#they’re becoming more borzoi every day

[drferox]

Fantasy Biology: Eevee

Eevee is the far superior Pokemon to Pikachu but it is something of a biological enigma and unique in that it has eight different mature, adult forms (currently, hanging out for a steel-type Eevee in sword/shield) all of which are possible for any single, individual Eevee.

Eevee is superficially mammalian, though like all Pokemon hatches from eggs, so it's not the anatomy that I'm going to consider today (mammals that lay eggs are not that weird in Australia). It's not even the fact that such superficially different adult phenotypes can interbreed successfully, as the different eeveelutions don't look any more different to each other than a pug would to a borzoi.

No, it's the fact that we start out with identical Eevees at birth that all move on to become such phenotypically different adults in response to their environment.

How do they do that?

There are, at the time of writing, eight known Eevee evolutions that evolve via the following:

Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon by contact with a small, very special rock

Glaceon and Leafeon by proximity to a large, very special rock

Espeon, Umbreon and Sylveon by by being friendly/affectionate enough with one other qualifier, either time of day or ability known.

Which is super weird, but let's try to explain these anyway.

It's perfectly normal for animals to adapt to suit their environment. Muscles get bigger the more they are used, skin toughens, skills are learned, and over many generations evolution takes place. But with Eevees, these adaptations happen rapidly within a single lifetime.

It's also not unheard of for animals to undergo a dramatic physical change as they mature. Compare the caterpillar to the butterfly. Or perhaps more interestingly, consider the axolotl.

Axolotls are a type of salamander that live their entire life cycle in an aquatic phase, rather than a terrestrial one. They're commonly seen as pets. However, if you throw a bunch of thyroxine (a naturally occurring thyroid hormone) at them, they will metamorphose into the terrestrial salamander form. They transform in response to a hormone from an external source.

Now, real world animals take days, weeks, months or years to transform. In the world of Pokemon you may choose to ignore that, or consider these transformations to be happening over a couple of days instead. But the mechanism for a dramatic physical change in response to external stimuli already exists.

So let's build up some details.

If we start with the classics, Flareon, Jolteon, & Vaporeon, then what actually are the fire stone, thunder stone and water stone respectively that are needed to induce this transformation, and also induce transformation and maturity in other Pokemon species. The Pokedex would tell you them emit some sort of radiation, but there's only so many sorts of radiation that could be, and things in the universe are exposed to radiation all the time, so what's an alternative explanation.

Actual biological molecules. Whether these are hormones or cytokines (another sort of chemical signal used by living things), either of these existing in high concentrations in the stone could plausibly induce the appropriate evolution. So how do they get there?

My preferred theory is that these 'stones' are not all mineral, but a matrix colonized by bacteria or single celled organisms from extreme environments that just happen to be secreting the chemical signals Eevee use to determine what sort of environment they are in. The higher the concentration of 'fire stone bacteria' they're exposed to, the more likely it is for the Flareon form to offer the best chance or survival, and the same for the other types of stones.

This could work with a positive feedback loop. The more hormone the Eevee is exposed to, the more sensitive it becomes to that hormone (or insensitive to the others it becomes) until it reaches a critical threshold and the 'evolution' commences.

As a result, exposure to a fire, water or thunder stone would not be the only way to get a Flareon, Vaporeon or Jolteon, it would just be the fastest way. Eevee living their lives in extreme environments could gradually accumulate enough exposure to these secreted hormones over time before evolving naturally. Even Eevee living in non-extreme environments could spontaneously evolve into one of these forms, purely by chance and random exposure, but at a slower rate.

Moss rocks for Leafeon and Ice rocks for Glaceon could function by a nearly identical mechanism, only instead of touching the stone, their chemical signals may instead be pheromones on the air produced by microorganisms living on/in that rock. This also implies that those microorganisms are elsewhere in similar environments, just at lower concentrations.

Espeon, Umbreon and Sylveon evolve differently, because their evolution is triggered by affection plus one other condition.

Now, the obvious choice for the evolution trigger in these cases is oxytocin, the so-called 'love hormone', but there's a few concerning implications of that, since oxytocin surges happen with a couple of other biological events which don't strictly require friendship or affection to occur. It's still a plausible choice though, but perhaps alongside something like serotonin, gradually binding to the appropriate receptors until the positive feedback loop is triggered. In this way, friendship, hugs and chocolate can push an Eevee towards one of these evolutions, but which one?

Espeon and Umbreon are determined by the time of day, with Espeon evolving during the day and Umbreon evolving during the night. So the level of melatonin in the brain may determine which evolution occurs. Now in a game that's easy, but in this hypothetical natural world, it may mean that Umbreon and Espeon are more common at higher latitudes where the day lengths are more extreme with the season, with more Umbreon developing in winter, and more Espeons developing in Summer.

Sylveon also evolves with some type of affection, but it must know a fairy-type move to do so. This is a little harder to hypothesize, as how can just knowing a fairy-type move induce a different evolution? Does it induce an accumulation of a different hormone in the Eevee every time it's used? I'm not totally satisfied with that idea, as these evolutions seem to happen in response to extreme environments.

My preferred hypothesis is that Sylveon evolves in response to the presence of dragon-type molecules in the environment. The more dragon-types there are around, the more use that Eevee would have from a fairy-type move, and the more advantage it has in evolving to Sylveon.

In addition to these different means of evolution in the wild, it's quite possible that groups of Eevees will evolve into different types, even in the same environment, as once an individual starts to become sensitized to a couple of signalling molecules, those molecules are bound to it, so can't be used by the next Eevee to come along. So you could plausibly have mixed groups co-existing in the wild.

This is, of course, a lot of speculation given what we know, and assuming the Pokedex is written by a ten year old. But I could potentially think of enough tests to occupy a full time job as an Eevee raiser and researcher.

Eevee was selected as a topic by my Patreon supporters. You can nominate a species for the same treatment from $1 a month.

#fantasy biology #pokemon #eevee #speculative biology #eeveelutions

[terresdebrume]

The space between

Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Movie) Series: Sequel to Rakuen Rating: General audiences Wordcount: 2 191 words Pairing(s): Napollya Character(s): Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin. Genre: Sometimes things are better when they’re not what they’re supposed to be. Trigger warning(s): None that I’m aware of. Summary: Solo can’t possibly understand what it’s like for a werewolf to be stuck in one for for years and years, but he suggested a wolf holiday anyway. Somehow, what Illya gets from it goes beyond what he expected. Note(s): Here, have an unexpected sequel (to a fic I completely forgot to crosspost here from AO3) that goes in an unexpected direction. Honestly, I wrote all of it in two days between 9pm and 2am: I have no idea anymore.

The wolf emerges, floating from a dream into the soft warmth of wakefulness. Familiar smells blanket him, shooing the rest of the world away even as something lumbers on hard wood somewhere in the distance. The ground is soft under it, something not-quite-sheep anymore weighing pleasantly on its shoulder. The wolf finds something not-quite-plant under its snout, pulls it closer with its teeth, and sinks into the thing’s faint smell of oily product with a contented sigh.

Darkness comes to it so softly he doesn’t remember greeting it at all.

***

It opens its eyes to the rich brown of fallen trees, ground as soft beneath it as it ever was. The smell of pine wood and winter-cold clinging to spring fills its nostrils, and he breathes in when he realizes something is rubbing against his stomach, steady and firm over the curve of his rib cage. The once-sheep-fur thing is gone, but the air glows warm with firelight, and when the wolf looks away away from the wood overhead—just shy of seeing his own body—the pink mountain on two legs rubs at his lips with its strange pink paw.

It is cold with snow, still, and it shies away when he tries to lick it in greetings, but the pink mountain rumbles, and pushes Illya back until it can resume the belly rub. Illya knows better than to complain, by now, the wolf too thoroughly addicted by the easy closeness of human hands to go back to its solitude without a fight.

Besides, after a year, even the mountain grew used to it enough to stop teasing.

They stay like this for a while, long enough for the light to go from mid-morning to early afternoon, Illya luxuriating in the easy physical affection until Cowboy asks:

“Water?”

It takes Illya some effort to manage a real nod, content as he is to remain in the hazy limbo between wolf and man now that he has someone who can be trusted with it again. He lets Cowboy prop him up for a drink, paws still too clumsy to maneuver a—a—thing for drinking, and yawns hard enough to make his jaw crack as he is lowered down on soft—on the mattress.

“Thank you,”” Illya says after some mental preparation.

“I like wolf you,” Cowboy says even as he takes the glass away again. “He’s polite.”

Illya grunts in protest and flops back onto the mattress, cheek landing just shy of Napoleon’s knee. He can feel the heat of him on his skin, smell the remnants of his usual cologne and last week’s Brylcreem through the unusual roughness of sturdy pants and a thick sweater over a flannel shirt. Outside, the pines are close enough to fill even human nostrils, and the lingering wolf still manages to pick up on the clean chill of Lake Superior, off to the East. Birds haven’t come back from their yearly migrations yet, and things that sleep through the winter won’t quite awaken until April, and the hush of it makes it feel like there is nothing in this world but Illya on a soft bed, with fire warming him up and Napoleon’s hand rubbing at his belly like he’s sporting fur and four legs and a tail.

It’s a wonderful thought, and Illya takes the time to savor it before he speaks.

“I’ve never asked—”

Illya’s sentence dissolves into another yawn, and Napoleon is far too consummate a pretender to allow his fingers to clench around the thick wool of Illya’s jumper, but his hand does come to a stop, just under Illya’s heart. Around them the air tenses, just enough to send a prickle of warning racing along Illya’s spine

He gives it a moment’s consideration—a heartbeat, if that—but he always did prefer tackling things head on, and his relationship with Napoleon, working or otherwise, has always been built on leaps of faith anyway.

“I never asked,” he starts again, voice breaking the quiet like a lone walker on freshly fallen snow, “how you knew what to do. When I came back. First time.”

Napoleon’s hand shudders, just the once and then it resumes its rubbing motion in a way that only feels stiff because Illya has been waking up to the gesture two times a weeks for the past six months and, at Napoleon’s insistence, every morning since they got to this modest but comfortable cabin in the northernmost parts of Minnesota.

“Well,” Napoleon says, practiced nonchalance too thin hide the tension in his words without the polished back up of high-quality suits and carefully arranged hair, “I do know a thing or two about dogs.”

Illya foregoes the habitual, playful swat at Napoleon’s shoulder in favor of a steady glare. It must appear lopsided, laid out as Illya is by Napoleon’s side, head level to the man’s stretched out knee...it does get Illya’s point across, though, and Napoleon’s features flicker into a self-deprecating smirk before he turns to look at the window to his left, away from Illya.

His hand doesn’t stop moving, though, and Illya sinks into the gesture the way he would lean into his father’s welcoming licks on his snout after a run; the way he’s rub his nose against his mother’s lips for hours on end as a child until she caved to the demands of human society and forbade him the gesture when he was not a wolf. His father left soon after that and, for the longest time, nothing of the wolf could be allowed to linger in Illya’s human life...then came Berlin and the smell of too many women mixing together over Brylcreem and sharp cologne. An amused rumble that so rarely allows itself to become a laugh. A pair of blue eyes, concerned but unafraid as its owner asked how Illya felt after turning back.

Illya squirms on the bed until his cheek touches Napoleon’s knee, eyes at precisely the right angle for the fading light to line Napoleon’s face with silver.

“You know dogs,” Illya prompts, unsurprised when Napoleon tries his very best to make his hum noncommittal.

It doesn’t quite meet the mark, but falls close enough to it to make Illya shiver with the sudden chill of it, the abrupt bone-cold of unexpected ghosts that makes up so many of his and Napoleon’s friendship. It isn’t the first time they have reared their heads at such a simple question: Illya has a graveyard in its chest but it knows its place. Napoleon’s ghost seem to hover all around, and take some sort of sadistic pleasure in catching at his heart at the most innocuous inquiries.

“We always had many of them,” Napoleon tells the window at last, “half a dozen, at any given time.”

An image bursts to life in Illya’s mind: Napoleon, shorter and much narrower in the shoulders, thrones on an elegant baroque couch, Darya Kuryakin’s favorite carpet absorbing the sound of six borzoi determined to grab a piece of their master’s attention. Napoleon, Illya must admit, has always seemed more like a cat person to him.

“You had good relationship with them?”

“They weren’t supposed to be pets.”

Napoleon shrugs, far too brittle for comfort and Illya has to restrain himself from pressing his cheek harder against the man’s knee, for fear of making him flee if he realizes just how much of him Illya has become able to see.

The conspicuous absence of the man’s suit is, after all, almost as much of a delight as the 'wolf’ part of what Napoleon insisted on naming ‘their first annual wolf holiday’.

“They weren’t supposed to be pets,” Illya says, once silence has had time to settle between them, careful not to put emphasis on any given word, even though he knows Napoleon must hear it anyway.

“I was lonely,” Napoleon tells the window, fingers coming to a halt on Illya’s ribs again. Then, non-sequitur: “one of the bitches had a litter with a wolf.”

In his mind, the landscape outside of young Napoleon’s window changes from a generic city  to an equally generic forest, albeit one with quite a lot of pine trees. The borzois are gone, replaced with sturdy, thick-pawed mutts running in a large garden.

“There was a run,” Napoleon continues. “Not sure why it’d been cast aside, but it would have been a pity to lose that kind of protection for the house.”

“You think five half-wolves are not enough to scare burglars?”

Overhead, Napoleon blinks and look back at Illya, as if remembering he is was even here to being with.

“Burglars?”

“You were too poor to steal from?” Illya asks before he can think better of it.

Napoleon doesn’t gape, far too well trained for that, but even he hasn’t mustered enough control on his body to prevent the slow, crimson creep of a blush up his neck and onto his cheeks. He turns away again, ears flushed even redder, before he mutters:

“I think even amateur burglars had more sense than to come and look all the way here.”

Illya, while not as practiced as Napoleon in the art of deception, is also a trained spy and so he does not gape. He does, however look around the room again as the image of young Napoleon, in his mind, flops on the very bed they are using now, shirt pulled out of thick winter pants, and is joined by a creature that looks far too much like the photographs Illya’s mother used to take, sometimes, when he stayed out later than she did in later years.

A minute passes, maybe five, while Illya digests the revelation, warmth flooding through his vein like a bath drawn at the end of an exhausting winter day, prickling at every frozen extremity of him until he can do nothing but swallow, shift under Napoleon’s hand, and let his head rest on Napoleon’s knee.

The wolf has gone back to sleep by now, and the proximity turns Illya’s throat dry but Napoleon doesn’t seem to notice or, if he does, to mind.

“An outcast, hm?” Illya prompts, quieter than even he expected to be.

Relief expands in his chest when Napoleon huffs.

“I was the only one with the kind of time it takes to nurse a dog. So, I did.”

A pause, thin and brittle, and Illya is all but holding his breath by the time Napoleon speaks again, barely above a whisper:

“The others wouldn’t teach him how to be a dog. So I watched. I taught him. Eventually, he integrated.”

There is a cold spot on Illya’s rib cage, Napoleon’s jaw tightening even as Illya sits up until his right shoulder bump into Napoleon’s. They sit close enough together for Illya to feel even the slightest shift in Napoleon’s posture, the care he puts into not stiffening, not breathing too fast, not sighing. He does close his eyes, but even then, only with reluctance.

Illya watches him; thinks of the lunches he shares with agents who aren’t Napoleon or Gaby now, in U.N.C.L.E.’s canteen. None of them are connections he made through his American friend, but none of whom would have approached him if not for the tangible proof that once could tease Illya Kuryakin and live to tell the tale.

“He didn’t forget you.”

It isn’t a question, but Napoleon answers it anyway, head turning so he can look straight ahead of himself. Illya watches the glow of the firelight turn the bridge of his nose to gold and is not, in the end, surprised by how beautiful he finds it—ridiculous butt shape and all.

“No,” Napoleon says. “He got shot because of me, too.”

He breathes in when Illya’s fingers close around his wrist, shoulders tensing again as if to run away, but Napoleon Solo doesn’t run. He didn’t run away from a giant with more fighting training than him in a public restroom of West Berlin, didn’t run away from the world after who knows how long in and electric chair in Rome, didn’t run away from anything they have encountered in the past two years of working together.

Illya has been present through enough of Napoleon’s not-running, by now, that pressing their shoulders a little closer together fills him with the relief of taking necessary but long overdue action.

“It’s okay,” Napoleon says, trying for nonchalance and mostly just managing to hit ‘strained’, “he wasn’t a pet.”

“No,” Illya confirms.

Then, emboldened by the turmoil of emotions swirling in Napoleon’s eyes when he turns to look at him, Illya adds:

“Neither am I.”

This time, it’s Napoleon who increases the pressure between their shoulders, Illya’s rifle wound from Japan an ache barely loud enough to register through the blood rushing in Illya’s ears, the delicious sting of his own breathing, caught in his lungs for too long.

“No,” Napoleon says, breath ghosting over Illya’s lips, “most definitely not.”

The wolf has gone to sleep, and soon Illya and Napoleon will have to return to the world of men, but it doesn’t matter.

Here, in the space between, they will always be free.

#Fanfiction #Napollya #TMFU fic #Napoleon Solo #Illya Kuryakin #TMFU #My Posts

[itsnotpatsy]

Ramble about Daphne and Trish and their relationship? I love the dynamic want to hear more!

oh boy oh boy oh boy there’s not enough words in the universe.

daphne knows a trish just picking up her pieces from her absolute worst. just developing her powers and just coming off her major season 2 relapse and just having lost everyone and everything. so trish takes up the hellcat mantle. because she has what she’s always wanted, right? and she’s going to get better! do right! save people! she’s going to help others!! she’s going to—

—parkour incorrectly off a roof and keep running (accidentally) while trying to lose traction straight into daphne’s glass terrace door, shattering it completely. and these were the days before a suit, after all, only in that fucking train bandit bandana and the dark blue track suit. after not braining her with a bookend, daphne and she started talking. and talking. and talking. and before they knew it it had been two days and trish hadn’t gone anywhere. before they knew it, a very lonely starlet and a very lonely superhero had started to bond. and why? well, because that very lonely relapsed addict currently struggling in recovery had held rachel getting married close to her heart. a film depicting an addict and their private struggle with addiction in a positive light? it meant everything to someone who had spent their lives struggling with addiction, and only recently fallen back into how hard it was. not to give up and turn back to going on a bender. not to take a handful painkillers to get through the migraine. an overwhelmingly grateful, lonely new superhero couldn’t be more thankful that a single person seemed to sort of understand. to kind of care.

daphne listened. and trish talked. and daphne talked. and trish listened.

they’re both in the same profession— sort of. trish, who could no longer stomach the acting profession after the abuse and the addiction, keeps up on the oscar noms. pays attention to the technique. watches closely how actors become their roles. and trish happens to have been on the same network as one daphne kluger— patsy owned by disney and princess diaries so the same. unintentionally, their paths had never crossed, but they’d been walking the same road. and this means daphne understands what the pain looks like. how the abuse in the industry can damage a person. she was lucky where trish was— absolutely not.

daphne encourages hellcat with every fiber of her being. she thinks it’s amazing that someone can come out the other side of this suffering and still be so kind-hearted. trish makes daphne a better person without necessarily making her feel like she needs to be better. and regardless of anything, they’re a team. trish might be the newly ordained hero but daph is her other half— just as helpful in matters trish needs saving from as it is the other way around. she’s had her life saved by daphne on several occasions, including dragging her out of the hudson river.

trish is absolutely eventually moving into daph’s penthouse with her. it’s a matter of time before she can agree to that, though she needs to find a way to section off her own space and just— make living with someone an experience she can handle, considering her anxiety triggers, her powers, and trying to drag herself back to na (which she hates, but it’s necessary). and daphne loves nothing more than waking up to a trish who often doesn’t sleep until the tiny hours of the morning, knowing that ultra-warm body’s there and heavy beside hers. knowing she can curl into trish’s body like a kitten and drift back to sleep. she always has to shower and then slip into bed, but sometimes she doesn’t even bother to change into clothes. daphne makes trish feel safer and more loved than anyone ever has. she listens and she’s patient and she cares. she never belittles what she thinks, even if it seems incredulous or, since it’s trish, it’s probably somewhat unsafe or out of control. daph finds a way to diffuse without making trish feel small or stupid. and that respect means everything, because trish is a healthier person because of daphne’s patient influence. daph has no patience for anyone but trish, basically.

their home is often a mashup of entertainment news and a constant stream of cnn. daphne keeps her up to date on the pop culture and the cinema world, and trish is perpetually politically inclined on a regular basis. it’s what she pays attention to, what she knows most about, and what she’s trying to structure a new career around. they’ve spent christmas, thanksgiving, and new years together, so far, and trish has become imbued in the oceans family, taken in by tammy, debbie, and lou who’ve adopted her as much as they’ve adopted daphne.

(also worth mentioning since daph has done get smart, she has her own limited but useful martial arts knowledge, and judging by the fact that she almost drowned on interstellar and what she had to put up with through dark knight rises, daph is no stranger to tenacity or grit, herself. just maybe a little less than trish, who has become one of the most formidable martial artists one can face in her rigorous acquisition of krav maga knowledge and her hellcat powers.)

trish willingly goes to daph when she has a problem, no matter how grievous the problem is. it took a lot of learning to understand that they’re a team and they can be there for each other no matter what. trish can fuck up massively and count on daph to help her out of it, or to help her get over the ridge for it.

let’s go for some headcanon bullets ‘cause i love those.

when trish and daphne adopt dakota, they get him a black borzoi puppy he names macaroni, who is promptly nicknamed roni. 

macaroni is a ptsd service dog who specializes in anxiety and grows up with dakota, learning to help him when it gets hard for him to express or when he needs to get out of a situation. 

daphne really likes trish’s short hair because it’s so easy to run her hands through.

daphne also really enjoys making it into a mohawk in the bath solely for the purpose of blowing bubbles off the top of her head. they both get a good giggle out of it.

daph convinces her into the yearly oscar nom watches. they’re either incredibly serious and attentive or completely absurd about how shitty or boring the content is.

mutual complaining about the straight-white-cis-maleness of the academy is household discussion. 

trish, after being taught somewhat how to dance by tammy, has coerced daph into a dance later that night to brown-eyed girl. it was very deliberate, and it lights up daph like no other. it’s the most sincere gesture she’s ever had anyone make.

every so often trish is gorgeous in a suit that compliments daphne’s outfits, colored to match her palette.

#diamonds are forever. trish&daphne. #dakota kluger. 'cause you are loved you are loved more than you know i hereby pledge all my days to prove it so. #v: main: hero unburdened ❂ atlas self made #criminallyfamous #[i'm CRYING BASICALLY.] #[THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.]

[kvothe-kingkiller]

wtf is Nephelai

aight so if you’ve been following me for a bit you probably have Noticed me posting about the Thing I am writing which is called Nephelai.

so I thought I’d give a lil primer on it just for uhhh fun? I guess?

anyways. if you want it in a sentence its ‘gays out-science the competition’

if you want a little bit More info than that 4-5 word (depending on ur opinions on hyphens) blurb, here u go. I will put her under the cut so it does not clutter up the dashes of anyone who isn’t into this kinda thing. I am shit at brevity so this in itself is kinda long.

Just as far as vague genre/feeling stuff goes, it’s a sci fi and it kinda combines adventure with slice of life? Idk man. Its very much character based and a lot of it is dialogue. If you’re looking for pretty, poetic writing you’re not gonna find it here, I tend to just get to the point lol. It deals with some pretty heavy/dark stuff but I will tell you upfront that the ending is happy. There’s too many dark edgy books that end sad. Plus we don’t have enough gay stories that end well. It’s also quite R rated, though more in the violence/sweary way than the sexy way. 

Given that it does deal with some Rough Shit (child abuse, racism, depression, etc.) I have a list of all the chapters and their possible triggers here. (its at the bottom of the post)  I just put in general things but if you have a specific/more obscure trigger I would be happy to inform you if/where it shows up.

Also, just so you know, this fucker is Long. its at 180+K and I still haven’t gotten all the chapters out yet. As well as that, this is essentially a first draft. I know its slow to start and choppy in some places but currently Im just trying to get it out, and uploading the chapters as I go gives me incentive to do that, cause otherwise I’d never even get the first draft done. Basically I write a chapter, check for spelling and grammar mistakes, miss most of them because grammar is my kryptonite, then upload it. I will be editing it a Lot in the future. 

anyways.

Setting

The story is set in our universe in The Future. How far in the future? don’t ask because I don’t know. I don’t want a 2001 space odyssey situation. A lot of the technological advancements would take wildly different times to achieve so I don’t want to put a number on it especially because we are very bad at predicting how fast things will advance. It is at Least 150 years I’d say.

Humans have moved on from earth and colonized new planets. They’re still on earth, it’s just that they’re also in other places. Namely Mars and proxima centauri B which has been renamed Salus to keep up with the whole roman god thing (she’s the goddess of safety). Both planets have colonies from multiple different countries. Not all countries, I mean lets be real lichtenstein isn’t colonizing mars anytime soon. The two american colonies on both planets are Lincoln (Mars) and Roosevelt (Salus). The way that people travel between these planets which are v far away is through electromagnetic radiation powered engines and the use of man made wormholes. Let’s ignore relativity and pretend that when you get close to the speed of light your timeline Doesn’t slow down because I don’t want to deal with that.

However, those planets are not where most of the book takes place. The main planet they are on is Nephelai (shocker I know.) It is a planet with a small research colony on it. Before the colony was put in place, it was a barren planet with some water that was in the zone for life, and just didn’t have any. They terraformed the fuck out of it so the atmosphere is the same as earths then installed a Beyersdorf around it. A beyersdorf is basically a time machine. Anything inside it will have it’s timeline sped up. Uses some black hole jiggery pokery I don’t want to explain because it would be... impossible. Anyways, they placed some organic molecules on it and sped it up until life evolved then slowed it back down to normal time to go in and observe. It has tall mountains and a surface that is so hot that water boils. So all of the life lives up in the clouds around the peaks. Most of it is adapted for life in the air. Such as: giant borzois with wings and living blimps that are basically guppies. Its very cold and people have to have specialized gear to go outside.

Plot

I don’t want to go too much into the plot because... thats why you Read books, but I’ll give my best summary. Basically the main character, Nadia, is getting her masters in evolutionary biology and has to do a year long research project. She goes with her professor, Brenley, to Nephelai to do the project. While there, the planet is invaded by uhhhh neo nazis (whoops) and they basically create a hostage situation that is very hard to get out of in order to get the third main, Krupin, a celebrity trash man, to work for them and make some very dangerous biological weapons that his company’s products would be able to produce. Obviously they don’t want this to happen so they have to come up with a plan to escape. However a lot of what happens is more based around the emotional toll it takes to be trapped for so long with no contact to the outside world and the uncertainty of whether they’re gonna make it out or not.

Characters

Alright so now the characters. As I said, this is very much character based. So its more about their interactions than anything else really. Again, lotta dialogue.

Nadia Waters

She is as said before, the main character. A 23 year old dork who is a complete nerd (they all are). She is bi and also a bit of a disaster, naturally. Quite smart but doesn’t think she is, very loyal to the friends she has, and can be a bit shy at first. She is also stupidly brave to the point where its a problem. Her need for adrenaline is Real and she does very stupid things to get it. She describes herself at one point as “just a grad student with a very poor sense of self preservation.” While she doesn’t go looking for fights she will definitely stand up for herself and others and throw down against people who could very easily kill her.

Elias Brenley

Nadia’s professor, also a dork, also a nerd. A lanky french weirdo with an obsession for physics and a love for 80s music. Very spontaneous and doesn’t give a shit about embarrassing himself. He has aspergers and even though he is very smart and can do some savant-like tricks, that isn’t the only aspect of his personality (what a novel idea...) He Also isn’t just a ‘robot’, he cares a lot about others, especially those who don’t mind his quirks. Also I took the expected subplot of ‘male professor gets with female student’ and threw it in the garbage where it belongs cause he’s gay as hell. He and Nadia do become very close but it is 100% platonic

Feliks Krupin

Also a nerd, also gay (seeing a pattern?). He is pretty much a public figure as he owns one of the biggest biotech companies out there, Vozmet. Kinda like if you took elon musk and removed the asshole-ness. Annoyingly perfect in every way, charming, pretty, v smart, all those. Struggles with a good amount of mental stuff that most of the world doesn’t know about and came from a pretty shitty background. Him and Brenley have some History though at the beginning of the story they haven’t seen each other in 9 years. Tends to be noble to a fault and will sacrifice himself for basically anyone. 

Some other characters who aren’t the main three:

Kristina: The president of Vozmet to Krupin’s CEO and his best friend. About five foot nothing and has the appropriate amount of concentrated rage. She’s not mean, she just doesn’t let anyone push her around and knows how to get what she wants. 

Heidi: One of the only sane ones. Was determined by others to be the leader of the hostages so to speak and has Way too much on her plate. Is often the one voice of sanity or the one to actually get the others to stay on task

James: Drinks that respect women juice all day every day. Very nice. Doesn’t deserve this situation. Has a bit of a thing for Nadia.

Scott: Is the other only sane one along with Heidi. The doctor of the group who almost acts as a father figure to all of them even though he’s not That much older than some of them.

Saoirse: Dumb irish lesbian. ‘Nuff said. 

Links

so if you like the sound of any of that you can find it on 

fictionpress: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

or AO3 here

if u took the time to read this massive post, and/or read some, I luv u. *mwah*

#my shtuff #nephelai #big boy post #lorge

[republicstandard]

Racial Profiles: Borzoi Boskovic, Host of The Poz Button

In ten words or less, describe your political persuasion.

Racist trade-unionism with nationalist characteristics.

How and when did you become “red pilled”?

Trayvon, etc. It's not really an interesting story. Most "redpill" stories aren't, to be honest.

What (or who) is the single biggest threat to the continued existence of Western civilization?

Liberal and decadent bourgeois whites. There's nothing to save if people don't want to save themselves.

What figure has been the greatest influence on the development of your political/ideological beliefs?

Probably Ted Kaczynski's writings, but it was never something I really took seriously or developed as you don't want to be known as the guy who said he was influenced by the Unabomber Manifesto. I grew up in a committed non-religious family so naturally, my mind became obsessed with death and by extension, it became obsessed with eschatology and the end of all things. Just normal teenage stuff, right? I got really into reading all about post-apocalyptic societies and the different end scenarios for all things, and thus that led to me discovering the grey goo scenario (spoiler: nanomachines go out of control and devour the world). Interest in that led to me reading, in college, the famous Wired article Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. Kaczynski was never anything more than just a whack-a-doodle bomber whose artist's sketch terrified me as a child, someone whom I was told as a teen that my nascent libertarianism at the time would inevitably lead towards, but that article gave me exposure to his ideas for the first time and I became obsessed with the possible futures that Kaczynski outlined. I wish he'd never committed the heinous and horrific crimes he committed, as we lost such a brilliant mind to system but I suppose that was inevitable when your professor is Henry Murray, the OSS's guy who pioneered the techniques for MK-ULTRA.

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Now here I am, actually influenced in my thinking by his writings on technological society and not entirely sure we can avoid the TechnoGay PissEarth future he outlined for us.

I guess they were right to warn me after all.

What are some other influences on you personally but perhaps not politically?

G.K. Chesterton is still a massive influence on me in terms of attitude and spiritual character. Satan fell by the force of his own gravity. It's important to be able to have a sense of humor about yourself and the world and to still have a mirthful character even when you're staring down at the possibility of PissEarth 2025. I'm a dour and melancholic person by nature; Chesterton's works have always managed to give me a counterbalance to that attitude. My thoughts these days are turning toward Houllebecq these days though, so I guess we'll see how long that attitude holds out. With Lauritz on vacation from The Third Rail, someone needs to embody his well-spring of boundless optimism.

What does your perfect America look like?

I don't know. I don't think I even have one. Non-whites who know my politics have quizzed me on this before, concerned about where my politics will lead to for them. I've said before that I would be perfectly content with a stricter Singaporean system. I don't run around talking about ethnostates or the like though because it's basically pointless. Here's some hard to swallow pills for people:

We aren't going back to the way things were, and we couldn't even if we wanted to.

We are never going to be left alone. There will be no country with giant walls that we get to live our lives peacefully isolated inside.

Every possible good future still ends with us fighting the Chinese.

Our fight is ultimately a global one, and not just because our European brothers are fighting for their countries too. If our enemies succeed, what will happen to many of our most talented people is that they will become a diaspora people serving the Asians and their projects. It's already happening, just look into what's going on with shipbuilding in South Korea and China. If we succeed, well, we still have to oppose the Asian sphere who will do everything they can to hobble us while they expand their soft empires.

These are big geopolitical ideas, I understand. For the regular, average Amerikaner, I just want them to have intact and crime-free communities they can raise their children in without the societal wrecking balls that neoliberal policies smash them up with.

Your critiques of literature and especially film are something the Right has been sorely lacking minus a few exceptions like Trevor Lynch. What got you interested in cinema in particular and what impelled you to begin producing The Poz Button?

I only started the show because I was fascinated by Eyes Wide Shut and the depths of it and wanted to do a podcast about movies I liked. If you listen to the first episodes of the show, it's pretty obvious I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing with it, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious it would get to this point due to my obsession with Metal Gear Solid 2 and the ideas it introduced to many new audiences about how to program a human being, meme theory, and the creation of new contexts in which to manipulate a person, the core purpose of mass media.

The reality is that people believe movies to be reality. How many people have you known who base their opinions and understanding of history with "But, bro, have you seen Schindlers List/Glory/Hidden Figures?" and so on and so forth. The key phrase in the opening song is from Videodrome: "Television is reality, but reality is less than television". These were ideas that George W.S. Trow was touching on in his peculiar work Within the Context of No Context, and these ideas were at the core of Marshall McLuhan's body of work, which was the inspiration for the Brian O'Blivion character in Videodrome. These are the ideas that are at the core of Edward Bernays' incisive understanding of propaganda. You are not immune to propaganda. The most incisive meme against the internet right has been mocking them for their obsession with movies like Bladerunner 2049 and Drive. You are just as bad as the people as you mock, and without understanding this aspect of yourself and your relationship to media, you will be just as cowed and controlled as everyone else. The ultimate form of controlled opposition, really.

There's this very incorrect notion floating around that I'm a cinephile, something which I don't do much to dissuade people from believing due to my enjoyment of fruity foreign and art films. I'm really not though. Every conversation about movies I have with Nick Mason, a true cinephile, always goes like this:

Nick: Have you seen X?

Borzoi: No.

If you've listened to my show consistently then you've likely noticed I don't actually talk about the movie in question much and I almost never talk about actual film techniques, get deep into the cinematography, or really anything that they'd teach you in film school about film. That's because I'm more interested in what Trow was warning against in his short work Within the Context of No Context, that media (but television in particular) was creating a landscape where people completely have no context for understanding reality because of the contextless reality that media provides for you. To put it more simply, Sven once brought up how since the age of the internet, everything culturally fracturing more and more and there's no 'culture' in the way there was a 70s culture, an 80s culture, a 90s culture, and so on and so forth. That's living without context, and that leaves you utterly atomized.

My background is in literature. I'm a writer at heart. I find movies and television to be mostly frivolous. Films are a static medium and force you to always be a passive viewer. They don't have the collaborative, dynamic, or spontaneity that come from other art forms or even hobbies. I'm only interested in it because people watch movies more than they read books or watch plays, so in order to understand what's truly going on in the world and the culture at large you have to meet people at their level. Almost no one outside of our niche circles is reading Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, but millions of people are watching Game of Thrones. There's no value except for its own sake to do a podcast on the former instead of one on the latter.

What are some films you would say are “required viewing” and why?

I don't know. Again, I'm not a cinephile. But you can't go wrong with watching Stanley Kubrick's films. He's the most important filmmaker of the 20th century for a reason. If anything though people should watch documentaries and study their manipulative techniques. Fictional movies have actually exhausted themselves quite a bit and are on a downturn. People want reality but they want it in a digestible form that mimics the structure of storytelling. A lot of this is due to, again, living within the context of no context and thus documentaries not only provide that but also give them a seemingly true reality they can point to for their political and societal views since the democratic society requires that everyone be constantly engaged in it and at the ready to justify themselves and their views.

The reason for the rise of television isn't just because they got better at making it, but because they're able to be more niche instead of going for the lowest common denominator, which movies are required to do in order to justify their budgets, is because it gives you that hit you need for consistently rising and falling action and twists and turns. Why is the twist so ubiquitous and why is it so essential to television series nowadays? Because the human brain is so fried from the media it constantly consumes that it needs novelty in order to keep that high going. People are chasing the dragon when it comes to storytelling. It's the same reason why soap operas and professional wrestling are still so massively popular. It's the twists and turns that keep people coming. Television just promises you twists that are seemingly less ridiculous than soap plot twists.

What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any future projects in the works?

My free time is mostly spent working out, shitposting, reading articles, playing tabletop games, socializing with average people, and chatting with friends. Like I said before, I don't really watch television and movies. I'm working on writing and expanding my show, but I work a pretty hectic job so I get done what I can get done for now.

How do you define success, both personally and in terms of your political and social aims/beliefs?

The only success that will matter is if the Right and the average person takes the threat and the power of the Left seriously. Currently, they do not. Their mindset is stuck in the 1980s. Look at the obsession with 80s-style music and 80s aesthetic and nostalgia for how much nicer things were in the 80s. What these people don't seem to remember though was that the 1980s were a large product of the feeling that nuclear war could occur at any moment, at the madness of these two massive superpowers that they couldn't just put the missiles down and talk to each other. That fueled the 80s, and at the core of it was escaping to frivolousness and the good times because of the madness going on outside. And despite all that nostalgia for this time period, the Right and the average cannot and will not acknowledge the Left for the threat they actually are.

I'm a guy who doesn't care about the long-term goals if you can't even get the simplest step done. That's success to me. If we can't even get these people to take the most immediate threat seriously, then how are you going to accomplish anything else?

How do you see this ending? Is the United States doomed?

The United States as an entity is definitely doomed. The best option for racially conscious whites is to simply band together and check out from the system once it becomes demographically impossible to affect change and let everyone else have the system. Don't try to stop it from collapsing, just let them run it into the ground. The only way that can work though is through true consciousness being achieved, otherwise, you'll just have Brazil with bold men like Bolsonaro doing everything they can to make that shell of a nation still work. But the American people, the Amerikaner as I call it, they'll persist. There are millions of us. But they'll have to determine the future they want to forge, if it will be a separatist one that they can rally around and slowly retake land or if they'll find another way forward. The best case for us presently is to buy as much time as possible so that serious people can emerge that can develop a bold vision for the future of our people.

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What about the West in general?

Every institution of the West is either dead or dying. Like I said before, we're not going back to the way things were. We couldn't even if we wanted to. What remains then is to take what worked and prepare it for the new ways, with a bold and dynamic vision for the future to come. To quote Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism: “When this dream has faded, another will emerge.”

The choice the West is staring down, and no amount of fantasy will make this any different, is death-and-rebirth envisioned by our most optimistic thinkers or the maximal total war scenario that Linkola warns about in Can Life Prevail.

I say this so often that it's a cliché, but you need to have a mind for marathon running, and if you don't then it is better to just go and live life as a woke normal person.

I find it very strange sometimes that people ask someone like me for my perspective on things, but the reality is people do so it's important to me that I do not sugarcoat things for people but at the same time outline a workable vision of the future. Circumstances change constantly and you adapt to those circumstances. Once you understand that things will never be the way they once were, it frees you up to make what happens next work and work towards a vision of the future you'd like for your own.

This fight is not over. It never will be.

Follow Borzoi on Twitter.

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[ezatluba]

Wolf Puppies Are Adorable. Then Comes the Call of the Wild.

Video Scientists aren’t entirely sure how wolves evolved into dogs, but new research into the genetic and social behavior of wolf pups may offer some clues.

RENAUD PHILIPPE 

OCTOBER 13, 2017

I’m sitting in an outdoor pen with four puppies chewing my fingers, biting my hat and hair, peeing all over me in their excitement.

At eight weeks old, they are two feet from nose to tail and must weigh seven or eight pounds. They growl and snap over possession of a much-chewed piece of deer skin. They lick my face like I’m a long-lost friend, or a newfound toy. They are just like dogs, but not quite. They are wolves.

When they are full-grown at around 100 pounds, their jaws will be strong enough to crack moose bones. But because these wolves have been around humans since they were blind, deaf and unable to stand, they will still allow people to be near them, to do veterinary exams, to scratch them behind the ears — if all goes well.

Yet even the humans who raised them must take precautions. If one of the people who has bottle-fed and mothered the wolves practically since birth is injured or feels sick, she won’t enter their pen to prevent a predatory reaction. No one will run to make one of these wolves chase him for fun. No one will pretend to chase the wolf. Every experienced wolf caretaker will stay alert. Because if there’s one thing all wolf and dog specialists I’ve talked to over the years agree on, it is this: No matter how you raise a wolf, you can’t turn it into a dog.

As close as wolf and dog are — some scientists classify them as the same species — there are differences. Physically, wolves’ jaws are more powerful. They breed only once a year, not twice, as dogs do. And behaviorally, wolf handlers say, their predatory instincts are easily triggered compared to those of dogs. They are more independent and possessive of food or other items. Much research suggests they take more care of their young. And they never get close to that Labrador retriever “I-love-all-humans” level of friendliness. As much as popular dog trainers and pet food makers promote the inner wolf in our dogs, they are not the same.

The scientific consensus is that dogs evolved from some kind of extinct wolf 15,000 or more years ago. Most researchers now think that it wasn’t a case of snatching a pup from a den, but of some wolves spending more time around people to feed on the hunters’ leftovers. Gradually some of these wolves became less afraid of people, and they could get closer and eat more and have more puppies, which carried whatever DNA made the wolves less fearful. That repeated itself generation after generation until the wolves evolved to be, in nonscientific terms, friendly. Those were the first dogs.

People must spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for weeks on end with wolf puppies just to assure them that humans are tolerable. Dog puppies will quickly attach to any human within reach. Even street dogs that have had some contact with people at the right time may still be friendly.

Despite all the similarities, something is deeply different in dog genes, or in how and when those genes become active, and scientists are trying to determine exactly what it is.

Wolf pups at Wolf Park, a 65-acre zoo and research facility in Battle Ground, Ind., in July. Though wolves and dogs are extremely similar genetically, their behaviors are very different — and scientists seek to find out why.

There are clues.

Some recent research has suggested that dog friendliness may be the result of something similar to Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in humans that causes hyper-sociability, among other symptoms. People with the syndrome seem friendly to everyone, without the usual limits.

Another idea being studied is whether a delay in development during a critical socializing period in a dog’s early life could make the difference. That delay might be discovered in the DNA, more likely in the sections that control when and how strongly genes become active, rather than in the genes themselves.

This is research at its very beginning, a long shot in some ways. But this past spring and summer, two scientists traveled to Quebec to monitor the development of six wolf pups, do behavior tests and take genetic samples. I followed them.

I visited other captive wolves as well, young and adult, to get a glimpse of how a research project begins — and, I confess, to get a chance to play with wolf puppies.

I wanted to have some firsthand experience of the animals I write about, to look wolves in the eye, so to speak. But only metaphorically. As I was emphatically told in a training session before going into an enclosure with adult wolves, the one thing you definitely do not do is look them in the eye.

From left, Kathryn Lord, Michele Koltookian and Diane Genereux, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, at the Zoo Académie, a combination zoo and training facility in Nicolet, Quebec.

Wolf pups at play at Zoo Académie. Researchers wonder whether a delay in social development in a dog’s early life could explain the difference between wolves and dogs, and they’re looking to DNA for the answer.

Sleeping With Wolves

Zoo Académie is a combination zoo and training facility here on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence River, about two hours from Montreal. Jacinthe Bouchard, the owner, has trained domestic and wild animals, including wolves, all over the world.

This past spring she bred two litters of wolf pups from two female wolves and one male she had already at the zoo. Both mothers gave birth in the same den around the same time at the beginning of June. Then unusually bad flooding of the St. Lawrence threatened the den, so Ms. Bouchard had to remove them at about seven days old instead of the usual two weeks.

Then began the arduous process of socializing the pups. Ms. Bouchard and her assistant stayed day and night with the animals for the first few weeks, gradually decreasing the time spent with them after that.

On June 30, Kathryn Lord and Elinor Karlsson showed up with several colleagues, including Diane Genereux, a research scientist in Dr. Karlsson’s lab who would do most of the hands-on genetics work.

Dr. Lord is part of Dr. Karlsson’s team, which splits time between the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and the Broad Institute in Cambridge. Their work combines behavior and genetic studies of wolf and dog pups.

An evolutionary biologist, Dr. Lord is an old hand at wolf mothering. She has hand-raised five litters.

“You have to be with them 24/7. That means sleeping with them, feeding them every four hours on the bottle, ” Dr. Lord said.

Also, as Ms. Bouchard noted, “we don’t shower” in the early days, to let the pups get a clear sense of who they are smelling.

Dr. Genereux, right, and Ms. Koltookian at the Zoo Académie.

Dr. Genereux, right, and Ms. Koltookian with the wolf pups. The researchers say the odds of being able to pin down genetically the critical shift from helplessness in infancy to being able to explore the world around them are long, but still worth pursuing.

That’s very important, because both wolves and dogs go through a critical period as puppies when they explore the world and learn who their friends and family are.

With wolves, that time is thought to start at about two weeks, when the wolves are deaf and blind. Scent is everything.

In dogs, it starts at about four weeks, when they can see, smell and hear. Dr. Lord thinks this shift in development, allowing dogs to use all their senses, might be key to their greater ability to connect with human beings.

Perhaps with more senses in action, they are more able to generalize from tolerating individual humans with a specific scent to tolerating humans in general with a scent, sight and sound profile.

When the critical period ends, wolves, and to a lesser extent dogs, experience something like the onset of stranger anxiety in human babies, when people outside of the family suddenly become scary.

The odds of being able to pin down genetically the shift in this crucial stage are still long, but both Dr. Lord and Dr. Karlsson think the idea is worth pursuing, as did the Broad Institute. It provided a small grant from a program designed to support scientists who take leaps into the unknown — what you might call what-if research.

There are two questions the scientists want to explore. One, said Dr. Karlsson: ”How did a wolf that was living in the forest become a dog that was living in our homes?”

The other is whether fear and sociability in dogs are related to the same emotions and behaviors in humans. If so, learning about dogs could provide insights to some human conditions in which social interaction is affected, like autism, or Williams syndrome, or schizophrenia.

The pups at Zoo Académie were only three weeks old when the group of researchers arrived. I showed up the next morning and walked into a room strewn with mattresses, researchers and puppies.

The humans were still groggy from a night with little sleep. Pups at that age wake up every few hours to whine and paw any warm body within reach.

Wolf mothers prompt their pups to urinate and defecate by licking their abdomens. The human handlers massaged the pups for the same reason, but often the urination was unpredictable, so the main subject of conversation when I arrived was wolf pup pee. How much, on whom, from which puppy.

As soon as I walked in, I was handed a puppy to cradle and bottle-feed. The puppy was like a furry larva, persistent, single-minded, with an absolute intensity of purpose.

Even with fur, teeth and claws, the pups were still hungry and helpless, and I couldn’t help but remember holding my own children when they took a bottle. I suspect that tiger kittens and the young of wolverines are equally irresistible. It’s a mammal thing.

A wolf pup, inside a pen, observing a borzoi outside at the Zoo Académie. The critical exploratory phase for wolves is thought to start at about two weeks, when wolf pups are still deaf and blind — scent is their primary sense. With dogs, that period begins at about four weeks, when they can see, smell and hear.

The first part of Dr. Lord’s testing was to confirm her observations that the critical period for wolves starts and ends earlier than that for dogs.

She set up a procedure for testing the pups by exposing them to something they could not possibly have encountered before — a jiggly buzzing contraption of bird-scare rods, a tripod and a baby’s mobile.

Each week she tested one pup, so that no pup got used to it. She would put the puppy in a small arena, with low barriers for walls and with the mobile turned on. She would hide, to avoid distracting the puppy. Video cameras recorded the action, showing how the pups stumbled and later walked around the strange object, or shied away from it, or went right up to sniff it.

At three weeks, the pups had been barely able to get around and were still sleeping almost every minute they weren’t nursing. By eight weeks, when I returned to have them gambol all over me, they were rambunctious and fully capable of exploration.

The researchers won’t publicize the results until observers who never saw the puppies view and analyze the videos. But Dr. Lord said that wolf experts considered eight-week-old wolf puppies past the critical period. They were so friendly to me and others because they had been successfully socialized already.

Before and after the test, she collected urine, to measure levels of a hormone called cortisol, which rises during times of stress. If the pup in the video would not approach the jiggly monster and cortisol levels were high, that would indicate that the pup had begun to experience a level of fear of new things that could stop exploration. That would confirm the timing of the critical period.

Dr. Lord letting an eight-week-old wolf pup investigate the jiggly monster testing contraption she devised.

She and Dr. Karlsson and others from the lab also collected saliva for DNA testing. They planned to use a new technique called ATAC-seq that uses an enzyme to mark active genes. Then when the wolf DNA is fed into one of the advanced machines that map genomes, only the active genes would be on the map.

Dr. Genereux, who was isolating and then reading DNA, said she thought it was “a long shot” that they would find what they wanted. She and the other researchers plan to refine their techniques to ask the questions successfully.

When They Grow Up

And what are socialized wolves like when they grow up, once the mysterious genetic machinery of the dog and wolf direct them on their separate ways?

I also visited Wolf Park, in Battle Ground, Ind., a 65-acre zoo and research facility where Dana Drenzek, the manager, and Pat Goodmann, the senior animal curator, took me around and introduced me not only to puppies they were socializing, but to some adult wolves.

Timber, a mother of some of the pups at Wolf Park in Indiana.

In the 1970s, Ms. Goodmann worked with Erich Klinghammer, the founder of Wolf Park, to develop the 24/7 model for socializing wolf puppies, exposing them to humans and then also to other wolves, so they could relate to their own kind but accept the presence and attentions of humans, even intrusive ones like veterinarians.

The sprawling outdoor baby pen was filled with cots and hammocks for the volunteers, since the wolves were now nine and 11 weeks old and living outdoors all the time. There were plastic and plywood hiding places for the wolves and plenty of toys. It looked like a toddlers’ playground, except for the remnants of their meals — the odd deer clavicle or shin bone, and other assorted ribs, legs and shoulder bones, sometimes with skin and meat still attached.

The puppies were extremely friendly with the volunteers they knew, and mildly friendly with me. The adult wolves I met were also courteous, but remote. Two older males, Wotan and Wolfgang, each licked me once and walked away. Timber, the mother of some of the pups, and tiny at 50 pounds, also investigated me and then retired to a platform nearby.

Only Renki, an older wolf who had suffered from bone cancer and now got around on three legs, let me scratch his head for a while. None was bothered by my presence. None was more than mildly interested. None seemed to realize or care about my own intense desire to see the wolves, be near them, learn about them, touch them.

Pat Goodmann, the senior animal curator at Wolf Park.

A mobile of animal bones hangs over the nursery where pups at Wolf Park live until aged 5-6 weeks.

I saw how powerfully a visit with wolves could affect how you feel about the animals. I wanted to come back and help raise pups, and keep visiting so that I could say an adult wolf knew me in some way.

But I also wondered whether it was right to keep wolves in this setting. In the wild, they travel large distances and kill their food. These wolves were all bred in captivity and that was never a possibility for them.

But was I simply indulging a fantasy of getting close to nature? Was this in the same category as wanting a selfie with a captive tiger? What was best for the wolves themselves?

I asked Ms. Goodmann about it. She said that park operated on the idea that getting to know the park’s wolves, which had never been deprived of an earlier life in the wild, would make visitors care more for wild wolves, for conservation, for preserving a life for wild carnivores that they could never be part of.

And she noted that Wolf Park operates as a combination zoo and research station. Students and others from around the world compete to work as interns, helping with everything from raising puppies to emptying the fly traps.

This is the rationale for all zoos, and it was a strong argument. Then she made it stronger. She pointed out that one of the interns, Doug Smith, worked on the reintroduction of wild wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

Dana Drenzek, manager of Wolf Park, with a pup.ANDREW SPEAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Haley Gorenflo, a volunteer at Wolf Park, howling with adolescent wolves.

Dr. Smith has had a major role in the Wolf Restoration Project from the very beginning in 1995 and has been project leader since 1997. I reached him one morning at his office at park headquarters and asked him about his time as an intern at Wolf Park.

“I hand-reared four wolf pups, sleeping with them on a mattress for six weeks,” he said. “It had a profound effect. It was the first wolf job I ever got in my life. It turned into my career.”

From there he went on to study wild wolves on Isle Royale in Michigan, and then to work with L. David Mech, a pioneering wolf biologist who is senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. Eventually, he went to Yellowstone to work on restoring wolves to the park.

He said ethical questions about keeping wild animals in captivity are difficult, even when every effort is made to enrich their lives. But places like Wolf Park provide great value, he said, if they can get people “to think about the plight of wolves across the world, and do something about it.”

In today’s environment, “with conservation on the run, nature on the run, you need them,” he added.

Then he said what all wolf specialists say: That even though wolf pups look like dogs, they are not, that keeping a wolf or a wolf-dog hybrid as a pet is a terrible idea.

“If you want a wolf,” he said, “get a dog.”

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Tear Up the Boards: An Interview with XETAS

Photo courtesy of Xetas

  I had an interesting conversation about the notion that certain songs can seem to become a part of your DNA immediately upon hearing them. Upon hearing the track “The Lamb,” from Austin sweethearts Xetas, I was immediately stuck in deja vu, remembering back to a time holding a Playstation controller with Tony Hawk Pro Skater on my television screen. I bring this specific scenario up because those songs and those feelings helped shape a grand portion of my music tastes for years to come. They grew with me, and I immediately feel joy upon hearing any songs from those soundtracks.

Simply put, this group of three best friends make music that crawls its way into your blood. And it stays there. David’s graveled vocals swirling in unison with Kana’s voice of frustration (especially seen in “The Gaze”) and foreboding warning, all swept in a hurricane of jangling, noise-rock-inspired guitar, threading it’s way between a perfectly orchestrated, pummeling rhythm section, building an uproar of palpable outrage. In a time of turmoil, and with an uncertain future, 2017 has been a strange year for us all. One thing, however, is assured: 2017 and beyond belongs to Xetas.

  Free Press Houston spoke to the band about their new album, The Tower, their energetic live shows, and about what Austin bands they’re listening to right now:

  “The Tower.” Photo courtesy of Xetas

  Free Press Houston: Treat me as if I am a person completely unfamiliar with the band. What I can expect when I come to a live performance, or if I put on this record?

Kana: One guitar, one bass, one drum set, everyone yells. David: Expect a lot of energy and expect it to be very LOUD!

FPH: The new album, The Tower, rightfully brought to life by 12XU records, is a beautifully crafted collection of very powerful and memorable songs. I’ve read in places it was an almost accidental concept album taking aim at our political climate and the negative behaviors that are now empowered by our new administration. Kana: I think if you’re sensitive to the world and others around you, things you observe and react to are going to seep into your work. When we were writing these songs, we didn’t think, “O.K., so this is how the presidential race is going, let’s write what happened in the news.” But the more we’d see and hear about national-scale problems, and also be confronted with local problems that were just smaller echoes of these bigger issues, and we would talk about how we felt about those things and how they affected our lives, as well as what was going on in our personal lives — and then practice for two hours. So it was probably on our minds the entire time without us realizing it. We try not to get too hung up in the studio and look at making an album as a snapshot of a time, mistakes and all, and I think that the timeframe in which we created this album definitely influenced the themes and tone of the LP as a whole. David: Yeah there was no way we could have known that Trump would actually get elected, but just the political and social climate during the period we were writing the album was a huge influence. The songs are more about the personal struggle of the individual surviving in that climate, and not so much about the politics or social issues themselves. FPH: Upon each of you being remarkably talented musicians, you continue to give endlessly energetic performances. Would you consider your live performance an essential thing to behold if someone wants to really appreciate Xetas as a whole?

David: Absolutely. Every time we record I think the goal is to capture the energy of the live show as much as possible in a studio environment, so if you want to get the real deal, you gotta come to a show! You can still enjoy the songs for what they are, but I think the energy of our show helps get the message across and engage the audience better.

Kana: Definitely. I mean, I’ve never seen us, but I’ve heard we’re really good live! (haha) I am huge fans of both David and Jay in their other projects and as people, and I love being able to watch them play. So I bet it’s pretty good when we’re all three up there. One time I wasn’t really “feeling it” on stage and kind of dialed it in, and at some point I made eye contact with a good friend that also plays music and he gave me the most disappointed, disgusted look and I felt so ashamed. After the show, I talked to him about it and he was very direct with me, saying that he could tell when I was faking it and it completely flattened the emotion of the show. Ever since then I try to devote 100 percent of my mental capacity and emotion to each performance, because it really makes a difference.

FPH: Xetas has been a group 3+ years at this point, with an impressive handful of releases under your collective belts. In those three years, as bands progress, what would you say some of the most valuable changes/maturities have taken place to become the band you are today?

David: Personally, I’ve learned to trust myself as a songwriter and not worry about what anyone will think about our “sound” or our “direction” with each new thing. I feel like we’re comfortable enough now that we know what we want and how to get it, and I trust my bandmates instincts. Every album and every tour we get a little bit better at it, too.

Kana: I like that we have figured out how to be completely self-sufficient in that time, which is a huge point of pride for me personally. Our label presses the records, but we manage, fund and promote everything else ourselves on top of each holding down full-time jobs, relationships and participating in the community. It’s a lot of work, but also a lot of reward. We don’t have to answer to a label or an agent and can accomplish the same things other more successful bands have done by thinking ahead and working together. If we find the right agent, we would consider a partnership, but from doing all the legwork and paying all the bills ourselves, we know exactly how being in a band should go and can’t be taken for fools. As a music documentary junkie, the lesson I’ve learned is: know what is going on with your band or someone will take advantage of it. So we’ve always prioritized setting goals and working together, and the hard work is starting to really pay off.

FPH: Austin is bursting at the seams with bands, and it’s hard for everyone to be aware of everything going on. Being a band of incredibly talented, genuinely great people in a city such as Austin, where because of the amount of transplant inhabitants it immediately sets up the mercenary mindset of “I am here to get mine,” do you find more success on the road, or playing locally in a comfortable setting?

Kana: I think we tend to surprise people on the road. A lot of people who play music in Austin only focus on “making it” or whatever, or in terms of getting social capital out of it, like, whatever their idea of being “a notable person about town is.” But we’re not really trying to prove anything, we just make music because it’s what we like doing, and we are lucky to live in a town where we have access to multiple venues multiple nights of the week and a giant roster of peers. When I was growing up here, all the older kids called Austin “the Velvet Coffin” because it was so seductive and comfortable and then one day the lid snaps shut and you’re trapped and never did those things you said you were gonna. So that has always been a fear of mine. I just wanna keep moving and go anywhere there is opportunity and support for us. David: When I moved to Austin years and years ago, it was a little overwhelming, but I never had that mercenary mindset. I’ve always seen punk as a community and not a competition, so I just put in the work and tried to prove myself. It’s definitely easier to pack a house and have a wild show here in Austin, but every time we go out on the road it’s more successful. I feel like the word is starting to get out to other places that we aren’t fucking around.

FPH: Xetas is a beast of it’s own creation, and the power seems to come from the chemistry between members. Who or what else inspires you to create what you create?

David: Inspiration can come from anywhere. Sometimes I’ll read something in a book and that will get the gears turning, or I’ll have a conversation with a friend that will make me think about something in a new way and that will inform a song. A lot of the great bands here in town are constantly inspiring me. We have so many talented friends. We really have to work hard to keep up!

Kana: I’m definitely inspired by my bandmates and conversations with my friends. Our music community is full of passions and projects that are interesting, well-executed and push me to want to be a better musician and artist. I also work in a record store and am constantly finding sources of inspiration in music that my friends share with me in addition to what I find and research on my own. I inherited a love of history from my Dad, and combined with being a record store nerd, I am constantly seeking out new timelines to explore.

FPH: Mentioning earlier the influx of Austin bands, are there any local bands you particularly are enjoying at the moment? What are some memorable shows you feel stick with you?

David: Jesus, too many to name, and I know I’m gonna miss some important ones, but off the top of my head Borzoi, Vampyre, Lung Letters, Street Sects, and Tear Dungeon, who may be defunct now. Breathing Problem… I could go on forever. I think all of our shows have been a blast, and we really haven’t had a shitty one. The last tour kickoff that ended up being the Hex Dispensers farewell show will definitely stick with me for a while.

Kana: I really enjoy Mamis, Hot Fruit, Lustron, and Street Sects for rock or noise shows, and lately I’ve been enjoying Jonathan Horne’s various projects and Christina Carter’s solo shows when I can catch them in town. One of the great things about Austin is that there are so many musicians and bands here that you can see all types of music and all formats of shows, sometimes happening within blocks of each other.

FPH: Now that The Tower is released, what are the future plans for the band? Any slowing down points, or is there no choice but to go all in and take over?

David: I don’t think we know how to slow down or take it easy, haha. We’re writing the third LP right now, as well as working on a short East Coast jaunt for the fall… gonna try to do some radio sessions while we’re out there. Kana is editing together a tour documentary, and we’ll hopefully have some more music videos out in the near future. I dunno, we’re doing it all ourselves so we can do whatever we want, I guess. It’s a good feeling!

Kana: Haha, yeah, I’m not sure if slowing down is an option. Life is short and we have a lot more to do. Catch XETAS at Walters, Wednesday July 26. The night will also be the LP release show for Houston’s own Poizon, with support from local synth punks Criminal Itch. Grab a copy of “The Tower” from 12XU.net or from the band themselves.

Tear Up the Boards: An Interview with XETAS this is a repost