#the evolution of trust

[sourfall]

"If you cut Dr. Weir out of the loop, you'll only alienate the people whose trust and respect she's earned. Including me."

What a difference a few weeks/months? in an isolated intergalactic outpost can make for our boy Johnny. ♥️

1x13 Hot Zone ---> 1x20 The Siege II

As requested by @mylittleredgirl ♥️

#sga #stargate atlantis #sparktober #john x elizabeth #the evolution of trust #elizabeth weir #john sheppard #sparky #sourfalledit

[odielikefromgarfield]

HEY! HI! You should play this game! Its called The Evolution of Trust and was made by Nicky Case

https://ncase.me/trust/

Why? Because

1) its short (i played it at my desk at work shhh dont tell)

2) it is about the evolution of trust and its so interesting and insightful and genuinely my favorite thing

3) it has a sandbox mode to conduct your own experiments on trust and the different situations trust can either flourish or diminish in

if you like learning about human connection/interaction and/or are looking for answers about how you can change all of this (as in, everything really) i highly suggest playing and really thinking about what it teaches and how you can apply it to your every day life

#the evolution of trust #psychology #social psychology #social science #sociology #anthropology #human behavior #nicky case #i just really like this its so interesting

[minoruru]

Life cycle

omg I never posted thiiiiis

My client wanted a commission for the life stages of the Mind Flayer and I feel very honored that they trusted my abilities to interpret it T o T so I'm super grateful, I learned a lot in the process and my client really liked it so I'm very happy with the result! Hope you like it as well 💖✨

#art commissions #dnd art commission #dnd art #mind flayer #mind flayer commission #mind flayer evolution #elder brain #illithid tadpole #srslt tysm for trusting in my artwork T T

[jays-supersonic-dynamo]

was very suddenly struck by a pokemon that arin would TOTALLY HAVE

#my art #fanart #ninjago #lego ninjago #ninjago dragons rising #arin ninjago #pkmn au #and he would evolve it into an appletun #not only bc its a pie pokemon but also because its the best applin evolution #trust me #also his meinfoo from last time #and a pawmo? just bc i thought it would fit #them being monotype trainers is a suggestion/not required #but i like the idea of arin having fighting type pokes. idk #btw. meinfoo is very happy about this development too. arin is surprised how little no one else can read her — isnt it obvious?

[chimaerakitten]

Malaria, Sickle-Cell, and Dragons in the Temeraire Universe

so I've been thinking about sickle cell all day because of the very cool real-life FDA crispr treatment approval news, and also I'm just about done rereading empire of ivory so thusly it is time to write the sickle cell/malaria/dragons/benefits of human-dragon mutualism breakdown I mentioned ages ago.

Standard disclaimer that I am not in fact anywhere near an expert on this, this is mostly recall from ANTH 102/215 classes I took five years ago, the info is very simplified and possibly somewhat out of date. I'm doing some quick checks and I write this but only enough to make this an appropriate fantasy novel fandom post, not enough to make it actually reliably informative. I do have a couple citations, but mostly for the parts I'm lifting straight out of a class assignment I wrote, and they're a short documentary hosted on YouTube and the textbook for the class. also none of my links are live because I want this fandom post to actually show up in the fandom tag lol.

second disclaimer is I'm starting at the basic obvious stuff because I genuinely have no idea how much most people know about this and better safe than confusing.

Intro and Background

So the first thing to know about any of this is that human genetics for the most part to not operate on mendelian inheritance. So the punnet squares in high school biology that did human hair or eye color as basic dominant/recessive one-gene traits were totally lying to you. Like they're a teaching tool for a very simple model that works well enough but they're not accurate. Most human phenotypes are way way more complicated genetically than that.

That said, there are exceptions. Mendelian traits (Characteristics that are influenced by alles at only one genetic locus) do exist in humans, a number of them being related to genetic diseases. The list in the ANTH 102 notes I just dug up was: Wet (dominant) or dry Earwax; Albinism; Brachydactyly (dominant); Blood type (ABO, not the positive/negative part); Hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome (BRCA-1, BRCA-2, unknown genes); Huntington’s disease; Lactase persistence (dominant); and Sickle-cell disease (recessive).

So the sickle cell punnet square looks like this for two parents who both have one copy of the sickle cell gene:

Sickle cell is a very painful and life threatening disease, (That's why the FDA approving a crispr treatment for it allowing patients to be their own bone marrow donors is very exciting.) and from an evolutionary perspective, one that very often prevents people from reproducing. It's also not strictly dominant/recessive, in that people heterozygous for sickle cell can have some symptoms like the possibility a sickle-cell crisis triggered in low-oxygen situations (high altitudes, intense exercise, etc).

So one might think that Sickle cell would be a vanishingly rare disease, since having it can be deadly and even having the trait can in some cases cause problems. Only it's not rare by genetically inherited disease standards, not at all.

And to make a long story very short, the reason is malaria.

Malaria

People who are heterozygous (possessing one sickle cell gene and one normal gene) for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. In areas of the world without a high incidence of malaria historically, there is a strong selection against the sickle cell gene, (Biointeractive Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia, 9:33) but in areas with malaria, both having sickle cell disease (homozygous HbSS) and not having the trait at all (homozygous HbAA) are selected against. People with sickle cell were historically less likely to reproduce, and people who were not resistant to malaria were more likely to die of malaria and also not reproduce. Because being heterozygous with sickle cell is selected for, the gene persists in the population.

The implications of that are best summed up from this map that I just stole from Britannica.com:

I dunno if the percentages on that second one are accurate tbh, other infographic maps I'm looking at give different ranges. but sill, you get the gist about how common it is in equatorial Africa. In the modern United States Black children are much much more likely to be born with sickle cell than white children—the genes don't just go away when the threat of malaria is removed. (And yeah, that's a historical consequence of the slave trade.)

There's some other stuff wrapped up in here too about bio-cultural evolution: There's indications that malaria was not a “significant problem until humans abandoned food foraging for farming” (Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B.). Humans cleared away the forest, which had kept the soil absorbent. Without the vegetation, more water built up on the surface, forming stagnant puddles which were a perfect environment for malaria-causing mosquitoes to thrive, thus creating the conditions for sickle cell anemia to be advantageous. Farming creates caloric surplus which is great for humans, but it also changes the environment in ways that can be detrimental. Malaria is one way, creating the conditions for other epidemic diseases to thrive is another, etc. etc.

But if you've read this far you're probably going "Chi, you promised this would be a fandom post but so far this has been a serious and kind of sad post about disease. when are you going to get to the dragons?"

The Dragons

So the first time malaria comes up in the Temeraire books is in Throne of Jade, when a bunch of the sailors on the Allegiance come down with "malarial Fevers."

Jane, I must ask you to forgive the long gap in this Letter, and the few hasty Words that are all by which I can amend the same now. I have not had Leisure to take up my pen these three weeks—since we passed out of Banka Strait we have been much afflicted by malarial Fevers. I have escaped sickness myself, and most of my men, for which Keynes opines we must be grateful to Temeraire, believing that the heat of his body in some wise dispels the Miasmas which cause the ague, and our close association thus affords some protection. But we have been spared only to increase of Labor: Captain Riley has been confined to his bed since almost the very first, and Lord Purbeck falling ill, I have stood watch in turn with the ship’s third and fourth lieutenants, Franks and Beckett. Both are willing young men, and Franks does his best, but is by no means yet prepared for the Duty of overseeing so vast a Ship as the Allegiance, nor to maintain discipline among her Crew—stammers, I am sorry to say, which explains his seeming Rudeness at table, which I had earlier remarked upon.

I do not know enough about what people thought about malaria in the 19th century to be 100% sure that this is actually malaria, but I think Novik wouldn't want to confuse her readers by calling something malarial that isn't you know..malaria. So I'm going to assume thats what it is. Google is not giving me figures on malaria survival rates before modern medicines for it which is driving me kind of nuts and means I can't say how lucky Riley and Purbeck were to survive with apparently no complications, but that's not the point here anyway. The point is the comment about the aviators not getting sick.

And not only (mostly) not getting sick, but not getting sick even though they aren't actually always near Temeraire. Laurence for example has been working watch shifts near constantly because he's the only one left on the ship who knows what he's doing. That means probably less read & cuddle time than is normal for him and Temeraire, and yet—no malaria.

We modern readers (and Novik) know that malaria is not caused by "miasmas" but by parasites carried by mosquitos. And lo and behold when we get to Empire of Ivory we get:

Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, “Laurence, there is someone coming, there,” and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.

So yeah, the dragons are keeping the mosquitos away. I know fuck all about why—it's probably not heat since you know, mosquitos like warm blooded organisms, but maybe it's an oil or a chemical or some artifact of the way some of them can breathe fire that's present in all dragons or something, they're described as smelling weird a few times, so who knows. If it's a substance like an oil in their skin that could explain why the aviators don't get sick even when they're not nearby, since they could have some on them from contact, but that's just speculation. The point is not the mechanism, just that it's happening.

The Point

This whole post grew out of a throwaway comment I made about the benefits of mutualistic symbiosis with dragons from the human perspective in that one post about how the series has some interesting stuff obviously going on psychologically/biologically. The point of going in-depth on malaria and sickle cell is to show how this is really impressively solid worldbuilding in relation to the Tswana.

See, Empire of Ivory describes locations that seem like they're in modern day Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, regions which will have had long-term problems with malaria-causing mosquitos. That's not the densest area for sickle cell, but still definitely in the region where malaria would have exerted selective pressure.

Selective pressure which, in a universe where just being around a dragon is going to drastically reduce malaria rates, is going to leave dragon-friendly populations a lot healthier than dragon-unfriendly ones. A community that has a dragon stay every night and work alongside humans during the day is going to have a lot less malaria even without the sickle cell resistance than a community which has no dragon. And considering that malaria is bad enough that sickle cell genes persist despite it also having a high chance to cause a deadly disease, whereas a dragon that's a fully prosocial member of the community is not going to cause more death and instead will probably help with defense and create more caloric surplus (at the cost of consuming most of that surplus) a dragon is just obviously the better option. From there, it's extremely easy to see how the Tswana in the series could develop such a dragon-centric culture and have it be so wildly successful. The dragons provide fertilizer, the dragons allow for fully domesticated elephants, and the dragons render malaria—one of the deadliest diseases in history—nearly a nonissue. Of course they're family.

Citations:

Biointeractive. (2014, August 26). Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia - HHMI BioInteractive Video. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbhvl2nVNE

Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B. (2017). Anthropology: The Human Challenge (15th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.

#Temeraire #it’s more bio-cultural evolution #wikipedia claims that malaria may have killed 50-60 billion people through history but I do not trust that citation AT ALL #regardless its still one of the deadliest killers ever #the kitten rambles #malaria #sickle cell anemia #Artemis if you read this I am sorry for the butchering I made of some anthropology concepts

[raayllum]

Rayllum + trust

#this shit Killed me #pretty sure there's an instance of trust on her end in 5x04 but #i wanted to focus on his evolution first #theme: trust #rayllum #tdp spoilers #s5 spoilers #s1 #s2 #s5 #1x03 #1x06 #2x02 #5x01 #rayllum spoilers #arc 1 #arc 2 #mine #compilation #tdp callum

[isopodluvr]

i KNOW this is a bug blog but i wanna talk ab one of my fav guys ever.,.,

Acanthostega !!!

theyre SO goofy!! appeared in the late devonian, this freaaaky thing has EIGHT DIGITS PER HAND!!! it has limbs but CANNOT bear its own weight, stuck in the waater.

i just love these guys so much <33

#next post WILL be about isopods. #trust!! #ecology #prehistoric #natural history #evolution #paleontology #fossil #acanthostega #devonian

[spacedlexi]

so often i see people try to downplay violet and minervas relationship like it wasnt Real enough or was some Inferior Romance that her relationship with clementine could Never compare to, and i find it so annoying and boring

she LOVED minerva!! and its okay that she did!! she was her first love!! childhood best friends turned girlfriends!! seeing her being so heartbroken and miserable about what happened to minnie, how deeply and desperately she missed her, hugging that bed frame so pathetically. but clementine makes her CARE again. makes her LOVE again. slowly violet becomes comfortable with the idea of opening her heart up to people again, after trying so hard not to because the pain of losing people she cared about was too much to bear (especially when she blamed herself for them being gone)

then she learns minnie didnt die. shes falling in love with clem while grappling with the fact that minnie might still be out there??

then she meets minnie in the woods. but minnie has changed just like she has. theyre both different people now. and slowly violet is forced to come to terms with the fact that the person she loved so deeply isnt that person anymore??

violet at the beginning mourning minerva and blaming herself, to shooting her to save clems life. she LOVED minerva once, but she doesnt like the person she is now. and shes not gonna let her hurt anyone else she cares about. shes done mourning her by the time they get to the bridge, only crying out for tenn

like idk i just find their relationship evolution to be so interesting and sad as shit. the fact that they once loved each other so much and it has now come to this?? but violet makes her choice and she Chooses clementine, because she admires and loves clementine, probably similar to the way she used to admire and love minerva if the way she talked about her is any indication

i just think "i never thought i would ever feel this way again" is way more interesting than "wow minnie Never made me feel like This"

#violet makes minnie a stronger character literally Just by being there #the way vi and minnie and clem all bounce off each other is so fucking good #CLEM SLEEPING IN MINNIES BED IS NOT AN ACCIDENT #clem has essentially replaced her. and minnie is seething about it. because she wanted them all to follow her to the delta #but instead theyre following clementine. who she sees as a threat to their lives. when in reality the real threat is her and the delta #now its minnie who is sad and lost and doesnt know how to grapple with it #instead doing what she can to save herself. even if it means hurting the people she cares about #and violet HATES THAT!! and shes willing to fight to save the people she loves #even if it means hurting someone she used to care about more than anything #she places that shot so perfectly. she doesnt WANT to hurt minnie. but she wasnt gonna let her hurt clementine either #she may have loved minnie once. partially blames herself for what happened to her. but theyre both different now. and she loves clementine #LIKE IDK that evolution is just so good and makes the clemvi romance even more strong??? violet knows Exactly what and who she wants #so by downplaying the vinerva romance it inherently makes her choice to choose clem weaker?? #the more she loved minnie the harder that choice was. and she chose clementine #anyway this is why the clem vi minnie boat fight makes me bark like a wild beast #either i see people try to downplay her love for minerva OR they overhype it and act like she never got over her #when her getting over minnie is the whole point!! taken vi trusted her bc she LIED to her about sophie!! and clem broke her trust #god shes so heartbroken and confused in that cell get her out of there!!!!! vi i'll save you every time!!!!!! #thinking about clemviminnie instead of working what else is new #twdg #violentine #vinerva

[bloodgulchblog]

Ooooooh you want to read and/or listen to the audiobook of The Mona Lisa by Jeff Vandermeer and Tessa Kum so bad oooooooohhhhhhh

(It's the best Flood horror story in Halo please believe me, fair warning the audiobook is 3.5 hours you WILL need to take a break but it's so worth it it's so good it's so well-performed, Holter Graham does some of the best audiobook work in Halo)

#yes there is a motion comic version on youtube that's about an hour but trust me #trust me #the mona lisa #halo: evolutions

[wayti-blog]

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

#martin luther king jr #mlk jr #quote #faith #inspirational #purpose #growth #learning #life lessons #next level #stages of development #levels of consciousness #evolution #soul #spirit #eternal life #soul path #trust #love

[goldkirk]

I opened Pinterest for the first time in months.

That made me realize a lot about how bad I was actually doing and how much of a Waffle House Index use of Pinterest is for adult me, apparently.

I hadn’t realized it had grown that foundational to me in a healthy-brain-exercise-and-hobby-joy way. Nice to know moving forward! It’s another sign I can keep track of and use to spot correlation/indicator patterns earlier my behavior.

I love this kind of thing, it makes me so excited!

#personal data hacking is my passion #someday I’ll tell a story about the most notable times I tracked things or hacked my own mental processes from childhood to now #including the fear of spiders and bed wetting and behavior changes and posture and heart rate and cursive and putting kitchen items and #trash away as soon as I’m finished using them instead of never ever or ages and ages later #I’m so proud of that #you have to give it time and still commit. chaining thoughts and routines and behaviors really works #we are not separate brains and bodies and external environments #anyway I’m gonna go haha I used up he last of my energy burst on Discord and here and I need to go rest and lie on the floor and probly doze #love you all be back soon bye mwah! #add to journal #trauma evolution #my Waffle House index #this is going to be a fun new tag I’m so going to have fun with this and I bet it’ll be a helpful example reference for other people too #more than just for future me! #so excited so proud of myself so happy so grateful for hope about me really trusting that my ability and my behavior and my performance #are able to and going to yes keep getting better #long many-milestone path-journeys of potential #like when I was a little 6-7 year old kid-team athlete looking ahead at a concept of a future with me over time getting #stronger and cleverer and faster and slicker and calmer and even happier and more and more capable and able to accomplish! #a gift. all this time I didn’t think I’d have and have been living anyway is such a gift. #knowing that I truly have future time to grow and explore and change and improve in even though I still can’t FEEL or IMAGINE that future #time yet. also a gift. #the time I will one day realize I can imagine a future and imagine myself alive? will be a gift. #breath is a gift. experiencing life is a gift. other life is a gift. rhythm is a gift. motion is a gift. awake is a gift. color is a gift. #such a great expanse. all of it new. all of it eternal. all of it me. all of it nothing I’ve ever known before. all of it all of it #all of it. gifts. #gonna go have floor time now. this would be such a nice time to re-re-regain my ability to cry! #mwah I love you future me. take care of your hand and thank u for writing all this down 💛 #hey little star whatcha gonna queue? #my poetry

[fiftysevenacademics]

Avocado sex is wild:

"The avocado flower has both functional male and female organs. The male floral organ, which produces pollen, is comprised of the anthers and stamens. The female floral organ is comprised of the stigma (which receives the pollen), style and the ovary. The flowers are small (10 mm diameter). The flowers are usually only open for 2–6 hours, then close and open again for 2–6 hours on the second day. When a flower opens for a second time, it produces pollen and the stigma is not receptive. Flowers then close and remain closed. Flowers will usually be one sex in the morning, closed in the middle of the day and the opposite sex in the afternoon. The timing of the sex phases can be quite defined, but environmental conditions will affect the timing and duration of the male and female phases. The mature tree can produce in excess of a million flowers during the flowering period."

#avocados #fruit #pollination #gardening #i have no idea how a tree can actually pollinate itself this way #I'm just trusting evolution that our tree is gonna produce fruit this year #my stuff

[novaraptorus]

“The pro-locomotion Deep State will try to tell you that it’s somehow ‘backwards’ and ‘limiting’ to stay rooted in a single position. Of course, these ‘Vertebrates’, as they call themselves, are just immature hippies who don’t understand basic biology and refuse to grow up.” - Average Tunicate

#tunicates trust Turning Point Chordata #tunicate #evolution #evolutionary biology #chordata #vertebrates #all ‘skull havers’ are just insolent children who need to respect their elders

[beware-of-you-98]

ok ok so josh stewart is done with CM and everyone is thinking that this is the catalyst for jemily to finally happen

But has anyone and I mean anyone at all considered the most likely, very real possibility that MGG is going to come back and that 🤢🤢🤢 jeid 🤢🤢🤢 will be endgame?????

Because,,, let’s be honest,,, what’s a more likely scenario here:

• two women on the team who the show runners have spent the last three seasons of this show completely the bond and relationship they have to the point they barely seem like friends anymore (and said women who have never canonically shown interest in another woman) suddenly confessing feelings for each other out of the blue (plus I highly doubt the writers are gonna do something like a late in life sexuality crisis; that would mean they’d actually have to focus on someone other than rossi 😒)

OR (and this is TERRIFYING)

• having reid come back after will dies or fucks off or whatever they’re gonna do with the man to be jj’s knight in shining armor especially since they pushed this whole “i’ve always loved you!!!” narrative in the last two seasons of CM

wake up sheeple we are not being blessed with the possibility of jemily, we are being threatened with the most likely outcome of jeid

#idc if mgg says he won’t come back #or if he has #idk i don’t keep tabs on that man #he gives me the ick #lmao #but if so I literally do not trust what that man says whatsoever #and with so many people being reid stans there’s a likely chance he’s coming back #it’s over folks #it’s all over #jeid is gonna be endgame 🤢🤢🤢 #gross #criminal minds #criminal minds evolution

[thegirlwithataser]

not enough tara lewis and luke alvez content in the reboot. where is my luke and tara commiserating scene? where is lukes mornings with roxy? where is the girls doing girls night? where is the luke alvez subplot? i am being starved of luke and tara, paramount. Give them back.

#paramount i no longer trust you with these characters #luke and tara my beloveds i’m so sorry #luke alvez #tara lewis #criminal minds evolution #criminal minds

[sunnibits]

things that I will never understand no matter how often or how extensively they are explained to me: those animals that physically mimic other animals or objects in order to hide or scare predators (leaf bugs, those caterpillars that look like snakes, etc). how do they know how to do that.

#YES I understand how evolution works please don’t mansplain evolution to me #logically I get how animals evolve. but also. I don’t #how the fuck does that happen 😭😭😭 how does ur dna learn ‘oh we should be snake shaped’ #how. what the fuck. #once again do not try to explain this to me unless ur actually nice and autistic about it #I’m just trying to make a funny post do not try to edumacate me #I have watched many many nature documentaries trust me