Calling This “extrovert Timeshare”

Тигроснежка и семь котиков

Тигроснежка и семь котиков

based on a true story

"Here, we should also mention the origin of the name "Ukraine. " Of course, this is not a "okraina" [russian] (there is no such word in the Ukrainian language at all - there is "okolytsia"), because in the 12th century, when this name arose, there was not a single state nearby that could call the powerful empire its "okraina" (Moscow, for example, was only founded in 1147). Instead, it is likely that the name "Ukraine" consists of two words: "u" (that is, "in", "inside") and "kraina" (country). This was the designation of the metropolis, or the ethnic lands of the Ruthenians, the owners of the empire of Kievan Rus, without taking into account the colonies. That is, Rus (the empire) minus the colonies equals the U-kraina ("inner lands"). In German, there is also a similar term - Inland (in - in, Land - land, country), which is used as a counterweight to Ausland. The emergence of this name was determined by the then processes of the empire's disintegration and the need for a separate designation of its "non-colonial" territories. But the old name Rus was preserved for Ukraine until the middle of the 15th century, as evidenced by numerous documents and chronicles, and for its separate parts until the 19th (Halychyna) and 20th (Transcarpathia) centuries. And Russia has approximately the same relation to the historical and cultural heritage of Kyivan Rus as its former colony Romania has to the corresponding heritage of the Roman Empire (Roma)..."

(c) Mykhailo Krasuskyi - THE ANTIQUITY OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #62

Brought to you by a marine biologist who has a pen…and has a pineapple…

CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST

Tell me if I’m referencing memes that are too old and watch me not care. Anyway, let’s go over the Sea Pineapple, because I bet you don’t know really what it is, and tbh, I didn’t for a second either. But it turns out it is a type of Sea Squirt, and therefore, of all the invertebrates in the game, we, as vertebrates, are most closely related to this thing. I’ll explain in a minute:

We here on Northern Hemisphere islands are able to dive for this thing all day and night, so if you haven’t caught one yet, just give it some time. Then, when you give your first one to Blathers, it’s put into the big coastal tank underneath the coral reef tank and it just…sits there. Which is totally understandable, considering this animal - yes, it’s an animal - lives a sessile life, meaning it attaches to something and stays there. It also filter feeds, so you see its little siphons opening and closing. 

The Sea Pineapple is a real animal, Halocynthia roretzi and it’s eaten primarily in Korea and less so in Japan, despite the fact that a lot people say it tastes like not-food. But, hey, humans will eat anything.

So, Sea Pineapples are a kind of Sea Squirt, aka a Tunicate, a soft, squishy that sits on the seafloor and filter feeds. But despite this thing not having a face or an interesting lifestyle, the fact remains we’re more closely related to it than we are to the cooler invertebrates, like insects, worms, or octopuses. They belong in the Phylum Chordata with us, the even-more-interesting vertebrates. Now, I’m gonna try REAL HARD not to go off on a nerd-tastic tangent, but this is one of my favorite topics - chordate phylogeny.  

So, what’s a Chordate? It is not synonymous with “vertebrate” although lots of us in the phylum are vertebrates. All animals in this phylum have 5 very distinct features that no other group has, either during our whole lives or part of our lives (that includes larval or embryonic stages). They are:

A post-anal tail, meaning our bodies extend past our anus.

We have a notochord, aka what my professor called “the stiffening rod of the body”. In humans, this is our spine.

A dorsal neural tube that, in us vertebrates, is the spinal cord, the main communication highway of the nervous system.

An endostyle/thyroid gland. 

Pharyngeal slits, which often become gills in adult stages of chordates.

Although the Sea Pineapple doesn’t look like it has any of these features, its larvae do, which puts them in the same phylum as us vertebrates. Wild, huh?And this list of features puts us together with some weird stuff, the weirdest has to be tunicates, as shown by this phylogenetic tree:

^From this site. This should look kind of familiar since a stylized one is on the floor of the fossil section of the museum. I’ll do a special fish-explained to talk about that and how to read one of these. But basically, every node, or intersection of the branches represents the last common ancestor of the groups at the end of the branches. Once you can read these, you start to find out some very interesting, and mind-blowing facts, like, we’re all just derived fish and that birds evolved from dinosaurs and whales are most closely related with hoofed mammals and we’re related to boring tunicates instead of cooler things, like horseshoe crabs. 

And there you have it. Fascinating stuff, no?

Din carrying Grogu properly

Yeeah, Elon lost it. Pay to read....

i think that at this point. at THIS point of Things. you can pretty safely assume that almost no one is Doing Well, so instead of being a real shitlord about tiny problems, maybe instead go out of your way to be kinder and more patient to everyone around you.

or at least fucking fake it.

or at least just be quiet.

«Heroes don't die» is a Ukrainian military slogan. It fuels our spirit and keeps our fallen comrades alive in our hearts and memories. But we must also face the hard truth. In reality, heroes do die. This specific person, or another one, is suddenly gone, leaving a haunting void behind. Thus, the slogan has to remain just that, while we need to remember that heroes die, and they are dying for us. And so, it is our obligation to honor their memory by living our lives with courage and dignity, standing up to our enemy just as fiercely as our heroes did for us.

Ukrainian singer and combat medic STASIK released a new song - the lyrics are painful and the video is hard to watch without tears, but everyone should listen to and see it. The song is translated into 20 languages, so choose yours and watch.

what if vampires are like mosquitoes and only the ladies drink blood

Living through genocide in this day and age is so deeply weird. I cried on the train today while listening to Halsey because I casually decided to go on Twitter and first thing I saw there was the photos of the bodies they found in Izyum. I go on Tumblr and I reblog every post about it in between photos of gorgeous actresses. I go on Twitter and I laugh at memes while thinking about the woman from my hometown the Russians killed and then dumped her body in the central street and no one dared to get her for hours, I`m thinking about the blue and yellow bracelet, I`m thinking about Bucha, I`m trying to imagine just how many it is - 80k dead in Mariupol, I`m thinking about how am I gonna keep living with a hole in my heart, and then I go back to liking pretty pictures online.