• Limonene@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The cell membrane is the wall of the cell. I know it’s less catchy, but human cells don’t have a cell wall.

  • Mustakrakish@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Some of them seem a bit obtuse. “Municipal hall” doesn’t immediately conjure a vivid image of it’s role.

      • Of the Air (cele/celes)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        And blood-black nothingness began to spin… A system of cells interlinked within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem… And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

        Cells.

        Cells.

        Have you ever been in an institution? Cells.

        Cells.

        Do they keep you in a cell? Cells.

        Cells.

        When you’re not performing your duties do they keep you in a little box? Cells.

        Cells.

        Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        What’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love? Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        Did they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        Do you long for having your heart interlinked? Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        Do you dream about being interlinked?

        Interlinked.

        What’s it like to hold your child in your arms? Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        Do you feel that there’s a part of you that’s missing? Interlinked.

        Interlinked.

        Within cells interlinked.

        Within cells interlinked.

        Why don’t you say that three times: Within cells interlinked.

        Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked.

  • ynthrepic@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This shit gives me existential dread and hope.

    Like the complexity of cells might as well be an alien civilization, but all that somehow results in something that it’s like to be me. That’s so fundamentally mysterious, all I can do is conclude that consciousness has to be the prior of the universe. So on the one hand I’m nothing, and on the other, maybe I’m immortal. I won’t know until I’m dead.

    • saimen@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      To add to that, similarly like there are microscopic and macroscopic processes we can only indirectly perveive, there are probably also processes on a much smaller and much larger timescale we can therefore only indirectly perceive.

      Like one cell could be the whole universe of some absurdly small conscious beings with a lifespan of less than a femtosecond.

      • ynthrepic@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Utterly absurd, and yet we know this with far more certainty than the most well subscribed religions know anything. There are so laughably unimaginative too compared to this reality. And yet, the knowing is also a burden. 😅

  • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    Non-anglophones, is this a thing you can relate to? I’ve never been told “das Mitochondrium ist das Kraftwerk der Zelle” or anything like it, at least not nearly to the extent that anglophones seem to, so much so that it’s forever burnt into their brain folds apparently.

    • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      All of us who learned Spanish in the U.S. also know “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?”

      Just a bunch of canned phrases like that kicking around in our brains.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      As a Canadian, I share your confusion. I think that phrase was just a common descriptor of mitochondria in US textbooks, or a catchy line in a popular US biology video.

      It’s just strange enough to make a big impression on bored students, so I’m not surprised it’s been memed so hard.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        2 days ago

        I think it was tossed around on Reddit a lot, too, back in the day, increasing its permeation through our ilk

        • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          Wikipedia says:

          The mitochondrion is popularly nicknamed the “powerhouse of the cell”, a phrase popularized by Philip Siekevitz in a 1957 Scientific American article of the same name.[4]

          But know your meme attributes its meme status to this tumblr post from 2013:

          screenshot of text: "what i learned from school 1. im a fucking piece of shit 2. everybody else is also a fucking piece of shit 3. mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell"

          Contrary to comments in many places like this reddit thread from 2018, I suspect the phrase wasn’t actually used in many textbooks or very commonly known prior to that tumblr post.

          (If you search on Google Books you can find numerous textbooks using the phrase. Range-based search on Google Books appears to be broken so I’m not sure, but all the ones I checked were published well after 2013.)

    • rooroo@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      As a German, I’ve definitely learned that in school. Maybe it was memes by then as well, but it being the late 90s I doubt it.