I Still Print My Photos Part 1

Photography is consumed at a considerably larger scale than ever before thanks to the Internet, yet the appreciation for the art of it is not proportional to these changes. It’s quite vexing that photography once was an esteemed, genuine art form in the public’s eye yet now is something we expect to see every time we open up our phones. But, if we see low quality, poorly composed photos, we mock it. On the other hand, photos that are museum-worthy are overlooked for someone’s travel photos laden with cutesy filters. Our eyes are trained to expect a specific type of photo and many of us expect nothing different. It has become something artistically undervalued and socially commonplace.



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Returning “Home” Poco a Poco

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and for me, this chapter of my life spent in Honduras has concluded, a brief intermission in Chicago has begun, and soon, a new chapter in Carbondale will follow. I do have my hopes there will be a “Honduras– Revisited!” at some point, but that hope I will tuck into my heart and allow myself to find again one day, a surprise for when I go to put it in the wash and check the pockets. I was only in Honduras for a little less than half a year, but it feels like much longer. I am grateful to have met so many incredible people, all of which have made an impact on me in various ways. I have been shown more kindness than I deserve and that I could never pay back in full. Honduras quickly became my second home, not necessarily only in the physical sense, but by the people who immediately befriended me, who stayed patient all the times I got tongue-tied in Spanish, who laughed at my (supposedly) Russian-sounding r’s, who taught me how to cook, who showed me the best hiking trails, who made it their goal to have me try the “essential” Honduran foods (cough cough all of them), who shared their music and eagerly received mine back, spent their evenings with me, and made me feel more welcome in a foreign place than I usually feel at home.



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Book Review: 21st Century Guidebook to Fungi, Chapter 4

Apical extension is a major characteristic of fungi with tubular hyphae. As exploratory organisms, being able to extend and dip their mycelia into the space around them is a crucial part of survival. They produce biomass, such as lipids and proteins, which are delivered to the tips of their filaments via vesicle trafficking, allowing them to add on their ends to keep growing outward. Once a fungus finds something of value, extension stops and branching begins to milk whatever food source they found. Other outwardly extending systems, such as blood vessels in humans, may seem similar, but these traits evolved convergently, such being that there are only so many ways to branch out radially with autotropism, or avoiding bumping into yourself. On a side note, sometimes positive autotropism is needed, specifically for hyphal fusions, but this is not the case most of the time.



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