I should call her.

Looks like the hole they dragged the Brain Bug out of.

Also why you don't re-use needles:

So when nurse misses a vein and want to try again you should ask them to uae a new needle?
- For good procedure, yes.
That's not the main reason why we don't reuse needles.
- One of the many
- For even into the same patient…
It's a little misleading in that the last photo is zoomed in a lot more than the previous ones. This one has that without the extra zoom in.
- Could they be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol or an autoclave?
- Comparing the pictures it looks like the exact same set of photos except like you said, more zoomed in.
Wow, I did not expect that.
Can we see the skin after that sixth use?

how do we know this isn't just a closeup of a tardigrade butthole?

They're well studied.
https://www.livescience.com/62602-tardigrade-poop-video.html
- TIL
- This deserves its own post.
- Here's a photo of the tardigrade in action:
- That was a huge log
- Shit this made me actually laugh out loud in person lol 😂
- I clicked because of that hole but came here because of the tardigrade upskirt pics.

There was missing something...

Hard to believe. To prepare a sample for an electron microscope you need to freeze it to nitrogen temperatures or below. You can fix it using glutaraldehyde, but again, you need to cut it accurately immediately after the penetration. My bet is that either stabbed dead skin or some sort of graphics.

Also seems wildly overkill to use an electron microscope for this.
- That's an elephant in the room here
Yes! When I did electron microscopy, we had to cover the fix the samples and cover them with a very thin gold layer beforehand.
- Yeah, and it's impossible to catch color!

In rationalist hell there is a special teapot for people who color SEM images

Thanks, I hate it. Not because of the hole, but because of how unhealthy the skin looks in this picture.

Were you expecting it to be smooth like plastic? The top layer is basically a bunch of dead skin cells that keep flaking away from the top layer and building up again from the lower layers.
- Mmm, skin flakes.
- Not if you moisturize
  ^/s, ^of ^course, ^though ^I’m ^sure ^you ^could ^put ^this ^photo ^on ^Instagram ^and ^be ^like ^“this ^is ^your ^skin ^without ^my ^brand ^of ^healing ^lotion ^made ^of ^baby ^foreskin” ^and ^make ^plenty ^of ^sales
- I am aware, but it still looks very unsettling. The fake colour actually makes it worse I think, because I have seen plenty similar pictures in gray scale
- It would only be smooth if it was shark skin.
Scanning electron microscopes image in a vacuum. Nothing looks 100% like it does at sea level when you suck all the air out.
Pik pik pik
I knit, tiny? makes me want to use a bandaid after I inject black yat heroim these days

That old familiar sting.

Most SEMs use a vacuum chamber to get their photos. Also, it's not uncommon to sputter a conductive coating onto the surface you're scanning.

How the hell did they get this photo?

Put a needle in someone, freeze them solid with liquid nitrogen, then take a picture. Throw body out with rest of specimens.
Easy peasy.
Environmental SEMs do not require vacuum and can be used for nonconductive samples. The beam ionizes the air which prevents the sample from charging. Magnification is limited but it is more than enough for this.
You can tell it is SEM and not optical by the depth of field. An optical image at this magnification would have much less DoF so the peaks/valleys would be blurry.
- That's very cool. I had not heard of ESEMs till you commented. I'll have to look into them more.
It likely wasn't done on an electron microscope, or at least there is no reason to. There is no scale bar, but quick look online tells me a very fine needle is about 0.016in. 500x magnification optical lens would give you more than enough resolution for a photo like that.
I'm more intrigued by the fact there's no blood, they must've taken this milliseconds after the needle was removed? Or it's a dead body.
Probably just a chunk of skin, not a whole person
They could have remained a portion of the skin. ~~But as another commenter notes, this is too large to need an electron microscope.~~
Edit: then another comment says otherwise, and cites the collection it is from.

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