#around eight million objects

[etakeh]

Hey no stop laughing this is serious someone stole stuff from....um...the people who like...got most of their stuff through theft.

around eight million of them.

[athenagc94]

Dear Daddy Long Legs - Chapter 1

Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

A concept I've been toying with. Will probably post the complete fic to AO3 once I've got a few more chapters written, but though I would share some of the chapters here first to see what people think. This fic is inspired by the (musical mostly, but also novel) of Daddy Long Legs.

Warnings: Implications of SA - nothing graphic

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Chapter 1

Eat the rich.

Seriously.

But what about Bruce Wayne? He does so much good for Gotham. He’s so handsome and tall. His philanthropy has… Shut up. Bruce Wayne didn’t get a free pass just because he was pretty. He was still a billionaire who needed a healthy dose of reality before you even considered calling him a good guy. Rich people were fucking weird, and you were a true victim of the elite and those weird habits.

Sure, their lavish parties paid your bills, if just barely, but that didn’t mean you had to like being a pawn in their game. This party lasted later than you wanted it to. They always did.

Ice sculptures weren’t cheap. Usually, they cost a quarter million to make depending on the time of year and whether Mr. Freeze had recently wrought havoc on Gotham. You counted eight in total as you wove through the crowds with a silver platter laden with aged beef sprinkled with edible gold leaf. It didn’t even taste good, but they were a hit.

One couldn’t account for good taste in these circles.

You still smelled vaguely of expensive hors d’oeuvres as you trudged up the stairs that emptied onto Park Row. A still quiet greeted you on the street. You were alone. No oddly built young men with an affinity for classic literature and Amazonian superheroes nipping at your heels like an eager puppy. While not the most unpleasant encounter you’ve had on the Gotham subway, you learned quickly it was better to be wary and take the kindness of strangers with a grain of salt.

A midsummer breeze rustled your hair as you drew the hood of your yellow jacket. Yellow was a bold choice for this side of town, but it also diminished your chances of getting taken out by a speeding vehicle on your walk home. Safety and preservation at all costs—that’s what you’d been taught.

Puddles rippled under your feet, pooling between the cracks and potholes that littered the street. A storm passed during the party, leaving the sky clear and a half-moon to light your way.

Silver linings. You could have been caught in the rain.

Hugging your bag closer to your person, you ducked down a side street. Darkness enveloped you like a shroud. You might have disappeared entirely if not for your obnoxious hoodie. The narrow alley had just enough room for you to walk, brick and mortar scraping your palms as you pressed past a dumpster.

You wouldn’t usually take a shortcut this late at night. Keeping to the main arteries of Park Row were safer, if just barely, but you were also anxious to get home to finish your—

“Drop the bag.”

Something solid pressed against your spine. A gun? A knife? It was hard to tell through your jacket, and it was the unknown that tightened your chest and throat. Given the narrow alley, you were more likely to get hurt if you fought back, and if he had a gun, it was over anyway. You could scream, but no one would come. You weren’t completely helpless, but you also knew when to cut your losses. It’s not like you had much on you anyway.

Lifting your hands in defeat, you slid the bag off your shoulder and set it on the ground.

“That’s right, sweetheart. Nice and easy.”

A shiver crept up your spine, but you didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see you shudder. You waited, hoping he would take the bag and bolt, but you were never that lucky. He pressed the object more firmly against your back as he snatched the bag. Not a knife, you decided, given that it didn’t feel all that sharp.

Your mind raced as you considered your next move. Muggers didn’t usually stick around unless they had an ulterior motive beyond theft. Dread bloomed heavy in your chest. You were a woman, alone at night, walking in a dangerous neighborhood.

It was bound to attract some attention because men like this one sucked. People would say it was your fault for taking a shortcut, your fault for wearing yellow, your fault for deigning to be a woman trying to live her life. You, alone, would bear the consequences and the blame. It wasn’t fair, but it was how society treated its victims.

You swallowed your vitriol and said, “I don’t have anything else on me.” The waver in your voice betrayed your fear, and you hated yourself for it. “Just take my bag and go.”

“Woah, sweetheart, what’s your rush? I thought you and I could have a little fun before we called it a n—”

Bang.

Your ears rang as the bullet sent bits of brick raining down over your heads. The pressure on your back disappeared. You felt no pain, but you patted yourself down anyway. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug, after all. When you concluded there were no extra holes to concern yourself with, you whipped around to face the man. It would have been smarter to run, but you’d be damned if you left without your bag.

A young man with gaunt cheeks and sandy blonde hair gripped your bag in one hand and a rusty lug wrench in the other. His attention settled on something over your head. You shoved aware your embarrassment as you followed the line of his gaze.

Red Hood stopped on the edge of the roof with a gun held aloft in one hand. He whistled sharply, the noise distorted by a modulator in his helmet. “Drop the bag. If you want to fuck around, I promise my next shot won’t miss.”

You blinked up at him in disbelief. Most dubbed Red Hood the hero of Park Row—at least to those that needed it. He was more of a thorn in the side of the crime syndicates that operated out of here. You were convinced he didn’t really exist. You’d never seen him, only the evidence of his work, but there were enough vigilantes traipsing about to make you question his existence.

The leather jacket over his plated uniform was a choice, but who were you to question the fashion choices of the man holding the gun.

Hood whistled again. “Last chance.”

With gritted teeth, the man tossed you bag and sprinted off. Its contents scattered across a nearby puddle. Your catering apron, a beaten wallet, and some loose-leaf paper. Your heart leapt into your throat.

Your paper!

You dropped to your knees to salvage what you could as a pair of heavy boots hit the ground behind you. Misery swirled in your chest as you wiped away the muddy water with the sleeve of your hoodie. To think, you’d been swindled by a coward with a lug wrench.

“You should be more careful.”

You licked your teeth as the ink bled before your eyes. Not only was the paper ruined, but Red Hood saw fit to lecture you. Could this night get any worse?

“Maybe that guy should learn not to mug people.” You turned to face him, undaunted, even when he towered over you like a titan loomed over mortal men.

He hesitated, his expression hidden with his helmet, but you saw the way his shoulders tightened under your scrutiny. His broad frame blotted out the moonlight. You mirrored him, clinging to a shred of self-preservation in the face of a very real threat. Hood wasn’t good. He wasn’t bad. He just was. He might have saved you this time, but that didn’t mean you would stay in his good graces.

A beat of silence passed between you two before he knelt beside you to pick up the last of the sodden pages. There was no saving them. With a heavy sigh, you set them aside.

“Fuck.”

He took the pages and scanned their contents, not even trying to play it coy. You swallowed your protests in favor of a displeased glare. No one said vigilantes were well-socialized. If they were, they wouldn’t be parading the streets in costume.

“Is this… homework?” His modulator grated on your ears, but he sounded genuinely curious.

You didn’t expect follow up questions. From the sharp breath that crackled through his modulator, he didn’t know either. Knowing that his question caught him off guard amused you, so you decided to humor him with an answer.

“It’s an essay for a scholarship,” you explained, “Gotham University has one of the best writing programs in the city. I know I can get accepted, but I can’t enroll unless I have a scholarship to pay for it.”

“That’s shit luck.” He sounded upset, angry even. You might have been too if you weren’t still processing the situation. “Does that mean you have to rewrite it?”

“Next year, I guess.” You stuffed the rest of the things in your bag, shouldered it, and headed toward your apartment. I didn’t expect him to follow you, much like you didn’t expect him to have questions. It shouldn’t have surprised you when he did, still clutching your ruined essay in his gloved hands. Even standing, he felt like an indominable presence.

“Next year?”

“The deadline is tomorrow morning, and I don’t have time to rewrite it.”

“Couldn’t you submit it online?”

“Can’t. Electrocutioner zapped the foundation office last week and online systems are down until further notice. They refused to extend the deadline, so we’re forced to submit by mail or in person.” You decided to write yours by hand to stand out from the other applicants, a decision that you were now kicking yourself for.

Hood scoffed. “That’s stupid.”

“That’s Gotham,” you deadpanned, “Our city can’t shut down every time there’s an incident between Batman and the villain of the month. This was my last-ditch effort to secure money before the start of the new semester. I’ve tried the usual avenues with little success, even Wayne Enterprises despite being fundamentally against him and the expectations set by his foundations.”

Most came with an unpaid internship within a branch of the company. The experience alone would launch most student’s careers, but unpaid work did more harm than good for someone like you. Besides, you had no interest in business or medical research. Honestly, you should have never applied in the first place, but desperation drove people to do stupid things.

“I’ll try again next you,” you finished with another disinterest shrug. You prayed it looked convincing. “The writing program isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t need it to make it in the industry.”

Your stomach lurched. That program, Gotham University, could open doors you could only dream of knocking on—especially when it came to making connections. This industry was about who you knew rather than what.

You stopped and Hood stopped with you. Hood didn’t need to join you in your pity party. Your apartment sat around the corner. The fact that he had followed you this far should have unsettled you, but you felt oddly empty as you turned to face him.

Your eyes locked, even with the helmet shielding his. You wished to see his expression. Or know what his face looked like underneath. Were his eyes blue or brown, his hair light or dark? You didn’t even know what his voice sounded like without the modulation. Did it matter? He saved you. He empathized with your situation. It was more than you ever expected.

“I can make it from here,” you assured him, “I live around the corner and if someone jumps me between now and then, well, I know you’ll hear me scream.” You laughed, trying to make light of a situation that weighed heavily on your chest.

“Thanks for saving me,” you added when he failed to respond.

He offered the papers and the weight on your chest increased tenfold. “Are you sure you don’t want them? You could copy the part you can still read.”

You shook your head. “I’m not going to sweat it.”

But you would cry over it, probably into a bag of chips or a pint of ice cream while Bridgerton played in the background, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Sometimes these things aren’t meant to be.”

Hood inclined his head as if he wanted to say something more. You waited, more curious than anything. Another beat passed before his hands fell back to his side. “Try to stay out of trouble. I won’t always be around to save you.”

But he was tonight and that was all that mattered. You were about to tell him as much, but he had already turned to walk away. You watched him go until the shadows swallowed him, and only then did you turn to go home.

[drnikolatesla]

The Lifestyle of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a very tall and skinny man, standing over six feet and weighing around one hundred and forty pounds. He had light blue-gray eyes, which was considered odd because he was of Serbian descent who were typically known to have darker eyes. Tesla, probably joking, said to a reporter that his eyes used to be dark, but using his mind so much had made them many shades lighter. The inventor was known to be very elegant, stylish, meticulous in his grooming, clothing, and regimented in his daily activities.

Tesla never married and remained a celibate and a bachelor his entire life. Tesla was solely committed to the principles of science above all else, and for this reason, he denied the love and companionship of a female counterpart. He chose to lead a solitary life, hoping only that this sacrifice to work would make his name live on through many centuries still to come.

One of his few hobbies other than work was feeding birds. Tesla’s respect for birds began when he was a child growing up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He and his local friends made a sport out of catching live birds, and when Tesla himself caught a couple of keepers, he and his friend found themselves getting attacked by a murder of crows. The revolt forced the boys to release the birds and take cover. In America, he made it a specialty of his to treat sick pigeons, which seems odd because he was quite the germaphobe. He would feed them every day on his daily walks and would also take in wounded pigeons and nurse them back to health at his hotel in New York. He seemed to have had a better connection with birds than with most people. In 1917, he was awarded the Edison Medal, and upon receiving the award, the inventor could not be found. He was later found feeding pigeons near a local library and was persuaded back to the ceremony to give his speech.

Tesla suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder, and because of this, he developed some very strange idiosyncrasies and phobias, such as having a strong dislike against earrings, pearls, peaches, and touching other people's hair. He counted the steps in his walks and calculated the cubical contents of soup plates, coffee cups, and pieces of food. All repeated acts or operations he performed had to be divisible by three.

While living in New York, Tesla kept his laboratories absolutely clean and pure, refused to touch other people, would wear gloves while shaking hands, and insisted upon personally cleaning his own plates and silverware at restaurants with his requested 18 napkins. This cleanliness was all intentional because, as a child, he almost died from cholera, which raged in the region of his hometown Lika due to contaminated water. Many found Tesla’s actions strange, but to him, it was a very important measure to protect his health.

In another way to keep his body clean and pure, Tesla invented an electrical apparatus that could give the human body a dry bath by passing millions of volts of electricity through it (similar to his demonstrations in the early 1890s where he passed electricity through his own body). His oscillator was a small, drum-like object about two feet long by one foot wide and could apply half a million volts of electricity through his body. The large amount of electricity would affect the germs without destroying the cells of the tissues of the body. Though his oscillator seemed like a fountain of youth, Tesla maintained his conventional ideas of health. He bathed daily, believed in plenty of exercise, and would walk eight or ten miles every day. He said that he never would take a cab or other conveyance and relied on his leg power for transportation.

His diet was a crucial part of his daily routine to remain healthy and to prolong the length of his life. He was very fussy and particular about his food: he ate very little, but what he did eat had to be the very best. He wasn’t a complete vegetarian; he ate meat, just not very occasionally (perhaps once or twice a year). He did believe though that humankind should move towards a vegetarian diet, not just because eating meat the way we do is “barbarous,” as he said, but because he believed the vegetarian diet is more beneficial to the human body.

In his later years, he never smoked, drank tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages, or consumed any other stimulant. Since he saw life through the lens of his mechanistic theory of life, he took great care of his body as if it were a machine properly maintaining its best efficiency.

As for sleep, Tesla reported that he was a poor sleeper and had very unusual resting patterns. He claimed to only sleep a few hours each day and would oftentimes practice polyphasic sleep where he would take short naps for restoration instead of sleeping for a long period of time.

Unfortunately for Tesla and his clean and healthy lifestyle, in 1937, at the age of 81, he was hit by a taxicab during one of his regular walks. It is likely he was jaywalking because he admittedly was known to do so. He broke three ribs and seriously injured his back. Tesla would be bedridden for months while refusing to see a doctor, and on top of this would catch pneumonia, which would plague his health for the last 5 years of his life. I believe this accident and sickness would play a major role in the rapid decline of his health, both mentally and physically, and his goal of living past a century would never be realized.

Nikola Tesla had a unique and eccentric lifestyle and was known for his intense work habits, often spending long hours in his laboratory. So much so that his friends would seriously worry about his health. Financial difficulties were a recurring theme in his life, and he died in relative obscurity. Despite these challenges, Tesla's legacy is marked by his groundbreaking contributions to the field of electrical engineering.

[blueiscoool]

3,600-Year-Old Jewelry and Weapon Hoard Found Under Field in Czech Republic

Archaeologists used metal detectors to find the hoard, which includes several pieces of jewelry and weapons.

Archaeologists discovered a hoard of Bronze Age artifacts while doing routine survey work in a field in the Czech Republic.

The bronze objects — which include eight arm rings, two pins, eight axes and one spearhead — were found near Budyně nad Ohří, a town about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Prague, Radio Prague International reported.

Researchers estimate that most of the items, which they found using metal detectors, date to around 1600 B.C.

"Most items are characteristic of the Middle Bronze Age, with only one ax belonging to the earlier period," Martin Trefný, an associate professor at the Museum of the Říp Region and the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně and the curator of the hoard, said in an email. One ax is even older and dates to the Early Bronze Age.

"Axes could have been used as tools or weapons. The latter function also applies to the spearhead," Trefný said. "Bracelets were forearm ornaments, and pins served either to fasten clothing or, for example, to style women's hair."

Archaeologists remain unclear about why the hoard was buried, but they have proposed three possibilities.

"In the first case, the hoards are presumed to have a votive function, meaning they served as offerings to deities," Trefný said. "In the second case, we speak of an economic function, where hoards are interpreted as, for example, storage for manufacturers of the given items."

Alternatively, the buried items could reflect "a crisis situation, where it was necessary to hide the items, for example, from enemies," he said.

The treasure could be worth "millions of crowns," Trefný told Radio Prague International. (One million Czech crowns, or koruna, is about $42,500.)

"All the items testify to the technological advancement of bronze casters and processors in Central Europe 3,500 years ago," Trefný told Live Science. "The composition of the hoard also contributes to understanding the warfare, craft techniques and contemporary fashion of the time. Considering that hoards might have a ritual significance, they can also reveal a bit about the contemporary religion."

In the "near future," these found items will be on display at the Podřipské Museum, located about 30 miles (50 km) north of Prague, Radio Prague International reported.

By Jennifer Nalewicki.

[anghraine]

This isn't going to turn into All US Politics All The Time blog for four years (all going about as well as possible). And I don't begrudge anyone finding comfort where they can from the various state-level small victories—the GOP losing their incredibly corrupt supermajority in NC and failing to take the governor's seat, various state measures to protect or at least advance abortion rights, my candidate for governor winning in my own state, decent performances in a lot of House races, the predictable Senate disaster not being quite as bad as it might have been in this environment.

But for me, there is something discouraging about these as well, and something overlooked in the comparisons to the 2020 election. To me, the obvious point of comparison is less 2020 than 2016.

[This is not an even slightly positive post—putting most of it below the cut so you can skip if you don't want further doom 'n gloom.]

Trump's victory in 2016 was more shocking, yes, but it came with a lot of qualifications. Most obviously, the majority of people who voted in 2016 didn't vote for him, and while this didn't change the result of the election, it did affect the sense of what was going on nationally. Hillary Clinton, a flawed candidate under investigation during the election (however obviously politically motivated that investigation—and it was reopened right before Election Day) and the object of a 30-year misogynistic campaign of relentless, unabashed right-wing and journalistic hatred, and the leader of a campaign that made some clear tactical missteps, was preferable to Trump for the majority of voters even without certainty about what his administration would do. And people could and did lie to themselves about what a Trump administration would be like because he was a posturing blowhard who'd never held office. I always thought "Trump's just saying stuff, he's really going to outflank Hillary from the left!!!" was stupid as fuck, but it's a thing people convinced themselves of.

But in 2024, we know how bad the Trump administration would be (and there's no reason to think this one won't be worse—quite the opposite). We saw how his COVID response made a bad situation orders of magnitude worse to the point that morgues were overflowing with dead bodies. We know about how unethical he is because he's been found legally liable in relation to crimes of corruption and rape. He encouraged a coup to overthrow the last election. And Kamala Harris has far less political baggage than HRC did, is more progressive, ran a better campaign, had no October Surprise, and yet is losing the popular vote quite badly (right now, with 89% of the vote counted, Trump is ahead by about five million votes).

And seeing that people are voting to protect abortion rights in their state or ousting obviously corrupt state officials etc and then also voting for Trump is on one level—okay, so ordinary voters only sort of align with the cackling evil of GOP politicians' schemes and will at times vote to restrict their awful policies even in very red states. On a pragmatic level, that's better than being fully aligned with those policies. But on another level, I find it appalling. This loss isn't about any particular policy and I think you're fooling yourself if you think any One Magic Trick could have changed this result—that was possible in 2016, potentially, but not in this election. A lot of people are voting against specific Republican agendas and then voting for Donald Trump and JD fucking Vance.

Obviously racist misogyny (and misogynoir particularly) is likely a major culprit given that this disparity wasn't present even in far more unfavorable-on-paper conditions in 2016 against a profoundly unpopular white woman after an eight-year Democratic administration. There's the weird cult of personality around Trump. Etc. But I'm also thinking about how the most successful period for Democrats during this cycle was when they veered away from anything to do with actual policies and were like "these Republican politicians are the weird freaks with bad vibes actually." I'm thinking about how the vast majority of the country went significantly rightwards even in many places that Harris or Democrats won.

And it's like... maybe we won't become an autocracy, maybe he'll have another disastrously awful administration that isn't as much worse than the first as we fear, and public opinion will turn against him again and his sheer unpopularity will drive backlashes favoring Democrats in 2026 and 2028. But even that best case scenario isn't fixing what's wrong here.

[doodle-pops]

House of Feanor | Having A Human S/O

Request: Can i request a feanorian group headcannon about having a human lover? — @misfortunateleprechaun

A/N: I couldn’t resist including a short reader in the mix because I know most of us are tiny beside these elves :)

Fëanor

Curious to learn all there is about you. Whether you’re naturally short, how you age, your life span, your features, culture, linguistics, everything, you name it. And when he does, it pushes for him to become even more intrigued with YOU.

Wants to follow you around as much as possible. Just picture a short you and a giant elf nearly 8ft trailing behind you asking millions of questions or silently observing you in your natural world.

Understands that humans are delicate and much more breakable than elves, so he treats you with the same care as he does for his jewels. You are fragile and deserve the utmost protection and care.

With that being said, you are not spared from being blessed with the great riches he is endowed with. Showers upon showers of gifts bestowed to make your mortal lifespan enjoyable and full of luxuries.

An enjoyment of his would be your vast size difference, as would all the elves when you lie, sit or walk beside him. Even when he needs to make jewellery, he marvels at the sizes and concludes that you are no larger than an elfling.

He will keep to himself knowing how you react when being compared to an elf child…or he might mention it because he enjoys your responses and phrases unheard of to elven ears.

Feanor takes great pride in having you as his S/O and accepts no criticism from anyone. He adores you with every fibre of his being and will worship the ground you walk on.

Maedhros

“Why are you so tiny, unlike other mortals I have come across?” That would be words spoken to himself upon meeting you because he’s already a freaking giant. It’s worse when you must stand on objects to meet this over-eight-foot-tall figure.

Holds out his hand and watches as you wrap your entire hand around two of his fingers. He has to bite his lip to hold back the laughter, because you attempt to guide him, and it looks like a child leading him off to Eru knows where.

Prefers when you sleep on his chest while (awake) he reads or relaxes on the balcony. Never allows you to close when you’re sharing the same bed and he’s sleeping. Do you want to go flying through a window with one of his kicks? You’re fragile babes, sleep on the floor.

Deep down, he believes that you deserve a lover who doesn’t have to place a restrain on everything they’re doing to prevent hurting you…physically. Play fights are a thing that happens rarely because you once knocked your own hand on the bedpost, and he blamed himself for forgetting your fragility.

With that being said, he gets worried about you when you accidentally injure yourself because you’re a mortal…soft, squishy and delicate. Please, don’t make him wrap you in the duvets like a burrito for your safety.

Since your lifespan is shorter than his, Maedhros’ main goal is to in ensure as much peace can be granted in your life. Takes you to the most scenic places around Beleriand or just nearby Himring and keeps you far away from his brothers, minus Maglor. Gives you a Shetland pony to ride for the kicks of it and watches as you fold.

He doesn’t seem to understand how you joke so easily about ageing and grimaces every time you crack a joke about your soon-to-be wrinkled appearance or increased fragility. You’re set to give him the heart attack instead of you.

Loves to compare your size to an elfling and jokes about having to purchase ready-made clothes in the children’s section for you.

Maglor

Humoured by your size and delicacy, and equally motherly as Maedhros. Henning over every little accident with a read-to-scold expression on his face and incoherent words spilling out his mouth about needing to cover you from head to toe.

Maglor adores your compliments when he sings for you or writes sonnets or poems. He understands that his species differ greatly from humans, hence his voice would sound ethereal to your ears, sparking grand praises. It tickles his ego and spurs him into never-ending songs because he lives for your praises.

Adores carrying you around because you’re as light as a feather and he could lift you with his pinkie finger. Sit on his shoulders, piggyback rides, cling to his legs or chest as he walks around his fort and ignores all the strange looks his servants are giving him.

He’s someone who respects humans and mortal life, so at no point would he ever allow you to feel insignificant compared to his elven nature. Hates to hear you ill-speak your mortality or even condemn the relationship to failure because of your differences.

Still hesitant when it comes to playfighting and unlike a certain brother, he wouldn’t scold himself for your injury. However, he would still engage and quickly dissolve everything to cuddles or a nap.

Sleep atop his chest and he’ll fawn because you look so tiny and feel weightless. One time you both fell asleep, however, Maglor forgot you were sleeping on his chest (because you’re so light), so when he rolled, you fell right off the bed.

Surprisingly cool with your human ageing jokes, especially the wrinkly potato ones. Sometimes he’ll cruise in with an affectionate joke to make you swoon about being his favourite potato.

Celegorm

It takes a long time to get it into his head that you’re delicate because, in his mind, he saw you performing hundreds of daredevil stunts, why stop the fun for safety purposes. Wherever Tyelko is, you are curled up under his arm like a sleeping bag being carried around on his adventure.

If he’s riding a horse large enough to carry an elf, then so are you—doesn’t matter if you’re four or five feet. If you fit, you sit. However, you prefer to ride Huan because he understands your comfort and safety more than Tyelko does.

Playfighting to the roughness degree and be prepared to end up in the healer’s room sporting bruises or a sprained joint, he’ll even lie down on you. He has an affinity for challenging you to your limits, solely because it’s thrilling to him. “Try lifting me off the bed and walking to the door.” (you collapsed under his beefy body)

As big and scary as he appears, start coughing or having a fever and watch as he crumples like a left. Clingy and never leaves your side the entire duration you’re resting or in the healer’s room.

Acts as though you’re going to die in the blink of an eye from a single sneeze and the next thing you know, he’s praying that you survive your common cold when the healers have informed him that you’re alright.

In addition, he’s the perfect teddy bear for a cold night with all those muscles he has going on. The issue is his ability to cuddle to the highest degree. You cannot escape his cuddle grip, even if you need to pee.

Tyelko has confidence that’s out of this world, so no one can attempt to shun or berate your relationship, not even mock him for choosing a human to be his S/O over an elf. Celegorm makes it clear that you’re his choice and he’s proud to have you.

Caranthir

Someone who admires you day by day and how easily you overcome obstacles without lamenting the way his race does. For a human, you are quite fiery and able to keep up with his pace of living, though he prefers that you relax while he lavishes you.

Vocal about his appreciation towards you in private as you lay in his chambers on the sofa or bed, cuddling. Like his siblings, he prefers that you lay atop him, refusing to even displace an ounce of weight for fear of crushing you.

Spoils you, spoils you, spoils you more than you could even imagine because he wants your life to be filled with comfort and luxuries before your end. Complaining about how much he spoils you is like kicking a puppy.

The only thing you cannot do is tear this elf away from his duties when he’s locked away in his studies deciding who to conduct his next trade with. He’s married to his work and then you.

This brings me to you easily clinging to his body because you wish for him to stay in bed longer. All he does is roll his eyes at your antics and continue to walk around the room while you disguise yourself as a backpack.

Sneeze and there’s a deafening silence that follows before a grumpy Caranthir paces out of the room to call for the healers. You are not permitted to go anywhere, basically bedroom arrest. You want water, food, more blankets; he’s there. Want to go for a walk, sure; he’ll walk you around the room.

As much as he admires your resilience as a human being to the harsh reality of life, many of your natural occurrences terrify him due to rumours of terrible endings for others. So, expect the protectiveness to go up a few notches.

Curufin

Everyone was surprised that he had a human lover when he strolled into a ball with you decked out in jewellery from head to toe. Poor you were trying to breathe under the weight of the gemstones breaking your neck.

Curufin isn’t any different in my dating him headcanons with the addition of his protectiveness increasing. He loves to use it as an excuse to tag along with you anywhere when he really wants to spend time together (what a tsundere).

Finds himself confused at all your human terminologies because how can “Break a leg” or “Knock ‘em dead” mean best of luck. “You humans are strange with your words, why can’t you just say what you mean.” – Curufin

Finds your excitement and expressive manner endearing given elves’ lack of facial expressions and enjoys bestowing all sorts of gifts upon you just to witness your reactions. He finds them better than the simple use of words when accepting his creations.

Less inclined to school you like his father, but still peppers you with indirect questions to learn more about humans and their odd differences from elves. If you’re female, then be prepared to blow his mind with talks of your menstruation. He considers you a brave warrior for going through that every month.

Curufin doesn’t like talks of how your lifespan is short and you’re bound to die soon, and you tend to use this to your advantage when you want your way.  “But what if tomorrow doesn’t come, and I don’t get to eat chocolate cake? You should let me eat it now, so you don’t regret not letting me.”

 (Tries) Keeps you away from Tyelko because he’s a terrible influencer and causes the majority of your injuries which sends Curufin into cardiac arrest. If Curufin has never shown much emotion in his life, it was the moment he learnt that you were in the healing rooms.

Amrod

Excited because he has someone to love him, but heartbroken about your shortened lifespan, which means he’s going to cram all his years of adventure into your lifespan so it can be shared with you.

Every morning, he walks you up with a brilliant smile as warm as the sun before dragging you out of bed to go hiking or host a breakfast picnic while the sun rises (sorry if you hate waking up early).

You are not spared from his pranks or the confusion between him and his twin when Amras decides to trick you. Aware that you are human and more breakable than elves, but he’s still going to engage in roughhousing or lying half his body atop yours so you cannot go anywhere.

As I had mentioned before, he’s touch–starved being the youngest bunch in the family with less attention being directed. So when you entered the picture, as a human, it was natural for you to be overly affectionate which stunned him. Never before had Amrod believed that he was capable of receiving so much love.

He doesn’t care about the fact that elves aren’t physically affectionate, he accepts every hug, kiss and touch you gift him. He considers them your greatest gift, second to finding you.

Already protective of his younger brother, so it’s natural when you enter the picture. Prefers being your bodyguard so he can spend every second with you, never allowing for there to be a moment when you aren’t together.

I have mentioned that he’s into woodcarving, so you can expect figurines of you and him (more you) to appear before your door in beautifully wrapped boxes. You have a collection by now and can consider it a hobby thanks to Amrod.

Amras

Prefers to spend all his time with you in tranquillity and away from his nosy and noisy family, including his twin who doesn’t understand the concept of personal space and attempts to chaperone each date.

The realisation of you being human doesn’t sink in for a long while because he’s pleased that he has someone whom he can love. Amras will be spending his dates surrounded by nature.

Waterfalls, hiking trails, rivers, ponds lakes or fields of flowers, you have seen it all in your human lifespan. Places you didn’t believe existed or could be viewed by the naked eye would be revealed to you.

Amras is more open to receiving affection from you and enjoys the lavish amounts you shower him in. He is stunned by the volume that humans are capable of delivering and how dependent they are on physical touch.

Like his brothers, Amras will shower you with tons of gifts, especially handcrafted ones. He is skilled in crocheting and competes with his brother for who can make the best look-alikes of their family. In between, you can expect to receive stuffed animals or a miniature of yourself.

Reaches out to his elder brother, Maedhros and Maglor for advice on how to date a human since they’re more aware of mortal mannerisms than him. It’s a cute sight to witness as Amras practices learning your mannerisms and culture so he can help you feel at home.

His major concern is ensuring that your time spent with him was the best years you’ve ever had in your entire life, and he was able to fulfil many of your wishes in the short space of time granted to you.

Celebrimbor

Tyelpё would like to know what he has done to inherit a significant other in the first place. Forget that you’re human, he wants to know how you can choose a person like him after the history of bloodshed his family has left.

Like any normal relationship, he’s doing his best to control his temper and be as patient as possible. He would hate to make you go running for the hills with a terrible slip-up.

Eyes of a hawk at your every move, wanting to learn as much as possible with the stark differences between you in particular and him. He’s already aware of how indifferent elves and humans are, it’s just to learn your netiquettes and mannerisms.

Like his father, you will be gifted tons of jewellery—it’s his love language—with your neck breaking under the weight of the gems. Tyelpё adores seeing you decked out and looking like a disco ball; you’re his mannequin for his pieces.

As one who spent years in the forge, he’s far from small and will crush you under his weight. Thus, he’s cautious when cuddling or any form of play fighting. The last thing he needs to hear is that he injured you from his bulky muscles.

Please hold his hands and let him fawn over the size difference. You’re only able to hold two of his fingers when tugging him about the place when you’re eager to show him something.

Did someone say standing on chairs to meet his height? Yes, that is exactly what you would have to do because he’s a giant eight-foot elf. Or even parading around in his long robes pretending to be him? Yes.

Protective to a degree, but not as overprotective as his uncles since it’s the second age and let’s assume that our buddy hasn’t shown up yet to ruin the peace. Tyelpё will gladly allow you to roam freely without worrying about your safety tremendously and would even request that you return with treats.

Masterlist

Taglist: @ranhanabi777 @lilmelily @mysticmoomin @rain-on-my-umbrella @asianbutnotjapanese @batsyforyou @ladyenchanted @mcwentfandomtraveling @involuntaryspasms @stormchaser819 @a-tong @aconstructofamind @addaigio @lamemaster @hermaeuswhora

[ostensiblynone]

✨ noel is every bit as messy as liam and always has been ✨

Noel and Meg finally divorce BBC News | Friday, 19 January, 2001

Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher's three-year marriage to Meg Mathews has been dissolved at the High Court. The decree was granted, along with 31 others, in a 75-second hearing before District Judge Clive Million. No objections were raised to the divorce, which is on the grounds of Gallagher's adultery with publicist Sara MacDonald. In divorce papers released later, Mathews says she found it "intolerable" to live with Gallagher since he admitted adultery "in or around late October" last year. However, Gallagher, 33, has denied being unfaithful to his ex-wife. In a statement released by the guitarist on Thursday, he said he had left because he could "no longer tolerate her behaviour". He said he only admitted to cheating in order to get the divorce over quickly. He was responding to a newspaper report on Thursday which said he had admitted he was unfaithful. 'Honest evaluation' Gallagher, who is touring with Oasis in Argentina said that reports that he and his current partner, Sara MacDonald, had had a fling were "completely untrue". In a separate statement, Sara MacDonald also denied that she had been involved in a relationship with Gallagher while he had still been together with Mathews. She said: "I feel that Ms Mathews would benefit from a more honest and introspective evaluation of the real causes of the breakdown of her marriage." Gallagher and Mathews married in Las Vegas in 1997 but separated in September last year, eight months after Mathews had given birth to their daughter Anais. Private life The guitarist's brother Liam Gallagher also split from his wife, Patsy Kensit, last year. The couple divorced in September. Nicole Appleton, of All Saints, is now seeing the Oasis singer and the couple are expecting a child together. Mathews, who is currently on holiday in the Far East, denied leaking details of the couple's divorce arrangements. Her spokeswoman said: "Meg has never discussed and is not willing to discuss the current situation of her private life with the press."

[mindblowingscience]

Scientists have directly imaged eight dim objects accompanying very bright stars within the Gaia data catalog, including so-called "failed stars," otherwise known as brown dwarfs.  The stars and their companions were originally identified from millions of stars in the Gaia catalog. They were considered ideal for follow-up investigations with the ground-based GRAVITY instrument, an advanced near-infrared interferometer located at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on the peak of Cerro Paranal in Chile. By combining infrared light from multiple telescopes, a process called interferometry, GRAVITY has already achieved the first direct observation of an extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet." Following up on Gaia observations, GRAVITY directly spotted light signals from companions around the eight bright stars, seven of which were theorized objects, undiscovered until now.

Continue Reading.

[deep-space-netwerk]

Alright, so, black holes right?

Most people have probably seen this astOUNDING image of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy - the first real picture of a black hole.

It may look like a blurry orange donut, but you gotta understand, this was and still is a hugely impressive achievement. At a black hole's event horizon, the escape velocity (or the speed at which something has to travel to escape the body's gravitational pull) is faster than the speed of light. By definition a black hole cannot be directly observed. Imaging the shadow of M87* required using eight ground-based radio telescopes all over the world, working together as an interferometer - or as though they were one single telescope the size of the entire planet.

So that's fucking cool in its own right, but how did we know that black holes existed before 2019 when we could actually "see" one? How do we detect something that reflects no light when we DON'T have a simulated telescope the size of Earth? The answer is gravity.

We think that most large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, left over from their chaotic infancies when hundreds of thousands of early stars collided and then collapsed, and then kept colliding. To give you an idea of what we mean by "supermassive", the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), is about 4 million times the mass of our sun. And that's SMALL.

So while black holes aren't the horrible all-consuming reality-guzzling unmakers of creation that science fiction likes to paint them as - we aren't in any danger whatsoever from Sagittarius A*, now or ever - they CAN get big enough to really throw things around. So we looked for objects moving under the influence of . . . nothing.

This gif is a years-long timelapse of stars orbiting something in a seemingly-empty region of space the center of the Milky Way, the approximate location marked with a red plus sign.

That something is Sag A*. It's an invisible behemoth, made of the extraordinarily dense remains of the birth of our galaxy, juggling entire solar systems the way Jupiter flings asteroids. And for so long, we couldn't even see it.

This shit makes me go fucking crazy. Imagine what else is out there that we don't understand just because we don't have the tools to even know it exists! Not just in space, in any field of scientific study!

It wasn't until the 1990s that we started realizing trees talk to each other, and now we know there's fungal mycelium networks that connect trees across entire continents. Just THIS YEAR we discovered an entirely new ecosystem underneath the hydrothermal vents in the deepest parts of the ocean floor. For most of human history, the existence of planets around other stars was highly debated, and now we've confirmed over 5 thousand of them. We even know what some of their atmospheres are made of!

There's a saying that "the more you know, the more you know you'll never know", and I feel like there's never been a time in history when that's been more true. And it's almost comforting, y'know? The universe is so vast, it feels correct that we shouldn't be able to understand all of its intricacies.

Reality is stranger than fiction, and the reality is there's stuff out there that we don't even have the words to begin to describe. Until we do! And our reward is even more questions!

[lafiametta]

Another prompt for the ask meme: breakfast

“I think I want to sell the ring,” she tells him one morning, as they’re curled together on top of her bed. “I’m ready to be done with all that.”

It’s nice that she doesn’t need to explain what she means. He was there, too, at least for the awful last days of it, and he saw firsthand what had happened to her. The only reason she has the ring at all is because of him, and whatever he did to be able to give it back to her.

For a while, she hadn’t known what to do with it. It had sat proudly on her finger during the days she had been married to Ivan, but afterwards she couldn’t bear to look at it. She had slipped it into an old, stretched-out pair of socks and then tucked it away in the back of one of her dresser drawers, where it had remained ever since. A part of her knew how pointless it was to keep it there—how many months of groceries could it buy, how many of their growing pile of bills could it pay?—but still, she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it.

Something had shifted, though, slowly and imperceptibly, until the day she realized that it didn’t hurt to think of letting it go. That part of her life was over, and she was ready to take the first step into a new one.

“Okay,” he says, like it’s just that easy.

Maybe it is.

A few days later he drives her into the city to a place on West 47th Street. She’s done some research and made a few phone calls, a little disappointed to learn that as a re-sale she’s not going to get the full value for the stone, but in the end winds up with an early morning appointment at a reputable jeweler in the Diamond District.

Igor waits in the car while she goes in. She doesn’t mind; this feels like something she needs to do herself.

Dressed conservatively, in her most ladylike heels and pencil skirt, she walks in the door, then sits and waits while the jeweler places the ring on a square of black velvet and then examines it this way and then that under a glowing magnifying lamp. It almost feels as if she’s being appraised—her ring, her life, her choices—but she tries to put that feeling away. It’s a diamond ring, a rock on a piece of metal, and soon it will have nothing to do with her at all.

The offer he makes is around what she had estimated, and after a little negotiation they agree on a price. The ring disappears, back into their vault, and in its place she’s handed a check, made out to Anora Mikheeva in the amount of sixty eight thousand, two hundred and fifteen dollars and twelve cents. She’s never seen any amount that big. Even Ivan’s fifteen thousand, hand-written in his boyish scrawl out of a big leather-bound checkbook, doesn’t come close.

For a moment she just stares at it, the numbers swimming in her vision, until the jeweler makes a soft little throat-clearing sound and she remembers where she is. She smiles politely and folds the check into her purse, then walks outside into the morning sun.

“Everything is okay?” he asks when she gets back in the car.

She nods, still slightly struck by the magnitude of what she’s done. When it sat on her finger the ring had never felt all that weighty; it was a beautiful object, an ornament that she had thought would be the first of many. But the ring was all she had been left with, and now it’s been converted into a number on a piece of paper, an astonishing number that could appear in her bank account balance by the end of the day.

“You want to go home?”

She turns and looks at him, Igor with his wide, blue eyes and faintly concerned expression. It’s nice, the way he looks out for her. She probably doesn’t deserve it, but she’s grateful all the same.

“No,” she tells him, because suddenly she’s struck by the desire to go somewhere, to do something out of the ordinary. They’re in this great big city; there’s a million things they could do.

“Can we go get breakfast?” she asks, only because it’s the first thing that comes to her mind.

They drive around for a little while until they find a place that doesn’t look like an overpriced tourist trap. Igor orders fried eggs with sausage and bacon, which he inexplicably covers in ketchup. Ani gets the French toast and starts to consider the cost for the extra strawberry topping until she remembers the check with all those numbers that’s sitting in her purse, and then tells the waitress she’ll have two portions of the strawberries.

“So what will you do with the money?” he asks.

Honestly, she’s not entirely sure. It had all been so theoretical, at least up until a few days ago, that she hadn’t put much thought to it beyond the most immediate needs.

“Fix a lot of shit in the house. We need a new roof. The washing machine and the dryer are fuckin’ ancient. The rest’ll go into savings. And, I don’t know... maybe at some point I could go back to school.”

That possibility has always been something so far off that she had hadn’t really given much real consideration to it. She’d need to get her GED first, but then maybe community college, and a degree that would let her find a job with benefits and health insurance and maybe even a fucking retirement account. It’s something to think about, at least, now that she’s got options.

“What do you want to do with it?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do I want’? I just fuckin’ told you.”

“No,” he says, and his brow furrows a little, the way it does when he’s having trouble expressing himself in English the way he’d like. “I mean, if you can buy anything you want, not what you have to buy, what would it be?”

It’s harder to think about this, because all it does is make her think about Ivan, and all the things she thought she’d have, all the designer clothes and jewelry and personal trainers and trips to the day spa for facials and deep-tissue massages. All the luxuries she had only dreamed about—or seen in magazines—were going to be there for the taking. All the travel, the private jet flying all over the world—the beach, the ski resorts, the five-star hotels.

Cinderella’s castle.

A part of her wants to start crying, but she won’t. Instead, she breathes out and laughs a little to herself until the feeling passes.

“I... wanted to go to Disney World.”

“In Florida?”

“Yeah. Orlando.”

He shrugs, looking at her inquiringly. “So why don’t you go?”

Ani can’t help but make a face, because it’s honestly the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. “You think I should buy a five-hundred-dollar plane ticket to go to Disney World by my fuckin’ self?”

“No,” he says, his gaze open, honest. “I will take you. I can drive.”

For a moment, she’s speechless. It’s only a marginally less stupid idea—because, what, he’s going to drive for two days there and two days back so she can sit in some teacups and take a dumb selfie with Mickey Mouse?—and she’s opening her mouth to tell him exactly that, only a different question comes out instead.

“Why?”

“It’s something you want, Ani. You should have something that is for you.” He smiles a little, glancing down, as if what he’s about to say is embarrassing. “And I have not been out of New York.”

“You want to go to Disney World?” she teases, because there’s something warm growing in her chest and she feels safe enough to let it settle there. “Go ride Space Mountain?”

“I want to take you there. If you want.”

She presses her lips together, trying hard to hold back the grin that’s threatening to form. The whole idea is so ridiculous, such a fucking fantasy, and she can’t believe she’s even bothering to entertain it. Forget the five-hundred-dollar plane ticket—she can’t be spending money on a hotel and tickets and everything else a trip like this would include. She’s got the money—a lot of money—but it shouldn’t be spent on frivolous shit. Still, she can almost see it, the castle with its banners and towers, the lake and the moat and the swans floating along the crystal surface. As a kid, she had once been given a picture book about Disney World, filled with glossy photos; it had been her prized possession, kept away from Vera and secretly poured over under her covers at night. She had always thought she’d get to go there some day—when she was rich enough.

That was going to be her honeymoon, complete with a Disney princess suite. But that dream was over, the new part of her life ready to begin.

“Okay,” she says, smiling at him like the fucking idiot she clearly is. “Let’s go.”

They finish their food and talk a little more about the trip, about when she can get some time off and who he can ask to look after his grandmother while they’re gone. The check comes and she watches him reach for his wallet.

“I got it,” she says, grabbing the paper slip before he can even look at it. “You’re taking me to Disney World. The least I can fuckin’ do is buy you breakfast.”

[send me a one-word Anora x Igor prompt]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Cohn at HuffPost:

Early in Donald Trump’s first term, Steve Bannon met with some House Republicans who were wavering on whether to vote for a Trump-backed bill that would have slashed Medicaid, the federal-state program that today pays medical bills for about 72 million low-income Americans. Bannon, who at the time was a senior White House adviser, read them the riot act: “This is not a debate,” he said, as Axios reported at the time. “You have no choice but to vote for this bill.” Eight years later, Trump and the Republicans are back in power ― and maybe laying the groundwork for a similar vote. The budget proposal House Republicans voted out of committee on Thursday night envisions massive spending reductions virtually certain to include Medicaid, in part to finance the tax cuts Trump has said are his top legislative priority. But this time around, Bannon has some different advice for the Republicans ― and the Trump White House, too. “A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid,” Bannon said on Thursday on his “War Room” podcast. “If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. You just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”

Bannon probably understands this better than most high-profile figures in American politics. The proposed Medicaid cuts during Trump’s first term were part of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. That bill proved spectacularly unpopular ― and ultimately failed to pass ― in part because even many diehard Trump supporters would’ve stood to lose health coverage had it succeeded. Which is exactly what could happen now, as Bannon knows. But these days, it’s not just cuts to Medicaid threatening Trump supporters. Since reassuming the presidency, Trump has issued a torrent of executive orders that seek to limit, downsize or even eliminate key federal programs and agencies. To implement all of this, Trump has deputized adviser and billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been laying off federal workers by the thousands and blocking federal spending by the billions. Trump says the purpose of these orders and Musk’s demolition tour of the executive branch is to eliminate wasteful spending ― and, no less important, to clean out the left-wing, ���woke” politics that he says have infected these federal initiatives. Which may or may not be worthwhile on the merits, depending on your perspective.

[...]

What DOGE Looks Like In Rural America

One Republican who seems to understand is Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama. Last weekend, a reporter from AL.com asked her to react to news that the National Institutes of Health was sharply reducing its research grants. The University of Alabama-Birmingham is a top recipient of NIH grants, and also Alabama’s largest employer. Britt said she was all for cutting waste, to make sure taxpayer dollars are “spent efficiently, judiciously and accountably.” But she added that she wanted to work with the administration on “a smart, targeted approach … in order to not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.” It sounded a lot like a warning, or at least an objection, especially from a staunch Trump supporter. And it wasn’t the only one out there. Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who also happens to be a physician, told STAT News: “One thing I’ve heard loud and clear from my people in Louisiana is that Louisiana will suffer from these cuts. And research that benefits people in Louisiana may not be done.” Louisiana, like Alabama, is a strongly pro-Trump state. It also gets about $300 million a year in NIH research funding, according to an analysis of public data by the Louisiana Illuminator. Other solidly red states with big NIH-backed institutions include Texas and Tennessee. The rural sections of these states ― or any state, really ― can be especially dependent on NIH money, because universities, teaching hospitals and affiliated clinics may be the only large employers there, and the sole providers of major medical care, as well. [...] Cuts at USAID might seem less likely to have a perceptible effect stateside, because American jobs don’t generally depend on foreign assistance. But in farm country, they do, because that’s where USAID gets food: Farmers, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, could lose as much as $2 billion if food aid goes away. “You’re talking about a direct impact on American products and American jobs,” George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post. Republican lawmakers from Kansas, Arkansas and other rural states are rallying behind legislation to save the primary food aid program by moving it out of the State Department and over to the Department of Agriculture.

Trump/Musk cuts have harmed every state, including red ones.

[hushedhowls]

Hai Dirt,

We read your post about your latest hyperfixation and thought we would tell you one of our kintypes

Can you talk a bit about cuttlefish we feel really connected to them but sadly we dont know much about them so yeah

Thanks mootie

hihi!! cuttlefish kin?!?! That is so so cool!!

[btw guys a went back to all my animal fact posts and added a "mating" section and it will be in all animal fact posts now]

INFORMATION ABOUT: CUTTLEFISH

lifespan- 1 - 2 years

mating- I don't know how to rewrite this so national geographic said: "Mating takes place with the cuttlefish linking their eight arms and two tentacles for head-to-head contact, with the males slipping their sperm packages into the female’s mouth and fertilizing her eggs." Female Cuttlefish select multiple males, increasing genetic diversity in their offspring. Cuttlefish reproduce in the spring, each female laying hundreds of eggs. After laying eggs, the female dies.

diet in the wild- Crustaceans [crabs, shrimp, lobster]

hunting- Cuttlefish use their tentacles to catch and secure their prey.

habitat- shallow tropical or temperate coastal waters, shallow reefs, channels, and deeper waters up to 650 ft.

behavior/communication- cuttlefish use their colors and patterns to communicate with one another. They use different colors to express things like searching for a mate, being territorial, being calm, being aggressive, and more.

evolution- cuttlefish are derived from a belemnite-like ancestor. Cuttlefish appeared in the Miocene Epoch and first appeared about 23 million years ago.

fun facts:

Male cuttlefish can disguise themselves as females.

Cuttlefish were around before the first shark or fish ever evolved.

They mimic objects around them.

They have 3 hearts.

cuttlefish can change colors to match their surroundings

they know how to count

Cuttlefish can change texture

vv other animal fact posts vv

⋆ siberian-tiger

⋆ spotted-hyena

⋆ black-flying-fox-[bat]

⋆ coastal-wolf

⋆ jaguar

[mariacallous]

Early in Donald Trump’s first term, Steve Bannon met with some House Republicans who were wavering on whether to vote for a Trump-backed bill that would have slashed Medicaid, the federal-state program that today pays medical bills for about 72 million low-income Americans.

Bannon, who at the time was a senior White House adviser, read them the riot act: “This is not a debate,” he said, as Axios reported at the time. “You have no choice but to vote for this bill.”

Eight years later, Trump and the Republicans are back in power ― and maybe laying the groundwork for a similar vote. The budget proposal House Republicans voted out of committee on Thursday night envisions massive spending reductions virtually certain to include Medicaid, in part to finance the tax cuts Trump has said are his top legislative priority.

But this time around, Bannon has some different advice for the Republicans ― and the Trump White House, too.

“A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid,” Bannon said on Thursday, during an interview on Fox. “If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. You just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”

Bannon probably understands this better than most high-profile figures in American politics. The proposed Medicaid cuts during Trump’s first term were part of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. That bill proved spectacularly unpopular ― and ultimately failed to pass ― in part because even many diehard Trump supporters would’ve stood to lose health coverage had it succeeded. Which is exactly what could happen now, as Bannon knows.

But these days, it’s not just cuts to Medicaid threatening Trump supporters.

Since reassuming the presidency, Trump has issued a torrent of executive orders that seek to limit, downsize or even eliminate key federal programs and agencies. To implement all of this, Trump has deputized adviser and billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been laying off federal workers by the thousands and blocking federal spending by the billions.

Trump says the purpose of these orders and Musk’s demolition tour of the executive branch is to eliminate wasteful spending ― and, no less important, to clean out the left-wing, “woke” politics that he says have infected these federal initiatives. Which may or may not be worthwhile on the merits, depending on your perspective.

But whatever the rationale, the effect is likely to be especially strong in communities where Trump is popular. Some have already taken a hit. The question now is how quickly that realization sets in, and whether anything changes as a result.

What DOGE Looks Like In Rural America

One Republican who seems to understand is Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama. Last weekend, a reporter from AL.com asked her to react to news that the National Institutes of Health was sharply reducing its research grants. The University of Alabama-Birmingham is a top recipient of NIH grants, and also Alabama’s largest employer.

Britt said she was all for cutting waste, to make sure taxpayer dollars are “spent efficiently, judiciously and accountably.” But she added that she wanted to work with the administration on “a smart, targeted approach … in order to not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”

It sounded a lot like a warning, or at least an objection, especially from a staunch Trump supporter. And it wasn’t the only one out there. Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who also happens to be a physician, told STAT News: “One thing I’ve heard loud and clear from my people in Louisiana is that Louisiana will suffer from these cuts. And research that benefits people in Louisiana may not be done.”

Louisiana, like Alabama, is a strongly pro-Trump state. It also gets about $300 million a year in NIH research funding, according to an analysis of public data by the Louisiana Illuminator. Other solidly red states with big NIH-backed institutions include Texas and Tennessee. The rural sections of these states ― or any state, really ― can be especially dependent on NIH money, because universities, teaching hospitals and affiliated clinics may be the only large employers there, and the sole providers of major medical care, as well.

As of Friday, a judge has temporarily blocked the NIH funding reduction, citing federal law that would seem to prohibit the Trump administration from making those cuts unilaterally. The same goes for orders that have effectively shut down most foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Cuts at USAID might seem less likely to have a perceptible effect stateside, because American jobs don’t generally depend on foreign assistance. But in farm country, they do, because that’s where USAID gets food: Farmers, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, could lose as much as $2 billion if food aid goes away.

“You’re talking about a direct impact on American products and American jobs,” George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post.

Republican lawmakers from Kansas, Arkansas and other rural states are rallying behind legislation to save the primary food aid program by moving it out of the State Department and over to the Department of Agriculture.

And they aren’t the only GOP lawmakers making the case to protect programs on the Trump target list. Nearly two dozen House Republicans have been lobbying their leadership to spare federal subsidies for electric vehicles that Trump has said he is determined to eliminate.

It’s not the potential of backsliding on climate progress that worries these Republicans. It’s the potential of losing jobs in their districts, which are home to new, sprawling EV factories in what’s become known as the “battery belt” stretching across the South. And what’s true for EVs is true for the clean energy push more generally: The money that President Joe Biden and the Democrats invested in projects like solar and wind power has gone disproportionately to Republican districts.

Take the money away, and it’s those districts that could suffer disproportionately.

How Republican Leaders Might React

Just what that suffering would look like in practice is hard to say. Cuts may not turn out to be as devastating as critics fear or say — and, in the case of the executive actions Trump and Musk have been carrying out, it’s always possible the courts will block these cuts, as they have with DOGE’s attempted NIH funding reduction.

But Trump is already well on his way to making some long-term changes — by, among other things, getting his appointees confirmed. That includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services once seemed to be in doubt because even some Republicans seemed queasy about his repeated, dishonest attacks on vaccines.

Among those voting yes were Sen. Cassidy, a vocal Kennedy critic, which is a reminder that even Republicans raising concerns about elements of the Trump agenda may vote to support them anyway. As for Sen. Britt, 24 hours after expressing concern about those NIH cuts, she was hanging out with Trump at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

Kennedy’s confirmation wasn’t the only vaccine-related news this week. The other piece was word of a measles outbreak that has already infected two dozen people in Gaines County, Texas, where the vaccination rate is among the lowest in the state — and where more than nine out of ten voters picked Trump in 2024.

That’s not surprising. Republican-leaning voters are less likely to trust or get vaccines, studies and polls have shown. And Trump has made plenty of vaccine-skeptical statements of his own.

Installing Kennedy at HHS at the very least reinforces that message. At worst, it turns U.S. vaccination policy over to somebody who has spent a career making false and misleading statements on vaccine safety. In either case, Trump’s own supporters could feel the effects most directly — though perhaps only when it’s too late to stop them.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

A recent study has revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the prevalence of myopia among children and teenagers globally with projections to exceed 740 million cases by 2050.

In Short -More than 1 in 3 children are affected by myopia or short-sightedness -Over 740 million children and teenagers will have myopia by 2050 -The increase in myopia cases has been notable after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic -The widespread occurrence of myopia has made it a public health concern, especially among researchers. While the escalation of its prevalence remains elusive, researchers of a recent study on myopia -note that there's a link between increasing cases of myopia and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Myopia or short-sightedness is an eye condition where a person cannot see objects far away clearly. This vision can be corrected with glasses or contact lenses.

In their latest study, published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, researchers from China's Sun Yat-Sen University and Henan Provincial People's Hospital, found that around one in three children and teenagers worldwide are short-sighted.

Prompting calls to discourage screen time and increase physical activity, they stated that the Covid lockdowns had a negative impact on eyesight in children, who spent more time on screens and less time outdoors.

"Based on our trend analysis, it has been observed that there has been a significant rise in the occurrence of myopia among children and adolescents globally over the past 30 years, with the prevalence increasing from 24.32% to 35.81%. This increase has been particularly notable after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic," the researchers wrote.

The study looked at research involving more than five million children and teenagers from 50 countries across all six continents. The highest rates are in Asia - 85% of children in Japan and 73% in South Korea are short-sighted with more than 40% affected in China and Russia.

Their analysis showed that the prevalence of short-sightedness has tripled from 1990 to 2023, reaching 36%. The study warns that myopia is an escalating global health issue, projected to exceed 740 million cases by 2050.

Myopia usually begins in school, which tends to worsen over time, until the eye has stopped growing, till 20 years of age.

Several factors increase the likelihood of developing short-sightedness, with living in East Asia being one of the most significant. Genetics, or the traits passed down from parents, play a role, but other influences exist as well.

In regions like Singapore and Hong Kong, children begin formal education as early as two years old. This early exposure to reading and screen time puts extra strain on their eyes, which research suggests can lead to myopia.

In contrast, myopia is seven times less common in Africa, where children typically start school at the age of six to eight years old.

The study further indicates that girls and young women may experience higher rates of myopia than boys, partly due to spending less time outdoors both at school and home as they grow up.

Additionally, girls often enter puberty earlier, which may lead to the onset of short-sightedness at a younger age.

"With the increase in enrolment pressure, students are experiencing a rise in learning pressure and burden. As a result, they are spending more time focusing on close-range activities with their eyes, which reduces the time they spend on outdoor sports and exercise.34 This constant strain on the ciliary muscles often leads to eye fatigue and myopia," the researchers wrote.

While Asia is projected to have the highest levels of myopia by 2050, with nearly 69% of the population affected, developing countries could also see rates as high as 40%, according to researchers.

The researchers added, "According to our projections, there is an anticipated 9% rise in the overall prevalence of myopia between 2023 and 2050, which will lead to a substantial burden of ocular disease, affecting more than 740 million children and adolescents."

The common signs and symptoms of myopia or short-sightedness include difficulty reading words from a distance, like reading the board at school, sitting close to the television or laptop or holding a tablet or phone too close to the eyes, getting frequent headaches, and rubbing the eyes a lot.

Study link: bjo.bmj.com/content/early/2024/08/14/bjo-2024-325427

[blueiscoool]

Rome is Building an Eight-Story Underground Museum – But Treasures Keep Getting in the way

Rome, as it’s often said, wasn’t built in a day. And nowhere is that more evident than its state-of-the-art Metro Line C, an ambitious project meant to help relieve the Italian capital’s renowned traffic hellscape and celebrate its rich archeological history with a unique-in-the-world underground museum.

The €700 million line ($757.7 million) was originally envisioned for the Catholic Jubilee of 2000 as a vital link between Rome’s San Giovanni Cathedral and Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica, making it easier for visiting pilgrims to collect indulgences by walking through the churches’ holy doors. Rome’s major basilicas open their holy doors only during Jubilee years, allowing Catholics from all over the world to make pilgrimages to the city to walk through them, symbolizing an openness to receive mercy and reconciliation.

But the 2000 dream never happened, thanks to a series of problems ranging from a corruption scandal in the city government and the sheer number of archeological objects – 40,000 in all, from petrified peach pits to pottery and vases and even the walls and mosaics of Emperor Hadrian’s 2,000-year-old military barracks – found with each shovel full of dirt during the initial preparations.

Now the hope is to have the line’s showcase Piazza Venezia stop, featuring an eight-story underground museum, ready in 10 years, according to engineer Andrea Sciotti, who is in charge of the metro museum complex. This will allow them to open around the Jubilee of 2033, which will mark 2,000 years since the death of Jesus Christ.

“It’s true, 10 years seems like a long time, but we aren’t just dealing with the engineering issues,” Sciotti said inside the construction site. “This station will be judged as the most beautiful in the world … we don’t have to rely on museum items being brought in, the museum station is in its original context in ancient Rome.”

Displayed where they were found:

During the initial phases of work carried out in the last five years, Sciotti said all of the artifacts were removed from the site for restoration. Each will be placed exactly where it was found inside the metro museum, which is being dug some 85 meters (280 feet) deep, encompassing eight stories below the modern city of Rome.

Over the millennia the modern city has been built over covered ruins. Only around 10% of ancient Rome has been excavated, with the rest still buried some nine meters (30 feet) below the current city, according to Rome’s tourist bureau. The city dates back to the stone age and construction work is notoriously hampered by the discovery of ruins that are too plentiful to even excavate and are often reburied to preserve them. Even simple infrastructure work, like sewage repairs, have to be attended by archeologists who have the power to stop the work if something is found.

There will be 27 escalators, six elevators and 66,000 square meters of archeological exhibit space. Ancient walls found during excavations will be placed “in situ” in the modern station and the ancient Via Flaminia that ran through the ancient city to the nearby Roman Forum and Colosseum.

The station’s three main entrances will connect the three museums around the square: the Vittoriano, the Palazzo Venezia and the outdoor ruins of the Roman Forum anchored by the Colosseum at the far end, which has its own metro station that will also feature museum and exhibit space.

Several of the archeological sites will have access points from inside the metro museum, meaning commuters and tourists alike can exit the station by rambling through historically significant ruins like Hadrian’s Auditorium, which was discovered when the initial archeological investigation into the project started and was meant to be the location of the station entrance. Since then, they moved the site and excavated the ruins, which are currently only visible looking down from street level.

‘Top down’ excavation system:

To secure the site as they dig, engineers are using a “top down” excavation system, which has never been used in Italy but was an integral part of the Jubilee line in London. Cross walls and diaphragms are being buried deep into the soil to form the perimeter of the underground complex, with the dirt taken out recycled and enhanced to be used in the building materials, Sciotti said.

The train tunnels themselves are not the issue since they will be more than 100 feet below ground.

The Venezia station museum stop is not the only treasure on the new line. In 2016, archeologists working on the site of the Porta Metronia (previously known as the Ambra Aradam) station found a 39-room complex that spanned more than 9,700 square feet that has been incorporated into the underground station, which will open by the end of 2024. In 2025, the new Colosseo-Fori station, complete with a four-level underground museum to showcase artifacts including 25 archaic wells unearthed when it was built, will also open after activation tests, meant to begin in October, are completed.

The entire 26-kilometer C-line will be Italy’s first fully automated driver-less subway system and will reduce road traffic by 400,000 vehicles a day, meaning CO2 emissions will be reduced by some 310,000 tonnes a year, according to the WeBuild group, which is the main contractor for the project.

The original plans from the 2000 Jubilee have been modified to eliminate several stations in the historical center that would have simply been too difficult to excavate.

By Barbie Nadeau.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Found: first actively forming galaxy as lightweight as young Milky Way

For the first time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has detected and ‘weighed’ a galaxy that not only existed around 600 million years after the Big Bang, but also has a mass that is similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this period in the history of the Universe are significantly more massive. Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, this galaxy is gleaming with star clusters — 10 in all — each of which researchers examined in great detail.

“I didn’t think it would be possible to resolve a galaxy that existed so early in the Universe into so many distinct components, let alone find that its mass is similar to our own galaxy’s when it was in the process of forming,” said Lamiya Mowla, co-lead author of the paper and an assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. “There is so much going on inside this tiny galaxy, including so many different phases of star formation.”

Webb was able to image the galaxy in sufficient detail for two reasons. One is a benefit of the cosmos: a massive foreground galaxy cluster radically enhanced the distant galaxy’s appearance through a natural effect known as gravitational lensing. And when combined with the telescope’s specialisation in high-resolution imaging of infrared light, Webb delivered unprecedented new data about the galaxy’s contents.

“Without the benefit of this gravitational lens, we would not be able to resolve this galaxy,” said Kartheik Iyer, co-lead author and NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York. “We knew to expect it based on current physics, but it’s surprising that we actually saw it.”

Mowla, who spotted the galaxy in Webb’s image, was drawn to its gleaming star clusters, because objects that sparkle typically indicate they are extremely clumpy and complicated. Since the galaxy looks like a ‘sparkle’ or swarm of fireflies on a warm summer night, they named it the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.

Reconstructing the galaxy’s appearance

The research team modelled what the galaxy might have looked like if its image weren’t stretched by gravitational lensing and discovered that it resembled an elongated raindrop. Suspended within it are two star clusters toward the top and eight toward the bottom. “Our reconstruction shows that clumps of actively forming stars are surrounded by diffuse light from other unresolved stars,” said Iyer. “This galaxy is literally in the process of assembling.”

Webb’s data show the Firefly Sparkle galaxy is on the smaller side, falling into the category of a low-mass galaxy. Billions of years will pass before it builds its full heft and a distinct shape. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched, and we are not able to see their ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” Mowla said.

Stretched out and shining, ready for close analysis

Since the image of the galaxy is warped into a long arc, the researchers easily picked out 10 distinct star clusters, which are emitting the bulk of the galaxy’s light. They are represented here in shades of pink, purple, and blue. Those colours in Webb’s images and its supporting spectra confirmed that star formation didn’t happen all at once in this galaxy, but was staggered in time.

“This galaxy has a diverse population of star clusters, and it is remarkable that we can see them separately at such an early age of the Universe,” said Chris Willott of the National Research Council Canada, a co-author and the observation programme’s principal investigator. “Each clump of stars is undergoing a different phase of formation or evolution.”

The galaxy’s projected shape shows that its stars haven’t settled into a central bulge or a thin, flattened disc, another piece of evidence that the galaxy is still forming.

‘Glowing’ companions

Researchers can’t predict how this disorganised galaxy will build up and take shape over billions of years, but there are two galaxies that the team confirmed are ‘hanging out’ within a tight perimeter and may influence how it builds mass over billions of years.

Firefly Sparkle is only 6500 light-years away from its first companion, and its second companion is separated by 42 000 light-years. For context, the fully formed Milky Way is about 100 000 light-years across — all three would fit inside it. Not only are its companions very close, the researchers also think that they are orbiting one another.

Each time one galaxy passes another, gas condenses and cools, allowing new stars to form in clumps, adding to the galaxies’ masses. “It has long been predicted that galaxies in the early Universe form through successive interactions and mergers with other tinier galaxies,” said Yoshihisa Asada, a co-author and doctoral student at Kyoto University in Japan. “We might be witnessing this process in action.”

“This is just the first of many such galaxies JWST will discover, as we are only starting to use these cosmic microscopes”, added team member Maruša Bradač of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. “Just like microscopes let us see pollen grains from plants, the incredible resolution of Webb and the magnifying power of gravitational lensing let us see the small pieces inside galaxies. Our team is now analysing all early galaxies, and the results are all pointing in the same direction: we have yet to learn much more about how those early galaxies formed.”

The team’s research relied on data from Webb’s CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey, which include near-infrared images from NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and spectra from the microshutter array aboard NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). The CANUCS data intentionally covered a field that NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope imaged as part of its Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble programme.

This work was published on 12 December 2024 in the journal Nature.

More information

Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia)

TOP IMAGE: Thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423.

The largest bright white oval is a supergiant elliptical galaxy that is the dominant member of this galaxy cluster. The galaxy cluster acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting the light from objects that lie well behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing that has big research benefits. Astronomers can study lensed galaxies in detail, like the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.

This 2023 image is from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera). Researchers used Webb to survey the same field that the Hubble Space Telescope imaged in 2010. Thanks to its specialisation in high-resolution near-infrared imagery, Webb was able to show researchers many more galaxies in far more detail.

[Image description: Thousands of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this field, including galaxies in a massive galaxy cluster, and distorted background galaxies behind the galaxy cluster. The background of space is black.]Credit:

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia)

CENTRE IMAGE: For the first time, astronomers have identified a still-forming galaxy that weighs about the same as our Milky Way if we could wind back the clock to see our galaxy as it developed. The newly identified galaxy, the Firefly Sparkle, is in the process of assembling and forming stars, and existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang.

The image of the galaxy is stretched and warped by a natural effect known as gravitational lensing, which allowed researchers to glean far more information about its contents. (In some areas of Webb’s image, the galaxy is magnified over 40 times.)

While it took shape, the galaxy gleamed with star clusters in a range of infrared colours, which are scientifically meaningful. They indicate that the stars formed at different periods, not all at once.

Since the galaxy image is stretched into a long line in Webb’s observations, researchers were able to identify 10 distinct star clusters and study them individually, along with the cocoon of diffuse light from the additional, unresolved stars surrounding them. That’s not always possible for distant galaxies that aren’t lensed. Instead, in many cases researchers can only draw conclusions that apply to an entire galaxy. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched and we are not able to see the ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” explains astronomer Lamiya Mowla.

There are two companion galaxies ‘hovering’ close by, which may ultimately affect how this galaxy forms and builds mass over billions of years. Firefly Sparkle is only about 6500 light-years away from its first companion, and 42 000 light-years from its second companion. Let’s compare these figures to objects that are closer to home: the Sun is about 26 000 light-years from the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is about 100 000 light-years across. Not only are Firefly Sparkle’s companions very close, the researchers also suspect that they are orbiting one another.

[Image description: Horizontal split down the middle. At left, thousands of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this galaxy cluster. A box at bottom right is enlarged on the right half. A central oval identifies the Firefly Sparkle galaxy, a line with 10 dots in various colours.]Credit:

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia)

LOWER IMAGE: Thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423.

The largest bright white oval is a supergiant elliptical galaxy that is the dominant member of this galaxy cluster. The galaxy cluster acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting the light from objects that lie well behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing that has big research benefits. Astronomers can study lensed galaxies in detail, like the Firefly Sparkle galaxy.

This 2023 image is from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). Researchers used Webb to survey the same field the Hubble Space Telescope imaged in 2010. Thanks to its specialisation in high-resolution near-infrared imagery, Webb was able to show researchers many more galaxies in far more detail.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky.

The scale bar is labelled in arcseconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arcsecond is equal to an angular measurement of 1/3600 of one degree. There are 60 arcminutes in a degree and 60 arcseconds in an arcminute. (The full Moon has an angular diameter of about 30 arcminutes.) The actual size of an object that covers one arcsecond on the sky depends on its distance from the telescope.

This image shows invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colours. The colour key shows which NIRCam filters were used when collecting the light. The colour of each filter name is the visible light colour used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

NIRCam filters from left to right: F115W and F150W are blue; F200W and F277W are green; F356W and F444W are red.

[Image description: A graphic labelled “James Webb Space Telescope; MACS J1423.8+2404.” A rectangular image shows thousands of galaxies of various shapes and colours on the black background of space.]Credit:

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia)