Quick poll, let's go.

Let's assume he just does.

Interesting Question for sure.

I have the feeling I represent quite often the minority in certain views about him, but I also do not think he would do it.

Remember the Magnae? People seem to wave it away easily, like, that was just a warning he gave us, as if that didn't take a lot from him.

He went against the wish and order of Xavier, his Master, who he also describes as someone very dangerous, who is not lenient usually and doesn't tolerate other peoples weaknesses, to warn RT. Xavier clearly wanted this to be a surprise and Heinrix went against this - knowing that this will not stay a secret, he even expects to be punished in some sort for this:

"Let them charge me with whatever they want later — I had to make you aware that there is no genuine threat to your life."

He is more afraid of what will happen to RT than to him. If RT acts unwise, Xavier might order her to get killed - or worse - tortured by him. He is clearly afraid of that and this is also where his fear on Janus stems from I think.

You can also have two times (Janus/Black Ship) already told him there is more than duty - but to be honest, even without this, even if hardened, he acts the same in the Magnae, because duty or not, he is already in love with RT.

And while a hardened Heinrix later tortures Emelina, I think RT is different for him, because of this love. Yes, he cares about Emelina too, but not as strongly. And while Heinrix leaves a heretic RT the ending slide says he was killed by RT while pleading to her - he still would not give her up.

Commorragh is the reason he opens up - if he is present or not. Because he realizes how easily he can loose RT and even sees it as another chance for them to at least enjoy the time they have. And you can have his date and him saying he loves RT even before Emelina.

So I think there isn't actually that much between the Magnae and him stating he loves RT.

I am honestly not sure that Xavier has forced Heinrix to do terrible things just to test is loyalty (at least not openly) - I think that came up naturally during his work, making hard decisions like with Rykad Minoris. Heinrix at least doesn't (until further towards the end at least) seem to hate Xavier - even after Emelina look how he talks about him. He sees him as his personal teacher, admires him, looks up to him. He defends Xavier during banter even later with Ulfar. I don't think he would talk like this if he would hate him or be really deeply afraid of him because of what Xavier might have done to him but for sure he is afraid of what Xavier would do to RT.

Would he do it with a stable environment of loved ones and friends? I do agree it means even more for Heinrix because he doesn't have anyone left or any friends really (aside from Emelina) so he is very focused on RT. But even then - he is in love. It would be more difficult for him to go against Xavier's orders because he might be afraid of retribution affecting his loved ones but still he loves RT. I don't think this would lead him to torture her.

As already being said - Heinrix could make it less worse for RT. But Xavier would know this and notice this too. I know it is hypothetical but if Xavier really wants RT to suffer he will make sure of it. So I doubt Heinrix would be able to do anything except for giving her a quick death and then face the consequences.

So no, I don't think he would torture her. He would rather end her quickly but I am not even sure he would be able to do that. He nearly kills himself just over the fact he can't stay with her. He might start a desperate action to have her or both escape but he knows that can't last. The Inquisition can find them. But they can enjoy the short time they have.

I think part of it would depend on the reason and the scope. It's easier to justify a certain amount of suffering for someone's own good, or for the good of the Imperium, vs torturing someone to death.

The Rite of Purification that a Heretical RT can undergo is, in my eyes, clearly torture. It's described in very similar ways to the drukhari inflicted and the RT can think they're dying and beg for mercy. And given that Heinrix has already asked for the RT to repent and is about to leave, I see him as being grateful it's happening. In fact, given that the RT asking Calcazar for help does seem to come out of nowhere, I could definitely see a romanced Heinrix as having strongly hinted that the Rogue Trader needs to seek the aid of the Lord Inquisitor. And he'd be doing that knowing what the consequences of that would be.

(Sidenote: the fact that Calcazar has the tools and is willing to offer the Rite of Purification is interesting to me. I don't imagine he gets many repentant heretics that he thinks worth the effort that could be "salvaged" in such a way. But the rite mentions the stains left by corruption on the soul, and Heinrix mentions he risks similar darkness messing with the chaos cogitator on Kiava Gamma. So I suspect the most common target of that purification is other members of the Inquisition, after the sort of particularly fraught mission that leaves them wanting to scrub their souls in bleach.)

At the Magnae, Calcazar can mention the "varied and fascinating instruments and procedures that expedite candour". And I think that if the encounter at Kiava Gamma where Uralon psykically contacted the RT had gone more sideways, or perhaps if some of the drukhari had said something that made Calcazar genuinely wondering if the RT had contacts with their own faction of drukhari that might foul up his deal with Yremeryss... it could come up that the Rogue Trader could be challenged to "prove" herself under interrogation.

And if that happened, an Act 2 romanced Heinrix would, I feel, consider himself the best choice because with his biomancy there's less chance of going too far and doing permanent physical harm. "The only way she does not survive this is if she's a traitor to humanity who tricked me the whole time" is something Heinrix would cling to.

Which would mess them both up terribly in the medium term, of course. But for the sort of RT who took more 'devil' flirting options, I could see the pair of them patching things up in Commoragh, with some black humoured "well, I knew that 'trial' had to be fake because the hallucinated version of you was doing [x] instead of [y]..." compare-and-contrast conversations as a form of processing.

I made myself a batch of tater tot casserole with venison. I think this would be better with some bacon in the meat, but it was pretty tasty.

Browned the meat with onions, garlic, salt, paprika, and mustard powder. Drained off some of the grease/liquid, and added ketchup and cream of mushroom soup. Layer that, cheese, and tater tots and bake at 350 for 30-45 mins (though I think it could have gone an hour and been better).

Had a minor out of body experience while reading this as I died, went to Valhalla, sampled this dish (because they must serve it there) and returned to my body knowing nothing will ever taste as good and being surprisingly okay with that.

Hyperbole aside, I now need to figure out how to score some venison.

I am pleased to report that it was even better the second day, after the ingredients really had the time to amalgamate properly. It would probably be best reheated in the oven (to crisp up the tots again) but I didn't have time this morning.

I don't know for sure where normal people get venison (I mean, besides hunting it themselves or getting it from a friend that does), but the place that processes my deer sells venison as well, so if deer are local to your area, you might try small town or country butchers that sell game meat. Instead of searching for venison (which is liable to turn up carcass processing places, not places that sell it to eat), you could try looking up game meat butchers or search by other meat names (pheasant, quail, goose, boar, bear, that kind of thing).

If you haven't had a lot of venison before, be aware some people swear it tastes so different than beef it's gross and gamey and and and- and that may be true, if the deer was an aged buck that got got for his rack. But good venison, the sort that is taken for food without regard for the antlers, honestly doesn't taste that much different, to me. BUT I'm used to eating 96% lean beef, and most people are getting a LOT fattier beef than that, which is probably where they are getting the flavor difference. If you HAVE the ability to grind meat at home, you can grind venison with bacon, which will add fat and flavor.

Alternately, you can definitely just make this dish with lean beef and it will be about the same, and probably cheaper. The only reason I use venison is because it's what I have on hand, since we get a doe a year from a local farmer that uses his tags for population control around his corn fields, and that provides my red meat for the year. I'm iron deficient, and vension has twice as much iron as beef (generally), and I'm not overly fond of the consistency of fat while eating, so it suits me better.

Also, if you do find venison gamey, the way to solve that is to marinate your deer meat in milk and garlic for at least 4 hours before you need to start cooking with it. It also tenderizes the meat. It neutralizes the so-called 'gamey' taste without compromising the taste of the actual meat, if that makes any sense.

My family has done that for years because we hunted what we could catch, and sometimes you just get a gamey deer. When that's your main source of meat, you take whatever you get.

This also works wonders on wild duck, turkey, and grouse, btw, though for grouse and duck I recommend using buttermilk instead.

I'm curious- why the switch to buttermilk?

Fascinating info though; I might have to try it with the loins this time. While VERY tender, those are the only parts that sometimes have a gamier taste to them for mine.

Duck, even wild duck, is fatty, but wild duck in particular does not hold on to its own moisture very well, for whatever reason? So it interacts well with the higher acid of buttermilk to keep the duck from turning very dry and sad. It keeps it more tender than just regular milk.

Grouse just tastes extremely gamey, and it tends to be SUPER dry and tough, so same reasons, the buttermilk helps it hold to its liquid content and keeps it more tender, PLUS gets rid of more of the gamey taste.

Wild turkey generally doesn't need this unless you bagged a very old tom. XD; Oh, for deer loin marinate it in milk and garlic (plus whatever other spices you like in your marinades) for AT LEAST 6 hours. They need a bit more time than most of the rest of the deer, save neck. Neck roasts you want to do overnight. The meat will FALL APART afterward!

Ah cool! Thanks for the info, I'll have to give it a try next time!

Huh, now I'm wondering about trying that milk trick on kangaroo. Roo is extremely lean and notoriously easy to overcook, and also has quite a strong gamey taste. Marinating it in something is pretty much essential.

Revising some of my horse drawing tips pages, starting with necks!

Corrected some muscle names and added more explanation/ method.

Hip page update!

Here are a couple more sections! Going to put all of these into a poster format soon

i think even as a child i recognized that the platypus is a gimmicky animal

The platypus doesn't even have a single gimmick, it has a load of them. (Most of these things are also true of echidnae, which are basically platypodes that got anteaterized.) Its stance, metabolism, and reproduction are halfway between reptiles and other mammals. It has milk glands, but no teats or nipples, so it just sweats milk through its skin. It has two uteri and a spiky asymmetrical forked penis (the penis of echidnae is four-headed). It completely lacks a stomach. It has five pairs of sex chromosomes. It can perceive electric currents in water through its fleshy bill. Males have a venomous stinger on their ankles. It's a mess.

A thing that helped me understand the platypus's weirdness was understanding that it is a "mammal" basically by dint of it not really being anything else. Mammal is this category of synapsids (clade that appeared in the Carboniferous, 330 million years ago, and includes mammals and extinct things) that includes Placental, Marsupial, and Monotremes (where Monotremes are basically "other" includes like 3 extant organisms). But the monotremes diverged between 160 and 220 million years ago, so somewhere in the triassic or early jurassic periods! There is considerably less genetic separation between a T-Rex and a sparrow (or a raptor and a stegosaur) than between the monotremes and all the other mammals. So it's no wonder they are weird as shit! They diverged when all synapsids still laid eggs!

Mammal is generally a very useful category that has a bunch of common characteristics which we learn as a kid - we get taught mammal by describing Placental mammal, and then weird Marsupial as the exception (together, the theriimorphs). But for whatever reason we decided that we would group the unusually weird/different/unique monotremes in there, rather than calling them "supermammals" or something (mammalimorpha is a category that includes all extant mammals and some extinct things). The problem is really that we have "mammal" as this super broad technical category but teach it as something really narrow.

Right! The category of Mammal, like many others, is largely an artefact of what happened to survive to the present day. If a greater variety of non-mammal synapsids (sail-backed pelycosaurs, saber-toothed gorgonopsians, dicynodonts with their strange beak-and-tusks combination) had survived the Permian and Triassic mass extinctions -- the ones that cleared the way to dinosaurs -- then the line between reptiles and mammals would be far more blurry. And if the huge variety of non-Therian mammals from the Mesozoic (which included flyers, swimmers, and large predators) had not mostly gone extinct with dinosaurs, monotremes would look far less out of place.

(Though it's also worth remembering that the weirdness of monotremes is not just due to primitive features. They are actually a really unusual and derived branch of non-Therian mammals -- imagine if the only surviving bony fish were mudskippers, or the only surviving birds were hoatzins. They lost their stomach and developed electroception and venomous stingers all on their own, long after separating from other mammals.)

Doesn't current research suggest that the venomous ankle spurs were reasonably widespread in the early Jurassic, and it's more that they were lost as more upright gaits became mammalian standard? I'd put that one alongside the eggs and lack of nipples as a primitive trait.

Fun bonus platypus fact! Their venom contains one of the very few right-handed amino acids found in nature! But since venom doesn't fossilize, we have no idea if this is an ancient mammal quirk or a platypus-specific quirk.

Scientists Unlock the Secrets of Crocodile Skin and Its Irregular, Mystifying Patterns

The scales on crocodiles’ heads are very different from the skin appendages of other animals and even distinct from the scales on the rest of their bodies.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-unlock-the-secrets-of-crocodile-skin-and-its-irregular-mystifying-patterns-180985654

@o-craven-canto

Some relevant biology for you!

For the Vizsier, this is what your character can sense if they're a psyker:

To me, this implies there's something of a spectrum, and he falls into "not quite a psyker, can't cause a breach, definitely more sensitive than average". The Inquisition probably likes recruiting those people, because with training they'll have a better chance of noticing trouble before everything erupts around them. I suspect many are also drawn unconsciously to 'sources of power', meaning more likely than usual to end up in the Ecclesiarchy, Death Cults, or also in outright Chaos cults (which would be another reason for the Inquisition to keep an eye out).

There's at least one Living Saint who looks like a psyker but has been proven not to be a psyker who probably falls into this category, too.

Kibellah, I think, might be right on the line between "sensitive non-psyker" and "very low level psyker". Ironically, Heinrix could be a little more comfortable with her because he'd know that psykers who are too weak to reliably manifest powers tend to get sacrificed to the Astronomicon, so she couldn't be sanctioned, but the training she's gone through and continues to practice has quite a few parallels to his own. Heinrix might be more comfortable with her if he's convinced she's unlikely to cause a breach and if placed in a situation she could slip, she'd cut her own throat before a catastrophe could happen.

Oh, that makes sense. I do remember the description about the Viszier, I usually play psyker too. Thank you for reminding me!

So there are psykers that are under the radar and not dangerous... interesting.

Ok Living Saint gets the power from the Emperor right? Just like Adepta Sororitas can actually due to their faith have miracles happen I suppose. So I think that is kind of a faith thing and don't require someone to be a psyker? Although - I think I read a lore post once where it says that any human (aside from blanks I think) are more or less psykers, just the majority so very weak that it is not noticeable (and not dangerous).

And very good point regarding Heinrix and Kibellah and her training - yes, seeing what she is through that would not be less than what happens during sanctioning I suppose.

Thank you so much, that was very interesting!

There's a sort of "category" of things that can be done via power-of-the-Emperor, so when a Living Saint does something outside that, but that is very similar to what an Astartes Librarian can do, it makes you go hmm. That does look awfully like a weak psyker being bolstered by the Emperor, which is exactly what happens for the bulk of astropaths in a choir.

Choir Masters tend to be strong psykers in their own right; for them, the soul binding is a matter of protection. But many astropaths are people who have strong wills but lower end abilities, carefully trained and bolstered to be good at one thing in particular.

Having watched how the lore has developed over the decades, and comparing things in the setting history... I'm fairly sure humans are gradually becoming more psykically attuned as a whole. During the Age of Terra (now) and Dark Age of Technology (the next few hundred years), psykers were exceedingly rare but also extraordinarily powerful, and didn't really have to worry about breaches because the only way they were succumbing to the Warp was is a demon managed to convince them to worship it and then they chose to surrender.

Push forward to the Age of Strife, and suddenly involuntary possessions are starting to become a thing and people are starting to learn to "beware the witch", but there were only one or two scary psykers per nation and it was pretty clear who they were.

By the time of the Great Crusade, the number of psykers had increased enough to be a problem the troops were all warned about, but not the sort of threat that had to be handled instantly; there's multiple occasions in the Horus Heresy books where someone finds a psyker just chilling and makes a note to recruit them. When the debate came up about the safety of psykic powers, all the Astartes who have them were just told to stop using them, not treated as potential threats that needed extra training to be safe like they are in M40.

So my view is that over time, more and more humans are able to awaken psykic powers at lower and lower "thresholds", which means there's a lot of people who 1) don't recognise them and 2) don't know how to shield themselves. Eventually, it may hit a point similar to aeldari, where everyone is a very low-level psyker. The Craftworlds solved this problem by making sure everyone gets basic training in meditation, shielding etc. Admittedly, they only did this after getting 80%+ of their population eaten by Slaanesh, and it might take a similar cultural shift to get the Imperium to change its ways.

Wow thank you so much for your insight! I only ever started to get into the warhammer lore thanks to the Rogue Trader game and while I read a lot in the lore subreddit and have started with the Eisenhorn books I am still at the beginning but haven't seen the development like you did.

Oh, so earlier they had it that psykers had to actively worship demons for bad things to happen but then they changed it? Guess it wasn't dark enough for them. Too bad, that would have made things better for psykers.

But not using the powers - is that even possible? I mean Astartes are basically super humans so maybe for them but for normal humans I thought that a) suppressing the powers for longer time can be problematic and b) you might still end up at a point where you lose your control because of strong emotions for example and then involuntarily use your powers.

That does sound however like you have to actively use your powers (if you are not a weak psyker and use it unconsciously but then I suppose only weak effects are possible). Because I was looking for an answer how it works for telepaths. I have seen people believing telepaths have to constantly/actively block foreign thoughts from invading their mind while I thought they would need to actively use their power to read someones mind (unless they lose control and do it unvoluntarily perhaps). I would assume a pyro wouldn't need to block their powers from happening but to actively decide to use them too and that this is the same for all disciplines. Now, in the Rogue Trader game Idira does pick up thoughts from people around her without her intention, but I thought that was due to her lack of control, so basically she using her powers unvoluntarily.

What do you think - if I may ask?

Oh, I've been unclear and accidentally misled you a bit, sorry.

I've been following the setting for over a decade and seen how it has changed, but what I meant is that during the in-setting timeline, humanity's relationship with psykers has been actively shifting.

The 40k "eras" of humanity are roughly this:

During the end of the Age of Strife and the Great Crusade, if a psyker was going to get possessed or cause breaches or generally fail to control their powers, it tended to happen quickly. Many were killed as soon as they were discovered because of this. But if a psyker survived those first few years, they were pretty safe; they were either actively worshiping Chaos or they were powerful and strong-willed enough to defend themselves. If the Crusade turned up one of these psykers, and said psyker wasn't their enemy, they tended to get recruited and put to work almost immediately without any special sanctioning required.

The Horus Heresy changed all that and showed how insidiously terrifying a Chaos-aligned psyker could really be. Before, they were seen as people with particularly dangerous potential. After, they were seen as risky sources of corruption.

As for usage of powers: the view during the Great Crusade seemed to be that psykic powers were potentially "addictive", but that you could just stop using them and "get control of yourself" and become "normal". I agree that this doesn't work, but it's certainly a view that many people have about neurodivergence in general.

Telepaths seem to be a mixed bag. Most have to actively try to read minds, but some can passively pick up impressions from around them. That may be partially individual variation, and partially training: both Weiss and Idira have gone through the sort of training that would make them far more sensitive to the thoughts around them. Weiss also got proper training in how to shield, where Idira didn't. If anything, she was encouraged to leave her shields open 'just a crack' so she could hear "warnings" even when she wasn't trying. At this point it's probably a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of ability, and she doesn't have a good enough relationship with Weiss for him to teach her, despite him being the most qualified. (Not to mention Weiss's many personal issues preventing him from offering tutoring.)

Honestly, if it wasn't for the whole Black Ship part (which I don't think Idira would cope with), she'd probably thrive with some of the training involved in sanctioning. When Heinrix mentions that he could sort out the paperwork for her, he's probably thinking of sending her to that sort of "back channel" Inquisition-run training instead of going through the formal one.

Very interesting, thank you for the overview!

I think with Idira the issue is also the mind wiping that happened to her and the other officers that apparently worsened her condition and her control. It does get better with her once she stays sober but it also sounds like she doesn't have to live long in any case - even if you don't take her to Commorragh the endings sound like she dies rather sooner than later.

Sending her to sanctioning might just getting her killed by them (or the Inquisition) earlier. I do think Heinrix would like to help but with his remarks it sounds like he also thinks she doesn't have that long anymore:

And if you send her to the Inquisition you don't hear anything about her anymore - ok could have a lot of reasons but I do think it implies she dies.

But I am wondering a bit about his choice of words here - "... any psyker deprived of the Emperor's protection" - that is not just unsanctioned psykers though? Even if you are sanctioned, how is the Emperor protecting you? Heinrix also speaks often about the fate any psyker awaits (no matter if sanctioned or not). We also see even astropaths succumbing to chaos. Of course, the Emperor could protect a psyker, but it is not like he usually does I think?

That bit is pure Scholasta Psykana propaganda. I mean, Heinrix isn't just a biomancer, he's also drilled in the sanctic discipline, so I expect he believes it whole-heartedly.

From what is described, sanctioning is mostly intensive training so those with the capability and the removal (in various ways) of those that don't. It arguably counts as brainwashing, it definitely counts as conditioning, but there's not a lot of mystical bolstering. It's more like taking the average person off the street and putting them through intensive military training until they're a soldier.

Astropaths definitely get protection from the Emperor[1] but that's the Soul-Binding, not the sanctioning. They've already been sanctioned before that point. But telling psykers that the sanctioning gives them a special personal protection is probably a good idea because it would give them a reason to keep fighting instead of giving in to despair. It ties in neatly to the training that they do for fighting breaches. Also, on a grim note, every sanctioned psyker is taught how to let themselves perish (and/or outright commit suicide) if they're about to be corrupted. People are more willing to do that sort of thing if you can convince them that the God-Emperor will be supporting the action and waiting to welcome their soul home.

For the Vizsier, this is what your character can sense if they're a psyker:

To me, this implies there's something of a spectrum, and he falls into "not quite a psyker, can't cause a breach, definitely more sensitive than average". The Inquisition probably likes recruiting those people, because with training they'll have a better chance of noticing trouble before everything erupts around them. I suspect many are also drawn unconsciously to 'sources of power', meaning more likely than usual to end up in the Ecclesiarchy, Death Cults, or also in outright Chaos cults (which would be another reason for the Inquisition to keep an eye out).

There's at least one Living Saint who looks like a psyker but has been proven not to be a psyker who probably falls into this category, too.

Kibellah, I think, might be right on the line between "sensitive non-psyker" and "very low level psyker". Ironically, Heinrix could be a little more comfortable with her because he'd know that psykers who are too weak to reliably manifest powers tend to get sacrificed to the Astronomicon, so she couldn't be sanctioned, but the training she's gone through and continues to practice has quite a few parallels to his own. Heinrix might be more comfortable with her if he's convinced she's unlikely to cause a breach and if placed in a situation she could slip, she'd cut her own throat before a catastrophe could happen.

Oh, that makes sense. I do remember the description about the Viszier, I usually play psyker too. Thank you for reminding me!

So there are psykers that are under the radar and not dangerous... interesting.

Ok Living Saint gets the power from the Emperor right? Just like Adepta Sororitas can actually due to their faith have miracles happen I suppose. So I think that is kind of a faith thing and don't require someone to be a psyker? Although - I think I read a lore post once where it says that any human (aside from blanks I think) are more or less psykers, just the majority so very weak that it is not noticeable (and not dangerous).

And very good point regarding Heinrix and Kibellah and her training - yes, seeing what she is through that would not be less than what happens during sanctioning I suppose.

Thank you so much, that was very interesting!

There's a sort of "category" of things that can be done via power-of-the-Emperor, so when a Living Saint does something outside that, but that is very similar to what an Astartes Librarian can do, it makes you go hmm. That does look awfully like a weak psyker being bolstered by the Emperor, which is exactly what happens for the bulk of astropaths in a choir.

Choir Masters tend to be strong psykers in their own right; for them, the soul binding is a matter of protection. But many astropaths are people who have strong wills but lower end abilities, carefully trained and bolstered to be good at one thing in particular.

Having watched how the lore has developed over the decades, and comparing things in the setting history... I'm fairly sure humans are gradually becoming more psykically attuned as a whole. During the Age of Terra (now) and Dark Age of Technology (the next few hundred years), psykers were exceedingly rare but also extraordinarily powerful, and didn't really have to worry about breaches because the only way they were succumbing to the Warp was is a demon managed to convince them to worship it and then they chose to surrender.

Push forward to the Age of Strife, and suddenly involuntary possessions are starting to become a thing and people are starting to learn to "beware the witch", but there were only one or two scary psykers per nation and it was pretty clear who they were.

By the time of the Great Crusade, the number of psykers had increased enough to be a problem the troops were all warned about, but not the sort of threat that had to be handled instantly; there's multiple occasions in the Horus Heresy books where someone finds a psyker just chilling and makes a note to recruit them. When the debate came up about the safety of psykic powers, all the Astartes who have them were just told to stop using them, not treated as potential threats that needed extra training to be safe like they are in M40.

So my view is that over time, more and more humans are able to awaken psykic powers at lower and lower "thresholds", which means there's a lot of people who 1) don't recognise them and 2) don't know how to shield themselves. Eventually, it may hit a point similar to aeldari, where everyone is a very low-level psyker. The Craftworlds solved this problem by making sure everyone gets basic training in meditation, shielding etc. Admittedly, they only did this after getting 80%+ of their population eaten by Slaanesh, and it might take a similar cultural shift to get the Imperium to change its ways.

Wow thank you so much for your insight! I only ever started to get into the warhammer lore thanks to the Rogue Trader game and while I read a lot in the lore subreddit and have started with the Eisenhorn books I am still at the beginning but haven't seen the development like you did.

Oh, so earlier they had it that psykers had to actively worship demons for bad things to happen but then they changed it? Guess it wasn't dark enough for them. Too bad, that would have made things better for psykers.

But not using the powers - is that even possible? I mean Astartes are basically super humans so maybe for them but for normal humans I thought that a) suppressing the powers for longer time can be problematic and b) you might still end up at a point where you lose your control because of strong emotions for example and then involuntarily use your powers.

That does sound however like you have to actively use your powers (if you are not a weak psyker and use it unconsciously but then I suppose only weak effects are possible). Because I was looking for an answer how it works for telepaths. I have seen people believing telepaths have to constantly/actively block foreign thoughts from invading their mind while I thought they would need to actively use their power to read someones mind (unless they lose control and do it unvoluntarily perhaps). I would assume a pyro wouldn't need to block their powers from happening but to actively decide to use them too and that this is the same for all disciplines. Now, in the Rogue Trader game Idira does pick up thoughts from people around her without her intention, but I thought that was due to her lack of control, so basically she using her powers unvoluntarily.

What do you think - if I may ask?

Oh, I've been unclear and accidentally misled you a bit, sorry.

I've been following the setting for over a decade and seen how it has changed, but what I meant is that during the in-setting timeline, humanity's relationship with psykers has been actively shifting.

The 40k "eras" of humanity are roughly this:

During the end of the Age of Strife and the Great Crusade, if a psyker was going to get possessed or cause breaches or generally fail to control their powers, it tended to happen quickly. Many were killed as soon as they were discovered because of this. But if a psyker survived those first few years, they were pretty safe; they were either actively worshiping Chaos or they were powerful and strong-willed enough to defend themselves. If the Crusade turned up one of these psykers, and said psyker wasn't their enemy, they tended to get recruited and put to work almost immediately without any special sanctioning required.

The Horus Heresy changed all that and showed how insidiously terrifying a Chaos-aligned psyker could really be. Before, they were seen as people with particularly dangerous potential. After, they were seen as risky sources of corruption.

As for usage of powers: the view during the Great Crusade seemed to be that psykic powers were potentially "addictive", but that you could just stop using them and "get control of yourself" and become "normal". I agree that this doesn't work, but it's certainly a view that many people have about neurodivergence in general.

Telepaths seem to be a mixed bag. Most have to actively try to read minds, but some can passively pick up impressions from around them. That may be partially individual variation, and partially training: both Weiss and Idira have gone through the sort of training that would make them far more sensitive to the thoughts around them. Weiss also got proper training in how to shield, where Idira didn't. If anything, she was encouraged to leave her shields open 'just a crack' so she could hear "warnings" even when she wasn't trying. At this point it's probably a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of ability, and she doesn't have a good enough relationship with Weiss for him to teach her, despite him being the most qualified. (Not to mention Weiss's many personal issues preventing him from offering tutoring.)

Honestly, if it wasn't for the whole Black Ship part (which I don't think Idira would cope with), she'd probably thrive with some of the training involved in sanctioning. When Heinrix mentions that he could sort out the paperwork for her, he's probably thinking of sending her to that sort of "back channel" Inquisition-run training instead of going through the formal one.

For the Vizsier, this is what your character can sense if they're a psyker:

To me, this implies there's something of a spectrum, and he falls into "not quite a psyker, can't cause a breach, definitely more sensitive than average". The Inquisition probably likes recruiting those people, because with training they'll have a better chance of noticing trouble before everything erupts around them. I suspect many are also drawn unconsciously to 'sources of power', meaning more likely than usual to end up in the Ecclesiarchy, Death Cults, or also in outright Chaos cults (which would be another reason for the Inquisition to keep an eye out).

There's at least one Living Saint who looks like a psyker but has been proven not to be a psyker who probably falls into this category, too.

Kibellah, I think, might be right on the line between "sensitive non-psyker" and "very low level psyker". Ironically, Heinrix could be a little more comfortable with her because he'd know that psykers who are too weak to reliably manifest powers tend to get sacrificed to the Astronomicon, so she couldn't be sanctioned, but the training she's gone through and continues to practice has quite a few parallels to his own. Heinrix might be more comfortable with her if he's convinced she's unlikely to cause a breach and if placed in a situation she could slip, she'd cut her own throat before a catastrophe could happen.

Oh, that makes sense. I do remember the description about the Viszier, I usually play psyker too. Thank you for reminding me!

So there are psykers that are under the radar and not dangerous... interesting.

Ok Living Saint gets the power from the Emperor right? Just like Adepta Sororitas can actually due to their faith have miracles happen I suppose. So I think that is kind of a faith thing and don't require someone to be a psyker? Although - I think I read a lore post once where it says that any human (aside from blanks I think) are more or less psykers, just the majority so very weak that it is not noticeable (and not dangerous).

And very good point regarding Heinrix and Kibellah and her training - yes, seeing what she is through that would not be less than what happens during sanctioning I suppose.

Thank you so much, that was very interesting!

There's a sort of "category" of things that can be done via power-of-the-Emperor, so when a Living Saint does something outside that, but that is very similar to what an Astartes Librarian can do, it makes you go hmm. That does look awfully like a weak psyker being bolstered by the Emperor, which is exactly what happens for the bulk of astropaths in a choir.

Choir Masters tend to be strong psykers in their own right; for them, the soul binding is a matter of protection. But many astropaths are people who have strong wills but lower end abilities, carefully trained and bolstered to be good at one thing in particular.

Having watched how the lore has developed over the decades, and comparing things in the setting history... I'm fairly sure humans are gradually becoming more psykically attuned as a whole. During the Age of Terra (now) and Dark Age of Technology (the next few hundred years), psykers were exceedingly rare but also extraordinarily powerful, and didn't really have to worry about breaches because the only way they were succumbing to the Warp was is a demon managed to convince them to worship it and then they chose to surrender.

Push forward to the Age of Strife, and suddenly involuntary possessions are starting to become a thing and people are starting to learn to "beware the witch", but there were only one or two scary psykers per nation and it was pretty clear who they were.

By the time of the Great Crusade, the number of psykers had increased enough to be a problem the troops were all warned about, but not the sort of threat that had to be handled instantly; there's multiple occasions in the Horus Heresy books where someone finds a psyker just chilling and makes a note to recruit them. When the debate came up about the safety of psykic powers, all the Astartes who have them were just told to stop using them, not treated as potential threats that needed extra training to be safe like they are in M40.

So my view is that over time, more and more humans are able to awaken psykic powers at lower and lower "thresholds", which means there's a lot of people who 1) don't recognise them and 2) don't know how to shield themselves. Eventually, it may hit a point similar to aeldari, where everyone is a very low-level psyker. The Craftworlds solved this problem by making sure everyone gets basic training in meditation, shielding etc. Admittedly, they only did this after getting 80%+ of their population eaten by Slaanesh, and it might take a similar cultural shift to get the Imperium to change its ways.

For the Vizsier, this is what your character can sense if they're a psyker:

To me, this implies there's something of a spectrum, and he falls into "not quite a psyker, can't cause a breach, definitely more sensitive than average". The Inquisition probably likes recruiting those people, because with training they'll have a better chance of noticing trouble before everything erupts around them. I suspect many are also drawn unconsciously to 'sources of power', meaning more likely than usual to end up in the Ecclesiarchy, Death Cults, or also in outright Chaos cults (which would be another reason for the Inquisition to keep an eye out).

There's at least one Living Saint who looks like a psyker but has been proven not to be a psyker who probably falls into this category, too.

Kibellah, I think, might be right on the line between "sensitive non-psyker" and "very low level psyker". Ironically, Heinrix could be a little more comfortable with her because he'd know that psykers who are too weak to reliably manifest powers tend to get sacrificed to the Astronomicon, so she couldn't be sanctioned, but the training she's gone through and continues to practice has quite a few parallels to his own. Heinrix might be more comfortable with her if he's convinced she's unlikely to cause a breach and if placed in a situation she could slip, she'd cut her own throat before a catastrophe could happen.

People Matching Artworks: An Unusual Photo Series By Stefan Draschan

People Matching Artworks: An Unusual Photo Series By Stefan Draschan More info: Website | Instagram…

I was really hoping these weren’t staged and the artist just spends weeks in art galleries and days in front of paintings to make these

Well guess what… That’s exactly what he did!

Thank you!

Welcome! 

//BREAKS INTO THIS POST// I DO THESE DANCES IN MY SPARE TIME THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO STILL DANCE THEM ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND I KNOW YOU DON’T WANT THIS MUCH INFORMATION BUT HERE WE GO

young-lavender-lady I would like to apologize now for what is about to happen.

There are also English Country dances (squares and lines mostly) which were made for the commoner folk - Arbeau, Negri, Caroso, etc. were more high-end Renaissance. Italian and French dances are (nowadays at least) usually regarded as harder than English dances, regardless of the “simple” or “complex” labels given them. 

This is a list of a whole bunch of Renaissance dance primary sources!!

This is a facsimile of Arbeau’s Orchesographie!

This is more Renaissance resources!

This is what a modern dance book looks like, broken into types (pavannes, almans, branles) and with dates and authors, unless it is a modern choreography. 

This is a video of me (in the green and red) and my friends dancing Caroso’s Allagrezza d’Amore, a pretty complicated Italian for three.

There are people who, in there spare time, study the original dance manuals, pick them apart to see what the themes are, and put them back together again to make their own take on this stuff. I’ve been dancing Renaissance for five years now, and it’s pretty awesome and now you’ve got me all excited.

If you want more specifics (i.e. how to dance the things) please let me know!

theonceandfutureherooftime migth be able to add more if she is around!!

That’s very interesting. Thank you so much!!!!!!

Thanks for the wonderful addition to this post!

I love that the question is what's most compelling. I think the idea that technology eventually runs up against a wall and interstellar communication/travel is not feasible is very compelling because what do you even do at that point? We just sit there lonely.

the standard Rare Earth arguments work for me

My actual answer is "impossible to tell with the information we have".

My second answer is "no one Great Filter, but a number of largish filters each of which cuts probabilities down by at least an order of magnitude" (obvious ones: origin of self-replicating life, origin of complex Eukaryote-like cells, origin of complex intelligence able to imagine and create new tools, origin of the scientific method and industrial societies). (II voted for "social or technological bottlenecks", but I'd absolutely extend it to biological ones as well.)

My third, rather distant, answer is "constantly broadcasting radio waves in every direction is a huge pointless waste of energy, and technologically advanced species replace radio waves with something more targeted unless they are specifically trying to reach out to the universe".

One I've seen (and now, frustratingly, cannot find a link to the paper) is that conditions sufficiently stable for advanced multi-system life have only occurred comparatively recently in the history of the universe: within the last billion years at most and possibly less. Which would mean the solution to the Fermi paradox is partially "they just haven't arrived yet".

Which I guess counts as "Alien life too far for meaningful communication" as the current answer, but also implies that if we can survive for another 100 000 years then we might be the one of the ones welcoming new comers.

How many different sounds -- reasonably distinguishable by human speakers and listener -- can a language have?

Looking at the table of the International Phonetic Alphabet, consonants are mainly distinguished by place and manner of articulation, which is to say the part of the mouth where the airflow is restricted to produce sound and how that restriction occurs.

The most restrictive consonants are called stops or plosives, which stop the airflow altogether and release it with a burst. The IPA table divides them into seven places of articulation: bilabial (p & b), coronal (t & d), retroflex (ʈ & ɖ, like t & d, but with your tongue curling backward in the mouth, common in Indian languages), palatal (c & ɟ, roughly like ky and gy), velar (k & g), uvular (q & ɢ, similar to k & g but pronounced further back in the mouth), and glottal (ʔ, the Bri'ish glo'al stop) (there is also an epiglottal stop ʡ which I really don't understand). Sometimes you also see labiodental stops (p̪, b̪) pronounced by touching lower lip and upper teeth, like the first sound in the German Pferd. The coronal t & d can be divided in dental, alveolar, and postalveolar, depending on where exactly the tip of your tongue touches your teeth, but distinguishing those is not common. (Though Dahalo distinguishes laminal and apical t & d, so produced with the blade vs. the tip of your tongue). Oh, and there's the labiovelar stops (k͡p, ɡ͡b) of African languages such as Igbo and Yoruba, which actually combines two places into one; and the linguolabial stops made by touching your tongue against your upper lip (t̼, d̼).

The stops in each of these places, except for the glottal, can also be articulated in different ways. The "basic" way is called voiceless (p t k). Then there is voiced articulation, in which your vocal chords vibrate to make the sound slightly more sonorous (b d g). Then they can be aspirated (pʰ tʰ kʰ, compare "t" in "top" vs. "stop": the first is released with a slight puff of air). They can also be both voiced and aspirated at the same time (bʱ dʱ gʱ, like in the original pronunciation of Buddha). Then there are ejectives (pʼ tʼ kʼ, like in Maya), when air is ejected from the mouth without passing through the throat at all, and implosives (ɓ ɗ ɠ, like in Vietnamese), where air goes the other way creating a "gulping" sound. There's such a thing as "nasal" and "lateral release" of stops, but from what I find they are not treated as distinct sounds from the standard form.

So using only stops gives us 10 places (bilabial, labiodental, linguolabial, laminal dental, apical dental, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, labiovelar) x 6 (voiceless, voiced, aspirated, voiced + aspirated, ejective, implosive) + 2 (glottal & epiglottal stops) = 62 distinct consonantal sounds. Good start.

The second-most restrictive manner of articulation is that of nasals, which close the mouth completely and redirect air through the nasal passage. The places of articulation are largely the same: bilabial (m), labiodental (ɱ, the "m" in "amphor"), linguolabial (n̼), coronal (n), retroflex (ɳ, like n but curling the tongue backward), palatal (ɲ, like "ni" in "onion" or Spanish ñ), velar (ŋ, like "ng" in "sing"), uvular (ɴ, the "n" in Japanese san), and the co-articulated labial-velar ŋ͡m (like m and ng at the same time). They can be both voiced and voiceless, even though the latter are rare. That makes for 10x2 = 20 nasal consonants.

Then come fricatives, which make hissing or buzzing sounds. Again similar places: bilabial (ɸ β, pronounced with lips almost touching, e.g. the first sound of Japanese Fuji), labiodental (f v), dental (θ ð, the "th" of "thigh" and "thy") linguolabial (θ̼ ð̼, see earlier), alveolar (s z), postalveolar (ʃ ʒ, like the central sounds of "fission" and "vision"), palato-alveolar (ɕ ʑ, like ʃ ʒ but with the tongue pushing forward), retroflex (ʂ ʐ, like ʃ ʒ but with the tongue curling backward), palatal (ç ʝ, the first like the "h" in "hue"), velar (x ɣ, the first like the "ch" in Bach), uvular (χ ʁ, like the previous but further back in the throat), epiglottal (ħ ʕ, don't ask), and glottal (h ɦ). Each of these can, again, be voiceless, voiced, or (except the last two) ejective. There is also a mysterious "palatal-velar" ɧ that seems to exist only in Swedish. I'm counting 11x3 + 2x2 + 1 = 38 fricative sounds.

Actually, there is a second row of lateral fricatives, in which air passses by the sides of the tongue. The most common is coronal (ɬ ɮ, like "ll" in Welsh), but there's also retroflex (ꞎ), palatal (ʎ̝), and velar (ʟ̝). All voiced or voiceless, so 8 more fricatives for a total of 46.

Approximants are yet looser. We got labiodental ʋ (the Hindi pronunciation of "v", kinda halfway between English v and w), coronal ɹ (a common English pronunciation of "r"), retroflex ɻ, palatal j ("y" in "year"), velar ɰ (an extremely soft sound, sometimes "g" between vowels in Spanish), and glottal ʔ̞, which I'm not counting because I think it's the same as a vowel modification we'll get to later. Oh, and then labiovelars (voiced w as in "wealth" and voiceless ʍ as in "whale") and labial-palatal ɥ (as "u" in French nuit). I think they could all be voiced and voiceless, so that's 7x2 = 14 approximants.

But approximants can be lateral too, with what you could call the "L series": coronal l (and its velarized counterpart ɫ as in "lull"), retroflex , ɭ, palatal ʎ (as "gl" in Italian), velar ʟ (as "l" in "alga"), and uvular ʟ̠. So thats 5x2 = 10 more to make 24.

Then taps or flaps. I'm not familiar with these, except that the coronal flap ɾ is how Spanish -r- and American English -tt- may sound between vowels. Then there's bilabial ⱱ̟, labiodental ⱱ, linguolabial ɾ̼, retroflex ɽ, uvular ɢ̆, and epiglottal ʡ̆. Adding the voiceless and lateral (and both) versions recorded in the chart, I get to 15 taps.

Finally there's trills. We get bilabial ʙ (a kind of raspberry sound), coronal r (the "rolled r"), retroflex ɽr (?), uvular ʀ (French "r"), and epiglottal ʜ & ʢ (which are sometimes among fricatives). Add unvoiced for all, and we get 5x2 = 10 trills.

No, wait. There's affricates too, which are really stops + fricatives (including lateral) of the same place of articulation. Each affricate can also be voiced vs. voiceless (except the glottal) and aspirated vs. not (except the epiglottal), so I believe that makes 15x4 + 2 + 1 = 63 affricates.

No, wait. There's still the clicks. They may be used only in languages from Southern Africa, but that's no excuse not to count them. I don't understand them perfectly, but the basic types seem to be bilabial ʘ (basically lip-smacking), dental ǀ (tsk), alveolar ǃ (like doing a clopping sound with your tongue), palatal ǂ, retroflex ‼ (don't ask me about these), and lateral ǁ (a clicking sound with the side of the tongue). Each of them can be voiceless or voiced, aspirated or not, nasalized or glottalized or have 6 types of pulmonic countour or 5 types of ejective contour, plus a preglottalized nasal type and an egressive only for the labial click (please don't ask me). I believe that makes for... 6 x ((4x3) + 6 + 5 + 1) + 1 = 145 potential click sounds, and some Khoisan languages go pretty close to using them all.

That's not quite all -- I haven't counted nasalization or glottalization of most types of consonants, for example, but by my count we have put together 62 stops + 20 nasals + 46 fricatives + 24 approximants + 15 taps + 10 trills + 63 affricates + 145 clicks = 385 distinct consonants sounds.

To be continued with the vowels.

Vowels, then.

Vowels are generally classified by three parameters -- height (how open your mouth is, with lower vowels corresponding to wider opening), frontedness (how close the tip of your tongue is to your teeth), and roundedness (whether or not your lips are rounded as in an "o"). All these parameters are continuous, so in principle there is an infinite number of possible vowels, but IPA recognizes 7 levels of height, 5 of frontedness, and 2 of roundedness (i.e. either rounded or not). Even that doesn't quite mean 7x5x2 = 70 distinct vowels -- for one, there is less variation in frontedness when the mouth is open wider; also, some states of height and frontedness are just instances of vowels being "laxer", or slightly moved toward the center of the vowel-space.

In practice, there seem to be 13 realized height-frontedness combinations, each with rounded and unrounded vowel. (Describing these sounds will be made a bit easier by English being unusually rich in vowels, which is a great part of why its orthography is such a mess.) Looking first at close vowels (i.e., least opening of the mouth) we have anterior i ("ee" in "teeth") and its rounded pairmate y (German ü and French u, pronounce it with lips like u and tongue like i); central ɨ (Russian ы) and ʉ; posterior ɯ (Japanese u, pronounce it with lips like i and tongue like u) and u ("oo" as in "boot").

Then we have the semi-close ɪ ("i" as in "bit"), ʏ and ʊ ("oo" as in "foot"), which are the "lax" version of i, y, and u respectively, being just slightly closer to the central schwa. Presumaby there should be a "lax" analogue of ɯ as well, though IPA has no symbol for it.

Then, the close-mid series. Again from front to back, we have anterior e (French and Spanish "e") and ø (French "eu" and German ö), central ɘ and ɵ, and posterior ɤ and o.

The mid series mostly has just the central, unrounded, "neutral" schwa sound ə ("uh" in most English pronounciations). However, there are also lowered variations of the previous series (e̞, ø̞, ɤ̞, o̞) that are intermediate between it and the following open-mid series.

So, the open-mid. We have anterior ɛ ("e" as in "bed") and œ (a somewhat more open ø̞), central ɜ ("i" in "bird") and ɞ, and posterior ʌ ("u" in "gut") and ɔ ("ough" in "thought").

The semi-open series gives us only æ ("a" as in "cat"), with no recorded rounded counterpart, and ɐ (a kind of more open schwa, as German "-er").

Finally, the open series has anterior a (as French "a") and ɶ, an unpaired central ä (Spanish "a", slightly less anterior than the French version), and posterior ɑ ("a" as in "palm" in the British pronounciation) and ɒ.

These are all the basic types, or "qualities" of vowels. A general count of IPA-recognized vowel qualities seems to be 33, or 36 if we add the missing rounded/unrounded variants of recognized sounds. Not so high compared to the number of consonants, but.

Vowels can also vary in length: compare the "short" "bit" vs. the "long" "beat" (in fact these are also slightly different in quality -- ɪ vs. i -- as I think English doesn't contrast vowels only on length, though many languages do). Usually vowel length can only be short (a) or long (aː), but IPA also records half-long (aˑ, as in Estonian) and extra-short (ă, as unstressed vowels in some English dialects). Let's make it four length values.

Vowels can also be nasalized (as they generally are just before nasal consonants), or rhoticized (see the difference between American and British "er"), as well as, it seems, pronounced with advanced or retracted tongue root, which is a distinguishing feature in some African and Central Asian languages. So that makes for 36 (basic vowel qualities) x 4 (lengths) x 3 (nasalized, rhoticized, or neither) x 3 (advanced, retracted, or regular tongue root position) = 1296 distinct vowel sounds.

And then there's phonation. As I'm kindly reminded --

-- vocal chords can tense and vibrate in different ways when speaking. I'm seeing a scale, from the most open to the most closed state of the glottis, that starts with complete voicelessness (which gives voiceless consonants, but also voiceless vowels, like low whispering); then "breathy voice", also referred to as whispery but also producing voiced sound at the same time; then "lax" or "slack voice", a weaker version of the former; then "modal voice", the one used for voiced consonants and regular vowels; then "stiff voice", somewhat tenser than the modal; then "creaky voice", or "vocal fry", which adds that sort of grinding sound to the voice; and finally full closure of the glottis, stopping all airflow and producing a glottal stop. These can be distinctive features of syllables in Burmese and Vietnamese. There is also apparently something called "ballistic syllables" "characterized with increased sub-glottal pressure" in some Central American languages.

Those apply to consonants as well as vowels; I'm not sure how independently from each other. To some degree they must be, since voiceless consonants are most often followed by voiced vowels. For now I'm keeping the voiced/voiceless distinction for consonants and counting 6 ways to vocalize vowels (whispered, breathy, slack, modal, stiff, and creaky), which moves the total to 1296x6 = 7776.

Of course there's diphthongs and triphthongs -- two or three vowels gliding into each other as part of the same syllable ("eye", "ewe", "fire", "dial"). That would suggest 7776 + 7776^2 + 7776^3 = almost 500 billions, but I'm not sure stuff like phonation can vary independently for all of them. Let's say only vowel quality changes, and then diphthongs and triphthongs give us (36 + 36^2 + 36^3) x 216, which still leaves us with over ten million choices. Still, lets stick to a single vowel quality per time, at least for now.

The most common type of simple syllable is CV -- a single consonant (affricates usually count), followed by a single vowel. With our 385 consonants (which I've now been convinced is a severe undercount) and 7776 vowels, we get 2,993,760 possible elementary syllables, enough to fully stock an extremely extensive vocabulary exclusively with monosyllables,

Ah, but there's tone left. IPA distinguishes five tone levels (high, half-high, mid, half-low, low), but then allows for tone contours -- changing between different tones on a single syllable. A contour can involve up to three distinct levels, as the third tone of Mandarin, which implies (assuming contours can't contain two consecutive identical levels) 5x4 = 20 two-level cntours and 5x4x4 = 80 three-level contours, for a total of 5 + 20 +80 = 105 complex tones. On the other hand, if the more complex contours can only distinguish high, middle, and low tone, the total goes down to 3 + (3x2) + (3x2x2) = 21. The languages I've found with the most tones are the Trique of southern Mexico, which may have up to 16.

Throw tones in the mix and we have either 385x7776x21 or 385x7776x105 = 63 million or 314 million possible elementary syllables.

What else as I missing?

If I am correct in what an epiglottal trill is, it sounds rather different depending on whether you make it on an inhale or an exhale. I'm not sure if that's already accounted for. If not, you can probably add another one to the list.

Image ID: a diagram of different types of blood and their colors. Bit of a long description, sorry.

1.) Most things have hemoglobin, which is red. The iron in hemoglobin is what bonds with oxygen.

2.) Some mollusks and arthropods have hemocyanin. It works best in cold environments with low oxygen pressure. Hemocyanin is blue when oxygenated and clear when not, and has copper instead of iron.

3.) Some marine worms and brachiopods have hemerythrin. Hemerythrin has a much lower affinity for carbon monoxide than hemoglobin. It’s a pinkish-violet when oxygenated and clear when not, and binds to oxygen with iron.

4.) A few marine polychetes have erythrocruorin. This one kind of sucks at binding with oxygen. The colors are also a bit fucky, when the blood is undiluted it appears as a light red, but when it is diluted it looks green. Erythrocruorin also uses iron.

5.) Artificial oxygen carrier! Coboglobin! Sources on color are notably varied and a little bit fucked up. The first set, amber when oxygenated and clear when not, from what I’ve read is probably the most accurate? But this is for fictional sci-fi so who gives a shit. The second set is pink when oxygenated and amber when un-oxygenated. End image ID

I encourage everyone to straight-up color pick from these if you want. Credit me if you want to, don’t if you don’t, i don’t even know how accurate the stuff after the grey line is. I just wanted to find out wtf blood was.

Great diagram!

I’d add that the blood may also contain pigments other than respiratory ones, which may affect the color in different ways. There is a New Guinean skink (Prasinohaema virens) that has green blood, despite using haemoglobin like (almost!) every other vertebrate, because it’s full of biliverdin (which is what makes gall/bile green), probably for immunitary reasons.

It’s also possible to have pigment-less blood: crocodile icefish have none, and their blood is completely clear. Of course this allows to carry much less oxygen, and is only apt for very slow metabolism.

We've been losing power due to winter storms lately so my partner 3D printed me a tealight "to fill in for tumblr when you're offline"

anyway this should be official merch imo

If you're wondering why I will not leave this site and why I love it so much: after this went around, I got a message from Tumblr asking if they could make it official merch and then they did. I said go for it, and donated the .stl file because I want to help the site stay afloat. It went live yesterday I think, and it's even prettier and better than this original design (they definitely put work into it which was very exciting).

But I want to say something else. They asked for suggestions on where to get these made, and I gave them the names of a few mass production companies, but I also gave them the name of my small local guys. I didn't expect them to go there, it's probably more expensive to use a smaller local shop, but I know it would mean more to them. And I was immediately told they'd check in with them, and then that's just what happened.

They went with my little guys.

So if you're wondering about the price, it's because Tumblr staff just... Listened and cared. They listened to the people who said they wanted one of these, and then they not only asked me but listened to the answer when I suggested supporting a business local to me. That's invaluable to me.

Also it's important to me that you know this comes apart so you can use just the dumpster to put things in. My prototypes are full of jellybeans.

This is why aliens don’t want us in their Starfleet.

Are you fucking kidding this is why aliens should be begging us to join their Starfleet. The precision?? The CONTROL?? The absolute mastery this driver has over their 20+ ton of steel is superhuman. This person could weave a mothership through an asteroid belt without making a single scratch on the hull. Foh “aliens don’t want us” aliens should be sucking our dicks.

Continue Reading

:D

The only other poisonous birds I knew of were the pitohuis, which seem to be loosely related to these species, all being in superfamily Orioloidea. Interesting that, despite having arisen multiple times, they seem to be all from New Guinea.

I wonder if it’s related to whatever food source they’re getting the poison from? Since the linked article suggests that isn’t definitively known yet. Perhaps both groups of birds started feeding on whatever it is - probably a beetle? - and started evolving mechanisms to cope with the poison in their diet, and this led to utilising it?

Most likely. Apparently there’s more poisonous birds than I thought!, and poison seems always derived from their diet. The batrachotoxins in pitohuis (famously found in poison-dart frogs, but those are South American) has indeed been found in New Guinean beetles too. The linked paper mentions a hypothesis that the toxins of pitohuis, too small an amount to kill large vertebrates, might be more a defense against feather lice than predators.

Turns out that Mediterranean quails are seasonally poisonous, too – only when migrating northward! Quail poisoning is even recorded in the Bible as a divine curse (Numbers 11). Source of the toxin uknown, but almost certainly from plant food.

The spur-winged goose definitely derives toxins from beetles it eats, and other species (bronzewing pigeons, ruffed grouse) from plants. Some woodpeckers rub crushed ants on their feathers to cover themselves in formic acid.

Huh. I did not know bronzewings were poisonous! But I guess that makes sense, half the things they’re supposed to eat are definitely poisonous. (The list of things they are not supposed to eat includes ‘my dad’s garden before it even sprouts’, but we can’t really blame them for that, they were here first.)