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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 12:12 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 10:24 am
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 09:11 amjames_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 08:56 am
sovay) wrote2025-09-22 02:26 pmjames_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-22 01:57 pm
oursin) wrote2025-09-22 06:14 pmThough probably African frogs do not say that (the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs).
Anyway, this was of considerable interest to me having had to do with archives relating to these here amphibians (in which they were described as 'toads'):
Escapee pregnancy test frogs colonised Wales for 50 years
and also read the ms of a work by A Friend on the history of pregnancy testing in which they played a significant role.
They replaced the rabbit test ('did the rabbit die' - the rabbit had to die, actually, in order to examine its ovaries) as this was a non-lethal test and kept producing yet more frogs.
And there was quite an issue of what to do with the little blighters once chemical testing became the norm - as I recall attempts to dispose of them as pets.
Also
The frog is genetically surprisingly similar to humans, which means that scientists can model human disease in this amphibian and replace the use of higher sentient species.
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-22 09:52 amWhich 2015 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
21 (63.6%)
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
7 (21.2%)
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
6 (18.2%)
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
4 (12.1%)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
15 (45.5%)
The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
16 (48.5%)
petra) wrote2025-09-21 10:24 pmlannamichaels) wrote2025-09-21 05:14 pmlannamichaelsoursin) wrote2025-09-21 07:46 pmLast week's bread became really, really, dry, so I made a loaf of Shipton Mill Three Malts and Sunflower Organic Brown Flour: very nice.
Friday night supper: the ersatz Thai fried rice with red bell pepper, chorizo and salsiccon salami.
Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 strong white/rye flour, turned out very well.
Today's lunch: lemon sole fillets, which I cooked more or less as for the whole soles here - slightly shorter time and lower oven temperature, also sploshed a little wine in; served with La Ratte potatoes roasted in beef dripping, spinach according to recipe in Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, and warm green bean and fennel salad (I included a little chopped red onion as there was one left over from last week as well as the fennel, and added additional tarragon to the dressing).
runpunkrun) wrote2025-09-21 09:22 amjames_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-21 09:13 am
sovay) wrote2025-09-20 02:52 pmspatch took a proof of life when I was finally home which does indeed look much more like a person than my fluorescently washed out self-portrait of a couple of nights ago and amazingly more so than the traditional tubes-and-wires effigy of earlier in the week. It's peculiar to look back on. Concentrating to talk to doctors during that period worked well enough that I was asked more than once if I had a medical background and had to answer only in the sense of having had a lot of medical to deal with, but otherwise much of what I remember of the first few days involved drifting in and out of weird half-overheard half-sleep acutely punctuated by conversations or procedures. It was amazing to go back to sleep this morning after my medications without having to discuss them extensively with anyone.
fleurdelis41 seasonally sent me some cases of piracy tried at the Old Bailey, of which my favorites are the prosecutor no-show, the punch line of the stolen hats, and the dudes whose defense was having been very drunk at the time.runpunkrun) wrote2025-09-20 11:28 amrunpunkrun) wrote2025-09-20 10:45 amoursin) wrote2025-09-20 05:14 pmI was intending posting a link to a really depressing article in Guardian Saturday about an awful trolling site and the people who seem to have nothing to do but troll on it: but it's not currently online, you are spared.
I was thinking about such people, who seemed to be spending hours of their lives being horrible about other people and trying to dig up dirt on them, did they not have lives? could they not be doing something else?
Like, you know, bringing ghost ponds back to life: An expert team are resurrecting ice age ponds and finding rare species returning from a ‘perfect time capsule’:
The two ponds returning on farmland are the 25th and 26th ice age ponds to be restored by Sayer’s team of academics, volunteers and an enthusiastic digger driver in the Brecks, a hotspot for ancient ponds and “pingos” formed by ice-melt 10,000 years ago. Over the past two centuries, thousands of such ponds have been filled in as land was drained and “improved” for crops. So far, most of the 26 ponds have been revived on land bought by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has supported the restoration effort with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Brecks Fen Edge and Rivers landscape partnership scheme.
But the latest two ponds have been dug out thanks to a Norfolk farmer, who is one of an increasing number of private landowners reviving ghost and “zombie” ponds. New surveys by Sayer’s team have revealed that 22 of the ghost ponds restored since 2022 now support 136 species of wetland plant. This represents 70% of the wetland flora found in more than 400 ponds on Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Thompson Common, an internationally important nature reserve whose ponds have survived since the ice age.
The Hunt: Friction to feel. which is about the culture of searching for music before it was (theoretically) All Online:
The hunt is built upon friction. Friction is good. Friction is healthy. Friction develops adaptation. The hunt is also born of curiosity. The desire to seek and discover something you don’t know, and might never know. In the pursuit of knowledge and experience, you teach yourself about empathy, other perspectives, and mold a person who is resilient and grateful. We lost something along the way in pursuit of efficiency and this idea of saving time for productivity.
And, of course, as I am occasionally moved to point out on The Soshul Meedjas, most archives are not digitised and online (and mutter mutter a significant % of the ones that are were digitised by proprietary bodies and paywalled), and finding them can still involve Expotitions.
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