reading-wanderer

[reading-wanderer]

Before my beloved and I moved in together they were living with roommates in a place that didn't have a bathtub. Now, a reasonable person might conclude from this that baths would be out of the equation in a home with only one standing shower and no tub.

But these people weren't quitters. Naturopathic doctors and acupuncturists they were dedicated to treating their bodies well and one of the ways they liked to do that was hydrotherapy. Most people are familiar with this through things like polar bear plunges. You sit in a hot tub then jump in freezing water.

It's supposedly good for you and they were way into it. But again, no tub. They'd do hydro showers but it just wasn't the same. These people were not quitters, though. (One of them is the boob soap person, so it really isn't a surprise that she goes hard on everything). So they got what looked like two big metal old timey tubs but which were actually animal food troughs and set them up in the garage. They set up a water heater and god knows how they emptied the tub after, I think there was hoses involved? A pump maybe? I honestly can't remember. Anyway! Voila, hydrotherapy on demand.

I was not aware of this. So when I came over after a long day and my beloved said we should take a bath I was extremely puzzled. I only knew about the one shower. They showed me the garage tubs. I did want a bath and I wasn't really sure about the setup, but honestly I'll try anything once if only for the story, so I agreed.

Fun fact about me though. I haaaate being cold. I've been 0% body fat most of my life with skin barely keeping my bones enclosed. I'm always cold. My favorite activity at the time was sitting directly in front of space heaters. My shower temperatures turn me lobster red and make my beloved cringe. Willingly dunking myself into cold water is the antipathy of my entire deal.

On the night in question I happily submerged into the warm tank, pleasantly surprised by the big silly improvised tub. Which again was meant for livestock. My knees bumped companionably against my beloved as we soaked in the hot water. After a while they rose to go into the cold water. "You don't have to," they told me.

But I was haunted. I wouldn't be doing hydro if I just stayed in the warm tub. Maybe hydro was amazing. It has all these health benefits. I desperately didn't want to but I stood up with them. We were having this nice intimate evening in the garage, just us, I felt safe. I was gonna do it.

They stepped easily into the cold tub, dunking matter of factly into the frigid water. I went to step. I did. I really really tried. My foot went in and I started shrieking, my progress arrested by the total state of shock I entered when my warm toasty foot hit that smug arctic water tension. My beloved started laughing as my pitch ascended the deeper my foot went into the cold water.

I started loudly narrating my discomfort as my foot touched the bottom and I willed my other foot up to join it. "THIS IS VERY COLD," I yelled, "IT'S SO COLD I THINK I MIGHT DIE HOW ARE YOU JUST CASUALLY SITTING IN THIS FREEZING COLD WATER?! I'M DYING- I THINK I'M DYING! I'M DYING BUT WE'RE HERE, TOGETHER! I CAN DO THIS! I CAN DO THESE EVEN THOUGH IT'S SO COLD ALL MY MOLECULES HAVE COMPRESSED INTO A SOLID STATE!"

I ended up with both feet planted in the cold tub, water up to my shins, bellowing and panting while my beloved laughed so hard they couldn't breathe. I hunkered over the cold water, squatting like a frozen gargoyle.

My beloved was trying to psyche me up while I willed my body to obey me. In a sudden jerky drop like a puppet whose strings have been cut I plummeted my body into the cold and let out a shriek that I’m sure could have shattered glass and then leapt up out of the water at a speed relative to a rocket achieving space flight. I didn’t like it.

When we got back inside my beloved's roommates were collapsed on the ground with tears in the their eyes from how hard they'd been laughing. They and probably every neighbor down the block had heard my pterodactyl screeching and narration because the garage was not remotely soundproof.

[reading-wanderer]

furiously googling “flowers with no romance meaning” because a. I love flower language and b. I love being aro and found exactly what I was looking for!!

image description under the cut

[id: A screenshot of a flower website stating: “Alstroemeria. Also called Peruvian lily, alstroemeria symbolizes the strong bond between two people that transcends romantic love. Send this elegant flower to a special friend to celebrate the strength and devotion of your friendship. Alstroemerias are tuberous perennials native to the cold, mountainous regions of South America. They are popular as cut flowers and also in the garden. Their delicate flowers come in many colors, and they bloom every summer and fall.” Above the text is a circular photo of the aforementioned orange and yellow flowers. Half of the petals on the flowers are speckled with dark brown lines. The flowers’ dark green leaves are long and thin.]

[reading-wanderer]

Removing part of the brain’s temporal lobe is the only treatment available to the millions of people with a form of epilepsy that medications often don’t alleviate. But even that approach fails a third of the time. A new study from Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues offers an explanation and suggests a more effective approach to treatment. They found that a previously overlooked region of the hippocampus, the fasciola cinereum, appears to be involved in instigating and propagating seizures. Removing or inhibiting the fasciola cinereum may help those patients who don’t find relief after surgery.

Continue Reading.

[reading-wanderer]

#this is how I found out Pornhub had a purge

[reading-wanderer]

I don't want to put this on that person's post, bc they are in the situation that they're in, they're very clearly advocating for themselves and other people the best they can given truly fucked up circumstances, and they don't need some asshole saying what I'm about to say to them right now. This is not aimed at them.

But: this is the inherent problem with flocking to platforms like webtoon 'for the audience'. Even if you are exactly the right combination of lucky and marketable, even if you successfully tap the market they've created, you don't get to walk away with those eyeballs. All you've done is tie your livelihood to someone else's infrastructure.

This is the nature of the modern web, you are always handing over the keys to your career to some other asshole to some extent. It might be twitch or youtube muting and demonetising your videos, it might be social media purging adult accounts, it might be patreon changing a policy overnight and decimating your income. Every time you buy into one of these marketplaces you HAVE TO do so with the knowledge that they could flip the table at any moment. You have to be aware of what you could lose by making their service a point of failure. Please please please please at least build a website.

[reading-wanderer]

Mammoth Cube Mammoth Cube Mammoth Cube

Known as the Jarkov Mammoth, this specimen was found in Siberia. The 23 tonne block of mud and ice was lifted to an ice cave where the mammoth inside was recovered and studied.

[reading-wanderer]

everytime dungeon meshi focuses on characters outside of the touden party you can really feel the looming horror of the dungeon,, only the touden party is having a silly fun time by virtue of eating the horrors

[reading-wanderer]

[reading-wanderer]

A tower! And a cat!

Meet Void Stormbringer, the cattest of the kitties! The kittiest cat that ever catted in her world.

keep reading for some silly lore.

Void Stormbringer roamed the earth, the ocean, and the skies, and only amongst the clouds did she find this abandoned tower. She knew not who once lived there, nor how this tower stood tall this long, and nor does she care, either!

Did it matter to her that some silly wizards used to live there? And that they actually solved the melancholy crisis? And that this discovery led to the biggest goose chase there ever was? Not really, for the moment her eyes landed on the conveniently placed hole in the middle of the roof, she inserted her loafy frame and knew right there and then she was home.

--

I really don't know how this keeps getting deeper I'm just bored help!!

[reading-wanderer]

[reading-wanderer]

WE'VE GOT ANOTHER ONE, GANG :D

[reading-wanderer]

Frogs and Bunny 5 week update: These kids are HUGE. Like....Frogs is almost at the minimum weight the shelter performs spays/neuters already! (He's not going to be put through surgery at 5 weeks old, he's just theoretically big enough.)

They're also more and more obviously long-haired kittens every day. Long ear tufties, smelly dingleberries, the works. No interest in eating food from a bowl yet, but they ARE both still latching, so that's a plus. The expected diarrhea has also reared its head, so we're headed back to the vet tomorrow.

My spouse says these kittens are just lemons, as they have been at the vet every week since their birth. I say they're getting all of their vet visits out of the way now so they can grow up big and robust!

[reading-wanderer]

I love the concept of Chilchuck seeing every single encounter as a Possible Romantic Moment and that he has to fight the urge to flirt w literally everyone. Like it's so counter to how he seems on the surface?? Let this man find comfort in love PLEASE 😭 😭 😢

[reading-wanderer]

THERE IS NOT A PINETREE NEAR ME

HOW DID THIS GET IN MY YARD

#unreality #lmao #goosegate 2024

[reading-wanderer]

[reading-wanderer]

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

[reading-wanderer]

So I knew that one of the rules of Wild Mushroom Safety is to cook all wild mushrooms before consumption, but I didn't know quite how vital this was:

And it turns out, scientific literature doesn't know much either. Apparently uncooked morels can be /super/ toxic, and there's not a ton of awareness.

Anyway the Rules of Wild Mushroom Safety as I was taught them:

ID every specimen you plan to consume.

Cook.

Try a little and wait a bit, because people can have allergies to random mushrooms.

Do not mix with alcohol, adverse reactions can occur.