My nervous Formica subsericea colony. These are black field ants. When I turn on the light they panic. A newly emerged worker (called a callow) cowers as her sisters stampede over her. She is newly emerged and not strong enough to run and freak out.
One of her sisters picks her up and she tucks her legs in like a pupae so she is easy to carry. In a few days she will be a lovely black like her older sisters.
Some people think my notions about "ant body language" are a little much... but look at that callow, how her body is low to the ground, legs close to her body... that's how ants try to be inconspicuous, and it can mean they are scared, but not wanting to be noticed. There are two other callows in the nest and they were not pick up. Just the one who was frozen to the ground as everyone ran around in circles.
@starrwulfe They don’t let callows leave the nest. Really for the first months of their lives young ants do safe jobs inside the nest: feeding larvae, grooming their sisters and queen, and resting. The ants who venture out are the older ants and the further they go from the nest the older they are.
It could be worse... cicadas could be as loud as my cat and they could all sing a song of suffering and injustice all day long:
"RAaaaAAHngh"
"Mrawahnagh"
"Angoororghragh"
"NraaAahrahah"
"Scientists predict that the 17-year brood of periodical cats will emerge from laundry baskets this year and climb to sunny perches on windowsills, chair backs, and cat trees, where they will begin to sing their raucous mating song."
When I pick up a wild ant such as this Camponotus pennsylvanicus minor worker I’m always anxious that I return her to her colony. I followed her after letting her go. She ran the full length of a football field then suddenly up a pole. Waiting there another ant of the same species. They fussed over each other. Grooming and feeding each other for several minutes. Then they tucked into a nook in the fence and went to sleep! I guess they won’t be taking me to their main nest today.
I was trying to find the location of the main colony and looked up to see this huge tree stump. Probably cut down to keep leaves off of the field 😡— it was once home to a vast colony of probably 20,000 or more carpenters! The ants I saw are probably the great granddaughters of the single queen who sired the substantial colony that marked the great tree. The stump may prove home to many more large colonies as it decays— though, the universe of organisms that was once this tree cannot compare.
Maybe people who are sensitive to noise end up being better at tasks that require concentration because they seek out quiet for fear of overstimulation and then are better able to think because they have fewer distractions.
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.
@futurebird I think you have reasoned out the basic weakness here: there is nothing that is reliably all of (1) predictable to the sender, so they can set it up, (2) unpredictable to the receiver, so they can’t anticipate or interfere, and (3) not requiring some human-managed mechanism like a trusted vault opening. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping is not the same but has some related ideas.
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) #writing#writingprompt
@futurebird The plague kept spreading. It had even reached the outposts on Europa and Charon. Desperate, the archaeobiologists tore open the burying ground of a doctor rumoured to have wind of something that killed all pathogens. His final notes hinted at success, but he had insisted his research be buried with him, fearing it would be misused. They pried open the coffin, to find his hand clutching the tool to create his cure, and they wept when they saw it. It was a single, unlit match.
@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.
There is a small brown rat nestled in a tuft of grass in the park this morning, holding a tiny fist of dandelion fluff and daintily munching the seeds. On a branch just above a common brown sparrow watches the meal with avarice. These are two characters who I often deny the honor of being “beautiful nature” but this little tableau is moving my heart a fraction to have some sympathy for them.
(Even if they both will be found in the bin eating french fry grease later.)
I've been reading some history books about Europe in the middle ages. The matter of the education of kings is incredibly interesting. It seemed nearly universally recognized that an excellent education is essential to a family holding on to power. And even in the controversies of the day (such as religion) children of the ruling class were exposed to a surprisingly wide range of ideas. Including those treated as heresy for the general population.
Skepticism of general education is part of many ruling ideologies. What I find shocking about Fascism is that they extend this glorification of making your own reality through ignorance to those in power.
But I think that's why it never lasted very long as well. Believing your own hype.
The people may still compliment the emperors beautiful clothes, but the cold of nature will still freeze him and send him to his grave.
Somewhere... not too far from you there are sleeping ants cuddling. They have a massive family who loves them and a house filled with wonderful things to eat... and also a mission in life. (fill the world with ants)
"the jails and insane asylums all over the world are being emptied" (no evidence of anything like this) and "they are sending people from insane asylums to the US" (also based not nothing.)
Get ready for a host of awful commentary about the Flynn Effect (the general tendency, since 1930 to about 2000 for test scores and IQ test scores to increase) "reversing"
I'm certain no one will use this data to make nefarious or evil political points!
OK, but what is really going on? Since there has never been consensus about the origins of the Flynn Effect in the first place who knows!
(It's education. People are better at tests when they spend time getting educated and taking tests)
Personally, I worry that the attempt to snatch away mass access to the power of a liberal arts education is working. That would make people worse at math and reading tests... and more importantly it will make people easier to manipulate...
But I can't prove that. It's just what I worry about.
I understand the idea of a loan: borrow money, pay it back over time plus a fee for the favor of having more money sooner.
I understand having a company and taking out a loan: borrow money to do something to help the company make more money and pay it off... but it's OK you made enough that it was a good idea.
But HOW can someone borrow money to BUY a company then say the cost of the loan should go on the companies books?
Imagine being so “rich” you couldn’t have friends, or lovers or a family since the unnatural force of your wealth distorts all human relationships and interactions— turning kindness to suspected obsequiousness compliments to base spaniel fawning, love to a product worn for prestige— and the few who were not perturbed by the magnet of wealth come to hate you for all your suspicions.