people who are like “how dare they retcon Spock having a sister” are so weak. have you seen the show? Spock said “one of my ancestors married a human female” and it wasn’t until a year later his best friends found out he was talking about his fucking parents, and even then he only reluctantly let it slip because they were in the room
The man has a whole ass brother and doesn’t mention it until his brother kidnaps them.
Didn’t mention his wife until it concerned biology, Vulcan biology, the biology of Vulcans. That biology.
masks and helmets that hides someone’s face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved
these are all creatures to me
Angel of War, angular and strange, gleaming silver and gold, Angel of Wonder, pure and one-eyed, looking to stars new and old, Angel of Harvest, simple and hidden, bring nature’s sweetness to all, Angel of Health, mysterious and fine, beacon when life starts to fall, Angel of the Deep, crooked and cage-like, guide us across the sea, Angel of Solace, protect us from evil, lead us to where we are free.
Was inspired by the previous post a while back, and had been working on this on and off for a long while.
You can see the full-resolution versions on My Patreon.
“I am going to get a good grade in ___________, a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve” drifts through my brain with positively alarming regularity.
So basically, Dolly the sheep was an accident. They were trying to clone sheep cells, and they ended up unintentally generating an embryo, which turned out to be viable, hence we got Dolly.
The method they used proved unsuccessful in primates, and the risk of cloning primates (and thus humans) outweighs the benefits (because there really aren’t any real benefits, scientifically speaking), so they don’t do it.
Where it’s most likely to be used is in agriculture, cloning livestock embryos.
What they use cloning for is stem cells. Cloning adult cells to create stem cells means they don’t need embryonic stem cells, which is probably the most important thing that came from cloning research in the past 25 years.
The reason it was so important was that it proved that you didn’t need an embryonic cell to clone live animals. The nucleus of an adult cell contains all the DNA you need to clone, because Dolly was cloned from an adult cell, which was previously unheard of. Now they know that adults cells can be reprogrammed back to an embryonic stage, and was a major breakthrough for stem cell research.
So basically, we don’t hear about cloning anymore because they aren’t doing anything that is so exciting it will capture the world’s interest, like Dolly did. But it was a major scientific breakthrough that is still very important.
One of my favourite cloned animals is Kurt, a Przewalski’s Horse who was cloned from the preserved samples from a horse that died in the 90’s so that he can hopefully introduce some additional genetic diversity into the Przewalski’s Horse population. Oh hey there’s actually two clones of this one horse now, the second one is Ollie who was born last year. Kurt is now about four years old. Last I checked he was at the San Diego Zoo.
We don’t tend to clone animals that are more common because we already have a very efficient machine for making sheep, it’s called sheep.
All of this. In lab settings we don’t really clone animals either, because they’re pretty much clones already: laboratory animal strains, whether they’re mice, flies, fish, whatever–they’re usually genetically stable, healthy inbred populations. Each individual only differs from the others by a small amount.
Even so, we do see genetic drift that has to be rolled back every so often. Mostly what’s done is freezing sperm and embryo samples in a biobank, which allows the genetic stock to be refreshed without introducing extra complications to the process. This was especially vital during covid lockdowns, for two reasons:
biobanks were a relatively quick and highly effective way to preserve the genetics of animals that naturally live short lives, thus preserving years worth of science and allowing labs to get back on their feet quicker.
The other reason is that during the outbreak of SARS, a few laboratory mouse strains had been created that could catch the virus (mice were otherwise immune). The intent had been to use the strain to test vaccines, but SARS went away with unexpected speed. Samples of the SARS-vulnerable mouse were preserved, though, as were a few more strains that were generally susceptible to coronaviruses. When covid was identified as a SARS virus, the mouse strains were pulled out of biobanking and resurrected.
At the time, vaccine development felt horribly, unfairly slow, but by the usual standards of science? It was blazing fast, requiring a huge amount of coordinated effort around the globe, helped along by our biobanking capabilities and genetically standardized mice. The techs and veterinarians that brought the lines back and cared for the animals deserve awards.
“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”
“Every day you will receive one thousand dollars in your bank account. But every time you lift a glass to your lips to take a drink, you will hit your front teeth on the first try. Every. Time. Do you accept this deal?”
Yes. Quite easily so.
You see, making deals with the Fae is down to very specific word choices. They shot themselves in the foot with their own words here while making this deal, even though they thought their word choice was so very, very clever.
The Fae specifically uses the word “glass”. This, in turn, limits the person that agrees to the deal to the “hit your front teeth on the first try every time” to only be hitting their teeth on the first try every time if they drink out of a glass.
If the person decides to drink out of a container that isn’t made out of glass, like, say for example… A paper cup. Or a soda can. A plastic bottle. Styrofoam cup. Yeti Tumbler. Their own hand. A bowl. Who knows, a person can get hella creative when they realize there are ways to get around the rules without actually breaking them.
So.
A Fae being stands before me, and offers me this deal.
I smile, wide and unassuming, offer my hand to shake. “I accept this deal and all of it’s terms unconditionally.”
I was in a swing accident as a child and lost my front teeth, the ones in my head are implants. That glass is gonna WORK to hit some Mound of medical waste in Tacoma, Washington
Also like. It says lift a glass. What if you leave it on the table and use a straw? I feel like that’s a work-around if you’re like at a fancier restaurant that only uses glasses too. Which you might be a lot if you’re getting $1000 a day.
Also, straws exist. That glass never needs to touch your lips in the first place.
Either that fae is new at this, or they really want you to get $1000 per day. I wonder what they think you’ll do with it.
I had no idea that chickens could?? float?? or swim??? I don’t know why I’ve never thought of chickens as buoyant. I never picture chickens anywhere near water. what else have I been missing
not to be rude but picard is the most boring of the trek captains to me. text me when you’ve lied, cheated, bribed men to cover the crimes of that men. become an accessory to murder. and the most damning thing of all is that you think you can live it it. and if you had to do it all over again you would
jokes asides though i think picard does serve a purpose in the star trek ecosystem in terms of showing us the purest ideal of starfleet captain, virtuous and hypercompetent, a beacon of morality. unfortunately this also makes him kind of boring compared to the captains who came after who were allowed to be actually flawed and morally gray because they were acting as a deconstruction of the utopian ideal that picard represented
Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest
Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind
Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone
