@futurebird@sauropods.win
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

futurebird

@futurebird@sauropods.win

pro-ant propaganda, building electronics, writing sci-fi teaching mathematics & CS. I live in NYC.

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stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

Outstanding move!

Cat & human play chess. Human does a move and cat shoves it off the board

kyleejohnson,
@kyleejohnson@jawns.club avatar

@stux we call that the falling edge gambit. It decimates the opponent because every piece they move they lose, and none of your pieces even engage.

kjhealy, to random
@kjhealy@mastodon.social avatar

The horror twist of course is that it turns out the skeleton is also me

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

At the Role-Playing Games club today, a fun debate. The whole campaign is on this ice-locked ship in the arctic: the DM introduced the possibility of sirens.

One player declares their character is ace and therefore immune to romantic seduction.

Not so, says DM these sirens call out with "whatever you desire most" ... another player wonders if, since their character is monk seeking enlightenment and the death of all worldly desires are they immune?

Apparently the sirens do enlightenment too.

funkula,
@funkula@goblin.camp avatar

@JamesDRyan @futurebird I think arctic sirens are probably quite a bit...rounder. Like a leopard seal.

funkula,
@funkula@goblin.camp avatar

@WhiteCatTamer @JamesDRyan @futurebird

globalmuseum, to space
@globalmuseum@mastodon.online avatar

A potentially habitable exoplanet that is roughly similar in size to Earth has been found in a system located 40 light-years away, according to a new study.

The planet is about the size of Venus, so slightly smaller than Earth, and may be temperate enough to support life, the researchers said.

Dubbed Gliese 12 b, the planet takes 12.8 days to orbit a star that is 27% of the sun’s size. It’s not yet known whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere

https://pressnewsagency.org/potentially-habitable-earth-size-planet-discovered-40-light-years-away/

alexwild, to random
@alexwild@mastodon.online avatar

Friday Flyday!

Here's an insect I'd never seen before: Berkshiria albistylum. A tiny, poorly-known soldier fly. Hanging out in the yard just minding her own business.

alexwild,
@alexwild@mastodon.online avatar

GBIF only list 19 records of this species in North America, total. I'm about to add 2 more.

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/map?taxon_key=1579760&gadm_gid=CAN&gadm_gid=USA

And this isn't atypical. For most insect species, almost nothing is known, and too few records exist to even begin tracking their conservation status.

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

It’s such a privilege to share my home with living breathing royalty. I check on her in the morning since she’s least likely to be disturbed. They are nocturnal and she’s been up all night laying eggs and being fussed over by her daughters. At this time of day she’s sleeping deeply enough that she won’t stir if I remove the light cover. Sleeping Beauty!

I never settled on a name for her. She’s just “the queen” —

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I wonder if she dreams of that bright day when she had wings. When she flew over NYC looking for seat for her empire? I don’t think ant memory works like human memory— (though they do remember AND learn.)

Ants radically reshape their brains to suit each stage of life— the parts of her that knew of flying are probably as gone as her wings—

Maybe she dreams of the feeling of her daughters massing around her in such great numbers that they all feel that impulse to produce new queens & drones.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@elan Sometimes! Though he’s very … youTube influencer styled (which is the only way to make such work a sustainable profession) but I think it harms the quality of the content— he used to make much better but less “viral” videos.

But at least it gets people thinking about ants. So I can’t be a hater.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@bovaz I think people sometimes expect all ants to have dichthadiiform queens like termites. But to have such a large queen means she can’t run while physogastric and certainly can’t fly. So only the species with “army ant syndrome” have those huge fat queens.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

She must have been a sight to see flying. Ants are chaotic, awkward flyers… even I can admit they aren’t very good at it. Don’t even tuck in the legs. “landing gear” stays fully splayed for the duration of flight: they don’t know when or where they’ll run into something. You have flying black creature the size/shape of a larger wasp hurtling through the air —legs out: if ants could scream you’d hear a tiny “ahhhhh!” as they went by. (no wonder they tear off the wings with such gusto)

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

@wcbdata @bovaz There are so many fun words in myrmecology for “junk in the trunk”

-Repletes (honeypot workers with huge social stomachs)
-Physogastrism (temporary gaster enlargement for laying eggs)
-Dichthadiiform (gastrically enlarged queens who cannot fly)

I feel like there must be more words I’m missing for “fat ants” Consider these camponotus majors who are storing extra fat for winter… rather like repletes but not as extreme.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Some arboreal worker ants of genus Cephalotes are famous for their ability to use their flat bodies to glide when they jump off a tree branch. They are able to glide back to the trunk of the tree so they can more quickly return to their nests in the rainforest canopy.

I wonder if there is any connection between the neural structures required for worker gliding and those for queens flying. Because isn’t flying really just falling with an excess of grace?

nixCraft, to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

🦈 via https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Jk2b8uzDd/

technicaltundra, to random
@technicaltundra@mastodon.social avatar

I mentioned walls of moss, but I am tragically unable to choose just one picture worth my delight at this short but intensely mossy path. You can breathe the green just looking at the pictures.

Same as the first image, but taken further along the path
Same as the other pictures, but taken further along the path

kevsherrystuff, to art
@kevsherrystuff@mastodon.social avatar

Day 4: Learning to draw. Via the magic of the book, I can now apparently draw my own hand with varying levels of proficiency. I’m amazed at how good this book is. You should all try it (unless you can already draw - in which case, ignore me)

image/jpeg
image/jpeg

LukeBornheimer, to random
@LukeBornheimer@sfba.social avatar

San Francisco should convert all slip lanes into public plazas with planters, trees, seating, tables, and murals.

Doing this would instantly make streets safer and increase public space for people to gather, connect, and build community.

Slip lanes can be opened to people fast!

jasonkoebler, to random
@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social avatar

Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.

It requires:

  • "Daily" dumps of customer data
  • The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

https://www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/

woody, to random

https://www.patreon.com/posts/samuel-alitos-104822784

BobNicholls, to art
@BobNicholls@sauropods.win avatar

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

The 2008 book, A TIME TRAVELLER'S FIELD NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS OF DINOSAURS; I'm posting more of my illustrations (it is a fictional story, so be prepared for plenty of inaccuracies). Here are the Triassic reptiles that feature in the book.

plazi_species, to india
@plazi_species@mastodon.green avatar

#NewSpecies!
New shield bug from #india just snuck in:

Meridindia magnolia

Treatment: http://treatment.plazi.org/id/DD7CAE7D-6A6F-FF8D-CCED-DD5F9C6BF8AA
Publication: http://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5428.2.3
#Zootaxa #MeridindiaMagnolia

#FAIRdata
#science #OA #openaccess #biology #taxonomy #ecology #biodiversity #nature #wildlife #conservation #animals #invertebrates #entomology #insects #hemiptera #shieldbugs #bugs

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

You can sniff at block-based programming if you like, but I do find that students who used such languages in middle school have an easier time adapting to object oriented and nonlinear programming later — the downside is that nonlinearity is nearly always an illusion in computer science. And under those floating islands of functions and classes there is an absolute order —

I’ll work with some middle school students next year and so I’m learning about all this scratch nonsense.

mattmcirvin,
@mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@futurebird My daughter had some fun playing with Scratch when she was very little, though she never really took to it as a thing she wanted to pursue further.

The thing I liked the most about it was that it was inherently both object-oriented, multithreaded and event-driven. Those are things I thought of as advanced wizard stuff when I was first learning programming. Here they were in a system a toddler could play with.

What I least liked about it was that there was no capacity for defining functions (e.g. making your own blocks)! But I think they added that later. There was a functional extension of Scratch called BYOB that did that; I guess it evolved into Snap!

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Here is a really interesting documentary about ants... including information about "cardboard ants" who build paper nests rather like wasps.

I've read about these ants but seen very little of images or videos.

It's in French, but will show English subtitles if you get the settings right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nQJVZZ-BEo

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

OH my god these little ants with their "gallery traps" are diabolical.

(I wish machine translation worked better with scientific names... it's going to take me a long time to find out the names of all the species of ants in this video. )

Documentary makers no matter what language you work in... please put the names of people and the names of species on the screen!

TheDinosaurDave, to LEGO
@TheDinosaurDave@sauropods.win avatar

This week for we have another that .

This one I would rate as medium. This is small sized ceratopsian.

Reminder: hide your answer behind a content warning. This will allow others to guess without a hint. I will post the answer tomorrow (and to anyone who guesses correctly).

This was designed by Kongzilla and modified to a new species by me

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Has anyone read any good math and science history nonfiction books recently? (pop nonfiction please) Are there any really good ones out?

EVDHmn,
@EVDHmn@ecoevo.social avatar

@futurebird
Umm… here’s my top 3

The Outsiders Guide to Humans

Camilla Pang
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/639332/an-outsiders-guide-to-humans-by-camilla-pang-phd/

Evolution
by Carl Bergstrom and Lee Dugatkin

https://a.co/d/dwks29j

Entangled Life by: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
By:
Melvin Sheldrake

https://a.co/d/0q2hGY3

Number 4 selection is especially for you, I’m a fan of Doug Tallamy’s works!

Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard

https://a.co/d/1crc9HC

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