little machines

HSV-1-EM.png

Herpes virus

HPV16, which causes cancer

"coronavirus"

Coronavirus

Electronmicrograph of "Foot-and-mouth disease virus"

Electron photomicrograph of Foot and Mouth (aphthovirus)

Mimivirus svg.svg

Mimivirus

electron micrograph depicting morphologic variants of "Orf virus"

Parapoxvirus

Negatively stained transmission electron micrograph of "Molluscum contagiosum virus" virions

Molluscum contagiosum virus

Cowpea mosaic virus

Virions-Electron micrograph of CaMV virions.png

Cauliflower mosaic virus

An electron micrograph showing a portion of a bacterium covered with viruses

Viral bacteriophages attaching to a bacterial cell wall

An electron micrograph of the virus that caused Spanish influenza

Recreated 1918 flu virus

Ebola

Marburg

SARS virion.gif

SARS

MERS-CoV electron micrograph3.jpg

MERS

Electron micrograph of Hepacivirus C purified from cell culture. Scale bar& = 50 nanometres

Hepatitis C

Electron microscopic image of two Epstein-Barr virus virions (viral particles) showing round capsids (protein-encased genetic material) loosely surrounded by the membrane envelope

Epstein Barr virus

Rotavirus.jpg

Rotavirus

 

 

 

More and more convinced

That I’ve already had the virus. Since I don’t know if I’m still shedding, I’m staying indoors anyway. I do feel physically better than I did last week in almost every way, although psychologically…. I mean people looking at Hitler couldn’t believe him, because he was so outside the norm of politicians, and now I’m pretty much the same with the Orange Twitler. My disbelief keeps hanging me up. I want to wake up. There is no waking up. There is only living through this.

Nathan Vincent’s ‘Manly Doilies’ (there are others, have fun)

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Helen Branswell, one of my twitter gurus since Ebola (she’s Canadian, makes sense, lives in Boston, good science writer) has a thing or two to say.

I hope that the health care workers get more PPE soon.

I have a horrible horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, that this time next year most of the disabled people I follow on twitter will be dead and I’m pre-crazy with grief about it because they’ve taught me so much and I’ve only made donations to a couple of them.

I did donate to anti COVID efforts on the DTES yesterday.

In other news, snitch-taggery rhymes with douche-baggery.

England is changing who is being assigned as cause of  death coronavirus on the basis of three of the flimsiest reasons

 

my email of today to some fuckwit at Kent State U whose name I shall redact. It is a variation on the modern standard: Were you FUCKING HIGH??

 

Are YOU the dean who sent out an email this week…..

demanding that your staff ACCELERATE THEIR RESEARCH during a pandemic which has forced every academic into distance learning?
If so, I would like you to tell me what you’ve been prescribed that makes you so disconnected from reality. I would like to provide the name of the drug, or drugs, to my physician, as damn, they seem to be working well.
If not, perhaps you can pass the message along to senior officers of the university that demands like that are ludicrous, insensitive, unrealistic and are NOT going to look good on anyone’s academic resumé.
Yours truly,
Allegra Sloman
Vancouver Canada
Tom Humberstone drew this for The Nib this past week:

 

lutte loose

‘Twas thirty-nine years ago this summer, that I first laid eyes upon the comic masterwork, ‘Green Tits and Fur’, a adult-oriented Suess rip-off, set at a furry convention. I thought it was hilarious. I have since realized it was arguably exploitative and totes appropriative. I have an appropriative and cruel sense of humour which I attempt to quell, so my fandom of that – and Crad Kilodney – makes sense. I don’t feel shame the way other people do (or so —— have you guessed this is 2020 talking —— 61 coddled years have shown me) but I make up for it by acknowledging where I erred, hopefully to make it easier for other people. Because… you know, this isn’t all about me, it’s in very minor part about helping people understand how they think, how they prune their own brains.

Better arts in the now soothe (in sooth!) the sting of not-that-great arts when you were young and impressionable. If you’re lucky you got older and stayed impressionable. I know I have. It’s what the ADD will do to you.

—–

I think I’ve talked before about mOm and pOp and brO as being my way of customizing my own family into English. I like the visual pop of the words. I find it amusing —–I found some evidence today that the design of a piece of my childhood might have had something with pOp’s moniker as in looooook belowwwwww. But as I was looking at them again today, and why not, my thought processes have galumph and will travel, I thought how Jeff and I were inside the ring of being cared for, so the m’s in mOm are hands, like one hand out for each of the kids or caring for them. And the p’s in pOp are arms. Also guns. Pew pew. Facing forward. mOm is books. When you look at the m’s can you see books open, being read, the curve of the pages in the m’s. brO is the comrade at your shoulder. I am next to him. And brO is for the solid unassuming wholeness that Jeff is. brO is a goofy looking word, and he is goofy, though that’s hardly his distinguishing characteristic. That O is the emblem and stamp and sigil and symbol and visual hug that says you can say bruh or brah or bro or mah brother but this is my brO and I set the words down to make that entirely clear.

Image result for pop shoppe logo

As for the goofy, I have recent evidence. They closed the playground equipment at the end of the street; Jeff makes his feelings known. Isn’t it a handsome hoodie she hinted hintingly with lollopping Monty Python eyebrows.

 

Hannah Gadsby

Many thanks to Alex for taking me to Hannah Gadsby when her good friend C. couldn’t make it. Told her to make sure Darwin sees “The Compleat Practical Joker” the next time he’s at the fOlks in Victoria.

If you haven’t seen Nanette, her earlier show which took the internet by storm, I’d advise it, but pack tissues.

Funny fandom note; Misha Collins, whose graceful corpus (along with the rest of the Company of Mad Bad Boys in Plaid from Supernatural) has inspired hundreds of thousands of words of smut’n’otherstuff from YersTruly, mentioned yesterday morning on social media that he’d rewatched Nanette with tears rolling down his face and then about two hours later Alex texts with hey wanna see Hannah Gadsby, and I thought ‘that’s interesting, I thought I was going to the Heritage Grill for the Jam tonight but guess not!’

It was a fantastic show. Superlatively intellectual, emotional and FUNNY on all cylinders.

She doesn’t like antivaxxers. SHE ADDRESSED THEM DIRECTLY and it was SOMETHING I ASSURE YOU

Her little rip through art history, much as in the previous show, was fucking hilarious.

Alex and I didn’t spend longer than two minutes at any point during the show without laughing. HARD VERY HARD XQUUEEEEZE ME

Alex and I both contacted each other after the show to ensure we got home.

Went to see a feminist comedian…. yeah

millennial prayer

Biscotti batch 3 in oven, this will be AWESOME

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https://www.chickenscratch.co.uk/shop/the-millennial-prayer is where to buy this AWESOME MERCH PLEASE ensure that Keith sees this I’m sure he’ll be amused this is from @wangleberry on twitter and she lettered this after something her ‘idiot husband’ (WRONG) said.

If Phyllis was still alive I TOTES WOULD GET THIS FOR HER

horror

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‘Black people in horror’ mini posters. No Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead lead) tho.

Francesco Francavilla is the artist
@f_francavilla on twitter
http://www.francescofrancavilla.com/ online
check out his OBK frankenstein poster live on the front page now

Dunnett group and instrument acquisition

Interesting. mOm you may find this diary entry provokes some feels about HTW and how he had v. progressive views.

Dunnett meet at the Sandbar on Granville Island was absolutely wonderful; met a woman I felt like I’ve known my whole life, and she’s moving from the bay area to Bellingham in MAY!!! Good news for me anyway – I told her about the Unitarian outfit there and she told me about the Bellingham ukelele orchestra. Then we all mocked Bellis Fair Mall, which, being an American mall constructed in 1988 which I drive by every time I go to Seattle and NEVER ENTER, is extremely mockable, and turns out anyone who’s been there feels the same way.  She’s been to Findhorn twicet! She told me I look younger than 61! Jan wasn’t there but Ingrid and Cheryl and Rob were.

Anyway I had shrimps and scallops and they were so goddamned good words can’t cover it. I did NOT have alcohol, for once; I had raspberry lemonade instead. In consequence, I felt better and did not muck up my digestion. Trip home was dented by wetsuweten protesters, who’ve been fucking up Vancouver for days.

Then I bought a pan drum – think a portable (not fantastically…) steel drum. I shall forward a sound file later, mOm.

This is me with baby Yoda earrings.

A startled looking white woman displays her baby Yoda earrings.

Giri Haji is not a show about Japanese gagsters

I am liking this show SO MUCH AND WE ONLY HAVE ONE EP LEFT wail

Did you know coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together? There’s video on the internet that looks like the first shot of a movie. Further pics.

Storage Jar (1858), David Drake.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Stoneware vessel (1858), David Drake At the Stony Bluff Manufactory in Old Edgefield, South Carolina, the enslaved potter David Drake made stoneware vessels of extraordinary workmanship, often inscribed with short poems describing their owner and function. ‘When you fill this Jar with pork or beef / Scot will be there; to get a peace’ is carved into one side of the vessel, among other lines. This is of 40 known surviving ‘poem vessels’ by Drake, and the first to enter the Met’s collection.

 

 

Japanese folk art called Temari

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Source, Nana Akua, photographing her grandmother’s  work. Shown are 24 brightly coloured embroidered balls in a variety of mostly geometric patterns, showing tremendous skill and design subtlety

That balloon we’ve been talking about; it’s gone up. NC2019 is forcing the admissions of 100 people per day in Wuhan and it’s appeared in Singapore and Thailand. Just learned this from Helen Branswell from an article from China that hasn’t been translated into English yet.