Other folk have the dosing stuff in other comments, iirc the goal of the combo is to help prevent the immune cascade that’s covid causes. Helping keep mast cells stable = less overall immune overreaction & fuckery is the thought.
She/her. Science media fact-checker, scicommer & independent researcher. If not talking about animals, I’ll be photographing them. I study the regulatory/legal/legislative landscapes impacting captive management of exotic and wild animals in the US.
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Other folk have the dosing stuff in other comments, iirc the goal of the combo is to help prevent the immune cascade that’s covid causes. Helping keep mast cells stable = less overall immune overreaction & fuckery is the thought.
Oh /no/ I’m so sorry. How incredibly frustrating.
Image description because I forgot alt text: the underside of a raspberry cane in golden hour lighting, showing a bunch of ripe and almost-ripe gold raspberries.
Image description because I forgot alt text: an open hand palm-up with three giant snow pea pods laying on it.
Zone 9A, absolutely giant snow peas that pop up pods overnight.
A or D. B looks like some of the weird psuedomilitary fonts and is off putting.
I know what that noise is going to sound like and it still startles me every time 😅
New fear unlocked 😬
The Seanan story is in this collection (they’re all great). www.randomhousebooks.com/books/
This is literally the plot of a short story by Seanan McGuire!
I'm officially putting out a call for volunteers with professional/academic expertise to help ID wildlife photos. My preference is to work directly with individuals rather than crowdsource IDs via iNat, for a number of reasons. If this is you re: any specific species or taxa, please reach out!
Woof, that’s definitely bad.
A brief moment at sunrise today was 25! Didn’t last long. I expect with all the new fires we’ll be in the 100s for a while, soon.
Somehow we’ve been staying at like solidly 60 AQI… not quite close enough to the water for it to get super low but not nearly as bad as close to Lake Washington. Red sunrise, sunset, and red moon though…
Do you know of any good primers on this I can link out to family and friends?
They’re going to get stuck on Mercer at rush hour and be pummeled for blocking traffic.
Increased risk of domestic terrorism on high status female celebrities to demoralize the population? (What if you photoshopped a dog shirt onto Kelse, could you write about it then)
Oh my gosh, I just got an ice cream maker - can I steal your recipe?
We’re trying to Goncharov it into being real, clearly
Are you able to see what brand names they’re under?
Yeah that one was just. Wtf
In the 2021(?) heatwave, in Ballard, my apartment was south facing and empty over the summer while I stayed with family. My command strips melted and the hooks slid feet down the wall.
They make little foot ice packs! You can’t walk in them but they do strap on your soles and toes. a.co/d/gAHzXEY
a reminder
So much. I had to refill the bath again after! But they looked like they enjoyed it.
I put fresh cold water in a birdbath during a heatwave today and immediately got to watch a crow take a luxurious bath.
What are you having trouble getting? I’ve definitely noticed a dip…
Do you know how many strains in this one? I’m torn between asking for a quadvalent or doing the nasal mist.
The air is white? Your weather app saying is super fine is lying, yeesh 🙃
I’ve had good luck with PurpleAir since it’s a network of consumer-purchased sensors, there’s a feee app called Paku or a web interface. It’s the only data I saw that matched how bad the air was today.
They want all the industrial stuff along the water to be a “neighborhood center”? Wtff
Exactly this. Off leash SDs must be under handler control (not like that) and behaving appropriately to be allowed public access exemptions. Also, if your dog is that shitty, it’s not really a well trained SD.
Their description of providing service dogs that get around the red tape required by legit orgs sketches me out. And no legit, credible dog trainer should be disobeying leash laws in public. Tbh I’d call the org and complain that someone wearing their logo was making their org look bad. 🤷🏻♀️
This was exactly my thought looking at it!
A belief in a free and open internet and equitable access to knowledge is a huge part of why I’m so determined to keep the repository un-paywalled. People deserve access to images and information guaranteed to be free of AI slop without having to shell out for the privilege.
last time i did this (about crabs) i had to put on an upper limit because we reached 1000 crab facts. make him regret it, folks
New species added: Yellow Anacondas! www.animal-photo-references.com/yellow-anaco... All photos on the repository are free-to-use for artists creating derivative/transformative works (sans AI).
Myrtle!
Please do not do this. Please do not mock people who are genuinely struggling to find ways to survive a society that decided to accept endemic COVID. It was a choice, that choice is made. Some folks are highly vulnerable to death as a result of that choice. That's just reality.
Another one? An electrical vault fire just shut down a lot of North Seattle power on the west side like a couple of days ago.
Goddamnit.
We have decided to ban the use of GenAI for research, writing & creative work at our organization. In fact, we make people sign an agreement saying that their research, analysis, writing, and creative work are *theirs* and not done by GenAI.
Every once in awhile, I think of my favorite “…the fuck did you just say?” phraseology, which is from Homer’s Iliad, proving we have never, ever changed as a species, only less fancily inclined. “What nonsense has escaped the barrier of your teeth now?”
Honestly, bless Teen Vogue. My tween daughter saw this headline over my shoulder & said “she’s so real for that.” Then pulled up the story to read it on her tablet. To my knowledge she has never read a political news story on her own before.
This is my most confrontational post of the day: please watch Armond’s video & think on it. It isn’t at all progressive or leftist to spread disabling disease in an ongoing pandemic. There are more Armonds than you know, & folks who don’t mask are making more each day bc most spread is asymptomatic
INSULINDIAN PHASMID - Few of us can begin to imagine the horror of you -- with all of creation reflected in your forebrain. It must be like the highest of hells, a kaleidoscope of fire and writhing glass. Eternal damnation.
That would explain today’s migraine…
The ZDR3 Network is varied and inclusive, comprising zoos, aquariums, sanctuaries, wildlife centers, and ranches specializing in exotic species. If you know someone who owns or works at a facility that may need assistance, please share our contact information with them.
ZDR3 has contacted our federal partners and zoological facilities in Texas to assure them that we have teams available to assist with any unmet non-domestic animal needs. Nothing has been reported, but given the enormous hurdles responders are facing, that does not mean there are not issues.
AI summaries kill search traffic. This has been an obvious consequence of Google's AI summary strategy since its inception. Apparently the training data is so valuable that Google is willing to risk the neck of the goose that lays golden eggs. Screenshot: thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-9-blu...
That’s already been my biggest problem out here, aside from how many extra spoons it takes to drive so far to everything. I’m like six times more exhausted and less functional here than in a walkable area.
Yeeeesh. Thanks for the warning about NYE. It’s definitely been an um… massive culture shift from old Ballard.
Ugh, is it always this bad? I’ve already been thinking I want to move asap.
Lucky, SnoCo here too but I’ve got three houses a block or two away setting off constant barrages. 🤮
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
We're delighted to reveal the cover (and excerpt!) from Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by @greerstothers.bsky.social! Sir Cameron is too handsome for death. And the only person who can protect him is the....alluring...mad sorcerer....which could mean nothing. reactormag.com/cover-reveal...
@asherelbein.bsky.social, this might be your jam?
NEW: Workers at Snopes.com are unionizing because fact-checkers deserve transparency, too! Follow @snopesguild.bsky.social and read their full press release here: newsguild.org/snopes-worke...
loosely inspired by real life events, the latest one page rpg is called Help, I have Too Many Cats in my Yard and it's about having too many cats in your yard because you accidentally drugged them because who is supposed to know what catnip looks like at a glance www.patreon.com/deathbybadger
Mamdani must explain his tweet from 1740 BC claiming that Ea-nāṣir had "high quality copper"
Please tell him I love him
If folk just want a portable chair that isn’t part of a cane, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Weighs 3lbs, collapses into a pouch you can easily clip to a belt, folds and unfolds with minimal complex motor skills. 250lb limit. a.co/d/4uf8pW9
^^^this. I work in animal fields and this point staunchly refuse to read any popsci books unless they list a fact checker or expert readers in the acknowledgements somewhere. The sheer amount of fake information that proliferates is mindblowing and has had real welfare impacts.
This holds true for common-knowledge topics, but the more niche or academic the text topic, the more likely I’ve found editors to actually introduce error in the name of making things sound better.
When authors pay for it themselves it rarely is! Which is a huge shame.
Thank you for the heads up.
Now maybe more relevant than before! I’m adding new species from my files as quickly as I have time; even more taxa than what I have personally seen will eventually be included, as folk from around the world have kindly offered to donate their photography.
So much this whole thread! Every time I move somewhere new, I purposefully spend the first month navigating home without GPS. I get lost a lot, on purpose! But I’ve learned if I don’t do it, I lose my wayfinding and my sense of how places nearby are connected.
Unfortunately it’s actually really dang hard to achieve in the US due to laws around desecration of bodies, but… if I could…
I don’t, preference towards being skeletonized and used for education in place of sketchily-sourced teaching skeletons. Also hopefully used as a talking point re: the ethical issues with human bone collections when consent wasn’t obtained.
this is a great piece that goes well with that recent nick clegg interview where he whined about how asking for permission would kill the AI business arguing that there is no legal reason AI companies can not take your creative output intentionally misses the moral reason of a culture of consent
I definitely remember it was in a county where there was a ton of migratory bird fly through.
Isn’t that even the same county as that emu? Or am I misremembering…
alt text: a gold star, outlined in brown, that says "Has never even opened ChatGPT"
They did, actually. She caught a gust of wind that let her get enough lift to clear the fences. It’s a local facility to me and while not as huge and fancy place, it’s reasonable and not a sketchy place. Sometimes shit just happens at even accredited zoos.
The sigil was drawn in salt and ash, the candles lit at the pentagram points, the incantation declaimed. There was a shimmer - a demon appeared. "Curious. What ritual is this?" "I got it from ChatGPT. I included all protections in my prompt!" "I see," the demon said and stepped out of the sigil.
Jesus. Excellent work by Michael Le Page, and utterly infuriating scenario. As Michael points out, the press release from Colossal called these dire wolves throughout. But now they want to argue that they never claimed that. Scandalous, really. www.newscientist.com/article/2481...
This is one of the most viscerally uncomfortable and insane things I’ve ever read (and the writing is superb). I’m really into fine dining and yeah, think I’m content with skipping the modern-day French Laundry - much as I wanted to go there myself when I was a kid in the 2000s.
Good story about research on the giant slope failure involved in the 1980 Mt St Helens eruption and the work that followed on other volcanoes.
Sending so much love and support.
IIRC you mostly want to keep them from eating the toothpaste if it’s fluoridated and I thiiiink no prescription strength until they’re a little older.
Also I remember taking that “candy” and have quite a fondness for the nostalgia!
FWIW I had to the literature & interview dental researchers for a fact-check, the consensus is that a topical application is more effective at protecting enamel than ingestion exposures while teeth form. So at least as long as it’s still legal to buy toothpaste with fluoride… (ugh)
If this is a snack you like to save, I found it’s super easy to make lower histamine poke bowls at home! They keep in the fridge for a couple days and you can doctor with nori or fresh protein as bandwidth allows. I’d be happy to share the recipe if you like - it really scratches the sushi itch.
Ewwwww.
I don’t want to go back to using an elastomeric industrial mask as my daily, but I’ve never been more glad that I have a couple extra boxes of filter pads stashed.
Probably not one you’d want to touch, still want to #invertefest #sciart #octopus #art #digitial
Childhood bookstore called the Bookworm. First place I was allowed to go to alone, took trade ins for reasonable amounts of credit. It was my wonderland and my freedom.
eat a book to gain its vocabulary
It’s common enough that they’re considered livestock legally in Florida!
There’s a pretty solid base of scientific evidence for brain impacts with each infection
Things are dark right now, and we all need things to help us smile a little more. To that end, I've created a new index page for the site: a collection of all the species with photos baby/juvenile animals. Click through if you're in need of some cute, it's worth it.
That super sucks. Let me know if you’d like to chat about any specifics, don’t want to offer unsolicited advice but happy to share what I’ve learned to do that helps.
