A castle town bustling with the morning sun in the tranquil spring sunshine 🏰
Sir Percival, one of the Knights of the Round Table, is browsing in a stall for travel supplies 🤔
The common people were excited by the sudden visit of the nobleman, wondering what he wanted from him…
Starting tomorrow #Golden Week! Are you fully prepared?
May the knight and everyone else have a wonderful start to their journey! 😉
#sonicpict
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Here's all the official Sonic Channel wallpaper artwork for 2023!
Links to source below
January 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230101_003117/
February 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230201_003133/
March 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230301_008239/
April 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230403_008257/
May 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230428_008274/
June 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230601_008294/
July 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230630_008313/
August 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230801_008329/
September 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230901_008347/
October 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20230929_008362/
November 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20231101_008378/
December 2023 - https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/staffcolumn/20231201_008406/
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Silver’s desire for peace (as symbolized by maple leaf 🍁 shape to his quills) seems to be fueled by empathy he has for the world and people in it. Silver’s feelings reflect the environment and those around him as it has been noted that:
The blue sky makes Silver feel at peace
He can’t help but smile when he sees smiling faces and wants to become a hero because it means being someone that can protect smiles
Silver denotes his good futures as happy ones or ones where people have a smile
Silver will drop his mission to help those in need, he simply can’t say no to a sad face as he helps Amy and takes a job as a delivery boy because of this
Natural beauty, flourishing environments or just places where people are prospering and living peacefully take his breath away
Desolate or destroyed environments sadden and upset him
He cannot stand the suffering of the people in his bad futures
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*pats askbox gently* there are more Thermoreceptors?
(I'm sorry ur dome was so hot; I hope its much cooler now!)
My bluff has been called! Hooray!!
I am not a neurologist, a biologist, or a scientist. If anyone with better credentials than "obsessed with emergent properties" contradicts me, listen to them instead.
Cell membranes include little portal proteins that open under certain circumstances based on the shape of the protein and let chemicals into and out of the cell. These portals are useful for all sorts of things: managing water and nutrients, sending messages to nearby cells, serving the whims of tiny intercellular cats. Science hasn't found the tiny intercellular cats yet, but we all know they're there; the existence of a door that can be opened necessarily implies an indecisive feline.
Some protein shapes open up if the temperature is within a certain range. This means that if a cell with that sort of protein in its membrane experiences a temperature in the right range, it will move some chemicals around. This is used to make nerve cells that send a message towards the brain whenever they experience a certain temperature.
Because evolution does all its best work the night before the deadline while on a Code Red Mountain Dew bender, the opened-by-temperature portal proteins are mostly copied from opened-by-a-specific-chemical portal proteins. All of them, in fact, still open for specific chemicals, which means there exist out in the world liquids you can put in a bottle that most animals will instead perceive as "a temperature between 8 and 26 degrees" So things can get a little weird.
Temperature-opening portal proteins:
TRPA1
Opens for temperatures below 12C (not air temperature, skin or body temperature, so you might be kind of in trouble when this happens). Used by hunting snakes to detect where heat isn't so they can find prey. Feels painful in an itchy sort of way.
This one also opens for allyl isothiocyanate. Many plants have evolved to take advantage of the existence of a chemical most animals perceive as itchy pain, especially horseradish and wasabi. Allyl isothiocyanate is harmful to plants, so they keep two separate components in tiny compartments. When an animal bites the plant, the compartments break open their contents mix to create allyl isothiocyanate.
"This plant tastes like itching" is a good defense against almost all animals, but some humans have taught themselves to appreciate the taste of itching.
TRPM8
Opens for temperatures between 8 and 26 degrees. Opens for menthol (peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen) and linalool (roses, orange blossoms, basil). Feels cool or cold.
"This plant tastes like cold" is a somewhat less effective defense against being eaten than "this plant tastes like itching" but it's a more widespread defense because TRPM8-activating chemicals don't harm plants and don't need elaborate two-part storage.
TRPV4
Opens for temperatures from 27-37 C. I'm not sure what this one feels like, or if even feels like anything, since it covers normal human body temperatures. Whatever feeling we get from this one, we're feeling it nearly all the time.
Plants do make a chemical that tastes like this temperature, and it can repel nonhuman creatures with different body temperatures: allicin, the flavour of garlic. Like allyl isothiocyante, it is stored in two compartments inside the plant, and combined when the plant is bitten.
Maybe this is why vampires abhor garlic. There is a feeling that, as humans, we always have. Something we don't notice, something deeper than touch. That feel disappears forever when you become a vampire, except those unbearable moments when garlic returns to you for a fleeting moment the experience of lost humanity.
TRPV3
Opens for temperatures 33-39 degrees. Opens for eugenol, found in cinnamon, nutmeg, bay leaf, holy basil, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Feels like warmth.
Plants with high quantities of eugenol, like holy basil and Japanese star anise, are sometimes sacred to buddhists because they smell nice and bugs don't like to eat them, so you can burn them as incense without worrying about all the little crawly guys.
Humans apparently think food that tastes like "warm" is comforting.
TRPV1
Opens for temperatures over 43 degrees. (The one I was experiencing in the overheated dome, which I had never felt from air before) Opens for capsaicin, the active chemical in hot peppers. Opens for the combination of temperature and acidity of fevers and infected wounds. This one we feel as pain, as burning, as flame.
TRPV1 says: Your flesh is failing, and your doom is very near.
Humanity says: This is incredible. We are going to breed plants that cause this sensation as much as possible, and we will spend thousands of years getting it right. We are going to dry this and powder this and flake it and grill it and ferment it and eat it with everything.
And when we leave earth and go into space, we take hot peppers with us. Without gravity, fluid builds up in nasal passages, and astronauts sort of have colds the entire time they're in space and can't smell food very well. But the Nearness Of Your Doom is not a smell and is not perceived by the nose, so - with their doom always on the other side of ten centimeters of insulated aluminum - astronauts can taste hot peppers. In 2002, Peggy Whitson, commander of the ISS, jokingly refused to let a replacement crew on board until they handed over the hot sauce.
We are a strange and wonderful species.
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