Pica: Can I licky every bacon and poach egg?
Me: No, that would ruin the human breakfast, but you may have a little crumb of bacon and little crumb of egg.
Pica: donot want
Me: Then go away.
Pica: Can I PLEASE licky every bacon and poach egg? PLEAS
Nothing makes a meal feel fancy like quite like featherlight flatwear. I want forks optimized for spaceflight. Titanium butterknife! The new definition of luxury!
@futurebird
I just want a spoon that won't bend when I use it on the ice cream I just dredged up from the bottom of the chest freezer.
(I mean, I have that, but it looks very old, and of course it's very thick. But I love it.)
in other news, the bowl I'm eating out of has titanium in the glaze. But not for lightness; it's super heavy. Titanium dioxide (rutile, usually) is a common high fire glaze ingredient. Although maybe not for mass-produced stuff.
@futurebird I have bought and been gifted vinyl records, usually artists I want to give money to - I don't actually have a record player yet, but I'm (slowly, idly...) looking for one!
I have just accepted that I like to look at the art and have them. I don't have space for a player and I don't want to not have the six records I've found.
One is music based on the sounds that ants make!
I hope every day to be asked to a record playing party where everyone brings their records from home and you listen to them.
We learned this the hard way: if you don't have anything tied to not getting vaccinated enough people will opt out out of vague notions about medical distrust, or just the inconvenience of getting it done, that you will have outbreaks.
Nearly all schools from Harvard to little community colleges simply won't let you teach or attend if you don't have the shots. It works.
When you have private schools without these rules ... that's where we've seen outbreaks. This is so simple. Come on.
Is there a place in the oral arguments or in the missives from the Supreme Court where the more reasonable justices can raise and call attention to the outrageous actions, conflicts of interests of their peers?
Shouldn't having a symbol, in support of an attempt to steal an election at one of their homes make it in to the record?
Could they be more aggressive in this way? If not why not?
They all pretend to be so impartial and its dishonest. It's ugly.
@futurebird we’d all be better off of they were sent to individual rooms to write their answers. But it’s really just pageantry for future “internet owns”. So that’s what we’re getting.
Just to show how I've thought about this waaay too much:
The line in the song "I learn foreign & exotic terms of endearment with which to address you" is the only line not sung by an ant: this is the ant mimic rove beetle who lives with them... they had to learn to make the correct pheromones to make the ants like them.
I filmed this two years ago, and the short video has become pretty popular. People are surprised that ants do this. Though to me it seems a general extension of their endless fussing over pupae... cleaning them and even biting them if they start developing into queens when queens are not wanted.
Flocks of graduates in colorful rayon robes, wind catching the hem, caps spinning in the air, groups of two or twenty: as much a part spring in The City Full of Schools, like the blossoms, like the balmy air— Like alates, winged ants, they gather and disperse forever.
Like the summer queens, whose wings are also one-use garments for celebration, for becoming
My Camponotus discolor colony has produced a batch of chunky queens. They all eclosed on the same day. I wonder when they fly? Alates are a mixed blessing for ant keepers— they can really drain the energy of a colony and may lead to its end. But, it’s beautiful to watch. Seriously considering mailing these girls back to Tar Heel ants in GA —. who sold me the queen. They are legal in NY but it’s too far north to let them fly. He has many colonies— maybe he could find a way to get them mated.
They are such beautiful ants! You almost forget how ravenous, warlike and sneaky they are!
The queens are all about the same shade of yellow/orange— which shows they all emerged at once. As their exoskeletons harden, their color will darken. In this species the wings are almost black—very striking! I hope the next batch isn’t all males— though this colony is massive— to think there were only 8 of them years ago.
(read alt text to learn how to spot a queen ant!) #antkeeping#ants#camponotus
yeah moss is great but how about a vascular plant that has basically ... gone back to the way of the moss...
Azorella compacta
It's... it's a carrot that has given up on having leaves...
Imagine a hostile planet with plants like this... could you tell that they once grew in less cold and arid climates? What if flora of the twilight days of a planet look like the earliest life... but when you look closer there are abilities, and structures that tell their history....
@futurebird I got all excited thinking this was the "star plant" that made me so happy when I was trekking in Ecuador, but the range and altitude didn't quite match. Turns out I was looking for Plantago rigida, which looks very similar, because apparently convergent evolution gave us a number of plant families with hardy little high-altitude cushion plants like this. TIL!
@futurebird I saw these llareta in Atacama and they were absolutely incredible. Alien. (They’re endangered now because they grow so slowly and miners harvested them for fuel)
@futurebird
40 years ago, there was a belief among space enthusiasts that seeing earth from space would make people realize how fragile civilization is, and how important it is to work together to make it sustainabile.
Since then, billionaires have built space businesses which are clearly having the opposite effect on the rich, and poisoning the public view of space exploration. I fear discovery of a life-supporting earth-like exoplanet will similar results.
Quick Tulip update: Didn’t see her for a few days and started to worry since she getting up in years for an ant. Just spotted her in the lower chamber doing some patrolling around. She’s at least two years old. Still full of life. #namedAnts#tulip#ants#tuliptheant