andmaybegayer
look, okay, these things happen sometimes
Kali's Tumblr | They/Them ’nounsRoughly ¼ original content by weightExtended Post Writer, Engineer, Terrible Computer Nerd, Infrequent Embroiderer.Kalium on Slashnet IRC, kilovoltamp on hachyderm, kva on cohost. Ask box usually open.
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Camilla Hect, about to absorb the entirety of The Necromancer's Marriage Season and its sequel as her soul merges with Palamedes
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Neuropterans time!!
They are slowly but surely climbing to the title of my favourite insect order!
So yeah, let me tell you some stuff about them! And today I’ll mostly focus on antlions because they are really cool (and by that I mean their larvae)!
So, to get a sense of these guys, neuroptera is an insect order comprising of about 6000 species, they include antlions, lacewings, spoonwings, mantidflies etc, and are closely related to snakeflies and alderflies. As generalities go, they have four iconic venated wings. Their larvae are especially interesting as they are fierce predators, I’ll discuss it a bit later. Also, are holometabolous (they pupate).
They have first appeared during the Permian and have diversified trough the Mesozoic Era! A notable extinct family is the Kalligrommatidae which are also know as the “Butterflies of the Jurrasic” because:
1. They filled the same ecological niche (had a proboscis with which they fed on plant juices and pollen)
2. They had quite big and ornate wings that had also developed scales (not seen in modern neuropterans) Now about Antlions (Family Myrmeleontidae)
Below: wing of an antlion in the Makarkinia genus of the Kalligrommatidae family. The insects of this family had the biggest wingspans of all, with the largest being about 160 mms, while in extant antlions the biggest wingspans belong to the genus Palpares.
Below: Palpares libelluloides (100mm wingspan, are found across Southern Europe)
Now about Antlions (Family Myrmeleontidae)
They are especially known for their predatory larvae, adults are more rarely encountered as they have short lifespans, around 25 days, at most 45 days in some species (do not feed, just reproduce) and on top of that are active at dusk and night. Although they have a worldwide distribution they prefer hotter, sandy places.
Now about the larvae which are basically THE highlight of the species:
While generally being half an inch, the larvae are one of the fiercest insect predators. In many of the species the larva dig special funnel-shaped traps in the sand using their heads. They then slightly burrow themselves in the middle and wait for other insects (mostly ants) to fall down the steep walls of the trap. They then use their sickle-like jaws to grasp the prey and they inject it with paralysing venom and digestive enzymes and afterwards they suck their insides then throw the husk out of the trap and get ready for the next meal. They stay in larva form even for years, they prepare for metamorphosis when they have reached a certain size.
Below: Antlion it its trap:
Also, note that not all larvae of the species make traps like such, some just hide in leaves, bark etc, and an interesting case would be that of the Dendroleon jezoensis species which spends its time on rocks, covering itself with lichen for hunting camouflage! (below)
Also, more cool facts about the antlions:
They can surive for moths without food as they have a slow metabolic rate (since ya know, they gotta' wait for their food, good adaptation guys)
Antlions hold the record of biggest size disparity between larva and adult. The adults, while not feeding, are bigger because of their low internal density. (Adults are actually quite flimsy and not very good fliers, and uh, not to mention the fact that the larvae EAT THEIR OWN ADULTS SOMETIMES :,,,, so uh, when the adult females come to deposit their eggs, they come and tap the soil a few times with their ovipositor and sometimes uh, surprise they could become meal for the children... nature)
In America antlions are known as doodlebugs because when the larvae relocate they leave these tunnels in the ground:
Euroleon nostras below
Also, above, the miracle of life, pupation!
Ok, maybe this is it for now, love these guys so much, they are very cute, OH BUT ALSO, their names comes from some weird mythical Christian creature called Myrmecoleon but I won't get into that, it's 1 AM... OH OH, but they are also in Terraria :O
No. Today I felt evil and did not put anything under READMORE because I want people to witness these insects! And ah, fact check me pls, I'm so sleepy and kinda looney.
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I ATE A BIG BAG OF FACTORY REJECT SEEDS UNTIL A HEALTHY FLOWER UNFURLED IN MY CHEST ...
I MISTOOK THE SENSATION FOR LOVE AND DIED.
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Ron Cobb’s ornithopter concept for Jodorowsky’s Dune
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I'm one of the younger employees around which is a little bewildering. A lot of people have been here for well over a decade. You can use this to your advantage because if you endear yourself to a greybeard filesystem developer he will spend fifteen minutes giving you a tour of the horrible endianness hacks in bcachefs.
Did also get to see the full force of the Czech beer drinking technique which confuses and terrifies me.
The conference is primarily for developers, who was a class are mostly terrible at socialising (including me) but also self-aware enough to want to put in the work and socialise anyway which means a lot of people are putting a lot of work into being friendly very cumbersomely. It is endearing.
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Have you seen the crap they're putting on children's television nowadays? When I was a kid, TV shows made for us were meant to do one thing: sell toys. Now they're all about doing fun activities with your friends, and learning about your responsibilities to greater social harmony. No wonder capitalism is flaming out like a Boeing stock option.
Thing is, even with this renewed focus on teaching children not to be useless, cranky ultra-consumers, the shows don't exactly teach valuable skills. Yeah, yeah, I know, interpersonal discussion, knowing about recycling, outer space, Freudian psychoanalysis, how to make change. All that stuff is covered, and it's fine, but it seems like shows are expecting parents to fill in the gap with these skills. Skills the parents often don't have. The cycle needs to be fixed, and it's television's role, as always, to tell people what to do.
Kids should be learning about the different kinds of screwdrivers, basic wiring, how to replace floor moulding, and what sorts of chemicals might inadvertently create bombs. If there's time, they can cover less practical information, like how to drive an unsynchronized manual transmission in a Detroit Diesel. I'm not asking for too much: I think children do not necessarily need to know how to operate a Lenco unless they're planning on going drag racing, which is a sign of excellent parenting already.
That's why I've bought the rights to the entire back catalogue of The New Yankee Workshop, and recruited a pop starlet to sing a new earworm of a theme song. We're gonna chop up the existing episodes with lots of fast transitions, exploding effects, and a dance party at the end. Wouldn't you rather your toddler ask you for a scroll saw for Christmas?
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tiktok where I do a gay little dance while the tts voice reads the complete man page for hdparm.
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Bunch of arthropod guys - refs created for OC purposes! ;)
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Everyone is all up in arms about what kind of energy source will power the cities of tomorrow. Is it natural gas, the invisible menace that leaks out of shitty welds? Could it be nuclear energy, the thing that makes cool-looking cooling towers and rocks you're not allowed to touch? Or could it be simply harnessing the power of the sun and sticking them into a bank of batteries?
If you ask my local recycling depot, which is stuffed to the absolute gills with scrapped solar panels, the answer is "however many of these things you can carry." And since the power had been cut off at my place ever since my landlord didn't come back from that vacation, it's my answer, too.
Solar companies have been going out of business in my area, claiming that there are unforeseen problems to be solved in the "actually installing solar panels on customer homes" challenge. The venture capitalists who control them have basically decided that any obstacle at all is too many obstacles, and shut the companies down rather than spend five minutes trying to think of a solution, as you do when you have no useful value to society.
It didn't take me long to put these things on top of my house. Turns out that the bolts you need to mount them with are basically the same as the ones I'd been smuggling out of the Pick N Pull in my pockets for the last few years. Something new called "met-ric." A couple spritzes of shoplifted Windex later to clean up the cells, and we were making enough electricity to cook any squirrel that was stupid enough to climb onto my roof.
At first, everything was going great. I could now microwave burritos, and probably other kinds of things if you were stupid enough to want to eat something that isn't a burrito. Then the sun went down, because it was night. Now having been cruelly denied the thing I only just recently became accustomed to, I began to freak out.
That's when it hit me. Batteries were the answer. Energy storage.
Thanks to the local Wal-Mart and their incredibly lax loss-prevention department, I now have electricity 24 hours a day. All I had to do was shoplift enough flashlights, AA batteries, and duct tape to make it through the night. Sure, it's a pain crawling up there every evening to tape the flashlights onto the panels and make sure they have fresh batteries, but to be honest I would be up here every night trying to knock all the charred wildlife off the wires anyway. Don't you rodent bastards know that I'm trying to save the environment up here?
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The rain in Spain: Buttercup Festival 3-273
www.buttercupfestival.com
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interesting fact i have titanium in my spine
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you need to have a good understanding of a Daemon in order to confine it
lines from a work conference
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