Welcome to Genetic Linkage, a series where I share updates and interesting links for the week.
What is genetic linkage, literally? It's when two alleles that are close together on the chromosome tend to be inherited together during meiosis. It means that traits that may be completely unrelated to each other may always show up together, because they are physically close together in the DNA. I'm going to use it for the name of this series because it's a cool concept.
Reading:
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Recently finished this Hemingway classic but found it's not really my cup of tea. It's about the WWI generation and the negative effects they live with post-war. It's like The Great Gatsby in that it follows a group of kind of shitty disillusioned people partying their way through life, culminating in watching the bull fights in Spain, a metaphor for society's view of masculinity. The main themes don't personally apply to me too much, which is fine, it just means I didn't really relate to it. Found it kind of cynical.
more Frida Kahlo:
I'm reading more books about Frida Kahlo and her life, still find her really interesting.
One of her paintings was accepted into The Louvre in 1939, a self portrait titled The Frame the uses glass frame elements. It was the first work by a 20th century Mexican artist to be featured by The Louvre.
If you're into journaling, Kahlo kept a journal that is a frenetic combination of writing and art.
Both Frida Kahlo and her husband the muralist painter Diego Rivera are featured on Mexican pesos.
Great Dinosaur Mistakes – Book Review: A review of a neat kid's book that discusses mistakes in dinosaur reconstruction, including the infamous Crystal Palace dinosaurs of the Victorian era, that placed Iguanodon's huge thumb claw on its nose. Read about the Crystal Palace dinos if you've never heard of them before, really interesting.
The Guardian: Invertebrate of the Year: Voting for Invertebrate of the Year is now open - please vote before Sunday night! There are ten options, from a squid to a woodlouse to a bee. If you don't know which to vote for, I would suggest you vote for the Muscardon bumblebee! Bumblebees are in decline pretty much everywhere.
LazerT Art Store: - buy cool stickers, charms, and pins with awesome illustrations of unique animals, including lots of prehistoric animals. Pigeons, geckos, trilobites, and more. The artist has stickers for one of the reptiles I've blogged about: a whiptail lizard!
Blog links:
WhatTheFran - 132 Blaugust Posts: WhatTheFran visited all the blogs signed up for Blaugust and features a favorite post for every single one! That's so nice to check through all of them, I really appreciate that. From my blog, Fran featured my whiptail article.
AcademicAesthetic - Why Are We Still Using High Stakes Tests: AcademicAesthetic's take on using standardized testing in schools and the problems that creates. I appreciate this perspective and the idea that standardized tests are really all-or-nothing, putting a lot of focus on singular tests. I try to implement more lower risks grades in classes I assist, like having multiple quizzes throughout the semester but the lowest two are always dropped. Students seem to do better in systems like this.
Bhagpuss - Things I've Found in the Back of a Drawer Episode 2: Bhagpuss' cool series about interesting things found in home drawers, this time featuring a set of buttons! Buttons weren't really a huge thing when I was young but I do remember having some Hot Topic ones on my bag lol. I think enamel pins are more the thing nowadays. I like the Batman ones here.
We are almost half-way through blaugust 2026! How are you doing? I've made a post every day so far, but don't know if I'll keep it up or not. I would really like to post every day. I started writing posts in advance so it hasn't been hard to keep up yet, and I have a huge list of other topics to get to! The list will take me through blaugust for sure if I actually do it.
I know not everyone is a gaming blog but that truly is the majority of those participating, so I feel bad that I have to skip through a lot of posts where I don't know what they're talking about. This is also true for the many software developers and coders - I do not know about coding!
Neocities keeps tracks of your site traffic for 7 days at a time (using the free version), and my traffic has gone way up since blogging, but it doesn't differentiate with AI visits. So it's hard to tell what is actually true. I'm guessing it's getting a lot of AI scrapers.
lucky instar 
