By looking at a lot of things – the number of blood vessels in their bones, their growth rates, the presence of insulation, etc. – we can compare these to modern warm- and cold-blooded animals.` What do we find? All dinosaurs that we’ve examined are more or less warm-blooded.
Now, as with most things, there’s a gradient. Some early dinosaurs and plant-eating dinosaurs seem to have been mesotherms – think “lukewarm-blooded”. Mesotherms are animals that maintain a body temperature higher than the environment, but that also fluctuates with the environmental temperature. This is present in some animals today as well – monotremes, sea turtles, and some sharks are mesotherms.
Now hang on, you might say, but aren’t dinosaurs reptiles? And reptiles are cold-blooded! How did this happen?
Well, if we look at dinosaurs’ close relatives – the pterosaurs – we can see that they were also warm-blooded. It seems then, that the ancestor of both groups likely was as well!
So, why evolve warm-bloodedness? For starters, it makes digestion easier. Cold-blooded animals can’t digest their food when it’s not warm enough out; they have to lay out in the sun to warm up enough for their digestive processes to work. Being warm-(or lukewarm-)blooded frees up a lot of time and makes you less vulnerable to predators since you don’t have to lay out in the sun.
Warm-bloodedness also means you can grow faster and be more active, and in a world ruled my massive protomammals and land crocs with heads like T. rex, small little running things want to avoid being vulnerable as much as possible.
This thing ate early dinosaurs.
The need to regulate temperature also led to the development of insulation in these animals – whether pterosaur fuzz, ornithischian fuzz, and pterosaur feathers are all the same or not, they all had it – in order to keep the animal’s temperature constant.
Okay, but hang on. If they’re warm-blooded, how are they considered reptiles?
Well, there’s no reason why a reptile has to be cold-blooded! Leatherback sea turtles aren’t, and no one argues that they’re not reptiles.
To scientists, groups of animals are defined based on their ancestry. In other words, a group of animals must be a complete branch on the tree of life. If you look at the branch that contains snakes, lizards, tuataras, crocodiles, and turtles, there’s no way to make a branch of the tree of life that doesn’t also include dinosaurs.
And you could say the same thing about dinosaurs – you can’t make a branch of the tree of life that contains T. rex, Triceratops, and Brontosaurus without also including birds. That makes birds dinosaurs, and since dinosaurs are reptiles, birds are also reptiles!
The most fucked up thing about modern culture’s view of traditional crafts is probably just how sophisticated they are, and have been for thousands of years, compared to the things that came to be seen as more respectable and cool.
Anyone can learn how to change a tire or fix a leakand anyone capable of lifting the necessary objects can perform those jobs correctly, but some people (me) WILL NEVER AND CAN NEVER even begin to comprehend making a pattern like this by hand.
How did anyone even figure out how to make a fucking basket??? Even beginning with bird’s nests as models, which is the lead theory, this is some kind of geometric sorcery I can’t believe a single person had the patience for, but they did, and it’s a feat of engineering that helped build society as we know it only for later generations to make fun of it as a boring, wimpy thing to do, like anything else that was pioneered by women I guess.
My brother is a gaslighter. They typically rely on controlling the conversation and that means they typically rely on relaying information from another person. i.e. they are the gatekeepers of inside knowledge.
If you can open communications with the third party, you will freak the gaslighter out and ultimately stop them from trying to gaslight you if they realise that every time they try you will expose their lies.
For example:
co-worker: Our boss is really fed up with you, he hates how you organise this project.
you: oh – i’m sorry to hear that. What specifically did he say?
co-worker: x,y,z
you: ok – well the best thing for me to do then is to go ask him directly about this and get to the bottom of it. I’ll tell him why I did it this way and hopefully he’ll understand.
co-worker: no, no, don’t do that – he HATES it when people come and interrupt him.
you: that’s ok, I won’t interrupt him. I’ll catch him on his break.
co-worker: no, no, he hates it when people use up his break. you’ll get fired!
you: ok, I’ll just email him now.
co-worker: no, no, then you’ll have written down an admission of what you did wrong and you’ll get fired.
you: ok, so what do you think I should do?
co-worker: do what I tell you and you’ll be ok.
you: ok, i will, but first I’m going to talk to the boss, I need to understand why he doesn’t like x,y,z. If i get fired, so be it.
co-worker: NO! DON’T DO IT!
you: it’s ok, if I get fired for asking how to get my job done better, it’s clearly not the right job for me. I’ll go talk to him now.
[you stand up and start to walk to the bosses office]
Normally at this point, the gaslighter will finally cave. Confronted with the fact that you’re about to find out the truth, they’re better off keeping you away from the boss, as then TWO people will know the truth. Don’t let them stop you. Go speak to the boss.
If the boss is any good, they’ll bring the co-worker in while the two of you are talking.
Then – in future – if the co-worker says anything to you about stuff that anyone else has said, adopt this kind of policy:
Co-worker: Mr X said Y about you and that’s why you’re in trouble and you should watch yourself
You: That’s terrible!
[get up, go get Mr X, bring them to your location, repeat what co-worker said and ask them DIRECTLY IN FRONT of the co-worker. Note: you do not have to directly accuse the co-worker of lying, but you’ll get to see them lying directly in front of the third-party and enjoy watching them squirm]
Do this two or three times and most gas lighting of YOU will stop. You’ll still have to protect others.
A good example of gaslighting is when your husband comes home late from work for the 10th time in a row. You ask him why he keeps coming home late. “What?” He says, in shock. “I haven’t been coming home late! Are you sure you aren’t just losing track of time?” And you doubt yourself. The next day it happens again, but you checked the time. “You’re late!” And he said “what? No I’m not. I always come home at this time.” And you try to argue that it’s only been the last ten or even times he shows up at this time, he insists that you must have been confused, maybe in the past he got off work early once but he definitely always just comes home at this time.
You wonder if you’re really that unobservant. Honestly that is so like you to be kinda airheaded. You’re not too smart, or you’d know for sure what time he gets home, like the fact that you doubt it is not a good sign, he seems pretty sure that he always got home at this time. You shrug. You move on. He goes on screwing the secretary. Some day you find a pair of underwear in your laundry and it’s not yours. You ask him about it. He says he got you those two years ago for your anniversary, what the fuck, why don’t you remember? You apologize because you feel bad for being inconsiderate, forgetting something that mattered to him. You wear the women’s underwear to dinner as a make-up surprise.
It’s beyond simple lying, it’s lying that makes you doubt your reality and makes you docile, easy to control because you no longer trust which way is up, you have to depend on them to tell you which way is up.
If you’re looking for a good way to spend the rest of your week, Archive.org have unearthed a gigantic collection of cassettes from the mid-eighties into the mid-nineties. According to their notes, the collection was saved from the archives of noise-arch.net and donated by former CKLN-FM radio host Myke Dyer in August of 2009. Due to the size and obscurity, the collection hasn’t been properly notated but is said to include cassettes ranging from “tape experimentation, industrial, avant-garde, indie, rock, DIY, subvertainment and auto-hypnotic materials”. Head to Archive now to download the free collection.
I know that some of you will lose your minds over this.
Yep – one of the lesser-known works of Eddie Morton. The specific version that appears in Homestuck is taken from a 2003 compilation album by
Archeophone Records, and is believed to be sourced from a recording made some time between 1907 and 1909.
The more you learn about shrews the more dramatic the change in your opinion of them goes from “a kinda boring stereotypical mammal” to “monsters held back only by their size and hatred of one another”
The only mammal alive today with a naturally venomous bite
Solenodons (which are not shrews, though related) and some slow lorises also have venomous bites.
I forgot Solenodons and they’re even one of my favorite mammals 😦
A slow loris, however, only has a venomous bite after licking its inner arms, where the poison is actually secreted!
Also I forgot to mention Shrews kill larger mammals, birds, frogs and reptiles and hoard their corpses underground.
“When Anna said she was raped by two on-duty cops, she thought it would be a simple case. She had no idea she lived in one of 35 states where officers can claim a detainee consented.“
One of 35..
What the entire fuck????
Reblog for the bloggers in the red states
Reposting again. This is insane. America is a third world shit-hole.
Is there an organization we can contribute to to fight this?
On the other, PLEASE don’t shoehorn in a convoluted reason for Venom and Spider-Man to fight for the entire movie. We get enough of them fighting in literally EVERY OTHER MEDIUM.
Venom and Eddie didn’t bond over a mutual hatred towards Spider-Man in this movie. Their bond is much more natural here, so there’s no need for them to be suddenly driven by a toxic obsession over Spider-Man like their comic counterparts.
In other words…
LET VENOM AND SPIDEY TEAM UP FOR A CHANGE, YOU COWARDS!!!
Carnage’s first arc in Spider-Man featured a Venom/Spider-Man team up, I’d be really down for that.
Monsters and Stuff 