inflation is crazy. back in my days you could buy a goat for two coins. until the cat eats it, that is

this tweet hasn't left my mind once in the two years since it's been posted

Violet-backed Starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster), male, family Sturnidae, order Passeriformes, found in southwestern Africa

photograph by Nigel Voaden

Coolest plumage of them all…..

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.

I watched a program a little while ago that estimated what the TRex would have sounded like. They took a crocodile vocalisation, lowered the pitch and slowed down the sound (to account for the larger vocal chords) and then played the sound.

My pets had been sleeping calmly. But as soon as that noise sounded through my lounge room, all three of them leaped to their feet.

Both dogs started barking a very urgent bark that was a combination of their “something just startled me so now I’m yelling at it” bark and their “a man in a fourescent vest is trying to come through the gate” bark (they hate men in flourescent vests, especially men in flourescent vests who try to come on the property; there’s nothing they hate more). It was the most angry-scared bark I’ve ever heard from either of them. Both of them were the spikiest I’ve ever seen them, too. Hackles ALL the way up. I didnt know they could get as spiky as they did. The fur was up ALL the way down their spines and their tails were all puffed up.

And the cat had been sleeping on the couch but she freaked the fuck out at the exact same time the dogs did; hiss-spat as she flew off the couch and through the gap in the half-closed-up chimney. She didn’t come back out for over half an hour. The dogs took about that long to calm down too; they kept stalking around the house all spiky and growling at shadows and didn’t settle for ages.

And I was freaked out too. I calmed down faster than the dogs/cat did, but it freaked me out when I first heard it. I’d had the TV up high cause I was eating crunchy salad and I’d turned it up so I could hear easily over my own crunchy chewing, and sound thrummed through my whole body like a muted, creepier version of a bass note from a big-ass speaker at a concert, and something in the back of my head went, “run.” Every hair on MY body raised up, and I felt the adrenaline fire through my body. Literally I felt the roll-out of adrenaline as it pulsed out from my heart, down my limbs, and into my extremities. I’ve never felt adrenaline so acutely as that before and it was very weird and alarming.

This was at the exact same time as the dogs and cat freaked out, by the way, so its not that i set them off or vice versa. The TV show was like “this is what we think a TRex might have sounded like!” and all four of the living creatures in my lounge room said, in perfect tandem, “oh, fuck”

https://youtu.be/SpO_ov2iWyI

Here is an example for anyone interested. It really is deeply unsettling. It’s the same kind of sound they use in horror movie soundtracks. For whatever reason, we have an instinctive primal fear of low frequency sounds.

@writerman

My favorite three-dimensional shape, the Great Rhombicosidodecahedron*, also known as the Truncated Icosidodecahedron**. It's an Archimedean Solid, so all of the faces are regular polygons, and they come together in the same way at each vertex, but there's more than one type of face (so it's not a Platonic solid) and it is not a prism or antiprism.

It has 62 faces, 180 edges, and 120 vertices. 30 of its faces are squares, 20 are hexagons, and 12 are decagons.

Image sources: eusebeia, Wikipedia, Anthony James, James S. Aber, Opera Gallery.

MOST BASS ARE JUST FISH BUT LEROY BROWN WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL

Leroy Brown has been haunting me, so I looked into his backstory and it's wilder than you could possibly imagine.

Leroy Brown was about one pound when he was caught in 1973 in Lake Eufala, Alabama, by Tom Mann, who is absolutely legendary in the world of bass fishing. Instead of releasing or taking him home to eat, Mann decided he recognized a spark of something special in the fish, so he took him home and popped him in his backyard pond. Later, he moved the fish to a giant aquarium in his workshop. He was an aggressive fish, so he got named after the song. And Mann loved this fish. He trained him to jump through a hoop, he hand-fed him, he would talk about him to anybody. The fish became internationally known, with publicity in Russia, South Africa, Australia, and other countries.

Then, in 1980, the fish dies- probably of old age. So what to do? Have a funeral. Various sources say between 500 and 1,200 people came (there was a very large bass fishing tournament that weekend), and the local marching band was there to play "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" as the fish's tiny casket was lowered into his grave.

But then things got really wild. On the day of the funeral, it was eventually decided that the ground was too wet and muddy, so Mann put the fish and his casket (actually a satin-lined tackle box full of one dead fish and the lure he was caught with) in the freezer.

That night, somebody stole the dead fish and his tiny casket.

Seriously. This was not a taxidermy fish, this was just. Y'know. A dead fish, with all of the smells that entails.

Three weeks later, the tackle box turns up at the Tulsa, Oklahoma airport. A baggage handler found it, and it was decided that the box full of three-week-old decaying Leroy was too nasty to ship back to Alabama. The statue remained at Fish World, which is where the public could visit Leroy during his life, until 2005, when Tom Mann died and the facility was closed. (Fish World was like... a weird museum/facility to learn about bass fishing. Mann wasn't just an expert angler, he also designed some of the most popular lures that are still used in bass fishing, as well as the Humminbird depth finder- still the most popular depth finder brand on the market. So he had this workshop/lure lab there and people could come see his stuff but also learn about how to go bass fishing and how to do bass fishing as a sport.) The statue went to another bass fisherman, until the city of Eufala asked for it back in 2016. Now it sits prominently on Main Street, reminding everyone that most bass are just fish, but Leroy Brown was something special.

@ofishal-fish-posts

Ok so I've reblogged this before, but...not with the context. Which. Needs to be reblogged so.

Offishal Fish Post.

You can condemn the actions of a human while still acknowledging their humanity

Small price to pay for golden goonch

In case you're wondering, this is a baby goonch. A goonchette. A goonchling. Goonchino.

This is what they grow up into.

There are several species of Bagarius, and B. yarrelli is the biggest one. It's one of the largest freshwater fish, and regularly weighs over a hundred pounds.

Also one of them may have eaten people.

hedgehog kisser

program: Clip Studio Paint devices: iPad Pro and Cintiq for: The Silver Campaign (Lythero)

we just keep naming bugs like this

you know what really gets my goat?

el chupacabra

I’m sorry!? What?!

Whoa, chupacabra’s a millennial?

when my brother and i were kids we got in trouble for using the term "dadding" to mean making a promise you have no intent to follow thru on which is a testament to this country's disdain for creative types

The remake reboot prequel sequel industrial complex is killing me but the good thing is I don't have to watch any of that. I can just think "that sounds boring or otherwise doesn't interest me in any way" and do something other than watch it

"They're making a willy wonka origin story with timothee chalamet," you might say to me. "They're doing a live action the last airbender again, didn't you love avatar?" I don't find it necessary. This is nothing to me

#my ability to not watch something is unparalleled