llewelly

llewelly, 2 months ago to random

officially, Moby Dick is not the protagonist. Unofficially, you will either spend the entire novel rooting for Moby Dick, or you will give up in the first five pages.

llewelly, 2 months ago to random

sure, if insects vanished, there would be a mass extinction, but on the other side of it, wasps and bees would be replaced by bats and birds, and ants would be replaced by social spiders.

hm, some how this seemed humorous before I posted it. Oh well.

llewelly, 5 months ago to random

more than a quarter of a century ago, I read a book which contained the following hypothetical conversation (approximately):

Philosopher A: "If non-determinism caused me to leap into the garden and eat a snail, would that mean I had free will?"

Philosopher B: "No, that would merely show an interest in the cuisine of southern France."

Unfortunately, I can't recall the title or the author.

llewelly, 11 months ago to random

#emacs thought: is there a function that returns a list of keypress combos that are unbound? If not, why not?

possible why nots:

1: emacs supports a lot of keys and mod keys, many/most keyboards don't have them all. It would be unhelpful to return a list dominated by keypress combos that remain unbound, but are also not on the keyboard(s).
1/3

llewelly, 12 days ago to poetry

3664
is headed 'round the bend
no knowing when
we'll see its like again
for a short time
it lit up the night
so wave to it goodbye
as it heads around the limb
of the Sun

#Sun
#SolarStorm
#3664
#aurora
#poetry

Solar synoptic map drawn by forecaster Lash, via NOAA: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-synoptic-map

llewelly, 13 days ago to random

I was trying to take a nap, but I was awakened by a nightmare: in my dream, early-branching tetrapodomorphs like Acanthostega and Ichthyostega with 7+ fingers were denounced as forgeries of so-called "AI" and erased from natural history.

Like nearly all dreams, it didn't make any sense when examined in the cold light of reality. At least, I hope not.

#fossilFriday

llewelly, 6 months ago to random

there oughta be a humble bundle that contains both an introductory text on graph theory and an introductory text on git.

llewelly, 1 year ago to random

number of scams critical thinking has helped me avoid: hundreds

number of social situations critical thinking has made me unacceptable in: millions

llewelly, 10 months ago to random

Caperea may be a long-lost descendent of an otherwise vanished group, the Cetotheres, after all!

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-whale-debate-rest.html

Longtime fans of @TetZoo may recall when this possibility was discussed on that blog and podcast, something like 10 years ago.

tagging @john, @idoubtit , and @LordGeekington

#whales
#lazurusTaxa

llewelly, 8 months ago to random

what's better than sparkly #unicorn poop?

sparkly #dinosaur poop!

Ammineite is a sparkly mineral and it forms in dinosaur poop!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammineite

#MinCup23

llewelly, 5 months ago to random

who is guilty of the spread of the notion that each and every idea in your head should either pay rent or be forcibly evicted to wander the internet like vagabond opossums?

llewelly, 7 months ago to random

the bot @biodiversitypix routinely posts great images with terrible alt-text. For example, here's an image of several spiders, Lycosa tigrina, L. arenicola, L. ramulosa, and Pucetia aurora, with multiple figures for each species. But the alt text provided by the bot is "Lynx illustration, from the source cited above".
Practically every day I see a retoot of this bot that has comparably awful alt-text.
https://botsin.space/@biodiversitypix/111257389130200938

llewelly, 2 months ago to random

1/3
one fine day many years ago, I was sitting in front of a spinning pottery wheel, trying to focus on making a mug, or maybe a vase. Around me, in the repurposed garage that served as a pottery studio, there were about 5 or 6 fellow students practicing wheel-thrown pottery. The garage door was open, and a mild breeze was blowing, just enough to help newly turned pieces dry a litte faster, but not too much faster.

llewelly, 5 months ago to random

the common descent podcast on thermoregulation was pretty good, despite a few minor items that rankled my inner pedant.
https://commondescentpodcast.com/2023/11/25/episode-179-thermoregulation/

llewelly, 3 months ago to Etymology

I've been reading that joke about etymology and entomology for at least 10 years, but I don't know anything about its history, and that bugs me in ways that I can't put into words.

#entomology
#etymology
#bug
#word

llewelly, 4 months ago to random

@futurebird , did you see this post about ISI , the invertebrate studies institute?
https://mastodon.online/

llewelly, 2 months ago to random

I fall asleep to old podcast eps I've already heard in a semi-random list. This morning the one playing when I woke was about studying aphids by making them part of an electrical circuit: tiny wire is attached to the aphid, and the other end of the circuit is attached to the plant, so when the aphid feeds, electricity flows through the plant's fluids, the aphid, and on through a scope which shows a waveform, whose shape tells whether the aphid feeds on xylem or phloem. I thought of @futurebird .

llewelly, 6 months ago to random

never feel bad about not knowing what the heck "stuffing" (USA turkey-eating day sense) is. Every year people look up this wikipedia article on stuffing. Never feel bad being one of them. People will stuff anything you can imagine in a turkey and call it stuffing. Maybe just bread. Maybe a goat. Maybe an octopus. One day a jokey physics prof will stuff their turkey with a black hole, and the black hole will swallow the turkey and the whole world, and that's how it ends.

https://wikis.world/@wikipedia/111456829791931276

llewelly, 1 month ago to random

easter fact:

if a rabbit leaves you a chocolate egg, it's not real chocolate.

llewelly, 6 months ago to random

Looking back on the english, literature, writing, and journalism teachers I had, it is remarkable how thoroughly and consistently they despised science fiction and fantasy. The nicest thing any of them ever said about was "I confess I'll read some scifi now and then, because everyone turns to trashy entertainment sometimes, but a good writer should aspire to something better."

llewelly, 1 month ago to random

the moray eel is a fierce predatory fish with a vicious reputation, and so it "makes sense" that it has those strange and terrfiying pharyngeal jaws.

Mola mola, on the other hand, has the reputation of being bizarre, and silly, swiming on its side to imitate a manta. And yet, it also has pharyngeal jaws.

#mola
#moray
#eel
#pharyngeal
#jaws

llewelly, 15 days ago to snails

a snail that lives with ants??

" Allopeas myrmekophilos was regularly found in colonies of the ponerine army ant Leptogenys distinguenda. The gastropods always remained inside the bivouacs of their hosts, where they were able to move around undisturbed by the ants. During emigrations A. myrmekophilos was always carried by workers in a manner identical to brood or prey items."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/PL00012646

unfortunately springer wants $40 for it!

#canHazPdf

#ants
#snails

llewelly, 8 months ago to random

The most recent Common Descent podcast is a good summary of herbivores:
https://commondescentpodcast.com/2023/09/02/episode-173-herbivores-plant-eaters/
Includes overview of early feeding traces, first on algal mats, then on plants, and the theory that herbivory was rare in the oceans prior to the Cretaceous. Followed by a nice overview of early amniote herbivores, and then the evolution of herbivory in Coelurosauria and (mammalian)
Carnivorans.

#fossils
#synapsids
#dinosaurs

llewelly, 9 months ago to random

@KateShaw 's latest episode is a great episode about that fabulous Carboniferous weirdo, the Tully Monster!
https://strangeanimalspodcast.blubrry.net/2023/07/31/episode-339-the-tully-monster/

#fossils
#TullyMonster
#problematica
#Carboniferous

llewelly, 9 days ago to random

I remain convinced that extra-terrestrials have never visited Earth.

However, I admit the Nintendo 64 controller is difficult to explain.