Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

...why am I so bloody nervous about getting a painting right my perfectionism doesn't even have the excuse of it being a commission or a gift! It's just a neat concept I want to do justice to and I can take all the time I need doing it??

 

Woo finally getting to the orientation part of a new job! Finally! It's just been interviews and then getting ghosted up until this point. I had to look outside the town to finally get a job. It's a half an hour drive but whatever, hopefully I won't get lost on the way over there again like I did the first time. Also I like this store because they sell ramune. I will not spend my entire paycheck on ramune and snacks...

 

Disappointed no one's spotted the stealth pun in a chapter we posted.

 

https://at.tumblr.com/homestuck-best-girl-tournament/round-1-roster/ a very important tournament

 

speaking of polls, if I may be cringe for a moment: would anyone with a tumblr please vote for Joe Hills here if it's not too much trouble :) the man has been campaigning so hard. he actually streamed on tumblr live. he deserves the W

 

My ferts REALLY like chicken, I put a bowl in with them and Salem spend a good five minutes gobbling it down rather than coming out to play. I'll give them some extra food tonight, he might have been hungrier than usual for whatever reason.

 

Jurassic Park and people calling the dinosaurs genetic chimeras got me thinking; how much dinosaur DNA does it have to have to be a true dinosaur? All living organisms have huge overlaps in their DNA anyway. Does it depend on where in the genome the spliced parts are? Does it depend on whether it looks exactly like a regular dinosaur? If one spliced something else's DNA into a human embryo, would it still be officially a human?

 

there is no universal definition of species and we pretty much make the categories based on vibes with some science thrown in anyways, so honestly... it'll probably just come down to vibe checks with some general guidelines. If I understand GMOs right we already have plants with random bacterial or human-made DNA inside them and they're still called corn, so I think if it makes a small enough genetic impact we'll likely just call it the same thing.

Once we get to more significant physical characteristic changes or function changes then yeah, it gets more complicated. I don't think anyone would call the theoretical result of the chickenosaurus project still a chicken. if a breeding population got established we'd probably go for a new species name for it, I'd guess? maybe just subspecies depending

As for humans... I mean, we literally don't know when to stop calling our species ancestors humans. Generally people call anyone in the genus homo human, but late australopiths obviously have heavy overlap with early homo groups - since, yknow, there is no actual line there is just an endless chain of relatedness going down a gradient.

if we categorized where the cutoff of where organisms needed to be split into different genuses simply based on how similar their DNA is, there could be an argument made for chimpanzees to be genus homo, even! if we wanted to firmly split species based on whether they can make fertile offspring with others, then grizzly and polar bears are the same species, and a ton of songbirds will be put together into one species to boot.

in summary.... species is arbitrary and if we start making significantly genetically modified organisms we will also make arbitrary categories for them.

 

Correct! One of the most common genes to splice into literally anything is actually from a jellyfish: it's handy for geneticists because if you want to figure out if the DNA you were trying to splice in is in there, all you have to do is shine a UV light on it and see if it glows. It's the same fundamental idea whether it's fluorescent zebrafish, rice with a gene taken from a tomato plant that makes it produce extra beta carotene, or sticking the gene for human insulin in yeast so that you can extract it as medication.

And just to make it way messier, this doesn't only happen from humans getting up to mad science; just off the top of my head:

• Some organisms are actually composed of multiple "species"- lichens, for example, are algae or cyanobacteria living symbiotically with a fungus
• Bacteria will just pass little rings of DNA (plasmids) around to each other like it's no big deal
  
• There are whole categories of viruses called retroviruses that stick their own genome into the host organism (this is why chicken pox you got when you were four can randomly flare up into shingles when you're 60, and one reason HIV is so hard to treat), and it's very likely that every single life form on earth is carrying around all sorts of bits of ancient virus
  
• Mitochondria ([meme redacted]) and chloroplasts both have their own DNA completely separate from the rest of the organism they're in, and it's widely theorized that they come from microorganisms that got swallowed up by another microorganism millions upon millions of years ago and just Live There Now
• Rotifers, a type of microscopic aquatic animal that looks like a little cup with spinny hairs around it, will just straight-up pirate genes from basically anything nearby, including bacteria, plants, and fungi

 

Fun fact, this philosophy is discussed pretty heavy handedly more in the world series. The whole first movie's plot is about a genetic mess of a creature who never "existed" in dinosaur times, its more of a monster than a dinosaur. The park is also funded by big corporations (the mon dino is literally named, "Verizon Wireless presents: The Indominus Rex") which is it's own set of morally grey. The trend continues in the second movie with

Spoiler: Major Spoiler

Maisy, a young girl who is a clone, and there's a good chunk of ethics discussing that as well as if she's really a person or not

 

Ugh why are caramelized onions so hard to make?!

 

what's your specific problem? I've been successful at making them before and might be able to help?

 

I'm think i might be slicing them too thin or too fat. My motor skills are shit. Last time I burned them to a crisp but this time I couldn't even get them to brown very much.

 

ime you can caramelize chunky or finely sliced ones. what's helped me is to regularly throw like, a bit of water on them to keep them moist and from burning onto the pan and the water will just vaportate off again. Otherwise it's just 'low heat, patience'
Like, the last time I went and caramelizeda bunch of onions I set aside nearly 2h for it so i could go at really low heat.

 

A TON of recipes just... lie about how long it takes, for some reason? It's super weird. I have seen "saute until the onions start to caramelize, about 5 minutes" more than once.

Slow-cooker is a low-effort option, too- you can just load a huge pile of onions and some butter in and come back several hours later to your entire house smelling like onions for a week, and freeze any you aren't going to use.

 

yeah deadass even with my 'splish some water in there so you can use slightly higher heat' approach it takes two hours to get a good caramelization on them

 

Calbee shrimp chips are really good. Not too sure about this mango coconut milk drink though.

 

Thank god for fanfic writers, one and all. I appreciate y'all so much.

Sincerely, a huge nerd who can't write to save their life

 

I feel you. it's always weird to see so many writing tips and jokes about writing and writers on tumblr since i'm just sitting here like 'i don't write and i have absolutely no urge to work on writing as a skill.' my nerddom takes other avenues.. deeply appreciate those who do, though

 

There are so many types of bread in the world. Pan sobao is so good, kimmelweck is also good. I love bread