@sundogplanets Once for a family event, my bf's family rented a big farmhouse so that there was room for everyone.

When we arrived, it'd gotten dark. One person was standing outside looking at the clear sky. "There's Orion," he said.

I looked up. But I'm partially sighted, legally blind. I'm used to seeing a few bright spots at most.

This time, I could see Orion. And the Little Dipper. I started crying.

I didn't want to stop looking and go in.

Turns out this place was near a Dark Sky Area.

On July 18, India’s first private orbital launch proceeded successfully. Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket launched India to be the third country with private space launching capabilities, after China and the US. https://spectrum.ieee.org/skyroot-aerospace-vikram-1-launch?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Mastodon-Daily-Pipeline

The best time to find slime molds is in the summer after heavy rain. Well, that’s exactly what we have had at the house… or should I say, ON the house??

Slime molds have 2 stages: plasmodial and fruiting. In the first, they are capable of movement. They can climb things. In the second, they can have very cool shaped bodies as they prepare to release their spores.

This one climbed the wooden siding of my house. 😳

Chocolate Tube Slime
[Stemonitis splendens]

#SlimeMolds #SlimeMoulds #Protists

@d_rift @0xabad1dea Okay actually honestly tho, linter or # TODO(...): categorization scheme?

Like, I've been trying to grow some sort of annotation-habit that would theoretically let me grep (or extensions thereof) for a given specific pattern of failures across the codebase to handle them one-pattern-at-a-time,
and haven't succeeded much yet,

and honestly maybe marking them up as "what kind of sin is this, which abstract folkloric category will need to forgive me for this" might actually work there.

Like, like the `// athena: forgive this lack of wisdson` -- `// TODO(arachne forgive the insufficient weaving of the type system here): ...` or `# TODO(janus forgive my compatibility issues): ...` or `; TODO(aphrodite forgive this lack of elegance): ...` or `<!-- TODO(sysiphus forgive this drudgery): ... -->` or ...

Came across some code which is subjected to a complexity analysis tool; the tool, called "lizard", has a specific annotation you can add in a comment to request it skip a function, which results in a rather alarming line of code without knowing that context:

// #​​​lizard forgives

There's this ant colony or ant hill -- large red ants that will bite a stick if you poke it at them -- back home in Vermont that I know has been there for at least 50 years, and what I sometimes wonder is how long could it have been there? Could this be hundreds of years old?

#ants

_Permanence_ by @KarlSchroeder is a fun book. I'm glad I picked it up at random. The story is about a young woman who flees an abusive environment in a comet-mining colony and discovers a derelict alien spacecraft. The setting is an eclectic mix of worlds around brown dwarfs, which in this story are abundant in the space between stars. There's politics and intrigue as factions fight over the discovery. The writing reminds me a little of James H. Schmitz.

#books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanence_(novel)

16. I really enjoyed this video interviewing people who were alive in the 1930s in Singapore

Talking about what it was like, how they grew up.

‘26 languages used in daily life’

https://youtu.be/swGiSQJ5slk

#Singapore #Languages

my preferred pub in my hometown in England has officially banned Meta glasses

a tiny pub in a tiny town doing their bit to protect the rights of those who just want to have a cider and big breakfast in peace

For the past couple years ive been working on a reimagining (not a Fan Edit cause the movie is perfect as is) of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Inspired by the film noir movies that the film is so clearly an homage to, my goal is to make the movie black and white, and rotoscope the Toons to keep them in color. This a ridiculous and ambitious task that I almost gave up on many times. Thankfully i didnt cause im loving how its turning out so without further ado, now that im starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel Im super excited to share the trailer with you all.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HPhp3pHM-Gg

I have a lot of people in the Fan Edit community excited for it and if you boost this post Id love to share it with more of you when it finally releases! Like and subscribe for updates!

#Film #Movies #Noir #Detective #Roger #Rabbit #cartoon #animation #toon #zemeckis #spielberg #silvestri #Disney

Saskatchewan's Lentil Empire

Saskatchewan has a global agricultural crown: lentils. #Canada is the world's top producer and exporter of lentils; over 95% of it grown in Saskatchewan. Introduced to the province in the 1970s, the pulses have become an economic powerhouse, with the prairies into the undisputed leader in the international lentil market. It's a key part of the province's farming identity. #Saskatchewan #Agriculture #Farming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentil#Production_and_trade

@sundogplanets I grew up in the 60s/70s on a farm in southern Manitoba. I just thought seeing stars at night was a normal thing that I’d have for the rest of my life. I do remember when I was around 5 my mom was taking care of my city cousins and she stopped the car on the way back to the farm so they could see the stars. Jesus, I thought, what’s the big deal! Thanks for asking, I had not thought of that in ages.

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project blog continues its tour through some medieval romances with cross-dressing heroines.

https://alpennia.com/blog/genealogy-medieval-romance

PDR has more on this remarkable technique that predates color film. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-search-of-true-color/

The world would be a much better place if everyone had easy access to infinity's doorstep, to realize how small we are, how unique and fragile our pale blue dot is.

You don't need a trip on a billionaire's rocket to get the "overview effect." You can do it by finding dark sky access, which is becoming harder and harder to get, partially due to billionaires' rockets.

The Po River Delta in Italy was a huge Manila clam fishery in the 20th century. The clams are native to Asia as their name suggests, but they thrived in huge numbers in coastal lagoons of the Po estuary. They became a huge part of Italian cuisine. Recently, clam harvests have declined 70% due to the introduction of Atlantic blue crabs, which have taken well to the Adriatic and exploded in population, merrily eating the clams by peeling their shells open. One invasion after another, but so far blue crab has not been adopted as a staple in Italian cooking, partially because of their horror at the loss of the clams. I get it! #clamFacts https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/article/an-american-blue-crab-took-over-italian-lagoons-now-fishers-are-looking-for-new-careers/

@sundogplanets It is the one thing I miss most from my time training to be a merchant mariner now I live in a big city.

I don’t miss the social aspect of life aboard ship. I don’t miss the working conditions. I kinda miss the constant travel. But I really miss the night sky on a deep sea voyage. I miss it a lot. Nothing like it.

And now even that’s not the same anymore.

@gannet My absolute favorite: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5128913-making-trousers-for-men-women

Not that I've made it past making one button-fly over and over again until I understood what it took.

I’ve been making lists of forgotten articles - articles that were created 10+ years ago but have no incoming links from other articles - using a tool that lets you run inline SQL queries on a copy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dreamyshade/LonelyPages

The game is to find other articles that should link back to them, and add those links. Sometimes you find duplicate articles that need to be merged, or hoaxes, or self-promotional articles to delete. Sometimes you feel like a caretaker in the Library of Babel.

Didn’t the book recommendation come around a while back about an undead who came out of his grave to investigate why his family was no longer tending his gravesite? He noticed they were no longer talking to him as they cleaned up and tidied around it?

I think it was a foreign book. Foreign to the United States, at least. I would like to get it through interlibrary loan.

#Books