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  Have been wrestling with moving hosts on the personal instance (@nev@status.nevillepark.ca) so was unable to follow #Monsterdon, but I encourage everyone to tune in for the gloriously unhinged _Dr. Phibes_ (1971) on https://miru.miyaku.media #MonsterdonDoubleFeature

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  Comrades. IT'S TIME. #FatBearWeek 2026 is upon us. https://explore.org/fat-bear-week 🐻 For the first time, the bracket includes bear families (mother and cubs), "in recognition of the record high number of bear families (19) and cubs (37) at Brooks River in summer 2026"! Find out about all the contestants here: https://explore.org/meet-the-bears Watch the bears live or check out videos introducing particular bears: @ExploreLiveNatureCams@youtube.com

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  it's #WeevilWednesday black vine weevil (_Otiorhynchus sulcatus_) #bugstodon #insects #beetles #weevils #Coleoptera #Curculionidae #Entiminae

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  night walk mammal tally - 4-5 raccoons - 2 skunks - 1 cat enjoying the catmint in a garden - 1 rabbit #parkdale #toronto #UrbanWildlife

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  Have some oribatid mites for #MiteMonday. These tiny detritivorous soil-dwelling mites look kind of like shiny poppy seeds. The plates on their sides are called pteromorphs ("wing-shaped") and are a feature of certain groups. #bugstodon #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Oribatida #Poronota

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  really wonderful quotes in this article about beaver coexistence professionals (https://baynature.org/2026/07/22/explore/it-gets-me-out/what-it-takes-to-become-a-beaver-coexistence-professional/): > "California used to be a joke at the beaver conferences because it represented one of the more backward approaches to beaver management in the world" > "'Nobody grows up being like, 'I really want to work with beavers'" > Beaver conflicts, and deaths, conce...

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  Apropos of nothing 😇 , there is a species of recluse spider, _Loxosceles coheni_, named after legendary Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. From an Entomology Today article by one of the scientists (https://entomologytoday.org/2021/01/08/new-species-recluse-spider-named-for-leonard-cohen/): "I have been listening to Cohen’s music since a rather young age, especially more so during the recent years, which certainly helped with working during the cold, dark, and long winters o...

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  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org More on this from Dr. Sehgal at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/replacing-gas-stoves-with-electric-stoves-greatly-reduces-asthma-symptoms-287753 Original (quite readable) study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2026.06.039

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  #WeevilWednesday: some people have been confused about how female hollyhock weevils (_Rhopalapion longirostre_) use their long snouts, so here you go. Her mouthparts are at the end of the snout. She chews a tunnel down into the heart of the flowerbud. Then she turns around, extends her ovipositor (at the end of her abdomen), and lays eggs down the hole. The larvae have a safe place to grow, with plenty of food! #bugstodon #insects #weevils #Coleoptera #Curculionoidea #Brentidae #Apioninae

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  will my gts instance be done migrating in time for #Monsterdon? i guess we'll see

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  A bunch of those generic viral "good news" sites are sharing this February 2025 Signal Hill story about a ten-year-old boy in Japan collaborating with one of the American entomologists who showed butterflies remember what they learn as caterpillars (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001736) to prove, amazingly, that butterflies pass on these learned memories to their offspring. However they all say less than the original story, and you really have to listen to it/read the transcrip...

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  So much discussion of Kessler Syndrome and space pollution, so few references to PLANETES (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes), which I think is the only fictional work I've seen that pretty much revolves around space junk and its implications

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  everything sucks and is terrible but i did go down to the lake and see a juvenile red-winged blackbird doing the thing where it hops up to some bit of food and opens its beak and flutters its wings hoping the food will go in and then it runs to the parent who just flies off exasperated, so there's that

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  #MiteMonday: I chased this sidewalk mite around a bocce ball court in a park for ages because I thought it was one of the iridescent blue-green ones, only to find out it just had some green stuff on it. 😐 It looks kind of like lichen but I have no idea how lichen would even grow on a mite. It's probably some random paint or powder or algae-filled water that dried on it. #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Erythraeidae

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  So I don't think I mentioned this on here, but a couple weeks ago, walking to the grocery store, I was surprised to find a couple of *beautiful* metallic green sweat bees peeking out of burrows in a rather weedy, neglected, half-bare corner of yard, right by the sidewalk. Today I saw them again and was taking pictures when one of the residents was coming home. I was like, "Did you know you have BEES" and pointed them out to her, and she was very excited! She mentioned they make sur...

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  Today's whirligig mites are eating: - small fly (midge?) - plant bug nymphs - another whirligig mite #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #bugstodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Anystidae

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  From @davidgerard: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/05/06/openai-chatgpt-goes-goblin-mode-let-none-say-model-collapse/ > OpenAI even put specific instructions into the system prompt for Codex, their AI coding model, to try to get it not to talk about creatures: [GitHub (https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-manager/models.json#L55)] > > > Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is a...

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  @colinpurrington@flipping.rocks It would certainly be possible to create a bot that can be summoned to do that. It is a little beyond *my* capabilities, but I've seen similar things.

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  current earworm: the indoor centipede song https://youtu.be/3W3R3EElMho (note, video contains footage of house centipedes, so just listen to the audio if you're skittish)

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  The linked story about digital forensics & AI is great (https://mastodon.social/@FabMusacchio/116529625252630872), but one of the best ways to tell if an image/video is doctored, CGI, or AI-generated isn't mentioned: FIND THE ORIGINAL SOURCE. Quite often tracing the source shows that it was originally from an AI slop account, computer graphics artist's channel, ad agency portfolio, or parody site. Or it is genuine but taken out of context. I use tools like TinEye, Googl...

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  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org the worst is when someone wants to know why an LLM said this thing or THAT and *they ask the LLM why* (See: too many articles about Grok)

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  Garden update: - rain barrel in operation (I did have to half get inside while another person held the tap still, but after leaving it empty for a few days it was less gross than expected) - mosquito kill bucket set up (based off @colinpurrington's instructions here: https://colinpurrington.com/2024/08/bti-honeypot-traps/)

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  So, heads up, I'm seeing this post announcing palantirwatch.org being boosted a lot: https://indieweb.social/@perlman/116487195727382898 However, the site seems to be vibe coded and, while I've just picked stuff at random, most claims are lacking sources and/or just plain wrong. I think it is all generated by an LLM. - For example, the "Court Dossier" page mentions a 2019 case "Kik v. Palantir", about a "former partner" suing them for stealing fraud-detec...

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  randomly came across the most cursed photo (Wikimedia: https://w.wiki/MLy3)

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  remember if you see a spaceship on the feed press the doorbell so the lock-keeper can let it into the atmosphere

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  I also encountered something I'd never seen before. This spruce(?) tree had little red patches on it which turned out to be remarkable profusions of juvenile _Bryobia_ clover mites! _Bryobia_ are in the spider mite family Tetranychidae, and I have seen photos of the silk-making spider mites, like gorse mites and two-spotted spider mites, aggregating like this on their webs. But the subfamily Bryobiinae does not make silk and until now I had never seen them swarm like this. They formed...

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  i don't particularly care for public displays of affection but the male cardinal is feeding the female seeds which i find inutterably cute #birdeing

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  I did manage to get some time outside in the nice weather today! It was nuptial flight day for _Prenolepis imparis_, cold-active ants who are typically the last to hunker down for the winter and the first to come out in the spring. Unfortunately these were the best photos I could get. #bugstodon #insects #ants #Hymenoptera #Formicidae

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  it's #TransDayOfVisibility and I'm here, I guess I have deeply ambivalent feelings about "visibility" but as the years go on I do see the importance of anyone who can afford to be out, being out, particularly in otherwise mundane or apolitical milieus. #tdov

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  man. imagine getting to see the dark side of the moon. imagine getting to be free of this miserable rock for even a few hours #Artemis #ArtemisII #nasa