it’s ninety-nine degrees outside, four fuck-thousand percent humidity, and my husband was like, “i’m gonna go for a bike ride.” and i was like “why. no. why. don’t put us on the news like that. local fool collapses on unnecessary journey. don’t do it.” so he says he doesn’t want to “hide in the house” because the sun is shining. bruh. honeybruh. “the sun is shining” does not cover it. its hot outside. its motherfucking hot as fuck outside. our outdoor plants have been crying into their hands all week. whole cars are melting into the sewer. our fucking patio umbrella developed sentience to ask me for lemonade this morning

@robotmango, you need to work for the weather forecast - this was both hilarious and so vivid it made me stand up and get some iced tea.

this is a great idea, thank you. here goes. my audition tape for the weather channel. dearly beloved. we are gathered here today to have a fucking funeral for the outdoors. it had a good run, with all its creeks and clouds and shit. pretty great. now it’s ten-thirty at night but still ninety-two asshole-sweating degrees and humid as fuck. everything is hot and slimy, like being a “borrower” that got trapped inside a bottle of shampoo and then accidentally microwaved. you can see on my doppler radar that nothing is moving around out there because everything is probably dead. the only alive thing is the mosquito currently trying to drill a hole in my leg. no surprise that all the shitbag mosquitos are fine, since the thermostat of hell is always at the devil’s preferred temperature. this forecast has gotten away from me a little, but in conclusion fuck the sun

Lmao

HA-ha

Oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire to cook food

The remains of a huge carp fish (2 meters/6.5 feet long), analyzed by the Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Oranim Academic College, the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institution, the Natural History Museum in London, and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, mark the earliest signs of cooking by prehistoric human to 780,000 years ago, predating the available data by some 600,000 years.

A close analysis of the remains of a carp-like fish found at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY) archaeological site in Israel shows that the fish were cooked roughly 780,000 years ago. Cooking is defined as the ability to process food by controlling the temperature at which it is heated and includes a wide range of methods. Read more.

Holy SHIT this is cool!! Y'all! Y'ALL!! This is HUGE!! Our ancestors were having a nice grill out 600,000 years EARLIER than we thought!!! We went from thinking this was 180,000 years ago to fucking 780,000 years ago!! That’s mind-blowing!!! Like… just think about the difference between starting a 180k fic (already a sizable investment) vs getting into a 780k MONSTER!! And… that’s just words! Not years!! I’m blown away!!

ETA: More info on this is here.

ETA2: See also this press release on the discovery.

ETA3: And here’s the link to the paper at Nature. (Sorry, friends, it’s a paywalled article.) :/

(I’m going hunting for the original paper, now. Because I want to know what species that carp was. After all… until you know the species, you can’t come up with a decent recipe…)

Per this: they mention two likely species (without specifically correlating them to the teeth they were analyzing in this study) as Luciobarbus longiceps, known casually as the Jordan barbel, and Carasobarbus canis, the Jordan himri. While both these fish are members of the Cyprinidae family, which includes carp, they’re not all that carpish. (And the genus name of Luciobarbus suggests that it’s a bit more pike-shaped; Esox lucius is the true [northern] pike.)

…Anyway, barbel are a bit more like perch, if you ask me. …But in any case, both are firm-fleshed fish that would probably bake up nicely. (Some people online can be found muttering about a slightly earthy flavor to the fish, which can sometimes have to do with the quality of the water where they’re found… and as a result, most of the recipes I turned up in a quick search involve simmering them in flavored stocks of one kind or another: like this one via the old Foody site, now only available at the Wayback Machine – one of Mrs. Beeton’s recipes. Or search for “barbel” in this page from the Illustrated London Cookery Book.)

@ceruleancynic has this on a t-shirt (the underpant worn by the rat, Fig. 1, that is)

I married SO well

I have it on TWO shirts, the first being ancient and somewhat raggedy and the second much more stylish

and I take full responsibility for introducing the underpant worn by the rat to the attendees of 4th Street Fantasy last year <3

THIS

Here's a big project I've been sitting on! All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, by our very own @ceruleancynic! And a box, naturally, building boxes for books continues to bring me immense joy.

What we have here is not just the main fic, or the main series, but also All That You Love (The High Hope Remix) alt pov short fic by byzantienne, and, a detail that I was really excited to include: the initial comment exchange between these two fantastic authors of m the first fic in the series. Did I title that second little book 'all that you meet cute will be carried away' as a silly placeholder? Did I then get super attached and refuse to change it? Uh-

Hell yeah, I refuse to be dignified about any of my favorite hobbies!

But the real secret delight here was that I've been looking for the right opportunity to get weird with boxes. Peller boxes, hinged slipcases, yes, fine, but those are like the box version of my sixfold book adventure. I'm still shooting for some parallel to my fourteenfold book, I'm looking for a way to go completely off the rails. I have some ideas, but it's hard, finding a good large chonk and a small number of equally sized texts, which made a unified and complete set, AND which excited me to work with. That might sound unnecessarily picky, but I swear, there was a good reason for it!

Oh baby. Oh baby.

This worked out so perfectly. I wanted a large book at the center of things. And I wanted two small books oriented in a different direction, placed end to end, at its edge. And I got it! I didn't want to commit too early, and it would have been heartbreaking to fail, but once the big book was together, and the preliminary typesets for the two little books were almost identical? I just HAD to try.

Tumblr is already silencing me and refusing to let me attach as many images as I want, so for this post, let's talk about the main book a little! Cute little quarto bricks are my new FAVORITE favorite thing, as I'm sure you can guess from my archives, and this one was a dream to put together.

It had to be a three-quarter leather binding, naturally. And I was sitting on some gorgeous iridescent maroon paper for endpapers (no photos in this set, it refuses to photograph well, as is the way of pretty iridescent things). I spent some time agonizing over my other material, and whether to use two different marbled patterns, but I went with it in the end. The vibes were distinct enough but the palettes overlapped enough that I really enjoyed the effect. And with the northcott art of marbling fabrics (my beloved) I was able to use lines of symmetry to get some nice fussy cuts for the big book and the little ones. All of the books have leather endbands, matching the spine. And the big book has the big thick faux raised bands I tried out with my last svsss! I don't have enough pictures to show off all the book interiors, but I used this cover plate for the series and main fics within it.

And then, like I showed you above, I put it all together. Marbled paper and silk moire for covering the box, a lot of very tense wrangling of glued-up paper in very small spaces, and, at one point, carefully lowering glue-covered pieces of moire bookcloth down these little pits (walls already covered) using that tab in the front like the world's awkwardest elevator shaft. But the EFFECT!

I'm very, very pleased with myself, and delighted to have delivered this book to its new home. I've been absolutely VIBRATING with a desire to share, so! I can't be contained by tumblr's image limit. Hold on for two seconds (approx.) and I'm going to reblog this post with some wip pictures and more detail about how I worked this thing out and assembled this box and modified my initial design on the fly

Now, all the BONES

So, the first and most logical step was to get the big book as close as possible to its final dimensions before I made my next move. I prefer to work on all the things at once, but something would have one hundred percent gone wrong here. I had the text on my computer, but I couldn't commit to margins and sizes until I knew how big the books needed to be. I'm pretty sure I took this photo because that was when I was finally able to get those measurements, haha

Then I was able to subtract the square for my boards (I hoped) and get dimensions for my text blocks that I would have to print and cut to very precisely. NERVEWRACKING. The guillotine.... I love her, but she is a vicious, unforgiving thing. But it worked! And here, I'm pretty sure I was checking how I liked the small books with the cover fabric before I FULLY fully committed. You can see the back of those endpapers here! The front is like that, but shiny.

Then, the books were made. The dimensions looked about right, and it was time for Box. I have the Hollander's book that talks about making and covering a divided tray, so I felt confident! An unjustified amount of confident. But that's just my usual operating mode when it comes to crafts.

First issue: I didn't want those little books to get stuck in their little pit traps. I thought about doing a little curved divot at the top edge. But cutting board this thick can be dicy, and I was also realizing that I would have just over a finger's width of space to work inside those spaces once the walls were all up. So I made a VERY good call and took a slice out of the wall all the way from top to bottom on the front and back of the little books. Nice and easy to pinch and extract!

Meanwhile, the rest of the tray was just a nice normal clamshell. I considered putting a wall on the back, but first, it's harder to delicately extract an eight hundred page brick with two fingers, and second, that spine turned out pretty and deserves to be seen. So I glued that all up, and then test fitted my books. You'll note that I hadn't titled the little books yet! I was pretty sure they would get spine titles, but was also waiting to see what would work best with the box.

Then it was time to COVER. The truly nervewracking part began. I decided to cover the front with a continuous piece, even though I'm not sure it's totally visible with the size of the pattern vs my gaps, then cut down the middle of each piece and turned it in. You can see how much space I had to work with getting down into those wells, haha. And they were MARGINALLY deeper than my fingers were long, so I did the bottom bits with careful poking from bone folders and a cheap dull letter opener I use for tiny spaces

I didn't take any pictures of me covering the rest of the interior because it was MUCH more nervewracking than expected, and I was increasingly afraid I would mess up something unrecoverable and have to start over. The last step, after the walls were done, was to cover the floors. Again, silk moire with one side covered in glue, carefully lowered down a pit already lined with fancy paper... twice. And then the main floor, which was easy, so I saved it for last, haha. But it worked!!

The rest was nice and easy! I built my other tray just fine. Three unbroken walls felt like a leisurely walk in the part by this time. And then I made the outer case for the trays. The very final step was to title it with foil, as seen in the first post up above!

But I do also have one bonus shot for you an initial photo from the inside of that main tray, where the little book holes are visible. This box truly stretched my mind in new ways, and I had SUCH an incredible time figuring it out! It looks much fancier in midday light rather than at midnight, and on a clean table rather than my active work zone. But this is a project where I think the progress photos are so cool and fun, and I just had to share them with you all :D

This is, hands down, the most amazing gift anyone has ever given me. I’m speechless: I knew it was going to be incredible getting to hold ATYLWBCA in my hands, a tangible object in the world, but having @byzantienne​‘s remix fic and the comment threads in which we began the process of falling in love bound into books as well and presented in something as complicated and beautiful as this box -- yeah. It’s amazing.

I bitch a lot about author copies, but this is the best author copy of all time, and now we have it, if something unspeakable happens to the internet we have our story and none of it can be lost.

so thank you so much, and one day perhaps I can make something for you that’s even half as beautiful as this.

Danai Gurira as Richard 111 in Shakespeare in the park in New York

DANG

Polished Malachite Stalactite - Copper Crescent, Congo

*looks around*

Is

Is anyone gonna say it

malachite is a poisonous mineral. please do not fuck the malachite stalactite

@lizaleigh do you know any rock people that can confirm/deny because I am very curious and really don’t feel like getting into a conversation with my geophysicist brother that MAY somehow get back to the fact I saw a malachite that looked like a weird dildo.

…sadly, I am not on good enough terms with any of our partner geologists to just attach this to an email with the subject line: “EXPLAIN.” Although I think @mollisaurus is a mineral person. Thoughts?

oh geeze, i’m kinda rusty on minerals but malachite is just copper carbonate and is really common in both antique and modern jewelry so i think like if you were really gun-ho about it you could go ahead and put it wherever you want?

It’s really only a problem if you’re polishing or cutting it. The particles would be bad to breathe. It’s rather porous too, so I would worry about bacteria growing. Well, being literal anyway… Better to leave the poor thing alone. ._.

I mean it kinda depends on where you stick it because malachite does not like acidic environments very much and the malachite will degrade and also might dye your bits blue-green as the copper dissolves out.

So use a condom when fucking rocks is the takeaway here.

Oh my god guys it’s poisonous

It is super poisonous

There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more

Not even with a condom, do not fuck the rock

Try this one instead. 

malachite literally explodes in water does it not?

I… no… I think you’re thinking of pure sodium?

Malachite is however water soluble, which really just means it will poison you quicker

This is both hilarious and cool as fuck because you’re getting all this information on minerals and rocks. You’re also watching people argue over wether or not you can fuck this rock

I go on hiatus for a week and come back to find tumblr molesting my post, but hey, at least we all learned something so yay tumblr, you just keep on  being you.

I’m still not sure if I can fuck this rock.

I’m looking into it.

UPDATE:

Today in “I’m so sorry, coworkers, it’s for Tumblr,” I brought this post to the attention the science reporters at BuzzFeed. Dan Vergano did a some research and weighed in on the question “Can you use malachite as a dildo or is it toxic?”

The answer is “It’s probably fine, just wash it first and maybe use a bunch of lube.”

Oh man this got so much better than the last time I saw this post

This is my favourite. Science side of tumblr: asking the REAL questions

*biologist crashes through the underbrush* Ok so here’s the thing though Malachite is not poisonous to YOU. BUT fucking this stalactite will probably wreck your vaginal flora and leave you with a gruesome infection within a couple days. Want details? SO GLAD YOU ASKED, ‘CAUSE HERE THEY ARE. • Malachite is not copper oxide. It’s Cu2CO3(OH)2. Like most carbonates it’s water soluble– that’s how it became a stalactite in the first place! And technically any given chunk of “malachite” isn’t just malachite– it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. This will become important later.  • When malachite dissolves it makes a bunch of copper (Cu++) ions. Cu++ is GREAT at killing bacteria and fungi– so good at it that sprays with Cu++ get used a lot as a spray in agriculture to stop plant disease. It takes such a large dose to harm larger organisms that copper sprays are used a lot in organic agriculture (like Bordeaux mixture).  So bottom line, yes malachite is technically nontoxic to humans. But it kills bacteria when it dissolves and releases Cu++. • Malachite dissolves somewhat slowly in water– but vaginal secretions aren’t just any water. A healthy human vagina has a pH of 3.8-4.5 and a salinity of about 0.9%. It’s also warmer than your average underground cave at 37°C (or 98.5°F in American meat units). As luck would have it, acidity, salinity, and warmth all make malachite dissolve faster.  • In other words, the human vagina dissolves malachite.  • I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.  • Gonna to take a quick moment to point out that sex toys that dissolve when you use them are maybe not the best investment.  • Anyway the key question now is “how fast does the human vagina dissolve malachite?” Are we talking geological timescale, a Nazis-in-Indiana-Jones situation, or something in between? If the reaction kinetics of dissolution are very slow, then there’s nothing to worry about. An encounter with a stalactite would have to last years for enough Cu++ to leach out to cause problems. If it’s quick then we’re in trouble.  • Unfortunately it looks like nobody really knows. One of the best sources on how malachite dissolves & precipitates in water– an EPA document on how to avoid too much Cu++ in municipal drinking water systems– helpfully says “The kinetic constraints on the formation of these solids in water systems are largely unexplored” (p. 42) because end equilibrium points is all you need to run a city water system safely. In other words, the experiments that would tell us how fast malachite dissolves in various types of water just don’t exist because nobody’s ever needed to know before. So we’d better assume it’s going to happen reasonably quickly, #for safety. • So in best scientific fashion, we’re just going to bullshit our way ahead using what facts we DO have on hand: endpoint equlibria.  • Is there any info out there telling us what equilibrium concentration of Cu++ we get in salty acidic water at body temperature? Almost! One J.F. Scaife published some great data on this back in 1957. TAKE IT AWAY, SCAIFE. 

That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly less salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly lower than people. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.  • Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides, and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.” In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.  • Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.

^This would happen. These are the counts of 4 E. coli strains exposed to various levels of lactic acid & Cu++ for 8 hours. This table only shows the end counts but it represents the death of 99.7% of bacteria*. • Losing 99.7% of your vaginal flora is seriously bad news. You’re looking at really good odds of a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, and/or other infection issues. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not be in the 4% of the population or so that’s sensitive to skin contact with copper.  • The good news? Biochemically speaking, you’re probably ok to put it in your butt. It’s not as acidic or salty in there, plus there’s a huuuuuge stockpile of gut microbes right upstream that can quickly repopulate the colon after spelunking is complete. However this stalactite is not flared at the base so it is the wrong shape for putting in your butt. Do not put this stalactite in your butt.  • This all looks like fun and games, but I think it’s really interesting that the internet’s mistake in concluding that this stalactite is fuckable is very similar to the mistake made by the Flint water management system. Hear me out.  • Central to the Flint lead poisoning crisis is that authorities only looked at & tested Flint’s water in its central treatment plant before it went out through the pipes. Not after it went through the pipes. They did not consider what would happen biochemically as it went through the pipes and metals started dissolving.  • Similarly, in concluding that the stalactite is fuckable, the internet only considered the stalactite itself. Not the biochemical processes that would happen to it as it, welp, went through the pipes.  • Media frequently reports that the Flint River’s water is “corrosive,” leading many to believe the river is full of industrial waste. This ain’t the case. You’d need industry to fill a river with industrial waste, and industry left decades ago. That’s why Flint’s so poor. So what IS in the water? Road salt. Plain old stupid road salt. The old Detroit-based source didn’t have salt because it came from Lake Huron which has a large, mostly rural watershed. Meanwhile the Flint River runs through a lot of towns, making it slightly salty as everything melts down in spring. And as we recall from the stalactite experience, a little salt is all it takes to get metals to dissolve.  • Information on this engineering problem was not coming through clearly from the engineering or chemistry sides. It took a biologist, pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, to document the real-time results and provide the data to kick-start a high-level investigation.  • Morals of the story: when dealing with a biological system pls consider asking a biologist, your vagina and/or city could depend on this • Pls use a condom when fucking any water-soluble material • Still don’t put the stalactite in your butt -3/10 do not recommend

OK, I haven’t reblogged this before now but the final post takes it to a whole new level and I can no longer resist. 

@elodieunderglass for that dp action

I’ve seen multiple crystal/dildo posts lately that did NOT reference malachite and that’s been a bit disappointing so thanks for bringing it back up!

IT GOT BETTER

sixteen *counts up seven on fingers* seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three

you start with the big number and you count up the small number, unless it's one of the easy ones (ten, eleven)