It eats chemicals produced from radioactive decay of rocks deep beneath the Earth’s crust.
Nothing on Earth is alone except this little bacterium.
Desulforudis audaxviator??? My favorite microbe??? Found 2.7 km down a South African gold mine in a puddle of radioactive groundwater?
Also fun in microbiology when we talk about wether individuals even exist. If they don’t, this guy could be the only one. BUT even he has evidence of horizontal gene transfer with archaea! Even if you can be alone doesn’t mean you have to be.
The name comes from a quotation from Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, where the hero, Professor Lidenbrock, finds a secret inscription in Latin: Descende, audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges (Descend, bold traveller, and you will attain the center of the Earth).
Just the other day I was chatting with an older woman about this exact thing. She’s retired so she enjoys going on almost-daily walks around her neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods. Well she told me that it was really weird that in the newer constructions where the younger families live, EVERYONE has their blinds closed all the time. In fact she can tell a younger family lives in a house based on the simple fact of whether or not their blinds are closed in the middle of a sunny day. It’s to the point where she can’t even tell if they’re even HOME and available for a visit to welcome them to the neighborhood!
When she said that, I realized that I do that too when I live in a more publicly visible apartment. I told her that I think it’s because of the internet. Younger people feel like we’re constantly being watched, observed, and JUDGED for merely existing. So when we’re home, we just want to be alone, unbothered, and unobserved because it’s the one place we can control that. She was very surprised to hear that I felt like that and she was VERY concerned for us young folk (and to be honest after talking with her I became pretty concerned too…)
People from her generation will have their blinds open all day, hang out on their front porch, and randomly visit/enjoy random visits from neighbors and strangers. If a stranger knocks on my door it’s scary and if they want to stay and chat? It’s a huge inconvenience and it feels super awkward and weird and I’m stuck wondering why exactly they’re talking to me, when just a few decades ago welcoming someone new to the neighborhood was just what you did! In fact to not do so was rude!
It made me really worried that as the Panopticon sinks its teeth deeper into our psyches, we are losing the very essence of what makes us human and got us this far as a species: community. I find that being on the internet for hours a day tends to almost trick my brain into thinking “I’ve been social all day, my social need is full” when in reality I’ve only talked to one, maybe two people I know from my real life all day, and only for short bursts, not REAL conversation.
I find it hard to have the energy to invite friends to hang out, and when I want to I feel like I’m a big inconvenience for asking them to take a break from their busy lives for me (not that they would ever say that’s the case, but it’s this nagging feeling internally). I feel like while we used to be a series of large islands of local community, our islands splintered apart and started drifting away from each other. Now your island is just you, your immediate family, and maybe a couple close friends. Those living physically closest to you feel like they’re miles away and unreachable, to the point where you might as well not even bother.
I guess I just have one question for you: Do you know the names of your next door neighbors?
That makes me think about how the rate of paranoia of being watched must be so much higher now than it used to be and must only be increasing, which is very concerning,,
discord is adding parental surveillance. as nerdskii’s tags pointed out its a ridiculous measure that doesnt help anyone because apps like Signal exist for actual illegal/sketchy activity and this just hurts lgbt teens looking for somewhere to be themselves and have resources especially with conservative parents
I use android. this is my secure folder, which was built into my phone. it has a customize option, so I’ve made it look like some bland fitness app. when you open it, it asks you to enter a password or unlock it in any other way you’ve set it to unlock before it lets you in
inside of this folder is like a 2nd phone almost, I can hide apps in here or have different accounts on apps I’ve already installed. I have a separate discord and tumblr inside of my secure folder (which I moved this blog to recently)
there are similar third party apps, usually disguised as a calculator that you set a certain number or calculation as the password to unlock. that’s a lot more inconspicuous if opened, but also more well known, and parents might be looking out for any suspicious calculator apps
also, be careful what 3rd party apps you download, especially when it’s concerning things like your accounts and data! make sure you’re downloading something safe and secure
this isn’t foolproof, depending on how far your parents are going to track you. if they’ve installed anything or had you install anything on your phone or computer, or had the chance while you weren’t there, be careful for spyware. some apps report how long you look at each app, or can record sound from your phone on demand
also important: a good VPN can secure what you’re looking at from the router, which parents may be able to access information from, but this also isn’t guaranteed to work if the parental controls are set to block VPNs
another one, if your parents are tracking your location but not your app usage: download a GPS spoofer. you don’t necessarily need to root your phone for this, as long as it’s supported in developer settings. a lot of them are branded as tools for pokemon go, which can be helpful for plausible deniability
parents reading this: these are things I’ve learned from constantly having my shit taken and looked through as a teen. you aren’t protecting your kids, you’re ruining any chance of them trusting you with anything. if something goes wrong, you’re going to be the last person they tell, because someone who goes to these lengths to see any little thing isn’t going to be chill when something actually bad happens if this is how you act when literally nothing is happening
