Saddest Thing Ever Is Reading An Academic Paper About A Threatened Or Declining Species Where You Can

Me after spending hours in the lab only to get a .05% yield

I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”

I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!

Absolutely beautiful! I hope everyone took this in! Makes you think just how small we are. A moment the world comes together as one! That’s true humanity . We will be uploading more amazing photos to this same post. So come back later on and check out our 2024 once in a lifetime eclipse photos.

Head-Up Displays (HUD) in aircrafts

A HUD is a transparent screen that displays flight information in the pilot's line of sight, allowing them to maintain focus on the outside environment. This technology enhances safety and situational awareness by reducing the need for pilots to look away from their forward view to check instrument readings.

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

This is a fascinating cosmic scene captured by Hubble: jets firing out from the rotational poles of a newly-ignited star illuminate gas and dust inside the Orion B cloud, 1,350 light-years away, forming what's called a Herbig-Haro object. 

Credit: Jason Major

Cesium-133, let it be. Cesium-134, let it be even more.

Periodic Table Regions [Explained]

Transcript

[A periodic table with regions labeled.]

[Hydrogen:] Slightly fancy protons [Lithium and Beryllium:] Weird dirt [Group 1 & 2 metals, Periods 3-4:] Regular dirt [Group 1 & 2 metals, Periods 5-7:] Ends in a number, let it slumber ends in a letter, not much better [Left side of the transition metals group:] Boring alloy metals Probably critical to the spark plug industry or something (but one of them is radioactive so stay on your toes) [Most of the top row of the transition metals + aluminum:] Regular metals [Below the rightmost "regular metals" - the "ordinary metals" and some transition metals:] Weird metals [The platinum group:] $$$$ [Boron:] Boron (fool's carbon) [Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Phosphorus:] You are here [The Halogens:] Safety goggles required [Noble Gases:] Lawful neutral [Iodine and Radon:] Very specific health problems [Ordinary metals and metalloids - Arsenic, Antimony, Tellurium, Thallium, Lead, Bismuth, Polonium] Murder weapons [Astatine and Period 7 from Rutherfordium onwards:] Don't bother learning their names - they're not staying long [Lanthanides and Actinides:] Whoever figures out a better way to fit these up there gets the next Nobel Prize

Caecilians’ teeth are so metal. Nothing you will expect from what looks like a gummy worm when it has its mouth closed.

Periodic Videos on YouTube discusses the creation of the element darmstadtium and pays a visit to where it was discovered.