Kids say the darnest things! (Source)
Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions
Holy shit. I have ALWAYS thought the people around me were being unconscionably intrusive and power-playing in their starter conversations and they told me I was antisocial and oblivious to culture norms. Turns out, maybe I’m just from a different culture.
Huh. This is really interesting.
I’m disabled, and it’s really uncomfortable to field that question about work in a social setting. (”Why no, random person at the yarn store, I don’t want to tell you about that, or about the nature of my disability”.)
I like his
“So how do you spend your time?”
question better.
The Bestiary: Scaly-Foot Gastropod
These are diamond-tipped indenter heads. They are used to inflict ludicrous pressure upon various shit in order to measure the hardness of said shit. Recently, one of these was used to measure the hardness of a certain animal’s shell, and, instead of crushing the ever-loving fuck out of it, it found serious resistance.
The aforementioned animal is a snail.
Let me spell this out for ya. There is a snail that can resist the onslaught from an industrial-grade diamond applied with the pressure of several metric fucktonnes. A. Snail. That. Can. Resist. A. Diamond. Indenter.
Just imagine stepping on one of these guys. Instead of breaking their shells like those of usual snails, you’d break your own fucking ankle.
Jesus trilobitic Christ.
Today’s Episode: the Scaly-Foot Gastropod
Just look at this little piece of shit. Look at it and say to my face it doesn’t look like a tank.
What we’ve got here is the rather lamely-named scaly-foot gastropod, also known by the considerably more badass-sounding names of iron snail and Chrysomallon squamiferum. The SFG hails from the deep-sea thermal vents known as black smokers, deep-sea vents from which water gushes constantly. That water, by the way, originates from below the mantle.
The proximities of black smokers are perfectly lightless, unforgiving badlands, with water rich enough in poisonous sulphuric chemicals to perform the chemical equivalent of curbstomping on any “superior” lifeform that dares stick it’s overspecialized, prissy ass down there, heat up to 450 degrees Celsius (one thirteenth of the temperature of the Sun’s surface) and pressures that could turn any land-dwelling scum into a Flatlander within seconds. If creatures want to survive here, they must either be hyper-effective murder-machines, or damn nigh unkillable.
The SFG’s predators, such as venomous, killer cone snails with bionic harpoon guns evolved from their own “teeth”, and car-wrecking carnivorous crabs that kill snails by pressing down on their shells for days with jagged ultra-hard pincers specifically designed to do this belong in the first category.
The SFG itself belongs in the second.
Hoooly shit does it ever.
The unkillability itself is obtained by using the chemosynthetic bacteria lurking in its glands to absorb and mineralize the poisonous iron-sulphides the water is overabundant with, making them non-poisonous for the snail. It then coats its shell with the minerals, constructing an unique three-layer structure no other gastropods possess. None.
To sum it up, the outer layer, used to block the bulk of the attack, is made up of greigite (Fe3S4), a ridiculously hard mineral. Then comes a middle layer of squishy organic matter purposed to absorb the shock of impacts, dents and blows. Finally, an inner layer of aragonite (CaCO3), designed to prevent asshole crabs from sticking their nasty claws into the shell and picking it apart splinter by splinter.
How effective is it? Well, this armor is so much better than what we puny humans possess that the U.S. Army is actively conducting research about it with the hope of developing new armor using the same build. Yes, this shell is so unbreakable that it caused the a military to lose their heads over a goddamn sea snail. Go figure.
Also, according to biologists researching the SFG, if we covered oil pipes with the stuff, they could easily shrug off damage done by such trivial things as fucking icebergs,
Not bad from a snail, I say.
But that’s not all! Look at it again.
There is a reason it’s called Scaly-foot Gastropod.
Those are scales. Made out of iron minerals.
Iron minerals that are poisonous and magnetic.
The scales are there because of the tooth-harpoon-hurling killer snails. Namely, they serve to deflect the harpoons entirely. Deflective iron scales. On a snail.
Holy crap.
So let’s sum it up, shall we? There exists a snail that forges itself a magnetic armor made out of poisonous iron ore to fend off killer crabs and venomous sniper snails that hunt it in its habitat of a vent leading to the Earth’s mantle.
Oh, and they don’t really eat anything, relying on their chemosynthetic bacteria for sustenance instead. In layman’s terms, that means that the snail keeps itself running by oxidating the sulphides in the water, all of which are lethally poisonous to most lifeforms, including the snail itself. The only reason it survives is that the bacteria chemosynthetize the sulphides, enabling the snail to quite literally live off of poison.
This molluscoid tank is ridiculously metal in more ways than one.
I LOVE this sort of thing and holy SHIT is this amazing <3
That’s totally a steel/poison type pokemon.
Bauer-Ross headed back to the Shoppers the next day with her receipt and says the manager offered a full refund, or exchange. She accepted an exchange under the condition that she could open the bottle in the store. When she did, she says it was also filled with pasta.
The flummoxed store manager then snatched a third bottle off the shelf and popped the cap, only to find more dried penne. A fourth bottle yielded a similar result.
ive been laughing uncontrollably about this story for a good five minutes or so
you know at first the manager’s just thinking she took out the pills and added the penne, and when she opened the second bottle in the store his mind just went
it wasn’t her?
My first suspicion would have been she did it too.
An exchange would be a surprise.
But this? What the hell.
Holy shit. I’m cackling.
Those vitamins were….
Impastas. 😂😂😂
Q appearing in Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Hello, Picard. I am an omnipotent space god powered by obnoxiousness and stupid games, and I have come to put the entirety of humanity on trial for crimes against existence.”
Q, appearing in Star Trek: Voyager: “Hello, Janeway. I have developed a taste for Starfleet captains. I want to make a baby with you.”
I love the implication that at some point during next gen, Q developed a taste for Picard
I mean…
95% of his motivation is “I want Picard to pay attention to me!”
he just really loves captains idk
ok but what if like. werewolves transform under the full moon but theres just this one and by day hes a big tough guy and then when he transforms hes a tiny dog. just fucking. just fucking turns into the tiniest, fluffiest dog
imagine that howling at the moon
imagine
Truly a ferocious predator.
And lastly: (He’s the pack leader obviously)
the big wolves are his younger sisters
Okay I’ve literally reblogged this prob a hundred times but it’s the best post ever so here we are again.
…do we know about Big Fifi? We Do, right?
if anyone outside of tumblr ever asks me what it’s like to have a semi-popular blog I’m going to tell them about the time I made a post that SIMPLY AND CLEARLY ONLY said I like how hotels smell like pools and that I feel peaceful walking through their hallways and it literally branched into three very confusing discussions that are STILL going to this day, years later, which are:
- pool employees Very Aggressively informing me that being able to smell a pool means chlorine levels are too high and I shouldn’t like that
- hotel employees Very Aggressively telling me hotels aren’t peaceful for THEM and I should be more considerate of them when I say I find hotels peaceful
- people??? angrily explaining to me that any time I’m in a hotel there is probably a victim of human trafficking in one of the rooms so I shouldn’t romanticize hotels.
and that about sums up any experience I’ve had with a post that gets too many notes tbh it’s probably best if everyone would stop reblogging my posts forever
I am crying what the fuck is happening on this hell site any more!!!!
i am crying what the
fuck is happening on this
hell site any more
^Haiku^bot^8. I detect haikus with 5-7-5 format. Sometimes I make mistakes. | @image-transcribing-bot @portmanteau-bot | Contact | HAIKU BOT NO | Good bot! | Beep-boop!
*in a haunted house* *walls start bleeding and spell ６ ６ ６*
*pulls out sharpie and makes it ６9 ６9 ６9*
*wall bleeds just a bit more below it spelling out ｎｉｃｅ*
winterfireice