#herping season

[megamind0416]

Friendly reminder that herping season is right around the corner!!

So excited to go in the woods and look for critters again :)

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

[celestialmacros]

American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus)

April 6, 2023

Southeastern Pennsylvania

[plethod0ntidae]

did u know that. um. him :)

(spotted salamander a. maculatum)

[Image description: a black salamander with yellow spots resting on a bed of green moss. there are brown oak leaves on the ground in the background. /end ID]

[aizenat]

Why the ever loving FUCK would you tag season 2 shit in the arcane season one tag? I will not be interacting with this fandom whatsoever because you showed quickly and easily how fucking imbecilic and repugnant you wretches are by not having the fucking decency to tag your shit right.

Is this just how all fandoms are now? People being their worst versions of themselves, trying to figure out how to ruin things for anyone who isn’t a hyper online braindead loser?

[xtruss]

It's Fall, Which Means It's Time For Gonorrhea! The Flu Isn't Alone: All Infectious Diseases Might Be Seasonal, According To A New Report.

— By Katherine J. Wu | Published: Thursday, November 8, 2018 | NOVA—PBS

All infectious diseases may be seasonal, according to a new scientific report—which means that every season may now come with its own set of symptoms. Photo Credit: Valerii Tkachenko, Wikimedia Commons

The transition from winter to spring signals the end of months of cold snaps, sweater weather, and Flu Season. But even as the roads clear and flowers bloom anew, it may not yet be time to shelve your sick days for the year.

According to a New Article, published today in the journal PLoS Pathogens, all infectious diseases may be seasonal—and there’s at least one for every time of the year.

Study author Micaela Martinez, an infectious disease ecologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, presents a compendium of 69 infectious diseases that run the gamut from rare to common, neglected to notorious, innocuous to deadly. Despite their differences, all the syndromes have one thing in common: They rise and fall with changing seasons.

Martinez, a conservation ecologist by training, initially set out to track the seasonality of acute, or short-term, infections like influenza and chickenpox after noting similarities between the disease states of humans and wildlife. But as she began to compile a list of infectious diseases that tend to plague humans, Martinez found that the trend also held true for chronic, or long-term, diseases like gonorrhea and leprosy.

“There’s documented seasonality for all infectious diseases, which is not what I was expecting,” Martinez explains. “It’s an even more widespread phenomenon than we thought.”

A quick look at the infectious disease calendar paints quite the sobering picture. As autumn leaves turn from green to red, gonorrhea and yellow fever rear their ugly heads in some parts of the world. The Winds of Winter are Famous For Flu, but also bring bouts of pneumonia. Refreshing springtime blooms breathe new life into outbreaks of chickenpox and salmonella. And last but certainly not least, summer months pack the heat with spikes in Lyme disease, polio, syphilis, tetanus, tuberculosis, and more.

Female Aedes Albopictus Mosquitoes, which can carry Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever, and Chikungunya Fever, are sensitive to seasonal changes. Ebbs and flows in their population can affect disease transmission. Photo Credit: FotoshopTofs, Pixabay

Other diseases are a bit less finicky: They’ll take any period of natural warmth, spreading the joy over many months at a time—often in regions of the world that don’t experience four seasons of climactic change. For instance, Chagas disease, diphtheria, and genital herpes all flourish over both spring and summer, while their prevalence takes a welcome dip when temperatures fall. Other infectious diseases fare better during rainy seasons, or when climes are particularly dry.

Though the diseases she linked together shared little in common, including even their seasons of prevalence, Martinez theorized there might be similar reasons driving their cyclic nature. To tease apart the connections, Martinez amassed data from 100 previously published studies, zeroing in on several factors that shape seasonality.

For instance, environmental factors obviously come into play. Climate conditions such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall impact the wellbeing of infectious microbes, as well as the humans and wildlife they plague. In diseases that are ferried to humans via an insect vector like a Mosquito or fly, the seasonal ebb and flow of these pest populations may also play a role.

The behaviors of hosts of disease, both human and wildlife, also appear to fluctuate from month to month. This has been infamously exemplified by congregations of kids in schools begetting measles outbreaks. But there’s also something to be learned, Martinez says, by studying flux in the habits of non-human animals, who go through bouts of seasonal breeding, territoriality, and migration, and how these changes affect the spread of disease. Humans may not be seasonal maters—at least, not to the same degree—but even a subtle shift, like an uptick in sex during the summer months, could spur outbreaks of Gonorrhea, Genital Herpes, or Syphilis.

“It’s not that we are vulnerable at a particular time of year and healthy at another,” Martinez explains. “We’re restructuring throughout the year. And the identity of the thing we’re vulnerable to changes with the seasons.”

The idea that some infectious diseases are seasonal isn’t new, says Shanthi Kappagoda, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at Stanford University who was not involved in Martinez’ work. However, Kappagoda adds, Martinez’ framework is unique in that it includes some infections that haven’t traditionally been considered seasonal—including several sexually-transmitted infections—and may change how clinicians and researchers approach future epidemics.

As climate change progresses, increasingly warmer locales may favor the transmission of infectious diseases like Cholera, or Mosquito-Borne Infections. Photo Credit: Martijn Meijerink, Pexels

According to Martinez, knowing when certain diseases are in season could help doctors quickly and effectively treat chronic infections that tend to flare up at certain times of the year, like herpes. With this sort of predictive power, patients may be able to minimize the amount of time they’re forced to deal with seasonal symptoms. The same line of thinking might even be applied to scheduling vaccines, which are ideally administered prior to the onset of an outbreak.

Understanding the drivers of infectious diseases’ seasonality may also be helpful on much broader scales, including the Forecasting of Epidemics Worldwide, adds Amy Wesolowski, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who did not participate in the new analysis.

Such global thinking is especially relevant in a rapidly changing world. As Climate Change progresses, the landscape of infectious diseases will shift, explains Kappagoda. Increasingly warmer locales may favor the transmission of summer-loving diseases like cholera. Humankind may also witness a boom in populations of insects like mosquitoes, which are likely to expand their habitats as temperatures climb, chauffeuring with them outbreaks of Malaria, West Nile Virus, and more. Additionally, human sensitivity to heat shouldn’t be underestimated in the context of infectious disease, Kappagoda points out: Climate change will continue to displace large populations of people, spurring the onset of epidemics.

Whether we like it or not, the spread and severity of infectious diseases are inextricably tied to both biology and behavior—which, in turn, cycle with the seasons. According to Martinez, the implications of this go far beyond fingering a malady for all seasons; rather, these patterns could change how we view our own bodies… and give new meaning to the phrase, “feeling under the weather.”

“This isn’t just about transmission—seasonality is also in the human body itself,” she explains. “There’s something happening in our bodies we don’t quite understand yet. Seasonality in infectious disease is just an enticing little piece of the puzzle.”

[7amonathursdayinoctober]

Seriously-

[jtthompson]

Also from a fandom POV it's such a shift! Less material from the source to work with. Fewer scenes to gif. Fewer character driven moments to use as a starting point for art/stories. Fewer minutes of dialogue to analyze.

Fewer chances for the show writers, directors, costume designers, lighting designers, actors, etc etc to play. To get weird and do something off the wall because why the hell not?

It's less for the original creators AND the fan creators!

I miss you filler episodes i miss you 20 episode seasons i miss you monster of the week format i miss you character development i miss you self contained episodes i miss you tv that isn't a long chopped up movie

[dusty-siltstrider]

(copied from my heads-up over in Viktor Nation)

yes it's not a drill this time shut up

Hi! Netflix is braindead and apparently gave some guy (claims to work in entertainment) full access to fully rendered season 2 episodes. To which he watched them all and proceeded to take a bunch of screenshots and yap endlessly on Twitter.

I am NOT on twitter and don't know how much this shit is currently circulating or how properly fast things are being deleted, but PLEASE **if you're on arcanetwt lay low and be careful** because dude apparently revealed a lot and that kinda thing spreads like herpes on Shitter. All I know is that there's a whole lotta screenshots he took that are going around.

Also don't know how much the guy might have grabbed about Viktor specifically (the screenshots I saw were of Vi) but I doubt he completely left that out. **These screenshots do NOT have the classic warning signs of hallmarks and timers**, they're fully rendered and shit. So you're gonna have to be paranoid. Thanks, Netflix. Thanks asshole guy.

As always I will NOT be posting s2 content related to leaks here. And thank you to Ignimbrite over in Viknat for the initial warning. Marcus voice "The situation is still developing" so pls just be careful! With 20 days left.... smh...

[futureman-outofcontext]

season 1 | Episode 2: Herpe: Full Loaded

[annmariethrush]

Even funnier take— Gabe fucking hates Sam and came out of 8 years of presumed dead hiding just to fuck Sam’s girlfriend before going out for real

I love that Sam Winchester's angel boyfriend and witch girlfriend decided to fuck each other and then said angel went and fucking died 🙃

[buttercupadventures]

Collague: So, have you finished Season 2 of Rings of Power?

Me: Not yet... But tell me, do Galadriel and Elrond really kiss or is that just a fever dream I had from tumblr?

Collague: They do... But it's not like that. She is in captivity and kisses him so she can give him something in secret.

Me: ... like herpes...?

[plethod0ntidae]

*vibrates with autism* my new herping headlamp got here and my partner gave me a field guide to reptiles and amphibians and i'm making a herping zine for my local area we are gonna find some CREACHERS come march

[violetpurpleviolet]

Supernatural , Season 5, Episode 8

Changing Channels

TRICKSTER?????????? TRICKSTER!!!!!! Trickster trickster trickster trickster

Oh my god the excessive colours burned my retina. I’m watching in the pitch dark (My retinas also burn when an Angel is nuked and the get all flashy

I’ve heard about this Dr.Sexy guy , I’ve seen people mention him a lot in posts? Also my sister kept asking if I’ve watched the Dr.Sexy episode. Let’s see what’s the big deal?

Oh that’s the big deal. Dean looks like he just met his crush. Cowboy boots?

“Cause I swore part of what makes Dr.Sexy sexy is the fact that he wears cowboy boots. Not tennis shoes.”

oh I need to know what they’re are saying in Japanese.

Okokok So i looked it up (I did my research) , and Sam gets asked what’s the name of the demon he chose over his own brother. And Dean , Dean gets asked , if his mom and dad would still be alive if Sam was never born, and , Dean answers yes

“I’ve got genital herpes”

hahahaha I couldn’t not quote that

“I am wearing sunglasses at night , you know who does that? No talent douche bags”

He’s an Angel????? Gabriel? what?

If it was always supposed to be Sam and Dean as the vessels, why did the yellow eyed demon feed demon blood and have the “pick the best one” thing?

Was it because they knew Sam wouldn’t want to kill a nd would die and , Dean would take a deal with a crossroads demon , and that’s the only way to get Dean into hell?

But i thought the demons plan originally was to make John break (not Dean)?

“Right about now , I wish I was in a TV show “

“Me too”

[scribblesnsketches05]

Female boomslang!!! I LOVE snakes and was super stoked when we spotted her because winter in South Africa is not the right season for herping 🐍

[eisforeidolon]

Question: What was your favorite episode of Supernatural to film?

Jensen: To film?

Jared: In hindsight, or at the time? I mean, 'cause I look back and, like, French Mistake? Looking back now I love it, but I was so anxious the entire time, I was so nervous that I didn't have a great time filming it? But in hindsight, I loooove the memory of having filmed it. Does that make any sense? It kinda sounds weird, like, it was nerve wracking, I was like, I have to be funny and there's a lock and a key and a [gestures vaguely like in the episode]. Nutcracker where they were fitting me for jock straps and stuff. I was like, this sucks. Like, who thinks this is funny?

Jensen: That was - Changing Channels?

Jared: [grabs Jensen's thigh] Changing Channels! I had, like, herpes commercials and shit, I was like, this, I don't like this very much. Riding the motorcycles around and falling around. Like in hindsight, it was amazing, but during the filming of it I was like this might be the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And then strange, like Sacrifice, the end of season eight, was awful to film but I loved that I got to experience it, you know? It was three days in an abandoned church with Mark Sheppard - who we're all sending love to, and I love him and you all love him [crowd cheers]. But it wasn't, it wasn't enjoyable during it - it's always enjoyable, not mean to bitch, but it was stressful during it, but those are the two episodes that just came to my head. Or like The End, you know, like that - like episode twenty three of five? What was that [slaps Jensen's arm] Swan Song! The End was him, um Samifer - Swan Song, the finale of season five, was amazing in my head now, but during it, I hated it. It was like, I'm killing my brother, I'm killing myself, like what's going on -

Jensen: I was gonna say that one of them would be The End, and it's, I think it's a similar thing [rests hand on Jared's knee] it's because it was such a challenge to shoot those particular episodes that it was very taxing during shooting those, that particular episode for me that I was playing two versions of Dean. But it's one that I look back on with great pride because of how challenging it was. I'll say that - you guys might not like this - that one of my favorite episodes to film was the very last episode. I'll tell you why, it's because we had gotten to a point where he and I could truly reflect and appreciate the magnitude of the moment that was happening in front of us. I - when I got in to that car and I drove it, Dean was driving in heaven, I knew that that was gonna be the final drive for this run of the show. And you know, I think I have video, I set my little phone up in the seat and recorded me doing that final drive. And then he and I on the bridge, like we, there were moments that he and I took, multiple moments that he and I took to ourselves without the cameras rolling. And so I think that was precious for me.

Jared: Yeah.

Jensen: And that meant so much because of the journey we had gone on and where we had ended up together, so. That's, that's - but if you're just like, what was fun? Yellow Fever was fun.

Jared: Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. You know what? I agree a hundred percent. It occurred to me while you were talking about it, I think the only episode that I really feel like I just had fun during? Was Baby. [Jensen points his mic at Jared] Because we weren't - it wasn't the Sam and Dean show, it was the Baby show. And so it was like we got to go have some fun on somebody else's set.

Jensen: It was also kind of the most unique -

Jared: So wild.

Jensen: process of filming an episode because they just mounted cameras to the car and then just sent us out into the wild. And just fingers crossed, I hope these two knuckleheads can get the scene. It was up to us.

Jared: Yeah. And it was also the first time in a decade and a half where we weren't going onto set of a show about Sam and Dean Winchester, like, this episode was about Baby. So we got to go and like just help be cogs in the wheel, you know, it wasn't like - it felt like less pressure - even though we were in the entire episode, obviously.

Jensen: Yeah, that's a great answer. Baby. And one of my favorite episodes, too. That was a Robbie Thompson special.

Jared: Yeah, that's right.