#it also gets slightly wavy when it’s this exact length which is very fun

[boneless-mika]

A me version with my natural hair and eye color. It’s a shame there were no options I liked to hide the human ear

Here’s the link (I hope)

[jwproducts43-6-blog]

📢20% OFF Winter Sale No Code Necessary Click the 🔗

Here at Grasscity.com, our team is enthusiastic about what we do! We work together to find the coolest new smoking accessories, provide a fun and easy shopping experience, get your stuff to you safely, and answer your questions along the way! For over a decade, you have helped us grow Grasscity.com into one the most successful online headshops today, with a thriving counterculture community forum of more than half a million members! With our great team and warehouse, we are an international company that ships worldwide.

Take An Extra 10%OFF

For a limited time only  subscribe to our newsletter and get a 10% extra discount

    4 High End Brands that are Definitely Worth the Price!

Roor

People smoke out of all kinds of things — from apples to high tech vaporizers — but if you love waterpipes and you’re ready to invest in a high-quality glass bong that will be a solid, reliable smoking instrument for years to come, it’s time to get a ROOR.

German made Roor glass is known as the best of the best for a reason: They. Know. Quality. All Roor pieces are made from the best Schott Duran Pyrex Tubing clear premium borosilicate glass, which I have to tell you is quality that you can really see, folks! Every Roor has a unique signature of the artist that created it, the ever recognizable Roor logo, and a certificate of authenticity, that comes with a code that can be verified easily online. Accept no imitations!

In addition to bongs, our ROOR catalogue offers high-grade glass steamroller pipes, diffusers, ashcatchers, bowls and more. For those who roll up their herbs ROOR also offers smoking papers, ashtrays, and the innovative new Cypress Hill’s Phuncky Feel Tips, reusable glass tips that act as a filter and roach clip!

Meticulously designed and manufactured at their German facility, ROOR premium glass bongs and accessories bring their owners years of smooth smoking pleasure and are well worth the investment.

To verify your ROOR bong is the real deal and not a cheap copy, every ROOR bong now comes with its very own seal, which is like its own fingerprint. Every seal has its own unique tag with 3-dimensional air bubble field and an alphanumeric ID. You can either scan the QR code next to the bubble tag or enter the ID code on the seal at https://roor.de/authenticate/. If yours is the real deal the pattern that will appear after you enter the code is identical to the one on your seal.

ROOR Blue Series Bong with Carb Hole | 250ml | 14.5mm

Only 3 left

$149.99

 $119.99

       Straight up and and down but never boring, ROOR’s Blue Series cylinder bong with carb hole features a stable hexagon base and is constructed from tough, high-grade borosilicate glass. Built to bring you years and years of smoking fun, your bong will arrive ready to go with a sliding funnel bowl with colored glass roll stopper and a non-diffuser downstem for a strong, snappy hit. The ROOR logo in blue is featured prominently, so everyone will know that you know what’s up when it comes to glass bongs!

As a bonus, you’ll also receive a free 3-point ROOR glass screen with your purchase!

Click 🔗 For more ROOR Products

Empire Glassworks

  Established in 2013, with their headquarters located in Placentia, California, USA, just southeast of Los Angeles, Empire Glassworks Artists and Owners hold over 40 years of experience with crafting glass figurines, borosilicate beads, and metal-infused trinkets for the high-end jewelry community. With this gained experience and knowledge, they have been able to use their skills to create a full line of hand crafted vaping and smoking accessories including a limited line of designer creations that are distributed throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, & Europe.

Empire Glassworks team of highly skilled glassblowers individually design all their pieces and only use the finest imported glass from Europe and the United States. They use a torch flame process called lampworking to finish the glass pieces and custom mix most of the colors they use to create their unique and beautiful range of hand made vaping and smoking accessories. All their pieces are carefully annealed in a kiln at over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit making them stronger and more durable.

Many of their designs are inspired by customer suggestions and the 1000 degree plus temperatures are responsible for the rich natural colors and characteristics that make Empire Glassworks pieces beautifuly unique. Empire Glassworks incorporate dichroic chips into many of their pieces. Originally created for the Aerospace industry and used by NASA as a protective layer in their space suits face shields, these ultra-thin layers of different metals are applied to the surface of the glass pieces, then the glass is kiln fired at extreme temperatures in a vacuum to create a array of individual color. This technique is used for single pieces and in big projects and guarantees that no two glass items will ever be exactly the same making Empire Glassworks a name and brand to look out for.

 Empire Glassworks Agent Orange Hand Pipe

    Only 2 left

$99.99

 $79.99

This incredibly detailed Agent Orange hand pipe from Empire Glassworks measures 11 cm / 4.5 inches in length and resembles a potbellied agent in a suit. The slightly wacky looking portable pipe has been handmade in the USA from the highest quality borosilicate glass and is ideal for people who enjoy smoking their dry herbs in style.

The beautifully finished pipe weighs approximately 150 grams and has a carb hole on the left side of the bowl for extra control of your hits. The bold colors and attention to detail will make this characteristic and collectable hand pipe stand out in any glass collection. The pipe can be placed in a standing position on its stable feet to prevent it rolling off any flat surface.

To use the pipe, simply load your favorite dry herb or tobacco mix into the bowl located on the rear. Place your lips on the mouthpiece located on the characters head and fire it up! This powerful and portable pocket-size pipe is easy to clean and use making it the perfect choice for regular smokers who just want a quick hassle free hit while out and about.

Because each piece is individually handmade, the Agent Orange pipe you receive will be one-of-a-kind. The exact shape may vary slightly from the pipe in the photo but the overall design will be the same. Pick up your own handmade characterized hand pipe today at the number one smoke shop Grasscity.com.

 G-Spot Glassware

 Rated 4.73 / 5.0 from 353 reviews.

 Since 2000, G-Spot has been producing first class, individually handmade glass bongs and accessories from the finest high-grade borosilicate glass at their Wertheim, Germany facility, but what they’re really famous for is their development of the Solid Tank Joint. The joint is a weak point on a glass bong, but the innovative Solid Tank Joint is constructed with ultra-stable grinding, ground on the inside and layered with thick glass, designed to withstand even the toughest strikes. Take a look at their video below, where the guys from G-Spot demonstrate that the Solid Tank Joint is so strong you can literally use it to hammer nails into wood!

 Strength and beauty go together at G-Spot, and GrassCity offers a wide range of durable and classy G-Spot bongs for sale from their extensive catalog, including specialty waterpipes like the Aboriginal and the Dragon Ice Cylinder Bong. With so many options, you can really take your time to pick the piece that’s perfect for you. Whether you choose clean straight lines, glass orbs, wavy curves or all of the above, G-Spot’s bongs exhibit premium quality that you can see and feel when you hold one in your hands. Besides the shape of your pipe, take note of options like the Solid Tank Joint, ice notches, carb hole, and the G-Spot logo itself, usually applied along the cylinder in either real gold leaf or raised and flame-polished glass.

 We also carry G-Spot’s selection of affordable, high-quality glass handpipes and a dizzying array of bong accessories to check out: spare or replacement parts like diffusers and colored glass bowls; add-ons like the Ash Catcher and carbon adapters; rubber stoppers for a carb hole or for plugging the jointwhile cleaning your bong; even a glass cutter for easy home customization of too-long downpipes.

Shop Now💨💨💨

 EHLE. Glass

 Rated 4.81 / 5.0 from 228 reviews

 A beloved name among discerning bong smokers on a budget, the EHLE brand began engineering and manufacturing quality glass instruments in 1950, but it was in 1988 that Thomas Ehle built upon his father’s life’s work by creating the line of high-grade glass waterpipes that they are now famous for.

   EHLE’s tubes project elegance, durability and luxury that go beyond surface appearance. Through computer-controlled cooling and tempering processes and the use of only the best high-grade borosilicate glass, EHLE produces sturdy and reliable glass tubes and accessories with pinpoint precision joints, subjected to continuous quality and performance tests and guaranteed to fit all standard-size accessories even after years of use.

 Check out our selection🔗🔞💯

 20% OFF Winter Sale Grasscity 📢20% OFF Winter Sale No Code Necessary Click the 🔗 Here at Grasscity.com, our team is enthusiastic about what we do!

[ntrending]

An evolutionary biologist takes on the absurd bodies of superheroes

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/an-evolutionary-biologist-takes-on-the-absurd-bodies-of-superheroes/

An evolutionary biologist takes on the absurd bodies of superheroes

Evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton loves reading comic books almost as much as he loves studying unusual animals. Now he’s combining his twin passions in a new podcast, The Biology of Superheroes, co-hosted by fellow geek Arien Darby. The podcast uses comic book characters to explore big ideas in science and technology. Campbell-Staton recently sat down with Nexus Media to talk about his new project, his favorite superheroes and his ongoing research into the ways climate change is driving evolution. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have a podcast where you talk about the biology of superheroes. Which superheroes?

We try to take characters from the comic book universe, not just superheroes, but also other figures of science fiction — dinosaurs, robots, giant monsters. We use them as archetypes to explore the place where fact meets fiction.

Let’s talk about Spider-Man, the subject of your first two podcasts.

Arguably, the thing that separates Peter Parker from other superheroes in the comic book universe is that he uses these webs. These webs are a huge part of his persona. And Spider-Man doesn’t produce spider silk in the way that a spider would. He has to engineer it.

So, the first question in that scenario is, “What would he use as inspiration?” Obviously, there is a huge diversity of spiders in the world. If you’re trying to develop a tool, you want go out into the real world and see how animals have come up with extreme solutions to solve similar problems. This is a really valid and popular means for scientists to wrap their heads around problems that are presented in the real world. It’s called bio-inspired engineering.

When we’re considering Spider-Man, one question is, “Can spider webs actually accomplish what we see in the comic books?” If we look at the biomechanics of silks, the answer turns out to be “yes.” Spider silks are extremely strong and very versatile. The drag line of spider silk, pound for pound, is stronger than steel. If you scale that up to the size of the webs that Spider-Man is producing, they could very easily support his body weight and help him catch bad guys.

How about the Flash?

One of the central plot lines for the Flash is his ability to move between parallel universes. You have numerous parallel worlds that are vibrating at slightly different frequencies, and you have slightly different versions of superheroes and other characters in these different universes. They never meet each other and they never see each other because they are vibrating at different frequencies. The Flash is able to vibrate from one universe into another universe, allowing him to explore the entire DC Comics multiverse.

If we follow the Flash on his adventures, not only do you see the same species on most of these parallel Earths — you see humans, for instance — you also see different variations of the same individuals popping up across each of these Earths. Thinking about the multiverse invites the question, “If you have four and half billion years of evolution playing out independently on each of these Earths, and you get almost the exact same result each time, what does that say about the process of evolution?”

This is a classic question in evolutionary biology: if you replay the tape of evolution, do you get the same result over and over again? This is a question that people have been chasing for decades. In some cases, in the real world, we see that the answer is “yes.” If presented with the same environmental challenges, natural selection drives independently evolving lineages down very similar trajectories.

On the other hand, there are one-off events, oddities like the duck-billed platypus. It has a bill and a beaver tail it uses to navigate through the water and locate crayfish and crustaceans and things like that. There are a lot of animals that live in very similar habitats and have very similar lifestyles, but none of them look anything like the platypus.

The DC multiverse is the ultimate biology experiment.

Exactly. In the real world, we only have one Earth, but there are ways that scientists in the real world can study repeatability. In some cases, they study islands, which act as independent universes. In other cases, they look at bacteria evolving in petri dishes. A lab full of petri dishes represents a multiverse. You can give independently evolving lineages of bacteria the same challenge to see if they find the same solutions. It’s not as cool as traversing the DC multiverse like the Flash, but very similar techniques are being used to explore the repeatability of evolution in the real world.

How did you get into comic books?

I actually got into comic books pretty late in life, when I was a graduate student doing my PhD at Harvard. In the process of writing my dissertation, I started to get pretty stressed. I needed something that was intellectual candy, something to get my mind off the rigors of academia.

I remember I was walking through Harvard Square one evening, and I passed this underground comic book shop, and in the window, I saw this comic book. It was Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. It had this really big classic cover where Muhammad Ali was facing off with Superman, and they both had boxing gloves on, and I thought, “I have to see how this ends.” Superman and Muhammad Ali face off in a room that has red-sun radiation, which basically makes Superman human, and Muhammad Ali whips his butt really thoroughly. That was the first comic book I ever bought, and it got me hooked.

I went back to the store and got a few different comic books, and that was my guilty pleasure while writing my dissertation. As I was reading comic books, I started to come up with all these really weird questions. A certain scenario would present itself in a comic book, and I would wonder about the biology behind it. This became so persistent that I taught a small course at Harvard on the biology of superheroes. We talked about Batman. We talked about Ironman. We talked about zombies. We talked about the Flash and a few other comic book characters. A lot of the undergrads came away from that course having learned a lot of the classic ideas that they would have learned in an intro bio course. That’s what spawned the podcast.

I’ll be an assistant professor at UCLA starting in July, and that’s actually the first course that I’m going to be teaching at UCLA. We’re talking about everything from evolution and physiology to brain machine interfacing and artificial intelligence.

You study how animals adapt to climate change. Do you talk about climate change in your podcast?

In our last episode, we talked about Jurassic Park and resurrecting ancient species. Obviously, this is a really fun topic to talk about. I interviewed Beth Shapiro, a geneticist who focuses on conservation genetics and the genomes of ancient species, and we talked about whether it’s possible to get DNA from dinosaurs and how we go from getting genes from an extinct species to creating a living, breathing animal. That’s all really fun to think about, but the last question is “Why would we do this?”

If we’re not going to resurrect ancient dinosaurs and have fun eating cotton candy watching them do their thing, why would we invest so much in this technology? Well, it turns out that that same technology is being used right now to help conserve species that are on the verge of extinction and potentially bring back species that have been driven extinct by human activity.

We just got news that the last male northern white rhinoceros died. Obviously, we have species like the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon and the black-footed ferret, which is on the verge of extinction. That brings up the idea of genetic rescue. The ability to tinker with the genomes of a species and reintroduce improved versions of those genomes into wild populations to help them recover — that same technology would be required to bring back a wooly mammoth.

What species do you focus on in your research?

I’m a herpetologist by heart, so I work mostly on reptiles and amphibians. A lot of my recent work is studying how changes in climate affect the form and function of wild populations. I published a paper last year looking at the effects of the polar vortex storms that swept the Southeast in the winter of 2013 to 2014. The polar vortex is a pattern of Arctic air that spirals around our poles. As the planet warms, the poles are warming faster than mid-latitudes, which causes that pattern to become more wavy, and it sends these periodic bouts of polar air to mid-latitudes. Here, in North America, it causes these extreme cold events.

It just so happened that in late 2013, I was studying the evolution of cold tolerance in this one reptile species, the green anole lizard, which is native to the United States, but its ancestors come from Cuba, which is very warm and thermally stable. So I had data on cold tolerance in these populations. I had data on gene expression.

So, I took advantage of this particular event to ask, “In the survivors of this storm, do we see any signature of natural selection taking place?” And the answer, in this case, was “yes.” We saw that in the southern part of species range, the survivors of the storm were significantly more cold-tolerant than the population was before the storm.

So much of the talk about climate change is that it’s happening so fast that plants and animals can’t adapt, so it’s surprising to hear that you see that change in such a short period of time.

I think this is something that we are increasingly coming to understand. When we think about contemporary evolution, this is a field that is only a couple of decades old. Now, we’re starting to see an uptick in the number of people who are focused on trying to understand how human perturbations to the environment are not only affecting ecology and extinction, gene flow and species distribution, but also the process of evolution. And we are starting to see evidence that animals around the world are adapting.

Jason Munshi-South is doing work in New York City looking at mice that are adapted to urban environments, and he’s seeing very strong signatures of selection in diet. Mice that are living in cities are eating a lot of the junk food that people leave around, while their cousins in more natural habitats are eating grasses and seeds and insects and that sort of thing. In response, the genes that are involved in digestive processes seem to be diverging between cities and natural habitats.

Pollution is also a factor. Andrew Whitehead’s group has been studying pollution adaptation in small fish called killifish. He’s shown that these animals have colonized these very polluted waters several different times, and we see these repeated signatures of selection in parts of the genome that help them to cope with the deleterious effects of being in these polluted waters.

That feels like cause for some small measure of cautious optimism.

I think it’s easy, when you hear that things are adaptively evolving, to think that things are going to be okay, but we still don’t really know. Because the thing is, when we talk about natural selection, that comes at a cost: death. When you have an extreme pressure that has a large death toll, the individuals who are left behind are better adapted, but in the meantime, all of this genetic variation that would have been in the population gets lost because everything is driven down this one specific trajectory.

In the case of the polar vortex storm, what happens if it’s a drought next time? Or a heat wave? Lineages that may have been better adapted for those types of events may be lost now. We just don’t know. There is lot more data that needs to be gathered to understand how the different types of selective pressures — from extreme weather events to urbanization to pollution—play out over longer periods of time to determine who survives, who dies, and how that translates into extinction and speciation and other important biological processes.

So, who are your favorite superheroes?

It’s funny because I think most of my favorite superheroes are actually scientists. Spider-Man, obviously, is a favorite of mine. Peter Parker is one of the most brilliant minds in the Marvel universe. Bruce Banner — I love me some Hulk. He’s one of my go-to characters. Batman is obviously classic. There is just so much to that character, so much depth and history. He’s got a dark side that you don’t see in many other characters.

As we move along with the podcast, we’ll continue to think about aliens and giant monsters and robots and artificial intelligence and all of these fantastical ideas, and explore the science behind them. I think it’s really important to bring these conversations to the real world. We’re being thrown so much information from all over the place. It’s not necessarily all from reputable sources. If we can go through this mental exercise of separating fact from fiction when it comes to these fantastical ideas like comic book superheroes, maybe that will help us to better discern fact from fiction when it comes to the more serious issues, like climate change.

Jeremy Deaton writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture. You can follow him @deaton_jeremy.

Written By Jeremy Deaton