MeerkatQueen・MeerkatP・Victoria Queer and Disabled, Autistic as fuck. That idiot VOCALOID user who has wayy too many VOCALOIDs for their own good. Also I make shitty sketches of Gay ducks. 27・Any pronouns
Uh hi. I’m Meerkat (MeerkatQueen, MeerkatP, Victoria) and welcome to my special little place in this hellsite.
Autistic Genderfluid Dyke with chronic pain
Any pronouns
I am obsessed with Gay singing robots and Gay ducks and they’re the only thing keeping me going. My vocal synths are my family and the Mallard-McQuack family lives rent free in my head.
Working on my own continuation of the Mallard-McQuack family’s story for DuckTales 2017 and I guess also the 2010/16 comics too since I got a few ideas for that. Apologies for never uploading them in order, my head’s just way too scatterbrained. (If you want to read them in chronological order see the comic index page.)
Please note that blank/ bot account followers will be blocked. If you’re not a bot and I block you by accident please reach out to me on bluesky. I would also prefer it if you follow me only if you like my work or just think I chill, not because you want something from me.
Generative AI users/ supporters will also be blocked. You are not welcome here.
It's hilarious to me how Colossal Biosciences wants to be movie-version John Hammond but are 100% book-version John Hammond. In the Jurassic Park novel, it's very clear: John Hammond is a con artist who gives people an illusion, not the truth. He knew from the beginning that what he was making weren't dinosaurs, but he didn't care because he had a story to sell. He wasn't just "filling in gaps" with the frog dna, his scientists were basically making things up from whole cloth and he had no pretence about it- but he also knew what the public wanted to believe.
These are not dire wolves. These are GMO gray wolves. Dire wolves aren't even in the same genus as gray wolves, and we know this from genetics.
What Colossal is doing is scamming the public. They want you to believe that they can pull off miracles. They can't. It's the flea circus where everything is mechanised, but because you want to believe, you "see" the fleas. They might be good at genetic modification and they might be good at hyping themselves up, but they haven't de-extincted the dire wolf. They didn't activate mammoth genes in a mouse. They are lying to you and they're going to keep doing it. Don't believe the hype.
"You know the first attraction I ever built, when I came down from Scotland? It was a flea circus, Petticoat Lane."
“Really?”
“Quite wonderful. We had a wee trapeze, a merry-go-round- carousel- and a see-saw. They all moved, motorized of course, but people would say they could see the fleas. Oh, I can see the fleas, Mummy, can’t you see the fleas? Clown fleas and high-wire fleas and fleas on parade. But this place? I wanted to show them something that wasn’t an illusion. Something that was real. Something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit."
In the book, his preceding venture is described differently:
"Hammond was flamboyant, a born showman, and back in 1983 he had had an elephant that he carried around with him in a little cage. The elephant was nine inches high and a foot long, and perfectly formed, except his tusks were stunted. Hammond took the elephant with him to fund-raising meetings. Gennaro usually carried it into the room, the cage covered with a little blanket, like a tea cozy, and Hammond would give his usual speech about the prospects for developing what he called “consumer biologicals.” Then, at the dramatic moment, Hammond would whip away the blanket to reveal the elephant. And he would ask for money.
The elephant was always a rousing success; its tiny body, hardly bigger than a cat’s, promised untold wonders to come from the laboratory of Norman Atherton, the Stanford geneticist who was Hammond’s partner in the new venture. But as Hammond talked about the elephant, he left a great deal unsaid.
For example, Hammond was starting a genetics company, but the tiny elephant hadn’t been made by any genetic procedure; Atherton had simply taken a dwarf-elephant embryo and raised it in an artificial womb with hormonal modifications. That in itself was quite an achievement, but nothing like what Hammond hinted had been done.
Also, Atherton hadn’t been able to duplicate his miniature elephant, and he’d tried. For one thing, everybody who saw the elephant wanted one. Then, too, the elephant was prone to colds, particularly during winter. The sneezes coming through the little trunk filled Hammond with dread. And sometimes the elephant would get his tusks stuck between the bars of the cage and snort irritably as he tried to get free; sometimes he got infections around the tusk line. Hammond always fretted that his elephant would die before Atherton could grow a replacement.
Hammond also concealed from prospective investors the fact that the elephant’s behavior had changed substantially in the process of miniaturization. The little creature might look like an elephant, but he acted like a vicious rodent, quick-moving and mean-tempered. Hammond discouraged people from petting the elephant, to avoid nipped fingers. And although Hammond spoke confidently of seven billion dollars in annual revenues by 1993, his project was intensely speculative. Hammond had vision and enthusiasm, but there was no certainty that his plan would work at all."
Basically, the tl;dr is that I'm saying that like John Hammond, this company is making promises they can't keep based on science they aren't doing, and the public is lapping it up because they want to believe. They want to see the fleas, even when the fleas aren't there to be seen.
Blathering Blatherskite I cannot believe this is in my house!!
Less then a week ago about 50 of the unreleased Gizmoduck figure from the Ducktales Phatmojo toy line were put up for sale online, and I was lucky enough to get one.
This thing is incredible! It’s such a shame it never made it onto store shelves because it’s a great toy with so many cool features. So well modeled too. It looks like Fenton flew off the screen! I am so honored to have this and the Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera figure that was found a while back. What a super pair!!
Leagues better then the handmade Gizmoduck I made out of desperation a few years ago that’s for sure.
I'm tempted to make a video about this thing for documentation purposes because I find the history of what happened so interesting (and Fenton is my favorite Ducktales character so any excuse to talk about him I'll take), but for now I'm just gonna sit here and... stare at it in disbelief.
After lamenting that we never got a Gizmoduck figure for so long, I actually have one.
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.
Yeah, I saw this and my immediate thought was "these people don't know what they're doing". My second thought was, "these people know what they're doing is a scam". Either way, I've always been very suspicious of Colossal's, well, colossal claims, and now it's clear they're full of shit
Do other people in the world really believe the genocide is over or that conditions have improved? They began starving the North in March last year and then continued to starve the whole Strip for a year and now they are starving the whole Gaza Strip again this March, in Ramadan.
Genocide is an act of collective punishment and neglect of the most essential life sources.
In reality they began committing genocide against the people of Gaza the day that the siege on Gaza was imposed. What we continue to witness since Oct 7th is only the same genocide accelerated which I will never stop repeating.
Not only that, the murder by aircraft has not stopped. israel's fascist death machines are still hovering and threatening and firing and killing people in their tents, in their damaged homes, in cars, at people trying to rebuild...their thirst for Palestinian blood is literally infinite.
Even if the fire stopped, it would still be genocide. There is no such thing as an israeli ceasefire because they practice murder by freezing and starving and medically neglecting and physically and psychologically torturing Palestinians too.
not only was a journalist tent bombed, which is forbidden under international law, but the whole world watched the journalists burn alive and do nothing about it.
I totally understand after one year and half you starting to ignore what’s happening and feeling not useful at all and almost there’s no donations i get for my brother and my family and my relatives in gaza
But all we have is you
You are our hope you keep us surviving in this madness please guys continue supporting us
