GreyShack 10mo ago • 100%
Had it about an hour ago: a sort of one-pot pasta and lentil stew thingy, made in our slow cooker. I wouldn't call it it a particular favourite of mine, but it has the advantage of being dead easy and surprisingly substantial.
There has been a lot of research into how seabirds choose their flight paths and find food. They seem to use their sight or sense of smell to assess local conditions. Wandering albatrosses can travel more than 10,000km in a single foraging trip, though, and we don't know much about how these birds use mid- and long-range cues from their environment to decide where to go. For the first time, however, my team's recent study gives an insight into how birds such as wandering albatrosses may use sound to determine what conditions are like further away.
Men and women might have had their fingers deliberately chopped off during religious rituals in prehistoric times, according to a new interpretation of palaeolithic cave art. In a paper presented at a recent meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution, researchers point to 25,000-year-old paintings in France and Spain that depict silhouettes of hands. On more than 200 of these prints, the hands lack at least one digit. In some cases, only a single upper segment is missing; in others, several fingers are gone. In the past, this absence of digits was attributed to artistic licence by the cave-painting creators or to ancient people’s real-life medical problems, including frostbite. But scientists led by archaeologist Prof Mark Collard of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver say the truth may be far more gruesome. “There is compelling evidence that these people may have had their fingers amputated deliberately in rituals intended to elicit help from supernatural entities,” said Collard.
GreyShack 10mo ago • 100%
Thanks for the update and for the work in building the new instance!
I'll be keeping my eyes open for further news.
It has been another catastrophic climate year: record-breaking wildfires across Canada scorched an area the size North Dakota, unprecedented rainfall in Libya left thousands dead and displaced, while heat deaths surged in Arizona and severe drought in the Amazon is threatening Indigenous communities and ecosystems. The science is clear: we must phase out fossil fuels – fast. But time is running out, and as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation worsen, there is mounting recognition that our political and industry leaders are failing us. If the science isn’t enough, what role could – or should – faith leaders play in tackling the climate crisis? After all, it is also a spiritual and moral crisis that threatens God’s creation, according to many religious teachings. Globally, 6 billion people – about 80% of the world’s population – identify with a faith or religion, while half of all schools and 40% of health facilities in some countries are owned or operated by faith groups. In addition, faith-related institutions own almost 8% of the total habitable land surface – and constitute the world’s third largest group of financial investors.
Neanderthals, which disappeared from the archaeological record roughly 40,000 years ago, have long been considered our closest evolutionary relatives. But almost since the first discovery of Neanderthal remains in the 1800s, scientists have been arguing over whether Neanderthals constitute their own species or if they're simply a subset of our own species, Homo sapiens, that has since gone extinct. So what does the science say? In particular, what does the genetic evidence, which didn't exist back when many early hominins were first discovered, show?
GreyShack 10mo ago • 100%
Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry. Apparently not originally intended as a Christmas song anyway.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
That good eh?
Hopefully the weekend will improve things.
I went out for a curry with some friends last night, have a fairly straightforward day at work today then a pizza this evening and have a day booked off on Monday: I have some DIY lined up over the weekend. Should be a good showing of the Perseid meteor shower this weekend too. It peaks tomorrow, but it looks like it'll be cloudy. I might spend a bit of time in the garden this evening though, since it is supposed to be clear, and see if I can spot any.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
With us, anything that is/would be smelly goes in some kind of container.
Cleaning - I would say once every 3-4 months or so in normal circumstances. Quite possibly longer.
GreyShack 1y ago • 82%
I am not a dog lover. I find them needy, melodramatic and hierarchical: some of the features that I try to avoid in humans.
I work in an office around one day a week which often has more dogs than humans - since one of the regular staff has two dogs. In general, however, they aren't much of a problem. One frequently nudges people's elbows to get attention and howls whenever a phone rings. Another gets in the way of the door an awful lot - resulting in the owner installing a child gate at an inner doorway, and another has been traumatised in the past and needs to be taken out whenever a fire alarm test is due. However, this is not more that the needs and quirks of other people, really, and is fairly easy to work around.
I am glad that I do not have to work in that office all the time, but overall it is not a big deal.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
I'm going through Robert Brightwell's Flashman tales: prequels to George MacDonald Frasier's Flashman book, featuring the original protagonist's uncle.
They are very well researched (as were GMF's) and generally engaging, but having just finished Flashman and Madison's War, I found it to be the waekest so far - lacking a strong narrative thread to tie the scattered, episodic historical events together. The next in the series is Flashman's Waterloo, which shouldn't have that problem.
I am very pleased to see how Brightwell has updated the original conceit - taking the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays and using him as a mouthpiece to entertainingly deconstruct the Victorian boy's-own colonial genre - to fit a more modern audience, whilst retaining the spirit of the originals.
GreyShack 1y ago • 98%
Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. I used to spend lot of time on TheEnvironmentSite.org some time before Slashdot, but I cant recall whether anything else came in between those two.
With, I think, a male red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) doing bumblebee stuff.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
Working from home today - or supposed to be. I finished a couple of Big Things at the end of last week and am really struggling to get stuck into any one of the dozen other things that are on my list now.
I've deleted a lot of photos and sorted the recycling though. I'll be sharpening pencils soon...
Another naturalised introduction, this one from Eurasia, first recorded in the UK in the C19th.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
I did get out and do a bat monitoring session last night - part of the national waterway survey in August each year - without getting wet. There were a few pipistrelles about and a couple of noctules and serotines passing by, but no Daubenton's which is what this particular survey is looking for.
Today will be getting the chores out of the way then - if the rain shows any chance of dying down - out to an open air Shakespeare this evening. It will be 'Exit pursued by a very damp bear.' I expect.
Tomorrow: third attempt to get these shelves up. It has been postponed twice so far.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
Sounds blissful to me. I can't recall the last time I had a complete weekend reading.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
They always say that you should stack up everything that you think you'll need and then put half of it back in the wardrobe. The problem is working out which half, of course.
Hope it all goes well anyway and that you have a good time.
Kickin' in the front seat or sittin' in the back seat: which is it today folks? Workwise, it should be ok today, then - rain permitting - I have a bat monitoring session this evening. That might be pushed to next weekend though (I'd get to watch the Perseids at the same time, if it was, by the look of it). And then out to an open air production of *A Winter's Tale* tomorrow night - also rain permitting and the forecast is currently saying it won't. What have you got lined up?
GreyShack 1y ago • 75%
you also haven’t addressed my reasons for doubt.
A) When did you ask me to?
B) By pointing out the cost/benefit to both sides, I would have said that I did anyway.
However, if you would like me to go into more detail: this is a property that was not occupied by the PM or his family - Greenpeace have stated that they were aware of this. The 'high security' was evidently provided by the police - who would also have been aware of this. Even at the best of times, given a little advance planning, avoiding a routine police cordon - routine being the key word - is not exactly difficult.
I struggle to see why Greenpeace would take the route that you are suggesting (a literal conspiracy theory) and decide to take the risk of losing credibility instead of doing as they have frequently, attestably, through court records, done and evade the existing security.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
Relay (Pro) when using my phone although most of the time I was using RES on a laptop.
GreyShack 1y ago • 80%
You haven't addressed the critical point:
What would be the consequences for both when the co-ordination was leaked/revealed?
Both would stand to lose vastly more in credibility than ever they might gain.
Whilst that might not matter to Sunak - a lost cause politically anyway, and clearly someone who values money highly - Greenpeace thrives on commitment to the cause.
It certainly seems to me a highly implausible scenario.
GreyShack 1y ago • 87%
So, you're suggesting that this was co-ordinated by Greenpeace and ...the Prime Minister? To keep up whose appearances exactly?
What would both parties stand to gain from this?
What would be the consequences for both when the co-ordination was leaked/revealed?
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
You say that you found out that lemmy.world had disabled downvotes. Where did you you find that out? I'd certainly seen nothing myself here - I know that some instances have - and can certainly see and use the downvote arrows.
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
I'm on lemmy.world. This thread is on lemmy.world I have just downvoted you successfully as far as I can see.
Blood on the corn, harvest in the horn, may you never hunger, may you never thirst!
Blood on the corn, harvest in the horn, may you never hunger, may you never thirst!
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
Another week to recover - yes, I often feel the same!
GreyShack 1y ago • 100%
The play is A Winter's Tale so a bit odd for the time of year, but the weather might be fitting...
Hope that you get through the day OK one way or another.