I bet my girlfriend that this picture of our cats could get 10 billion boosts on Mastodon.

She said she doesn't believe me. She said there's only 15 million accounts on Mastodon. She said there aren't even 10 billion people on Earth. She said it concerns her that I struggle to comprehend large numbers.

Let's prove her wrong everyone. Boost away and show her just how awesome the Mastodon community is.

My ADHD says y'all need to give me more updoots because my dopamine levels are low!

EDIT: You're all absolutely bollocks and ily! <3

Some ads just don't age well.

Humble Oil became Standard Oil became Exxon became ExxonMobile became monsters.

#climate #ClimateChange

Who are we all descended from? And I mean 𝑎𝑙𝑙 - people, birds, plants, bacteria, archaea....

It's called 𝗟𝗨𝗖𝗔: the last universal common ancestor. And people have been trying to track it down. By comparing the genomes of different organisms you can infer a tree of life and guess where it leads back to.

This new paper suggests that LUCA lived about 4.2 billion years ago, with a genome having about 2.5 million base pairs.

They guess it was a prokaryote: a single-celled organism with no nucleus. They guess it was anaerobic. Neither of those are at all surprising. More interestingly, they guess it was an acetogen! I hope you know acetic acid is what makes vinegar sour. Nowadays, 'acetogens' are bacteria that power themselves by converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen to acetic acid and water:

2 CO₂ + 4 H₂ → CH₃COOH + 2 H₂O

This produces less energy than fermentation, which converts glucose to acetic acid. But hey: sometimes there ain't no glucose around.

The paper says that the metabolism of LUCA could have provided a niche for other microbes living at the time, and recycled hydrogen they made. It's the blue box in the web of chemical reactions carried out by early organisms in the picture at left.

At right you see how if bacteria called methanogens were also also around, they could put methane (CH₄) into the atmosphere, which gets broken down to H₂ by sunlight. When this dissolved in water, acetogens can eat it!

The paper is open access:

• The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02461-1

Alright, sent an email to the head of my local library about setting up a seed library there.

Seeds libraries are places you can go and "check out" seeds. Grow the seeds. Let one of the grown plants go to seed. Harvest the seeds. Then "return" the seeds back to the seed library!

Free seeds!!!!

Check and see if you have a seed library near you: https://www.communityseednetwork.org/map/

Or connect and share seeds with folks online:
https://exchange.seedsavers.org

#solarPunk #seedLibrary #libraryEconomy #urbanGardening