#Axial Age
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KARL THEODOR JASPERS WAS A GERMAN-SWISS PSYCHIATRIST AND PHILOSOPHER WHO HAD A STRONG INFLUENCE ON MODERN THEOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY, AND PHILOSOPHY. AFTER BEING TRAINED IN AND PRACTICING PSYCHIATRY, JASPERS TURNED TO PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY AND ATTEMPTED TO DISCOVER AN INNOVATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. HE WAS OFTEN VIEWED AS A MAJOR EXPONENT OF EXISTENTIALISM IN GERMANY, THOUGH HE DID NOT ACCEPT THE LABEL.
#historyandphilosophy#karl theodor jaspers#axial age#education#philosophy#inna besedina#existentialism
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They spoke from the margins – socially, because most stood on the lower rungs of the elite; and geographically, because most cake from small states on the fringes of power.*
*Not all, though. The Mahavira (roughly 497-425 BCE), founding father of Jainism, came from Magadha, India's most powerful state. Zoroaster, whom some historians include among the Axial Age masters, was Iranian, although he lived – probably some time between 1400 and 1600 BCE – while Persia was still marginal to the Western core. (I do not discuss Zoroaster here because the evidence is so messy.)
"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris
#book quote#why the west rules – for now#ian morris#nonfiction#marginalized#mahavira#jainism#magadha#india#zoroaster#axial age#iran#persia
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What is the Legacy of Isaiah the Prophet? | Ancient Origins
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/isaiah-0010798
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#200 BC#700 BC#701 BC#705 BC#712 BC#714 BC#715 BC#730s BC#735 BC#8th century#Amos#Aram#Ashdod#Assur#Assyria#Assyrian Empire#Axial Age#Babylonia#Book of Isaiah#Christian#Confucius#Egypt#Isaiah#Israel#Jerusalem#Jewish Prophets#Judah#Judaism#King Ahaz#King Hezekiah
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I felt studious yesterday for the first time in a while.
Spent the entire day researching about the Indian Axial Age shift in the Vedas from the Upanishads, and the Hebrew Axial Age shift from henotheism to monotheism. I then wrote an essay on how they were similar shifts happening at the same time despite the obvious distance they had.
It made me really happy. I can't wait for what else my classes and major throw at me :)
#Did I mention that I procrastinated several days on this?#it was due at midnight yesterday but thankfully I turned it in on time haha#my posts#Indian Axial Age#Hebrew Axial Age#world history#history#culture#international affairs#college essay#college assignment
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Did you know (No.3)… the human skeleton …
#youtube#short human skeleton framework body bones birth adulthood fused bone mass weight average person maximum mass ages axial skeleton appendicula
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Avian Homeplanet
Star: F-class (yellow white)
Vegetation: blue and black
Axial tilt: 11 degrees
Gravity: 1.12 g
Position from star: fourth
Over 90% ocean and blasted by the light of an intense star, the avian homeplanet is prone to hot, humid weather and enormous monsoon storms. In spite of this, the planet’s very slight axial tilt gives its poles a coating of year-round sea ice, whose sifting, dune-like surface plays host to a strange variety of slow growing plants and hardy animals. On solid land, the dominant photosynthetic life is a clade of “plants” ranging from dark blue to cerulean, and a clade of sessile tube-dwelling “landworms” with black flesh and frond-like appendages. Their dark colors selectively absorb and reflect the harsh, high-UV light of the sun.
The crust of the planet also has an usually large amount of the element cobalt. It compromises over 5% of the planet’s crust, comparable to iron on Earth. Cobalt compounds generally have a much higher solubility in water than iron compounds, though, and the avian oceans are stained a purplish red from huge amounts of dissolved cobalt nitrate, cobalt chloride, and cobalt carbonate. Mineral veins of cobalt compounds can be found commonly in the planet’s rocks, forming streaks of red, blue, black, green, and sometimes yellow depending on composition. Sand and soil are sometimes stained purple and blue by cobalt salts, as well.
The clade of avians has a difficult evolutionary history to track, given the limited amount of dry land and intense development over the past thousand years. The current theory is that a flying sophont ancestor originated on the planet’s largest landmass, an Australia-sized continent, and radiated outwards to evolve into the 5 extant species of avians.
In modern history, avians have often run into space issues developing their societies, and metal as a resource has been at the center of some particularly bitter wars. Most land on the homeplanet is currently colonized by the Dominion of Tiiliit, and now in the space age, imported metal and helium is being used to add new land in the form of artificial islands and floating cities.
Avians tend to use simple, writable icons to represent their nations. Though traditionally, the Hotsuuv nations use local cultivated varieties of seal fruit as icons, and the mineral rich south pole uses dots of pigment.
Map art rendered in Photopea by the stellar @cmaidaartworkblog! Edited in CSP by me.
PATREON | Runaway to the Stars
#i refuse to name any of these smaller countries unless forced to btw. enjoy the little national icons i gave them instead.#avians#runaway to the stars#jayart#maps#speculative biology
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BATMAN/DC FIC RECS
I like to make a list of fics i like but i'm starting to get kinda tired of scrolling through all my drafts to get to this one, so i'm posting this and starting a new one. This is mostly batman centric. Multiship ! The quotes are not the synopsis, just some parts i liked from the fic so i can remember what exactly happens in the story/what i liked about it. This list is more for myself tbh. I tried to keep things organized but probably failed
1 Wholesome and fun, but with a serious undertone/a bit of angst
Finished:
Nature and Nurture, by lurkinglurkerwholurks: long fic, multi pov batfam, they meet de aged Bruce Wayne through multiple stages of his life
"Bruce could feel a slow smile begin to spread across his face, until it stretched from one cheek to the other, framed by dimples on either side."
Am I The Asshole?, by FabulaRasa: greenbat/batlantern (i have to find out the official ship name), but also hal x bruce's bathtub; mostly hal's pov, and i love their dynamic so much. I recommend you read the whole series
(...) He crossed to Garwell, confident he could find a cab headed uptown on the wider avenue. After all, a world where Hal Jordan called him baby was a world where anything was possible – even catching a cab in Gotham in a winter storm headed uptown.
What Not To Wear To A Wedding At Wayne Manor, by FabulaRasa: oh i love this fic so fucking much. I can't put it into words. It's just so so good, you wouldn't believe it. Another batlantern/greenbat. I love this pairing with my entire heart and they're so good in here, really, so amazing. Mostly Hal's pov. I love this author and this might be one of my favorite works of them. This is just beautiful.
"And now. . . stupid idea number three? (...) This is your plan now?"
"I have a good feeling about this one."
Axial Rotation, by FabulaRasa: ok, so i really have a thing for this author works. Their batlantern/greenbat (?) is so good, seriously, i can't stress this enough. I love how committed FabulaRasa is to find a way to make their relationship work while still acknowledging how fucked up they are.
“Okay,” he said. And he put his hands on Bruce’s face, in the mirror of Bruce’s gesture. Last night’s stubble had become a definite shadow by this morning, and his face was like sandpaper. And also indescribably beautiful. “You are so fucking beautiful, you know that, right?”
Bruce’s small wince told him that he did not, in fact, know that, but that was okay, Hal had a lot of time to teach him that.
Lungs full of saltwater, by Maeruh: GHOSTBAT FIRST SOULMATE AU AND IT'S FREAKING GORGEOUS, SO SO BEAUTIFUL
It drowns him as if rocks had been tied around his ankles before throwing him into the sea.
It is suffocating.
Furthermore, it's refreshing
How Batman Made The Housemaid Cry, by FabulaRasa: technically batlantern, but the focus is on Bruce and Alfred, and they are amazing in this. I love them with my whole heart
He pulled his cell out of his inner pocket and texted. Remind me to tell you about my conversation with Alfred, he said. And then please use your ring to erase my functional memory. Do whatever you have to do.
a soul that's born in cold and rain (knows sunlight), by bat_butch: ghostbat; bruce visits his parents grave and talks about Khoa
He thinks about the light in Minhkhoa’s eyes when he smiles. The glint that they gain when he teases, and the excitement that sparks when they spar. He thinks about the careful way that Minhkhoa cleans his swords. The line that forms between Minhkhoa’s brows when he’s sewing a mask or a cape or a wound.
Like a cactus on frayed wires, by Maeruh: ghostbat fic! It's just Khoa thinking about batman, but it's so sweet
"Khoa wondered then if, as the cactus fell, anyone would dare try to catch the cactus?
With its thorns, sinking into your flesh and with the dirt soiling you. With the possibility that it would be useless.
He supposed that there is always someone."
Kerosene in my hands, by Maeruh: oh this one. Maeruh is definitely one of the best ghostbat writers we have, and their minhkhoa narration is absolutely perfect.
Because Bruce is like that, he wants to be the sun in the lands where winter never ends.
And Khoa is a selfish snowman.
Relax, Clark, you're only getting married, by truc: oneshot, clarks pov, super fun to read. Honestly, I recommend the entire series
When, on the eve of his marriage to Lois Lane, Clark gets serious pre-wedding jitters, he calls his best- worst- man to help him deal with it. Bruce, in all of his pink and gray Barbie sleepwear glory, offers knockout drugs, unsolicited wedding rants/advices and a video gaming opportunity. Despite everything, the wedding isn't a total disaster.
Unfinished:
Manor - Dad lets me drive the Batmobile: batfamily at it's best, seriously, also incredibly funny, wholesome, with great family dynamics! Multi pov's
“Bruce!” Dick shouted when he finally spotted him. “Look! This has to be the Batcave!”
The what Cave?
“Can you believe it? Did you know it was right here under the manor all this time? This must have taken years to set up and look at all that cool tech! Of course, Batman has the best. Have you seen him…”
Dick trailed off and studied Bruce cautiously. His gaze lingered on Bruce’s neck, where this night’s fights had resulted in a small bruise, and the coffee mug in Bruce’s hands.
“Look, Dick, I know this is a lot to take in—” Bruce began to speak, but Dick interrupted him.
“You’re dating Batman!”
Brilliant Analytical Minds, by stuckoncloud9: some really fun Riddlerbat! Bruce's pov. Edward loses some of his memories and leaves his life as a supervillain to become a private detective. Somehow, Bruce ends up being his Watson
He was silent for a moment, then looked up at me. “Riddle me this,” he said. “I solve nothing, I build nothing, but I can destroy anything. What am I?”
I thought about it. “I’m not angry at you, Edward,” I eventually replied
love, nevertheless : superbat. Funny, wholesome, beautiful, poetic, Bruce's soulmate is Gotham, with Gotham city being kind of sentient. Soulmate au, mostly Clark's pov
"He needed to go back inside, to slip back through the service door and into the ballroom before too many people noticed him missing, but for just another second he wanted to hold out. He wanted to be loved and feared and owned by someone he could never hold or touch in its entirety any other way."
2 Pure comedy and/or fluffy
Finished:
and he looks at me, and i look at him, by Shleapord: THIS IS WHAT PEAK TEENAGER BRUCE LOOKS LIKE, I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH. Honestly, comedy gold
“You are a fantastically strange child,” said Diana. She said it with perhaps too much interest and not enough wariness for comfort.
“That’s what Alfred says. Also my old science teacher when I dissected everyone’s squirrels for them because everyone who goes to Gotham Academy is a coward, except for Roman who’s a bitch. I’m not allowed in Biology classes anymore, all I can do it take higher-level Chemistry classes for my science credits.”
welcome to the playground, by Shleapord: once again teenager Bruce being my reason to live
"Like, I get kidnapped all the time and Alfred says its good for me as a growing young man to learn how to navigate stressful environments"
here as i am, by TheResurrectionist: this is sladebru/deathbat and okay, i find if pretty hilarious but a more accurate description would be pwp? The important thing is that i love it, i'm lowkey such a sucker for sladebru >...<
Slade briefly debated making the sign of the cross, but thought better of it, running a hand down the man’s sweaty back instead.
Begone, foul demon, he intoned in the safety of his mind, still thinking of that flash of white teeth in near-darkness. Of burning blue eyes and plush, kiss-reddened lips.
Send to All, by kerosceene: peak comedy batfam.
I, ___________________________, hereby acknowledge that this form represents my wishes should I contract phytoaphrodisiac-induced delirium (hereafter referred to as “PAID”) during engagements with or while apprehending Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley (“Poison Ivy”).
Bruce knows how to swim, and he is will swim up the entire Nile if he has to. Too bad Jason has other plans, by arrowupmysleeve: this is a batlantern one, but what i'm actually highlighting here is clark. Perfect, absolutely stunning. Tecnically he doesn't even show up but he still steals the show. Clark eavesdropping on other people's conversations and sending them messages with his opinion is a top tier concept and needs to be used more times <3
Text from Clark K at 10.45:
I know you're awake, B😡
Text from Clark K at 10. 46:
I can hear you chewing😒 Pick up.😠😠
The last text makes Bruce pause. He knows Clark can't see him, but he turns to glare in the direction of Metropolis anyway and takes a large bite of his toast. And if he is chewing a little louder than usual, well, no one is here to call him out on it.
I'm Not As Think As You Drunk I Am, by Mardiaz173: good old identity porn superbat, clark is being messed with by bruce but he loves him so he gets away with it
Until behind them, Arthur yelled, “Cheer up, Bats! At least we already know Kal’s into brunettes!”一he broke off into a yelp一“ow, Diana!”
Arthur’s heckle seemed to piss B off一well, even further than his anger at Clark forcing him to go to the medbay. He didn’t speak their entire way there. When reached the medbay, B sat on the examination table with petulant air around him.
Clark really did adore him.
Lugubrious Alarmism: baby Clark being the most adorable person in the universe, superbat friendship with dolls, justice league shenanigans, very wholesome and super fun
Clark beamed and tugged the mask back into place. “Yep. Boose okay.” With that, he clasped his irritable stuffed friend to his chest and planted a kiss atop it’s cowled head. “Missed you.”
Space cellmates, by BoredomBeckons: superbat, a short but hilarious oneshot
“Mr Wayne. Please take this seriously.”
“I take everything seriously Superman. I’m Batman.”
“Look, it’s obvious you don’t believe me…”
“I do believe you.”
“…but I really am Superman, and I want you to know that whatever happens I will do my best to protect you.”
“Since your powers are being hindered it seems to me that I’ll be the one protecting you.”
“Right,” Clark sighed, not bothering to argue.
“Because I’m Batman.”
“Sure.”
3 Not sure if it's the same as the first, but here we go: comedy with some angst
Finished
Getting It Right, by FabulaRasa: batlantern/greenbat (?), Hal's pov, some really good slow burn but like, not too slow, and seriously, don't get too caught up on the sinopses, it's not nearly as dark as it seems, it's actually quite lighthearted and with some family feels too
Jordan wasn’t just laughing, he was doubled over with it, his grin wide. “You’re so mad,” he managed, through gusts of laughter. “You are—you are genuinely so mad, look at you. I was just kidding, your score was higher, but I just wanted to see you lose your shit, and you did, oh my God are you in fourth grade or what?” And he threw his head back and laughed even louder. Bruce gave him a shove off the railing, and he just laughed harder.
Article 120, by FabulaRasa: I wasn't expecting this one to be one of my favorite batlantern fics i've ever read, not given the dark subject, but god, they are so good in here.
“Don’t mind him, grief hits everybody different. He just found out Batman broke up with him, but he’s gonna be okay.”
4 angst with some lightness
Finished
Sanctuary, by FabulaRasa: batlantern/greenbat (and yes, at this point i know it's batlantern but i got attached to greenbat so i will keep using both, sue me), angst with some comedy, great family feels and Hal and Damian relationship is really precious. Hal has a chronical illness but is not dying. I recommend strongly that you read the whole series
(...) He wasn’t someone whose absence would be felt along a thousand fault lines and ripples, like a hole blown in the universe – not like people who had families and huge networks of friends. He wasn’t one of those people.
He sat cross-legged on the floor for hours, staring at the welter of wings and the green light that surrounded him on all sides. He had never thought of himself as one of those people, but somehow he had become one of those people, when he wasn’t looking. Somehow he had acquired a family, and the ripples of his life extended far beyond his own calculations. He had sat down on this floor one person, and when he rose – stiffly, slowly – hours later, he was another, a person whose ties to the universe around him were different than he had thought.
How To Keep A Promise To Hal Jordan, by FabulaRasa: I love everything this author writes, seriously, I can't stress this enough. This is batlantern, of course, and mostly Bruce's narration. Some parts of it ripped my heart out
(...) He let his eyes skate to Bruce’s lips. He wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. Contact with the unthinkable. The impossible. Only the impossible had held him in his arms. Had touched him, had caressed him, had said impossible things to him.
Something about us, by Maeruh: ghostbat, khoa's narration at it's finest
"I had a dream," are the first words that leave Khoa's dry lips upon awakening. He doesn't get up immediately, just stares at the immaculate white ceiling of The Haunt.
(There's something different, he feels it buzzing deep inside of his bones.)
"Oh, that's unusual for you."
Unfinished
Drawn to the blood, by bat_butch and bellandeano: Ghostbat in a dc vampire au! Their dynamic is really good and Icon is such a sweetheart :)
“I don’t know how much you’d enjoy that victory, Ghost-maker,” Bruce muttered. “Winning me over with a bite and a bit of blood. I think you’d be disappointed.”
"Do you think so?" He tilted his head back, arms crossed. Bruce was right, of course. And he wasn't even looking for that victory anymore. "I might just take it to be forced to cooperate with someone effective."
“No,” Bruce dismissed. “You wouldn’t.”
"Don't be so confident. You're not as relevant as you used to be," he replied easily, voice clipped.
“Neither are you.”
you're still the oxygen i breathe/i see your face when i close my eyes, by nygmamale: this one is special to me bc i'm a sucker for ghostmaker interacting with tim and bao :)
"Later, after Khoa had pushed everyone away, he sits alone in Bruce’s townhouse, in a shitty beaten-up chair that smells like him.
Thirty minutes prior, he had ingested a copious amount of psilocybin. He wanted to see him, one more time."
5 angst
Finished:
every tale a tragedy, by pomeloquat: ghostbat, khoa's narration. Bruce and Khoa are soulmates; things don't go well for them.
"The strand around Khoa’s finger twists and tangles and pulls taut as he traverses the globe. Always stretching back toward Bruce, always tying them together. No matter the distance, Khoa knows Bruce is waiting for him on the other end."
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@snazzyjazzsounds
it’s weird how for much of human history “democracy” was just like. technologically unfeasible within a medium sized state.
on the one hand i’m a big fan of, like, material conditions as an explanatory factor for social and political structures. on the other, i’m wary of letting the dicks of history off for their dickishness, as if it was impossible to know or nobody ever suggested that war and slavery and exploitation were bad, because, y’know, they did.
i think the paucity of something we might call democracies in the ancient world is due to several factors:
1) states originating as wealth-extraction machines. the earliest states seem to have approximately in common the monopolization of a valuable resource, as in hydraulic despotism, and a degree of keeping people in place by force, so elites can glean the excess of farmers and live without having to do food production themselves. sometimes this supports things people consider to be socially valuable activities, like the upkeep of temples, and sometimes not. but if you want to live in an egalitarian society, even one with villages and farming and whatnot, your best option is the extremely vast territory outside the control of organized states, which at least back in the beginning of Sumerian civilization is, like, most of the Earth. States compete over resources and optimize for better resource extraction, and more sophisticated hierarchies and ideologies that enable them to control larger territories, but the goal of “roughly egalitarian society without a ton of coercion” is exclusive with the goal of “live within the boundaries of a state.”
and i think a lot of ancient commentators noticed this; this is why the Tao Te Ching seems so down on the whole idea of statecraft to begin with, and why it paints the picture of an ideal society being one where the people of one state can hear the dogs barking in the next state over, but have never met those people face to face in their lives. because it was written in a period of fierce inter-state competition, and it did not escape the authors’ notice that states were mostly a bad deal for the people who lived under them.
(as we might also notice of the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece, even “democratic” forms of government were ways of brokering power-sharing between elites; most people living in ancient democracies had no ability to participate in their political systems.)
2) infrastructure is expensive, communication is hard. as you note, how the fuck do you coordinate a medium-sized democracy when it takes days to get a message from one end of your state to the other? on the one hand, yes, very big states did exist in this period, like persia. as did states with comparatively well developed apparatuses, like rome. but a lot of how big states operated historically was delegating to local elites--you tax the big men in the province you just conquered, and trust them to figure out how to get the most money out of their peasants. our modern idea of democracy is in many ways predicated on our modern idea of a state, which is somewhat different an animal than an axial-age kingdom!
and a big part of why this is so difficult i feel like has to be linked to the small size of towns, which is linked to the fact that most of the population had to be farming, because the amount of extractable surplus from the rural population was small.
for centuries--longer than the industrial revolution itself, maybe since the late middle ages--my sense is that the yield per farmer has been gradually increasing, which in addition to the population growth enabled since the industrial revolution itself has really vastly increased the amount of time we can spend on things other than producing food. and i suspect that that means states have a lot bigger pool of manpower available to them to assist in their administration, and gives them the capacity to do things like be run for the benefit of a larger subset of their population--and in turn for the population to demand that they be run that way.
3) i suspect lots of ancient societies were run in ways we would approve of, i.e., comparatively egalitarian, not terribly exploitative. i also suspect these societies didn’t look much like (their neighboring) states. you’re not building pyramids for the pharoah if you don’t have pharoahs after all. your court officials are not writing histories of your dynasty if you have no court and no dynasts. so these societies, along with very many others, leave less of a historical impression.
but i don’t want to overly romanticize the past; lots of societies that left no lasting historical record also probably sucked ass. slavery is observed even among hunter gatherers. humans can be real dicks, and we have, as terry pratchett noted, a really unfortunate tendency to bend at the knees.
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Human : pulling out a picture of them and their sibling playing in snow
Alien : I-I know you humans are crazy… but why would your parents not stop you from getting out during a nuclear winter ?
Human : Nuclear winter ? Nah that was a regular winter !
Alien : What do you mean regular period of cold ?
Human : Don’t you have winters ?
Alien : No we don’t have natural period of cold !
Human : Well… we do ?!
Alien : Is it because of the tectonic activity of your planet ?
Human : Huh ?
Alien : Sorry that was stupid, it would mean that difference in temperature occurs in a thousands of year timescale.
Human : Oh ! You mean ice ages !
Alien : Ice ages ?
Human : Yeah we have those, but winter is a yearly phenomenon.
Alien : T-that makes more sense… wait no it doesn’t ! Why would you have a period of cold on a yearly basis ?
Human : Because our planet has some axial tilt. And we also have period of heat that we name summer.
Alien : What ? Why ? No… How did your planet get some axial tilt ?
Human : Another planet crashed on Earth.
Alien : AND IT DID NOT WIPE ALL LIFE ON YOUR PLANET ?
Human : N-no… There wasn’t any life on earth at this stage.
Alien : That’s… good… I though that your planet’s life had survived a mass extinction for a moment…
Human : …
Alien : …
Human : …
Alien : It didn’t !
Human : It did…
Alien : WHA-
Human : Five of them.
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The Cosmology of Athyrmagaia, the Home World of the Astutocentaurini
Athyrmagaia is like a distant twin of Earth in many regards. It is the third planet of a G-type main-sequence star called "Doppelganger", and it lies right in the system's Goldilocks zone. It is one of three celestial bodies in this system that currently harbors complex multicellular life, the other two being the sweltering hot Musp and the frigid Hel, both of which we will examine at a later date. Athyrmagaia is about 93.928 miles away from its home star, and it travels an elliptical counterclockwise orbit that is about 413 Earth days long. Its axial tilt is about 24.2 degrees, which results in slightly more dramatic seasons throughout the year. With an axial rotation speed of about 893 mph, its days are about 28 hours long, just four more hours longer than our own planet.
Athyrmagaia has two natural satellites, nicknamed "Nicholas" and "Kringle" respectively. Nicholas behaves similarly to the Terran moon, whose counterclockwise orbit takes about 29.5 local days to complete. Its most fundamental difference, however, is that it has its own sub-moon, Kringle, which is less than a quarter of its size. As Nicholas orbits Athyrmagaia, Kringle occasionally comes between them, which amplifies lunar gravitational forces. As a result, the tidal patterns on Athyrmagaia are much more complex, and in addition to the daily cycle of high and low tides, there is a larger monthly cycle in which the tides get their highest and lowest at the very middle of the month. The moons are tidally locked, with Nicholas locked to Athyrmagaia and Kringle locked to Nicholas.
Several of Athyrmagaia's geophysical characteristics are shockingly close to those to those of Earth. It is about 12,742 kilometers in diameter and has a total mass of 5.972 × 10^24 kg. The centrifugal forces of its axial rotation give it a subtly ellipsoidal shape (although it's practically imperceptible). Its chemical composition is also somewhat similar; the crust comprises oxides containing elements such as aluminum, calcium, silicon, iron, potassium, and magnesium, and its mantle is a mixture of superheated rock and magma comprised of silicates. Its core, just like that of Earth, is a 1,200-kilometer sphere of superheated iron and nickel. However, it is a much older planet, estimated to be about 8.043 billion years old. Despite its advanced age compared to our home, Athyrmagaia is still a very tectonically active world. Mid-ocean ridges constantly ooze hot magma as tectonic plates slowly and steadily shift Athyrmagaia's surface features, and active volcanoes can be found here as well. Its metallic core also acts like an electrical generator, and its kinetic energy generates a strong magnetosphere that shields the planet's surface from deadly UV radiation. It should be noted, however, that there is some geological evidence that Athyrmagaia experienced an unexplained, albeit brief, period of "tectonic arrest" around 230 million years ago. This event is believed to be linked to the Borea-Comedian Mass Extinction Event and was likely responsible for the formation of Cronos, a monstrous (and thankfully long-dead) shield volcano with a surface area comparable to Saudi Arabia.
Like Earth, most of Athyrmagaia's surface comprises of an interconnected global ocean with large continental landmasses. However, Athyrmagaia's continents and oceans are much more localized than the more generously distributed Earth, with the northern latitudes being mostly land and the southern latitude mostly ocean. The sea can be divided into the Great Central Ocean, the Polar Ocean, the East and West Crescent Oceans, and the Comedian Ocean. Inversely, the planet only has three continents: Borea, Comedia, and Austrus. Although the continents are few, they comprise a relatively substantial portion of the planet's surface. Borea, the biggest continent, exceeds Europe and Asia in size and is formed from two smaller continental units (Macroborea and Microborea). It is so large that it wraps around almost the entirety of the northernmost latitudes, and the mountain range that forms the border of its larger and smaller regions runs straight through the north pole. Its smaller western neighbor, Comedia, still exceeds most of Earth's other continents in terms of scale, including Africa. On the opposite end of this scale is Athyrmagaia's only southern hemisphere continent, Austria. It is the smallest continent, so much so that it has less surface area than Australia. The rest of the southern hemisphere, save for the southernmost portion of Comedia and a few islands, is almost entirely marine, and the south pole is essentially in the middle of the ocean.
Athyrmagaia's atmosphere is nearly identical to Earth's. In terms of composition, it is about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 0.9% argon, while the other 0.1% is comprised of other gases such as carbon dioxide and neon. It also lacks a definite boundary, and it has an average atmospheric pressure of 1013.25 millibars at sea level. This means it is breathable for Humans, and the surface can be explored without a pressure suit. Similar gases are also found in the oceans, though, as expected, they are present in different quantities.
An Earth-like atmosphere and hydrosphere also means an Earth-like biosphere. Regarding chemical composition, life here is probably the most similar to Earth out of all alien biospheres known to science at this time. Not only are they carbon-based, but their biology has converged on the same macromolecules as ours, and they even encode their genetic information using DNA and RNA. This is exceptionally rare, as most known forms of carbon-based alien life often use alternative polymers for their genetics. A differing cell structure also makes us immune to Athyrmagaian pathogens, which means that a human would be able to eat Athyrmagaian food with minimal health risks.
Except for a small number of Archaean-like methanogens, a vast majority of the microbial and multicellular organisms on Athyrmagaia are aerobic respirators that use oxidative phosphorylation to produce ATP and require essential elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon to survive. Not only do they rely on this Terran atmosphere to live and breathe, but they also play a role in recycling and replenishing its gases. The heterotrophs ("consumers") feed on other living things as they use oxygen from the atmosphere to power their metabolism, releasing carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Meanwhile, the autotrophs ("producers") replenish this oxygen by using carbon dioxide and abiotic energy sources to produce their own food, which separates the oxygen from the carbon and reintroduces it to the atmosphere. These autotrophic forms also made the planet's water and air breathable to begin with; back before the first autotrophs and heterotrophs evolved, the oxygen content was much lower, and there were significantly larger quantities of carbon dioxide on both land and sea.
Biochemical and metabolic similarities aside, it is still quite an alien biosphere compared to our own, and there are multiple discrepancies between Earth and Athyrmagaia biology that complicate the possibilities of human habitation. While we are immune to each other's diseases, there is still a small possibility that they may adapt to infect alien cells, which means that environmental suits are still recommended for surface exploration. The "plant" life uses polylactic acid (a type of bioplastic) in addition to cellulose to construct their cuticles. This substance is indigestible to Earth animals, but many of the native organisms are well suited for dealing with it. The planet's equivalent of cellulolytic "bacteria" can break down polylactic acid using the enzyme proteinase K, which degrades the substance through hydrolysis. Some herbivorous animals are also able to produce this enzyme to assist in digesting vegetation, though most just utilize symbiotic forms of the former microbes to do so. It also just so happens that polylactic acid is highly flammable, and it releases gaseous isopropyl alcohol when it is burned with flame. Due to this, naturally occurring wildfires often release plumes of toxic gas that linger for several days before dissipating. Fortunately, most of the native fauna are highly resistant to these toxic emissions.
Athyrmagaia's global climate is one that us Terrans would be very comfortable in. It's global temperature is similar to that of Earth during the Pliocene epoch, and it is currently in the midst of a minor warm period that started about 2,000 Terran years ago. Unlike the artificially-induced global warming that once threatened our Earth, Athyrmagaia's warm period is a wholly natural climatic trend, and it is a result of the millennia-spanning variations in its proximity to its home star. Based on current estimates, the planet will likely enter another glacial maximum (or "Ice Age") within the next millennia, as the planet has already started cooling down slightly over the course of the past century of study.
Just like Earth, Athyrmagaia's surface can be subdivided into latitudinal belts that constitute regions of relatively homogeneous climate. From the equator to the poles, these bands represent tropical, subtropical, temperate and polar climates respectively. This is because latitudes closer to the poles tend to get less direct sunlight than those in the tropics. Some of the other major determining factors of regional climate and weather on Athyrmagaia are atmospheric and oceanic circulation; Tropical and polar easterlies in higher and lower latitudes blow from the east, while prevailing westerlies in middle latitudes blow from the west, which distributes both warm and cool air across the land and sea. Oceanic currents also play a part in this process, bringing precipitation from the tropics to higher and lower latitudes. These phenomena, combined with the varied topographical features of landmasses, forms a wide variety of biomes. The poles are capped with ice and tundra, while the equator forms a belt of steamy jungle. Subtropical latitudes form dry forests, shrublands, deserts and savannahs, and the temperate latitudes consist of forests, steppes, and taiga.
As a result of its 24.2-degree axial tilt, Athyrmagaia is also a highly seasonal world, with springs, summers, autumns and winters that become more noticeable as you travel further away from the equator. The seasons of the north and southern hemispheres are opposite to each other; In the northern hemisphere, the year starts with winter, which is followed by spring, summer and autumn until it cycles back to winter at the end of the year. In the southern hemisphere, the year instead starts with summer, which is followed by autumn, winter, and spring and then ends with summer once again. At the equator, however, no such seasons exist, with there instead being two wet seasons and two dry seasons. Larger climatic trends have also occurred as a result of variations in the axial tilt and proximity to the sun over the course of millions of years, such as the current warm period.
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Fossil Friday! TRILOBITES
Trilobites are some of the most well-known invertebrates of the fossil record. They popped up during the Cambrian Explosion
and lasted all the way until The Great Dying of the Permian.
That's 469 million years!
Trilobites are a type of sea-faring arthropod. This phylum includes crustaceans, arachnids, millipedes and kin and insects. In other words, their bugs. Big, sea bugs.
The name trilobite means "three lobes" in reference to the vertical lobes their bodies are split into. They also happen to have three horizontal segments too.
The horizontal segments are split as follows: 1.) the cephalon (head), 2.) the thorax (abdomen) and 3.) the pygidium (butt). The vertical lobes are 4.) the right pleural lobe, 6.) the left pleural lobe and 5.) the central axial lobe.
Trilobites are found on all modern continents and occupied every paleo ocean. There are thousands of known species and because they appeared and disappeared quickly and left behind hundreds of molts they make excellent index fossils.
Representations of all the trilobite orders.
There are tons of immaculate specimens from various quarries around the world including the Cambrian-age Wheeler Shale of Utah where I got this specimen:
#paleontology#fossils#geology#dinosaur#trilobite#cambrian#cambrian explosion#cambrian period#paleozoic#the great dying#permian#index fossils
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High obliquity (axial tilt) worlds are really very strange. The ice caps of terrestrial planets with substantial water inventories creep down from their high polar latitudes as you increase tilt, blanketing more and more of the surface in ice sheets right up until you reach a tipping point found somewhere around forty to fifty degrees. There, due to the way sunlight is distributed across the planet seasonally - like a sunbather turning over just twice a year - the ice caps suddenly migrate into a new configuration, hot polar summers driving the formation of an ice belt around the equator. We know Earth likely can't enter such a state (although a few papers claim otherwise) - the tidal influence of the Moon, coming in at just over one percent of the Earth's mass, is thought to damp down the spin-orbit resonances that drive axial wobble.
But then there's Mars with its two pebble-like asteroid-moons, axial tilt relatively free to wander compared to the Earth. From <20 to >50 degrees it lurches around on, as far as we can tell, a timescale of hundreds of kiloyears to a few megayears - really surprisingly short in geological time. Interestingly, there's evidence* in the paper above that those periods of higher 30-50+ degree obliquity have, taken cumulatively over the whole post-Noachian history of Mars, lasted for up to a billion years. It'd have been interesting if we got to see Mars during these relative ice ages, a Mars almost more white than red, or a Mars with its lowlands bisected by a great wall of ice... The (orographic?) snow west of the four big Tharsis volcanoes in the high-obliquity present-atmosphere model (bottom right) below is kind of fun I think.
Also kind of interesting that so much snow piles up on the high-altitude uplands in scenarios with more Earthlike atmospheric pressures (if not compositions), mostly independent of obliquity. Seems fairly plausible that you'd get a similar kind of scenario when terraforming Mars or Marslike exoplanets, ending up with deeply glaciated highlands feeding glacial rivers down into lakes and seas in the more temperate lowlands. It does things just a little more difficult though - ice is more reflective than dirt, and all that increased sunlight bounced back into space means you'd need to ramp up the heat you inject into the climate as you get into the pressure ranges where polar ice can sublimate into the atmosphere and fall as snow or risk atmospheric collapse... realistically of course you're doing that anyway with your soletta mirrors and all that. Food for thought, though.
(*)The paper looks for a specific kind of crater that probably only forms when a meteor strikes an ice sheet, and finds a fair chunk of them down in the midlatitudes and equatorial regions.
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We have a responsibility to tell the truth about the past, so far as we are able to do so. We have a responsibility not to do violence to it, just as we have a responsibility not to do violence in the present […] Mythmaking does not just distort the past in general. It also distorts the past in its particulars […]
What we believe about the past is [also] inevitably bound up with our understanding of the present and our vision for the future. Our understanding of the past profoundly influences our decisions about the present and the future— just as our understanding of the present helps to shape our view of the past. This makes false notions of the past not just regrettable but dangerous; as Bobbi Low puts it […] ‘Romantic misconceptions [about the past] might not matter, except that the conventional wisdoms arising from them generate normative prescriptions’ […]
In the end we contribute neither to world peace nor to saving the planet by romanticizing the past. We must ensure that our story about the past is not at odds with the evidence, precisely so that we do not end up harming the very people— the very planet— that we are so intent, in our well-meaning way, on trying to save.
From Convenient Myths: The ‘Axial Age’, Dark Green Religion, and the World That Never Was, published 2013; Prof. Iain Provan (My Review Here) (My Ko-Fi Here)
#Quote#Convenient Myths: The ‘Axial Age’ Dark Green Religion and the World That Never Was#Iain Provan#Natural Connections#Ancestral Connections#Academia
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Who is your favorite visual artist? Are there any artists you consider an inspiration?
it’s difficult to pin down just one; however, many of them has served as inspirations.
it was love at first glance with Magritte’s works. after studying some of his paintings at a young age, i became transfixed with Surrealism. i appreciate essentially all the artists of this movement—Dalí’s mind and execution is a huge fascination of mine. [albeit, he did suffer from schizophrenia.] Man Ray’s photographs are of subjective perfection. so on/so forth.
before giving a fair study to Warhol’s works, i loathed him. but he was truly so revolutionary. in my opinion he had far better works than the iconic imagery, ie: his appropriated images & portraits. as far as i’m concerned, he was thee axial point from Modern into Post-War/Contemporary art.
Holzer & Kruger’s conceptual works i likely associate myself with more deeply than anything else i’ve witnessed. my personal collage pieces contain a deal of influence from their artistry.
Weegee’s photojournalistic film captures of candid urban situations always leave me begging for more. i would’ve loved to have a conversation with him—i’d envision a ‘snarky’ demeanor.
Doré’s engravings & illustrated works i became acquainted with on here in my mid-teens. i’ll forever be perplexed & astonished by them.
i’ll conclude this ramble by sharing my favorite series: A Week of Kindness by Max Ernst. i’m constantly fighting the urge to tear up my physical copy and scan it in its entirety here. no one person’s ever established a concrete analysis on what the series summarizes—if anything—with the individual collages being absurdism at its finest.
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Youre designed a map of opi???
Yep here’s the topography, climate and ocean currents
The planet’s conditions are pretty similar to Earth’s: similar radius, density and gravity, and sits in a similar position to our planet’s in the habitable zone. The oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are slightly higher. The axial tilt is more than Earth’s (at around 30°) which leads to a larger temperate zone.
Like here there’s ice caps at the poles as the planet is in the middle of an interglacial period, towards the end of an ice age that lasted a couple millions of years. The lower sea levels allowed for land bridges and island chains to form between the Western and Eastern continents, giving the two similar biospheres. The third biggest landmass on the planet is the continent of Notalia, which has remained isolated for tens of millions of years, allowing for a much more divergent fauna and flora to evolve.
The two main continents are simply called Eastern and Western continent. The southern one is called Notalia and the South Pole landmass is called Notopelagia. The central sea is called Nereus Sea, the northern one is the Njörd Sea and the southern one is the Pontus Ocean (answering to @monkeyseededworld cause it doesn’t let me answer or comment on my own posts)
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parasitic ovipositor possessing humans. they domesticate their host species and form religious rituals surrounding them. but its not a creepy thing. it can’t be a creepy thing cause it’s just normal for them. like how most pre-axial age societies viewed cattle.
This is a good worldbuilding prompt (reminiscent of blood child) but :/
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