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nyr027.bsky.social
nyr
@nyr027.bsky.social
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nyr027.bsky.social
nyr @nyr027.bsky.social · Aug 1
Id'ing spiders at work and took some photos I really like.
Lots of spider claws (frequently need to know how many there are to distinguish between certain families) w/ a video to give some sense of the dimensionality.
Looking at them here they feel almost embryonic, peaceful.
Also cool crab spiders.
thomisid / crab spider Cephalothorax coloured like a glowing ember; abdomen alabaster with dark, seemingly random accents. Crab spiders have such distinctive eyes: small and widely distributed but deeply pensive to my mind; although they're hard to make out in any of the photos I took, and in our key they're identified simply by proportion of the legs after a few other families have been ruled out. I think this is my first cribellum. If I'm right, I'm pretty sure this was a dictynid. This is the underside/ventral view. The cribellum should be the small small white triangle positioned just away from the light-coloured spinnerets that are at the tip of the abdomen in the top right. Not all spiders have one, but those that do can produce so many silk threads of such small diameter (on the order of tens of nanometers) that it is often combed out by the back legs and in the process develops a 'woolly' consistency, in contrast with the threads produced by spinnerets used in weaving the webs that are commonly associated with spiders. I can't find too much information about the purpose of this kind of silk, except that due to how fine it is the intermolecular forces are so plentiful, and collectively so strong, that no liquid glue is required. Also that some species use it to create trophic eggs (which are used for feeding young rather than reproducing). philodromid / running crab spider Very intimidating-looking spider. Feels like a creature from another world. Flat, sleek and broad cephalothorax, dark orange brown with a seeming pulse of light within the crest of each lateral half. Its eight eyes somewhat reminiscent of the thomisid, but presumably adapted for the habits of a more active hunter, gathered at the front, but each still quite small. Long legs (even the back ones, which in thomisids are reduced), the same orange-brown as at the heart of the cephalothorax, with sparse but thick setae. A narrow, modestly patterned abdomen, a truer brown with beige highlights. Underside/ventral view of the philodromid / running crab spider The cephalothorax and abdomen are approximately the same size. From this view (the specimen simply inverted) we see the pedipalps the same darker brown as the abdomen.
Reposted by nyr
nickybay.bsky.social
This is the Sunburst Candy Spider from Thailand. Not AI (sucks to have to declare this). Very real and had been on my wish list for a long time.

The taxonomic placement is unclear, so we are leaving it at Cyrtarachninae.
November 29, 2025 at 3:15 PM
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depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
more from the "interest in birds" subsection in Flannery O'Connor's personal life en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanner...
November 30, 2025 at 3:42 AM
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depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
Flannery O'Connor
November 30, 2025 at 3:42 AM
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techwontsave.us
The tech industry has captured our imaginations, in part because we’ve lost a vision for a better future.

@danmcquillan.bsky.social explains how decomputing isn’t just about exerting control over technology; it’s about imagining a better world.

Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/286_...
July 28, 2025 at 8:39 PM
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bertonemyia.bsky.social
I think he looks kinda emo here...
November 27, 2025 at 7:16 PM
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villesinkkonen.bsky.social
What might be my favourite fossil has been just published by Kiat et al. 2025. Years ago I saw a pic of this Anchiornis specimen in nat geo article and I audibly gasped.preserving not only the feathers but also the original patterns as well. I made this drawing on the spot. Maybe its time to do v2.0
November 21, 2025 at 7:27 PM
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sabs.bsky.social
this might be the saddest story I've ever written, about a seal that I will be thinking about for a long, long time.
defector.com/why-wont-nor...
Why Won’t Nora The Leopard Seal Abandon Her Dead Pups? | Defector
In the fall of 2021, Renato Borras-Chavez, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, spotted a leopard seal on an ice floe. Borras-Chavez was on a research expedition to a glacial f...
defector.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:54 PM
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janephuong.bsky.social
A 13-year search for one of the world's rarest flowers in Indonesia ends in a 'magical experience'
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
Researcher cries after finding rare flower in Indonesia
A team of researchers describe the "magical" experience of finding a rare species of flower in bloom deep in the Sumatran rainforest after a 23-hour trek.
www.abc.net.au
November 26, 2025 at 12:13 AM
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jerthorp.bsky.social
LOOK AT THIS BIRD

The King Bird-of-paradise is the smallest BOP but it is big in drip

This time next week I hope to be watching one and squeeing

ebird.org/species/kbop...
November 26, 2025 at 1:14 PM
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annpersand.bsky.social
Hiroo Isono (1945-2013), Untitled (detail)
November 21, 2025 at 5:47 PM
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davidrvetter.bsky.social
You ever just sit down and realize that the rise of 21st century fascism is capital's answer to climate change?
November 21, 2025 at 9:25 AM
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zinderfox.bsky.social
I love taking photos of all the lichen around here, especially when I find a really vibrant red or blue. I really should try painting them in watercolor but I'm still very much a beginner and don't know how to go about it. Maybe washes of color and taking care of the details with ink.
Deep (angry) red and dark grey lichen on an almost white sandstone boulder. There are a few tiny patches of mustard yellow scattered throughout. Dusty blue, light grey and white, and yellow licken on purple granite. A branch of wild rose with new green leaves lays over one half of the photo. Grey-blue and black lichen on red sandstone. Circles of green and orange lichen forming an arc on yellow sandstone.
November 18, 2025 at 6:26 PM
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sarahmackattack.bsky.social
People have accused my macro photos of being AI which is such a bummer. Like yeah man bugs and crabs are weird but they really do act like that. That’s why nature is cool. AI has ruined weird little guy photography.
theartofasty.bsky.social The Art of Asty @theartofasty.bsky.social · 12d
The amount of people I see harassing real artists and even wildlife photographers with accusations of AI is genuinely disheartening, and sadly this is just the beginning
November 18, 2025 at 12:25 AM
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watershed-i.bsky.social
Only 2 years since the ban on neonics, France's population of insect-eating birds has risen 2-3% - from banning a single type of insecticide. Demonstrating just how much harm we cause birds when pesticides kill off the insects they need for food.
@paneurope.bsky.social
guyshrubsole.bsky.social Guy Shrubsole @guyshrubsole.bsky.social · 12d
Good news: Study shows France’s birds making tentative recovery after neonicotinoid pesticide ban

UK has only just closed loophole in neonics ban (‘derogations’) so may be too soon to see recovery here?

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
With neonicotinoid pesticide ban, France’s birds make a tentative recovery - study
Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:29 AM
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noncompliantcyborg.bsky.social
It’s baby octopus season 🐙🦑

Saw this little guy last night with the Salish Sea School in Anacortes, WA as part of their free community dock walk I volunteer as an interpreter for.

We can tell it is a giant pacific octopus from the single line of chromatophores on each arm.
Four shots of a baby giant pacific octopus bouncing around
November 15, 2025 at 9:32 PM
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daveparisi.bsky.social
Finally got to the "I want to burn it all down" portion of the gen AI-era semester, where I realize they're all using some sort of LLM to "help" organize their thoughts and it's just spitting out raw sewage onto the screen.
November 17, 2025 at 10:04 PM
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olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
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abeba.bsky.social
every new AI application amounts to coming up with a smart sounding way to prey and profit from the most vulnerable and gullable
November 15, 2025 at 1:12 PM
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ajaysawant.com
At #COP30, the ocean integration is finally being talked. Brazil’s ocean NDC, Blue Package roadmap, and its pledge to ratify the High Seas Treaty are big steps.

But the $149B annual gap for SDG14 remains. The real test is turning recognition into systems that deliver.

earth.org/oceans-at-co...
Oceans Take Center Stage at COP30 | Earth.Org
COP30 host Brazil has acknowledged that we cannot mitigate climate change without recognizing the key role oceans and forests play.
earth.org
November 15, 2025 at 11:57 AM
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davidho.bsky.social
With current pledges, the world's on track for 2.6°C of warming in 2100 compared to preindustrial levels.

10 years ago, before the Paris agreement, it was 3.6°C

20+ years ago, we thought it would be 4-5°C

So 2.6°C is better, but the problem is that climate impacts are way worse than we predicted.
World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds
Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:55 PM
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clarascintilla.bsky.social
My best graphic tattoo designs from this year
November 9, 2025 at 7:22 PM
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derek.bike
good morning specifically to the FBI agent who introduced Mamdani’s dad to Marx
guy said, “Do you like Marx?” I said, “I haven’t met him.” Guy said, “No, no, he’s dead.” “Wow, what happened?” “No, no, he died long ago.” I thought the guy Marx had just died. So then, “Why are you asking me if he died long ago?” “No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor.” I said, “Sounds amazing.” I’m giving you a sense of how naïve I was. After they left, I went to the library to look for Marx. So that was my introduction to Karl Marx. BS: The FBI. MM: The FBI. Then, of course, I took a class on Marx. Couldn’t just get Marx out of the library. But,
November 5, 2025 at 2:21 PM
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thatsgoodweb.bsky.social
Steve Kirk and Jane Burton, miniatures and photography from The Age of Dinosaurs: A Photographic Record, 1991
Steve Kirk and Jane Burton, miniatures and photography from The Age of Dinosaurs: A Photographic Record, 1991 Saltopus
November 8, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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davidcsimon.bsky.social
It's that time of year again: The Puyas are flowering at the Botanic Gardens in Mt Tomah!

The Wattlebirds (Red and Little) have bright orange faces from all the pollen, while the Bowerbirds are eating the bulbs themselves, creating small pollen explosions.

#birds
Photograph of a Red Wattlebird among Puya flowers. The wattlebird is mottled and striated in brown and white, with a yellow belly, red wattles on its cheeks, and bright red eyes. There is a large quantity of orange pollen on its face. The flowers are turquoise with orange stamens. Photograph of a Little Wattlebird perched on a lateral puya flower spike. It is similar to the Red Wattlebird, but smaller, with no wattles, and light grey/purple eyes. The front of its face is absolutely caked on orange pollen. Photograph of a male Satin Bowerbird on a Puya flower spike with a flower bud in its beak. The bird is satin black with a light beak and violet eyes, and there is an explosion of orange pollen in front of its body, like fireworks.
November 7, 2025 at 2:28 AM
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michellekenneth.bsky.social
Color me intrigued. This is a horror novel waiting to happen.
November 6, 2025 at 12:37 PM