The Chimaera, known informally as the “ghost shark” or “rat fish”, is a deep sea cartilaginous fish in the order Chimaeriformes. Living at over 8,000 ft below the surface, the Chimaera is well adapted to the deep, dark sea. The dots on its nose are sensory organs that detect electrical fields in the water - helping the Chimera find its prey. While little is known about the Chimaera’s diet, it’s speculated that it feeds on molluscs and crustaceans that it crushes open with the grinding plates in its mouth. The spines on the top of its body are loaded with venom; the Chimaera uses these spines to defend itself.
(Source: gentlesharks, via bone-of-contention)
~ Roman “Swiss Army Knife”.
Place of origin: Date: ca. A.D. 201 — 300
Period: RomanFrom the source: As well as a knife, spoon, and fork, this implement provides a spike, spatula and small pick. The spike might have helped in extracting the meat from snails, and the spatula in poking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles: the pick could have served as a tooth-pick. While many less elaborate folding knives survive in bronze, this one’s complexity and the fact that it is made of silver suggest it is a luxury item, perhaps a useful gadget for a wealthy traveller.
(Source: fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk, via bone-of-contention)
friend: ends a text with a period
me: i don’t know what i did but what can i do to make up for it, please,I didn’t even realize this was a thing until this article a few weeks ago from the Washington Post:
A trend piece in the the New York Times on Friday touched on this fascinating development — which, incidentally, has been brewing for at least two decades, ever since kids were logging onto AOL Instant Messenger. The period is no longer how we finish our sentences. In texts and online chats, it has been replaced by the simple line break.
You just hit send
Your words end up on a new line
a visual indication
that you have started
a new sentence,
phrase,
clause,
or unit of meaning
Of course, this practice far predates the instant message. Poets have been using line breaks for basically forever. (In the right light, you might even say a text conversation has some of the same exuberant, associative, overlapping qualities of say, an e. e. cummings poem.) But we can credit the text and the IM for making the line break the default method of punctuation in the 21st century.
What’s extra fascinating is how this –
Early Greek and Latin texts often lacked any kind of punctuation. They didn’t even have spaces between the words. The reader just had to figure it out. Later on, punctuation and spacing were added to help guide novice readers. There weren’t many rules at first. Punctuation was largely an oratorical tool, a guide to help people read a text aloud. Scholars would mark down wherever they thought it would be good for the reader to take a breath, or to adjust the tone of their voice. They would also make marks where they anticipated that people might get confused, wherever that was in the text. They didn’t end every sentence with punctuation if they thought the meaning was already clear.
For instance · medieval scribes often used something called the punctus · a dot that floated between words · The punctus was an all-purpose tool · It could separate complete sentences · functioning like a medieval period · It could also act like a comma · to separate different clauses within a sentence.
– is basically how tags are used on tumblr! What a time to be alive.
@samtalksfunny language is fluid and my use of commas is totally justified
(Source: motherearthsign, via bone-of-contention)
Rena Effendi is a photographer from Azerbaijan and she won the third prize in the stories category of the World Press Photo contest. She made a portrait serie of the Borca family from the Breb village, Maramureş, Romania.
(via anthropolos)
The Enterprise
NASA concept for the first warp capable vessel
(via teksorbkyva)
Mola mola, also known as a sunfish, is for sure a strange looking animal. I remember the first time I saw it, I just could not get my head around how this giant swimming head could be a real animal. In fact, mola mola is the heaviest bony fish in the world! But when I actually got to see mola mola while scuba diving I realised there is something magical about it- to watch a group of sunfishes slowly move in a cold ocean current is an absolutely captivating experience. There are often a number of scavenger fishes that travel together with sunfishes and form a mutualistic relationship. The scavengers eat off the parasites that often infest the skin of the mola mola. Sometimes sunfishes will also jump out of water and splash back into it in an attempt to remove the skin parasites themselves.
(via scientificillustration)
Panorama of Hong Kong, taken from Happy Valley, 1860, Felice Beato. J. Paul Getty Musuem.
Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the sea, 1957
