actually, neurotypicals only want to talk about the weather until you start talking about all the myriad ways weather is being altered by fossil-fuel driven global warming.
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
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.
@llewelly timeline in which all media and literature exists only as corporate streaming libraries. then some billionaire buys them all up, feeds them to a generative ai program and then deletes the originals
@llewelly@gay_ornithischians it's gotten to the point where i'm doubting the value of any satire at all, except only as an unhealthy vice that we inevitably find ourselves indulging in from time to time
when has any satirical work, however well written and received, ever done anything but normalize the bad thing further
" 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
some cicadas have symbiotic gut fungus (yes, fungi, not bacteria) that make amino acides for them. These fungi are related to the infamous "zombie" cordyceps fungi.
some cicadas in N. America have gone extinct in recent times, some without having their songs recorded
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.
contrary to what mainstream cryptozoologists would have you believe, the easter bunny is not evidence of an "ethno-known" third family of monotremes convergent with rabbits.
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.
@gay_ornithischians
I enjoyed it very much, although in a few places the science is out of date (for example, Ellis favors the old whales evolved from Mesonychids theory, rather than the modern whales-are-Artiodactyls theory), and in some places I felt like there was too much about the whaling industry, and maybe too much about Moby Dick. (These things are relevant, and interesting in their own right, but I'd rather have had some of that space turned over to the whales themselves.)
@gay_ornithischians@llewelly Moby Dick already has at least three embedded harpoons! Also, it’s implied he’s something like 85-90+ feet long, so far larger than a real whale (maxing out at ~20 meters / 65’)
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.
2/3
the man working on the wheel across from me was talking computer talk while his hands did pottery. I was rather annoyed at this, because I was doing pottery mainly to escape computers. He was explaining what streaming was to the woman next to me, and telling her how much more better it was than watching a movie the old way.
For a time she listened politely. Then he paused for a bit, and she asked: "But why do they call it streaming, when that's slang for pissing ?"
3/3
I laughed. I laughed so hard my pottery was totally ruined, but I kept laughing. I could hear other students in the room laughing. The self-appointed streaming advocate looked around the room in confusion.
It was only mid-morning, and he didn't talk about tech stuff for the rest of the day, even though we stayed there doing pottery until late in the evening.
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 .
I suppose the circuit method could be used to study feeding habits of any insect that feeds on plant fluids, provided it doesn't move too much. hm, maybe scale insects would be good. Unfortunately I'm kind of a afraid ants who tend the bugs might take offense to the tiny gold wire.