@llewelly@sauropods.win
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

llewelly

@llewelly@sauropods.win

I tried to write an introduction and it was so empty it collapsed inward on itself

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futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The ant “foot” consists of a tarsal claw with two toes and the several segments above that I suspect are simply… well…floppy. Basically, I’ve seen no evidence ants can wiggle their ankles at will, but rather they seem to adjust the floppiness, or tension of the lower leg. The claws, however, show signs of dexterity, ants can control how sticky the soft pad of their foot is, but also seem to be able to grip and release with their claws. (how exactly are the muscles arranged?)

Another view that includes the segments above which I suspect to be “floppy” the ant leg is often covered in hairs.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird I am surprised. I thought keeping 3 legs in contact with the surface was the normal insect walk, with the exceptions mostly being insects who had highly modified a pair of legs to do something else (like mantids).

TheDinosaurDave, to random
@TheDinosaurDave@sauropods.win avatar

Im doing some fossicking at Richmond QLD Digsite 1
After a few hours, this is what i have to show for it
Who can guess what they are (spoilers i have no ide myself haha)

Close up of one ofnthe finds
Close up of a possible belemite fossil
No idea, maybe bones (shrugs)

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@TheDinosaurDave
they look like rocks

: )

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Cats keep trying to start a union— but it’s too easy to attract scabs with offers of scritches and greenies. And every single cat thinks they are “union leadership” — add to that their intractable negotiation skills and the problems are obvious.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird cats think protracting their retractable claws gives them the traction to overcome the "intractable" bit.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Hydroponic ultra ripe vertically farmed strawberries are very popular in NYC but flown in from Japan. Restaurants buy them at $2 per berry (not even big ones) they are very good— but do you know what’s more fancy than Japanese vertically farmed berries? LOCAL ONES. Why don’t we have a flouncy berry farm in NYC yet?

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
ok. I try to be understanding about the desire to use vertical farming to provide a nearby source of fresh fruits and vegetables, but since it is practically always going to be less energy efficient (with the debatable exception of some low light crops), adding insult to injury by FLYING vertically farmed crops halfway across the globe from a place of similar climate is just an absurd amount of waste.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
but, if people want berries year-round, there are plenty of sub-tropical places that grow strawberries year round that are lots closer than Japan. Heck, I bet going to a southern hemisphere nation like Chile (almost the same timezone as NYC) is probably less fuel than Japan! Maybe even a lot less. (I guess you're really thinking that if it's vertical farming anyway, it could be in NYC and be year-round, and I agree.)

llewelly, to random
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

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

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

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Why is this sign so ominous to me? ?

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird @dantheclamman , can you explain this terrifying sign?

ai6yr, to random

Somebody leave their sunspots on?

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@ai6yr
it's my fault for writing this poem:
https://sauropods.win/@llewelly/112428063446385667

mrundkvist, to random
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Keyboard macros. They were a huge deal in the 80s. Now nobody ever mentions them. What changed?

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@mrundkvist
mice got into the keyboard pantry and ate all the keyboard macaroni.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Is it possible to devise a kind of encryption that will grow easier to break based on the passage of time? A key that can be reliably produced with enough calculations could be a start, but you can’t account for faster computers. Maybe a system that has a host of parameters based on other computers and sensors? but inputs can be faked. I don’t know if this question really even makes sense: it seems to bush against something fundamental and impossible.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
I don't understand the question. If I take it literally, I think: As long as people keep developing faster computers and better knowledge of the maths of breaking encryption, all encryption will get easier to break over time. But you must mean something else.

futurebird, to writing
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Writing Prompt: In a future time your grave is robbed. Who is the theif? How do they see the “treasure” of your grave as salvation? How do they find it cursed? What is one thing in the grave that they do not dare disturb?

(a grave need not be a physical thing and treasure could be gold or information or anything rare)

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
reminds me of a bad 1980s novel in which paleoanthropologists, while investigating Clovis graves and the mystery of the end-Pleistocene extinction, find some intact dried preserved meat from the pleistocene. They reserve most of it for analysis, but can't resist eating some of it. Turns out it contains a horrible virus that turns every infected person into murderous super-predator, as would be required by Paul Martin's absurdly fast "Blitzkrieg" idea.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

NYC pretends to be a modern city. But really we are still a place with fishmongers and cutlers. Cabarets and speakeasies.

The cutler’s flier advertises when he will bring around his grindstone. (gotta remember my knives that day)

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
a cabbie
took a bear
wearing a beret
to the cabaret

singing
♬ ca berry beret ♬

mrundkvist, to DadBin
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Children are vague on geography and tend to assume that any place they know well is well-known to everyone. They will use obscure place names and get confused when you have never heard of them.

One of the kids I grew up with used to talk about his or her summers at "Haverdal". Neither of us had any idea of where it was on the map. Now I learn that it's a nature reserve in Halland, SW Sweden.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@mrundkvist
adults do that too, but mainly with films, tv, and music. : )

hypnogoria, to random
@hypnogoria@ohai.social avatar

To tie in with this morning's One from the vaults selection, a little piece on the Ladybird Dinosaur book - https://hypnogoria.blogspot.com/2014/03/dinosaurs-ladybird-leader.html

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@hypnogoria
Interesting! did you know Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs also covered this book:

https://chasmosaurs.com/2022/03/30/podcast-show-notes-episode-16/

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I’ve been wanting this print of ants for years and at last broke down and got it. Just put it in a frame. I could look at it forever— it came with a card with a key to each species!

The artist is AMAZING for all kinds of insects.
https://carimnahaboo.com/

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird look at Camponotus inflatans! Such wealth!

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Book Cover

Title: "Born Pregnant"

A drawing of an aphid eating a blow pop, with a tiger-print bikini top and cut off shorts like "whatever I do what I want"/"cash me outside"

What is this book about? A garden-themed version of your typical urban fiction story featuring wild young aphids and horrified moral upstanding ants.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird sure, sure, the ants make a big deal about how horrified they are, but what does a new queen bring to her mating flight? An aphid pregnant with an aphid pregnant with yet another aphid! . There are even those who say this is a post-ant-domestication phenomenon, bred into the aphids by the very ants themselves.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
even as the light of the Sun shines through the weave of a thin cloth, the guilt of the ants shines through the subtext of their propaganda

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Gonna get listed in the yellow pages as an "ant psychologist" ... I'll find out why your ants are too nervous... or aggressive... or depressed. Give me a call!

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird
(several summers in a row I got a job delivering old-style "yellow pages" and "white pages" dead tree phone books. The first time I went to the warehouse to pick them up, the warehouse was filled with stacks of pallets so huge I felt like an ant standing next to one. )

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

You know the early humans who lived in Europe 25k years ago? The ones with stone tools who carved thicc portable woman statues?

How many do you think there were in all of Europe?

I'm shocked to learn the estimates are only 30,000 people! Hardly even a small town... and spread over so much space. Humans were rare animals. Our shift to numerous is more extreme than I think we realize.

It explains why technology changed so slowly. Not enough people!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTn5KdsxZ0E

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@mckennas @futurebird
well there was a megafauna extinction near the end of the Pleistocene. We meet the definition of "megafauna" typically used: a typical adult size of 44kg or more. (yeah, this is smaller than many people think they when they hear "megafauna", but I blame Paul S. Martin. ) Maybe it's just luck we didn't get taken out in that extinction event.

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@futurebird @mckennas
yeah, I should have remembered that before making a cheap joke. Africa was definitely the center of and most dense area of human population at that time, and I would guess probably remained so until relatively recently, until the development of high density rice farming in southern China and southeast Asia.

llewelly, to poetry
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

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





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

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

me: writes poem on the passage of 3664 around the limb of the Sun

active region 3664: "I'm not done yet!"

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/yet-another-x-class-flare-0

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

and now the strongest flare yet!

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/region-3664-not-done-yet-produces-x87-flarelargest-solar-cycle

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@gay_ornithischians no, it's as safe for us down here. Some radio and satellite disruptions. If the flares got stronger, power grid disruptions could occur; see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm

If you had proper eclipse glasses to protect your eyes, you could put them on, look at the Sun , and see active region 3664; it was huge!

18+ gay_ornithischians, to random
@gay_ornithischians@sauropods.win avatar

the awkwardness of first contact

llewelly,
@llewelly@sauropods.win avatar

@gay_ornithischians I like it.
For earth gravity - I would guess it would be ok up to about elephant size, assuming density similar to an average mammal.

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