Evergreen Social Content
A selection of content from Seed’s Instagram. Assets and designs conceptualized by me and copy written by me.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Everything Everywhere All At Once. Just like microbes.😉 Where are our cinephiles at? 👋
The iconic googly eyes 👀 from Daniels’ maximalist film represent Evelyn’s (the lead character) pivotal perspective shift—akin to opening her “third eye” wherein she sees both the vastness of the multiverse and the small, seemingly insignificant moments in her life.
While we can’t speak to the nature of alternate realities (Are there any quantum physicists¹ out there that want to chime in? 🤓), we can say that the “microverse”—the invisible world of trillions of microorganisms🦠 that live on 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦—is a new dimension.
•
¹ Famed physicist Alan Guth, the founder of the cosmic inflation theory, proposes the existence of a multiverse. In this, he predicts there were actually many big bangs, creating multiple expanding universes, or a multiverse, that overlaps on itself—like bubbles forming on top of existing bubbles. This idea of “pocket” universes states that universe expansion will never completely stop—where one ends, a new universe forms. We (🌎) are in one of these pocket universes.
The Corn Kid Trend
We could tell you all about it…🌽
Pictured above: A kernel (or a single knob from a lump) of corn at 118x magnification. 🔎
Have you ever looked back after taking a #2 💩 and noticed bits of corn in the bowl? Most of us have. That’s because corn is actually a seed protected by a tough outer shell that is made of cellulose. Our bodies don’t have the proper enzymes to break down and digest cellulose, so this outer shell passes right through us and can be seen speckling our poop.
Fun fact: because we’re able to see corn in our 💩, it can be used as a way to measure our gastrointestinal transit time, aka how long it takes for food to go from ingestion 👄 to elimination 🚽.
Do you like #corn as much as that one kid on TikTok?
Julia Fox’s Trending TikTok
Sorry we meant ‘‘jahmz”. 💎
With everyone meme-ing a muse right now, we thought we’d revisit a brilliant line from the film #UncutGems. In it, Adam Sandler’s character, jeweler and gem dealer Howard Ratner, says: “They say you can see the whole universe in opal…”
Well, he wasn’t far off—there is a whole (micro)universe 💫 inside precious gems.💎
Anyone else reading this as “jahmz”? Give us a ✋
Garnet (pictured above) is a set of closely related minerals that have gemstones in a range of colors. A 2018 study¹ looked at garnets retrieved from soil and river sediments and found that they were cut with internal tunnel networks. Originally, the cause of these tunnels was thought to be non-biological forces like erosive weathering—the same way wind, rain, flowing water slowly creates grooves in rock…🌦
But a closer look 🔬revealed something surprising—traces of life. 🤯
Within these grooves and tunnels were fatty acids, hypothesized to be left behind by microorganisms.🦠 Specifically endoliths, a collection of microbes known to live in hard materials like rocks 🪨, shells 🐚, and even bone. 🦴
These extreme conditions are similar to many types of planets and exoplanets in our galaxy (and beyond). This discovery (along with our growing knowledge of extremophiles) could reveal the possibility for life beyond Earth…👽
So, somewhere out in the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10¹⁸)km radius of the Milky Way, other planets could be supporting similar sparkling ecosystems of life. 🪐
Now things like thaaat…that’s a muse. 😉 @kanyewest take note.
—
¹ Ivarsson M, Skogby H, Phichaikamjornwut B, Bengtson S, Siljeström S, Ounchanum P, et al. (2018) Intricate tunnels in garnets from soils and river sediments in Thailand – Possible endolithic microborings. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0200351. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200351
Dune Movie Release
✨Spice Melange ✨(no spoilers)
If you’ve been watching, reading, scrolling into Frank Herbert’s fictional world of Dune, you’ve journeyed to Arrakis—a barren sand-planet—where microbes are at play. And just like here on Earth, they govern more than we give them credit for.
In #Dune, the ‘spice’¹—a life-giving compound produced by subterranean fungi 🍄—is the main commodity of the universe. Found only on Arrakis, it influences politics, power, and commerce.
So, a microbe, living in a place where life could never exist, producing highly coveted goods that govern the trajectory of society? That’s something only sci-fi can dream up…
...right?! 🤓
Actually, Dune was inspired by one of Earth’s most hostile places: deserts.
Desert ecology and the indigenous experiences tied to deserts, built a (fictional) world of colossal extremes—one informed by the science of our world. 🌎
Take, for instance, the Atacama Desert in Chile.📍One of the most arid places on Earth, it's as close to Arrakis as you can get. Even in these extremes, organisms teem beneath the surface. And they aren’t just ‘holding on for dear-life’, but evolving in highly specialized ways.
A soil sample collected² in 2018 from the Atacama revealed an entire community of lifeforms: specifically, a type of bacteria known as actinobacteria. Even more astounding, these microbes were producing antimicrobial compounds (pictured above) as a survival tactic. From this sample alone, researchers isolated 46 new types of molecules with antimicrobial, antiviral, or anticancer properties. 🤯
Microbial discoveries like these can inform how we think about health and disease. And they are one of the first steps in bioprospecting—the exploration of biodiversity for new resources of social and commercial value.³ For example, many antibiotics come from bioprospecting.
However, unlike the bioprospecting (or mining) of spice on Arrakis, we have only scratched the surface of the potential of microbes here on Earth, and those that live in extremes could hold the key to biology a billion years in the making...
Read this far? Give us a ✨
Oscars
Our nomination goes to Parasite¹. 😉
______
¹ Symbiosis is defined as any type of close and long-term interaction between two different biological organisms. In nature, this can express in three ways: commensalism (one party benefits, the other experiences no benefit or harm), mutualism (both parties benefit), and parasitism (one party benefits while the other suffers). Bong Joon Ho's masterful film draws parallels between these dynamics in nature to comment on human relationships and the class divide. The open question remains: who really was the #parasite here?
Mother’s Day
To all mothers¹ on Earth who have nurtured us from a seed² to thriving ecosystem. And to this pale blue dot, Mother Earth. Thank you.
_____
¹ Before Mother's Day (and before the flowers, brunches, and cards) was 'Mothers' Friendship Day'—birthed in the aftermath of war to foster reconciliation between Union and Confederate soldiers, along with mothers from both sides.
² 'Seeding' (where our name comes from), the process by which we receive our first microbes from our birth mothers, through the vaginal canal, breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin contact.
World Toilet Day
Setting the record straight on this¹ ahead of #WorldToiletDay: it’s over, not under 😉
—
¹ The original patent² for the toilet paper holder illustrated by Seth Wheeler in 1891 whose patent not only created the piece of hardware we are all familiar with, but was also designed to reduce the amount of toilet paper used by introducing the perforated (or the tearable lines that separate one sheet from the next) toilet paper roll itself.
² https://patents.google.com/patent/US465588A/en