Zala > Recent Status Updates

”A comet or an asteroid—we aren’t sure which—collided with the Earth, hitting what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It was about six miles (ten kilometers) wide, or about the size of Mount Everest.”

“Everything not rooted into the dirt was thrown upward; then it crashed down, and then up and down again, the Earth’s surface having turned into a trampoline.”
[…]
“Then the rains came. But what fell from the sky was not water. It was beads of glass and chunks of rock, each one scalding hot.”
[…]
“Forests spontaneously ignited and wildfires swept across the land.”

“We even know that both the typical sleeping posture of birds and the way in which they mine calcium from their bones for the shells of their eggs first arose in dinosaurs long before birds.”

“Pterosaurs were the first group of vertebrates (animals with backbones) to evolve wings and fly. Dinosaurs—in the guise of birds—were the second.”
yup, birds are dinosaurs and pterosaurs/pterodactyls are not

‘Later research showed that Nopcsa was correct, and his dwarf dinosaurs are now regarded as a prime example of the “island effect” in action.’
so pod’s travels was accurate

“Most of these dinosaurs seemed to guard their nests and provide at least a bit of care for their young. Without some parental love, the baby dinosaurs would have been hopeless, because they were tiny: no dinosaur eggs that we know of are larger than a basketball, so even the mightiest species like T. rex would have been, at most, the size of a pigeon when they entered the world.”

“The largest tyrannosaurs like T. rex had an [encephalization quotient] in the range of 2.0 to 2.4. By comparison, our EQ is about 7.5, dolphins come in around 4.0 to 4.5, chimps at about 2.2 to 2.5, dogs and cats are in the 1.0 to 1.2 range, and mice and rats languish around 0.5. Based on these numbers, we can say that Rex was roughly as smart as a chimp and more intelligent than dogs and cats.”

“We increasingly believe that Rex didn’t go on the prowl alone; it traveled in packs.”

“That’s the final piece of the puzzle, the last component in the tool kit that allowed T. rex to bite so strongly that it punctured, and then pulled through, the bones of its supper. Thick peg-like teeth, huge jaw muscles, and a rigidly constructed skull: that was the winning combination. Without any of these things, T. rex would have been a normal theropod, slicing and dicing its prey with care.”

“Once so diverse in the Late Jurassic Morrison ecosystems, the long-necks suffered a crash in the Early Cretaceous. Almost all of the familiar species like and Brachiosaurus went extinct, while a new subgroup called the titanosaurs began to proliferate”

“They were the largest animals that ever walked the land, and they push the limit for what evolution can achieve.
This raises a question that has fascinated paleontologists for over a century: how did sauropods become so large?
It’s one of the great puzzles of paleontology.”

“Both groups were becoming more diverse as the Triassic unfolded, but the pseudosuchians were always outpacing the dinosaurs. Far from being superior warriors slaying their competitors, dinosaurs were being overshadowed by their crocodile-line rivals during the 30 million years they coexisted in the Triassic.”

“As a matter of fact, many of today’s most recognizable animals can be traced back to the Triassic. The very first turtles, lizards, crocodiles, and even mammals came into the world during this time.”

“These were minor changes, and to be honest, we don’t really know what was driving them, but we know that the dinosauromorph-dinosaur transition wasn’t a major evolutionary jump. A far bigger evolutionary event was the origin of the swift-running, strong-legged, fast-growing dinosauromorphs themselves.”

“Stifling clouds of carbon dioxide were released with the lava. As we know all too well today, carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, which absorbs radiation in the atmosphere and beams it back down to the surface, warming up the Earth. The CO2 spewed out by the Siberian eruptions didn’t raise the thermostat by just a few degrees; it caused a runaway greenhouse effect that boiled the planet.”

“You feel you ought to get a refund from Hell.”
lol honestly, same. glad I didn’t buy the book or I’d want a refund for that too

”Take a strip of paper, twist it in the middle, and connect the ends. Very good. Now you have a ring, a three-dimensional object you can hold in your hand.”
now she’s just giving a lecture fr

“Oh, if only she could just shatter, if only this would all end—but it kept going on and on”
me at this book

“We follow the example of the Morning Star. We make our own paradise in Hell—”
“All right, Milton,” said Professor Mansfield.
“God has no hold on us,” said Gertrude. “Morality is for the weak.”
“All right, Raskolnikov”
ok she’s read milton and dostoevsky, but one after another? really?

ah so it’s peter’s turn

“I see.” Peter tilted his head. “That’s—hm. Fascinating.”
“You think it’s sick.”
it is yeah

Why is Phlegyas here??

”Alice hated this misplaced sympathy.”
girl, I don’t think it’s misplaced

”You think I’m that sort of person? That I’m capable of—of trading your soul, like you’re nothing?”
dude those notes are suspicious tho

this is somehow shaping up to be a love story about two people sharing the same shitty advisor

”But the benefits so clearly outweighed the costs, for what scholar wouldn’t have killed for her perfect recall? It was the age when everyone was getting excited about computing machines, and here Alice had become one. She would adapt; she had no choice.”
oof

“But surely they’re all parts of the good—”
“Oh, so there is a complete list? And what else qualifies for your list? What is the common quality of all virtues on your list? Can you give me a comprehensive, tightly defined version of your list?”
Peter paused. “I see.”
“It’s harder than you think.”
yeah this is starting to sound like hell

lembas bread?

”No one saw Professor Grimes’s eyeballs stretch out of his face before popping like grapes; his intestines spooling out and around his body like a jump rope, crisscross applesauce; his mouth twisting in a soundless scream.”
oop

why magick