[sock-ness-monster]

My coworkers keep thinking they hear a Willet calling in the distance but its just me breathing 😭

[trilobutch]

happy birthday to this beetle :)

[sock-ness-monster]

Happy emergence day beetle : )

[sock-ness-monster]

Hello my little friend in the internet I have something to share that does not matter to almost all of you but could be pretty important to a few of you.

I might not have even mentioned it on here before, but I have something called Alpha-galactase syndrome. It's a disease you get from a tick bite that makes you develop an allergy to mammalian products, so like red meat, dairy, and gelatin. Yeah yeah, it sucks, but I've had it for about four years so its just kinda run of the mill for me now.

I'm an avid outdoors person from an area where it's prevalent, so when I started having symptoms I figured out what was happening pretty quickly and had a few friends with it as well to help me out. Reactions can vary pretty widely from person to person. I've known pretty much since the beginning that my first symptom (my friend and I refer to it as my being 'Galvanized', like how Celiacs say they've been 'Glutamized') is extreme fatigue, followed by joint pain and gastrointestinal distress, to put it lightly. I have noticed that the following day after I get Galvanized I'm not at my best mentally (I was in college when I got it) but I chalked it up at the time to being dehydrated and tired. Anyway, last weekend at a friends birthday party I had a little too much alcohol and ended up eating something containing dairy late in the night. This is the first reaction I've had in a while, I'm pretty good at managing it when I'm not very drunk. The next day I had what I can only describe as the weirdest sensation of brain fog.

I forgot my phone password! Thats been the same for like five years! It was so unsettling. I managed to keep down some water and took a nap and it came back to me after that, but it was definitely a wake up call for me.

I just wanted to share in case any of you, like me, now want to be even more careful if you're going to be driving or something in the hours after eating something you're on the fence about giving you a reaction.

[sock-ness-monster]

Everything you need to know about us environmental scientists can be encapsulated in the fact that last night we played beer pong and a few other drinking games and this morning we washed our red solo cups to reuse for the next party

[sock-ness-monster]

Before I go looking myself does anyone have a favorite resource for learning Lord Huron lore

[sock-ness-monster]

I just found its somewhat widely known that people sleep worse at higher elevation and thats because I was looking into because I feel like i sleep so much better?? In the past month I went from living at -70 to just over 7,000 feet of elevation (not my first rodeo, last year I lived around 5,000 and worked every day between 8-10,000) and i loooove it I dod not sleep well at ALL the whole time I lived at sea level but I am here

[icaseybaybee]

[kind-words-like-honey]

i love mushroom names

[kind-words-like-honey]

all of y'all like "who is naming bird species" WHO IS NAMING FUNGI SPECIES??

?????

[xeduo]

[sock-ness-monster]

I took this screenshot a while back and never got around to making it its own post so ill leave it here

[sock-ness-monster]

For years one of my favorite books has been The Man-Eaters of Kumoan by Jim Corbett, which is a collection of true stories recounting Corbetts methods of tracking and killing tigers who gained a taste for human flesh in Northern India in the early 1900s. This may sound like a strange book for a wildlife biologist to love but you gotta read it to understand. Corbett is a fantastic writer, his imagery will leave you jumping at the smallest noises for a whole day after reading his accounts of tracking tigers through jungles. Truly some sentences in this book that will haunt me forever.

He's also absolutely not the type of person you would immediately assume he is. You're probably picturing the bad guy from Tarzan, I know I was when I first heard of him. But he 100% isn't! Dude was actually so humble and genuinely respectful. He repeatedly expounds the bravery and virtues of the multiple Indian women who survived being mauled by these tigers, and seriously there are some amazing women in this book and it he gives credit where credit is due.

Its very refreshing to read accounts like these that have empathy and grace to the victims and their families, especially older accounts like these. He never once blames anyone else for the many times when the tiger he's after slips away, I do not think I could have been as patient and understanding if I'm being honest.

And he was not in it for the glory or the trophies!! He just wanted everyone to be safe I'm being so for real. He was a huge advocate for conservation and greatly preferred taking pictures of tigers to killing them, hes on record in saying that his exception to that is the maneaters. That's fair, ya'll.

He was instrumental in creating India's first Narional Park, which was named in his honor after he passed away. They also named a subspecies of tiger after him. You cant get more respected as a naturalist than that.

Anyway, this has all been context to say I finally got my hands on a copy of his other book The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag which I finished moments ago and I just had to say Jim, you've done it again. I do still think Kumoan is my favorite of the two but man if the last line of Rudraprayag isnt the strongest closing to a book I've ever had the pleasure to read. Highly recommend.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

There are ten trillion pictures of flowering trees to the point where they sometimes seem trite and overdone. But then you see a tree in full flower and go holy shit this rules and I've gotta show this to everyone so they can experience the same magic and wonder and there are ten trillion and one pictures of flowering trees

[sock-ness-monster]

Project Hail Mary is wildlife biologist approved because it perfectly illustrates the issues ecosystems face when apex predators are removed

[rylandgracie]

i can't get over this quilt and how cool it looks against the cold contrast of the ship

[taumoebas]

Project Hail Mary is wonderful bc it’s the kind of story that would normally be a sweeping romance - they were destined to find each other, they love each other to the point of saving their entire worlds - but its not a romance! Friendship can be the thing that propels you to save the world!

[sock-ness-monster]

As a nearsighted person watching Project Hail Mary i just thought that weird glasses thing Grace does is something unique to farsighteds because of idk how bifocals work from experience but I've seen people with them doing the peering over their glasses thing and such I just thought it was a way to circumnavigate that. Very glad I have this site to tell me no nobody does that and its something Ryan G fully made up

[pop-squeak]

in less emotionally destroying news i also appreciated a lot of rocky and ryland’s great one liners including but not limited to:

“no understand do puppet show” “do you still need the puppets” “yes yes showtime”

“thumbs up baby” 👎

”do you have to sit right there?” “is usually closer”

”not half bad!” “is full good!”

”bad no good grace die rocky die all earth die we die we die we die”

”how do you know when hug is over” “you just feel it” “oh okay. are you feeling it”

[sock-ness-monster]

I saw Project Hail Mary last night and it was SO GOOD oh my goodness I loved it so much . It is so important to me now.

[sock-ness-monster]

If I'm talking to someone in a casual conversation and they say for example "me and my friend" instead of "my friend and I" it is something I notice but dont comment on because cmon its a casual conversation we dont have to follow every grammar rule here but I unfortunately do get very annoyed to see it in a book or any form of published article and I feel like its becoming more and more common 😭