I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.
Is this on IG or something too? Or going to be a sticker? I need to link my lichenologist dad.
And this is why I support Public Domain Review 😍
A look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the "modern" book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914
if you need a moment's distraction from Events, pls consider @monotomidae.bsky.social's extremely good new paper on passandrid beetles stridulating with their armpits. THERE'S VIDEO, WITH SOUND link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Two more book covers.
Don’t forget. Never Surrender. You cannot both care about the constitution and sweep these events under the rug.
![A dark blue book cover with both gilded and black designs. “Wild Flowers [line break] WORTH NOTICE” with a subtitle of “for Their Beauty [line break] Uses & Associations”
At the bottom it says “By Mrs. Lankester”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:c4bbndeurn2zwxq3qrhwd5rn/bafkreigfjgpx55h2hbrxg5qzac3rjietfk5nnnlitjdxfvfdtsdmxibn5y)
Some book covers I’ve taken pictures of.
These designs are all in the public domain so I like to ensure they’re accessible.
Deco Beauty nail stickers are fab and for Xmas I got more. This new set includes HOUSE CENTIPEDES!! Also silverfish, multiple spider families, ticks, multiple centipede families, distinct lizards as well as salamanders. I’m blown away. Cannot suggest highly enough!
🤣😂🤣
It’s always good assurance that my personal brand is rock solid when people recommend me to myself!
Will o’ The Wasps is book by Margaret Warner Morley that took me years to acquire. This was written 12 years after Wasps and Their Ways and is from the perspective of a kid talking with a wasp lover named Will. Here’s a couple examples from the book.
I own a Cintiq 21UX. It's perfectly functional, but it's over a decade old, now.
When I attempt to update it through the manufacturer's interface, it literally tells me to buy a new tablet instead of downloading the drivers.
@quasimofo.bsky.social 👀 for morgan
Muppets Christmas Carol
one thing I love about older scientific literature. in his 1947 paper 'Scale adaptation and utilization in Aesiocopa patulana' William Beebe fucked with a caterpillar in the wrong way and it died and he expressed genuine and poetic contrition about it in the paper itself
@toomanywasps.bsky.social
Fantastic work! I was absolutely delighted in the demo!!!
And then you have to fix it, and as long as you’re doing that you should do the next one before it breaks…
4 days later you wake up in a haze of old ethanol and plastic chips. You’re surrounded by new full vials. You’re finished!!
But wait, look on your elbow, where did that label come from?!?
I’m posting this now because I’ll be devastated if Bluesky deletes it accidentally, but we aren’t done.
Ps. Here’s the link to that prior source
thinkinthemorning.com/de-mortuis-n...
This leads me to a different record with stories that make me stop feeling as inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Are you starting to feel like you’re trapped in #TheRoottreesAreDead ? I sure am.)
This excerpt is from a blog called Thinkinthemorning from 2017.
(For the record, he was a legitimate naturalist.)
I’ve included the limerick because it adds some more details.
(Find the letter in the archives of “theava” number 30261)
theava.com/archives/30261
Dig a tiny bit deeper and holy crap does his local drama go hard.
In a Letter about the first chairman of the Mendocino Historical Review Board, Donald P. Hahn, I came across a scathing review and poem about the death.
Oh, did I forget to mention that he was found at the bottom of a cliff?
While endeavoring to discover if Jacques Richard Helfer actually drew these comics (he did) I found quite the… uh…. engaging history. He was enough of a ‘community member’ to have historical records made about him, including his mysterious death.
kelleyhousemuseum.catalogaccess.com/people/1868
These particular illustrations are from the much later “How To Know The Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, and their Allies” by Jacques R. Helfer (a different Jacques, don’t get confused) and might be my favorites.
If you come across any of the “How To Know The…” series, check inside for periodic illustrated comical drop caps, a frontispiece cartoon, and opening peppered with playful comics. Look closely at the L. There’s four orthopterans hiding there!!
One of the richest veins of charming nature illustrations comes a series of books called the Pictured Key Nature Series. The series was started by Harry Edwin Jaques in the 1920s and eventually expanded to 20+ books. They were self published so #H.E.Jacques slipped cute details in everywhere.
A curse on all snap cap jars and vials too.
I have no idea why I just thought of this but the scent of crayfish in ethanol still haunts me to this day after we had to study them in field zoology.
Awesome! Well, if you went to the museum of biological diversity during your visit, he’s the spider guy there!
Oh, but also just in case so it’s not a bummer later: it might be literally impossible if they’re not sexually mature. Spiders are very rude that way.
