@apophis@brain.worm.pink cover
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

apophis

@apophis@brain.worm.pink

they/them, PNW, xennial, not white
formerly @apophis

assume my reply is a yes-and unless it's obviously not

pfp is a slight edit of Marcille nervously pointing out a problem: https://fluffytail.gay/@Hourlymarcille/112248226088313872

prev pfps:
hand-fried still from Shakugan no Shana the movie
https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/29413

banner is our wormium franchise regulatory compliance contract officer, Dr. Noam Problem, Ph.D

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futurebird , (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

A student asked me “If I really wanted to do something about climate change & all this injustice do you think I should just try to become a billionaire so I’d have real power? Or should I be a judge so I can make the big decisions? or president? Who has the most power? who can fix it?”

me: Listen if I knew the answer to all that I would tell you. I think it matters what you are good at? What you think you can do well.

student: whatever it is I need to do well I will learn it.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird assuming magic genie who changes the economy so you're instantly a billionaire: billionaire

without the magic: this is impossible to do without (a) being born into significant wealth and opportunity and (b) getting into the habit of making some of the most mercenary, amoral and utterly ruthless decisions a human being can make, which will utterly deaden you to whatever ideals you may have started out with long, long before you're anywhere near "influence the decisions of major countries" money

of course this dynamic works for the others as well, but at least those you can theoretically coast into through connections while secretly harbouring your plots - and the legal training required might help stave off some of the worst of the deadening (i have no actual reason to believe this of the American system)

as for the others...

scotus judge: ginsburg did a spectacular job holding the line literally unto death (which was a horrible strategic blunder but that just proves the point here)

president nowadays seems very weak if the administration isn't just as determined as he is on that one specific issue - the damage trump did had very little to do with any policy he implemented himself that the american govt wouldn't have done anyway, and everything to do with the overton window and the scotus appointments

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The special words for forms of lichen are almost as good as the special words for the textures of ants.

The Foliose, The Crustose and The fruticose.

Areolate, Filamentous, Placodioid, Byssoid and Calicioid

Who can forget Cladoniform and the Squamulose!

And must we mention the Gelatinous and Leprose?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen_growth_forms

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird thinking about the gelatinous cube and realizing you can mad libs an entire dungeon campaign's worth of monster bestiary with this

cladoniform dodecahedron
foliose tetrahedron
level boss: dire leprose icosahedron

liferstate , to random
@liferstate@mas.to avatar

Graphic designer Saul Bass directed exactly one film, an extremely trippy adaptation of HG Wells' "Empire of the Ants" called PHASE IV.

As far as I can tell the ants do not become large, so the film may not qualify for , but it does sound real fucked up. It's on Criterion til June 30, dunno about other sites.

(cc @futurebird)

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird @puffer @liferstate
> The movie is always getting to you think about how this all seems to the ants and so few movies do that with "monsters"

Phase IV is easily my favourite work in the "story of the ascension of a new sapient species" genre of science fiction

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Since Citizens United we have seen dark money in politics: huge sums of money in our elections. We have felt like there are few protections in campaign finance law.

You can't know who or WHAT is funding ads, events, promotions, social media stealth campaigns.

But the old rules do still apply to the money controlled by the canidate. We saw a little of that today. Campaigns are supposed to be transparent precisely to prevent the kind of media manipulation Pecker so nakedly orchestrated.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird that would be funny if trump appealed and scotus took this away as well

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The fate and future of a former president is in the hands of 12 regular citizens and really whatever they decide (which I only hope they do earnestly and with a focus on the law, as if this was just some guy) that's a lovely thing isn't it?

I hope it happens again and again and again!

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird there will be a large number of people who would take an acquittal as a sign of the system being rigged in favour of rich white evil men

timhutton , to random
@timhutton@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Do all animal's mouths open horizontally?

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@lritter @futurebird @timhutton @simon it's shared but between insects and people it's reversed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostome

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The ant “foot” consists of a tarsal claw with two toes and the several segments above that I suspect are simply… well…floppy. Basically, I’ve seen no evidence ants can wiggle their ankles at will, but rather they seem to adjust the floppiness, or tension of the lower leg. The claws, however, show signs of dexterity, ants can control how sticky the soft pad of their foot is, but also seem to be able to grip and release with their claws. (how exactly are the muscles arranged?)

Another view that includes the segments above which I suspect to be “floppy” the ant leg is often covered in hairs.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird until this post prompted me to look more closely i always thought (non-ant-mimic) spiders also did the four-legpair version of this

e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE2QPYKju04

but the more of these i look at the more it feels like the spiders are more or less "trying" to aim for this kind of alternation but can't quite ever get into the rhythmic flow when they have to start from a standstill or change direction or pacing in any way

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

For a long time I've wanted to make a GPS gardening game (for health!) plant virtual plants in real locations & walk back later to harvest them. Basically "farmeville Go"

The big stumbling block? Farming games need a ton of little plant icons and I'm a slow and not very good graphic designer.

Could procedurally generated sprites be the answer to my laziness?

Maybe?

I like this, but I also think part of the fun of a farming game is the graphics...seeing what grows ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfgKd5QeGc

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird as someone who has never touched a gun in their life but has this weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of late 20C/early 21C military firearms thanks to this one gaming trend back in the day, i approve of this

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird obviously the game will need to fudge a lot of stuff to allow this sort of daily(-ish) reward cycle, at least without making things awfully abstract or distanced by accelerating everything in the game world

which brings up the question of exactly what we want the player to take away from this game, so that those things are either preserved/replicated faithfully or represented in some abstracted way that still gets the core message across

how do these plants affect each other's growth? do some crowd out others, and are there other plants that can be deployed to stop them somehow (maybe make habitat for or lure things that eat the invasive, etc.)? do some plants favour a monoculture of pollinators? who suffers when the honeybees crowd out the smaller bees?

just some stuff to consider both before, during and after even figuring what activities and resources the game's feedback cycle would even involve...

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

wicked mean delinquent children who are mean to their poor elderly teacher
:( “what’s a modem?”

“why would you need to go home to update a website?”

It never ends.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird i dunno, if a kid understands the significance of a private individual "updating their website" i think they'd realize nothing on their phone easily allows for the tasks required for that

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird @leadore it's funny but i really do wonder how much this constant intergenerational alienation of some of our most basic everyday experiences as social beings is really messing us up as a society if not necessarily species

mvyrmnd , to random
@mvyrmnd@aus.social avatar

It's a little known fact that the C in USB-C stands for Cloaca. One hole that does every job.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@mvyrmnd too bad it doesn't go all the way so we can just have any two holes connect in a cloacal Keep It Sweet and Simple

yonabee , to random
@yonabee@eldritch.cafe avatar

it really doesn't matter what eugen thinks or does, mastodon is open source and we can take the ball, the whole field, all of the goalposts and the players, and go wherever we like

tbqh it's us who need to stop treating eugen like some tech CEO who must be deferred to, and .social as 'too big to defederate'

.social would be a pretty terrible social network all on its own, so it's actually us who give them legitimacy, and not the other way around

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@Yza @yonabee worst case scenario 10 years from now there's been a government crackdown on "mastodon" and we're sharing pleroma updates transferring SD cards through funny handshakes in strange parts of town

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

These cursed "ants" can be ordered for your child's playground... no wonder people grow up fearing bugs. I'm scared of them after seeing this.

apophis ,
@apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

@futurebird
> Make the mandibles smaller but don't skip them. It's like drawing a bird with lips instead of beak when you skip the mandibles.

i tried to draw a counterpoint but my hand literally slipped and the seam resulted in implied mandibles anyway

A very crude tiny bird and ant done in Kolourpaint. The bird's had is just a roundish blob with the outline thinned in one spot on the side to imply a beak. The crude circle-like freeform drawing forming the ant's head doesn't loop back on itself exactly, forming a small seam at the bottom that implies the line of a mouth.
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  • Reply
    • + futurebird
    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    More seriously, can someone steel-man the case for executive power being less effective if subject to future evaluations and constraints?

    I don't think I've ever looked at any singular leader of any organization and thought "the problem is they can't do what they want easily enough"

    When I was younger I might have said that the director of a film or play can do better work if they are an unquestioned dictator... but I've grown to even reject that idea.

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @mattmcirvin @futurebird from everything i've heard about chinese politics everything good happening there is happening despite xi jinping not because of him - basically the entire prc governmental infrastructure works around him like tesla and spacex work around elon musk

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @llewelly @mattmcirvin @futurebird all speculative fiction would be so much better if we got rid of the influence of all the taming the frontier guys

    (unravelling this mythic knot in my brain is one thing i'll always be grateful to Out Of The Silent Planet for)

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @mattmcirvin @futurebird now that i've read the OP, here's my attempt, based on the above:

    when a single despot is in power controlling everything, and everybody working under him knows specifically how and in what ways he's stupid and incapable of critical thought, it becomes easier to manipulate him into thinking he is obeyed to the fullest while the people who actually have to do things are thereby more free to do what they really want

    this institutional knowledge, being unaccountable to electoral political cycles while needing to stay out of the way of the parasite class struggling with each other for a final champion to succeed the despot when he inevitably dies, has a stronger incentive to perpetuate itself in the long term to protect its own members, and thus their incentives are better aligned with those of the common weal than you'd expect from a for-profit capitalist enterprise that has to answer to short-termist investors or elected officials who must answer to an electorate that, however individually intelligent and educated, must due to the structure of electoral politics get their collective will filtered into the stupidest binary choices possible

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    I’m very fond of stories in a universe where some advanced, but long vanished, race of enigmatic aliens has left behind strange artifacts: like puzzle boxes or dungeons for our heroes to explore and nearly get killed in. If not aliens let it be a lost human civilization.

    I also like to think about those ancient people who built the ‘Temple of Doom’— for all of those traps to work so well after thousands of years they must have been very clever. What was it like to set them up?

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird saw this and immediately wanted to come up with the opposite: a dungeon that's old ruins of an ancient civilization but all the traps are unintentional consequences of corruption, corner-cutting and poor design - stuff falling apart, former walls now floors with huge buttons designed in a "minimalist" aesthetic that now look like a path of tiles and it's really hard to tell which tiles are buttons and which are decorative, oozing rivers of gear-destroying toxic sludge that used to be part of the building envelope but the plastics have slowly reacted over the years to form this instead, AI smart electronics that interpret every noise the party makes in the worst possible way causing all sorts of automated stuff to happen at the worst possible time and place,...

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @llewelly @futurebird the software has been tested in the field many times over (to the misery of very many people in that now-lost civilization) and everything's placed more or less sensibly, but the way the screen registers a touch is now reacting to one party member's breathing and it's not clear whose

    Sherifazuhur , to israel group
    @Sherifazuhur@sfba.social avatar

    Nearly 200 bodies found in mass grave at hospital in ’s Khan Younis @israel @palestine

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/21/nearly-200-bodies-found-in-mass-grave-at-hospital-in-gazas-khan-younis

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @Sherifazuhur @israel @palestine i'm reminded of the discoveries at Canadian residential schools and American prisons in recent years, except those bodies had accumulated over the course of years rather than months

    futurebird , (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    "The Why Files" is a youTube channel that regularly has videos with over a million views. They started as a kind of paranormal/fringe science channel that was mostly harmless, and that often debunked conspiracies.

    But, they've moved beyond that in to material such as suppressed patents for cars that run on water. And treating climate change like it's a unresolved question. This has made their audience grow.

    The things is they aren't just spitting lies. 1/

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @TomSwirly @futurebird
    > car that runs on water
    tried to think of a snarky reply (snark directed at the conspiracy people, not anyone present ofc) and ended up reinventing the steam locomotive instead

    mondoweiss , to israel group
    @mondoweiss@social.mondoweiss.net avatar

    Jewish students participating in pro-Palestine protests on their campuses would have valuable things to say about the alleged "rising antisemitism" at their schools. But the media is ignoring them.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/the-media-is-advancing-a-false-narrative-of-rising-antisemitism-on-campus-by-ignoring-jewish-protesters/


    @palestine @israel

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @mondoweiss @palestine @israel there really is a rise in antisemitism but a lot of that can be fairly easily traced to the zionists (jewish or otherwise) saturating the dominant narrative with the equivalence of anti-zionism and antisemitism

    they're succeeding in planting that false equivalence in a critical mass of people

    what they presumably want to do with this is to make anti-zionism unpopular by equating it with being a nazi

    what they end up doing is making antisemitism sound appealing because apparently to speak out against massacring and starving civilians and deliberately murdering children for fun in a blatant century-long armed robbery requires that one thereby be an antisemite

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    On one of my recent nature walks I came across the deceased body of an adult Periplaneta americana. They are remarkably large. Compared to all the other insects in the city only the praying mantises beat them. (and the mantises never leave lush gardens, so they rule the streets... did you know the roach & praying mantis are close cousins?)

    I thought "that is your real crime you are too large & successful, too swift and athletic you can climb, leap, fly, survive... and we hate you for that."

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird tempted to start quoting nietzsche at this point

    futurebird , (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    What was was a bigger blow for the long-term prospects of complex, large, diverse, life on earth? Which one was closer to the brink of planet sterilization, or a planet with few prospects for anything like complex life?

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird @mafeesh given this standard and the parallels between our best guesses about what happened at the end of the Permian and what we're doing, voting "neither" and "other" (and thanks for allowing multiple votes)

    my write-in is "the invention of the concept of private land ownership"

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Ever look at the headlines and wonder which staff member at The Onion found a monkey's paw in their attic back around 2019?

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @llewelly @futurebird venn diagram with all those famous dystopian books and "you are here" in the middle but instead it's

    the onion
    the simpsons
    beavis and butt-head
    starship troopers
    dilbert

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Imagine some evil stepmother takes the place of your dear mother AND she's covered in mites

    Not only did she kill their mother and take over the nest...she has a hygiene problem.

    "Cinderella" is a very real thing for ants. Imagine a Formica alate has a Polyergus wicked stepmother, & evil Polyergus alate step-sisters. The prince is searching for a bride, holds a nuptial ball. He searches for the one with the “dainty mandibles” (Polyergus have gaping mandibles)

    (Photo by Macronatura.es )

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird when a foss project gets bought up by a for-profit company

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    I love how Spanish-speaking ant-keepers pronounce "Camponotus"

    "Comp pu NO tus"

    I'm starting to do it myself, it's just a more fun way to say the name of the genus.

    ♥️ adoro hormigas! 🐜

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird @stevenbodzin bit of a relief tbh

    if you'd said the stress was supposed to be on the "po" i may have decided to vow to stop speaking English forever today

    futurebird , to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Here is how I “watch YouTube” first I check that my ad blockers are on, and the extension that hides thumbnails, and the extension that gives videos more neutral titles. I look at my subscriptions and add videos to a playlist. I search for topics I’m currently concerned about. When I have about 90min of video. I shuffle the list and check the order. Then (and only then) do I get to kick back and “watch TV”

    YouTube isn’t easy to use this way.
    Anyone else do something similar?

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @futurebird what's this extension that changes the titles?

    Catvalente , to random
    @Catvalente@wandering.shop avatar

    I just had a realization.

    It was (and is) always so confusing when The Bad Straights claimed “gay people getting married will ruin the institution for everyone.”

    But I think they always meant that if two men or two women can get married, then marriage must not be defined by a man obtaining a woman as servant/property & securing exclusive rights to her labor, identity, & body.

    And without that, they can’t even imagine what purpose marriage could ever serve.

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @philip_cardella @Npars01 @Catvalente it all makes so much sense when you look at the history and frame it in terms of a society that's fed itself by maintaining one of the most brutal and massive slave-holding institutions the world had ever seen, and has had its laws and culture and understanding of right and wrong shaped by being in that position for multiple centuries, suddenly losing the de jure element of that structure and spending the next 150+ years scrambling with everything they've got, by any deception or stochastic violence or blasphemous heresy necessary, to put the substance of everything back into the only social, economic and moral order that they can conceive of for organizing a society

    ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs , to random
    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@kolektiva.social avatar

    When I was a zookeeper, I was always experiencing a euphoric awe when an animal did something really animal-ish, like when the wolves would howl when I approached them in the morning. It was the basis of my cognitive dissonance. Anyway, I get that same feeling from companion animals, too! Specifically when dogs are REALLY sniffing something or trying hard to communicate with me, and with cats I feel that way when they have a flehmen response or when they do acrobatics through the air during play. 🥰

    apophis ,
    @apophis@brain.worm.pink avatar

    @ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs like when an ant taps the ground with its antennae to find something, or shifts whatever it's carrying while trying to find purchase while climbing a surface (like in that cat food vid @futurebird posted earlier)...

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