Me

Scientists have analyzed earwax to determine that World War II was incredibly stressful – for whales.

BREAKING NEWS

I just learned about a bird species called Golden Plover. Their chicks have an amazing camouflage: their baby fluff resembles MOSS!

LOOK AT THEM! JUST LOOK AT THEM!

...Oh to be a tiny golden plover lying in the moss safe and sound waiting for your mom to bring you some worms...

2,300-Year-Old Plush Bird from the Altai Mountains of Siberia, c.400-300 BCE: this figure was crafted with a felt body and reindeer-fur stuffing, all of which remains intact

This plush bird was sealed within the frozen barrows of Pazyryk, Siberia, for more than two millennia, where a unique microclimate enabled it to be preserved. The permafrost ice lense formation that runs below the barrows provided an insulating layer, preventing the soil from heating during the summer and allowing it to quickly freeze during the winter; these conditions produced a separate microclimate within the stone walls of the barrows themselves, thereby aiding in the preservation of the artifacts inside.

This is just one of the many well-preserved artifacts that have been found at Pazyryk. These artifacts are attributed to the Scythian/Altaic cultures.

Currently housed at the Hermitage Museum.

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

Distracted dining? Steer clear of it!

A new University of Illinois study reveals that distracted dining may be as dangerous to your health as distracted driving is to your safety on the highway.

“Being distracted during meals puts kids at added risk for obesity and increased consumption of unhealthy foods. In this study, we found that noisy and distracting environments affected parents’ actions, and we know that parents set the tone for the quality of family mealtimes,” said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the U of I’s Family Resiliency Center (FRC).

Barbara H. Fiese, Blake L. Jones, Jessica M. Jarick. Family mealtime dynamics and food consumption: An experimental approach to understanding distractions.. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 2015; 4 (4): 199 DOI: 10.1037/cfp0000047

dark academia*: science version

*an aesthetic that revolves around romanticizing university and academia, classic literature, the pursuit of self-discovery, and a general passion for knowledge and learning

opening a lab notebook from decades ago and hearing the soft crackle of the pages, trying to decipher an old lab tech’s cursive handwriting

an entire shelf of old glass specimen jars with peeling and faded labels

someone’s brainstorming flowchart that was left on the whiteboard for so long the ink’s turned permanent

going to science museums on rainy weekends and quiet evenings

spending hours at the microscope staring at your samples because it’s like visiting a whole hidden world

reading papers so old they have hand-written labels on their figures

lab benches that stay forever occupied and forever messy

scattered paper towels with hurried last-minute math equations

equipment from years and years ago that are slowly losing their color saturation, but still work just fine

trying to make your lab notebook legible, but sometimes you just write too fast

walking a little ways off from the group during fieldwork, just to see what’s deeper in the forest

feeling a sense of beauty at dead and broken things–be they preserved samples of a once living thing, or an unusable piece of equipment no one can bear to throw away

walking around with the lab coat unbuttoned so it flows behind you like a cape

journal articles scattered throughout your desk, some in precarious piles, others folded open to a page you had meant to read months ago

1-hour lab meetings turning into 3 hour brainstorming sessions

always an entire wall of flasks, beakers, and graduated cylinders drying in the rack above the sink

sharing articles with colleagues who can’t access them bc fuck paywalls

a hallway filled with light-bleached posters from past-conferences

running multiple experiments at once, and turning to each one right before the timer goes off like a skilled dancer

blowing the dust off of old specimen display cases

bubbling flasks in one corner, a high-tech bench robot in the other corner

bookshelves overflowing with science textbooks and nonfiction, and binders containing data for all your different manuscript ideas (and you have quite a few of those)

walking everywhere with a timer clipped to a piece of clothing, forgetting about it, and having it go off in the middle of a conversation with a professor

Listen. Do it for the aesthetic. If you want to fill an entire 20 dollar sketchbook with anatomy drawings fucling do it. If you wanna get lost in the woods and come stumbling home with a bag of dried mushrooms and bones you go goblin dude. You aren't alive to go to work and hurt!! You're alive because bumblebees bump into little flowers and dandelions only open up in the sun! You're alive because cats purr when you pet them and coffee keeps you up all night!! Do everything for the aesthetic!!

I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back

Paulo Coelho (via itcuddles)