Episode 39 Of The Magnus Protocol Is Now Available Wherever You Get Your Podcasts.

having sex with me is always incest because I consider us all brothers and sisters in our shared struggle against capital

To anyone who follows me, I don't care about nor trust Colossal Biosciences anymore (The people behind the "Wooly Mice"). They have proven themselves to be headline-chasing grifters after this latest stunt. They are claiming to have de-extincted *Aenocyon dirus*, aka the Dire Wolf, by editing just 20 genes from the the DNA of a Grey Wolf (*Canis lupus*) to make this thing:

If it wasn't clear from their scientific names, Grey Wolves and Dire Wolves aren't remotely related to one another aside from being Canids, despite what pop culture like Game of Thrones would have you believe. If they did look like each other, it would have had to be via convergent evolution, as they only shared a common ancestor over 5 million years ago.

This distinction, however, isn't found in the publicized articles about this so-called resurrected Dire Wolf and makes their claim that they brought the Dire Wolf back by simply editing *20* genes from the genome of a Grey Wolf laughable. A Dire Wolf would have shared more in common genetically with a Maned Wolf (*Chrysocyon brachyurus*) or Bush Dog (*Speothos venaticus*) than it would with a Grey Wolf.

Bottom line, don't fall for whatever this company is trying to tell you. If the Dire Wolf were to be brought back, it wouldn't be via something like this, and certainly wouldn't *look* like this. If you want an idea as to how a real Dire Wolf would look like in life, here is some fantastic paleoart by artist Mauricio Antón:

Addendum: I seem to have partially miscalculated Dire Wolf genetics. They were not closer to Maned Wolves or Bush Dogs, but they were still not closely related to Grey Wolves. They were basal members of Canini, related to canids like Jackals (genus Lupulella) but distinct from them. I am sorry for this misinformation in my attempt to correct other misinformation. My main point, however, is still correct.

it's always "kill yourself" and never "i'm going to kill you". no one wants to work these days

Dragons are a girl's best friends

FRIENDSHIP ENDED WITH INK5OUL NOW HEINRICH UNHEIMLICH IS MY BEST FRIEND

Happy Ace day everyone <33

big brown eyes. long dark hair

rhaenyra targaryen. you have a fucking type

trump could inadvertently win the nobel peace prize if he got those three to actually agree on something

As someone from konkan who called people in hilly/pahadi regions of Western Ghats "Desi" this information is even weirder...

'Desi' meant something entirely different to me growing up, tbh. We're in a mountainous region, we're from the hills so we called ourselves and the culture and the native flora and fauna 'pahadi' ('of the mountains') and that stood in opposition to 'desi' - used to mean 'of the plains'.

Then I started seeing people call themselves 'desi' to mean 'Indian', then saw it being used in a general 'south asian' sense, particularly oved the internet or in more global (but informal) contexts. I probably tagged some of my posts that had to do with something specific to India 'desi' too bc I didn't know how else to find others to talk to that stuff about but even then I never used the term for myself because it has never fit. And the kind of people I saw using it, often disapora South Asians but also particularly people from northern plain regions of India, I'd say I didn't see myself fit with their idea of desi anyway at the end of the day. And I never could get on board with using 'desi' to refer to all South Asian or even all Indian people when that's just one Hindi word, felt like ceding more ground to the homogenising of language and culture to place Hindi at the centre of the Indian identity, why would I say desi to refer to myself when I've always said pahadi, why would I say desi to refer to my friends from southern India and north east India when that's never who we referred to as 'desi' and they won't use that word in their own languages anyway, let alone why would I use it to refer to South Asians as a whole?

Obviously it's being used a certain way to have a shorthand for an identity and that's fine and whatever, and obviously there are hegemonic reasons for why That ended up being the word in common use (Hindi, north indian). I just prefer saying what I actually mean especially when I'm referring to my own identity and I think Indian, South Asian, etc etc fulfill that purpose better as far as I'm concerned

I love the idea that the 15th Doctor is one of the incarnations totally willing to manipulate his friends and companions, but he does it THROUGH laughs and smiles and charm, so much so that he barely even registers that that’s what he’s doing. Upbeat darkness.

Of course, “silly Doctor hiding a manipulative streak” is hardly new, but there’s a specific difference between, say, 7 using silliness to trick enemies but manipulating Ace more overtly, and 15 trying to manipulate Belinda, his potential new companion, USING his charm. It’s a (relatively) new angle on the Doctor’s manipulative behavior. I’m not gonna say it’s NEVER been done before (thousands of stories across several mediums over 60 years, I’m sure it’s cropped up), but this is the most overt example of the Doc using this specific manipulation tactic to my mind.

Belinda, having been the victim of a (clumsy) attempt at manipulation by Alan in the past, recognizes it right away and calls the Doc out, and he still doesn’t let the smile drop until he recognizes he isn’t gonna charm his way out of the situation.

And he KNOWS she’s right. But it almost makes him mad that she recognizes it too. You can see it on his face. He wants to argue back. But he knows she’s right, so he doesn’t.