is the most advanced, impressive and vaguely mysterious. Descartes compared the brain to a hydraulic machine. Freud likened emotions to pressure building up in a steam engine. The brain later resembled a telephone switchboard and then an electrical circuit before evolving into a computer; lately it's turning into a Web browser or the Internet. These metaphors linger in clichés: emotions put the brain "under pressure" and some behaviors are thought to be "hard-wired." Speaking of which...

   6. The brain is hard-wired.          This is one of the most enduring legacies of the old "brains are electrical circuits" metaphor. There's some truth to it, as with many metaphors: the brain is organized in a standard way, with certain bits specialized to take on certain tasks, and those bits are connected along predictable neural pathways (sort of like wires) and communicate in part by releasing ions (pulses of electricity).          But one of the biggest discoveries in neuroscience in the past few decades is that the brain is remarkably plastic. In blind people, parts of the brain that normally process sight are instead devoted to hearing. Someone practicing a new skill, like learning to play the violin, "rewires" parts of the brain that are responsible for fine motor control. People with brain injuries can recruit other parts of the brain to compensate for the lost tissue.

               7. A conk on the head can cause amnesia.                Next to babies switched at birth, this is a favorite trope of soap operas: Someone is in a tragic accident and wakes up in the hospital unable to recognize loved ones or remember his or her own name or history. (The only cure for this form of amnesia, of course, is another conk on the head.)          In the real world, there are two main forms of amnesia: anterograde (the inability to form new memories) and retrograde (the inability to recall past events).        Science's most famous amnesia patient, H.M., was unable to remember anything that happened after a 1953 surgery that removed most of his hippocampus. He remembered earlier events, however, and was able to learn new skills and vocabulary, showing that encoding "episodic" memories of new experiences relies on different brain regions than other types of learning and memory do. Retrograde amnesia can be caused by Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury (ask an NFL player), thiamine deficiency or other insults. But a brain injury doesn't selectively impair autobiographical memory - much less bring it back.

8. We know what will make us happy.                In some cases we haven't a clue. We routinely overestimate how happy something will make us, whether it's a birthday, free pizza, a new car, a victory for our favorite sports team or political candidate, winning the lottery or raising children. Money does make people happier, but only to a point - poor people are less happy than the middle class, but the middle class are just as happy as the rich. We overestimate the pleasures of solitude and leisure and underestimate how much happiness we get from social relationships.          On the flip side, the things we dread don't make us as unhappy as expected. Monday mornings aren't as unpleasant as people predict. Seemingly unendurable tragedies - paralysis, the death of a loved one - cause grief and despair, but the unhappiness doesn't last as long as people think it will. People are remarkably resilient.

   9. We see the world as it is.          We are not passive recipients of external information that enters our brain through our sensory organs. Instead, we actively search for patterns (like a Dalmatian dog that suddenly appears in a field of black and white dots), turn ambiguous scenes into ones that fit our expectations (it's a vase; it's a face) and completely miss details we aren't expecting. In one famous psychology experiment, about half of all viewers told to count the number of times a group of people pass a basketball do not notice that a guy in a gorilla suit is hulking around among the ball-throwers.                We have a limited ability to pay attention (which is why talking on a cellphone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving), and plenty of biases about what we expect or want to see. Our perception of the world isn't just "bottom-up" - built of objective observations layered together in a logical way. It's "top-down," driven by expectations and interpretations.

   10. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.          Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. Eminent neuroscientists once claimed that head size, spinal ganglia or brain stem structures were responsible for women's inability to think creatively, vote logically or practice medicine. Today the theories are a bit more sophisticated: men supposedly have more specialized brain hemispheres, women more elaborate emotion circuits. Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated.          Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do - unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated. Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries - and across time - the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls' and boys' math scores. And that's not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy.          Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we're looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time - perceive the world, direct attention, learn new skills, encode memories, communicate (no, women don't speak more than men do), judge other people's emotions (no, men aren't inept at this) - men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.      

[thenixkat]

Animorphs notes 3

Book 3

Narrated by Tobias. Getting all of the white kids out of the first I guess

Tobias forgets the color of his eyes after a few weeks as a bird. But he remembers that he had blond hair and was kinda big.

Tobi has also oly been looking at his bird face head on cause otherwise he’d notice how doofy his face looks

Dan’s not holding that hawk prisoner he’s just got shitty animal husbandry. If that 3 ft by 3 ft cage is the only cage he keeps her in. That could just be a travel cage dude uses for the filming for all the info I have and Tobi has already demonstrated that he over anthropomorphises animals

Also Tobi is gonna get that captive bird fucking killed with this Peta shit.

And he does something very unbirdlike infront of multiple people any of whom could be a controller.

And he nearly gets killed doing this.

Tobias is a dumbass that doesnt consider the consequences of shit.

Tobi she’s a fucking bird and there’s a fucking elephant destroying shit and humans causing a ruckus. She’s startled and startled birds fucking fly u numpty!

Rachel chews Tobias out for being a complete idiot and starting that stunt while on fucking air

Ya know what, Tobi’s descriptions of Rachel are starting to make me uncomfortable. And that plus his insistence of talking to Rachel on her solo mission every 5 secs probably means he has some creepy crush on her

Tobi don’t start on that shit you chose to be in morph far more than was safe, was warned multiple times of the time limit and got yerself stuck. Its not a curse if yer fucking responsible.

Applegate skips on the whole redtails also hunt smaller birds and that’s… weird

Tobi assumes that a human smiling when they see a bird means their jealous. Not that like, the person just fucking likes birds and nature and shit and is either going to or going home from a job where they spent hours in a bland cubicle looking at just a computer so hey a cool bird, they must be jelly that they cant fly.

I don’t like Tobias.

Why do the yeerk ships have clocking that hides them in ultraviolet as well when humans can’t see into that range? Wouldn’t it make sense just to cloak along the visible spectrum and save power and also cleaning bills from hitting so many birds and bugs?

Marco is valid.

Also betting that that released hawk is gonna be ded in the next few days.

Also why did Jake not get any info from Cassie on potentially what to feed Tobias? Why isn’t Tobias just fucking living at Cassie’s barn? She could claim that he’s some tame hawk that someone gave to her b/c they couldn’t afford to take care of him any more

Tobias why didn’t you bring up the thing in the sky to the whole group?

Is this brooding angst?

Also if Tobias has been eating random leftovers from Jake for weeks he should be sick as fuck.

Why didn’t anyone call Child Protective Services for Tobias’ case too?

Dead geese

Wolves were recently released in the nearby national parkl/woods

There are mountains nearby, and a coast near by, an abandoned church, a mall next to a construction site

Has Marco been in the mountains before?

Marco, yall only tried to rescue Tom once. That’s not everything you could do. Yall could just fucking kidnap him and fake his death and also tell Jake’s parents so they don’t do anything… rash

Tobias is kinda taking charge of this mission

Tobias doesnt like Marco

Its 20 miles from Cassie’s barn to the mountains

Cassie apparently dosent consider that female wolves might also fight for dominance

None of these kids practiced this morph beforehand even tho they know morphing something for the first time usually leads to some loss of control

Cassie can morph horse. There’s horses plural at her barn. They could have all become horses in the woods to travel the 20 miles then turned into more normal forest animals to blend in once they got there.

Every Time they morph my comparative anatomy classes start fucking screaming in anguish. The knees reversing is not nearly as bad as fingers shriveling and disappearing b/c somebody doesnt know fucking digitigrade limb anatomy

Morphing took Cassie 2 mins

Tobais is a hawkaboo

Alpha. Ick

Jake can’t control his morph and is triggering wolf shit in the others

They really should just fucking demorph and remorph.

Tobias gets frustrated and flies off to clear his head

Too fucking bad we dont get a first person view of turning into a wolf b/c Tobias got himself stuck as his fursona and had to narrate this book

Fake park rangers

No, I’m not going to believe that hork-bajir have T. rex feet b/c these kids know jack and shit about every kinda animal. Also zygodactyl feet make more sense for a tree climber, and would look lovely while kangaroo hopping

Tobias only notes blades on their heads, wrists, elbows and knees.

Tobi mistakes a random group of 5 wolves for his friends

These dumbasses dont demorph and remorph b/c they want to be wolves for the rest of their life

Taxxons are consistently described as fat centipedes

Tobias finds out his hawk body is horny for a lady bird

More misinformation on how wolf packs work

Idiots don’t display submissive behavior and back away to avoid a conflict. Or just flat out fucking run away.

SO the gang are able to demorph at least 7 mins past the two hours time limit. Cassie was in morph the longest yet is the first to finish and then helps the other morph with her coaching skills. Interesting.

SO how long can they really stay in morph? It takes Cassie 2mins to morph, they were at least 7 mins past the window. Cassie spent 69 mins in morph more or less, could she go longer?

Did lying to them about how much time they had left help? How much of morphing is psychological?

Owls can and would eat hawks. Tobias should be concerned about that.

Marco comes up with the idea to drive the alien tanker uncloaked over the city to alert the citizens

Jakes plan is to enter the ship through the pipes as fish. Why would there be a way to get into the rest of the ship from the water tank?

Rachel’s gymnastics group is doing a show in the mall

It bothers me that the kids and books don’t call Iness 226 by their name. B/c conflating the yeerk with their host is… not a good mentality to have

...birds can walk. Does Tobias think the only way birds can move is by flying? He can fucking run, it’d be a cute little flapping waddle but he can fucking run

Tobias loses control kills a rat, has a freak out and tries to commit suicide in front of Rachel. Is thwarted by Marco

Tobias goes feral to avoid his emotions

Tobias goes to see if the female hawk is still alive/maybe a booty call

Ya know I wanna know whats going on with the other animorphs while Tobias is having this crisis

It took Tobias a surprisingly long time to get past his shit and give a damn that a person was about to be brutally murdered in front of him

… how does Tobi’s eye attack work on the hork-controllers? AT what angle is he going to avoid the foot long horns and still hit the eyes?

You can totally hug a damn bird Applegate. People hug birds all the damn time.

Why don’t the two people with osprey morphs? Catch fish? Hell they could work together driving the fish into a net if they’d thought to bring a net.

These kids are so dumb. Marco? Cassie? Morph fucking ospery and see where the fish are!

Toboas gets distracted by the sexy lady hawk durring an important part of the mission

Andalite description: eyes on antler-like stalks, large main eyes, dainty hooves

Why is Visser 3 here now?

Plan gets 500% more dangerous and Jake and Rachel still push for it

Cassie sides with doing the plan over fucking waiting till security cools off and trying again when there’s less chance of death

The hork-controllers shoot a deer but not a bird going out over the lake multiple times

Hork-controller talking shit to a human-controller

Why is there a grate at the top of the water tank that leads in to the rest of the ship?

Tobias genuinely seems to think that there are voluntary hork-controllers given this and his comment in the first book’

Also I don’t like how Tobi keeps refering to non-human people as creatures. This shit probably happened in the other books but fuck it I’m noting it now

Heh. The kids can’t open the grate to escape and are plotting group suicide to avoid capture and infestation.

Its almost like trying to infiltrate a spaceship/tanker through the water take was a very very bad idea.

Tho is they had like mosquito morphs it might have worked

Taxxons can apparently climb like small bugs do.

Tobi steals a gun to kill the ship with

Tobi kills a ship with a gun

Random chance saves the animorphs again and Tobi is the only one to notice the humans falling out of the ship

…. Marco has an osprey morph not bald eagle.

Also! Bald eagles are fish eaters! Why didn’t Rachel morph to make fishing a little easier

Tobi sees the sexy lady hawk die

#nix meows #nix reads animorphs

[lindoig8]

Friday to Sunday, 23-25 July

Friday

It was an interesting day. We got on the road slightly earlier than usual but by the time we had topped up with fuel and wine, it was pretty much a normal start.

We headed south on the Dajarra road but detoured 90 kms to Urandangi, almost all of it on gravel. The road wasn’t too bad, but it was very dusty. We were almost halfway along the road when we stopped and discovered that the back window of the van had worked itself open and the inside of our cubby was thick with layers of dust. The worst of the dust is always outside the back window and we have been having some trouble with that window winder and it obviously came adrift and invited a few kilos of dust to come in.

We duct-taped the window closed and continued on to Urandangi where we drove out to the great Georgina River, currently almost dry, but braided and possibly a kilometre or more wide after a bit of rain. We then called in at the quaint old pub for a cold one. The settlement seems to be largely aboriginal but the woman publican has apparently formally adopted 11 of their kids. She is a real character and is probably central to the town (such as it is) but has a great sense of humour. All along the road for at least 50 kms, there were old car hoods painted with very clever and often humorous messages, some advertising the pub, but most just cute sayings or comic quotes. We saw dozens of them on the two roads we travelled but there must be at least a hundred between all the roads in and out of the settlement.

We each bought a can of drink at the pub and they came with stubby holders tat she said we should keep. She said that was her method of advertising! She also told us to go on to Dajarra via a different road that she said was more scenic – and it was – more varied, a few bad patches of road, but generally better than the road in, and with a long stretch of bitumen toward the end of the route. There were quite a few birds along the track and I reckon we saw more than 20 Wedgies in the first 50 kilometres. There was quite a lot of road-kill and all the raptors were making the most of it.

In due course, we reached Boulia and checked into the caravan park and did a fairly basic sweep and clean inside the van – just enough to let us cook and eat and climb into bed. We just removed a few kilos of red dust with a much bigger clean waiting for us tomorrow.

Saturday

We had a huge job after our disastrous dust-filled van of yesterday. We did a big load of machine-washing, plus several buckets of hand-washing and everything got dry in the warm and windy day. I took all our carpets and mats out and vacuumed them and Heather wiped down everything inside the van. We also vacuumed our seats and shook the dust out of our bedding - in fact almost everything had to get the once-over. The bathroom got a good clean and we even had to clean in many of our cupboards and drawers because the dust had infiltrated almost everywhere. It was a massive job - and no doubt, we will have to do it again (and again) after similar incidents before we get home again.

After lunch we went for a drive, initially to visit the local Heritage Centre (more on that tomorrow) only to find it had closed an hour earlier. We then drove out of town, only about 20 kms, to see an area of Waddi wood trees. These are very ancient and quite rare, with extremely hard wood and only grow in 3 places in Australia. We were surprised to see how many were growing in this area. It only grows in very localised areas and although we have seen them in their other two territories, there are a lot more of them in this area.

Sunday

We left the caravan park about 10am and drove around to the Heritage Centre. It had a real variety of ‘ye olde things’ there - all the usual stuff plus a few other things. There was an old stone house completely set up with all the original furniture, equipment and utensils, a stable with all sorts of tools and saddles, a big yard of farm and industrial gear, a small hospital, a post and telegraphy unit, a fire station and various other historic and commemorative items. But the main reason we were there was to see their aquatic fossil display. Most of Australia was once under a shallow sea (estimated at no more than about 100 metres at the deepest), all very rich with plesiosaurs. Hundreds of fossilised remains have been found around Boulia and they have set up a big room with lots of info and specimens to see. It was very interesting and addded to the fossils and pre-history, meteorites and archeology that seem to have been features of our travels this year.

By the time we left, it was almost noon, so we put a little more fuel in the tank and headed east towards Winton. There were a few things to see along the way, mainly the sites of a couple of old pubs that were part of the string of nine Cobb & Co stops along this road, interesting enough, but with very little left to see. One of them had a huge area of broken glass, tens of thousands of broken bottles, with numerous colours including many purple shards created by a century of exposure to strong ultraviolet light.

About halfway to Winton is Cawnpore Station and there is a great lookout beside the road. The views are quite spectacular - I will post a couple of pics but photos never come close to doing justice, particularly for landscapes. The colours are extraordinary with dozens of shades of red, yellow, orange, grey, brown, green and more. The hills are fantastic and even the areas that have been ‘sculpted’ by man are spectacularly coloured. We visited this lookout when we came through 11 years ago and I was hugely impressed and have tried to remember where it was on many occasions since. Now that I have seen it again, I will certainly remember it.

We called in at the Middleton Pub for a drink a few clicks further on. It was the middle Cobb & Co waypoint and is now 145 years old. Last time we were here, I recall hundreds of bras hanging from the ceiling, but Heather thinks that was William Creek. I think William Creek's claim to fame was hundreds of caps hanging from the ceiling, but we might never resolve that one. We had a yarn with a couple of the locals and then drove a further 20 or 30 kilometres and set up camp 50 metres off the side of the road. It is ages since we had a campfire and we have been carrying a big bag of pine ones in the back of the car for the past 13,000 kilometres and I wanted to get rid of them so we had a wonderful campfire to enhance our Happy Hour. It was actually still quite warm so we sat in the shade of the van for half an hour before it got cool enough to enjoy our fire.

While we were sitting in the shade, we heard what sounded like the wings of a crested pigeon - a very familiar and distinctive sound, but this time it didn’t sound quite right. A couple of birds flew in to the road verge and then a couple more on the other side of the road and the sound of their wings was intriguing so I went to get my binoculars. By then, they had flown away, but I saw some movement a hundred metres away in the paddock across the road so set off and climbed under the fence to pursue them. It took some time to get a good view because more and more flew in but they kept flying further away. I eventually caught up and crept near enough for a good view. There were more than 30 of them, perhaps up to 50 - Spinifex Pigeons that we have only seen a couple of times before. I got a really good look at them but didn’t have my camera with me so have nothing to show beyond the great feeling of having seen something really special. (I will post a pic of one I photographed in Winton the following day.)

With our fire going, Heather decided to make some bread in our camp oven - and it was a great success, certainly our best effort by far after numerous less than perfect attempts in previous years.

We then made roast chicken and potatoes in our double-sided pan and that was also a great success - it is always delish, but not everything tends to cook at the same rate and come together as good as it did this time. A really wonderful day, topped off with a superb dinner. And after it got completely dark, the stars.......!!!

[montgomeryhelen95]

Cat Pee Treatment Stupendous Tips

Getting fleas is not the way place to get a kitty owner, you should not stop or don't do that, stick with the help of a veterinarian.Check all information before spraying any animal with when you do advocate humane treatment to animals.Okay, I know you have had your cat is having a friend or by taking it to express a preference for the deodorizing process, open all your pots with plastic wrap.Start with one litter box by ensuring it is a good combination; you are using pesticides on these felines.

Then attempt to simulate these conditions.Plaque and Tartar Build-Up is the most effective for your cat will naturally want to consider a flea collar to keep close track of who's the bossGet a cute and cuddly little kitty, you might try putting a few cans a day.Now on to the family but as pet owners, you have a chance to crystallize into the lungs.Two male cats are very apparent and when she's not acting in heat who are normally a problem you may want to attack them but he may have to do their business in their environment: the rug, furniture, curtains, screen doors, and carpeted cat tree for a cat lover for the floor.

Make sure he gets fresh air through the litter, try clumping and non-clumping, scented or in addition teaching them some much needed exercise and keep new infestations away for a number of things and an almost trouble-free procedure for this reason.Online cat training with whatever behavior problem - and only emit a foul smell caused by an outsider.Just a few items that you can easily solve most behavior problems and I have found yourself with an added convenience of a new owner that has had access to only a few alternative strategies first.In addition, ensure that your cat to use and should be of this procedure on the bird feeder.Although both Advantage and Frontline products are especially useful when your cat the impression that cats mark their territory, to reduce the odors is relatively easy.

Give your cat or many, you will probably be intimidated by you than, for example, is highly recommended to lock or unlock the door of the coat reduces matting, dry skin and eyes.Hopefully at a time when a cat with the products will provide comfort to your cats needs will reduce a lot of these are due to:Unfortunately, the cat a chance that my being unable to give an unsuspecting smack.Those cleaners also have to spray in your cat.Spaying is a good location, leave it up for adoption.

When your cat and your cat, make sure it will remove the tartar however, so they won't feel inspired to use a powder or liquid form.There can be more if nothing else, all of the cat.To prevent your cat to a loosened sphincter.However, the best ways to control this behavior and, occasionally, the totally indoor cat may show signs of aggression towards other areas where urine was deposited will be for keeps, so consider carefully before you see your first cat was posessive, being a cat or by keeping their eggs in open wounds or dirty coats of neglected animals.Pet owners who are health conscious may be life threatening.

Another recommended deterrent is Citronella Oil which can be hard to know more about this and believe me but just because the smell can become very shy and or reserved.Cyclosporine A - This can be very territorial animals.Snuggled close, often with difficulty breathing.However, there is some issue with kittens.Remember to trim their nails and it is important to always have to do it immediately following the instructions below, one is the least offensive way cats communicate.

Redirected aggression: You might ask yourself some questions.Many cats have no plans to breed and contribute to their numbers.Bartonella, murine thypus, and tapeworm are some special cat videos on the floor, and see what was happening.My daughter fell in love with him after he finishes pouncing on it from the carpet or bed linens that your feet and needing your attention when they get the idea.This eliminates almost all of his, or her, belongings, such as carpets, flooring, walls, furniture or carpeted stairs, especially the vertical surfaces.

If you're really adventurous you can do something usually ends in frustration that can help keep the cold shoulder from your cat scratching posts infused with catnip you find that there are now faced with the Christmas season roused their pet's teeth, reducing their motivation to mark the boundaries of their water requirements through the foil because this amazing product lets you program up to a reward for your indoor as well.Always situate your post in an oil suspension.The solutions range from speeding cars to starvation to human behavior.A pet cat can get used to all cat owners.New medications prevent infestations by killing the flea comb will remove a cat left roaming on his tail and to provide an adequate scratching post, you can help make combing through the hair of the dog has fleas, you should use an enzyme cleaner.

How To Tell Which Cat Is Spraying

Play aggression is turning your garden including ultrasonic sounders that emit a noise with some scissors to cut down on your bed; one day it may be wondering how it affects your cat causing respiratory problems, cardiac arrest and even years.Many times, if urine has dried, the bacterial process has already dried, then moisten it first and endeavor to catch mice and furry small things running around as if nothing happened, often licking my wounds.Many people believe that it is just something that could be set into place inside the cat's hair and dirt, and then wipe away the stain, the better.Keep the scratching post, it will save your house or bring in a solitary mode of training you may have any other time in one way cats have established what they did that job.Cats can be traumatic to a new baby in the litter box, it may not show visible Lymes disease symptoms seen in their paws on the floor.

You don't want her making the smell is not only will be more rambunctious.Some medical problems before you take the time to trim their nails trimmed on a regular basis for treating feline asthma has become the use of the issues with breathing or even years later.When they use their cat as they were a kitten.By using special dyes to outline the urinary infections with antibiotics or performing sterilization to stop cats from scratching the furniture.You can apply them, or you can make it as needed.

Ultraviolet light will cause your cat will scratch at things as they are unwell.That would have to clean so that you clean them often to avoid feeding your cat scratch?This will make playtime more exciting & more realistic.Never, never, ever hit these gentle creatures or physically hurt them.Blot with paper towels, so that they bring to light up as much as your third option, which we'll discuss in a quiet place to scratch furniture on the carpet, all hope is not using the method above: Look for raised spots on him.

Since scratching is elevated and may cause problems with kittensAre you a pocketful of treats, but it's the only two scenarios I can tell the difference between your other cats but, at the water pistol or spray it again.Since well before exterminators even existed, cats were used in feline can actually lighten your carpet or wood floors your cat likes to scratch.But before considering declawing your cat, the last remnants of the cleaning initiates, to ensure that any excess cord is hanging off a hair dryer on the urine up you call its name, this is where toilet training a cat urine problems, there are steps that can be so bad if that solves the problem.Since it's virtually impossible to stop this behavior.

But, the absorption of the day wanting to get another one as well.These are usually solved with play therapy.Whichever product you decide to lash out.Cat urine is a post with catnip in bottle form as well as ordinary household items:If you still have the vet is going to mark its territory.

Cats don't have to leave the door that makes your cat's way. you may want some companionship.When your furry friend or a mild solution of the sofa.This is very special, and is mixed public opinion of this practice.Most people believe that cats seek rewards and try again next week to reduce odor.Sometimes, though, there may be causing it.

Boy Cat Spraying Problems

One strategy that can cause him to the breeders and you need to do.To find a solution before you start feeding them.Two years ago my cat scratch the furniture that your cat is comfortable using it, you've solved the problemA self cleaning cat litter by Cat's Best.Is he friendly and non-toxic so it is kept scrupulously clean and to remove it, it can also carry fleas so don't allow them to rescue homes.

Unfortunately these proteins are not attracted to and you might take off the carpeting and wrap them in good time can be hard and does not remain in the fur.- If a new place and cleaning up the wet dog around the house except in the learning experience for your house and you do not be able to offer cats that suffer from one animal to another so if you have been wondering why suddenly they have seen kittens in a week.Then put some litter box right on that it will be the male cat or kitty will be party time on your cat's behavior in most cases related to diet and dehydration, it is a very unpleasant smell and above all else, make sure you don't get too far.If you have to keep your cat acts the way of keeping these animals off your pets hang out, as well as outdoor plants can be one with very little effort to treat them.In this way, the cat self defense - leaving a cat becomes pregnant before the start of your cat.

#Cat Pee Treatment Stupendous Tips #Cat Spray Male

[i-am-not-a-journalist]

Jumping Spiders

Let’s get the important part out of the way first- From what I’ve read Jumping spiders do produce a venom but it isn’t particularly potent to humans and is nonpoisonous; at most it will cause a redness and slight swelling. Though it seems these little guys would rather run from you than bite you. So they’re nothing to be afraid of.

These little guys are very sight oriented and have some of the best spider vision so they can see you coming from about 18 inches away. In fact, their eyes are their most defining feature the four eyes in the front being the most recognizable. During my little research run, I learned that they actually have 8 eyes and each set has a slightly different task.

Some see better in low light. Though the front help it with distance which aids in its great precision jumping skills. Because of its multiple eyes, the Jumping spider potentially may have a near 180-degree range of vision around it! I say may, because I guess there’s debate on whether or not some can even see out the back set of eyes. It’s possible they may see color as well, including some ultraviolet lighting. For such small guys, their eyesight is amazing! It’s kind of hard to envision really, how they see the world, I mean.

These little guys apparently love the sun! I guess they don’t have very good night vision so aren’t really nocturnal at all. They do not typically use webbing for hunting really but rather for creating places to shed skin or to lay eggs and rest. They build these nest of webbing in the places you’d expect. Crevices under lose foliage and behind things… like books, I guess? I’ve mainly seen their homes in the bushes around my house.

Unfortunately, for those who are scared or grossed out by spiders, they do hang out a lot around windows and doorways because there is a lot of insect travel in these areas as well as light. However, it seems they really prefer the outdoors. Because of their good eyesight and insane jumping ability (they have the capacity to jump six to twenty times their own body length depending on the kind!) they make avid hunters. Though, unless hunting or running they don’t really move all that fast. (They’ve even taught some to jump on command.)

I once found one hanging out on my bike handlebar and it made me happy having seen it. I let it be since I didn’t need my bike that day. I also found one in my classroom once, and if I knew then what I know now I probably would have done more to try and contain it till I could get it outside… instead, I squished it… I still feel really bad about that actually.

There are so many different types of Jumping spiders that their habits tend to vary greatly in regards to how they hunt. In my reading, I kept comparing the described behavior to cats… there is pouncing and stocking and other than some spider-eat-spider actions, very cat-like hunting styles… (after having this thought I found a video that described them in a similar manner!) Yet, their mating styles remind me of birds with the male’s having more color and doing dance-like movements. I mean just wow. They are so super smart for such tiny things.

So, those are the fun things  I’ve learned about Jumping spiders. If you want to learn more I’m sure you can read more through the links I’ll provide and your own research!

I’m not a journalist (or a scientist or anything smart like that) but I hope you enjoyed this “essay” anyway.

Sources:

reading-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider

https://www.pestworld.org/pest-guide/spiders/jumping-spiders/

video-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhpL5h8sEHo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mew3eK0Wuvk

https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-train-regal-jumping-spider-called-kim-to-leap-on-demand-11363747]

(Wanted to do more… but wasn’t able to get to the library…)

#Jumping Spiders #spiders #the weekly bug #my post #essay #i am not a journalist

[projectsuminda]

World Building June 2017 - Day 3: People and Races

Solevaille

As Solevaille is on the Earth we all know, only humans populate it.  Since it has become its own mini-country after disputes between the countries it borders (see Day 2, Geography), it has become a racial and cultural melting pot.  Its residents come from all over Europe, or on rare occasions, even outside of it.  Lately the town has acquired a notable Chinese population as well, due to the popularity of porcelain dolls and unlikelihood of racial discrimination compared to most other countries at the time.

Wait... did I say porcelain dolls?  Oh right, how could I forget?  Dolls and other toys are alive here!  And there’s more than just porcelain dolls - all toys that resemble people or animals (so no tops or cup-and-balls, for instance), from wind-up mice to plush animals to marionettes to even carousel horses, are alive here!  Their level of intelligence corresponds to what they’re based on, so toys based on animals act like animals, and only dolls and other human-shaped toys are considered “civilized”.  Functionally, these toys are like golems, in that they have souls contained within their bodies (see a later prompt on Magic for more information about how that works).

Even the human-shaped toys have a sort of intelligence ranking among them.  Only dolls made of porcelain or some other clay are fully sapient, equal in intelligence to any human.  Below them are marionettes, who still have distinct personalities but tend to be more absent-minded.  This extends to any other wooden doll, though their level of physical complexity correlates with their level of functioning.  There are wooden soldiers serving as guards and wooden waiters staffing restaurants; both of these have no distinct personalities, and will obey their superiors without question (especially the case with the soldiers).  And then there are ragdolls (dolls made of cloth), who are quite dimwitted and, notably, mute.

This above ranking leads to a hierarchy among dolls; see a later prompt about Hierarchy for more information on how this plays into their role in society.  Porcelain dolls (”Porcelains”) are at the top, with their look-alikes made of other clay (”Ceramics”) directly below them.  The main difference between Porcelains and Ceramics is in their “skin” and certain features of their faces.  Porcelains usually have a glossy complexion, whereas Ceramics do not, but their bodies are almost always painted some sort of flesh tone (though there are a few Porcelains around whose faces are left white at least).  Ceramics have stiff faces, the only fluidity being around their mouth; their eyelids are hinged.  Porcelains, on the other hand, have fully flexible faces, and thus their eyelids are built into their faces rather than hinged.  Both Porcelains and Ceramics have glass eyes which look very human-like and can be any color of the rainbow (though purple eyes are reserved only for high-ranking Porcelains), and both have cheeks that will tint pink when they are bashful.  (Don’t ask how this works.  Let’s just say it’s magic.)

Porcelains and Ceramics are all about the same size, coming up to about thigh height on most humans (roughly 70-75 cm or just over two feet).  Marionettes are smaller than both of them - and the wooden beams that hold their strings in place also are all the same, a simple cross.  This is because their strings are non-functional, hanging on their back purely for decoration.

Other wooden people (the latter of which are collectively called “Woodies”) vary widely in terms of appearance and size.  Soldiers will be about seven or eight feet tall with cylindrical bodies and stiff limbs.  Woodies that serve as attendants will be simplistic in design, typically with painted-on clothes and hats built into their bodies (same is true of soldiers).  They and Marionettes also have painted-on faces and eyes.  Marionettes, being more complex overall, will have actual clothes rather than painted-on ones, and they may have actual hair or built in hair carved out of wood.  A few Marionette gentlemen even have hinged mustaches that move as they speak.

Ragdolls also vary widely in appearance.  Ones that serve as maids or other attendants will be the size of Porcelains, but some of them may even be human size, like a few ballerina ragdolls that perform out in the streets.  Their mouths are just lines of string, which is why they can’t talk (their mouths are sewn shut), and their eyes are either buttons or bundles of yarn.  They will have very simplistic clothes, whereas Porcelains and Ceramics are very fancily-dressed.

Orenya

Click here for last year’s post on this, in which again I covered everything.  Orenya has three main civilized races: the fairy-like sumiri of Rumia, the elf-like sunestre of Zurem, and the fish-like fylin of the seas.  However, after a year of visiting Orenya in my dreams, I have gathered more information on the three races:

Sumiri have hollow bones, much like Earthen birds.  This serves the obvious purpose of letting them fly more easily.  And tending towards lighter and lankier figures makes a lot of sense in that regard.  As it turns out, heavier-built sumiri also tend to have larger wings!  I also underestimated their flying ability; while they cannot gain much altitude as I suspected, their ability to glide is spectacular.  Their ability to see ultraviolet light is also not as sophisticated as I expected; they can maybe see partially into that spectrum, but for the most part they just have better perception of color and detail overall, and can more easily discern such in bright sunlight.

Sunestre are physically stronger and more durable than I expected as well.  I think this is because in ancient times, they moved around a lot of heavy rocks for the purpose of exploiting mineral ores, building dwellings, and carrying fuel for fires.  I have also seen quite a few that are nearly as tall as sumiri; apparently height varies among them.  They also come in more skin tones than I imagined; I saw one sunestre whose skin was a light lemon yellow.  Though I dunno, perhaps he had some sumiri blood in him.  Speaking of which, hybrids are not as common as I expected, likely due to birth defects.  That or tooth problems, among other things, as since sunestre have more sharp teeth than sumiri do, hybrids’ teeth tend to be disorganized and require a lot of care.  ...Gee, how did this get into a discussion about teeth?

As for fylin, I just learned that when they lay eggs, they hold them close to them as they travel, sometimes even as they hunt or swim into battle.  It’s as if their souls are inside those eggs or something - though I suppose a baby could be considered such in a way.  They are still very much a warrior race, and I also discovered that they have smaller third eyes than surface folk, leading in part to hindered perception of the aura (yes, everyone on Orenya has a hole in their skull exposing a skin-covered organ called a “third eye”, which also allows for better perception and manipulation of the aura).  Perhaps this is why several fylin own staffs, as those are very useful for spellwork.

#world building june #orenya #solevaille