GreyShack

joined 2 years ago
[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

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@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

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@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry. Apparently not originally intended as a Christmas song anyway.

 
 

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@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

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@lemmy.world 73 points 2 years ago (11 children)

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.

 

Another naturalised introduction, this one from Eurasia, first recorded in the UK in the C19th.

 
[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Relay (Pro) when using my phone although most of the time I was using RES on a laptop.

[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I'm on lemmy.world. This thread is on lemmy.world I have just downvoted you successfully as far as I can see.

[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I have seen them, but a while ago, whilst binging through all of the show to S11, which was airing at the time. I'd say, yes - go and watch them, but I don't recall them as particularly stand-out from the rest of the show.

[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Too early to say yet. The best part of the show is the Empire arc, IMHO. If you don't care for that in S1, I doubt that there is anything tp grab you so far in S2. Personally, I think that it has some interesting ideas and some good character beats. The rest is merely OK.

[–] GreyShack@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Right now Strange New Worlds which has been extremely good this season following the merely OK first episode; Foundation which seems to have improved the weakest arc - the actual Foundation arc - from the first season; and Futurama which, on the evidence of the first episode, I can best characterise as being 'back'.

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