WRETCHEDSORCERESS

WRETCHEDSORCERESS OP wrote

Reply to comment by nomorepie in Stir Fry by WRETCHEDSORCERESS

I usually like to toss the tofu in a bit of salt and msg, prebake it in convection oven til its lightly browned and slightly crisp, then toss them into the stir fry before I add the sauce!

You can use cornstarch and stuff for more of a coating, but I dont normally feel the need. It's a fun treat if you're craving that crispy fried texture though

Good luck with the tofu!!! It's one of my favorite foods :)

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

Thank you!! That's a good question! There's really not too many Qs, sadly.

There was a 2022 paper proposing three candidate phyla including Qinglongiota. They seem to be a big fan of oxygen poor environments and sediment!

Mesorhizobium qingshengii is a bacteria associated with milkvetch root nodule, which is cool! Those symbiotic relations are awesome. Everyone says its this cool thing plants can do, because our society suffers from serious metazoan bias, but ALL nitrogen fixation [that we know of] comes from bacteria. Some plants just form these symbioses.

Broadly, there's the concept of Quorum Sensing, which is a huge topic but basically accounts for a ton of the cool stuff bacteria do. Basically they can switch up gene expression based on the proportion of various chemicals in the environment. It is insane and awesome.

I was looking up Q related microbes (that sounds like a horrible conspiracy theory thing oops) and was able to find something tangential — queen bees have a really cool microbiome distinct from other bees!

There's also the queen hypotheses. The "Red Queen" one is general biology, basically just claims evolution is an arms race even if one remains static. Black queen is microbe specific and focuses on why certain traits are lost — basically, bacteria are wont to offload labor they don't need to perform. It's adaptive!

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

Arthrospira platensis, commonly known as spirulina, can take on discrete morphologies depending on environmental conditions: helical as the name implies but also linear! theyre shapechanging out here

Aureispira is a predatory bacterium which uses a heptameric "grappling hook" to catch prey and reel itself in then shotgun blast them to death with a type 6 secretion system

Actinosynnema can grow insane branching fractal mycelial hyphae-like synemata structures in agar medium and into the air. they found that guy in New Jersey!

ok those are 3 interesting bacteria whose names start with 'A' that I can think of rn

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

Long ago I made a d666 table for various fluids to be found in d&d style alchemy jugs. I will roll on this table to determine what fluids I get. Please excuse me for being a fluid anarchist at time of making the table

Pinky: Heavy Cream

Ring: Olive Oil (hell yeah yhell yeah hell yeahfgh)

Middle: Carbonated water (HELL YEAHGFH)

Index: Oil Paint

Thumb: Molten Silver

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

Being nice to random strangers is very fun to me. The drivers on my bus route always seem really happy to see me since I am always saying good day and thank you and suchlike. Some have checked in on me after I was gone for a long while.

I should talk more to my neighbors, we've never done proper introductions or anything. I've only seen a few of them since moving in.

My partner and their family got nearly their whole neighborhood in on a mutual aid thing which is so nice. Been doing it for decades now.

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote (edited )

I wonder how I ever lived without "torment chrysalis" in my vocabulary.

just as mycoplasma survive with not cell walls nor peptidoglycan, deprivation has made you stronger. you are presumably highly resistant to antibiotics.

The big question is where is this fiction available?

I have system agnostic ttrpg stuff published in a small magazine!

Been working on a novel, though I write very slowly! but steadily — went into a dwarf fortress style fey mood over it. no idea where it'll end up, but it's a bit too grotesque for the current spec-fic zeitgeist, I figure. might try finding an agent when its finished, but i dont want money, just to subject more people to my gross art :D

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

Thank you that is genuinely so sweet. Honestly my main ambitions are all creative. If I am not making art I enter a sort of torment-chrysalis

I do move liquids from vessel to vessel as my career, but that is just for the money and because it is fun. My true passion is writing incoherent commercially unviable fiction

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS wrote

It's sort of a low whistle like that of a train! It builds up slowly then reaches an apex at just above speaking volume or thereabouts. It's not too disturbing but lets you know the water is ready. I like it because it's so much lower pitched than most kettles I've heard which tend to be quite high pitched!

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WRETCHEDSORCERESS OP wrote

thank you! mercifully i am better now — still got a post infectious hacking cough though :(

viruses are indeed a type of video games! i run caves of qud on a fractal lattice of sulfolobus monocaudavirus.

which is really cool btw. the capsid looks awesome and its an archaeal virus. it goes after these super acidophilic thermophilic archaea in hot springs and the like

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