@trachelipus@masto.ai
@trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

trachelipus

@trachelipus@masto.ai

I live under a rock, occasionally emerging when the slugs run out of beer and start whining. Not quite round enough to be a roly-poly bug. Prone to odd humor.

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trachelipus, to 13thFloor
@trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

I have a vague memory of a myth (Celtic?) about refining iron the tedious way to forge a sword. The smith rasped a length of iron into filings, which he mixed with grain and fed to chickens. He gathered the chicken poop and refined the iron from it. This iron (which probably picked up some extra carbon while sloshing around inside the chickens) is what he used for the sword. Does anyone know this story?

zoomar, to random
@zoomar@masto.ai avatar

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @zoomar I skipped my last high school reunion last year because the organizing committee pushed nostalgia to a creepy extreme. Yeah, sixteen year old me was pleased to get a varsity letter. I've done other cool stuff since then, though.

    yurnidiot, to random
    @yurnidiot@mstdn.social avatar

    we meet again my elusive nemesis

    orange cat jumping on bed playing with its own shadow on the wall

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @futurebird @yurnidiot I saw one article suggesting that bumblebees will play with beads, and another that captive octopus will play with items in their tanks. I think play capacity varies on the complexity of survival skills needed. If you are an armored siphon feeder, like a clam, you don't need much brain. Hunters, prey animals that survive by fleeing & social animals depend more on learned skills. Thus more need for practice, adaptation & planning.

    futurebird, to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    "Crazy Legs" lives in Australia. he raises various bull ants, as I assume anyone lucky enough to live in Australia would. This is a video about moving his Myrmecia nigrocincta colony to a fantastic new nest of their own design.

    It shows how the ants react to getting help from a giant (imagine a bunch of babies being dumped into your front door.) And the ways ants help each other when confused (happens often as they are just little ants.)

    Captioned, with ambient sound.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIaVWfKx4vk

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @futurebird I love how gentle, patient, and respectful he was with them. I would have been tempted to rush them by rudely tipping them out of their previous nest.

    zoomar, to random
    @zoomar@masto.ai avatar

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @zoomar It's usually easier to fix blame than to fix problems.

    ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs, to random
    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs I relate to your frustration. Like, if someone doesn't want to share their home with a sentient creature, why don't they just glue fleece to a Roomba and toss treats down for it instead?

    trachelipus, to random
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    Took a stroll down into the wetlands over the weekend. Reemerged with half a dozen ticks crawling through my clothing. Ugh.
    A tree killed by beavers has sort of bent sort of broken into the stream.

    enobacon, to Sliderules
    @enobacon@urbanists.social avatar

    Did you get a $15k quote for swap from your central furnace? Are heat load calculators really still this hard to use or are sales bros just not doing the work? We had cardboard that did it in the 80's. LMAO just wait for the coldest day and measure it @TechConnectify 🤣

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

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @enobacon @TechConnectify I'm in the process of getting a heat pump installed in a house that currently has radiators. The ductwork installation, necessary for summer cooling, is what's pushing the project costs into the stratosphere.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @TechConnectify @enobacon . Even a mini-split installation is tough in my quirky house. There's no easy way to run refrigerant lines everywhere they need to go. We'd need to install two condensers to get coverage for the whole house. The prime goal for us is bedroom cooling. We can close off the uncooled rooms in summer. So we'll keep the existing heating system as a supplement to the heat pump. We lose power for a few days every winter, and we know the current system works with our generator.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @TechConnectify @enobacon Had an interesting conversation with a neighbor whose house has a similar floor plan to ours. They opted for multiple mini-splits when they installed the heat pump 4 years ago. Somewhere in his system there is now a refrigerant leak nobody can find. The labor to properly diagnose it is close to what it would cost to replace the system. They are limping along by adding more refrigerant every few months.

    trachelipus, to random
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    People find it interesting when they see me using a fountain pen in the office. I often let them try out my pen. It's always a 50-50 chance they will try to write with the nib upside down. It makes me feel a bit like a character in the Star Trek movie where Scotty tries to use the computer mouse as a microphone, each of us looking at the other thinking "why are you so weird."

    trachelipus, to random
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    An illustration of why you don't mess with downed power lines. Over the winter a line went down and hung arcing into the street. It vaporized the asphalt road surface and fused sand into glass. The surface was freshly paved and smooth when winter started; the damage is all caused by the power line. Glad the power got shut off before more damage was done.

    eclectech, to photography
    @eclectech@things.uk avatar

    The view* from my garden RIGHT NOW**!

    • I possibly added a little something
      ** well, about 30 minutes ago, because I did faff quite a bit after taking the photo

    A sunset photograph. At the bottom is the silhouette of some tree tops and a mountain rising up to the right. Above it is a strip of light, cloudless sky. Above that are dark, brooding clouds, darted through with bright orange shafts. Along the top of the silhouette are a series of animated silhouetted dancers.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @eclectech Your silly snippets bring me such joy.

    lilithsaintcrow, to random
    @lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com avatar

    “Mistaking the highly flammable substance for a piece of amber or other semi-precious stone, the woman placed the centimeter-long chunk in her pocket and moved on.” https://www.dw.com/en/woman-mistakes-wwii-era-munition-for-precious-stone-on-german-beach/a-39977702

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @lilithsaintcrow Yikes. Lucky for her she had removed her jacket when the phosphorus went off.

    futurebird, to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    There is this trope in fiction: A boy gets bullied on his way to school; his dad teaches him to fight. It always seemed so bizarre to me.

    Somewhere in there is a less perplexing story about a young person learning to deal with conflict--

    But, I spent a lot of my childhood waiting to be "jumped" on the way to school. Because, I was being bullied, just not physically.

    I was looking forward to learning kungfu and taking them all out. LOL. 1/

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @futurebird The teachers in my elementary school tolerated bullying because they thought kids learned social skills from it. Act normal and you don't get picked on. What I saw instead was that, once a kid was labeled a safe target, the kid just got very confused. They got bullied no matter what they did, so they never figured out what they were doing to trigger the attacks.

    penfount, to random
    @penfount@penfount.social avatar

    of the day:
    What preferred non-fountain pens do you fall back on in situations in which you can’t use a ?

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @penfount It depends on the need. I keep some ballpoints with a capacitive head handy; they are my most multi-purpose pens. I can use them as a tablet stylus or grind the point into carbon paper forms. Pilot Razorpoint is the most comfortable non fountain pen for me. Sharpie bleeds through paper but is waterproof and good on plastic. I avoid gel pens for the most part. A bad gel is the worst combination of fountain and ball point to me.

    ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs, to random
    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs I can't get behind smashing & looting. It often turns into an ethnic vendetta against other minorities. Just say no to pogroms.

    Kathmandu, to TaylorSwift
    @Kathmandu@stranger.social avatar

    Oh. I just got it.

    Taylor Swift called on her followers to register to vote. Taylor Swift inspires young women who are more likely to vote left-wing.

    So now I'm seeing a zillion re-posts of news articles about "Taylor Swift has a private jet: she is an evil polluting billionaire" because the right wing wants to suppress her political influence.

    That's why we're seeing 'news' about just her jet, not anyone else's. It's a coordinated propaganda campaign.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @Kathmandu
    I'm totally fine with Taylor Swift traveling privately. Why?
    -Christina Grimmie
    -John Lennon
    -Diana Spencer
    -Gianni Versace
    -et al.
    It's not just about privilege. It's about security and protecting themselves - and others around them - from batshit crazy stalkers. Does any casual traveler want to be caught in the stampede when a MAGA nut opens fire on a crowd of Swifties? Hell. Does any casual traveler want to deal with a crowd of Swifties at all?

    senanthic, to random
    @senanthic@mstdn.ca avatar

    I love it when a ticket is basically resolved with "yeah, no, that's a tough one". that's an option? I can just NOT fix things?

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @senanthic Have you encountered the other version, "We're the wrong support group, but the ticketing system won't let us route it to the right group. We could ask an admin to move it instead, but the delay would ding our SLA stats, so we are closing the ticket instead."

    ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs, to random
    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs I want more pictures of George. He looks a lot like a part Maine Coon cat I had years ago. (Sadly, my introduction to HCM.)

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs HCM wasn't all that widely known at the time. I'd had a feeling something was NQR with him as an adolescent; he used to play until he was gasping. The vet said he was just a big cat & his organs hadn't caught up to his growth. A decade later he was splooting a lot, and a vet tech friend said she had seen this position in cats that had blood clots. Again, our vet told us it was no big deal. Turns out it was a big deal. 🙁

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

    Niki Haley wants to raise the SS retirement age to 70.

    Life expectancy for African American men in the US is 62*.

    For men in general? 73.

    Enjoy your negative 8 and 3 years everyone.

    *This is for black men born in 1960 ... the cohort who would be retiring soon if they weren't dropping like flies.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @futurebird The amount of childcare and eldercare provided by people in their 60s and early 70s is undervalued. If Haley gets it through, I can see it resulting in a lot more older men in nursing homes and a lot more working age women leaving the workforce or choosing not to have children.

    KitMuse, to sciencefiction
    @KitMuse@eponaauthor.social avatar

    I need your help . One of the classes I'm taking at the graduate level this semester is Religion & Science Fiction. I read more fantasy, and would like to do my research paper on something that's not obvious (like ST/BS5/Matrix/etc.) & I'd love to use more modern sf rather than the golden age classics.

    Anyone have any interesting ideas for my research paper on regarding the intersection of religion and science fiction?

    @bookstodon

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @KitMuse @bookstodon Leftover AI as a metaphor for divine omniscience in a devolved society has been a theme in a few series. The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card and the Samaria Series by Sharon Shinn are two that come to mind. I think the tail end of the Pern series had a leftover space station too.

    eclectech, to photography
    @eclectech@things.uk avatar

    Some old blackhouses in the Scottish Highlands weight their thatch down with stones. These ones made me think of those theme park rides where people dangle from a track.

    That one in the front has just seen what's coming.

    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @eclectech I like the touch of blurring the limbs of the more distant rocks to match the focus.

    ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs, to random
    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    trachelipus,
    @trachelipus@masto.ai avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs Explain why.

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