Avatar of TheMushroomLord

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Recent Statuses

19 days ago
Current Happy Halloween!
2 likes
21 days ago
I used to love the holiday season as a kid, but these days I’m terrified that the strange man in red is going to break into my home again and leave another suspicious package under one of my plants.
4 likes
27 days ago
Alright, that's it! I've had enough of this damn heat. Bring me my matches, it’s time to burn the sun down.
2 likes
1 mo ago
If there are 3600 rats living in my bones and I eat one every second, how long will it take me to eat all the rats? Assume each rat undergoes binary fission exactly once every hour.
1 mo ago
Adventurer, the rats in my basement have merged into a fractal entity! I will pay you 4 silver coins to slay the infinite rat(s) in my basement.
6 likes

Bio

I am me... I hope.

Most Recent Posts

Felix Jones — MY-1801-FJ

Even if he could no longer recall it the boy had spent the vast majority of his life in Facility B, to the point where even before he’d lost them his earliest memories were spent surrounded by various anomalous beings within Facility B's stark white halls. Consequently, the boy's idea of what could be considered normal had been stretched to an absolutely absurd degree, so much so that when the boy saw the shadowed figure step out from their room across the hall from him, the boy was neither frightened by its inhuman appearance, nor did he find it at all odd to see such an imposing figure holding such a cute plushie. In fact, in his own mind, the boy could find nothing out of the ordinary about the scene in front of him at all. No, instead what caused the boy to shrink away from the demonic-looking figure, was the sight of it waving at him, years of limited human interaction having conditioned the boy into being shy around those he was unfamiliar with.

The boy averted his gaze, letting an awkward silence hang between the pair for several long moments as he fidgeted and tried to work out what to say. Finally, the boy looked back up at the shadowed figure and spoke, “Um… could you please tell me what’s going on?”, the boy asked, frowning for a moment before adding, “… I think I forgot?”.

Having asked his question, the boy’s shyness subsided, if only a by little, as he stared at the shadowy figure with expectant, hopeful eyes and awaited a response. As needlessly awkward as he’d made the encounter the boy still felt rather pleased with himself for having successfully spoken to an unfamiliar human being, sensing that that was probably some kind of personal achievement for him.

@Bartimaeus
Felix Jones — MY-1801-FJ

A young boy awoke sprawled out face-first atop a cheap wire mesh bed. In spite of his uncomfortable resting position, the boy wore a peaceful expression as he attempted to settle himself back into sleep, only for the piercing sound of an alarm to ring out from somewhere outside, its ringing wrenching him from his serenity and into wakefulness. Almost as if on cue the boy's stomach growled, urging him to get up and ready. Wait who? And ready for what?

Visibly confused the boy sat up rubbing the tiredness from his eyes, feeling something was off as he noticed the lighting flickered eerily. “Huh? What’s going on?”, he mumbled to himself, taking a moment to look around the room, surprisingly plain and sparsely furnished for a kid of his age, with little more than a cheap desk and bed. Stranger still was that the room he found himself in seemed entirely unfamiliar to the kid, his frustration and confusion only growing as he tried to search his memories for answers and came up with nothing but haze.

Getting up the boy examined himself as best he could in the current conditions, taking note of his surprisingly long black hair and the simple grey dress he wore, entirely devoid of colour save for a single yellow patch. Like everything else he’d encountered since waking up, the boy found even his own appearance strangely unfamiliar and alien. Was that normal? It didn’t feel like it

Eventually, with the last of his grogginess overtaken by his confusion, worry and now gradually mounting curiosity, the boy looked towards the door. Maybe there was someone outside who could tell him what was going on or maybe where he was? That seemed pretty likely and it wouldn’t hurt to try and find something to eat in the meantime… With that in mind, the boy approached the door, peeking out before tentatively stepping into the space beyond.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

@Lady Selune Ahh, I got this done! I know I was meant to run the power by you beforehand, but I kind of forgot and had the thing mostly written up anyway so here's as good a place as any I guess. Sorry about that.

EDIT: Adjusted some of the numbers and units at Ginnungagap's suggestion.
@Lady Selune Are applications for this still open by any chance?
@TheMushroomLord sorry full


Oh well, that's too bad. I'll probably be lurking around in case something does free up then.
Are there spots still open by any chance?
Fair enough. My bad.
The abstract for that paper clearly identifies the primary correlation with skin pigmentation as UV levels; furthermore the conclusion continues the same premise. Pages 72 and 73 identify the alternative reason for how both native Greenlanders and the Inuit maintain a darker skin tone in such northern climates (maintain, not develop) in the high degree of Vitamin D available in their diet. Therefore, if a fair-skinned population were to move north, there would be no overriding pressure to increase pigmentation, and thus they would retain a pale skin-tone. i.e. a darker skintone moving north is the baseline taken when assessing changes in relative melanin content in humans; increased Vitamin D in the diet would not have the same effect.

Otherwise, the mass domestication of chickens would have had a really strange effect by now.


If I'm not mistaken does snow not often cause an increase in exposure to UV radiation due to its high reflectivity? Might that act as a selection pressure for developing a darker skin tone. Also while chickens have been domesticated for thousands of years, how long have we been able to consume their products consistently?

EDIT: @Myrna Minkoff My concerns weren't with the similarities between elves and humans in a fantasy setting but rather the validity of evolution as a whole within one.
Ah sorry, I missed that quote in your prior post. Now I'm feeling pretty silly, that's one of the papers I was looking at when I looked up the subject. Thanks for that, it's interesting stuff.

One thing I would note there though is the fact that the Dark Elves are an immortal race would probably entail a much slower evolutionary rate than humans given the time between generations is likely longer. If you call a human generation 30 years then there are ~15 generations in those 500 years if elves have babies half as frequently than humans than it may take 1000 years to see a change.

Also worth noting is we're both looking at this from a very scientific perspective and a lot of science, particularly evolution breaks down in most fantasy settings.
@Myrna Minkoff
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