Em Speromint

i need more posts in this genre

How English has changed in the past 1000 years.

the big mans a lad i have fuck all, he lets me have a kip in a field he showed me a pond 

this is easily one of the videos i’ve ever seen

friends. romans. countrymen. i am asking. i am begging. please use headphones when consuming audio content in a shared space.

friends. romans. countrymen. i am no longer asking. use headphones when consuming audio content in a shared space or consider your life forfeit

saying “i want him” about the character but not in a romantic or sexual way . i just Require him i need to Obtain him

Trail cam catching a deer fawn with the zoomies

Dancy

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

evilwizard

good and righteous wizard

evilwizard

Neutral wizard

EVILwizard

Nuanced and complex wizard

WHAT IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS

*puts down the watch of wretched dreams* this isn’t working, we need to try something else

*jolts up from my trance writhing on the table* you are not my favorite therapist that ive ever seen

Two animals people need to shut the fuck up about and be normal are pandas and dolphins

Respectfully, no.

Pandas are only alive because they're cute.

Dolphins are sex criminals and drug fiends.

No. Pandas are animals that evolved to fit a particular biome. The fact that they don't reproduce well in captivity isn't a mark against them, it's a mark against captivity. They, like almost any animal, are threatened by fragmented habitat and are luckily cute enough to get the funding necessary to conserve them. If not for similar conservation efforts all kinds of animals of varying degrees of cuteness would be dead as well. Nobody is calling for the abandonment of the black footed ferret project because ferrets are cute and somehow that makes them less-than in the eyes of slack jawed edgy douchebro comedians.

Dolphins are mammals and enjoy things that mammals commonly enjoy, such as intoxicants, and if you're going to pretend to be shocked and disgusted by a dolphin getting high you'll also have to throw away reindeer and every other animal that enjoys fermented juices including fruit flies. Dolphins are perceived by humans as being more intelligent and therefore more culpable to "sins" than other animals but humans can't even agree on what's immoral let alone expecting a non human animal to magically ascribe to our same biases for no reason and assign the animal negative traits when it fails to meet that asinine expectation.

The sooner you stop trying to shoehorn in some fake idea of an animal being more or less deserving of its existence the easier it will be to get through to people.

Which I should just go ahead and say right now, the OP was inspired by an article about a woman who was injured in a dolphin petting pen on vacation and the comments were full of people blaming THE DOLPHIN because "theyre nasty violent rapists" and not the humans, who captured it, forced it into a pen, and climbed and petted all over it knowing full well it was a large wild predator that had no business being swarmed by untrained fucking idiots.

It may have been haha funny shocking animal fact at first but now it's ruined because too many people started buying that shit for real and now we have people who no longer want to preserve the sea otter because it doesn't know what consent is.

The biggest misconception in public schools is that literary analysis is about proving you can be right or wrong about a book you read

Literary analysis isn’t about the book

It’s not even about being right

It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury

It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won

And the incredible life skill of spinning bulletproof bullshit out your ass with a handful of facts and a prayer is soooooooo much more valuable than anyone’s ever gonna tell you

the "dire wolves are no longer extinct" stuff is gonna be the most annoyingly persistent science misinformation for the next decade at least

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.

Case in point: https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/

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.

It's from Jurassic Park!

"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.

Yeah Mr. Darcy’s proposal was a complete turd and a half but you gotta understand. You got your life together. A good career, stable income, retirement plan, all that shit together. And you meet this girl. And she’s everything. Clever, outspoken, funny, calls you on your bullshit. Grade A cutie, right? And she doesn’t go out of her way to spend time with you but she’s nice, and sometimes you catch her looking your way in a way that makes you think you might have a shot.

But her family. Holy shit.

First off, it’s p much ALL women, and mostly UNMARRIED women, which at this time means of something happens to her dad then you’re financially responsible for like. Four grown ass adults, potentially forever

Because mom in law is DEFINITELY gonna need someone to take care of her when dad in law kicks it, and they have like. NO money. So already you’re accepting that if all goes well, you’re gonna be one random old bag’s retirement home. That’s expensive and exhausting, yeah? Imagine asking someone on a first date knowing that if they say yes and things go good her high-strung chihuahua mother is gonna move in with you. IMAGINE.

And girly’s other sisters. Well, one is a sweetheart, yeah, so she probably won’t be an issue, but that still leaves three more, and two of those ones are INSUFFERABLE. Never went to school, dumb as rocks, spend cash like it’s toilet paper

And while one of the two is young still and might grow out of it the OTHER one is actively torpedo’ing her entire family’s reputation by wandering off with random dudes and chasing ass. She’s never gonna work, she can’t build connections, she’s a fucking sinkhole, and she’s being led on by the same goddamn con man ass leeching tit who’s been bleeding you dry while telling anyone who’ll listen that your family is full of ratty thieving bastards.

And if he dumps her after a week- WHICH YOU KNOW HIS BITCH ASS IS GONNA- you’ve got a SECOND UNMARRIABLE GROWN ASS ADULT TO PROVIDE FOR. And you KNOW she’s gonna be a tantrum-throwing little shit about it, and it’s not like you can lock her in the basement or something, you’re gonna have to bring her fucking. Everywhere. And give her an allowance and shit while she contributes zero, because again, she NEVER GOT EDUCATED AND HAS NO MARKETABLE SKILLS. She’s not even good to TALK to. FUCK

And you’re looking at this girl’s father like “please for the love of fuck get your spawn under control, marry them off, get them working on their résumé, learning to sew or be nursemaids or manage staff or SOMETHING, yall got no money and one foot in the grave” and that old man just laughs like “haha yeah, what can you do. lol”

So you’re looking to the mom and finally it’s making sense how she got that twitch in her eye and as MUCH as she is you’re starting to realize she’s the SMART one, desperately throwing her armloads of girls at random men like they’re a bunch of fucking lifeboats bobbing around a sinking ship, like yes Jesus Christ sweetly that life boat IS old and ugly and kind of boring but for FUCKS SAKE PICK ONE

And you look back at this girl who is ALSO REFUSING THE LIFE BOATS BY THE WAY and god damn it she’s still the most radiant thing you’ve ever seen so fine, fuck it, Christ alive, you’ll do it. You’ll shoot your shot. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in anybody abut it’s not even just about that anymore, it’s about being her best fucking shot at a future, and even if she doesn’t like you all that much she’s still gonna say yes and that might break your heart a bit knowing it’s about the money but who knows, maybe it will at least be civil, or companionable, and even if she doesn’t LOVE you at least you’ll know she’s well and cared for

And so you’ll do it. You’ll take on the neurotic stress mess mother in law, the absent father, the broke ass wingnut no brain no money no future airhead sisters, the bad mannered relatives and the embarrassing behaviour and the impending future of sharing your entire shit with a clown parade of freeloaders, you’ll risk it all and accept the absolute certainty of financial ruin and emotional exhaustion for the rest of your whole ass life and you’ll make your own family deal with it too, you’ll do it, you’ll fucking DO IT, you stupid lovesick motherfucker

And so you go to this chick like “look. Your whole family’s a shitshow. You’ve got fucking nothing and you’re gonna die on the street. But for some reason- and I don’t get it either- I’ve fallen in love with you, and I wish I didn’t, but I did, so I’m telling you that whether you like me or not, I’ll give you everything. I’ll give you everything even if it’s the dumbest shit I ever done. Fuck my stupid Baka ass, I’ll marry you.”

And she looks at you- having heard or considered absolutely none of your months-long internal debate and monologue- and goes “The fuck did you just say about my family, you son of a bitch?”

And the shock of that is enough to jolt you back into a reality where you are able to actually hear and process what just came out of your damn mouth And yeah

Yeah, I think I kinda get it

Watching the mummy 1999 for shits and giggles, thought it'd be fun to bitch abt the inaccurate hieroglyphs now that I know smth abt all that. Disappointed and disgusted to find out that they hired an egyptologist consultant and the hieroglyphs are actually well done. Night ruined

“f it we ball” BALL?? BALL??? BALL??? BALL???? THROW THE BAL???? THE BALL???? THE BALL?? BALL??? BAL?? THROW BALL?? THROW RHE VALL???? THE ALL?????