I want it as a game à la The Witcher
The world is so ripe for that kind of exploration.

@quasimofo.bsky.social HISTORY drama is happening and the thread is completely over my head but you might enjoy it.

I made sure to say hi for you.

People dress up in costume as insects with ice vests

LICE protesters at #nokings DC

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

Is this on IG or something too? Or going to be a sticker? I need to link my lichenologist dad.

And this is why I support Public Domain Review 😍

A look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the "modern" book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-bo...

Armpit squeaks: first recorded sounds, video, and images of the stridulatory apparatus in two parasitic flat bark beetles (Coleoptera: Passandridae) - Zoomorphology Zoomorphology - Stridulation is an important sound production mechanism in many groups of insects but is less well-known in beetles (Coleoptera). Recently a new sound production mechanism was...

if you need a moment's distraction from Events, pls consider @monotomidae.bsky.social's extremely good new paper on passandrid beetles stridulating with their armpits. THERE'S VIDEO, WITH SOUND link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The cover of the book “Elements of Botany” which is olive green and covered with all manner of plants in black.

A shiny red book with gold text and illustrations. It says “PSYCHOLOGY of BOTANY MINERALS and PRECIOUS STONES By Charubel COPYRIGHT JANUARY 1907 IN ENGLAND & AMERICA”

Two more book covers.

Newspaper cover pages showing photos from the January 6th insurrection. “The Washington Post Trump mob storms Capitol Hartford Ge Courant DEMOCRACY ATTACKED Fort Worth Star-Telegram ASSAULT ON DEVIOCRACY SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN 'UN-AMERICAN' Starribune = INSURRECTION TRUMPINCITED MOB VANDALIZES U.S. CAPITOL Los Angeles Times TRUMP-INCITED MOB STORMS U.S. CAPITOL JOURNAE Disbelief and dismay grip Washington, nation Che Times- Picanune -NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATE CAPITOL CHAOS Rioters storm building, as Congress debates Biden win ARIZONA REPUBLIC PRO-TRUMP MOB INVADES CAPITOL THE KANSAS CITY STAR. MOB STORMS US CAPITOL Detroit Free Press INSURRECTION Uhe basette 'SAD DAY FOR AMERICA' News Tribune UNDER SIEGE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 'INTOLERABLE ATTACK' ON DEMOCRACY Pro-Trump mob storms U.S. Capitol ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol Campa Bay Times UNDER SIEGE”

Don’t forget. Never Surrender. You cannot both care about the constitution and sweep these events under the rug.

An orange canvas book cover with a black ornate design.

A green canvas book called “Mosses With A Hand Lens” by A.J. Grout and the subheading “Second Edition with Hepatics” Below that are line-art diagrams of growing moss with sporophytes.

A red canvas book cover of “The International Scientific Series” with a simple laurel and sun motif.

A dark blue book cover with both gilded and black designs. “Wild Flowers [line break] WORTH NOTICE” with a subtitle of “for Their Beauty [line break] Uses & Associations” At the bottom it says “By Mrs. Lankester”

Some book covers I’ve taken pictures of.
These designs are all in the public domain so I like to ensure they’re accessible.

Deco Beauty nail stickers are fab and for Xmas I got more. This new set includes HOUSE CENTIPEDES!! Also silverfish, multiple spider families, ticks, multiple centipede families, distinct lizards as well as salamanders. I’m blown away. Cannot suggest highly enough!

🤣😂🤣
It’s always good assurance that my personal brand is rock solid when people recommend me to myself!

The yellow cover of the book has blank line art of multiple kinds of wasps on a flowering tree branch.

A boom page with line after illustration of a spider web in the grasses. The spider has been snatched up by a spider-hunting wasp. The words are shaped around the illustration and say: “with black and brown and yellow — alas for her! The insect she hoped to have for dinner was a strong and relentless huntress that sprang upon Madam Spider before she could collect her wits enough to escape, — yes, she sprang upon her and threw a poisoned dart into her vitals, and snatched her away from her green-leaf bower with the homespun silver silken curtains and you know the rest." " Uncle Will," said Theodore, rather soberly, " when you talk like that I don't know”…

The top of the page has a symmetrical illustration of mud dauber wasps and their capsules. The page says: ‘Cave Dwellers I. LADY WASP OF THE SLENDER WAIST. Who comes hurrying through the door, hugging her little pellet of clay so tightly under her chin? It is Lady Wasp of the slender waist. She is on her way to the corner of the shed up there under the roof. Now see, she has stopped. What is she doing? Pretty wasp in the brown dress, tell us what you are doing up there under the roof? "Zzz-zz-zzz!" says the wasp, but she…’

This is the page before the prior one that shows the spider before her untimely capture.

Will o’ The Wasps is book by Margaret Warner Morley that took me years to acquire. This was written 12 years after Wasps and Their Ways and is from the perspective of a kid talking with a wasp lover named Will. Here’s a couple examples from the book.

I own a Cintiq 21UX. It's perfectly functional, but it's over a decade old, now.

When I attempt to update it through the manufacturer's interface, it literally tells me to buy a new tablet instead of downloading the drivers.

@quasimofo.bsky.social 👀 for morgan

Muppets Christmas Carol

one thing I love about older scientific literature. in his 1947 paper 'Scale adaptation and utilization in Aesiocopa patulana' William Beebe fucked with a caterpillar in the wrong way and it died and he expressed genuine and poetic contrition about it in the paper itself

@toomanywasps.bsky.social

Fantastic work! I was absolutely delighted in the demo!!!

And then you have to fix it, and as long as you’re doing that you should do the next one before it breaks…

4 days later you wake up in a haze of old ethanol and plastic chips. You’re surrounded by new full vials. You’re finished!!

But wait, look on your elbow, where did that label come from?!?

I’m posting this now because I’ll be devastated if Bluesky deletes it accidentally, but we aren’t done.

Ps. Here’s the link to that prior source

thinkinthemorning.com/de-mortuis-n...

“…blue (Euphilotes enoptes smithi). As we were maneuvering through a field, the tall grasses suddenly parted and out walked our local "naturalist" Sir Jacques toting a shotgun and sporting a dour scowl. He claimed we were trespassing. He said he would not hesitate to use the gun if we didn't leave immediately. Bob explained about the blue butterflies but this only enraged Helfer further. It turns out he was of the opinion that he had discovered that species and never received credit for it. He was not about to share his prize with some citified intellectual. Needless to say…”

This leads me to a different record with stories that make me stop feeling as inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Are you starting to feel like you’re trapped in #TheRoottreesAreDead ? I sure am.)
This excerpt is from a blog called Thinkinthemorning from 2017.

“Knowing Don's taste for limericks, I did one for Jacques as well: Tea-totaling Helfer was brash, When converting his chips into cash, Twas ironic, I think, That he veered toward the drink, Ending Jacques on the rocks with a splash. Not that Don would approve of these. Or that his family would either. The local paper didn't. They never published them. These poems needed to be written. And they never would have, if not for Don.”

(For the record, he was a legitimate naturalist.)
I’ve included the limerick because it adds some more details.
(Find the letter in the archives of “theava” number 30261)

theava.com/archives/30261

An excerpt from the Anderson Valley Advertiser BY AVA NEWS SERVICE ON APRIL 2, 2014 “One of its fiercest opponents was Jacques Helfer. A faux naturalist who opposed everything Don stood for. In a weekly column of the Mendocino Beacon titled "Jack's Corner". Needless to say, Jacques and I went at it hammer and tongue for many years of matters of historical significance. I went for fact. He went for drama. So when Mr. Helfer died, I eulogized him in a poem that Don might appreciate. Jack's body lies over the ocean. Jack's body lies over the sea, But he no longer lies in the Beacon, And that's all that matters to me.”

Dig a tiny bit deeper and holy crap does his local drama go hard.
In a Letter about the first chairman of the Mendocino Historical Review Board, Donald P. Hahn, I came across a scathing review and poem about the death.
Oh, did I forget to mention that he was found at the bottom of a cliff?

A illustration of a praying mantis eating a grasshopper with the words “the same event that spells The End for one is breakfast for another”

While endeavoring to discover if Jacques Richard Helfer actually drew these comics (he did) I found quite the… uh…. engaging history. He was enough of a ‘community member’ to have historical records made about him, including his mysterious death.

kelleyhousemuseum.catalogaccess.com/people/1868

A drop caps M with a tarsal claw style spiny design and a grasshopper face in the middle.

Part of the actual key, including a lovely mole cricket.

These particular illustrations are from the much later “How To Know The Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, and their Allies” by Jacques R. Helfer (a different Jacques, don’t get confused) and might be my favorites.

A drop cap of an “A” illustrated with a tiny person trying to catch a grasshopper on a shrub with their net.

A drop cap “L” in an illustrated manuscript style knotwork letter. Beside the letter is a pane of a bearded gentleman (adorned in giant hat, sword, sash) in front of a castle on a hill. He holds a net almost as tall as himself. There’s a grasshopper flying overhead, a tiny katydid in the plant by his leg, and a further tiny decorative border of two more katydids facing each other at the top.

An E drop cap is decorated with a lovely illustration of an earwig!

If you come across any of the “How To Know The…” series, check inside for periodic illustrated comical drop caps, a frontispiece cartoon, and opening peppered with playful comics. Look closely at the L. There’s four orthopterans hiding there!!

An illustration of two grasshopper people reading little books. They’re sitting on each side of a group of books as large as they are as if they are bookstops.

A book illustration of a grasshopper with the wings on one side extended. It is an extremely detailed illustration and the hind wing has a glorious but subtle checkered pattern.

One of the richest veins of charming nature illustrations comes a series of books called the Pictured Key Nature Series. The series was started by Harry Edwin Jaques in the 1920s and eventually expanded to 20+ books. They were self published so #H.E.Jacques slipped cute details in everywhere.