André Brocatus was here...

This is the digital scrapbook of André Brocatus to hold quotes, examples and links. Primarily on graphic and interaction design until he sees something else which distracts him from his work.

[worldsandemanations]

John O'Brien for NEW YORKER magazine, 1991.

[love-ardour-anarchism]

“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself—as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation—you may hate it, or deify it, but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.” Ursula K. Le Guin "American SF and The Other" in Science-Fiction Studies 7, 1975.

[depsidase]

[do-not-u-dare]

Stole this from somewhere but i think it’s appropriate

[botanyshitposts]

a couple months ago someone sent me an ask asking if I’d ever heard of Boquila trifoliolata and I was like ‘no way. this can’t be real’ and i looked it up and it was and I forgot about it until just now when my supervisor and I got sidetracked and I looked it up again to prove to her that it’s real and found out that not only does this plant vaguely mimic the leaves of whatever plant it’s vining on, it does it when it climbs on fake plants too so any theories about how it does it that include gene transfer or chemicals or touching it in any way are just out the window and those were like, the only theories the original researchers had about how it might be doing it. so anyway I am screaming and crying and whatnot

[elephantbitterhead]

The more you read the better this gets – from Krulwich, Nat Geo 2016:

Boquila feels more like a cuttlefish or an octopus; it can morph into at least eight basic shapes. When it glides up a bush or tree that it’s never encountered before, it can still mimic what’s near. And that’s the wildest part: It doesn’t have to touch what it copies. It only has to be nearby. Most mimicry in the animal kingdom involves physical contact. But this plant can hang—literally hang—alongside a host tree, with empty space between it and its model, and, with no eyes, nose, mouth, or brain, it can “see” its neighbor and copy what it has “seen.”

(Artifical plant modeling & c. discussed in White & Yamashita, Plant Signaling & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2021.1977530)

[that1girlarreis]

Don’t like this at all! Thank you!!

[alithographica]

One theory from that above White & Yamashita paper is that Boquila does this using plant ocelli—a very basic type of eye! If you’re interested in a brief infodump about ocelli: Many animals have ocelli, like jellyfish and insects. Here’s a picture of a wasp head—you can see its two main eyes to the side, and those three dots in the middle are ocelli.

(Photo cred: Assafn, Wikipedia)

These ocelli don’t form sharp images, but instead probably detect light and shadow for sleep patterns, directionality, flight stability, etc.

Some reptiles and amphibians also have a light-sensitive third eye called a parietal or pineal eye! It’s similarly right on top of their heads. Again, they’re not forming complex images, but instead use general light information to regulate other things. It’s also why even tame reptiles may bolt if you reach at them from directly overhead, out of range of their normal eyes—that third eye sees an incoming shadow and goes HAWK, RUN.

So with that in mind, plant ocelli…Basically they think the upper epidermal cells have evolved to have a particular convex dome shape that focuses light. I don’t know what proportion of cells are ocelli, if it’s just some or all, but basically the leaf itself IS the “eye”.

Plant ocelli were first proposed over a century ago but they haven’t been well studied since then. Cyanobacteria (a photosynthetic bacteria) focus light. Arabidopsis thaliana has been documented to recognize other Arabidopsis plants…basically when competing for resources, if the Arabidopsis recognizes it’s competing with other Arabidopsis plants, they’ll cooperate and move leaves so that they don’t shade each other, ensuring each plant has access to nutrients. But if the competing plant isn’t Arabidopsis, screw ‘em, they’ll shade it. Crepy & Casal narrowed this down to a light-based response, not just chemical identification, so it’s possible Arabidopsis is visually identifying friend from foe. At any rate, that’s about the extent of plant ocelli research that I was able to find. So this Boquila thing is cool and weird.

What we don’t yet know is how precisely Boquila is seeing the world. Boquila is clearly getting some level of resolution in order to be able to copy shape, size, AND color. Unlike an insect’s 2-3 ocelli, it has tons, so even crude data over a lot of inputs might lead to a pretty good picture. The paper also says the mimicry gets more accurate over time, so there appears to be some learning involved. I would also love to know if it has some equivalent of depth perception! If the target plant is near vs. far, does Boquila produce the same appropriately sized mimic leaf? Does it adjust? They’re going to keep studying it so hopefully we have some answers in a few years!

Anyway here’s a picture of the variation of Boquila mimic leaves.

(Photo cred: Gianoli figure)

👁 🌱 👁

[vigilantsycamore]

On the one hand, this is fascinating, on the other hand “some plants can see you” is a terrifying thought, thank you for this

[bruzum]

[jkottke]

What is queer typography? “I think that covers a lot of what queerness means: an attitude in the face of conformity, an attitude in the sea of passivity, an attitude to say yes when others say no.”

[wakingfromthewater]

This was shared as a "bad" joke but I was so charmed by it I've been thinking about it for days.

[artistic-octopus]

[wordswithkittywitch]

Moose at the next table: No they don't. I've been waiting here for an hour.

[totally-not-an-al1en]

[depsidase]

[dduane]

A report on some discourse (if that’s the word we’re looking for) going on at Threads

…With the clarification that “I don’t even go there.” …But get this (via @jobrammer.bluesky.social):

…Um.

[brocatus]

i had to google scrying but worth it

[cleo-fox]

Writing tips:

“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context

“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets

[maple-seed]

Both options convey that he's horny

[cleo-fox]

How dare you be funnier than me on my own post

[themysteriousmurasamecastle]

[aiweirdness]

finally i have learned how to type laser sounds//

[truetgirl]

Car Trunk vs Car Boot: A clear win for US English, trunk was already a thing in which you stored items, frequently for transport.

Crisps vs Chips: I gotta admit, the Brits have this one. They're thin slices of potato that have been made crispy. No chipping of any materials involved.

Car Park vs Parking Lot: Equally matched. What's a car park? A place to park cars. What's a parking lot? An otherwise empty lot where you can park.

Elevator vs Lift: Both equally fail to address that the damn thing also goes down.

[fuiru]

So are we calling this a draw or a tie?

[cugzarui]

as a chemist i would like to say BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[alexseanchai]

image description at explainXKCD:

explain xkcd is a wiki dedicated to explaining the webcomic xkcd. Go figure.

[flareonfloof]

its a bit easier for astronomers

[nerdynonnativenarnian]

NO! Where’s the non-metals and metaloids?!

[flareonfloof]

are they hydrogen or helium

[nerdynonnativenarnian]

oxygen, carbon, sulfur, xenon, iodine, neon, etc etc.

[flareonfloof]

ooo okay i see the confusion. you're listing off a bunch of metals there

[nerdynonnativenarnian]

…. You’re breaking my chemistry nerd brain. Hhhuuuhhhh???

[flareonfloof]

im an astrophysicist

[nerdynonnativenarnian]

but but, science is science?!

[flareonfloof]

and different fields of science have different conventions and definitions for their unique contexts

[katzeregi]

[formlab]

Logo and custom alphabet for ESPRIT, John Casado,1979–84

[brucesterling]

[angiepants]

This is a man loving blog btw. I know this is the man hating site and increasingly the trans man hating site but that shit stops at my borders

[snicklefritzthecat]

[thememedaddy]

[the-final-sif]

So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.

Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?

The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!

This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.

Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:

Don't have enough space to plant full trees, or

Don't have enough time to plant trees and wait for them to grow up.

The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.

The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).

Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.

So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.

[straawberries]

can ppl pls reblog this version

[us-nowhere-girls]

Well damn. I was also like wtf is this stupid slime tank and then I read the rest and my mind got blown

[brocatus]

OK fine. Still dystopian as fuck.