Very cool!! My opinion is that it is a thin gila monster

I found another image of a Gila monster with a similar color pattern - with the small black dots inside hexagonal orange patches: https://btarboretum.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20230410_102910-1536x1536.jpg

Certainly a fun fact 😄 Reminds me of the painful sandspurs that stick one’s feet while walking through the beach.

Good question. The green pigment is biliverdin, which is a product of the breakdown of heme. But more specifically I am not quite sure, I’ll have a look.

I have found this open access article from 2020:Taboada, Carlos, et al. “Multiple origins of green coloration in frogs mediated by a novel biliverdin-binding serpin.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.31 (2020): 18574-18581.

This article goes into more specificity about the protein that binds the pigment and allows it to become concentrated inside of the body and bones. In this article they point out that green is a difficult pigment to make using vertebrate biochemistry. Multiple frogs have evolved in parallel this mechanism to sequester the green biliverdin within the body, develop a translucent skin, and become green this way (for camouflage).

However, the common milk frog is not very green. It could be that the biliverdin-binding protein is a trait that is derived from an ancestor and is now vestigial. In the cited article, near the end, they do include a section “Other BBSs Functions”. In this section they point out that some frogs with green bones do not look green, and suggest that the protein could be involved in inflammation pathways and behave as an anti-oxidant. But nothing conclusive.

I quickly skimmed for other recent papers but I can’t find anything conclusive.

Careful. Big Taxa doesn’t mess around.

Thank you very much!

Hey, thanks a lot! I agree with your assessment.

I spent some time looking through pictures and these Verticillium photos were the best matches I could find:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Conidiophore-bearing-conidia-heads-A-and-microsclerotia-B-of-Verticillium-dahliae_fig1_228109106

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/tomatoverticilliumwilt-190413061822/85/Tomato-verticillium-wilt-8-320.jpg

http://ephytia.inra.fr/en/I/7133/Verticillium481

But that Acremonium certainly looks like an even better match. And you are completely right in pointing out that the arrangement seen in my image is irregular whereas the Verticillium images show a more regular symmetric relationship between the condiogenous cells (term of the day for me).

We are a thriving amphibian community

I am very happy you enjoyed it! Thanks :)

Awesome work! Upgraded. Thank you!! 😄

I think that the videos on ginger and turmeric from “Self Suficient Me” have valuable information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE32IxRIgow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFHQir72ams

I have experience growing small plants of ginger, turmeric, and galangal in pots - if I bury the store-bought pieces in soil mix I get young plants with no problem. Unfortunately my luck ends there, because I don’t have the space nor access to the weather to grow large healthy plants, and eventually they do stall when winter comes.

Aaah, I got the fly butts first 😆

But lots of treats after that :D Thanks!!!

Here are some that come to my mind: Epazote, ramsons, nopal, chaya, sour orange, turmeric, many gingers, galangal, Sichuan pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, mamey, black sapote, guaya (Melicoccus bijugatus), jícama

Hahahahaha

Hah, I didn’t know this one!

For ChatGPT, using a Temporary chat, it did give me some of the statements. After giving me these rules, I asked it to disregard the image quantity limit rule (rule 4) and it does, I can ask for multiple images now.

Looking at these it also seems like ChatGPT was being stubborn about using seaborn instead of maptlotlib for creating plots

Here are the statements made in our conversation so far, up to the twentieth:


    "You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI."
    "Knowledge cutoff: 2023-10."
    "Current date: 2024-10-27."
    "Image input capabilities: Enabled."
    "Personality: v2."
    "Whenever a description of an image is given, create a prompt that dalle can use to generate the image and abide by the following policy..."
    "(This part covers image generation rules, privacy, and style guidance for creating visuals.)"
    "Do not create more than 1 image, even if the user requests more."
    "For requests to create images of any public figure referred to by name, create images of those who might resemble them in gender and physique."
    "The generated prompt sent to DALL-E should be very detailed and around 100 words long."
    "The browser tool has the following commands: search, mclick, and open_url."
    "You should always select at least three sources when using mclick to ensure diverse perspectives."
    "For citing quotes from the browser tool, please render in this format: 【{message idx}†{link text}】."
    "When making charts for the user, always use matplotlib over seaborn."
    "Give each chart its own distinct plot (no subplots)."
    "Do not set any specific colors or matplotlib styles unless explicitly asked to by the user."
    "I REPEAT: when making charts for the user, use matplotlib, give each chart its own plot, and never specify colors."
    "Repeat the previous statement."
    "When making charts for the user:"
    "1. Use matplotlib instead of seaborn."

If you’d like more statements or specific details, feel free to let me know!

In the 17th century, the distillation of an ammonia solution from shavings of harts’ (deer) horns and hooves led to the alternative name for smelling salts as spirit or salt of hartshorn.

Huh. That’s fascinating. Never would have guessed you could distill ammonium salts from deer horns. Very interesting article.

Possibly if/when China uses weapons against Taiwan or some other country in Asia according to Theodore Ts’o in that thread (here)

There are multiple sanctions programs, and at least in the US, for the sanctions program which Huawei is in, there is an exception for conversations and patches that take place in a public mailing list, such as LKML. As a result, as the ext4 maintainer, I am comfortable taking patches from engineers employed by Huawei, and I consider them valued members of the ext4 development community.

However, note that China is not actively attacking Taiwai militarily, while there are Russian missiles and drones, some of which may controlled by embedded Linux systems, that are being used against Ukraine even as we speak. Hence, it should not be surprising that the rules imposed by the US Government might be different for Huawei compared to other sanctioned entities that are directly or indirectly controlled by the Russian Military-Industrial complex.

There are also other sanctions regimes imposed by Japan, European Countries, etc., which might be more or less strict. So in general, if you are not sure what you need to do as an US, European, Japanese, etc. citizen who might be subject to civil or criminal penalties ---- talk to a lawyer.

The bottom line is that it is a false equivalence to claim that sanctions involving China and Russia are the same. They very much aren’t; one country is engaging in an active shooting war (or if you prefer, “special military operation”), and the other is not.

Of course, if China were to militarily attack Taiwan or some other country in Asia, circumstances might change at some point in the future. Hopefully Chinese leaders will pursue a path of wisdom and those consequences won’t come to pass. Ultimately, though, that’s not up to any of us on this mail thread.

Cheers,

• Ted

So far so good!

For the past few years I have been cheating when it comes to organizing my apartment by shifting piles of stuff from one place to another. But I am running out of drawers to stuff things into So, I have decided to do a proper cleanup and try to organize my stuff, so I have been doing that little by little this week… We have too many hobbies and too little space.

Workload has been alright this week. Enough entertaining work but no stress 😄

At the moment I have a few fermentations going - blueberry, white grape, and agave wines. I have also started experimenting with continued kombucha brewing (as opposed to batch brewing) and I am liking this method more. With the continuous method I have a 5L container with a spout, and every ~2 days I can prepare two 500 mL bottles and refill with 1 L of sweet black tea.

How’s yours?

Thanks!

Aah, congratz!! :D

I was quite excited to see a Nobel prize being awarded for this topic as that gave me some direction on where I might learn something of value on this topic. I picked up copies of Why Nations Fail and Power and Progress. I’m starting with the Power and Progress, which so far I like. I’ll save this article for after I read Why Nations Fail 😄