fun biology facts + upsetting short story recs (two great tastes that taste great together?)

Here, have some assorted fun #animalfacts and some mostly fairly upsetting great short stories - todaythings.substack.com/p/fun-biolog...

#storyrec #booksky #recommendation #literature #snakes #octopus #inverts #marinebiology

ur so hot no fungus can survive in you + snails, Garbage Pail Kids, macroplankton, & let's just breathe (shall we?)

Been a month since my last infodump post, but here’s a new one - todaythings.substack.com/p/ur-so-hot-... (the writing timeslot has mostly been co-opted by climbing instead lately) #inverts #snails #garbagepailkids #breathing #artspiegelman #plankton

this is my brain on leeches I just want to bring you along for a reprise of the journey of how I read Asimov Press’s Leeches and the Legitimizing of Folk-Medicine, because man was it fun for my brain

rabbit holes I got curiously sucked down into while reading @asimovpress.bsky.social’s great article on hirudotherapy -

open.substack.com/pub/todaythi...

#leeches #inverts

Plimsoll (load) lines, Dracula translations, & a lobster on a leash “The human body has about 25,000 nerves triggered by pettiness.”

Plimsoll (load) lines, #Dracula translations, & a lobster on a leash

open.substack.com/pub/todaythi...

#MaritimeSafety #booksky #literature #translation

Tom Lehrer outlived his obituary writer by two years archive.is/gY3Xa

11 April 1849 - Herman Melville possibly refers to a baby as "Moloch of a baby."

fragmentsfromawritingdesk.blogspot.com/2015/07/sez-...

Aw I wanted this to be true but afaict the Latin word is just clam, not clamclam?

hooded nudibranchs smell like watermelon + fruit flies using bloom filters, ladybug STIs, & short stories about motherhood

hooded nudibranchs smell like watermelon
+ fruit flies using bloom filters, ladybug STIs, & short stories about motherhood

open.substack.com/pub/todaythi...

#nudibranch #seaslugs #inverts #marinelife #algorithm #amreading #booksky #shortstories #ladybugs #motherhood #readingrecs #TIL

best books I read in the first half of 2025 totally jumping on the midyear reading update trend (doing this now will make my life easier in january, so that’s nice)

Best books I read in the first half of 2025 open.substack.com/pub/todaythi...

#booksky #booklist #readingrecommendations #booklife #literature

There’s surely a joke here about his initials being IBS and Ashkenazi Jews often having digestive problems

I assumed Isaac Bashevis Singer's Meshugah must’ve inspired The Producers (1967) until I noticed it was first published in 1981-83

Pretty convinced this means Isaac Bashevis Singer was directly inspired by Mel Brooks #booksky

truly feels like learning Tolstoy was inspired by Star Trek or something

i got to touch a horseshoe crab's mouth so very many eyes, web fic recs, & an explanation of commercial shrimp peeling machines

Horseshoe crabs, so very many eyes, web fic recs, & an explanation of commercial shrimp peeling machines

#horseshoecrab #shrimp #inverts #engineering (and my vaguely guilty indulgence in actually really delightful #rationalist fiction)

open.substack.com/pub/todaythi...

how many calories from a pumpkin toadlet + some etymological & other digressions

I got distracted thinking about whether one oughta eat a #pumpkintoadlet this morning

open.substack.com/pub/todaythi... #frog #etymology #herps

bold move assuming it’s not just still March 2020

if i were gonna run a slow read, it'd be for this + fly brain maps, capillary-ratchet-feeding birds, bone-collecting caterpillars, & taxes

books I’d run a slow read for if I was gonna run one, + fly brain #maps, capillary-ratchet-feeding birds, bone-collecting #caterpillars, & a fun tax #loophole

also I just discovered the awesome @virtualflybrain.bsky.social

#drosophilia #phalarope #invertebrates #booksky #literature

the victory of atom and romance screwworms, snakebite dude, and getting stigmericly borked

screwworms, snakebite dude, and getting stigmericly borked

These are basically all my favorite things <3

let's microwave hamsters for their own good, help rogue miners compare vehicles and cheeses, learn statistics & languages, read short stories, appreciate art, & get swole “By a strange twist of fate, the microwave was invented to meet a need to heat hamsters humanely in 1950s laboratories.”

Microwaving hamsters for their own good (thanks #tomscott), a surprise #statistician, drug gangs assisting rogue miners, vehicles vs cheeses, QWOP crossed with Codex Seraphinianus but for #linguistics, some #shortstory & art recs, + ofc #swole #invertebrates

todaythings.substack.com/p/lets-micro...

let's all disguise ourselves as stinging caterpillars while having Odysseus, Michalina Janoszanka, & Anish Kapoor on the brain

let's all disguise ourselves as stinging #caterpillars while having #Odysseus, Michalina Janoszanka, & #AnishKapoor on the brain - oh & #Dostoevsky #art!

todaythings.substack.com/p/lets-all-d...

<3 <3 <3 @danielmendelsohn.bsky.social & @publicdomainrev.bsky.social for this one #booksky #bookish

I've been on the octopus beat for more than thirty years and I will never leave it because they still have the power to make me yell EXCUSE ME WHAT

happy fish doorbell day! and other friendships? to aspire to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin shared a bed one night...

Happy fish doorbell day! Also some entertaining friendships in history todaythings.substack.com/p/happy-fish...

flying while pregnant & painting swans after the war "This article is about the artist. For the balloonist, see Stanley Spencer (aeronaut)."

Today I had art, war, #tolstoy, aeronauts, #swans, &c on my mind todaythings.substack.com/p/flying-whi...

sharks & elegant technique are not yet a matter of indifference ps I maintain a calendar of NYC events that I find interesting nowadays

#sharks, elegant technique, a translator ceding his identity to an author, air conditioner effect on finance (ps I maintain a calendar of nyc events that I find interesting nowadays) todaythings.substack.com/p/sharks-and...

Now I really wanna read a manga about magnapinna. It’d be an epistolary romance btwn 2 marine biologists who cite each other’s papers but never met. Turns out they’ve had rare sightings (citings) of the same giant squid who swims through both their bodies of work over the years. Illustrated by CLAMP

Freud should be so lucky!

quork!: raven physics, ant dudes, knolling "it was 1945 now, just after the Second World War, and Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia wasn’t exporting insect pins"

quork!: raven physics, ant dudes, knolling

todaythings.substack.com/p/quork-rave... #etymology #entomology #birds #knolling

let's take a moment to rest our eyes things fitting perfectly into other things, + salps

just trying to breathe todaythings.substack.com/p/lets-take-...

science is everywhere (+ short story recs) “I don’t need much aftercare, but it’s nice if you make a low, continuous hum, around 10 kHz, to simulate stridulation.”

Poetry, citizen science, short story recs todaythings.substack.com/p/science-is...

MIT Mystery Hunt 2025 I spent my weekend at the MIT Mystery Hunt making complicated spreadsheets for fun.

My favorite #puzzles from this year’s MIT Mystery Hunt - todaythings.substack.com/p/mit-myster... #MITmysteryhunt #mysteryhunt #puzzle

Scapegracers trilogy by HA Clarke, Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White, Black Water Sister by Zen Cho