Gregory's Server|
10 posts total
I swear this is a real beetle and not AI generated. (Omophron americanum, the American round sand beetle. Texas)
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 Beetles come in so many shapes and colours, that beetle configuration space is fully exhausted, so every possible beetle does exist somewhere. Including what LLMs hallucinate as beetles.
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@alexwild Thank you for doing this! What about other types of impact? Citations in policy docs, for instance? It's unfortunate that I have to contend with so many companies just swiping my photos for their marketing material without permission or payment. But this is the absolute weirdest: a live insect trafficking company, of dubious legality, has copied my self-portait from a few years back in Ecuador, and uses it on their "Our Story" page, as if I'm the dude out there poaching the ants for them.
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The red state brain drain is already happening, as educated professionals do not want to live and work under extremist Republican rule. Do you want to photograph every insect species on earth? If you started now, shooting 100 species per day, it’d take about 30 years to get through just the known species.
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I have a new favorite fly. I thought it was a little mirid bug when I first saw it in the field, but no. This is Stictomyia longicornis, a tiny picture-winged fly whose larvae feed on damaged cactus tissue. Photographed at Seminole Canyon, Texas.  @alexwild My current favourite local Singapore fly is the Drone Fly, Monoceromyia javana. Fooled me the first time I saw it into thinking it was a wasp. 🙂 On iNaturalist [ https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/97879165 ] When you arrive to Mastodon, try to follow at least 200-300 accounts. As there is no algorithm shoveling delayed content into your feed, this place will feel sparse until you hit the right threshold of active connections. It really springs to life, though.
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@alexwild its not really necessary to follow that many. i follow like around 50 accs, and my timeline is full @alexwild hard disagree. I’m quite happy with just a handful of accounts, and one “group” account for Trek fans. That alone guarantees lots of delightful, silly, or thoughtful Star Trek content when I check in, and a smattering of other things I want to see. I don’t want hundreds of new posts in my feed every day. I just want content that doesn’t leave me angry and rage-replying to everyone. John Roberts’ family making millions of dollars from Supreme Court-related business is another reminder that this court is corrupt, illegitimate, and some of its members should probably be tried for financial crimes. I show this bug every year to my intro entomology students to see if they can figure out what body part all that undulating spiny weirdness is. Heteronotus sp. treehopper, Ecuador. @alexwild I would guess pronotum, largely because that is what gets elaborated in other treehoppers but it kind of looks like it is growing straight out of the vertex of the head. Answer: the weird structure is of uncertain function- possibly an ant mimic, or maybe a spiny defense- and is made from a greatly enlarged pronotum, which is the plate on the thorax just behind the head. The bug’s true abdomen is visible under the wings. |
@alexwild Yikes
@alexwild
Looks very dangerous. 🥴