Tentacular Investigations

louis-damien:
Hearing them get so excited over the whale fall is so fun I love hearing people who are passionate about their work
Fascinating to see how low energy this ecosystem is. This is the greatest bounty these animals will probably see in their lives, and they’re sleepily shuffling toward it, because their body literally lacks the energy to move any faster than that. To them it probably feels like breakneck speed.

(via tarsisus-and-company)

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prudencepaccard:

prudencepaccard:
these tags are so incredible

(via a-voltage)

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pascalcampion:

This is where we say goodbye
#pascalcampion

(via paunchsalazar)

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copperbadge:

[ID: A statue of a person lying on a very plush looking pillow-bed; the sculpture is nude with back to the camera, face turned to the side, lying on a dramatic drapery, with one foot gently raised.]
This is an incredibly compelling work in person for a number of reasons – to begin with, the raised foot isn’t done justice by the photograph, but it’s really funny and very human in person. It looked ancient enough, but also whimsical enough, that I was surprised I hadn’t seen it in the records yet, so I checked out the placard, which put the date at around 100 CE. I must have just missed it while paging through the records. I’m sorry I did, because it’s a gorgeous sculpture. (Its history is complicated but it appears the figure and draperies are ancient while the bed itself is 17th century.)
And it’s called the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, because…
[ID: The statue as seen from the side; head still turned away, the torso is visible, and shows both the generous curve of a breast and also a penis and testicles resting on the drapery on which the figure reclines.]
In ancient history, Hermaphroditus was the child of Aphrodite and Hermes, originally male, who was merged with a naiad who was obsessed with him and became both male and female. He’s generally represented as a very feminine-looking person (hair in the female style of the time, prominent breasts, female clothing, rounded hips) with male genitalia, often coyly on display. The history is complicated; we don’t have good sourcing for the story and we don’t truly know how Hermaphroditus was viewed in the ancient world, as far as I know (classicists feel free to correct me on this). Hermaphroditus, generally referred to with male pronouns even after developing a female appearance, may have represented trans women, intersex people, or some spiritual concept that had little to do with human gender expression at all.
Regardless of the complication surrounding the narrative, the sculpture itself is beautiful, and well worth sharing, I think.

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haunted-xander:

So. Fatebreaker, right? Ryne’s biggest fears made manifest, daddy issues personified, yes?
He’s an amalgamation of Thancred and Ran'jit, his face, his voice and his weapon is Thancred’s, but his body, his fighting style and his words are Ran'jit’s.
Throughout the fight Fatebreaker constantly makes comments about how only he can protect Ryne, only he can provide for her, only he has even the right to so much as stand beside her, to be in her general presence. He’s possessive and obsessive, repeatedly asserting that she is HIS and his only. Which is exactly what Ran'jit says basically every time we encounter him.
But this time it’s in Thancred’s voice. This time it’s with the voice and face of a man she actually cares about.
Ryne isn’t scared of Thancred, she never has been. Even when she first met him she was barely even nervous (as clearly shown in Thancred’s short story). There’s a lot of different feelings happening between those two, but fear has never been one of them.
But now, after things have gotten so much better, she is scared of Thancred becoming like Ran'jit. Because if Thancred was just a little further gone, if he was just a little less compassionate, he would’ve. It wouldn’t be hard for him to go down the same path as Ran'jit did, to be incapable of letting go of the ghost of that girl he loved so so much to the point he’d stubbornly grip anything close to her he could. He didn’t, but the fact he could’ve is terrifying.
It makes his final words, words that are Thancred’s, so very important. This is her deepest fears made manifest, but he still says he wants her to be happy. Her happiness not only matters, but is important to him.

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elfwreck:

mikkeneko:
hello-delicious-tea:
chrliebot:
Apparently Serbia, and especially Belgrade, has a huge problem with air pollution.

Ms. Francine Pickup, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Serbia, explained that: “It is estimated that cities are the source of as much as 75% of total CO2 emissions in the world, of which the largest percentage comes from traffic and cooling and heating in buildings”. She later continued to explain that 59% of the Serbian population lives in urban areas and that the number is constantly increasing. Because the population density is so high, creating green areas and planting trees – which represent natural air purification in urban areas– is a complex goal to achieve, as there is a lack of free areas for landscaping.
The microalgae replace two 10-year-old trees or 200 square meters of lawn. The function of the LIQUID 3 is practically an imitation of it. Both trees and grass perform photosynthesis and bind carbon dioxide. However, the advantage of microalgae is that it is 10 to 50 times more efficient than trees. The team behind LIQUID 3 has stated that their goal is not to replace forests or tree planting plans but to use this system to fill those urban pockets where there is no space for planting trees. In conditions of intense pollution, such as Belgrade, many trees cannot survive, while algae do not have a problem with the great levels of pollution.
The project is designed to be multifunctional. LIQUID3 is also a bench, it has chargers for mobile phones, as well as a solar panel, thanks to which the bench has lighting during the night.
Dr. Ivan Spasojevic also explained that “the Institute used single-celled freshwater algae, which exist in ponds and lakes in Serbia and can grow in tap water, and are resistant to high and low temperatures. The system does not require special maintenance – it is enough to remove the biomass created by dividing algae, which can be used as an excellent fertilizer, in a month and a half, pour new water and minerals, and the algae continue to grow indefinitely. This project aims to popularize and expand the use of microalgae in Serbia, because they can be used in wastewater treatment, as compost for green areas, for the production of biomass and biofuels, as well as for air purification from exhaust gases from the factories”.
A Liquid Tree? Scientists in Serbia Make Incredible Innovation - World Bio Market Insights
Planting trees in forests is a commonly used strategy for companies and governments to lower CO2 in the air. But what can we do in dense cit
World Bio Market Insights
Liquid tree to combat air pollution in Belgrade
Liquid 3 is a photo-bioreactor with microalgae that cleans the air and serves as a bench in the Belgrade city centre.
Balkan Green Energy News
[Image ID. Screenshot from twitter. User @pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (with an icon of a pixelated boat) wrote: “My goal is to be the first person dead inside one of these.”
pixelatedboat is responding to a tweet from the account @yupthtexists who wrote: “Scientists create Liquid Trees; a tank full of water and micro-algae that could be an alternative to trees in urban areas.”
Underneath is two photos of the tank in question: a rectangular green tank in a black frame of about human height. There is also an ivory bench attached to the tank. In the background is a street scene with cars, businesses, bike racks and trees. End ID.]
This is lovely.
Trees require dirt with good nutrients. One of the problems with “plant trees in cities” is that trees in cities are drinking water full that includes street runoff, and the dirt is soaked with exhaust fumes, oil, cleaning solutions, and random toxic chemicals.
Trees need sunlight - a stable amount of it, at the right times of day, at the right times of year. (Algae needs sunlight but it’s a lot less picky about it.) Trees have leaves that get shed… do you sweep them into the garbage? Try to gather them as mulch for plants that are nowhere near the trees? They grow branches that need to be trimmed for safety reasons - but not trimmed too much, because that can severely damage the tree. …And so on. Trees require conditions maintenance that an urban center may not be able to provide.
“Space that’s in the light sometimes and is big enough for a vat of green sludge” is much more available, and cities should be all over this.