You know the parable about how the foolish man built his house upon sand and the wise man built his house upon rock and it’s always about having a sturdy foundation well there is also the fact of location which is that the sand probably used to be rock except it’s been eroded to sediment because it’s a FUCKING FLOODPLAIN
flood Plain perfec t size for put town in to b\uild! inside very Soft and Comfort town safe happy put town in Floodplain. Put Town In Floodplain. no problems ever in flloodplain because good Shape and Support for town roads weak of big town citizens. Afloodplain yes a place for a town put town in floodplain can trust floodplain for giveing good place for town. friend flood
No one - and I mean no one- could have prepared me just how much of my adult life would consist of keeping the dumbest dog ever created alive against his will
It’s 103 degrees out and your brain is the size of pea dude I can’t let you lay out there and bake all day you’ll literally LITERALLY fry your little pea brain please stop screaming at me
Am I putting the mop bucket up high to keep it from my child? Now I am not. This dummy thinks Lysol is just flavoring even though it made him vomit.
I need that for our terrier; he'll chew any plastic he can get his maw on... Probably responsible for most of the micro-plastics detected in Los Angeles county
We need to isolate and start selectively breeding the plastic eating bacteria so we can optimise their efficiency, and then somehow splice their DNA into the gut bacteria of an obligate carnivore, so we can put it in our cats gut biomes so they’ll finally be free of having to choose between whether they want to eat plastic or whether they want to live.
As a geneticist and microbiologist who has worked with plastic-degrading microbes briefly, this is theoretically possible. The most difficult parts would be finding a microbe that could take plastic in it’s unaltered (or slightly stomach-acid degraded) form.
For my project, we were trying to identify microbes that could use partially treated plastic as a food source and break it down further. The carbon bonds in our daily plastics are really hard to get at and break, hence the bad degradation, so breaking some of those bonds through heat and chemicals first can help microbes get access to them. Once we identify a microbe that can do this, we could test giving them slightly less degraded plastic to live on until they develop a way to eat it and go until they either get back to normal plastic or hit a wall where the microbe can’t progress anymore (which may be likely).
An alternative approach to breeding (although you don’t ‘breed’ most microbes since they reproduce asexually but instead find strains with mutations that lead to desired changes) would be trying to predict an enzyme that could break the bonds in plastic, engineering it, and putting it in microbes to test if it works. On one hand it could overcome any natural halt selection has but would be initially harder to discover.
The best solution would probably be to find the microbe that can eat the partially degraded plastic, figure out what enzyme is doing the work, then see how the enzyme could be improved to work through plastic in its default state.
Once you have that, the next consideration would be what byproducts are created from eating plastic? Part of the project was hoping that the microbe that could eat plastic would produce a useful byproduct that could be harvested, as an unfortunate reality of our current world is that if it’s not profitable it probably won’t take hold. But if we wish to put this in a living organism, we need to make sure it won’t produce a harmful byproduct, or if it does, then ensuring the organism can quickly turn it harmless before it builds up.
Once all of that is figured out, the next hardest thing would be ensuring that whatever gut microbe you put the plastic eating gene in continues to express it. Since plastic is so hard to use it would probably prefer to use any glucose lying around first, and if that runs out then switch to eating plastic. We could try removing its ability to eat glucose (or whatever other compounds it lives off of), but then it would be less competitive in the gut environment and would require a steady source of plastic in order to not die off.
Although, I assume cats (and some people) would not find that a challenge.
…holy shit.
the only research I did for this post was 30 seconds to double-check on wikipedia whether or not bacteria have DNA.
so grace is probably alarming to most eridians at first because he’s a lanky wet alien with too few limbs, yes–but what if he ends up being terrifying in a sort of divine way instead of a repulsive one?
like. a creature that perceives the intangible? a creature that walks with thin permeable membranes bared to the air, whose blood contains elixir that can destroy pathogens without heat? a creature that is impossibly fragile yet resilient? a creature that breathes potently flammable gas to survive? a creature that is loud all over and speaks in a strange and frightening monotone, who thought it would die for you? who gave up its home in the heavens for you without meeting you first, whose first words to your people were probably something along the lines of We saved your star. It’s gonna be okay. Don’t be afraid.
grace is such an interesting bundle of contradictions! he breathes an incredibly flammable gas because he lives at such a cold temperature the gas can’t ignite except he burns it very slowly inside the delicate gauzy cage of his body. his meat is basically a delicate water-and-protein foam because he lives in a very tiny fraction of normal atmospheric pressure. his planet has almost no air, no atmosphere. they’re so gauzy, so frail, living underneath a whisker-fine sky, that to get to space in a couple seconds by exploding towards it. they can’t build a space elevator because all their materials are just various attempts to do anything whatsoever with shitty frozen metals and various hydrocarbon meshes. their spaceship is a tiny refrigerator, the most expensive thing they ever built, and controled by a impossibly complex calculation engine they knitted out of silicates. it contains all human knowledge, if it doesn’t catch on fire.
they knew that space was there because they can perceive it directly. it’s literally right overhead all the time for their entire evolution. they know the faces of thousands, millions of stars, as soon as they tip their faces up. eridani is a name from two thousand years ago. all their stars have been named and known and watched and sung about for longer than any individual human civilization. they have always known the eridian star was there.
Whaddaya think, should I make this for our retirement community’s barbecue tomorrow? My daughter says I’ll be arrested for manslaughter if I make it with Absinthe!
Posting this for my soul cat Kenzie (she passed a few years ago but I still think of her every single day) and for everyone else who has lost someone they love. ❤️
Did I just employ the “Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again” method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.
So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.
I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.
This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.
ME: [Teacher voice] I’m calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?
DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.
ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?
DOC: It looks like eight.
ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?
DOC: Two.
ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I’m not taking?
DOC: Yeah, totally, it’s an MAOI.
ME: That’s correct, you’re really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?
DOC: It’s contraindicated for sure.
ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you’ve been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?
DOC: I’ll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I’m sorry about this.
ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.
WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ……….. OKAY! It’ll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?
I recall when I was driving across country once and was passing through some city (Minneapolis?) and the DJ said something like "and to the Jiffy Lube I stopped at this morning, you forgot to add the oil and my engine seized on the way to the studio"
I first noticed the rodent activity last week (image above) at the place where the driveway meets the garage, so I replaced the gravel in the burrow and made a mental note to do something about it, but by yesterday (below) the process was obviously in an accelerated phase.
The quickest response would be to push all the dirt and gravel back down and then seal the top with an expanding foam, but I was reluctant to possibly convert the burrow into a live burial, so instead I got out our smallest Havahart trap, baited it with a piece of chicken teriyaki, and waited. Within a couple hours the malefactor was in the trap, and I drove him/her to a new homesite near fields and prairie about a mile away.
Then I reset the trap, not sure if this was one guy or possibly two. I captured a second one before evening and drove it over to where the first was released. Then I realized that I don't know that the ones I trapped are a mated pair and the occupants of the hole or just wandering neighborhood residents, so I decided to look up some info on their ecology and when they have their litters. Found this nice infographic -
That was new information for me. I did not realize that common chipmunks would create multiple entrances to their hidey-holes. Now I'm thinking that the risk of sealing a chipmunk family into a live burial horrorshow is unlikely, and that I can just go ahead with the cleanup and closure.
But one advantage of having a blog full of well-read and diversely-experienced readers is that sometimes I can call for help. So I'd appreciate advice from others with backgrounds in rodentology, mammalogy, pest control, or house maintenance.
Before leaving, I'll insert several tidbits from the Wikipedia entry:
The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk", from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" (cf. Ojibwe ajidamoo). The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is "chipmonk", from 1842. Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck", and in the 1830s they were also referred to as "chip squirrels", probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-19th century, John James Audubon and his sons included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the "chipping squirrel [or] hackee". Chipmunks have also been referred to as ground squirrels, (although the name "ground squirrel" may refer to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus).
Eastern chipmunks, the largest of the chipmunks, mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year... Chipmunks construct extensive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m (11 ft) in length with several well-concealed entrances. The burrows are complex and include plugged entryways, nseparate compartments for nesting, multiple food chambers, side pockets and escape routes. The sleeping quarters are kept clear of shells, and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.
Foreigners will never understand how someone like Rawhide Kobayashi would immediately become a beloved local fixture in whatever small American town he ended up in.
every single time someone pulls the “How would you AMERICANS like it if someone came to AMERICA and” reversal, the answer is always “we’d fucking love it”
Your tags summed up the exact feeling I had about this
I just Googled the Swedish-Japanese guy in the OP, and according to this interview, his Japanese name was given to him by the master gardener he was apprenticed under:
“The family name ‘Murasame’ was given to me by my master. The given name ‘Tatsumasa’ is a combination of ‘dragon’ (tatsu), the [zodiac] year when I was born, and one character from my master’s name,” says Murasame.“
So I think maybe it’s less like naming yourself ‘Brandon McFreedom’ and more like moving to the states to work under a veteran car mechanic named Bud McLean, and then having him turn to you after a few years on the job, and say "Son, it’s time for you to become an American so you can open up your shop. And when that day comes, I think the world should know you by a new name: McLeo GM Corvette.”
Named by his superior by conventions one would apply to a super chill stray cat
For anyone wondering, the PhD student’s name is Myra Cheng.
Here’s a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.
Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.
Myra Cheng et al. “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence.” Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).
ALT
