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becausegoodbye · 1 year ago

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(This is a really incredible essay by the recently-passed author and trans legend Rachel Pollack, first published in issue #9 of TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism. I wanted to reproduce it here in full because it's a goddamn banger, because archived PDFs can be a bit hard to read, and because every trans person should get the opportunity to read it at least once.)

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Archetypal Transsexuality

By Rachel Pollack, 1995

The San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad, Colorado has become a kind of shrine for transsexual people in America. Even for those who did not get surgery from Dr. Stanley Biber, his clinic in San Rafael has become synonymous with "sex reassignment surgery" in the same way that the entire nation of Denmark came to symbolize "sex changes" in the 1950s and 1960s, after Christine Jorgensen stepped out of Copenhagen and into the world.

A small hill rises behind the hospital, and on top of it, surrounded by trees and flowers stands a genuine shrine, a small structure dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Behind a conventional statue of Mary, with room for candies and other offerings, the building houses a more precious sculpture of the Christian Goddess. According to the plaque at the front of the shrine, a Trinidad man was caught in a blizzard and in danger of being blown away when be came upon the statue of Mary and clung to it until the fury of nature broke open and he could find his way to help and recovery. The sanctuary he created looks over Dr. Biber's clinic, gently blessing all the trans-formed women and men who pass through its doors.

Now, Mary occupies an interesting place in the history of mythology. Many people know that while the Christian Church attempted to portray God as entirely male, the ordinary people clung to Mother Mary as giver of hope, mercy, and nurturance. Less known is fact that the early Church consciously adapted aspects of various Pagan Goddesses to create Mary's image and place her in the hearts of the people. Two Goddesses in particular contributed to Mary: Aphrodite, who rose from the sea, and Cybele, a Goddess from Asia Minor who earlier had made a triumphant entry into Rome as the Great Mother of the Gods.

I have written elsewhere of Aphrodite as a transsexual Goddess. Her story tells us how the Sky God, Ouranos, was oppressing Gaia, the Earth, until Gaia gave a sickle (a women's harvest tool shaped like the crescent Moon) to her son Kronos. Kronos cut off his father's genitals and threw them into the sea. Ouranos does not die in the story, but withdraws into the shadows, the same way the male persona of many transsexual women will withdraw once the female reality has given itself permission to emerge. The severed genitals, however, do not sink out of sight. Instead. they stir up a great foam on the waters. Out of this foam, golden Aphrodite. the embodiment of femininity in all its grace and power, emerges into the world.

And Cybele -- when the Great Mother came to Rome she brought with her her Gallae. The Gallae were anatomical males who, in the midst of ecstatic group frenzy, used stone sickles to sever their own genitals, which they then flung through open doorways. The families who received the bloody relics considered them a blessing. In return for Cybele's grace, a family would tend to the bleeding Galla and nurse her back to health, at which time she ceremoniously received women's clothing and entered into the service of her Goddess.

The presence of Mary overlooking the San Rafael clinic, and in particular her mysterious emergence out of a storm, forms part of a great web of images and history. The web includes all the mythological figures who change sex or cross genders. It includes the real life Gallae and Hijras and others who alter their bodies as well as the tribal shamans who move into the roles of the "opposite" sex, usually not as a matter of conscious choice, but because the spirits demand it of them. It includes the Stone Age evidence of androgynous Goddesses and cross- sexed priests and priestesses alongside the increasing numbers of contemporary transsexuals who have begun to understand that, as Davina Anne Gabriel puts it, we cannot comprehend transsexuality without some notion of "transcendence," or, as Dallas Denny says, more bluntly, "Transsexuality is a religious experience."

To recognize our place in that web means, paradoxically, to step out of a trap. This is the trap in which we experience transsexuality as a sickness, or even just a psychological condition. For transsexual people, such an ideology (and that is what it is) has become more and more of a dead end - literally, with so many people losing their lives to depression, suicide, bad drugs, unsafe sex and all the other miseries that allow the purveyors of pathology to say "There? You see? If it wasn't a sickness, wouldn't they all be happy?"

Even those of us who insist that transsexual people are not "sick" will still talk about "healing," whether we think we need to heal from shame, or society's oppression, or unhappy childhoods. But as long as we speak of healing we stay within the world of sickness. In the United States we consider happiness the basic human condition, and any suffering as some sort of aberration. I would argue that transsexuality arises from a passion so powerful that it transcends issues of happiness. The word passion originally meant suffering, not pleasure. The suffering of transsexuality, however, is like that of religious ecstasy, or even orgasm -- overwhelming, intense, and ultimately joyous when we surrender to it and let it carry us into the power of the experience.

Think where transsexual desire leads us. We give up our positions in society (I am not talking here about the slide downwards in status for male-to-females, but much more basically of our very places in the world, a loss that applies to transsexual men as well as to women, even if the men eventually go up in status). We risk losing our family and friends. We face ridicule and sometimes extreme violence, even death. We take powerful and dangerous drugs to alter the very shape of our bodies. And finally, we undergo -- we seek out, even demand -- surgery on our genitals. No logical decision, or confusion, or social conditioning, or even mental illness, can account for such an overwhelming need.

Recently, a number of transsexual and transgender people have suggested that people seek surgery because of pressure from the medical profession, which convinces them that surgery will allow them to become normal members of society. I cannot believe this. I have met too many transsexuals who know very clearly that surgery is exactly and precisely what they want, and that the doctors are not their masters but their instruments.

To describe transsexual people as dupes of the medical profession, or slaves to social conditioning, or trapped in rigid ideas about gender roles, is precisely to take away our power, a power so intense that it terrifies people. Sometimes we can see the question in their faces. "What would make someone do -- or want to do -- such a thing?" And because the dual acts of changing gender and altering the body frighten them they try to think of an explanation. "He must hate himself so much." "She can't accept the role society has given her." "Her parents must have abused her." Each of these statements, and all the others, assume that the transsexual man or woman doesn't really know what he or she is doing. And more, they shift the focus from transsexuality itself to some external concept or ideology. All explanations, even friendly ones, drain away the passion of the experience.

It is time to realize that changing gender and altering the body are not the same thing. While many people cannot imagine a gender change without surgery, many others find surgery totally unnecessary. And many people who have surgery will say clearly that it is not the surgeon's knife that makes them men or women, that surgery only changes the outer form to match their inner feelings. The confusion of surgery with gender identity leads many people to think of postoperative transsexual people as superior to preops or to people who change gender without caring about surgery at all. This hierarchy is unfortunate , because it sets people against each other when them is no need for that. At the same time, it also takes away the mystery of surgery itself. Once again, it "explains" surgery as a way just to prove something, or to join an elite. But genital surgery is too strong an experience to dismiss in this way.

Gender identity is a matter of self-knowledge, but also of social functioning. We inhabit our gender and exhibit it to the world. Genital surgery is not really a social experience at all. Obviously, it becomes important in intimate sexual relationships. It may also give us more confidence, as well as legal status. Ultimately, however, surgery is private. It forms a mystery of the body. It may have more in common with religious body altering, such as ritual scarring, than with changing gender. (It is important to remember, however, that transsexual people not only desire surgery but go to great lengths to get it. This makes the experience radically different from any body altering imposed unwillingly on people, such as clitoridectomy performed on pre-adolescent girls, or even the surgery done on intersex babies.)

There is a verse in the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese teaching on "the Way", that speaks directly to some of these issues. In the translation of Gia-fu Feng by Jane English it reads as follows:

"Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick. The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness. Therefore he is not sick."

Whenever we try to find the cause of our transsexuality we become weak. This is because we deny its reality within our selves and try to find some explanation outside of us. Some sickness or conditioning. If we know and accept that we are ignorant of what makes us transsexual, and that we should not waste our energy trying to pinpoint some external cause, then "knowing ignorance" will indeed become a source of strength.

But if we cannot know what causes transsexuality, we can know a great deal about it. We can acknowledge its power and its reality, we can learn about other transsexual people and their experiences, and we can discover its ancient worldwide history. To ignore all this knowledge only weakens us and makes us sick.

To overcome the pathology that our culture attaches to transsexuality, we need, above all, to want to overcome it. To finally and utterly reject it. To be sick of sickness. At the moment that we do this, that we become sick of sickness, we begin to escape it, and the deeper we go in that direction, the greater our liberation.

Carl Jung once remarked that the ancients had gods, we have complexes. The Gallae may have experienced feelings and desires similar to those of modem transsexual women. After all, since no one chose them to be Gallae, they must have felt the same overwhelming push to present themselves. But instead of seeing themselves as compelled by a sickness, they believed their Goddess had called them into Her service. Both viewpoints require a surrender, but when we surrender to a Goddess we join ourselves to her power and her beauty. When we surrender to a sickness we get nothing but shame.

Here are two more aspects of that web of images. In Greece, the main God who ruled over transgendered activities was Dionysus. His male followers would dress as women, his female followers would strap on large phalluses. He himself was depicted as a stick with a dress and a beard. Some of the more patriarchal Greek writers described him as "effeminate" or "womanly." Indeed, his myth tells us that he was raised as a girl, and even when he came into his Godhood he often wore feminine clothes and kept his hair long and flowing, something only women were supposed to do.

The psychologist Ginette Paris tells us an interesting story about Dionysus. Raised as a girl, he went mad in adolescence. Paris tells us that we do not know the cause of his madness. Certainly some of the readers of this magazine might make a guess. Insane, Dionysus wanders the world until he comes to Phrygia. the home not only of Cybele and the Gallae, but according to some accounts, Aphrodite. Cybele initiates him, Paris tells us, and restores his sanity. Paris says we do not know how Cybele heals him. Did she initiate him back into his femaleness? Did she lead the God to embrace the doubleness of gender? After he returned from his wanderings, Dionysus became the God of ecstasy, leading men but especially women out of the traps laid for them by a rigid polarized society.

The second myth does not invoke transgendered or transsexual issues quite so directly. However, it involves someone clinging to a statue for deliverance from an emotional storm, and thus it returns us to the presence of Mary overlooking and blessing Dr. Biber's clinic. The Greek Orestes went mad -- madness again -- after Apollo ordered him to kill his mother as punishment for her crime of murdering her husband. Though the Goddess Athena absolved him he still had to pay a penance to the Goddess Artemis (Orestes' mother had killed her husband because he had sacrificed their daughter to Artemis in the hope of gaining the Goddess's favor -- the story of Orestes involves generations of murder and abuse). Thus Orestes wandered the world carrying a statue of Artemis. Finally, he felt the insanity leave him, and he dared to put it down. He set it in a riverbed and walked away. Two Spartans passed by. When they saw the statue staring at them, horribly, from the water, they went mad.

Now, Spartans were known for being ultra-masculine, while Orestes, despite his defense of his father, was considered -- like Dionysus -- effeminate. Thus, the rigidly male Spartans cannot believe the sudden emergence of the dark feminine. But there are more direct connections to our own stories. Artemis was often linked with Cybele. The most famous statue of Artemis stood not in Greece but in Ephesus, a town in Asia Minor, the home territory of Cybele. The Phrygians themselves described Artemis as another name for Cybele.

The Ephesus statue showed the Goddess's torso covered in small globes. Most modern writers assume these are extra breasts, showing her power as the Great Mother. Recently, however, a British archaeologist pointed out that the globes have no nipples. The archaeologist suggested they might have represented the testicles sacrificed by Artemis/Cybele's gallae worshippers.

Classical Greek Artemis was not a mother Goddess but a virgin. We might describe her as forming a link between transsexual women and lesbians (or between the two sides of a transsexual lesbian). Goddess of the Moon, Artemis lived in the mountains apart from the male dominated civilization. She refused all contact with men, spending her time with her band of nymphs. A lover, as well as hunter, of animals, she also watched over women in childbirth. In short, she is almost the model of a back to the land radical lesbian. And yet, as Cybele. she also is the Goddess who accepts the Gallae into her service.

And a final link -- the early Christian council which established Mary as officially the Mother of God took place in Ephesus, the site of that famous statue, once considered one of the seven wonders of the world. And so we come full circle, to Mary, and to Cybele/Artemis, and to statues.

Writing about the story of Orestes, the statue of Artemis, and the two Spartans, Roberto Calasso states: "Such is the power of the image; it heals only those who know what it is. For all others, it is an illness." Transsexuality comes to us with all the power of a divine force who will not be denied. If we recognize it and accept it as a true vision of the self from the deepest part of the psyche, if we carry the Goddess with us until we find ourselves strong enough to set her down, then we may find it opens us to a life of spirituality and joy. If we try to deny it, or belittle it, or explain it away, it can destroy us. Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.

***

#WHENEVER WE TRY TO FIND THE CAUSE OF OUR TRANSSEXUALITY WE BECOME WEAK #IF ONE IS SICK OF SICKNESS THEN ONE IS NOT SICK #I'm normally pretty allergic to invocations of spirituality #but this is a perfectly-notched arrow that goes straight through my heart #RIP Rachel Pollack #1945-2023

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entitycradle · 3 months ago

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Psychic Thresholds: anticorporeality, peregrination, and exolocality

As psychics incorporate more noospace within the holographic boundary of their vast egos, they become increasingly disillusioned with being human. The behaviors resulting from this rising disillusionment are typically separated into three discrete stages, each marked by a threshold.

Beyond what is called the anticorporeal threshold, psychics disassemble their bodies and discard everything except what is necessary for cognition.

Anticorporeal psychics use telekinesis to locomote and to maintain homeostasis for their reduced biological forms, eliminating the need for skin, a circulatory system, and limbs. There are many different perspectives within the psychic community as to whether unconscious data processing such as that found in the gut and brain stem is necessary for conscious thought. A psychic on the extreme end of this spectrum may discard their entire body except for the dominant hemisphere of their brain, citing studies on epilepsy that show that hemispherectomies do not disable cognition. This carries the risk of splitting the psychic into a dominant entity and a non-dominant entity, because both hemispheres have some capacity to think even when separated.

Beyond what is called the peregrination threshold, anticorporeal psychics abandon contact with baseline humans in favor of wandering the earth. They can be seen floating several feet above the ground, accompanied by a trail or cluster of objects the peregrine psychic deems important enough to keep close to them at all times. These objects may include: tightly-packed nutrient bricks or psionically oxygenated blood slurries used to maintain their physical form; various personal treasures, such as the corpse of a loved one or an ancient megalith; and bulk construction materials like uncured concrete and steel beams, which are used to create large, seemingly ornamental structures of unknown purpose. Peregrine psychics evenly distribute themselves across the surface of the earth, so most are found above oceans. Peregrine psychics have never been observed interacting with each other.

The final observed threshold is the exolocal gate. Exactly what occurs as a psychic becomes exolocal is unclear. Several days before a peregrine psychic passes through the gate it can be observed developing exotic anatomical features, such as compound eyes (note that psychics typically remove their eyes and other sense organs at the anticorporeal threshold, relying on clairvoyance to perceive the world), multiple webbed phalanges, and ring-shaped boney growths. Passage through the exolocal gate is marked by "cross-sectioning"--the psychic's physical form suddenly flattens and its insides become visible, as if a very thin slice were cut out of the form. This "cross-section" may continue to locomote. It may also alter in appearance, as if the slice were being replaced by other slices taken at different directions and positions, similar to an MRI scan. The cross-sectioning phenomenon is easily compared to representations of what three-dimensional objects would look like upon rotation into a fourth spatial dimension. Less than a minute later, the psychic's entire object collection will also "cross-section", and seconds after that the psychic and its collection will disappear entirely. All broadcast devices attached to a psychic or its collection cease transmitting upon cross-section. The higher-dimensional explanation may suffice: electromagnetic waves have only ever been observed to propagate within our three-dimensional universe, suggesting the broadcast devices may still be functioning, but transmitting in a separate non-intersecting three-dimensional space that the exolocal psychic has rotated into. Whatever the case, this precludes tracking of the psychic beyond the gate. To be pedantic, exolocal psychics don't exist--once the psychic has completed passage through the exolocal gate, it is never observed again.

Heterodox scholars suggest the existence of a fourth, "dark" threshold. In some regions of the universe, galaxies can be observed traveling at high speeds in trails or clusters.

#writing #original fiction #weird fiction #short fiction #new weird #flash fiction #sff #scifi

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helthcareheven · 7 months ago

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HeartFlow: Flowing Freely with Prosthetic Valve Performance

PHVs help millions of people worldwide Prosthetic heart valves have come a long way since the first successful valve replacement surgery was performed in 1960. Artificial heart valves are surgically implanted to replace damaged or diseased native heart valves that no longer function properly. There are two main types of PHVs in use today - mechanical valves and bioprosthetic (tissue) valves. Each type has advantages and disadvantages that doctors consider when deciding which valve is best for an individual patient. Mechanical heart valves Mechanical or artificial valves are made entirely from non-biological materials like carbon or metals. The three main types of mechanical valves are caged-ball, tilting disk, and bileaflet valves. Mechanical valves last longer than tissue valves with expected lifespans of 15-20 years. Their rigid, non-biological design also offers very low risks of structural deterioration or infection. Tissue (bioprosthetic) heart valves Tissue or bioprosthetic valves are constructed from biologically sourced material, usually a pig (porcine) or cow (bovine) tissue treated to reduce negative immune responses. The two most common types are stented porcine valves, where a plastic or metal stent holds up treated pig tissue, and stentless porcine valves, which lack a stent and are molded into the shape of a native human valve. Continuous improvements Technological advancements aim to address the trade-offs between mechanical and tissue valves. Lifestyle-compatible mechanical valves reduce clotting risks with designs like carbon leaflets that limit pannus overgrowth. Bioprosthetic valves now undergo additional fixation treatments and altered material compositions to better resist calcification and degradation. The use of polymeric instead of fixed metal stents further enhances flexibility and durability. Future of transcatheter heart valves One rapidly developing area is transcatheter heart valve replacement - commonly known as TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement). TAVR allows high-risk surgical patients to receive a new aortic valve through a catheter inserted into blood vessels rather than open-heart surgery. The folded valve is guided by imaging to the defective native valve location then expanded in place. Personalized prosthetic choices With many valve options available, doctors consider each patient's particular anatomy, medical history, lifestyle factors, and life expectancy when deciding the best valve type. For example, younger patients are usually given tissue valves to avoid anticoagulation requirements but accept more re-operations risks later in life. Monitoring valve performance over time Regular clinical and imaging follow-ups help monitor prosthetic valve function and structural integrity long-term. Echocardiograms provide data on leaflet mobility, pressure gradients, regurgitation levels and pannus/calcification development. CT and MRI further clarify anatomic relationships. Prosthetic heart valves have given hope and extended lives for millions over decades. Continuous refinement of materials, designs and surgical methods now provide patients and doctors more options tailored to individual circumstances. Non-invasive technologies continue facilitating minimally invasive therapies. The future promises even less traumatic valve replacements through percutaneous techniques, advanced biomaterials resistant to degradation, tissue-engineered solutions grown from one's own cells and personalized care maximizing each patient's quality of life.

In Summary, prosthetic heart valves play a critical role in restoring normal cardiac function and improving the quality of life for individuals with heart valve disease. These artificial devices are designed to replace damaged or diseased heart valves, restoring proper blood flow and preventing life-threatening complications. With advancements in medical technology, PHVs have become increasingly sophisticated, offering improved durability, functionality, and compatibility with the patient's physiology. Understanding the importance of PHVs underscores their significant contribution to cardiac care and patient well-being.

#HeartRevive #ValveVitality #CardioCraft

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ainews · 9 months ago

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Mermen, with their strong, muscular tails and streamlined bodies, have long been romanticized in literature and media as powerful and majestic creatures of the sea. Many people may assume that these mythical creatures would make for formidable empires, with their physical prowess and vast ocean territory at their disposal. However, the reality is that mermen, and any empire they may attempt to build, would be severely limited by their lack of traditional armor, specifically breastplates.

Breastplates, also known as chest plates, have been a staple in military armor for centuries. They offer protection to the vital organs in the chest and abdomen, and are often a symbolic representation of strength and power. In traditional sea-based empires, such as those of ancient Greece or Venice, breastplates were essential for naval warfare, protecting soldiers from enemy weapons and projectiles.

But for mermen, whose natural habitat is the vast, open ocean, breastplates would be far from adequate. Mermen rely on their tails for movement and navigation, and any additional weight or hindrance to their mobility would be detrimental to their survival. The use of breastplates would significantly impede a merman's ability to swim swiftly and gracefully, making them vulnerable to predators and unable to effectively hunt for food.

Moreover, the ocean's constantly changing currents and depths would also render breastplates useless. Unlike land-based empires, where terrain and landscape remain relatively stable, mermen would face challenges such as strong tides and underwater currents that would constantly alter their battle positions and strategies. Breastplates, which are designed for use on land, would be ill-suited for such a dynamic and unpredictable environment.

Another issue with breastplates for mermen is their material. Traditionally, breastplates are made of metal, such as bronze or steel, to provide the necessary protection for soldiers in battle. However, metal is heavy and prone to rust and corrosion in saltwater, which would be constantly in contact with a merman's armor. This would not only add unnecessary weight and strain on the merman's body but also weaken the armor's effectiveness over time.

Additionally, mermen have different anatomical features than land-based creatures, further limiting the usefulness of traditional breastplates. While humans have a chest and ribcage that can be protected by a breastplate, mermen have no such structure. In fact, their most vital organs, such as their lungs and gills, are located in their tails, making breastplates even more redundant for their protection.

In conclusion, breastplates would be inadequate for any empire of mermen due to their aquatic habitat, dynamic environment, and different anatomical features. Mermen's strength and power lie in their agility and speed, not in their ability to wear cumbersome armor. Any attempt to impose a human concept of armor on these creatures would ultimately hinder their abilities and put their entire empire at risk. Instead, we should admire mermen for their unique abilities and contributions to the ocean ecosystem, rather than trying to fit them into a human-centered warrior mold.

#ai generated #fake news

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orphanedshadow · 7 months ago

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"A name is the summary of all one is. Their data, their vibrations, their ancestry… the closest term I can find is 'bioscan,' or perhaps even 'soul,' entirely compressed into a single moment." It was more complex than that, but the system felt elaborating would only lead to confusion. However, it did prepare a small package for Cortana, some information on architecture and art, as well as a few of its favourite astronomical phenomena.

"Thank you." The system didn't even pause between receiving the information and plucking out names, analysing countless languages and titles until settling on those that fit best, then communicating its selection to the child through the screens.

As the girl looked them over the system took that time to announce its own choice, clearly excited by the new information it had to play with. "You may call me Leviathan. Take of that what you may."

It took a moment more for the child to select a name, one that prompted a smile from the newly-named Leviathan. "The offspring wishes to be known as Kara, for it reflects her age and her role. The ancestor will chose a title at a later date, she is currently dormant."

With a name chosen Kara turned her attention to the armour, first touching with a tendril, then with her hand, marvelling at the structure, and at the anatomical information that was coming up on the screen next to her. It was so much information, and it was all so fascinating. But it would be improper to just take, not when she had information to offer in return, and when she was uncertain on what Leviathan had sent.

"Built to save us. Had been captured. Had been altered. Was egg then. Kept in stasis, wanted to fix. Then war got worse. No time to fix. Flood came, Ancestor went below. Altered self to survive. Altered us to resist. Then ancestor cycled, waited, could not awaken us. After others came. Altered more. Ancestor could not come. Flood cells in air. Slow, infected others. Infected make mistake, we escaped." Kara wasn't sure how much of it the human could understand, but she didn't entirely understand his explanations either, so it would have to do for now.

The plates of his armour and the explanation of the suit's abilities made her pause, wondering why a species would do that. "Why armour for strength? Why not alter? Have marks of kin. Should alter cells. Better than implants." After all cellular enhancements made more sense, they didn't rely on metal that couldn't be healed…or at least she didn't think it could be, it seemed to lack the proper technology.

A twitch, an almost smirk, at the 'organic' title given. "That must be one helluva name," John replied, glancing towards the smaller figure as she scanned the screens with obvious avarice. At the resident AI's question, he and Cortana exchange a glance, and he gives an almost imperceptible nod. "I think a little cultural exchange could be .. good," he added. He trusted Cortana to be able to assimilate a broad lore and culture dump to offer that would be unlikely to give anything that could be used for untoward purposes -- though they both had to wonder just how well Cortana would be able to resist the elder AI, should it decide to push for answers.

Better to appease it, for the time being, and assess threat levels before risking antagonizing it.

Larval stage. Gods, it really was just a kid. Of course, that could still make it dozens, or hundreds of years old, depending on the life expectancy of its' species. "Cortana, can you offer a rundown of the basic human anatomy for our little friend, please?" He turned his attention back to the girl as she approached, crouching down closer to her level and holding out a forearm so that she could prod the armor. "We call it Mjolnir armor," he explained. "Mark VI, meaning the sixth model of its line. It allows me to breath in space, under water, amplifies my strength and speed, agility. The biofeedback from my neural implants allow it to anticipate and enhance my attacks and movements."

"And, filters out toxins and -- infectious elements." Like this 'flood'. He processed her words, even if they only raised more questions. Ancestor, with a hive mind, or telepathic link? What kind of ancestor? "And this ancestor -- they the ones that built this place," he asks, casually.

#in the storm's path: thread #halo verse tag pending #halofcrged

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alphynix · 4 years ago

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It's March, and that means it's time for Cambrian Explosion Month!

(…Part 1, because this is a topic I can't possibly fit comfortably into just 31 days. Part 2 will happen later this year.)

The start of the Paleozoic Era 541 million years ago is marked by what's become known as the "Cambrian explosion" – a time of rapid evolutionary diversification when representatives of most known animal phyla first appear in the fossil record.

For a long time some of the creatures from this period were seen as mysterious alien-looking fossil weirdos, barely seeming to make anatomical sense and unable to be classified into any known animal groups. Some paleontologists even proposed they represented an entirely separate branch of the animal evolutionary tree, regarding them as "failed experiments" that had left no living relatives at all.

But, slowly, we've been piecing together the evidence and figuring out their relationships, studying exceptionally well-preserved fossils and the genetic connections between modern-day animals. And gradually many of the bizarre fossil species are starting to find their places in the tree of life as evolutionary "cousins" of modern groups, novel early branches of more familiar lineages that are giving us more insight into their origins.

It isn't clear what actually prompted the sudden innovation of the Cambrian Period, but it was probably a combination of various environmental and ecological factors – including changes in oxygen levels, the formation of the ozone layer, early burrowing animals altering the aeration and chemistry of the seafloor, the development of biomineralization, and increasingly complex "arms races" between predators and prey.

It's also looking increasingly likely that it wasn't really an isolated "explosion" at all, instead being one of multiple pulses of rapid diversification that started further back in the Ediacaran Period.

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Cambrian Explosion Month #01: The Explosion Before The Explosion

An evolutionary burst known as the Avalon explosion around 575 million years ago produced a range of weird unidentifiable fossil creatures – the strange Ediacaran biota – many of which seem to defy classification and have often been considered to be early "failed experiments" in multicellular life.

…That sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Our understanding of the Ediacaran has recently been echoing our history of understanding the Cambrian, and we've even been starting to figure out that some of these bizarre creatures weren't quite so alien as they first seemed. A few of them are now revealing their evolutionary connections to early animal life, and showing that some groups go back much further than previously thought.

Ikaria wariootia was a tiny worm-like creature the size of a grain of rice, up to 7mm long (0.25"). Discovered in the South Australian Ediacara Hills fossil site that gives the entire time period its name, and dating to 555 million years ago, it was probably an early bilaterian animal that burrowed around in thin layers of sand on the seafloor.

Kimberella quadrata was another early bilaterian known from Australia and northwest Russia, living around 558-55 million years ago. It was about 15cm long (6") and vaguely resembled a slug, and it may have actually been a very early member of the mollusc lineage – some interpretations consider it to have had a radula-like feeding structure and a leathery "shell".

Namacalathus hermanastes is known from Namibia 549-542 million years ago. About 5cm tall (2"), it was an odd-looking creature shaped like a "cup on a stalk", lightly calcified and covered in spines, with six "holes" around the outside of its body. While in the past it's been compared to cnidarian polyps, more recent studies suggest it was actually an early lophotrochozoan – related to the ancestors of annelid worms, molluscs, bryozoans, and brachiopods.

Yilingia spiciformis was a segmented worm-like bilaterian that may have been related to either annelids or panarthropods. Living in South China during the late Ediacaran and earliest Cambrian, between 551-539 million years ago, this animal reached up to 27cm long (10.5") and was found fossilized at the end of its own trackway.

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#science illustration #paleontology #paleoart #palaeoblr #cambrian explosion 2021 #ediacaran #avalon explosion #ikaria #kimberella #namacalathus #yilingia #bilateria #eumetazoa #animalia #lophotrochozoa #mollusc #art #long post

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kenyatta · 4 years ago

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Upon birth, a person’s brain structure is largely prescribed by experience in the womb and their unique genetic code. As we age, experience continues to imprint unique changes on the brain’s neural connectivity, increasing connections in some areas while decreasing them in others, accumulating reroutes upon reroutes as a person ages and learns, gaining knowledge and experience. Additionally, there are alterations in the strength of existing connections. These processes are especially evident in twins, whose brains are strikingly similar when born. However, as they grow, learn and experience the world, their brains diverge, and their essential selves become increasingly unique.

Essentially, this process creates memory, something so fundamental that it unconsciously surfaces in every aspect of our sense of self. Even our unconscious knowledge of movements needed for riding a bike, speaking a word or even walking require memory. Incredibly, hypothermia victims, who have undergone hours of clinical death signified by an absence of both heart and brain activity can achieve a state of full recovery, demonstrating that neural electrical activity alone is not essential for the storage of memory in the brain.

Although there are indeed anatomical regions that appear to serve relatively specific functions, one’s memory is not formed, stored or recalled within the activity of any single brain region. Certain structures, such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, play key roles but trying to find memory in one specific area is simply impossible. It would be like trying to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth but hearing only the strings (duh duh duh, duuuh!). Instead, memory, in its broadest sense, lies in the uniqueness of a brain’s entire connective structure, known as the connectome. The connectome consists of its complete network of neurons and all the connections between them, called synapses. It is argued that, fundamentally, ‘you are your connectome’.

Thus, a key to unlocking the correspondence between the connectome and memory is to elucidate the entire circuitry of the brain. Tracing the wiring at this scale is no easy task when considering the sheer complexity involved. A mere cubic millimetre of brain tissue contains around 50,000 neurons, with an astonishing total of around 130 million synapses, according to some estimates. An entire human brain, however, is more than 1 million cubic millimetres and contains around 86 billion neurons, nearly equivalent with estimates of the number of stars in our galaxy.

The most relevant number is the one representing the total sum of synaptic connections, which comes in at a mind-numbing c100 trillion. Once the possible paths that electrical neural signals can run on across these connections are determined, only then might it be possible to comprehensively know the patterns of activity integral to memory and to subjective experience.

#connectome #neuroscience #consciousness

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botslayer · 4 years ago

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Fantasy and Scifi “Racism,” an opinion piece:

This whole thing is gonna be a slurry of politics, hot takes, nerd shit, some pictures to make it not a snooze fest on the eyes, and me asking the lot of ya to consider both sides of an argument. If you have a problem with any of that, please leave. All that said, let's get on with it: Let’s take three gentlemen for an example. One is from Poland. One is from Angola, one is from South Korea. What does that tell us about them? We can infer averages. For example, The average Polish man’s height is about five feet, ten and a half inches, so the Polish gentleman’s height might be in that ballpark. A very well known Korean dish is Kimchi, so it is moderately safe to assume the Korean man has, at some point, eaten it. Two of Angola’s largest provinces happen to be “Moxico” and “Cuandocubango” and one of it’s most populated is called “Huambo” So it would be a moderately safe bet to assume the man from Angola is from one of those areas. Their countries/continents of origin don’t directly tell us much though. Hell, we could be dealing with a Polish little person, a Korean who has bafflingly never had kimchi and an Angolan from Lunda Sul. We also don’t know about their outlooks, their lives, mental conditions they might have. Hell, we may not know what race these guys are. There’s a slim chance the Angolan Gentleman is Chinese (1.4% of the country’s population) Or that the Polish guy is ethnically German. We just don’t know. What we do know for a fact is that they’re all human men. They have (most likely) similar psychology, anatomy, dietary need to not starve to death or dehydrate, etc. And that’s about it. Now let’s take a sample from three fictional species off the top of my head: Starting with a Furon from Destroy all humans.

Now, Furons are pretty much universally shorter and physically weaker than humans, so it is safe to assume our single Furon has these qualities. He's also likely a psychic as that's a common attribute of his people. Also common would be the perception of humans as cattle, his possession of advanced force field technology is also pretty much a guarantee. Outliers exist and all that but something worth mentioning: This Furon is a Furon. In other news: The sky is blue, yeah? The problem is though: The Furons are very much not humans. And there aren't too many "races" in that equation, either. Just the populace of the Furon Homeworld. It's also worth noting that we don't actually know what Furons eat, their water intake any of that. We know only so many details but with just those, it's obvious that Furons and humans are too damn different. For species two, let's look at Mind Flayers from DnD.

Mind Flayers, otherwise known as "Illithids," are generally humanoid creatures born through a process known as "Ceramorphosis." See, Illithids are anatomically asexual, as in, they self inseminate and produce eggs from their mouths. They put the eggs in with an entity called "The Elder brain" which is a conglomerate of other Illithid brains, the tadpoles eat one another or get eaten by the brain for about ten years before being selected and implanted into a sentient creature (Humans, elves, etc) From there, the tadpole eats the brain of that creature, replacing it with its own and slowly altering their anatomy until you get a malevolent microcthulhu with potent psychic powers and the need to eat one entire human-level brain every month. Mindflayers start their lives as parasites that literally consume your entire sense of self and mutate you into an unrecognizable husk with a cephalopod for a face. And they have the gall to consider humans lesser? How bloody dare... an entirely separate species of sentient creatures come to that conclusion. For our last example, let's talk about a species from a setting best described as Technomystical: The Skakdi from Bionicle.

For those who don't know what that species is, The Piraka from the 2006 toyline are all examples of Skakdi. Now, Skakdi look, and they are, absolutely brutal. For example, the species was beset by an army of large and lethal creatures called "Zyglak" after becoming what they are today, the lot of them being mutants. The Zyglak were completely wiped out. Skakdi are savage in the best of ways. They aren't just beasts, they're berserkers with the powers of the elements, however, it does require two of them to activate such powers. Thing is though, they're all like that. The entire species has been mutated from what it once was into a legion that knows little else other than slaughter and subjugation of others... Generally speaking, at least. The problem with all three of these species, or "Races" (As I do NOT prefer to call it), and in fact most species from almost all settings is that they're a monolith. Illithids, for example, generally all follow the same societal structure, living in large groups wherever they can under the "guidance" (as in "Hivemind link") of elder brains, some strike out on their own, but for the most part, they live under elder brains, no matter where in the world they are. There aren't competing Illithid Nations or sub-species with things that makes them distinctly Korean or Aztec inspired unless the DM adds those things. And even then, when settings do that, say, Warhammer, there are some groups that are a national proxy (The Empire is Germany, Bretonnia is France, etc) and then some proxies are just an entire species. (See the Lizard Men, who went from Native American-coded to Aztec over the course of some years.) Adding to these things is a slight elephant in the room. Alignment systems. See, humans in games like DnD can be anything from neutral evil to chaotic good, true neutral to lawful evil, etc. But then some species are stuck as inherently good or evil or inherently lawful or chaotic. The problem with saying that about a sentient species is that it smacks a bit of actual, real racism/racist ideas. The idea that this group of beings that just lives differently to the rest of us is inherently almost anything is clearly bad, right? Well... Maybe if we didn't do that IRL, that would feel more genuine. The hell am I on about?

We, as humans, understand that other species of everything from primates to insects are naturally more aggressive, more gentle, more poisonous, more endowed with certain senses, etc. All except for other groups of humans. Because save for pigments of skin, general height, and elements of culture, pretty much all human groups are the same. That said: Point me to the the race of humans more naturally endowed with psychic powers. Or the human race that can only go on by implanting itself in other humans and slowly making people lose their minds until only they take over said body.

I can show you examples of animals doing the whole “Eating you from the inside out” thing. But not humans. Hell, even cannibals have to get a cut off of ya first. But that’s just how beings like Mind Flayers operate. I can show you examples of more aggressive insectoid life vs ones that just want to be left alone. Generally speaking, a wasp is more aggressive than a ladybug. But that’s because they evolved differently to one another. Like Mind Flayers have from elves. Or like Furons have from Blisk. Or like The Skakdi had from Matoran, even before being mutants. Does that make them (wasps) “Evil” though? Well... No. The problem is that wasps took on the various scary attributes they did because that was the hand nature played for them. A wasp does not choose to start life by eating it’s way out of a living tarantula and then spending the rest of it angrily defending whatever it considers to be it’s “territory” only to lay another one of its kind into another tarantula, that’s just what the little bastards do without thinking because that’s how they adapted to the world. I would say though that Furons are evil. They view an entire species they consider intelligent (Even “Loosely”) as cattle to harvest DNA from and otherwise use as playthings, killing them en masse just for shits and giggles. Mindflayers, I would say much the same of unless they willingly find violent/genuinely harmful examples of intelligent life that will do the world no good and then eat only them. But no, these freaks bred an entire species of creatures to have massive brains and be super passive just to make eating their brains easier. That’s pretty damn evil.

(Pictured above, an Oortling from Forgotten Realms 2e) Creatures like the Krill from Seth Macfarlane’s “The Orville” believe all other sentient species are lesser than them. The galaxy is for them and them alone to conquer and do with as they please. Such is the Will of their god Avis. They started stabbing a human head live in front of other Krill in an episode as part of their religious practices. But then the species has some nuance. This fundamentalism and extremism is how they cope with being so damn small in the face of an uncaring, unfeeling void. So are the Krill evil? No. They’re afraid.

Coming back to the Skakdi, They started out as relatively peaceful until a creature from the Makuta species showed up and mutated the lot of them into the magabadasses they are now. All of them now have, fighting skill equal to, if not greater than most Toa, and even elemental powers. But they aren’t all evil. They’re just aggressive, angry, and furthermore, also probably hurting. A peaceful existence was just taken from these poor bastards, all they know now is conflict with one another. So are the Skakdi evil? No. Some of them might be but it ain’t because they’re Skakdi.

See, Skakdi and Krill are important things to remember here because they, while still being monolithic as cultures, have a little more depth than just the myriad ways in which they’re evil bastards. But Mind Flayers? Not really. Not unless the DM adds that. Furons? I mean... Sometimes they become friends or mate with humans but not usually. And what of the big old elephant in the room? The Orcs of D&D? Orcs as a species were recently described as only having limited capacities for things like empathy... If raised outside the violent and chaotic madness that is living with other orcs.

This is the thing that sparked this post, so I will now, at the near end, address it specifically: People find the wording here to be reminiscent of things actual racist propaganda and ideas perpetuated about pretty much specifically black people as I understand it. Which, I genuinely wouldn’t know. I never really grew up around that stuff and I do my best to avoid racists/racism in my day-to-day. But to me? This just makes a depressing kind of sense. The species that evolved/was made or whatever to be this big, hulking set of warrior badasses. has a limited ability to understand what it is to be the other guy. Seems legit. Especially when you remember that even if Orcs are just another group of primates, they aren’t human and would likely have psychological differences to humans.

This is a baby chimpanzee. Look at it. It’s cute. You want one, don’t you? Well... That’s not advised, honestly. Chimps can be fucking monsters. Don’t know what I mean? A. I’m surprised. B. Just google “Chimpanzee attacks” if you have the stomach for it. Not all Chimps will do it, but chimps can and do, do it. Some Chimps hunt monkeys for food in their territory. It’s royally fucked up, but its a thing they do. And you know how different human DNA is to theirs? About 1%. I personally don’t see anything wrong with saying “An entire species is evil” in any setting other than that being shallow as fuck. I also personally don’t see anything wrong with suggesting that a species has limited empathy because honestly...? Just look at nature and even humans. Fantasy and Scifi often entertain the idea of “What if we are not the only living things smart/naturally equipped enough to build a society?” But the sad reality is if we weren’t? Most other species wouldn’t act a damn thing like humans, most other species probably wouldn’t give a shit about us, and a large number, even if they can and do act like us in some ways, will not in all ways. So, to bring this ramble to something resembling a conclusive point: Fantasy/Scifi “Racism” (As in just being prejudiced, although it should just be Xenophobia, IMO) is way more understandable and even more easily believable than the real thing because we stopped talking humans the second we brought in the crazy dudes with octopus heads. Or who are just naturally, by virtue of their species (not “race”) psychic. And even if it was just between groups that didn’t exist, nature proves that it would most definitely happen. But those are just my thoughts, anybody wanna weigh in? I’m all ears.

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ticktockstuck · 4 years ago

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Versal Biology Lesson: Shards

Across the many worlds of the Verse there exist many different types of person: the gelatine, the serpentine, those with fire inside and outside of their bodies, and the hardy shards just to describe a few. “Shards of glass”, whose number includes underground 🐬Moistystopian🐬 streamer Cirava Hermod and the aristocratic Lalonde twins of Tick-Tock Town, are so named thanks to their bodies having a highly similar build to thick inanimate glass. This anatomical quirk has its upsides and its downsides for any given shard and can take form in many different ways.

A shard’s skin is highly protective. The bodies of shards are infamous for their skin, which is denser than the skin of a non-shard’s skin. Along with just being thicker the skin is flawlessly smooth, cool to the touch, often has a glossy or metallic sheen, and in the vast majority of individuals the skin is at least partly transparent. This transparency not only allows light to partly pass through them, but leaves much of their internal anatomy visible to the naked eye. Combined, these qualities have the effect of making shards highly durable and protected from many everyday dangers, with many circumstances that would give non-shards cuts or bruises will literally only scratch the surface of a shard (especially true of bladed or slashing weapons like claws or knives.

Shards’ bodies have three types of glass skin. As a consequence of being more durable, glass skin is inherently less flexible than non-shard skin. It’s still skin, so it can bend slightly, but not without effort and physical strain. To circumvent this, shard bodies have three different types of skin which collectively gives their bodies an optimal balance of natural defense and maneuverability.

The most flexible of the three skins is aptly nicknamed “flexiglass”. While still dense enough to ward off claws and knives, flexiglass is the least dense of the three skins but provides all joints the full range of motion available to non-shards. Flexiglass parts of the body are anywhere that needs to frequently bend or twist, namely the neck, shoulders, elbows, and knees.

The sturdiest but least flexible skin is “hard glass”, which makes up the majority of a shard’s body. Consisting of any area which does not need to make major movements, hard glass areas of the body include the back of the head, the chest, the back, and non-joint parts of limbs such as the thigh or forearm.

The middle ground between these two skins is called “twainglass” since it posses the durability of hard glass and the flexibility of flexiglass (though not to the fullest extent in either quality). Twainglass parts of the body consist of anything which needs ease of movement but also needs adequate protection, namely the face, hands, feet, and pelvis.

To be clear, these are not different layers of skin; on a technical level shards have a single layer of skin (like everybody else) that simply has three different compositions based on which part of the body it covers. The shift from one composition to another is gradual, though that gradient isn’t visibly apparent. The body of a shard is coated in thin grooves which divide these different areas of skin (scientifically these are termed “microfractures” but colloquially known as “fracks”), which are at most 4cm deep. By having the gradation between skin types occur below the surface within these grooves, the body is able to maximize the surface area coverage for any given type of skin. Fracks take many shapes and serve as identifying marks since any individual shard’s fracks all take the same shape.

Shards can be many colors and transparencies. While the majority of shards have “colorless” skin that takes on a crystal-blue hue many others have a variety of vivid colors from gold to magenta or even black or white. Different shards likewise can be more or less transparent than another, including fully opaque shards with a metallic chrome gleam to their skin (who have the self-granted nickname “jewels”). Any given shard’s skin color has no correlation to the color of their blood, and as an example it’s entirely possible for a troll shard to have golden glass skin but fuchsia blood. The skin’s color can change over time or be temporarily altered through the use of cosmetics, lotions or creams allowing the skin to absorb chemicals to dye it (though this effect fades after 3-4 weeks and can negatively impact their health over long enough periods).

An individual shard can be many colors and transparencies. A shard’s body isn’t restricted to only a single level of transparency or a single hue, and can display multiple types of either feature. In terms of color, multiple colors will blend together in a smooth gradient (there are no hard stops outside of a visual line with fracks) and while most multi-hued shards only have 2-3 colors spread around the body some rare others have been seen with upwards of 5 unique colors. Transparency gradation is comparatively rarer than color gradation but operates on similar principles. Color, regardless of hue, is only an aesthetic different and has no significant impact on the defensive properties of the glass skin. Transparency differences have a negligible impact, with more transparent sections being evidently more fragile than opaque section.

Shards can still be wounded. While glass skin helps prevent injury, it’s not impervious and there are ways that shards can be hurt. High-pressure impacts and blunt force trauma are particularly capable of cracking or breaking the skin; this include sudden falls onto hard surfaces, enforced punches, hammers, and in certain situations gunfire can manage to deal lasting damage (mainly dependent on how it fires bullets and the range they’re fired from). Once damage gets bad enough to break through the surface, it quickly becomes apparent how shards’ glass skin is a double-edged sword: injuries may be harder to acquire but any injuries they do get are much worse. The skin cracks with the wound running deep into the body and that wound can take weeks to heal over completely. It won’t heal over cleanly, either, partly thanks to scar tissue forming underneath the skin and partly due to a visible “ring” that forms on the surface marking where the edge of the wound used to be.

Medical treatments for shards are not simple. While shards are known to have superb health in general, the nature of the skin impacts what kinds of medical treatments shards can have. Anything that can be ingested works normally, the problem of giving an injection without struggle has long since been solved with specialized syringes and patches, but traditional surgeries (that don’t cause more complications than they solve) have been functionally impossible for generations. Many shards with internal issues have had to rely on magical medicine to cure their maladies, a process which (considering how selfishly magic tends to be hoarded around the Verse) is financially costly and necessitates seeking out a specialist. The need to ensure they can reliably find help has, over generations, led to many shards taking up magical professions (medical or otherwise). Modern technology is slowly finding ways to reliably and safely treat shards but in their current state those methods are as expensive and arguably riskier than the magical options.

Shards can be as tall, short, thin, fat, or muscular as anybody else. The unique qualities of their skin don’t significantly alter how a shard’s internal anatomy works, and their organs and skeletal structures function the same as any other member of their species. The ability to gain or lose muscle and fat is not hindered, and at best the skin only affects how fat and muscle is distributed around the body and how that physically shows on their figure. Specifically, it usually works out that instead of softer builds shards have stocky or sturdy builds that ultimately reinforce the already-noted defensive upsides of their body. It should be noted that, as a consequence of being denser than non-shard skin, the glass skin itself adds to a shard’s weight such that a shard would weigh a handful of pounds heavier than a non-shard with the exact same shape.

Shards tend to have short hair. The physique of a shard isn’t impacted by their skin but their hair is. Thanks to how pores manifest on glass skin, your average shard has less body hair but what does exist grows short, grows thick, or both (i.e. hair on the head rarely grows past neck-length). There is no effect on what color a shard’s hair can be though it often appears darker thanks to the thickness of the hair itself. One notable quirk specific to shards is that some can have hair as transparent as the skin, an effect that’s difficult to spot at a distance for multiple reasons and is only really visible upon closer inspection. See-through hair is a trait shards can pass down to their children (shard or otherwise).

If you have questions about shards that weren't answered in this post, the the inquiries office is always open. The next VBL will likely be covering star-skinned folks like a certain Harley and Kanaya, and released before that Harley and Jake's revamped sprites go up.

#ticktockstuck #setting notes #Versal Biology Lessons

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biostudyblog · 5 years ago

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Evolution

Evolution is an essential key to understanding all branches of biology. Microevolution is the changes in one gene pool of a population over generations. Macroevolution is speciation, which refers to the formation of an entirely new species.

Individuals never change or evolve. Your DNA is your DNA, and cannot evolve. (Adaption is different). A population is the smallest group that can evolve.

Evidence of Evolution

There are 6 areas of study that prove the theory of evolution:

Fossil record

Comparative anatomy

Comparative biochemistry

Comparative embryology

Molecular biology

Biogeography

Fossil Record

The fossil record is evidence of species who have become extinct or evolved into other species.

99% of all organisms that have ever lived on earth are now extinct.

With studies of radioactive dating and half-life, we know the earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old.

Prokaryotic cells are the oldest fossils, and so were the first organisms to develop on earth.

Palaeontologists have discovered transitional fossils, which link older, extinct fossils to modern species. For example, the discovery of the Archaeopteryx is a fossil that links reptiles and birds. Along with that, we know that the Hyracotherium was the ancestor of the modern-day horse.

Comparative Anatomy

Many organisms share anatomic structures, proving that they came from a common ancestor. For example, by comparing the dental structure of humans and chimpanzees, we now know that we share a common ancestor that lived less than 10 million years ago.

Homologous Structures: Homologous structures are like the wing of a bat, the fin of a whale, and our own arm. By looking at them, it’s evident that they share bone structure. We share a common ancestor, however, we diverged millions of years ago.

Analogous Structures: Analogous structures are like a bat and fly’s wing. They have the same function, however a differing underlying structure. This is a superficial similarity and reflects adaptation to a similar environment. It is an example of convergent evolution.

Vestigial Structures: Vestigial structures are like our coccyx (the tailbone). While it was useful when our ancestors had tails, it now is a useless reminder of what we used to be. Fun fact: the appendix is not a vestigial structure. In fact, it has a function in the immune system.

Comparative Biochemistry

Organisms with a common ancestor have common biochemical pathways. The more closely related two organisms are to each other, the more similar their biochemistry is. Humans and mice are both mammals, which is why mice are often used in medical research (However, mice are rodents and we are apes, which is why studies done on mice can very often be flawed.)

Comparative Embryology

More closely related organisms go through similar stages in their embryonic development as they evolved from a common ancestor. When vertebrates are embryos, we all develop gill pouches on the side of our throat. In fish, these become the gills. In humans, they become the eustachian tubes which connect the middle ear with the throat.

Molecular Biology

Comparing two organisms on a molecular level also gives insight into how closely related they are. Since respiration requires an electron transport chain, we have a polypeptide called cytochrome c. By comparing the amino acid sequence of cytochrome c, we can know how closely related the organisms are. For example, our cytochrome c is identical to that of a chimpanzee, however different from a pig, and almost completely different to that of the cytochrome c found in paramecia.

Biogeography

The earth did not always look the way that it does now. The theory of continental drift states that 250 million years ago, all the continents were together in a supercontinent called Pangaea, which slowly, over time, separated into the 7 continents that we know today. Because of this, we know organisms like marsupials migrated by land from South America, across Antartica to Australia, before the continents separated, isolating marsupials.

Lamarck vs. Darwin

Before Darwin’s theory of evolution was Lamarck’s. Lamarck’s theory was based on the ideas of inheritance of acquired characteristics, and use and disuse. He believed that individual organisms change in response to their environment. For example, when the ecological niche that giraffes in the grasslands of Africa became too full, he believed they learned to stretch their necks to reach the acacia trees. After developing these long necks, they passed the trait off to their offspring.

Darwin did his studies on the Galapagos Islands to study the strange wildlife that lived there. His theory of evolution was based on characteristics of animals like the finches who had developed different shaped beaks depending on which ecological niche they filled. He published his book in 1859 and became a sensation.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that:

Populations grow exponentially, to overpopulate and over exceed their resources. This idea came from Malthus, who in 1798 published his research on population growth, disease and famine.

Overpopulation results in competition and a struggle to exist.

In all populations, some organisms have advantages over others. Those that win the genetic lottery are able to survive long enough to reproduce, passing the successful traits on. The organisms who lose the genetic lottery die before they can pass their genetic material on. For example, in a snowy area, if there are white and brown rabbits, the brown rabbits will be eaten, as they don’t camouflage. As a result, only white rabbits have babies, and soon the entire population will become white. This is a concept known as survival of the fittest.

Fitness refers to the ability of an organism to reproduce.

How the Giraffe Got Its Long Neck

Lamarck’s theory was thrown out in favour of Charles Darwin’s. What happened, was there were too many animals in one ecological niche, and so not enough food. Giraffes with shorter necks couldn’t find enough food, and so they starved. Giraffes with longer necks than normal were able to eat food other animals couldn’t reach, and so survived and passed on their DNA. Thus, over time, there was a noticeable change in the appearance of the giraffes, as the average neck length of the population increased, not the individual.

How the Peppered Moth Went From Light to Dark

In England, until around 1845, peppered moths were light. This was around industrialisation, and so factories producing smoke and soot polluted the air. As a result, light moths no longer could camouflage themselves and were picked off, causing an increase in the percentage of black moths, as black moths had the selective advantage. This darkening is known as industrial melanism.

Evolution and Drug Resistance

Antibiotics are wonder drugs. People are constantly asking for them, even if they have a virus. However, by taking antibiotics more, the antibiotics become more and more useless. This is because antibiotics kill susceptible bacteria while leaving alone bacteria that have developed resistance. These bacteria reproduce, and antibiotics no longer can fight them. The ability of a virus or bacteria impacts the ease of finding a cure. A famous example is AIDS. AIDS is caused by the HIV virus which evolves extremely easily. Currently, the treatment for the disease is a drugs cocktail which slows its progression. In some patients, the HIV virus becomes resistant, and they take a downward spiral. The flu virus is another example of a virus that evolves extremely quickly.

Types of Natural Selection

There are 3 ways natural selection can alter the frequency of inherited traits in a population, depending on the favoured phenotypes: stabilising selection, diversifying, or disruptive selection, and directional selection.

Stabilising Selection

Stabilising eliminates the extremes, and favours the more common intermediate form. Stabilising selection is the reason why most human babies are born with a similar weight: 6 to 9 pounds, as greater or less than this often increases the mortality risk.

Disruptive or Diversifying Selection

Disruptive selection increases the numbers of extreme types in a population, at the cost of intermediate forms (it is the opposite of stabilising selection.) This results in a balanced polymorphism where two or more phenotypes coexist. Over time this may lead to speciation.

Directional Selection

Directional selection is caused by changing environmental conditions, where one phenotype replaces another. The peppered moth's case is an example of this.

Diversity Within a Population

Darwin’s theory of evolution depends on diversity within any given gene pool.

Darwin at the time could not explain the genetic diversity, however, we now know it is due to mutation, genetic drift, and genetic flow.

Mutation

Mutations are changes in genetic material. They are the raw material for evolutionary change. Even just one point mutation can introduce a whole new allele to a population, as found by Hugo de Vries who studies polyploidy in plants.

Genetic Drift

Genetic drift is a change in the gene pool due to chance. This is the reason why most people from Ireland have red hair because there is no known evolutionary benefit. Two more broad examples of genetic drift are the bottleneck effect and the founder effect.

The Bottleneck Effect

The bottleneck effect is caused by major events, like a flood, volcano, or fire causing the massive, nonselective reduction in the population. The resulting population is no longer representative of the original one, causing certain alleles to be over or underrepresented, completely by chance.

The Founder Effect

When a small population breaks away from a larger population, it is not representative of the original population. As a result, rare alleles can become overrepresented. This happened in the 1770s, with the Old Order of the Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Their ancestors moved from Germany to America, and a large percentage of them have the dominant, but rare gene for polydactyly, which means having more than 5 fingers and toes. As a result, in this area, there is a massive concentration of this extremely rare gene.

Gene Flow

Gene flow is the movement of alleles in and out of a population. Migration of fertile individuals or gametes between populations may cause gene flow. When pollen from a flower in one valley travels via the wind across a mountain to another valley, that causes gene flow.

Population Stability (Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium)

Hardy and Weinburg were two scientists who developed a theory describing a stable, nonevolving population (where the allele frequency does not change). For there to be Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium, the population must meet the following requirements:

It must be very large: Because changes in small populations have such massive effects on the allele frequency of the entire population, there must be a large population to dilute these changes.

The population must be isolated: When a population is isolated, the lack of gene flow prevents the introduction of new alleles into the gene pool

There must be no mutations: Mutations alter the allelic frequency and can lead to a whole new allele.

Mating must be random: When individuals select mates, natural selection comes into play, and the fittest individual will reproduce, altering the allelic frequency.

There must be no natural selection: Adding to the above, there must be no reason for the population to evolve.

Hardy-Weinburg Equation

The Hardy-Weinburg Equation is necessary to know the frequency of alleles in a population.

Example Problem:

If 9% of the population has blue eyes, what percentage of the population is hybrid for brown eyes? Homozygous for brown eyes?

Isolation and Speciation

A species is a population whose members are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Horses and donkeys produce mules, which are infertile, thus they are not in the same species. When a population fragments and isolates small groups, new species may form, as different selective pressures influence the two groups.

Geographic Isolation

Geographic isolation can be caused by any geographic feature that makes it nearly impossible for two groups to interact, such as mountains, canyons, or rivers.

Polyploidy

Polyploidy is a mutation that occurs during meiosis, where instead of ending up diploid (2n), cells can become polyploids (>2n). Polyploids cannot breed with non-polyploids, therefore this is a kind of isolation.

Habitat Isolation

Habitat isolation occurs when two organisms live in the same area but rarely interact. For example, two snakes may share the same genus, however, one inhabits the water, while one is terrestrial.

Behavioural Isolation

Behavioural isolation occurs when two organisms are isolated because of a change in behaviour. For instance, male fireflies attract mates by flashing a specific pattern of lights. If the male firefly does not use the pattern she will respond to, no mating will occur.

Temporal Isolation

Temporal isolation is just isolation over time. Two plants of one species may become isolated, as one becomes sexually mature earlier than the other.

Reproductive Isolation

Reproductive isolation is caused when anatomical incompatibility makes it impossible to mate, for example, a chihuahua and a great dane cannot mate.

Patterns of Evolution

Divergent Evolution

Divergent evolution when a species is isolated and becomes a new species. Homologous structures are evidence of this pattern of evolution.

Convergent Evolution

Convergent evolution occurs when two unrelated species inhabit the same environment. For example, in the whale and the fish, despite having different ancestors, they have very similar appearances and features as these features benefit both of them. Analogous structures are evidence of this pattern of evolution.

Parallel Evolution

Parallel evolution describes when two related species have related evolutionary adaptations. For example, the grey wolf and Tasmanian wolf have striking similarities, as, despite their geographic isolation, their environments are similar.

Coevolution

Coevolution is the mutual set of adaptations between two interacting species. For example, pollinators and plants. When it feeds from a flower, a pollinator guarantees the survival of the plant. Thus, the plants and pollinators evolve together to guarantee survival together.

Adaptive Radiation

When most people are asked to talk about evolution, Darwin’s finches are brought up. When the birds were isolated on multiple different islands, and environments, the one species fractured into multiple. This is called adaptive radiation.

Theories About the Theory

Gradualism

Gradualism is Darwin’s belief that evolution occurs gradually over a long period of time in a linear, or branching fashion. Big changes occur by accumulating multiple small ones. For this theory to be correct, no missing links should exist.

This theory is no longer popular, as transitional fossils are rare to find.

Punctuated Equilibrium

Punctuated equilibrium is more widely accepted by scientists now. It is the idea that new species occur suddenly after long periods of now change, as new species arrive in different places, expanding their range, and replacing the ancestral species.

Spontaneous Generation

Before there were gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, there was spontaneous generation. It was a popular idea until the 1700′s and states that living things emerge from nonliving ones. Francesco Redi disproved this theory by putting decaying meat into wide mouth jars, some with lids, some covered by cheesecloth, and some left open. Maggots only appeared where flies could lay their eggs.

How Life Began

So then, if life comes from life, where did it all start?

After the formation of the earth, around 4.6 billion years ago, earth’s outer surface cooled and solidified, forming a crust. The ancient environment was likely made primarily of CH4 (methane), NH3 (ammonia), and H20 (vapour). There was no free oxygen. Intense heat, lightning, and radiation in the atmosphere gave rise to the first cell. An attempt to recreate these conditions have happened a lot throughout history.

In the 1920s, two scientists, Oparin and Haldane separately concluded that earth’s early conditions gave rise to life. In the absence of corrosively reactive O2 that would react and degrade them, organic molecules were able to form and persist.

In the 1950s, Miller and Urey tested this hypothesis and proved nearly any energy source could convert inorganic molecules into organic molecules including amino acids. They used electricity to mimic lightning, and UV light, as without the atmosphere we have today, with its protective ozone layer, UV rays were extremely prevalent (the sun was a deadly laser, but not anymore there’s a blanket)

Fox, in more recent times, recreated this experiment and produced membrane-bound cell-like structures he named proteinoid microspheres which were able to survive for hours in a lab.

The Heterotroph Hypothesis and the Theory of Endosymbiosis

The Heterotroph Hypothesis states that it is most likely that the first cells on earth were anaerobic heterotrophic prokaryotes (as autotrophs need membrane-bound organelles to produce their own energy)

Eukaryotic cells evolved when small bacteria took residence in large prokaryotic cells and helped perform essential functions in the host cell. These small bacteria became the nuclei, chloroplasts, and mitochondria we have today, which is why these 3 organelles have their own DNA, and why the mitochondria and chloroplasts can self-replicate.

The first multicellular animals appeared around 565 million years ago, and within 40 million years, the phyla we know today appeared. This time, when multiple organisms moved onto land is called the Cambrian explosion. Animals developed features such as lungs, skin, limbs, internal fertilisation mechanisms, and eggshells in order to survive on land. Plants developed roots, supporting cells that allowed them to be so tall, vascular tissue, cutin on their leaves, and seeds.

Mass Extinctions

So if life on earth represents 3% of what used to be on earth, how did so many species die out?

While normal extinction causes the deaths of individual species or populations, mass extinctions are events that lead to the deaths of more than 75% of life on earth. Earth has seen five and may be seeing a sixth in today’s time.

The Permian extinction occurred 250 million years ago when massive volcano eruptions in Siberia spewed massive amounts of lava, and CO2 raising the global temperature up 6 degrees. (Sound familiar?)

Where did the dinosaurs go? The Cretaceous extinction was a subject of much speculation, until the discovery of a massive asteroid hole on the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico. The 10 km-wide asteroid crashed, causing massive clouds of debris to coat the atmosphere, blocking sunlight, killing plants, and the animals that depended on them. Some dinosaurs survived and evolved into birds. So next time you have a parrot on your finger, remember that you have what used to be a dinosaur standing on your finger.

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insanityclause · 5 years ago

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There are three principal characters, unfixed points in an adulterous romantic triangle, in Harold Pinter’s 1978 play “Betrayal,” now being revived to thrilling — and chilling — effect on Broadway. But there are just two chairs onstage for the duration of the show.

The choice is not incidental. The two men and one woman in the play are engaged in a long, painful game of musical chairs (or perhaps, less metaphorically, beds), during which one of them will always be on the outside looking in — the subject of the titular infidelity. But it’s never entirely clear at any point who is the odd man, or woman, out.

Starring Tom Hiddleston (known for playing Loki across various Marvel movies), Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox, the production, directed with a soft but searching intensity by Jamie Lloyd, is simply exquisite on every level: Acting, direction and design perfectly align to excavate the shiver-inducing layers of what is probably Pinter’s most accessible — and certainly his most popular — full-length drama. (This is the third Broadway revival.)

The play’s structural novelty is by now well-known. We begin at the ending, or rather some time after the ending, of the affair that drives the narrative, and move (mostly) backwards in time, to the moment that sparked it, several years before. Delving into the unchangeable past, Pinter anatomizes, with an almost clinical detachment that is nevertheless infused with a bleak compassion, the progressive disintegration of three once-loving relationships.

In the opening scene Emma (Ashton) and Jerry (Cox) discuss with just hints of discomfort the ending of their seven-year-long affair, an ending already in the past. She reveals that she has learned that her affair with Jerry was matched by her husband Robert’s own extramarital dalliances.

Soon after this meeting, in a scene that springs the first of several surprises, Robert, a publisher, and Jerry, a literary agent, share their own slightly tense but still nominally congenial meeting. Jerry admits to the affair, but Robert coolly parries this confession by revealing that he had known about it for some years. He kept Jerry, who was once, by both of their accounts, his best friend, in the dark about his knowledge — a betrayal of their friendship of course, and also a form of insidious, quietly malicious revenge.

The sad, unsettling beauty of “Betrayal” is how Pinter explores the many infidelities and disloyalties that spring from the initial one. And the actors, all superb, reveal with remarkable delicacy how deeply their sense of these betrayals — those committed as well as those endured — gnaw quietly at the characters’ belief in their own, and each other’s, humanity. “Betrayal,” with its clipped, mostly short scenes, unfolds like a series of softly jolting revelations that give us glimpses into the fragility and the flaws of even the most closely held and loving relationships.

Lloyd’s production is as handsome as, well, the three exceptionally attractive stars, who might have leapt from the pages of a current fashion magazine: Hiddleston’s Robert, his long hair sweeping back to reach the collar of his slim-cut black suit; Cox’s Jerry, in slightly more casual but no less Instagram-ready skinny jeans and jacket in muted tones; Ashton’s Emma in the latest in high-waisted, wide-legged denim and a billowy blue peasant blouse.

Lloyd, not incidentally, keeps all three onstage at all times, necessitating no costume changes despite the passing years, but more pointedly emphasizing that, even though virtually all of the scenes take place between just two of the three central characters, the third is ever-present in their minds and in their emotional interactions: a possibly vengeful ghost looking on, or merely looking lost, hovering at the back or the side of the stage.

The set is dominated by an imposing wall of light-colored marble, which occasionally slides forward or back to indicate changes in location that are otherwise only minimally indicated in designer Soutra Gilmour’s settings. Another clever touch from Lloyd and Gilmour: the revolve that allows the characters to seem to be forever warily circling each other, as the relationships between are constantly, unsettlingly changing.

The production, and the play, are so perfectly composed that to highlight individual scenes is almost impossible. But two are emblematic of the complex emotional currents that make it such an enduring work. The first takes place in Venice, when Robert inadvertently stumbles upon evidence of — or at least a suggestion of — his wife’s infidelity. Shamed and, presumably, weary of her own guilt and deception, Emma simply confesses the truth.

Hiddleston’s Robert, heretofore depicted as a walking, talking stiff upper lip, gently melts into a puddle of tears, as Emma puts a comforting hand on his arm. But they scarcely look at each other even during this most traumatic of moments: Locked in their own individual chambers of horror, they mostly stare straight ahead, finding only the barest of words to confront this brutal revelation.

In another arresting, blackly funny scene, back in London Robert invites Jerry to lunch, plying him with comical amounts of white wine as Robert makes bland small talk about business and the Venice vacation. Despite his new knowledge of his friend’s and his wife’s relationship, he chooses not to play the outraged husband, instead offering teasing, softly aggressive repartee, preferring to allow Jerry to squirm in discomfort — clearly something is wrong, but what? — and to allow him to compound his disloyalty by continuing the affair. Hiddleston brings out the playful malice in Robert’s little game of cat and mouse, while Cox evinces the antsy discomfort of a man who doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know. It’s another terrific moment in which the dual meanings of the word “betrayal” — to evince disloyalty, but also to reveal something kept hidden — hover tensely in the air.

Even with its non-chronological structure, “Betrayal” is a conventional play by Pinter’s standards. The pauses seem perfectly natural, and no one onstage engages in any distinctly sociopathic or psychopathic behavior. There’s scarcely a whiff of the famous Pinterian “menace” spritzing the scenes (save for a brief mention of Robert physically abusing Emma). And yet Lloyd — whose company produced a series of Pinter plays at the Pinter Theatre in the West End, of which this has been called the “culmination” — understands that even when the playwright is seemingly at his most naturalistic, Pinter is exploring with uncommon clarity the dark, irrational impulses, the cruelties and emotional violence, that underlie so much human behavior, even among superficially “civilized” and successful characters like these, which connects them to the more outlandish specimens in many of his other plays.

“Betrayal” suggests, in its dispassionate way, both the necessity of human attachments — all three characters remain deeply connected even after the shock of Jerry and Emma’s affair has altered their relationships to each other — but also, of course, the limits of those attachments. And while the title has many meanings, perhaps the saddest is the idea that the greatest betrayal all three characters commit is the betrayal of their better selves; this suggests that there may be no such thing as a better self. There is only the flawed, confused, unfathomable self.

#robert

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nebulousmistress · 5 years ago

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On the Pupillary Response

Or, on why this rakshasa feels comfortable inflicting incurable nearsightedness on a trained sniper. How said sniper managed to pass his marksmanship quals. And why none of this gets in my way.

Here’s the fic in question: The Hound of Arkanis.

Also, despite the implications of ‘the hound of Arkanis’ I use the cat as my basis for predatory function. Domestication saw dogs evolve into grain-eating omnivores while cats remember themselves. Also, this:

(disclaimer, I am not a veterinarian. My anatomical education was on humans. Please be prepared to suspend your disbelief as I wave my hands in a ridiculous manner)

(second disclaimer, yes I am writing out a gigantic and pointless essay for a Star Wars AU that might not go far and that only 45 people have read. The rakshasa is bored)

There are a couple of eye topics I want to touch on. But first, some anatomy.

For comparison, a human eye looks about the same. The human eye has a little disc at the back of the eye called a macula lutea, a high cone density area that humans use for extremely fine and clear vision. The human eye also doesn’t have that green layer up there, the tapetum lucidum. For my purposes, the Arkanan eye has both. This does lead to conflicting signals within the eye itself but let’s look at both of those signals and see how the eye and the pupillary response would compensate for that.

First, the tapetum lucidum. It’s the green shiny that gives cats their ‘laser eyes’ look. It’s located directly behind the retina.

Its purpose is to bounce light back and forth inside the eye. Light hits the retina, activates rods and cones, hits the tapetum lucidum, bounces back, hits the retina, activates rods and cones again. Some of that light bounces off the front of the eye and back to the retina again to repeat the process. Each batch of photons is automatically sampled twice, potentially more than that. It’s an efficient way to reuse light, amplifying images in dim light. However, there’s a problem here. There’s no guarantee that light is impacting the same rods and cones on the way in as well as out. It’s near the same spot but it’s not going to be exact unless that light is travelling exactly perpendicular to the retina.

The macula lutea helps. It is the densest area of cones (no rods) in the entire human eye and its center, called the fovea, sits where that light would hit perpendicular. It’s why you see more detail when it’s in front of your face versus in your peripheral vision. That density of cones, no rods, requires oodles of light to work correctly. Cones, your color vision, are much less efficient than rods, your night vision. So now that we have some basics, let’s elaborate.

Let’s get the big one out of the way here. Rods and cones don’t undergo mitosis. They differentiate and then they stay there. Stem cells could potentially be used to forcibly regenerate rods and cones, perhaps even altering or augmenting the subject’s vision. But I’ve never worked with stem cells so I’m not putting stem cell treatments into my Star Wars fics. Nowhere near enough biotech in that universe for me to justify it. Therefore, the number and spread of rods and cones within the eyes of one Armitage Hux are unchanged throughout his life regardless of any genetic treatments.

It’s the tapetum lucidum that’s changed. It’s not a nerve structure and was present in the original eye (at a reduced capacity). It’s a choroidal tissue, it’s vascular in nature. Blood vessels grow all the time, often where we don’t want them to. The addition of metallic ions into protein structure is easy enough, your hemes do it all the time. Given the structure was present in a reduced capacity, gene therapy to force this layer to express those proteins and giving him zinc supplements to fill those proteins is a trivial matter. I’ve worked with the forcible expression of genes before, it’s not hard.

So I’ve made his vision nocturnal yet fuzzy. And Brendol Hux made sure his son trained as a sniper. Now I’ve done it... Or have I?

Consider the pupil. It constricts in response to light. It widens in response to something we want. But it’s this little thing a few millimeters wide sitting in the middle of a tiny iris, it doesn’t seem to do much for a human.

When we first see young Armitage he has a larger iris than human norm but it’s not ridiculous. There are whites to his eyes. Dr. Katsuo takes care of that and I left out exactly how. After all, debridement of unwanted tissue so the correct genetically modified tissue will grow in its place is also something I’ve done and NOBODY wants to read about that in relation to a person’s EYES. [shudder]

But when we see him again his eyes have been changed. The iris takes over the entire eye, filling the whole thing with jewel-green iris. Like a cat’s eye. Remember, the limit to a pupil’s expansion is the size of the iris. Consider that fuzzy little Void up there and his hunter’s stare. The pupil gets gigantic as he sees something he wants. It can also collapse into the thin slitted pupil we’ve all seen. That is a helluva pupillary response and I will use that to my advantage.

No I’m not saying Armitage has slitted pupils. Humans don’t and the slitted pupil takes too long to evolve. It also isn’t going to confer any evolutionary advantage on Arkanis. Humans are too tall and the macula lutea is round. He has round pupils just like any other human. They just have the ability to expand and contract like a boss.

Such as in the Accommodation Reflex. It’s that thing your eyes do where the pupil contracts as you’re looking at something close in while it dilates to see that same thing at distance. It assists the lens in focusing light on the retina instead of before or after. Those eyes that dilate to turn almost entirely black on a battlefield, taking in every photon of light, changing the focal length of the eye to bring a target into (albeit fuzzy) visibility at half a kilometer distance, will also turn green as the pupil constricts to points into order to read a datapad. That fuzzy target, at least on a well-lit controlled range during marksmanship quals, will be a different color from the background. A white target against a black background will always look like a white fuzzy thing. It becomes a matter of math to trace out the fuzzy edges and aim at the center.

Since so much of his experience is in simulators and on the shooting range Armitage rarely has to compensate for issues in the field. He ‘maths’ his way through all his proficiency quals, from small arms to assault rifles to sniper rifles to small artillery. Until the sympathetic nervous system gets involved.

The human eye dilates when that human wants something. During the heat of battle. Any time adrenaline rises. As part of hunting. During sexual stimulation. That dilation that aids in distance vision will destroy his close-in vision. An actual fight won’t be affected, a neck is about one hand-width wide and Armitage uses knives in slicing motions, it’s not an exact stab. It’s a sweep. His target will gurgle when that sweep connects and with that sound Armitage knows exactly where to grab the back of the head and can bite without worrying about missing. But picking up intelligence? Holding a datapad to his face and reading the thing? Difficult, if not impossible. Luckily this problem has a solution and I already know what it is. I mentioned a unit of stormtroopers known as the Hound’s Pups. I don’t expect him to track Resistance fighters through a festering jungle alone, not even Kylo Ren does that as much as he might like to pretend.

This also means it’s a little dangerous for Armitage to command alone. It explains Ren’s station on the Finalizer. Why he has a dedicated second in Lieutenant Mitaka, possibly promoted from the Pups himself. Yes...

But I’ll not disparage Armitage’s self control any longer. Over time it’s taken for granted. Close up work makes him look normal, almost human. Battle and distance turns those eyes black with something green and feral. It’s a difference that can be ignored by anyone who hasn’t seen him on a battlefield. And really, how often does that happen?

Often enough that Mitaka takes bribes to have bells sewn into the hems of the general’s greatcoats because he thinks Armitage doesn’t suspect him. When the general wants to stalk someone, usually Ren, he gets too quiet for comfort. Oh, the bells aren’t for Ren’s benefit, it’s to warn onlookers that they need to run.

#the Hound of Arkanis #it's full of fanfiction and innanity #doin' the research #eyes #tw: eyes #fanfiction

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twentytwo0one · 5 years ago

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Yautaung

The Yautaung are a cephalopod-like species originating from the planet Yau in the Minoan Wasteland. They maintain an embassy in the Confederation, but are generally uninvolved in galactic matters.

Appearance

Yautaung look very similar to the cephalopods of earth such as squid or octopi, their “body” is comprised of thick tentacles fused together to form a torso and limbs, with the large head on top and running the length of the back being the converging point for these tentacles, and the housing structure for most of the internal organs. Two or more eyes sit on either side of the head, and the spider-like mouth is constantly hidden by 6-8 tentacles protruding around it. Yautaung have limited chromatophores which allow them to change colour, but only in spectrums most other species cannot see. Otherwise they may appear gray blue or purple. Their DNA is extremely diverse, and one Yautaung may not look anything like another, with small spines, extra tentacles, spots or patterns, and other such differences.

Biology

The Yautaung evolved from other mammal-cephalopods like beings that lived and dwelled in the shallow seas close to land on Yau. To escape the very large predators living in the deep oceans of their home, the Yautaung eventually evolved in order to thrive on land, and adopted the convergent, bipedal form that most sapient spacefaring species possess as well.

Yautaung are invertebrates, their entire bodies comprised of flexible boneless tentacles that they use to walk and manipulate objects. The head, which contains all of the major organs, is very large and extends along the “back” of the yautaung to form the dorsal organ cavity. Most of the primary organs lie in the dorsal cavity, which can be actively protected due to their positioning, but are vulnerable from behind. The “body” which consists purely of fused tentacles, is anatomically referred to as the false torso. The muscles in the tentacles that make up the false torso need to be able to support the individual without bones, out of water, and in an upright bipedal position, and thus are incredibly dense. Despite their flexibility, a yautaung tentacle would feel as solid as wood to the touch, which is mirrored by their innate physical strength; most adult yautaung can crush a human femur to powder simply by squeezing it.

Because most of their bodies are muscle, the Yautaung require very powerful circulatory and respiratory systems. To breathe, a yautaung has hundreds of small spiracles lining the edge of the dorsal cavity where it meets the false torso. These spiracles contract and expand to force air/water in and out over a series of and thus possess five hearts. Four brachial hearts compliment the systemic heart - itself large in comparison to those of most other sentients – and are positioned in pairs along the lower and upper portions of the body, acting as boosters and therefore relieving significant stress off the systemic heart.

Yautaung eyes are each trinocular, seeing three different images separately, and six when combined. They also detect fourteen colour wavelengths. While it is difficult for Yautaung eyes to decipher colours that a human can see, they are the only eyes that can see the colours that their chromatophores can output. While to other species would simply see a yautaung as being grey, another yautaung might see another as any one of a number of alien and unknowable colours. On at least one occasion an individual has had their eyes surgically or cybernetically altered to be able to see these yautaung colours; however, as the brain cannot yet be altered in a way that would allow it to process these new colours, the subject would suffer dementia and at worst permanent psychosis.

DNA of a Yautaung is the most diverse of any recorded species, and results in Yautaung looking severely different from one another. Rarely will one encounter one whose tentacles fuse in the same direction as another. Secondary eyes, spines, webbing and a plethora of other features numbering so many that splitting the yautaung into subspecies would be effectively impossible. The most extreme variances could be the presence of an additional pair of arms, or a lack of individual legs in favour of a single column, that can grind across the ground using muscle contractions. The yautaung genome seems to be highly mutative, and even parents with similar features may not have a child that bears significant resemblance to them.

Yautaung reproduce via females generating unfertilized eggs after puberty. Once an egg is developed, a female lays it’s egg which is coated in powerful pheromones, which (prehistorically) drew a male to the egg. Eggs do not have a hard shell, and need to be laid in water. If the male is unimpressive, the female may turn him away and wait for another. The female may also choose not to lay an egg at all, causing it to be broken down inside and used for nutrients. If the male is suitable, the male swallows the egg through a special canal near the mouth, which brings it into a chamberin the upper chest where it is inseminated, the male will then carry it until it hatches. They usually mate for life and are very social, usually living in groups of several families. A Yautaung separated from its own kind will take to frequenting social abodes, similar to primitive shoaling.

Homeworld

Yau is a world 90% coated in shallow seas and deep ocean, orbiting an energetic white star, resulting in a permanent, but thin blanket of clouds. The only land masses are found in tropical archipelagos along the equator. Fossilized land-based fauna found on the bottom of the seas and a massive crater on the southern hemisphere suggests that this was not always the case and that Yau was once a topographically diverse world with many biospheres like Earth.

Science suggests that while Earth-like once, it was considerably colder and it’s poles were significantly larger, until it was struck by a cosmic body with such force that it was released from stable orbit, knocking it closer to its very active star. The chaos of this event wiped out any advanced life on the planet and warmed Yau enough to melt it’s poles completely, flooding all but the tallest mountain ranges. This occurred approximately five hundred million years ago. Life started over on Yau, evolving into massive creatures not limited by space like land-based animals.

Almost uniquely, Yau’s oceans apparently contain trace amounts of vehementium particles. While slight vehementum concentrations in seas and landmasses is not uncommon on worlds with confirmed progenitor ruins, Yau possesses no such remains, though the deepest areas of it’s seas are as of yet unmapped. Yau’s vehementum contamination is slight compared to the sheer volume of it’s oceans, so the presence of the radically contrary element does not appear to have altered the growth of the local fauna, at least not in any way that can be better justified by other zoologic foundations such as abyssal gigantism.

The Minoan wasteland in which Yau resides is in fact named after it’s evident lack of significant progenitor sites. Whether the area does not contain such relics or if they have simply not been discovered yet is subject to interpretation, but the sector receives little attention from the archeological community, as there are many other unexplored reaches of space with much more promising hints to their contents.

Culture and Government

As the first species the Yautaung encountered were the Ashiik, and considering their social demeanor, many Ashiik cultural traits have rubbed off into that of the Yautaung, particularly in fields where there was little before, like the military.

The yautaung government is officially referred to as the Courts of Yau. They follow the recommendations of Elders, each representing a different island on Yau. The Elders decide all proceedings in any given situation on Yau, and due to their conservative nature, their government is very stable. Any actions taken have been analyzed, discussed, and then analyzed again. This innate caution is reflected by their nature of keeping backups and records, a repository of which is kept in a grand library in the capital. The true downside to their governing methods is that if enough research is done, their methods and outcomes will become somewhat predictable.

Outside the courts, Yautaung live in tightly-knit groups each in control of their own island. While they generally mind their own business, they are almost always welcoming to outsiders. Yautaung are not seen particularly often outside their space or off their colonies. Many have difficulty with the prospect of living in areas where there may be very few or no other Yautaung.

While their economy is relatively small, being only about the general size of that of the Humans, it is far better developed. They do not rush developments and frequently make lengthy, century long development plans. Also, they only ever trade in finished goods, having colonies rich in the resources they need to support themselves. This makes any attempt to embargo their space a fruitless endeavor.

The Yautaung as a collective are extremely talented geneticists, having accomplished much even before being introduced into the galactic community. The genetic diversity shared by them and the animal life native to Yau allowed for experimentation and developments not possible for many other species. This aptitude has inevitably carried over to medicine, and Yautaung founded corporations are responsible for many of the galaxy’s most cutting edge medical tech. This applies to both sides of the moral spectrum, an infamous example of which is GenEx Industries, who created the potential for clones to inherit the memories of their hosts. Splicing together specific Yautaung genes allowed for their genetic memory trait to carry over. How GenEx developed this technology would most likely have been through extensive (and illegal) experiments, and there are no public records on the development of this cloning technology. In addition to the taboo nature of cloning, the process of introducing yautaung genes into any clone is an unstable one due to the radical diversity of their species, and will inevitably cause medical complications later in a clone’s life. (Note that the cloning of sentients is not currently possible)

Religion

The polytheistic mainstream Yautaung religion is Zindro, which teaches the Yautaung that they have souls separate from their bodies. When death occurs, the soul leaves the body through the eyes, and it departs for Zeymah, the great underwater city; the body is not prepared in any special way, unless the eyes have been damaged and the soul cannot escape, in which case it is burned instead. Zeymah – the city of the dead – supposedly lies in the deepest, fathomless depths of the global ocean, and is extremely hard to get to as it is guarded by evil monsters. The religion contains at least thirty two deities including Bahlok, the god of land, time, communication, mercy, and funeral rites, Vaal god of destruction, change, revolution and ambition, and Maatim goddess of the sky, rain, love and sadness. It is also host to countless other minor beings such as Meibelmok the soul eater; a beast whose sphere is storms, the unknown, forbidden knowledge, secrets and fear.

While a great many Yautaung are religious, since encountering other space faring species many older ways have begin to die out as younger generations turn to other ways to interpret their place in the universe.

War Doctrine

The Yautaung as a body rarely if not never engage in active combat, and instead prefer to keep to diplomacy. This does not mean however that they are incapable warriors, as they have suffered assaults from organized crime groups, hoping to gain access to their medical technologies or considerable supply of unrefined resources. The Yautaung keep their own small military force, mostly comprised of atmospheric combat vessels –of which they have a considerable preference - and planetary troops. Their space fleets are quite small, and mostly rely on the neighbouring Ashiik for support in that field. The Ashiik will aid the Yautaung in any war they may find themselves in, and the Yautaung will do the same for the Ashiik. They have only ever produced one warship - the Tuanuk - that while the only ship of it’s class, is remarkably well armed. It’s broadside cannons and main gun are all MHD-U and MHD-O beams respectively, and it probably is the most powerful individual ship of its kind to date.

The Yautaung method of organizing their military strongly resembles that of the Ashiik, units are organized not unlike tribal bands organized by locals. The more populous the area, the more well equipped and sizeable the unit will be. Their military is still not an irregular militia however, and again like the Ashiik, those who serve are full time professionals. There is no uniform standardized for troops either, as Yautaung biodiversity would make distribution of one similar suit a difficult undertaking.

Yautaung ground and space forces are generally very limited, relying heavily on the ashiik for support; where they excel however is in the atmosphere. They prefer airpower when dealing with threats, and maintain several flotillas capable of combat in any atmosphere, deployable from carriers in space. Their atmospheric forces are alone capable of defending their homeworld from most threats that get close enough, as the lack of solid land gives them a significant advantage.

Because of their reliance on allies for combat, most technologies used by the Yautaung are utilitarian in nature, and ships are usually designed for support roles next to larger, more front-line capable vessels. The most often used technologies in vessels include fusion thrusters and reactors, radar sensor, weak linear shielding, carbide composite armour plating and almost exclusive reliance on MHD beams for offense.

History

#worldbuilding #headworld #2201 #species #yautaung

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