Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)

In my office there is the most glorious house centipede. I see them each morning as I’m the first one to get in, and startle them from their nightly creepings when I switch on the lights. I’ve tried to catch them several times, but they are swift, and I don’t know if they would be safer in the basement than our office. I am terrified one of my coworkers will see them and crush them or toss them outside where it is too cold.

Today they have bunkered themselves in a box of old exams.

I need to let the other people in the office know about this centipede, who lives on a diet of spiders, who live, in turn, on smaller arthropods— it speaks of a complex ecosystem the size and elegance of this creature: deadly, delicate, a muderous chandelier with racing stripes. (for those of you in tropical climates please rest easy, this is not one of those snake like creatures it can’t hurt a human)

At the bottom of the ecosystem are messy middle school students.

I thought of putting a sign on the box, but that seems in contravention of “Project Try To Be Normal”

I just don’t want anyone to be startled by the creature and kill it. I’ve seen that happen before and it’s very upsetting. I find if I let people know how helpful they are it’s possible to get people to leave them be. I hope no one needs to look up any old exams today!

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is a fascinating and deeply alien world. Many bodies in space are, well, dead. No weather, no climate, no geology. Not Titan! Things are Happening on Titan, but none of the elements building the complexity and weather of this planet are the same as those on Earth.

I really enjoyed this video, and here are some exciting images. What happens when a river of methane carves "rock" of water-ice and organic sand?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxPsu0zHrd8

@mansr

The Queen Ant talks to King Solomon in Proverbs, but now I'm remembering that this is a story in the Jewish texts, but not in the Bible. Dang it.

Friendly reminder that there *are* talking ants in the Bible** so don't @ me, Christians.

EDIT
**For large values of "in the"

Please don't order lilies for your friends and lovers if they have a cat. Really... a gift of flowers for a cat owner is... I won't say it's *always* a bad idea, but consider if the cat owner has any house plants.

If they have no house plants there is a *reason* for that. It's called: The Cat. You can have house plants OR a cat but not both. Cats chew on plants, and they will chew on lilies and get sick and possibly die. No, they don't know not to eat these plants. They dig right in.

Which isopod are *you* feeling like today? (tag yourself.)

I feel like a creeper tbh.

Saw this on tumblr and tracked down the original source: Invertebrate Biodiversity as Bioindicators of Sustainable Landscapes
Maurizio G. Paoletti, Mark Hassall, 1999

People are running role-playing games on the tumblr communities and somehow it works really well. Communities are popping off.

I'm fascinated by the ways that social media "features" almost never get used as intended. Tumblr tried to have this thing called "tumblr live" a few years back and everyone hated it. Communities have been better received.

I wish we had something like "communities" here on mastodon. Imagine if monsterdon could be a little more ... contained.

Yes it's charming to have warning posts about the incoming onslaught of #monsterdon posts each Sunday. The monsterdon people are very considerate all things considered. But, it feels like swimming upstream. We need a groups feature.

I have thought about doing many fun things here, but rejected it because I don't want to spam people more than I already do. Groups ideally would have a customizable landing page, members list, the ability to view only posts from the group. Nothing huge.

The other very simple feature I wish mastodon had was a way to view one (1) most recent post from each person you follow in order with no repeats. People post at different rates and I often like to go through the people I follow and see what I missed. This feature would make newer users feel more included and boost engagement generally and it's just a fancy search query ...

(read the post after this before responding with a "solution" please)

I made a python script to do this, but I didn't know how to integrate it so it was on my phone and computer ... and what I really want is for *everyone* to have this kind of "check on everyone" reminder on their dash. So, I don't need anyone to tell me a way to do this. I know how to do it. I'm saying it should be a feature of the main software, not just asking for myself.

(The perils of posting on a site with so many programmers means giving this kind of disclaimer. Ya'll are so helpful.)

Hot Take: I *like* it when people explain jokes.

Even if I understand the joke, it's soothing to know I didn't miss anything. BUT often I *did* miss something and didn't even know!

Explaining a joke does not "ruin it." I don't understand why people say that. (Although, I can see how explaining a joke, because it's just not a very good is bad. But, the if joke isn't good ... not explaining it isn't going to make it any better.)

If someone asks you to explain a joke I think you should just explain it and be nice. It should be more socially acceptable to ask for a joke to be explained and people who groan and shout "now it's ruined" need to stop.

In fact, some jokes become more funny when they are carefully explained, especially if you try to be very neutral and clinical about it. "And you see, it is humorous that..." give it a try!

@gwagner

Plastics are amazing materials. Plastics can do things that were impossible before they became common in manufacturing and design.

In some ways this solution (where they use a little less plastic and lie) is better than the much more common plastic laced paper that tries to pretend to be "green" At least with this mess, you can still separate the plastic and paper.

Our school tried to replace plastic cups only to buy fake "green" paper ones with a plastic micro-lining.

I have never been able to verify this.

In Pittsburgh I did a lot of "urban exploration" -- old factories, places down town. This old guy took us on a tour of his favorite spots. A brick factory with huge windows.

"They took so many photos during the civil war. Sometimes to identify the dead. After the war no one wanted to see those photos anymore. So, they recycled the glass plates into windows like these."

You didn't look out of those windows, they looked into you.

Thinking about Miyazaki and the way that his animation uses nostalgia. A good friend who grew up in South Korea surprised me when she said she couldn't stand "Ghibli Stuff" from her perspective it was laden with all of these very Japanese nostalgic touchstones, brands, technologies, tropes. She said it reminded her of "Leave it to Beaver" or "Art Deco Denis the Menace" --And right away I could see exactly what she meant. It's just for me the cues didn't land because I didn't have the proximity.

But, this also helped me to understand how some American media that is overburdened with nostalgic triggers to the point of being annoying to me, can seem wonderful to people who don't recognize all of those triggers. They just see the wider vision of "a simpler time" and "a time of innocence" and all of the the things like white picket fences and KitchenAid blenders in chrome that speak to me of both innocence and violence are just strange and beautiful when abstracted.

Miyazaki is an artist, and frankly that man is melodramatic. It's goes with his particular brand of superlative talent & genius. So, while I agreed with his objections to AI, and enjoyed seeing the AI boys getting a thrashing, I assumed his comments about "insult to life" and "dead zombies" were hyperbolic.

It couldn't possibly be *that* bad, right?

Then I saw some of the animations in the "Ghibli Style" from AI.

They are an insult to life itself. Soulless, dead, animated corpses.

I'm so glad you asked. These are general overviews of some of the most famous kinds of ants that everyone should know about.

@golgaloth

The Wood Ant Supercolony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXKn1f5yVe0

Atta Cephalotes: The Leafcutter Ants, Ants who Farm Fungi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n0SkIGARuo

Weaver Ants (Ants who live in trees and make silk nests)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSmM3fVHwQQ

Army Ants (Ants that inspired horror stories)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prwdLQi2LFQ

Bull Ants (one of the largest ants)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vRRYsVUkwU