Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
It’s hard to imagine, especially if you’re using this medium to read these words. What was life like before computers?I’m old enough to recall a world before home computers and smartphones. I remember building dens in the woodlands safely.TV wasn’t great back then, with just three channels at best, and kids’ TV had limited airtime, thanks to…
Mxtx, creating a beautiful and well-rounded female character that appears only briefly: Hey, isn’t it fucked up that this character who is so important in the world of this story and to the people that knew her can only be known to you, reader, through flashback memories because the people in power were willing and able to sacrifice her in their never-ending quest for ultimate dominance? Do you feel the constant grief over what could have been had her potential not been killed in its infancy? Do you understand that you as a reader are mourning in the same way that her loved ones she’s left behind are, knowing that the world has been changed for the worse by her premature death? Doesn’t it suck?
(English-speaking) Mdzs fandom the bane of her existence (probably): Killing women in stories can have no other meaning than that you hate women, so this was a misogynistic choice, actually.
*pats askbox gently* there are more Thermoreceptors?
(I'm sorry ur dome was so hot; I hope its much cooler now!)
My bluff has been called! Hooray!!
I am not a neurologist, a biologist, or a scientist. If anyone with better credentials than "obsessed with emergent properties" contradicts me, listen to them instead.
Cell membranes include little portal proteins that open under certain circumstances based on the shape of the protein and let chemicals into and out of the cell. These portals are useful for all sorts of things: managing water and nutrients, sending messages to nearby cells, serving the whims of tiny intercellular cats. Science hasn't found the tiny intercellular cats yet, but we all know they're there; the existence of a door that can be opened necessarily implies an indecisive feline.
Some protein shapes open up if the temperature is within a certain range. This means that if a cell with that sort of protein in its membrane experiences a temperature in the right range, it will move some chemicals around. This is used to make nerve cells that send a message towards the brain whenever they experience a certain temperature.
Because evolution does all its best work the night before the deadline while on a Code Red Mountain Dew bender, the opened-by-temperature portal proteins are mostly copied from opened-by-a-specific-chemical portal proteins. All of them, in fact, still open for specific chemicals, which means there exist out in the world liquids you can put in a bottle that most animals will instead perceive as "a temperature between 8 and 26 degrees" So things can get a little weird.
Temperature-opening portal proteins:
TRPA1
Opens for temperatures below 12C (not air temperature, skin or body temperature, so you might be kind of in trouble when this happens). Used by hunting snakes to detect where heat isn't so they can find prey. Feels painful in an itchy sort of way.
This one also opens for allyl isothiocyanate. Many plants have evolved to take advantage of the existence of a chemical most animals perceive as itchy pain, especially horseradish and wasabi. Allyl isothiocyanate is harmful to plants, so they keep two separate components in tiny compartments. When an animal bites the plant, the compartments break open their contents mix to create allyl isothiocyanate.
"This plant tastes like itching" is a good defense against almost all animals, but some humans have taught themselves to appreciate the taste of itching.
TRPM8
Opens for temperatures between 8 and 26 degrees. Opens for menthol (peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen) and linalool (roses, orange blossoms, basil). Feels cool or cold.
"This plant tastes like cold" is a somewhat less effective defense against being eaten than "this plant tastes like itching" but it's a more widespread defense because TRPM8-activating chemicals don't harm plants and don't need elaborate two-part storage.
TRPV4
Opens for temperatures from 27-37 C. I'm not sure what this one feels like, or if even feels like anything, since it covers normal human body temperatures. Whatever feeling we get from this one, we're feeling it nearly all the time.
Plants do make a chemical that tastes like this temperature, and it can repel nonhuman creatures with different body temperatures: allicin, the flavour of garlic. Like allyl isothiocyante, it is stored in two compartments inside the plant, and combined when the plant is bitten.
Maybe this is why vampires abhor garlic. There is a feeling that, as humans, we always have. Something we don't notice, something deeper than touch. That feel disappears forever when you become a vampire, except those unbearable moments when garlic returns to you for a fleeting moment the experience of lost humanity.
TRPV3
Opens for temperatures 33-39 degrees. Opens for eugenol, found in cinnamon, nutmeg, bay leaf, holy basil, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Feels like warmth.
Plants with high quantities of eugenol, like holy basil and Japanese star anise, are sometimes sacred to buddhists because they smell nice and bugs don't like to eat them, so you can burn them as incense without worrying about all the little crawly guys.
Humans apparently think food that tastes like "warm" is comforting.
TRPV1
Opens for temperatures over 43 degrees. (The one I was experiencing in the overheated dome, which I had never felt from air before) Opens for capsaicin, the active chemical in hot peppers. Opens for the combination of temperature and acidity of fevers and infected wounds. This one we feel as pain, as burning, as flame.
TRPV1 says: Your flesh is failing, and your doom is very near.
Humanity says: This is incredible. We are going to breed plants that cause this sensation as much as possible, and we will spend thousands of years getting it right. We are going to dry this and powder this and flake it and grill it and ferment it and eat it with everything.
And when we leave earth and go into space, we take hot peppers with us. Without gravity, fluid builds up in nasal passages, and astronauts sort of have colds the entire time they're in space and can't smell food very well. But the Nearness Of Your Doom is not a smell and is not perceived by the nose, so - with their doom always on the other side of ten centimeters of insulated aluminum - astronauts can taste hot peppers. In 2002, Peggy Whitson, commander of the ISS, jokingly refused to let a replacement crew on board until they handed over the hot sauce.
Jaiden: Oh my goodness– WHOA! Whoa– wait– you can't– who's– Well who's this, Bobby? Who's this??? You can't have other Eggs on– you can't have Eggs in- in your– [Bobby breaks the bed] Oh!
Roier: [Laughs] No Bobby, who is that?
Jaiden: Bobby has a girlfriend already? You can't sleep in the same bed as this other Egg!
Roier: Bobby, is this your girlfriend? [Laughs]
A small misunderstanding during the first day of the QSMP Egg event.
[ Full Subtitle Transcript ↓ ]
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Roier: A... a bed. No?
Jaiden: Oh, do we? Does– do you want a bed or do you want a little nest, maybe...?
Roier: Do you want a bed, do you want–
[Bobby places a bed down, which has his Egg model in it already]
Roier: [Laughs in surprise] What? WHAT!
Jaiden: Oh my goodness– WHOA! Whoa– wait– you can't– who's– Well who's this, Bobby? Who's this???
Roier: No, who is this?
Jaiden: You can't have other Eggs on– you can't have Eggs in- in your– [Bobby breaks the bed] Oh!
Roier: [Laughs] No Bobby, who is that?
Jaiden: Bobby has a girlfriend already? You can't sleep in the same bed as this other Egg!
Roier: Bobby, is this your girlfriend? [Laughs]
[Bobby wiggles]
Jaiden: Twins? No wait– no twins, not twins! Girlfriend...?
Roier: Bobby, you're not old enough to have a girlfriend, Bobby. You're too little! No! [Chuckles] He can't have a girlfriend, he's too young.
Jaiden: I don't think– [Laughs] I don't think we were ready for– for this already! Already Bobby having girls over...
So uhhhhhh. No one @ me, but I feel like Jack might be a better therapist than Earth
I'd have to go rewatch the therapy videos she did with Sun to draw a better comparison between her and Jack's therapy styles since it's been a bit and I forget how her therapy sessions went, but I just feel like Jack is saying and doing all the right things, and his "therapy" might be exactly what Sun needs in this current moment
In Turnabout Goodbyes, Maya can barely reach out to Mia, which is a huge insecurity of hers and which results in her deciding to leave for Kurain after the trial
But in Farewell, my Turnabout, she's strong enough to force Mia out of Pearls' body -- Pearls, who is established as an extremely powerful channeling prodigy -- even though she's nowhere nearby and hasn't eaten in days
And in Bridge to the Turnabout, she's able to channel Dahlia for 3 days straight while locked in a freezing cold cave
Maya's an absolute powerhouse when it comes to channeling: the only thing that seems to hold her back is her own self-doubt about her abilities, but when she's in a situation where she can't afford to have that doubt, she's lowkey terrifying