Saturday, September 05, 2020

ANTs: How cats and dogs see the world

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.

— Christopher Isherwood, born in 1904


The Dynamic Treetop Kingdoms of the Weaver Ants


6 Extinct animals found again RTE (PlutoniumKun). A long time ago, I read a childhood, or at best young adult book (as in narrative-style) about the finding of the coelacanth, so I am weirdly fond of them.


Topless sunbathing: French government defends right to bare torsos EuroNews 


How cats and dogs see the world Popular Science



Blueberry farmers warn of ‘disaster’ crop BBC. Oh, no! That is one of the great things about going to Maine, the tiny wild blueberries, sold by farmers on the side of major roads. 


How cold was the ice age? Researchers now knowPhysOrg 


Surprising pulses of ancient warming found in Antarctic ice samples Science Magazine 


Russia Just Declassified Footage of the Largest Nuke Ever Tested Vice 


A site called Sounds of the Forest is collecting sounds from forests and woodland areas around the world and presenting them on a world map.

Sounds of the Forest

We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.

The sounds form an open source library, to be used by anyone to listen to and create from.


  See also the work of Gordon Hempton, who is trying to capture the sounds of the very few places left in the world without human noise. 


Ikea has uploaded scans of all 72 years of their annual catalogs, from 1950 to 2021, to their online museum. (The company’s optimism that there will be a 2021 is heartening.) An entertaining time machine of Scandinavian design trends.