Exploring American History, Wednesday, November 13, 2024

[heroic_jawline]

Class today featured one of the teachers on their phones with Portalocity as they'd been dumped in the middle of nowhere Kansas. Was Tony getting anywhere with customer service? No. No, he wasn't.

"No, don't put me on hold again!" Aaaand he was on hold again. "Sorry, guys. Just a little snafu."

That left the naturally more upbeat teacher to smooth this over. "So...welcome to this really big ball of twine!" Steve said enthusiastically. "And not, um, the Grand Canyon."

All while Tony paced behind him and kept on trying. "Hello? Hi, I just need--no, no, no! Why do they keep picking up just to put me back on hold!?"

"Entirely to annoy you," Steve said. "Sorry. So we're in--" he craned his neck to read the helpful sign near the giant string ball, "Cawker City."

He had no idea what state that was in. "In the Midwest," he added, making a guess based on how flat it was around them. "And sometimes people in the United States have very odd ways of passing the time. Like this, the biggest ball of twine, which is an excellent example of a community working together and probably being very bored and cold in the winter."

"Yes, I want to escalate this to a manager!" Tony said, leaning against said ball of twine to dull horror of the employees of the site. "No, not claims, a manager. A manager, yes."

"Do not buy Portalocity," Steve hissed as he walked past his husband. "So explore this piece of Americana and maybe we can come up with something like this we could implement back in Fandom. And then we'll find something to eat."

Morality of Action, Wednesday Afternoon

[suitably_heroic]

The first thing the students would see as they arrived was a small, grey cat. That cat seemed to radiate... disdain? Yes. Yes, that was absolutely disdain, radiating somehow even stronger than the woman the cat had clearly replaced.

It hopped up onto the desk. It radiated stronger still. And then--

"What the--"

... a dark-haired man in a white button-up, dark jeans and long fingerless gloves hit the ground behind the desk with rather a lot of noise. "Are you-- is this going to keep happening?!"

Ja-- Atton was going to file a complaint with the stupid moose.

He grabbed the desk and yoinked himself up. "You did this, didn't you, you insufferable, hateful scow," he snapped at the cat. "I should--" Probably remember that he was in front of a class. No? Yeah. "...Hi," he added, belatedly, tugged on his shirt (where was his jacket) and looked at the students. "I'm Atton Rand, I used to go to school here, and I'm not supposed to be here."

He cleared his throat. "Also don't know what her blind scowliness has been teaching you, and I don't care," he added. "Blah blah probably something about personal responsibility and wielding your power or whatever. Well, here's a new lesson: sometimes, it's not your responsibility to stick around and fix whatever the mess is. Sometimes your mental health is more important than the fate of the world, or the galaxy, or the guy next door. Because stressed, traumatized people make really bad decisions."

He rolled his shoulders and tugged on his glove and then tried to fix his hair while he was at it.

"So alongside whatever galaxy-saving or galaxy-conquering plans all of you have, you should also probably think about what your sanity line is," he said. "When is it time to tap out? For a while or forever? And how are you going to do that?"

There. Hard lessons taught!

Almost made him miss his class about bailing.

Fandom Library, Wednesday, November 13th

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Today, Arden had come prepared. She brought a whole bowlful of candy--and put it in a classroom on a completely different floor.

And then when she walked into the Library, she simply announced, "Huh. I wonder what all that candy was doing in that classroom on the--" She barely had enough time to say what floor the classroom had been on before there was practically a stampede of gremlins heading for the door. She managed to leap out of the way in time to not get bit, clawed, or knocked down and trampled and that was really all she could have wanted.

With the gremlins out of the way, she was able to spend a relaxing afternoon putting together a display on various Indigeneous peoples who had lived in America pre-Columbus.

Introduction to Fossils - Wednesday Period 1

[itsananomaly]

“Good morning,” Cutter said as he began that week’s class, “this week we’re going to be looking at Micro and Macro Fossils,” he explained, “starting with micro fossils, a micro fossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size the visual study of which requires the use of light or electron microscopy. A fossil which can be studied with the naked eye or low-powered magnification, such as a hand lens, is referred to as a macrofossil,”

“Microfossils are a common feature of the geological record, particularly from the Precambrian to the Holocene and are more commonly from deposits found in marine environments but they can be found in brackish, fresh water and terrestrial sedimentary deposits,” he went on, “while every kingdom of life is represented in the microfossil record, the most abundant forms are protist skeletons, microbial cysts from the Chrysophyta, Pyrrophyta, Sarcodina, arcitarchs and Chitnozoans, together with pollen and spores from the Vascular plants,”

“A microfossil is a descriptive term applied to fossilized plants and animals whose size is just at or below the level at which the fossil can be analyzed by the naked eye. A commonly applied cutoff point between micro and macro is 1 mm. Microfossils may either be complete (or near-complete) organisms in themselves (such as the marine plankters foraminifera and cocolithophores) or component parts (such as small teeth or spores) of larger animals or plants. Microfossils are of critical importance as a reservoir of paleoclimate information, and are also commonly used by biostratigraphersto assist in the correlation of rock units.

“Meanwhile Macrofossils otherwise known as Megafossils are the preserved remnants of the organic beings and their activities that are large enough to be visible without a microscope. Macrofossils come in many varieties and form in various ways depending on their environment and what is being fossilized including plant, fungi and animal remnants”. Cutter continued, “plant macrofossils include leaf, needle, cone and stem debris and can be used to identify types of plants formerly growing in the area. Such botanical provide a valuable complement to pollen and faunal data that can be used to reconstruct the prehistoric terrestrial environment. Algal macrofossils (for instance, brown kelp, sea lettuce and large stromatolites) are increasingly used to analyze prehistoric marine and aquatic ecoystems The study of these fossils is called paleobotany. Plant macrofossils are increasingly being used along with pollen microfossils to reconstruct past climates.”

“Vertebrate macrofossils include the teeth, skulls and bones.Vertebrate macrofossils are used to reconstruct extinct animals, determine their behaviors and how they evolved. Invertebrate macrofossils include remains such as shells, tests, faunal armor and exoskeletons. The bodies of small and soft bodied invertebrates rarely fossilize. Meanwhile, large and hard bodied invertebrates more commonly fossilize. Well preserved body fossils are of particular use in helping to reassemble extinct animal body structures. Fungi macrofossils include fungal bodies and fillaments and most fungi fossils are found in amber, Fungi fossils are under-researched compared to animal and plant fossils. Macrofossils of fungi are rarer and are more commonly found as microfossils. Trace fossils are fossilized evidence of animal behaviour and include tracks, burrows and dung and Trace fossils are the primary type of fossils used by paleontologist to reconstruct extinct animal behaviors and finally Chemo Macrofossils are fossils are the fossilized chemical remains of an organism. For example coal is the fossilized chemical remains of extinct plant matter.”

“For the rest of the class I would like you to go through the moddable worksheets that have been left out for you,” Cutter finished, “and as always I’ll be around to answer any questions that you may have,”