genetic linkage aug 08

Reading:

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Finished this one last week and found it impactful and harrowing. Beloved is essentially a horror novel, and I've never seen other media use a baby's ghost as an element before. Many historical elements about the horrors of slavery and post-slavery America. Wish I had read this earlier. It has some imagery I will probably never forget.

Frida Kahlo, by Andrea Kettenmann

I'm new to reading about Frida Kahlo and didn't know much about her before, but WOW she's such a badass. Kahlo is a Mexican artist from the first half of the 20th century, well known for her stoic self-portraits. She had polio as a child, which gave her permanent leg deformities, and suffered a bad bus accident as an adult, which damaged her spine for her entire life. She endured multiple spinal surgeries, and continued painting throughout almost all of the recovery.

Check out this pic of Kahlo dressed in a men's suit in the 1920s (in the middle).

Most coverage of Kahlo focuses on her self portraits but she did much more than that, painting on the topics of American industrialism, her divorce, her fertility, her cultural identity.

She criticized intellectuals in the surrealist movements and called lots of people "sons of bitches". She's amazing, I love her.

I was looking at this one Hieronymous Bosch-esque painting she did, Moses, or Nucleus of Creation, and noticed something biology students would recognize - a cell undergoing meiosis, with the chromosomes being pulled to either side prior to division. Many of Kahlo's painting are about the cycle of life and death.

Website links:

AntScan Digital Repository This is a relatively new science resource available that has CT-scanned many ant specimens for free use. It's a crazy amount of data that would be useful for biomechanic or modeling studies, but is probably only of interest to a very niche audience.

This one takes a while to load, but you can view a 3-D image of bullet ant queen's head, and rotate it directly in the browser. Check out the insane mandibles.

This short Youtube video shows a model of an army ant subsoldier created using AntScan. It looks like a goddamn alien.

Space Jam, 1998 The original Space Jam website from 1998 has been preserved in totality for a full 25 years and it still works. It is deliciously old-school with distracting backgrounds and shitty gifs. There's tips on how to play basketball, behind the scenes footage, character profiles, and coloring pages. Oh my god you can even download screensavers!

The Last Museum I found this one through Aaron's of Academic Aesthetic's blog post here. The "largest search engine for museum art", with much of the art being public domain. I've searched through it and found some great images to use in future blog posts.

The Guardian - Invertebrate of the Year Countdown The Guardian holds an Invertebrate of the Year contest, voted on by readers. They are revealing one invertebrate that made the top 10 every day, so check back to see the full list. Currently in the running is a giant stick insect also called the tree lobster, that almost went extinct. I'm expecting you all to contribute to the voting once it releases.

Painting 1 in 3 rotor blades black on wind turbines cut bird collisions by ~72%. Funny how the simplest solutions are sometimes the ones that work. I have seen for several years now work being done with high frequency emitters used to deter bats. I guess something visual isn't gonna work on a very non-visual species.

Endangered bats caught in NC recently Speaking of bats, the endangered Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) was sighted in North Carolina, USA for first time in 10 years. The bat has been decimated by white-nose syndrome (a fungal infection).

Gene may help lizards get a grip on hurrican force winds Anole lizards are kind of the model animal for studying evolution questions, since there are so many different species of them and they're separated across islands. Those islands are constantly barraged by hurricanes and the anoles always hang in there, literally using their grip to hold onto trees. Anoles is regions of high hurricanes seem to evolve larger toe pads. Now some of the genes responsible for those have been identified, including hs6st1, which plays roles in limb development in general.

Also, I need you to know that researchers test lizard grip strength by subjecting them to fans at 118 km/hr, a "hurricane in a box".

Dead bees appearing on sidewalks Are you seeing a lot of dead bees on sidewalks? Bumble bees have been subject to heat stress badly this year, which is disrupting their thermoregulation. Pesticides also play a role - spraying areas to kill dandelions and other weeds is killing the bees.

Snakes in Movies When I was researching for my threadsnakes post, I came across this insane website. It lists in extreme, neurodivergent detail the species of each snake in possibly every film ever. It groups movies by tropes, such as "all snakes must die!", "snake charmers", "snake pits" and even "snakeSexploitation" (when snakes are used as sex symbols, which is weirdly often - why are they portrayed with naked women so often?").

You should check out the "unusual snakes" tab, for cases where unique species not often seen in movies are used (the first example is Adventure Time lol). Labyrinth also makes the list.

Blog links:

brennan.day: We need interlinkers: Brennan posts about the need for interlinkers among the blogging community, which would integrate the writer's thoughts about each link instead of just posting a linkdump without commentary. I'm pretty new to blogging but I am trying to create dialogues and discussion. I'm also a little frustrated with 'blogging about blogging' because it seems so circular, but what do I know.

theTangentSpace: How the Miyoo Flip broke my heart: theTangentSpace wrote about their experience using this cool retro handheld, the Miyoo Flip, which allows you to play gameboy, gameboy advance games, etc. A while back I modded a Gameboy Color to have a backlight to see the screen better and it made a world of difference.

And I love playing retro games, there's something so charming about the pixel art, like in Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages. I think I will look into getting one (but not the Flip, which tends to have hinge issues).

ContainsModeratePeril: The price of a freddo as an economic indicator: Roger had me laughing about this article using a cheap chocolate's price as an economic indicator in the UK. I've never heard of Freddos but listen: I'll eat anything with a frog mascot. 

The equivalent here is maybe "dollar menu" items from fast-food chains like McDonalds, which were a staple in the 90s and early 2000s, but seem to exist no more. Even $2 items don't seem to exist at the chains, so the lowest price has at least doubled (yikes).

TroyPress: Lapine the rabbit language from Watership Down: As a rabbit-enjoyer, I appreciate TroyPress' documentation of the lapine language of Watership Down, a book about rabbit characters that I love a lot. I remember at the end of the book, a character tells a villain to "hraka silflay", the lapine equivalent of "eat shit".

Nullish: My batty coworker: Is your batty coworker...me? Just kidding. I do love bats, though. Thanks for appreciating this person's interest. And yes, this is a consumer-grade device that records bat echolocation and estimates the species using your phone, its called the Echo Meter. I have a much older version of this and it has worked really well! Of course, there is a bit of error associated with it. 

I appreciate your ending message here, especially the "stay curious" bit, because I literally live by that mantra. It's probably one of the most important human characteristics (imo).

Stay curious, bloggers.

-jakalopes