#anyways God

[glittergoats]

And mother looks away—

father looks away—

for a second.

[neuronary]

well now ya GOTTA tell me about octupi!!!

okay so like. a lot of the reason i found human neuroscience so Boring is because everyone is always obsessed with like. 'oh this bit which is psychology' and blah blah blah and psychology is so Fluffy and Bland and 90% of the time people are just talking about like. magic mushrooms. like just do the fucking mushrooms, cowards.

ANYWAYS what i liked about neuroscience or like. why i wanted to study it is because i have a lot of people in my life with neurological conditions/stuff. my mum has epilepsy, as does my brother, one of my friends sustained a spinal cord injury a few years before i started university (don't go skydiving folks). one of my aunts passed due to MS. my grandfather suffers from alzheimers.

unlike the more psychology-oriented stuff, these conditions are like. physically observable degradations or interruptions of the nervous system. we, more or less, Know what's going on. we just don't know how to fix it.

(side note: on the off chance anyone except alyshara reads this, you can fuck right off before doing that whole 'social model of disability' thing. yes it is a useful model for SOME conditions. the conditions i am talking about are not among them. nothing is 'social' about convulsive seizures or chronic pain or dementia.)

what's going on, in the simplest of terms, is that the nervous system - be it the brain, the spinal cord, the synapses, whatever - is degrading. and we have to stop that happening. and then repair it.

so where the fuck do octopuses come in? well, i'm glad you asked.

octopuses have different nervous systems to us. very different. only about 1% of our nerve cells exist outside of our central nervous system (that is to say, our brain and spine). about two thirds of an octopus' nerve cells are in their limbs.

reflex reactions happen when our nerves bypass our brain to Get Shit Done Quicker, and for the most part that's very simple stuff. move hand away from flame. jerk leg back from sharp thing. etc.

octopus limbs can react like a reflex, the way our spinal cord would, but in a far more complex manner. grab the thing. change colour. change texture. etc. if it helps, think of them as slightly more advanced spinal cords. eight of them. now, there are whole debates to have if an octopus' limbs are effectively a hive mind connected to the central brain, if their limbs have consciousness. i don't really care to be honest. i don't think that's a productive scientific question.

what's really fucking cool about this? if an octopus loses a limb (each of which contains just under thirty eight million neurons) it just fucking. grows a new one. just regrows the whole fucking thing. and it works they can do that. we Can't. we just can't. our neurons don't regenerate, really. and certainly not to that extent. peripheral nerves? sure. that's mostly fine. it's tough, but we can do it. the cns? forget it.

(now, to be fair, this depends enormously on the type of damage and/or degradation you're looking at. our bodies are incredible structures capable of amazing things. but for the most part, medical professionals have to spend years retraining our nerves to do what an octopus just entirely replaces from scratch in a matter of weeks.

imagine if we could figure out how to replicate that with us. imagine the lives we could change. imagine the pain we could relieve. imagine the world we could make.

so yeah. octopus neuroscience is pretty fucking cool.

[nemu-carente]

I love my husband so much!! JWJWJ3EJJEEJEJEJEJEJE <3

[starstcff-z]

i need to stop adding period drama muses and start writing info for the ones i already have..... but sophie as miss georgiana darcy?? i think so.

[varilien]

am i blanchin?

girl we blanchin!!

HI HIII happy birthday to everyone's favorite mystery twins!! how did they grow up so fast!!!!

Palestine: Funds | Action | eSims | Info Sudan Resources | Congo Resources

[tariah23]

Oh…. Well, it’s over for Crunchyroll I guess

[astriiformes]

Really says something about the dire state of offerings for men interested in sewing their own clothes that even searching things like "interesting men's clothing patterns" brings up articles with links to four or five whole websites that primarily offer admittedly nice but practically identical patterns for making button-ups and work pants and maybe a varsity/bomber jacket if you're lucky.

(Branching out into historical costuming for everyday wear is like your one shot at variation, and even then, the ratio of men's to women's patterns on every website is frustrating to say the least.)

Patternmakers as a trans man I am begging you. Give me a little more to work with here.

[iscariotapologist]

today in church one of the priests referred to trans people as "those who are growing into the gender they were called to be" and i'm kind of enjoying the idea of like....divinely ordained top surgery

[trekkerac]

Ford "Icarus didn't flap hard enough" Pines

[rapidashrider]

The agonising feel when a character tag is full of shipping that you Simply Do Not Vibe With. The solution is, naturally, to keep scrolling. But the wince, the WINCE.

[hinamie]

trick or treat!

[doodledrawsthings]

i love being predictable

[lilislegacy]

imagine being someone at new rome university and not knowing percy is the same guy as “percy jackson, son of poseidon, two-time hero of olympus, former praetor” because the thought doesn’t even cross your mind. like… he’s percy. he’s a total frat boy. on a normal night, he walks into a party, refers to everyone as bro or dude, socializes with every living (and not-living) person in the room, makes at least 50 sarcastic comments, plays 12 rounds of beer pong, drinks way too much, and then skates around campus on his skateboard yelling “I LOVE NEW YORK” (which makes no sense, because they’re in california) until someone calls his girlfriend to come get him.

and then one day there’s an attack, and frat boy percy is all of a sudden a fighting machine. he’s yelling battle cries alongside the praetors frank zhang and hazel levesque as they lead everyone into battle. (why is he with the praetors? and why…. why in the world do the praetors seem to be following his lead?) his sword slashes through armies of monsters faster than you’ve ever seen. he’s controlling the entire river surrounding the camp, creating huge waves as tall as skyscrapers that crash down all around him, wiping out monsters and causing mass destruction to his enemies’ ranks. the sky is suddenly dark above you, ice-cold water droplets are slashing through the air, and the wind is blowing so aggressively that it’s making it hard to stand up steadily. because he’s somehow created a hurricane.

and he looks terrifying. you can feel the power radiating off of him. he’s like a god. or maybe a monster. it’s hard to tell. you’re a little scared of him, to be honest. but also in total awe, because it’s extraordinary. he’s extraordinary.

frat boy percy is not who you thought he was.

[drumlincountry]

I was at a Palestinian solidarity gig last night & the one Palestinian artist who was going to perform had COVID so the organisers asked around to see if there were any Palestinians who'd like to say a few words instead.

A local guy who was born & raised in Gaza offered to speak. He started with "I'm an engineer. i'm not a poet or a politician. I don't... do public speaking… I had no idea what to say when I came up here. So i'm just going to tell you about the street I grew up on."

And then he did! He went down the street building by building. He told us about the ice cream shop on the corner, the grocery shop, the charity that supports people with intellectual disabilities. He told us about the people who he knew growing up, the families who still live in the different houses. He told us about the university buildings and about his friends who quit being accountants to start a band together. All on that street.

All of which is gone now, by the way. Bombed to dust.

[ravenmccookies]

Weird phenomenon I've seen on tumblr

[monkesupreme]

ref

a satisfactory answer for Selina