Grian Be Like:

Grian be like:

If there's one thing that humanizes me to my fellow productive member of society, it's that I love a good button. Elevators, jukeboxes, medical equipment: if you make a quality button, I will push the hell out of it. I've bought tons of things on impulse, just because the buttons were of a high quality.

What that device is does not really matter to me. Like I just said, I'll buy anything if it's satisfying to push. And lots of high-quality, expensive stuff just... isn't. There's no excuse for why your hugely pricey stereo system feels worse to jab your finger into than any given Fisher-Price toddler toy.

I didn't know much about buttons at all when I was a kid. Just took them for granted, like you do for so many other things: gravity, breathable air, the option for grandpa to hide you from family services when they start wondering why your mom and dad are off auditioning for the circus again instead of feeding you. Buttons, though, have a long and fascinating history. And you won't read about it here, because we have things to do.

So if you're about to throw something away that has a satisfying button on it, pry that button out and keep it. You'll wish you had it the next time you encounter something with a button that sucks. And it's not like the police can really get you for "vandalism" just because you pried out that bullshit touch screen from your apartment elevator and crammed a nice Otis part in there. At least, not if you do a good enough job of wiring.

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak.

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth.

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human.

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

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cowfoodisgoodfood

4 months ago

Octopus filmed changing colours while sleeping.

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cowfoodisgoodfood

1 year ago

"The notion of Palestine being Arab emerges, really, only in the 60s. because... what did Israelis do? the colonial era is over; the Ottoman Empire is gone, finally the British are gone, and the Jewish people finally, having outlived all these empires, going back to the Roman Empire, finally restore their sovereignty. What do they do? they do what every self-respecting people in history did when the colonial people were gone- they call the country by their name, right? so Siam becomes Thailand, and the Gold Coast becomes Ghana, and Palestine becomes Israel because Palestine was the colonial name and Israel is the original, indigenous name.

Once the Jews call the land Israel... in order to present the Jews as foreign, [...] thieves, interlopers, Arabs began to hijack the name Palestine, to say, actually we are Palestine, whereas previously everyone understood it was Jews. and I love it, because sometimes you see on the internet, oh look Palestine existed, and they show, like, the Palestine football team and if you look closely all the names are like [...] all Jewish [...] because this was the Jewish football team of the Jewish state in the making, and the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra was the orchestra of Jewish exiles that became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. So, this is a classis [...] hijacking of the Arabs of something that was very Jewish, in order to present the Jews as thieves, rather than the original owners."

-Einat Wilf (source)

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? i guess good to know new jeresy SoPac South Orange is a place

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cowfoodisgoodfood

3 months ago

אוקיי אף אחד לא שאל אבל הנה הסבר על ששת המצבים של שוקולד ולמה השוקולד נראה ככה:

שמתם פעם שאם ממיסים שוקולד בבית הוא נהיה פחות טעים? שהוא נהיה רך ולא מבריק? שהוא מתמצק רק במקרר ולא בטמפרטורת החדר?

לשוקולד יש 6 סידורים של התגבשות. 4 מהם נמסים בטמפרטורה של פחות 30°, אחד נמס בטמפרטורת הגוף, ואחד נמס בסביבות 40°. קשה להגיע אליו בהמסה אז בינתיים נתעלם ממנו.

אנחנו רוצים את הסידור שנמס בטמפרטורת הגוף, כדי שהשוקולד ימס על הלשון אבל יהיה קראנצ'י. בשביל זה, אנחנו צריכים לשלוט בגבישים שלו, ולוודא שכל הגבישים יציבים ב28°, ונמסים רק בטמפרטורת הגוף. לכן צריך לעשות תהליך שנקרא טמפרור, בו ממיסים את השוקולד (ממיסים את כל הגבישים), נותנים לו להתקרר קצת ואז ממיסים אותו שוב עד טמפרטורה של בערך 30° כדי להמיס את הגבישים שנמסים בטמפרטורה נמוכה, וככה לוודא שכל השוקולד בגבישים הטעימים שנמסים בטמפרטורת הגוף.

מה זה המצב השישי? שוקולד, בסופו של דבר, הוא לא יציב, ואם תתנו לשוקולד לשבת הרבה זמן, במיוחד במקרר, הוא יתפרק. השומן יצוף למעלה, והשוקולד לא יהיה מבריק וזה יראה כאילו יש עליו אבקה לבנה. זה בסדר!!! הוא יהיה קצת פחות טעים, כי הוא ימס בטמפרטורה גבוהה ולא יהיה ממש קרמי בפה, אבל הוא יהיה סבבה לגמרי לאכילה, ופחות יפה. אין איך לעצור את זה, אבל אם בא לכם לראות את זה קורה אפשר להאיץ את זה! קחו שוקולד, תמיסו אותו (בלי לטמפרר) ושימו במקרר! תוך שבוע תהיה עליו אבקה לבנה, שהיא השומן.

כן כן, מוצרי אוכל בארץ בחיים לא יגיעו לרמה של יפן, שהמוצר שבתמונת האריזה נראה כמעט אותו הדבר כמו המוצר האמיתי

אבל אני מוצאת את זה מצחיק שמוצרים בארץ לפעמים זה כזה;