c0nc0rdance

Think of how bad you have to be at business to bankrupt ... a casino.

Neatly arrange the cats and dogs in aesthetically pleasing ways. Problem solved. *dusts hands*

Black Crakes chasing each other in South Africa

One of the funner moments from my South Africa trip occurred when these two little borbs decided to chase each other on the edge a lagoon.

(They're Black Crakes, btw.)

Yup, I think he was from a rural area near Nacogdoches.

a cartoon of a man talking about trivia man Alt: Boomhauer from King of the Hill saying "dang ol ooo la la where's the dang ol trivia man? I tell you what man dang ol dust in the wind man."

I had a suitemate in college that grew up around construction work who just cussed as filler words in a normal sentence.
"You f&^%ing find your f&*^ing book?" or similar.

In polite company, he struggled to talk in normal sentences.

That's my head-canon for what Boomhauer is doing.

I'not fittin' to correct you on this, nahw.

That is just a phenomenal shot. The framing, the implicit motion, the color palette . Love that one.

"What those people were doing to the Superdome." 😢

Aw, man now it's playing in my head.

"Who is he?" they whispered.

A composite of a pika with hay in its mouth and a Pikachu.

But it's still a heck of a coincidence!

I had no idea that squirrels could make this gesture.

Would love to spot one in the wild!

I LOVE citizen science done right! Awesome stuff.

American Pika - Valles Caldera National Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)

And, this being the Internet, I have to acknowledge the Pokemon of it all.

They are NOT the inspiration for the electric mouse-squirrel that has their name, at least according to the creators of that character.

But what a coincidence!

Read more at the NPS: Valles Caldera here:

a small animal sitting on top of a rock looking at the camera Alt: An American pika sitting on top of a rock looking at the camera. It wiggles its little nose and mouth without moving.

... in rock crevices to serve as food caches during the long mountain winters, as they don't hibernate.

This behavior, called "haying" may be unique to pikas.

Their heat sensitivity poses a risk as climate change produces warmer & longer summers in the Rockies.

YouTube video by Mount Rainier National Park Mountain Moment: Call of the Pika

These chirps or shouts serve... to warn others of predators, to protect territories, or to attract mates.

Here's a video (with audio) emitting its tiny roar from Mt. Rainier National Park.

Like rabbits, they're herbivores, eating grass, but unlike rabbits, they create little stashes of 'hay'...

a small animal sitting on a rock with national geographic wild written in the corner Alt: A furry brown mouse-like animal, an American pika, sitting on a rock with national geographic wild written in the corner. It screams and runs away, which is highly relatable.

Their range is the northern Rocky Mountains from the US to Canada where year-round temperatures are cooler, as they are sensitive to heat-stress.

Unlike rabbits, they don't hop, have short, rounded ears, have no visible tails, but they do like to sing.

They're a very vocal little lagomorph!

American pika (Ochotona princeps) carrying flowers and grass to build its nest. Photo was taken on 24-07-2016 at Cawridge, Alberta (Canada). CREDIT: Frédéric Dulude-de Broin

Aww... look, she brought you some flowers!

Let's meet the American pika (Ochotona princeps).

The scientific name is from Mongolian 'ogotno' meaning "pika" & Latin princeps for 'first' or 'chief'.

They're lagomorphs, in the same taxonomic Order as rabbits & hares, but adapted to mountain environs.

This color image, acquired during Galileo's ninth orbit (C9) around Jupiter, shows two volcanic plumes on Io. One plume was captured on the bright limb or edge of the moon, erupting over a caldera (volcanic depression) named Pillan Patera. The plume seen by Galileo is 140 kilometers (86 miles) high, and was also detected by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Galileo spacecraft will pass almost directly over Pillan Patera in 1999 at a range of only 600 (373 miles). The second plume, seen near the terminator, the boundary between day and night, is called Prometheus after the Greek fire god). The shadow of the airborne plume can be seen extending to the right of the eruption vent. (The vent is near the center of the bright and dark rings). Plumes on Io have a blue color, so the plume shadow is reddish. The Prometheus plume can be seen in every Galileo image with the appropriate geometry, as well as every such Voyager image acquired in 1979. It is possible that this plume has been continuously active for more than 18 years. In contrast, a plume has never been seen at Pillan Patera prior to the recent Galileo and HST images. Color images from orbit C9 have been merged with a high resolution mosaic of images acquired in various orbits to enhance the surface detail. PIA00703 is another version of this image which also includes detailed insets of the plumes. North is to the top of the picture. The resolution is about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per picture element. This composite uses images taken with the green, violet, and near-infrared filters of the Solid State Imaging (CCD) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The C9 images were obtained on June 28, 1997 at a range of more than 600,000 kilometers (372, 000 miles). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is an operating division of California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

"Lava plumes on Io can reach up to 500 km (310 miles) high, though most range from 300 to 500 km (190 to 310 miles)"

Possibly yes to all of it!

The egg case doesn't quite match the reference photos I'm seeing, and there's no doubt uncatalogued inter- and intra-specific diversity in this taxonomic family!

What a lovely thing!

The title page of the "The Genera of the Spider Family Therisiosomatidae"

Sorry, I know it's a sketchy to post this kind of link, but it's the 1986 publication in the Smithsonian archives.
For "Plato troglodita, new species"
"At present the genus is exclusively neotropical; known from Trinidad, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil."
repository.si.edu/server/api/c...

Someone ask it to hallucinate some sources for us.

Genus Plato Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/ PLAY-toe; Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, born c. 428-423 BC, died 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philos...

One imagines there is a perfect, eternal version of the Plato spider of which this one is merely an imperfect projection.

You can learn more about the group of ray spiders (Family Theridiosomatidae) in genus Plato, including more pictures of their oddly cuboid egg sacs at iNaturalist:

Plato's allegory of the cave shows people in a cave watching shadows of solid objects pass on the cave wall, and I've composited it with the five Platonic solids.

In case you need that unpacked, it's a reference to Greek philosopher Plato's "allegory of the cave" & his insistence that all of the elements are made of five 3D shapes ('Platonic solids'), one of which is the cube.

Scientists 🧪 are nerds and I love ❤️ them for it.

A biologist at the American Museum of Natural History, Jonathan Coddington, cataloged a new genus of South American spiders in 1986.

Two things about the spider were unique:
they lived in caves & laid cubic eggs.

So he called them genus 'Plato', and that's the nerdiest thing I have read all year.

Omigod, I have to tell the world more about this amazing spider and the absolute nerds who named it.

😉 Thread.

A meme involving three military officers or soldiers whispering in each other's ears. The top reads: "Flow of genetic information be like:" and underneath there's a soldier on the far right labeled "DNA" whispering into the central soldier's ear (with hand cupped around his ear). The middle soldier is labeled "RNA" and he's whispering to a female soldier labeled "Protein".

I had to transcribe a translated version of this meme.