The She-Geeks Loot Crate Dream Crate

Recently the Loot Crate team contacted She-Geeks to ask me to participate in their Dream Crate project. Essentially, I (and several other bloggers) write about what would be in my perfect Loot Crate box one month. In case you're somehow unfamiliar, Loot Crate is a monthly subscription service that sends a themed box full of geeky loot to your door every month for a fee. The overall value of all the items in the box is significantly more than you pay for the service, so as long as you like what you're getting it's an incredible deal for fans.

I took this project pretty seriously. I know several people who have gotten Loot Crate before and ended up dropping it due to disinterest. If I'm going to create a box, I wanted to make sure that it was one people could get excited over. I wanted the reaction to my Dream Crate to be, "If I opened that box one month I would die a thousand happy deaths." So, with a firm goal in mind, I set out to do a little research. I asked subscribers in my social circle what they liked and what they didn't like about Loot Crate. General consensus was that a t-shirt was an essential inclusion, Funko POP figures were a great value, and keeping things as functional as they are awesome is a great way to keep them from being stuffed on a dusty shelf somewhere. With these things in mind, plus the basic structure of a typical Loot Crate box, I set out to create my Dream Crate:

She Blinded Me with Science! 8/23/14

She Geek Eris drops a knowledge egg on dat ass via her segment on local radio show The Week in Geek. Here are this week's topics:

Could You Camouflage like a Cephalopod One Day?

Forget maxing out your level in Obfuscate; when it comes to blending in, vampires ain't got nothin' on octopi! 

Mad hide and seek skillz.

Cephalopods (mollusks with arms attached to their heads like octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) are masters of camouflage because it is their main form of protection. Their bodies are covered in a layer of thousands of chromatophores, color-changing cells just below the skin. Each cell contains pigment and can be expanded or contracted to accentuate or subdue the visibility of their pigment depending on the desired effect. For instance, if the octopus needs to blend into a piece of red coral, the chromatophores containing red pigment would be expanded while the others contracted, essentially turning the octopus red. Some cephalopods also have a layer of reflective plates in their skin in addition to chromatophores which allow them to either appear iridescent or simply reflect the colors around them in order to blend in even more completely. Most importantly to this research, cephalopod skin also contains a layer of photosensitive cells. These cells are able to sense light and patterns without the use of the cephalopod's eyes or even its brain, which allow it to utilize its camouflage technique almost instantaneously.