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Exploration of horse genetics highlights intensive selective breeding by humans over thousands of years:

https://wapo.st/3HZSjZD

Oooh thank you! I was able to find an archive link for this article, and ended up finding the Science article link from there. (Not sure if there's a public version of the latter, I got it via university access.)

The graph to the left is interesting. It maps the lineage to modern domestic horses (orange) against Przewalski's horse (green - and pictured above, the last of the true wild horses). Apparently the divergence is 4367ish generations ago (each generation being 7-8 years), when the world was rapidly being overtaken by glaciers. (The red arrows indicate some crossover, but the two groups were mostly isolated.)

Linearly, it looks like we started selecting for basic domestication around 5,000 years ago, when an allele gained prominence that made horses less anxious. At this point, we might've been corralling horses for food.

Around 4,000 years ago is when we started selecting for a gene that flattened out horses' backs (which isn't great for them, but makes them more rideable). This coincides with the bottleneck.

Around 2,000-3,000 years ago, there started to be a lot more selection impacting whither variation and height in predecessors to the modern Thoroughbred and related breeds. Around this time, horses got taller and bulkier, which tracks with the rise of mounted cavalry. Body size has selected for bigger since the Iron Age onwards.

Selection for coat colors came last. There were four markers that show selection as far back as 2,000 years ago. Surprisingly, a lot of modern preferences (spots, cream genes, etc) weren't being selected for that far back - so I guess that's a fairly recent preference in the horse world!

I say "we selected", but the study finds that the statistical evidence isn't strong enough to necessarily be caused by intentional breeding. It might've been driven by local bottlenecks rather than conscious effort. Though it appears that the GSDMC - the gene that flattens out the back - was critical to domestication regardless.

That was an interesting study, thank you for sending it!

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Lena opened her eyes. Where am I? Darkness. She lay on the ground in a state of shock, staring up into deep abyss. She stilled to listen to her surroundings, trying to figure out if anyone - or anything - was nearby. Am I in a cave?, she wondered. Buried alive? What is this place? Her only answer was the sound of rushing water.

Posted as part of @ekingston's flash fic challenge!

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Lucy Lawless’ timeless badassness 👑

1995: Xena Warrior Princess (1.09) 2025: My Life is Murder (5.03)

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kara motherfucking danvers based on this

STORE

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I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook

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Lena opened her eyes. Where am I? Darkness. She lay on the ground in a state of shock, staring up into deep abyss. She stilled to listen to her surroundings, trying to figure out if anyone - or anything - was nearby. Am I in a cave?, she wondered. Buried alive? What is this place? Her only answer was the sound of rushing water.

Posted as part of @ekingston's flash fic challenge!

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Andrew Cairney from Glasglow, Scotland loading all nine of The Ardblair Stones

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For some reason, this scene also appears in a show called Easy ;)

wow the opening scene for ep 6x21 of supergirl was really something

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touch prompt: pls 15 or 17 give me back hugs and/or head caresses i beg i beg

Thanks so much for the ask @sssammich !! Now okay, okay…it’s soft, I promise. You get your back hugs and some head caresses too. They are just a little…uh...hard won.

from the touch prompts list - "a chest pressed warmly against a back"

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a geometry of bodies (Kara and Lena)

------

The falling always begins before she knows she's falling.

No edge. No moment of stepping off. Only the sudden understanding that air has replaced the ground. The rushing sound of wind. Her organs lifting up inside her body. Stomach floating. Heart suspended. The specific terror of acceleration without control.

Thirty-two feet per second squared.

Her body reduced to an object. An equation.

But it's not the ground she hits, never the ground. Only ever Kara's chest. Always Kara's chest.

Hands finding ribs with desperate accuracy.

Pressure almost painful. Almost breaking something

Kara's breath against Lena's neck is quick. Panicked.

Then — nothing.

Only Kara still.

She feels something forming beneath her skin. Not quite pain, not quite a bruise. She doubts it will be there when she looks.

Behind her, Kara breathes slow, even.

The room smells of sleep. Of skin. Of imagined ozone.

Lena closes her eyes again.

------

Again.

She is falling again.

It is different this time. Each time. She tastes copper before she understands why.

There's blood in her mouth. Her teeth have gone through her lip.

The air cuts across her cheek, it has teeth of its own.

She collides with Kara's chest.

There is a crack of bone. Of breath knocked loose. All the sounds a body makes when it's caught at the exact moment before shattering. Hands grabbing, gripping. The cotton of Lena's shirt pulling, ripping.

The violence is mutual. Equal. Necessary.

Lena's body folds backward into Kara's. Spine curving. Head snapping back. The whiplash of stopped motion. Her skull connects with Kara's shoulder. Stars explode behind her eyes.

Thirty-two feet per second squared

The mathematics of dying.

But instead of acceleration, Lena is thinking about the specific feeling of Kara's chest against her back. Warm. Familiar. The notches of their bodies matching bit by bit.

Newton never accounted for this.

"I've got you," Kara says. Or doesn't say.

But the ground doesn't come. It never does.

She wakes up instead. Inspects her body. Ribs intact. Limbs unbroken. The copper taste fading as she wipes her tongue across her teeth. The inside of her lip still tender. Raw.

Evidence of something that happened. Or didn't happen.

Behind her, Kara shifts, arm slipping across her waist.

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There is a strange comfort in familiar catastrophe.

Her body turns as it always turns. Limbs caught up in the unrestrained tumble of her body. Arms reaching for nothing. For someone.

The impact spreads across her back one vertebra at a time.

She feels Kara exhale against her neck. Long and deliberate.

Lena is familiar now with the geometry of Kara's body.

The particular slant of her collarbone.

The dip where her throat meets her sternum.

Kara's chest rises and falls.

Up, down. In, out.

One body making room for another.

One shape meeting another.

Lena feels Kara's heartbeat against her spine. Not just the rhythm but the force of it. Blood pushing through its chambers. The wet sound of valves opening and closing.

The violence is small. Measured. Necessary.

"Lena," Kara says.

The syllables vibrate through them both.

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Lena stands in the bathroom. Lifts her shirt. Expects to find some kind of evidence. The faint outline of fingers. Faded yellow-green skin.

But the light reveals what it always reveals. Her body whole, unblemished.

She goes back to bed. Slips into the gap between the sheets and Kara's body.

"Stay," Kara murmurs against her hair. The word thick with sleep, barely formed.

Later—years later, minutes later—she will try to explain this to someone.

Maybe even herself, standing in a different bathroom, looking at a different reflection.

But explanations require distance. And here with Kara, distance will always seem impossible.

Physics offers its formulas, of course. Conservation of energy. The transfer of momentum. The predictable behavior of falling objects.

But physics can't account for the way Kara's ribs feel like they were shaped specifically for the contours of Lena's shoulder blades.

She'll call it faith then, or at least something like it.

As she keeps falling.

As they both become good at it. Practiced. Professional grievers of gravity.

Maybe love is just catastrophe rehearsed.

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Lena keeps falling until it barely feels like falling at all.

Until she is used to the peculiar pull that exists between them.

But for once, they are lying together, and the only downward motion is the mattress beneath them dipping with the compression of its springs.

Lena's back curves to fit Kara's chest even in this uncommon stillness.

Her shirt smells like Lena's detergent. Something borrowed and then given back again.  The fabric has grown soft from washing, thin from use. She can feel the heat from Kara's skin easily bleeding through it, warmth gathering between them, flush spreading across her cheeks. 

She wraps her hand around Kara's forearm as her palm spreads flat against her hip, slips just under the hem of her shorts, fingers spanning the distance between bone and soft tissue.  If she thinks about it enough, she can feel the lines on her palm, the texture of her skin.

Kara tucks her knees up behind hers. Lena lets herself be gathered, rearranged. Feels herself sink even further into the well of her body.

She counts the places where they touch. Shoulder. Elbow. Foot. Ankle.

Each one feels more necessary than the last.

They have been lying this way for three hours. Or perhaps twenty minutes.

Kara's hand finds her hair, fingers working through the tangles that have found their way in. Each strand pulled gently apart.

She looks around the room as if she is waiting for the illusion of it to disappear. To be replaced with sky. With traitorous atmosphere. But the room maintains its simple shape. Four walls. A ceiling. A floor. A window through which the evening is a different kind of blue.

Dense.

Permanent.

Pressed into Kara's warm body, she is the same.

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Prompts for #SCRiftWeek are here! We have both sfw and nsfw prompts. You can mix and match them, post them every day, or combine and post on the last day of the week. The prompts will stay up. You can join at any time after the event, too!

Alt. Text under the cut.

Illustration of Supergirl and Lena, each on a corner of the canvas, trying to reach to each other. Art courtesy of @/bottomkiramman on twitter.

Text Overlay:

Supercorp Rift Week September 21st to September 27th Use the Hashtags #SCRiftWeek and #SCRiftWeekNSFW

Prompts: Day 1: Sept. 21: - SFW: Enemies to Lovers / NSFW: Hate Sex Day 2: Sept. 22: - SFW: Fortress / NSFW: Temperature Play Day 3: Sept. 23: - SFW: Balcony / NSFW: Lingerie Day 4: Sept. 24: - SFW: Kryptonite / NSFW: Restraints Day 5: Sept. 25: - SFW: IKMBFYFOF / NSFW: Public Indecency Day 6: Sept. 26: - SFW: Yearning/ NSFW: Marks Day 7: Sept. 27: - SFW: Making up / NSFW: Make Up Sex

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Once again thinking of Katie McGrath in Jurassic World 🦖

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‘Kara… Ya'gay" ‘What?’

Anyone else thought of this? You did… didn’t you. Okay, great. Glad we had this talk. See ya’

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17 year old Jackie Mitchell applying makeup before she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, 1931.