Consider yourself lucky, good reader, very lucky indeed, that you didn't have to deal with the aftermath of a rodent shit orgy like I did yesterday at the family cottage.

Please, if you've ever enjoyed anything I've posted, I'm asking for one favor. Please sign this petition. I know it likely won't go anywhere but it would mean the world to me. This game saved my life. It gave me the confidence to talk to people and make friends. www.change.org/p/petition-s...

I did draw it in the past haha Also animated it later on

Dog legs #Dogs

In 1940, Congress passed the "Defense Housing & Community Facilities & Services Act", popularly called the Lanham Act, for TX Rep Fritz Lanham. It was an infrastructure bill that authorized funding for community, childcare & housing. Let's talk about the US experiment with universal childcare.

THE POPE IS QUOTING GANDALF!!!

"Ancient Tongues and Ideas about Truth" – @questingvole.bsky.social (Sam Leith) interviewing yours truly on Axess Television, on Kabbalah, Nāgārjuna and other such interesting stuff! : youtu.be/ZUucCE7MXZ0?...

Ok. I would welcome these cute af fluffy LGTBQIA icons to my life.

Another possibility is a loan from/into Nakh-Daghestanian *=ǝlḳwV[n] 'pick, scrape (clean)': Archi: arḳʷin- pick, scrape Akusha: =irḳʷ- peel, shell Because ND historical phonology is so poorly understood, these are not very reliable comparands.

Does this Kartvelian form have any connection to other Eurasian language families? Perhaps. In Indo-European we find *h₃rewk- tear out, weed, till, in Latin runco clear of weeds, and Sanskrit लुञ्चति luñcati pluck, peel. These might represent a semantic shift in ancient loans.

This Old Georgian word გარკვევა garḳveva is in turn based on a clear Kartvelian root *rḳw- meaning 'clean, polish' found in several of the sister lgs: Megrelian რკვანუა rḳvanua explain, clarify Svan ლირკჷნე lirḳəne clean, polish The Svan form preserves the original meaning.

The word გამორკვევა gamorḳveva 'research, elucidate, bring to light' is not much older than the compound form with tvit-. This is first attested in the 1840s in an early Russian-French-Georgian dictionary, and was derived from the Old Georgian გარკვევა garḳveva 'investigate'.

The word is formally a compound based on a verbal noun: თვით-გა-მო-რკვ-ევ-ა tvit-ga-mo-rḳv-ev-a self-PVB-VENT-determine-TH-MAS თვით- tvit- is commonly used in words corresponding to Greek terms beginning with auto-, e.g. თვითმფრინავი tvitmprinavi airplane, lit. 'self-flying'.

The same idea was couched in slightly different language in different political circles. Around the same time, Georgian nationalist leader Ilia Chavchavadze used terms like თვითმმართველობა tvitmmartveloba "self-governance" to convey a similar idea.

"Thus... [a]world is gradually emerging. A power before which the old forces tremble; a new class is growing with a new morality & a new philosophy. A class whose numbers, integrity, economic importance, self-determination and foresight are increasing day by day."

The word in this precise form is first used in early 20th century authors arguing for the liberation of oppressed peoples and social classes, e.g. in a 1906 translation of German Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky:

Weekly Georgian Etymology: თვითგამორკვევა tvitgamorḳveva 'self-determination', modern coinage from გამორკვევა gamorḳveva determine, research from Old Georgian ႢႠႰႩႥႤႥႠ garḳveva investigate, discern, clean, from Kartvelian *rḳw- clean, polish. Long part of political discourse.

I called a hotel's call center to confirm a reservation and spelled out my name, to which the Bot gives a speech about not recognizing offensive language and hangs up on me. I call back and fight to speak with a human, who promptly fixes the issue. As if I didn't need another reason to #despiseAI.

tegula is a fun one, because that Latin teg- has a Germanic equivalent: *þak-; which gives English two more construction terms: "thatch" and "deck"! (also from the PIE root: "Baltimore", "stegosaurus", "detective", and "thug" 😂 www.aidanem.com/word-family-...)

A few more Finnish words with paths like that 😄: (mostly with the Saxon, not English version of the path) kamari: "chamber" kirkko: "church" informal kokata "cook" and kyökki "kitchen" the weekday names maanantai, tiistai, torstai, perjantai, & sunnuntai (with calquing Lat. > W.Gmc. > ON)

also i have now learned a pretty fun strange route for a word: Finnish muuri borrowed from Swedish mur descended from Old Norse múrr probably borrowed from Old English mūr from PWG *mūrā from Latin múrus

now to be fair, מויער moyer does also have a Latin-to-Germanic origin shared with German Mauer, Dutch muur, and obsolete English mure. It’s ultimately from the Latin múrus

to my knowledge “wall” isn’t in Yiddish. you either have a מויער moyer for a stone wall, or a וואַנט vant for a building wall

Words such as 'museum', 'formula', and 'ratio' instantly give away their Latin origin, but 'wall', 'street', and 'kitchen' come from Latin too! These were borrowed very early: into Proto-West Germanic, the ancestor of English. Today’s graphic shows six construction terms. Next time: food words.

Here's the iNaturalist page on Olona zolotuhini.

This definitely forbidden gummy is in fact a moth larva of genus Olona (possibly Olona zolotuhini). It's *normal* to want to know what flavor it is, but the answer, unfortunately is "pain". Most species in this family are covered in tiny stinging spines connected to poison glands. (📷: Janice Ang)

We have lived here 20 years and I don’t ever remember seeing a fox in the backyard. Cute little buggers.

Happened to me all the time, the "cheap looking" animations or "waste of talent" comments. But in the end I love what I do and that's what matters, I don't want everybody to love it! So I keep going and now I see many people enjoy, if I stopped myself from bad comments, I would not be here today.

Sucks seeing a nasty comment about your art and trying not to let it get to you but it does :,)

Oh no. The mice got into the bedroom chests of drawers at the cottage. I can feel my airways filling with mucus, even with a mask on. The rodents usually keep to the kitchen area. They were certainly there, despite our best efforts, but going into bedrooms is new here. Fuuuuuuuuuhhh...

The other thing you might notice about them: they swim with their mouths open. This serves to move water over the gills in a mechanism called "ram ventilation" that meets the high oxygen demand of swimming with your whole body.

This male-first, female later life strategy is called 'protandry' & it's common in reef fishes due to size advantage model for egg production. These eels have only a single color photoreceptor, making them essentially colorblind, so it's unclear what purpose color-changing plays. (📷: Walt Stearns)

It's only when they reach full maturity that egg production begins. We think this is selected for evolutionarily because the large, all-yellow females with their thicker bodies are capable of maximizing egg production that would be difficult in the slender, gracile males.

Here's a juvenile of the same species, showing their initial dark coloration. They're technically within the moray eel family (Muraenidae) & can be called 'leaf-nosed morays'. They're all born male. Hormonal switches cause gonads to develop to first male then female also change skin color.

This is a video of a ribbon eel (Rhinomuraena quaesita) captured by Tjeerd Schone in waters near Padangbai, Bali in 2025. Every ribbon eel is born male, with jet black skin & transitions first to this colorful male, then to female - only when they've reached their max size. Let's talk about it.

I’m experiencing a bit of this again with Sentential Logic. The logic itself is extremely simple so far, but it’s being explained in the abstract. The issue is less “this is confusing,” and more “my eyes are glazing over please get to applying this to actual things to show its usefulness.”

I genuinely enjoy math when I have context and am using it do things. In classes where math was taught, but no context for use was given, I could barely focus. I never understood other people complaining about word problems. I was like, “YES! Context!”

DeTrumpification is as necessary a project to the US as DeNazification was to Germany. Everything removed from everywhere, including every person in the Trump party from every elected and appointed position of public trust, with all appropriate investigations, charges, and trials.

For any humans reading this, you can read more about how exercise keeps one's brain healthy and zombie diet-friendly here: #DoItForThem

HDL (high density lipoprotein) are used to transport cholesterol in young brains, but older astrocytes become less able to produce them, especially in sedentary individuals. If you want a healthy lipid profile, target young people with high levels of activity while ignoring older, less fit people.

Zombie PSA 🧟: The human brain 🧠 is only 2% of total body weight, but contains 25% of all the cholesterol in the body, mostly in myelin sheaths around brain neurons. Because cholesterol can't cross the blood-brain barrier, it has be made locally by support cells: astrocytes & oligodendrocytes.

Ugaritic word of the day: yḥdh ("together"; cf. Hebrew yaḥdāw).

Okay Bluesky, this is it. NEW VIDEO IS OUT!!! GO GO GO GO GO GO!!! SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON GO AROUND ON THE SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!! youtu.be/wCB921utTwU

Here's a thread on the adults.

The video above is of the larval form, just like this photo off the Florida coast by Rajiv Bhambri. Eggs from the adults float to the surface, hatch & then they go progressively deeper as they mature, reaching the abyssal depths (800 to over 4,700 meters), grow their tripod & hunt the dark depths.

You're looking at a Rainbow Tripod Fish (genus Bathypterois) observed on a blackwater dive near Cozumel, MX. This species demonstrates "ontogenetic vertical migration": young of this species mimic jellyfish near the surface, but descend in depth as they age. (📷: Frida Yolotzin, Blackwater Cozumel)

Bonus thread on visible eye movement in a transparent jumping spider:

It's one of the great mysteries. A hypothesis I find compelling: it's a random 'unlearning' process that weakens neuronal circuits, lest they become so hard-wired that they generate problematic "parasitic" behavioral responses. But the important thing is we still don't know, exactly.

Platys are one of the oldest existing branch of mammals & may represent an earlier, more "primitive", state. Our ancestors (perhaps back to a shared ancestor with lizards & birds) may have experienced much deeper, longer REM sleep & we are their insomniac offspring. So why do we dream?