Energy Cannot Be Created Or Destroyed

big lizards

"Megan, Can You Do Me a Favor? Can You Fucking Shoot Me?" by Fall Out Boy

he fell victim to the fuckor

A Wave of Fuckor Wracked My Feeble Body by Fall Out Boy

I feel specifically called out as my name is Megan

shaky exhale

Teamwork..................................................................................

Me, when they made the U-turn:

^ my exact reaction

The Bolshoi has nothing on this choreography.

There is. No. Unskilled. Labor.

Spiders? Hate them but see their use. Mosquitoes? Begrudgingly acknowledge that they like... feed bats. But can anyone explain what the fuck ticks are doing that's helpful??? Because frankly I'm not convinced they're doing anything nice for anyone

ticks are a massive source of protein for the many many creatures that eat them, same as mosquitos. they're integral to the food chain.

also, parasites of all kinds are incredibly important to ecosystems for many reasons: they help keep populations- especially of large herbivores and predators- low and healthy, they help individuals develop immune strength, and they are often integral parts of their food webs.

much of life is parasitic. it's a very successful life-plan and food strategy. dont hold it against them: blood is a really nutritious food and the creatures they target (generally) have a lot of it. it's not their 'fault' they have the capacity to carry even smaller parasites/diseases. that's just how life is

Deer is big creature, has microbe community inside it making it super good at digesting plant, turning plant into easy nutrients.

Small creatures would like nutrients. Deer is too big to eat, hoards all the nutrients. RUDE! Not everybody can be a wolf! Not fair :(

Tick bites deer. Tick takes tiny bit of deer's blood, falls off deer. Tick now contains deer's nutrients

Small creature eats tick. Nutrients in deer go into small creatures.

In this way, deer can become food for spiders, birds, lizards, beetles, ants. It couldn't happen without ticks. They are the portable snack packs of the forest

And not even just when they get eaten by something else, either! The tick also excretes waste and molts an old exoskeleton several times in its life, if it lays eggs then the babies leave thousands of old eggshells behind, and if it evades all possible predators it still eventually dies of old age. One way or another all those deer proteins are recycled by the many ticks, flies, gnats, lice and fleas living and dying for countless generations during the Deer's comparatively tremendous lifespan. It's easy to think of vertebrates like us as just the default neutral citizens of our planet, but the vast majority of life on Earth is microscopic and very short lived. Even a squirrel is on the larger and longer-lived end of our planet's biota, demolishing habitat and hoarding food that would have otherwise been used by millions of tinier lives. So humans might look at a squirrel's parasites and see a bloodthirsty plague torturing a sweet little woodland critter, but in the eyes of nature, they're the ones who evolved to stand up to a gluttonous dragon.

i should not be allowed to make fake warning signs

im having so much fun btw

@hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard

Here it is folks:

My definitive ranking of my least favorite bodies of water! These are ranked from least to most scary (1/10 is okay, 10/10 gives me nightmares). I’m sorry this post is long, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this.

The Great Blue Hole, Belize

I’ve been here! I have snorkeled over this thing! It is terrifying! The water around the hole is so shallow you can’t even swim over the coral without bumping it, and then there’s a little slope down, and then it just fucking drops off into the abyss! When you’re over the hole the water temperature drops like 10 degrees and it’s midnight blue even when you’re right by the surface. Anyway. The Great Blue Hole is a massive underwater cave, and its roughly 410 feet deep. Overall, it’s a relatively safe area to swim. It’s a popular tourist attraction and recreational divers can even go down and explore some of the caves. People do die at the Blue Hole, but it is generally from a lack of diving experience rather than anything sinister going on down in the depths. My rating for this one is 1/10 because I’ve been here and although it’s kinda freaky it’s really not that bad.

Lake Baikal, Russia

When I want to give myself a scare I look at the depth diagram of this lake. It’s so deep because it’s not a regular lake, it’s a Rift Valley, A massive crack in the earth’s crust where the continental plates are pulling apart. It’s over 5,000 feet deep and contains one-fifth of all freshwater on Earth. Luckily, its not any more deadly than a normal lake. It just happens to be very, very, freakishly deep. My rating for this lake is a 2/10 because I really hate looking at the depth charts but just looking at the lake itself isn’t that scary.

Jacob’s Well, Texas

This “well” is actually the opening to an underwater cave system. It’s roughly 120 feet deep, surrounded by very shallow water. This area is safe to swim in, but diving into the well can be deadly. The cave system below has false exits and narrow passages, resulting in multiple divers getting trapped and dying. My rating is a 3/10, because although I hate seeing that drop into the abyss it’s a pretty safe place to swim as long as you don’t go down into the cave (which I sure as shit won’t).

The Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota

This is an area in the Brule River where half the river just disappears. It literally falls into a hole and is never seen again. Scientists have dropped in dye, ping pong balls, and other things to try and figure out where it goes, and the things they drop in never resurface. Rating is 4/10 because Sometimes I worry I’m going to fall into it.

Flathead Lake, Montana

Everyone has probably seen this picture accompanied by a description about how this lake is actually hundreds of feet deep but just looks shallow because the water is so clear. If that were the case, this would definitely rank higher, but that claim is mostly bull. Look at the shadow of the raft. If it were hundreds of feet deep, the shadow would look like a tiny speck. Flathead lake does get very deep, but the spot the picture was taken in is fairly shallow. You can’t see the bottom in the deep parts. However, having freakishly clear water means you can see exactly where the sandy bottom drops off into blackness, so this still ranks a 5/10.

The Lower Congo River, multiple countries

Most of the Congo is a pretty normal, if large, River. In the lower section of it, however, lurks a disturbing surprise: massive underwater canyons that plunge down to 720 feet. The fish that live down there resemble cave fish, having no color, no eyes, and special sensory organs to find their way in the dark. These canyons are so sheer that they create massive rapids, wild currents and vortexes that can very easily kill you if you fall in. A solid 6/10, would not go there.

Little Crater Lake, Oregon

On first glance this lake doesn’t look too scary. It ranks this high because I really don’t like the sheer drop off and how clear it is (because it shows you exactly how deep it goes). This lake is about 100 feet across and 45 feet deep, and I strongly feel that this is too deep for such a small lake. Also, the water is freezing, and if you fall into the lake your muscles will seize up and you’ll sink and drown. I don’t like that either. 7/10.

Grand Turk 7,000 ft drop off

No. 8/10. I hate it.

Gulf of Corryvreckan, Scotland

Due to a quirk in the sea floor, there is a permanent whirlpool here. This isn’t one of those things that looks scary but actually won’t hurt you, either. It absolutely will suck you down if you get too close. Scientists threw a mannequin with a depth gauge into it and when it was recovered the gauge showed it went down to over 600 feet. If you fall into this whirlpool you will die. 9/10 because this seems like something that should only be in movies.

The Bolton Strid, England

This looks like an adorable little creek in the English countryside but it’s not. Its really not. Statistically speaking, this is the most deadly body of water in the world. It has a 100% mortality rate. There is no recorded case of anyone falling into this river and coming out alive. This is because, a little ways upstream, this isn’t a cute little creek. It’s the River Wharfe, a river approximately 30 feet wide. This river is forced through a tiny crack in the earth, essentially turning it on its side. Now, instead of being 30 feet wide and 6 feet deep, it’s 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep (estimated, because no one actually knows how deep the Strid is). The currents are deadly fast. The banks are extremely undercut and the river has created caves, tunnels and holes for things (like bodies) to get trapped in. The innocent appearance of the Strid makes this place a death trap, because people assume it’s only knee-deep and step in to never be seen again. I hate this river. I have nightmares about it. I will never go to England just because I don’t want to be in the same country as this people-swallowing stream. 10/10, I live in constant fear of this place.

Honorable mention: The Quarry, Pennsylvania

I don’t know if that’s it’s actual name. This lake gets an honorable mention not because it’s particularly deep or dangerous, but it’s where I almost drowned during a scuba diving accident.

@plaguedocboi rates holes

I want an osmosis jones sequel where he and drix have to contend with extrajudicial rivals in the form of a bunch of human beings that have shrink themselves really small in order to go into the sick guys body in a submarine

Spiders? Hate them but see their use. Mosquitoes? Begrudgingly acknowledge that they like... feed bats. But can anyone explain what the fuck ticks are doing that's helpful??? Because frankly I'm not convinced they're doing anything nice for anyone

ticks are a massive source of protein for the many many creatures that eat them, same as mosquitos. they're integral to the food chain.

also, parasites of all kinds are incredibly important to ecosystems for many reasons: they help keep populations- especially of large herbivores and predators- low and healthy, they help individuals develop immune strength, and they are often integral parts of their food webs.

much of life is parasitic. it's a very successful life-plan and food strategy. dont hold it against them: blood is a really nutritious food and the creatures they target (generally) have a lot of it. it's not their 'fault' they have the capacity to carry even smaller parasites/diseases. that's just how life is

Deer is big creature, has microbe community inside it making it super good at digesting plant, turning plant into easy nutrients.

Small creatures would like nutrients. Deer is too big to eat, hoards all the nutrients. RUDE! Not everybody can be a wolf! Not fair :(

Tick bites deer. Tick takes tiny bit of deer's blood, falls off deer. Tick now contains deer's nutrients

Small creature eats tick. Nutrients in deer go into small creatures.

In this way, deer can become food for spiders, birds, lizards, beetles, ants. It couldn't happen without ticks. They are the portable snack packs of the forest

What about fleas? I hate those little bugs

I think there's nothing wrong with being disgusted by parasites, it's just an instinct that evolved to stop little guys from taking all your nutrients.

And infectious diseases spread really easily by contact with blood, so the snack packs of the forest are also like public transportation systems for blood-borne pathogens.

But outside of your very understandable desire as an organism to keep your blood inside and pathogens outside, parasites are an amazing and thought provoking aspect of life's diversity.

Wild animals can have dozens of different species of worms and arthropods living on or in them. (Most big animal species even have their own parasites that can only live on that animal.) To the parasite, animals are worlds; a deer is like a planet inhabited by its own fauna, just like deer inhabit the landscape.

Isn't it awe-inspiring that you can go into a habitat and see animals inhabiting it, but each animal IS a habitat with its own animals...

And it keeps going! Parasites often have their own parasites, called hyper-parasites! And hyper-parasites can have hyper-parasites! How many layers of animal are there?!?

Parasites are symbiotic creatures that decrease the fitness of their partner, but "parasite=harmful" is not quite right, since parasitism interlocks the fates of organisms in complex ways. Sometimes a parasite has to spend the first part of its life cycle in one animal, and the second part in another totally different animal. How do they get there? Maybe the second animal eats the first one. The parasite needs this predator-prey interaction to happen to continue life! If the predator turns to other prey, the parasite can't live. But if the predator loses its other prey and has nothing to eat except that prey, well that might seem like a good thing except now there are 27 of you in the same predator's digestive tract, and the predator is now weak and struggles to hunt. If your host starves, you are all dead for certain!

Parasites in a situation with two hosts, one predator the other prey, sometimes might change the prey's behavior to make it easier for the predator to catch. This might be considered helping the predator. Is the parasite "harming" the predator or just taking a cut of the profits when it makes a kill? It's complicated!

Another way to do it is to be a parasite that lives inside a parasite that lives on the outside of an animal, and when the animal grooms itself and bites the ectoparasite out of its fur, the parasite living inside the parasite can now grow inside the host animal.

Parasites' impact on their hosts' behaviors impacts the whole environment! For example maybe a herd of deer likes to browse on the tender shoots down in the swamp, but they do not like the swarms of mosquitoes. By driving off the deer, the mosquitoes help the orchids in the swamp survive. If a bison wallows in the dirt to get rid of parasites, it creates a disturbance that gives rise to a little mini habitat for flowers that can't survive in the tall, less disturbed grass. If parasites make it unhealthy for animals to live crammed in a small area, they might be driven to disperse and move to new habitats, or to have a system of migrating from place to place. If a large animal is itchy and scratches itself against a tree and rubs the bark off, that might kill the tree, which is bad for the tree but great for the woodpeckers that need standing deadwood to hunt for food.

Speaking of woodpeckers, we have recently learned that woodpeckers transmit lichens and mosses to new places! And woodpeckers also were found to harbor freshwater diatoms...which should be found in freshwater streams, but perhaps got onto the bird when it was taking a bath...why does a bird take a bath? Perhaps to get rid of parasites...?

...Basically, everything is so interconnected that a flea could affect an unimaginable number of things. Parasites weave together the ecosystem in ways we barely understand.

Of course, you should still treat your dog or cat for fleas...but that's part of your symbiosis with the dog or cat, so even the space where a flea should be, is a space where organisms are bound together.

something I don't understand is why we make an exception for pathogens. if there's some intrinsic value in the current species of life on earth continuing to exist, why is it a good goal to eradicate a strain of bacteria? why are we excited that we're close to exterminating guinea worm?

With microorganism pathogens, they evolve so fast that we probably couldn't do lasting damage to the ecosystem. The extinction of a strain of bacteria is no more disruptive than any of the wild evolutionary stunts bacteria are constantly pulling.

Death is a neutral part of nature, even extinction is a neutral part of nature, and this isn't contradictory to the intrinsic value of life. Killing an animal is permissible under some circumstances, and that animal individually was a unique event in the history of the cosmos, it was a Life.

Destroying a species could also be permissible, but it would be the absolute gravest, most serious form of taking life. You would have to know what you were doing as fully as that could be known. I think these cases are mainly limited to creatures that are obligate human parasites, they have a relationship with humans and almost nothing else. That is a relationship we're allowed to terminate, because it is OUR relationship, there are no links in it that don't include us directly.

But that's just my opinion

...What about flies? I've heard that they're basically useless, but I don't particularly believe that. I've just never been able to ask and find an answer.

Flies are important in all the ways mentioned above (biting flies in tundra are important for moving caribou from place to place, for example) but they are also really important as scavengers and as pollinators!

Maggots do a really good job at cleaning up rotting corpses, garbage and feces of animals quickly. Without them, our world would be full of a lot more poop and dead bodies, and that doesn't sound like a good or healthy place to live.

It sounds disgusting, but maggots even have an application in medicine to clean up dead and rotting tissue in a wound. The maggots eat dead flesh but won't touch the living flesh.

Flies are pollinators just as much as bees are, and they pollinate some flowers that bees don't visit. For a familiar example, flies are really important pollinators of mangoes. When you eat a delicious mango, a fly did that for you. Thank you, flies.

gotta talk more about maggots bc its super cool

the whole "maggots in medicine" thing is still used! sure, they arent the only way to remove dead tissue, but they work really well and are very cheap!!! if for whatever reason you cant get medical attention and have any necrotic tissue, get some maggots (not just off the ground, there are medical grade maggots out there that are ideal) and sprinkle those bad boys on there! theyll nibble off all the bad tissue and leave the healthy parts of you alone!!!

that said, be careful if you find or get non-medical maggots. some people can actually have an allergy to them, and they do carry diseases like salmonella (im pretty sure thatll only transmit if you eat them, but dont quote me on that). if you need maggots for something but cant get medical grade, reptariums usually have em

I think it's also important to understand that ONLY flies stand between us and a world littered with stinking rotting corpses. I know everyone talks about vultures and other large scavengers as keeping the world clean, but they're only complementary to the activity of maggots. Flies find absolutely every single dead body left on land unless it's sealed completely airtight or frozen solid, the flies lay thousands upon thousands of eggs and then the maggots clean every tiny microscopic scrap of soft tissue from the skeleton. Vultures, opossums, rats, coyotes, and even other scavenging insects simply are not equipped for that total deep-cleaning process. They can all come by and eat their fill of everything they can reach and there will still be plenty of gunk clinging to those bones that only maggots could have taken care of. And while maggots take just days to do their job, microbial activity alone can take months, during which that gunk is breeding some of the deadliest pathogens on the planet. If carrion-eating flies disappeared overnight things might go fine for a little while, but every single animal that ever dies on land or washes ashore would take longer to rot away than it has for most of the history of life on Earth, slowly but surely piling up quicker than anything could eliminate it all. In just a couple years, there'd be enough overlooked rodent corpses alone that you could smell their stench wafting from every meadow, forest and mountain in the world. And by the time you could smell it, you'd possibly already have anthrax, which is one of the soil microbes that surges in an older corpse.

worst part about getting angry is how much it makes you want to be mean

sorry i said something dickish. a few mildly frustrating things happened to me in succession and it turned me evil

i used to work for a nature center and we would constantly have wild owls come and call out to the owls in their cages and try to 1.) get them to follow them or 2.) they were looking for a mate

in the spirit of this post: when you live in areas with wild horses, the number one culprit for horse theft is actually other horses, because the young stallions that get chased out of the herd wanna start their own, and oh, look, look at all those cute mares in just,,,,a fenced off grassy area,,,how easy would it be to lure them over the fence,,,like some four-legged yodeling pied piper,,,

i think about this a lot

I really do think about the editing of this video all the time

in the topic of world heritage posts

My favorite video on the entire internet!!

I am in love w the way pre 2000s films have that hazy feel to them. hd honestly kills the vibe

I think that’s one of the reasons why “period” media that’s marketed off the Aesthetic sometimes bothers me.......like they get the music, the clothing, the cars......and yet it always feels like something is missing

like,

vs

or even compare the early x files to the reboot

something is just lost with the crispness

someone in the tags said early spn vs new supernatural and tbh 100% yes !!

vs

I never realized how much I missed the grainy undersaturated filing ...... “good lighting” and sharpness strike again

Seasons 1-3 were shot on 35mm film

4-15 were all shot on digital cameras, a change that the network insisted on

Yeah the exact thing that changed is that all the old stuff was recorded on film and all the new stuff was recorded on digital media.

i was going to say the film thing and the someone brought up supernatural and i was like "nah" and then @aphony-cree out here dropping that bomb.... in *2005,* to *2008?* there was a show shooting on film???? god you guys MOST shows went though this transition in the 90s how the fuck was SPN on FILM

In the 2000s dramatic shows had a good shot of convincing networks to let them use film. The network still had film cameras they’d bought and maybe hadn’t gotten enough use out of before the switch to digital. Most dramas can’t be shot entirely in the studio, they need to go on location, so it made sense to let them use the older cameras while the new expensive digital cameras stayed in the studio where they were safer

Supernatural wanted the 35mm film aesthetic and hated when they were forced to switch to digital

They just recently released a 4K version of Lord of the Rings and they’re so Crisp. None of those soft fantasy vibes

one of my least favorite things about these 4k updates to films (especially ones that used actual film) is that they also go and try to do color correction. like there’s a REASON that some scenes are heavily blue saturated. that wasn’t purely an effect of using film, but also a choice during the editing process. color is just as important to a movie as anything else.

it’s the exact reason why the matrix was shot with blue heavily filtered out to give that greenish-gray appearance, which added to the feel for a grungey dystopian machine-ruled future. The 4k version of it still has that there for the most part, but you can tell they did some color correction too and it throws off the entire vibe.

not to mention 4k updates of older movies REALLY makes the CGI stand out in a bad way and often times reveals imperfections in makeup that they knew, at the time, wouldn’t be noticed once everything was edited and it hit the big screens.

There's something a theatrical costumer told me about, the 10 foot rule. As long as the costume can pass muster from 10 feet away, it's good enough. Too sharp attention ruins the illusion.

Whats that quote about how the flaws/inadequacies of a medium are what will be missed and replicated as soon as they're obsolete? IE record static (lo fi)