I hate linguistic anthropology. Why? One of the most influential experiments in linguistic anthropology involved teaching a chimp asl. One of the most influential linguistics is named Noam Chomsky. You know what the chimp’s name was?
Nim Chimpsky.
Fucking monkey pun.
And this is in textbooks, in documentaries, everywhere. And everyone just IGNORES THIS GOD AWFUL PUN cause of how important the experiment was. But
BUT LOOK AT THIS SHIT. FUCKING NIM CHIMPSKY. I HATE THIS WHOLE FIELD.
Its not just the linguistic anthropologists.
There’s a group of very important genes that determine if your body develops in the right shape/organization… they are called the hedgehog genes, because fruit fly geneticists are all ridiculous. The different hedgehog genes are all named after different hedgehogs. And then someone decided to get clever and name one “sonic hedgehog” because this is just what fruitfly geneticists do.
Well sonic hedgehog controls brain development, and now actual doctors are stuck in the position of explaining to grieving parents that their child’s lethal birth defects or life-threatening tumors are caused by a “sonic hedgehog mutation”.
And this is why no one will invite the fruit fly people to parties.
Biogeochemical scientists, upon discovering the complex mechanisms that govern the storage and use of molecular iron on our planet, decided to call this cycle “the ferrous wheel”. We groaned about that for at least five solid minutes.
The phenomenon of sneezing when exposed to sudden bright light is called an Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio Opthalmic Outburst. ACHOO.
This is demonstrating why you absolutely do not pour water on a grease fire.
holy shit
Okaaaay. If any of you actually have a grease fire in the kitchen put the lid on the pan. It will suffocate the flames. Don’t pour water on it, and don’t freak out. Cook safely!
Or throw flour on it to smother it.
/quick safety announcement
NO, DO NOT USE FLOUR, DO NOT USE FLOUR TO SMOTHER A FIRE.
YOU HAVE TO USE BAKING SODA.
Throwing flour into a fire can cause it to combust and make the fire worse because FLOUR/SUGAR IS FLAMMABLE. One cup of flour into a grease fire can have the explosive force of dynamite.
The reason you use baking soda is that it releases carbon dioxide when heated, and CO2 is a fire suppressant.
I’m pretty sure that the reason the ice fractured into six slices is the same reason snowflakes are often six sided and it has to do with the shape of a molecule of water and I just think that’s so freaking cool.
How would it even stay lit though?
!!!!! it IS actually because of the structure of water molecules! Water molecules are fuckin weird, as are lots of other liquid substance molecules, because theyre shaped like fuckin HEXAGONS! hexagons are those weird, six-sided shapes that re very sturdy, but they dont tend to sit very well when stacked together. thats why, when you fill up a glass of water to its full capacity, it can go OVER the brim a little and not spill over. It’s also why water beads.
anyway, so since water is essentially made up of a gazillion little hexagons, it tends to gather into larger hexagons as it shapes together. this is not visible unless the water is in a solid form, aka ice. when the water is split, it tends to crack around the established hexagons. that bottle rocket exploded in the PERFECT place to show this phenomenon and its geeking me out.
ALSO! the bottle rocket stays lit because the fuse was definitely waterproof and made with magnesium and an oxidizer of some sort. this means that they will burn underwater because they dont need the oxygen from the air to stay lit. thats so fucking weird isnt it. im tipsy and its the 4th of july. sorry for the science haha
DUNKLEOSTEUS WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE TERRIFYING PREHISTORIC SEA CREATURES. BECAUSE LOOK AT THAT FEROCIOUS MOTHERFUCKER. BUT I RAISE YOU THIS MAGNIFICENT BASTARD:
THIS EVOLUTIONARY TRAIN WRECK WAS CALLED ALBERTONECTES, PART OF THE ELASMOSAUR FAMILY. SEE HOW THE BAD DUDE UP TOP IS BASICALLY 80% BONE? APPARENTLY THAT WAS A THEME, BECAUSE POOR FUCKING ALBERTONECTES HAD 76 NECK VERTEBRAE (A GRAND TOTAL OF 132). WHY? BECAUSE EVOLUTION AND NATURAL SELECTION WENT OUT AND GOT BLASTED TOGETHER, AND THE MESOZOIC ERA WAS THE RESULT.
LOOK AT THIS BULLSHIT.
“LOWER ESTIMATE,” IT SAYS.
WHAT THE FUCK, EVOLUTION. GO HOME. YOU’RE DRUNK.
(PS: IN RELATIVE SERIOUSNESS, THOUGH, GOOGLE A SCALE PICTURE OF MEGALODON. I DARE YOU. I’LL WAIT. YEAH, GO SWIMMING IN THE OCEAN WITH THAT MONSTER AND I BET YOU’LL EVOLVE SOME WEIRD SHIT TOO.)
Congratulations, B.o.B., a dude more than 2,000 years ago figured out what you still can’t understand despite the benefits of free public school, generations of documentation and the internet at your fucking fingertips.
There’s been so many studies on this it’s ridiculous and I think we need to stop focusing on the why and just respect people’s genders and stop forcing gender roles on to people (and I totally see how a TERF could twist this so don’t even try). However, as a genderqueer person I do get a little joy from this. Now we just need someone science-y to point out sex is a construct.
get fucked gender essentialists
someone send my dad this lmao
HUMANS ARE A SEXUALLY MONOMORPHIC SPECIES
HUMANS ARE A SEXUALLY MONOMORPHIC SPECIES
HUMANS ARE A SEXUALLY MONOMORPHIC SPECIES
This is pmuch common sense. We are not anglerfish. We are not elephant seals. We are not orangutans. We are not peacocks. We are sexually monomorphic - that means there are literally no actual difference between males and females outside of our genitalia, and humans are similar to crows and dolphins in that aspect. And thus, our rigid concepts of gender and sex roles are entirely social constructs. One based on a myth of sexual dimorphism that does not exist in our species.
Science, motherfuckers
THERE WE GO. Now when someone tries to de-legitimize your gender identity, your response can be “SCIENCE BITCH I’M VALID AS FUCK.”
Look at your wrist, see the blueish veins? The blood flowing through them contains hemoglobin, a protein that has four iron atoms incorporated into its structure. Iron is only naturally produced in one place, it can only be forged in the core of dying stars.
Every time you look at your veins, remember that you are built from, and kept alive by, pieces of stardust.
This is actually a thing, to the very best of my knowledge! Iron might not be only produced in the heart of a star on its way to going supernova (I would need someone with, y’know, actual degrees to say that for certain), but that’s certainly a major source! The way stars work is through fusion, or taking two atoms of an element (or different element) in an environment of massive heat and pressure and joining them to create a new element. Fusion gives off massively more energy than fission, which we’re more familiar with and can actually do ourselves with elements like uranium, but the hiccup in fusion is that there’s a point at which the energy gain is no longer high enough to offset the density of the atom created. So, fusion works GREAT on things like hydrogen or helium, which are both very small and therefore easily fused to give massive energy yields–this is why the biggest stars tend to burn very hot (not an absolute rule), because they have so much of these smaller elements available. These enormous stars–the sort of stars that die with a bang (nova/supernova) rather than a whimper (petering out)–burn hot and build up enormous pressure in their core, so the deeper you go the bigger the elements are.
Iron is the turning point, the point where you stop getting energy from fission and start getting it from fusion instead. As you work up toward iron from hydrogen on the periodic table, you get less and less energy from fusion, and as you get further from iron, into the higher numbers, you get steadily more energy from fission until you reach what we recognize as the radioactive elements, which break up easily enough to be practically applied for energy gain. Iron, however, is basically neutral: it won’t give energy either way, and managing either one would require a massive energy output. So, suppose you have a really huge star, a giant of some kind, and it’s been burning away happily for time immemorial (I don’t really have the time to go get data for star lifespans, I’m supposed to be studying for my organic chemistry final), fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium and so on and so forth. And now it’s reaching the end of its life and the elements it’s creating are getting up to the teens and twenties, and it fuses two oxygens into an iron atom. That’s the cutoff: the star has now started to die. The dense iron building up at the core of the star causes it to collapse inward, building pressure, and when the pressure inside gets too much…boom. Supernova.
So yeah. Iron is the element that kills stars, and it’s the element that keeps us alive. It’s…it’s pretty damn cool.
