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Rats are snatching bats out of the air and eating them

Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) figured out how to get inside the kiosk and climb up to the bats’ landing platform at the entrance, using a curtain the researchers placed inside the kiosk for filming purposes. From August to October 2020, cameras captured the rodents — standing on their hind legs and using their tail to balance — grabbing bats mid-flight, killing them with a bite and dragging the carcasses away. The rats also caught bats as they landed on the platform.

Rats, especially brown rats, can be vicious little predators. It will be interesting to see if A) rats evolve further in predatory directions and B) bats learn to avoid them. Hats off to Dougal Dixon, you called it dude.

Note from birdhouse architecture: don't create a platform or perch near an entry hole that predators can stand on. Fliers can typically enter without it. Probably the rats can't climb upside down, but you might want to check that.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, there are 31 new verses in "An Inkling of Things to Come." As the worldbuilding class discusses setting, Shiv tries to figure out what a genre is.

Current Mood: busy

sonia

mrissa posted about her contributions to The Vertigo Project, a generous handful of poems and stories (and journal prompts, and more).

I especially loved the last two stories:

She Wavers But She Does Not Weaken (story), when the waves hit you even on dry land, it's good to have someone who's willing to swim against the current for you

The Torn Map (story), rewriting the pieces of the former world into something new

sonia

The Right to Say "No" by Audrey Watters. A rant about AI, eugenics, and Epstein (no details).

There is a real rot at the core of many of our institutions – and certainly at the core of those powerful players operating within and adjacent to them. "Artificial intelligence" emerges from this rot. It cannot be a bulwark against it.

Why Science’s press team won’t be using AI to write releases anytime soon by Emily Underwood at The Last Word On Nothing.

Every time a translator takes a book and puts it in their own words, they are interpreting the material slightly differently. What we found was that ChatGPT Plus couldn’t do that. It could regurgitate or transcribe, but it couldn’t achieve the nuance to count as its own interpretation of a study.

I think that’s because ChatGPT Plus isn’t in society — it doesn’t interact with the world. It’s predictive, but it’s not distilling or conceptualizing what matters most to a human audience, or the value that we place in narratives that are ingrained in our society. [...]

Now, after this experiment, we’re very against using it. After a year of data, we know it can’t meet our standards. If we ever did plan to use it, we’d have to implement super rigorous fact-checking, because we don’t want to lose reporters’ trust.

The AI Invasion of Knitting and Crochet by Jonathan Bailey in Plagiarism Today.

Creating a pattern requires considering the entire work; each step has to fit with and work with all the others. Blindly selecting the next step without that consideration will, more often than not, fail. This is especially true since AI can’t “test” the pattern after writing it, which is a big part of what humans do. [...]

However, the best and simplest advice is to buy from patternmakers that you trust. If you know someone who is a human making high-quality patterns, turn to them first. Rewarding known human creators rather than chasing the cheapest pattern is the best way to avoid buying AI slop.

ysabetwordsmith

This poem is spillover from the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Aroace" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are the notes for "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem is spillover from the May 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from

fuzzyred and

dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Power(ful)" square in my 5-1-24 card for the Superpower Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

sixbeforelunch

If I had a dollar for every time I've read a science fiction novel about a female protagonist who travels to another planet and discovers she's being manipulated by an infectious alien hive mind, I would have at least three dollars (four, if I include the book where another member of the crew is taken over by the aliens but the protagonist herself is IIRC never directly touched by them).

IDK but in context that feels like kind of a lot of dollars.

brithistorian

Presented without comment, except that I have always loved Jim Henson and I agree with this quote 100%:

"When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for my having been there." - Jim Henson

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the June 4, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

mama_kestrel. It also fills the "Nonbinary / Intersex" square in my 6-1-24 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

hannah

In folding laundry, I found I'd lost a wash cloth. In going down to the laundry room to check, I found the woman who only had bills, no quarters, hadn't seen it either. In talking her through my decision making process and to not waste an elevator trip, I take her up to my apartment with me to trade her a roll of quarters for the appropriate amount in small bills.

In checking what I'd already put away, I found the missing wash cloth.

One of those strings of events where I can't find it in myself to be upset about the inciting inconvenience.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: nothing now

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the November 5, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Chamomile" square in my 11-1-24 card for the Sleepytime Bear Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

Warning: This poem contains some intense topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes digestive upset, reference to human trafficking, implied mayhem, emotional upheaval, exhaustion, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: tired

brithistorian

About a month ago, NMIXX came out with their latest sing, "Blue Valentine."

Watch on YouTube

I loved it — I've listened to it so many times! One part of it really confused me, though: From the start of the prechorus (at 0:40) until the beginning of the chorus (at 0:56), the tempo suddenly drops, then has an accelerando until the chorus begins. But I was really confused, though, because the line "You'll always be my blue valentine" in the chorus took the same amount of the time as when the same line was sung at the beginning of the song, but it felt faster. Fortunately, when React to the K (a YouTube channel that feature classical and jazz music students reacting to K-pop songs) did their video reacting to this song, they had an entire section where Liam (a classical percussionist) explains what's happening rhythmically during the prechorus — it took him almost 2 minutes to explain what happened in that 16 seconds of the song, but to me, it was worth it — I'd listened to that part of the song over and over so many times trying to figure out what was happening there, so it was great to finally understand.

ismo

I could have used more sleep, but at least I slept better than when we were away. At this age, travel always sounds fine in theory, but in practice, it doesn't work out as well as one imagines. There's really nothing like your own bed! I used to be able to sleep like a log on someone's floor in a sleeping bag. I remember one time when I was at a con, and there were too many people in the room for my liking, so I took a blanket and pillow out on the balcony of the hotel room and slept there. Or on a trail ride in October when I didn't like the ambiance of the ride leader's trailer, so I slept in a pup tent outside, and just wore three sweaters to keep warm. I'm not that flexible any more.

Today I was just trying to get a few things done. I talked to Queenie. She's with the Fireman in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia, where her kids will join her for Thanksgiving. I did my laundry. I listened to Hawaiian music while trying to finish up the chapter for our book club tonight. I carried various things up and down stairs and made spaghetti sauce for dinner. More things are always possible to do in theory than they turn out to be in practice!

lannamichaels

As superhero movies go, this is a very good superhero movie. As regular movies go, I kept being annoyed about the seriously compressed timeline and some really basic suspension of disbelief, like "is anyone going to say Lex Luthor is lying about translation" because, uh. Also, how does anyone know Kryptonian? So many little things just drove me up the wall.

However! It was a good movie, and the Clark/Lois stuff was very well done, I actually really loved their interview/fight because it worked so well in with characterization, it didn't strike my "I cannot, I cannot, I cannot" that I tend to have about couples arguing.

The main effect of the movie was, after it was revealed that Lex had people going over every inch of every Superman fight so he could get a single strand of Superman's hair so he could clone him -- I went and reread some old favorite Smallville fics. Good times.

The movie also did something I noticed with the Knives Out 2: Glass Onion film, where it made the Cool Evil Rich Villain... not come off very compelling on the slash goggles. I did not walk out of this movie shipping Clark/Lex, even though I ship Clark/Lex. Lex Luthor, played by Why Do I Recognize Him Oh That's The Boy From About A Boy, is very well done and very well performed and is not a magnificent bastard and he has zero chemistry with Clark, but not in a way that detracts from the film. This is not a film where Clark and Lex have ever been on good terms; this is not a film where they even ever knew each other. There was nothing about the movie that was in the same flavor or theme as Smallville, but hey, always fun to go reread some stuff.

But for a movie that did Lois so well, did we have to have Eve The Awful Clingy Obsessive Wannabe Girlfriend with Jimmy who did not want to date her, just wanted info from her? That was so hard to endure. I think worse of the movie for making that decision, it casts a long tail on the movie even a week after I finished it, like "oh yeah so that was a movie that made me go reread some old fics from 20 years ago, and also had this unnecessarily misogynistic sideplotline played for laughs (?)".

Nathan Fillion also appeared to be treating this film as "I will do bad acting on purpose to show that my character is a buffoon" but mostly it just came off annoying.

I also have a nit to pick with this movie that is solely from watching it with the DVD closed captions, which kept noting when the main Superman theme was playing, which is: the soundtrack to this movie is ... well, it's got some perfectly acceptable pop songs peppered in. But the rest of it is just so bland.

But this movie is better than every MCU movie I've seen, with the exception of Captain America 2: A Good Spy Movie With I Guess Absolutely Zero Repercussions For The Worldbuilding Oh Well.

edenfalling

This weekend (Friday through Sunday) I helped staff a table at Fables and Flames, a romantasy fiction con in its first year. Vicky has an ongoing m/m romantasy series (branching out in new directions from her contemporary m/m romance) and got an author invite, but it's hard to staff a vendor table alone so I helped set up/take down the displays, provided some company, and held down the fort when she wanted to go do some other con activities. I handed out a lot of cards and flyers, and even sold a few books!

(I also picked up cards for every other author present and bought more things -- scented candles, weighted plushies, scrunchies, a 3D-printed fidget toy -- than was probably wise, but that is only to be expected at a con. Also I love my new plushies with fierce devotion, so there.)

Word is that the con either broke even or came very close, which is excellent for a first-year event. Hopefully that means they will run it again next year. :)

Anyway the con was a lot of fun but also very tiring -- and I didn't even have to be "on" most of the time. Also once we packed up early on Sunday afternoon, we drove across the street to IKEA and spent a couple hours looking at sofa beds and other assorted things. As is typical for a trip to IKEA, I came away with more than I meant to buy. I am now the proud (?) owner of a slightly dinged-up "as-is" desk, a coat stand, two wooden storage crates, a bath mat (that was probably intended as a hand towel but pssht like I care), and a $5 print of a botanical illustration of a fig. And also a pack of cinnamon rolls, because reasons.

So that was my weekend.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: new brighton, mn

sovay

Only a day or two late, I saw a classic new moon in the old moon's arms as I walked around the neighborhood just after sunset, the reflection-white crescent and its charcoal-colored cradle like an eclipse in monochrome. The sky was its usual clear apple-blue in the east and then sank. I am not sure I have ever had this much difficulty with the early dark between the clocks falling back and the solstice. I am awake most of the days and there still doesn't seem to be any light in them.

I slept last night. I would like not to have to record it as a milestone. It feels a little unnecessarily on the nose that I was woken out of some complex dream by a phone call from a doctor's office. Most of them lately have some unsurprising insecurity in them: slow-motion cataclysm, as if it makes much difference from being awake. Last night, something about a house with tide-lines on its walls, as if it regularly flooded to the beams.

Describing the 1978 BBC As You Like It to

spatch made me realize how few of Shakespeare's comedies I have actually seen when compared with the tragedies, the late romances, the history or the problem plays. A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night would be the predictable exceptions in that I am verging on more productions of either than I can count without thinking about it, but I am three Winter's Tales to zero Comedies of Errors. I've seen Timon of Athens and not All's Well That Ends Well. One Richard II and neither of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. It begins to feel accidental that I caught The Merry Wives of Windsor in college.

I really appreciate

asakiyume sending me Hen Ogledd's "Scales Will Fall" (2025) and

ashlyme alerting me to the trans-Neptunian existence of the sednoid Ammonite.

Current Music: Hen Ogledd, "Scales Will Fall"

flemmings

Got my water meter reading yesterday. They said I could add a photo of it if I wanted to, which was dicey because I needed three hands to do it (one for the flashlight, one to hold the tablet, one to click the icon) and I only have two. But got something, then went to the city's website and entered my info and meter reading and attach photo, and it wouldn't attach. OK then, reenter info, click on send, it wouldn't send. Ohhhkay, here's a phone number for reporting, call, sit through five minutes of useless information, press button for enter reading, get told mailbox is full. So much for that.

To library today to print my blood draw form. Guy says I can do it from my phone. Log in to library's wifi, bring up the DL, press print, phone does not try to find a printer but sits and snickers at me. Fine. Go to a computer, wait for it to load Chrome, why are library computers so slooow, get Chrome, call up webmail's login, enter my info, Chrome says the password is wrong. Enter it again, still wrong. Check password on my phone, yes it's the same one, try again, wrong password, three tries and you're out, try again in fifteen minutes. Sit there glowering at computer, remember that I forwarded the email to my gmail account, call up gmail, login, there's my forwarded message, where's the link to the form? It should be at the bottom, where's the link? Could this be it? Yes!! Press print. Then go to printer, enter my library card number, enter my password, last digit doesn't enter but printer tries to print anyway. Can't. Go through it all again, enter password veeery carefully, printer prints my form. Success, I have slain the beast! but sheesh is this amount of faff necessary?

And now I must once again go down to the lab only this time in the rain, or snow if I leave it to later in the week. However, today my water meter reading went through no problem, so go me.

cosmolinguist

I had a pretty good day for it being the blackest day on my calendar.

Twenty years ago today my brother died. It was thanksgiving day, that year. He died in a car accident. No other cars involved, he wasn't drunk, the weather was fine, he was on familiar roads...

So there was no reason for it, no lesson to be learned from it or cause to take up because of it.

Normally I will have a wee dram for the occasion, but tonight I went to the gym instead, knowing that the rest of the week is too full to allow it and not wanting to let the good effect of actually making it to trans gym on Saturday wither away already. It was a good choice but means I got home and as usual went upstairs to a shower and bed.

It was a pretty good day. I woke up absurdly early as usual but didn't feel tired. I got up and did my morning chores (opened the curtains, emptied the dishwasher, made a pot of tea), made breakfast and started work an hour early. My manager is off all week and his manager is off today, so while I'm awaiting feedback from them on a report that's perilously close to its deadline now, it's not my problem if they don't get it to me. I didn't have many meetings either (though the two I did have were bad enough), it was much warmer than it had been at the end of last week and the sun was even out sometimes.

Most of all, what made this November good is that I wasn't fretting about my dog dying (like last year), I didn't break my ankle and need an operation (like two years ago), and a dear friend wasn't having a psychotic episode where I was the only person she'd talk to (like three years ago).

November just sucks.

But this one has been okay. Yes it's been full of work and of counterprotesting fascists, but it's also had some fun stuff and there's more happening this week: a birthday party, a wedding, a new Knives Out movie, a thanksgiving dinner that I'm not cooking...

Twenty years.

It doesn't feel long ago.

And yet I've also been so many people since then. I'm sad I didn't have the chance to find out who he would have been.

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Page Summary

ysabetwordsmith - Wildlife
ysabetwordsmith - New verses in "An Inkling of Things to Come"
sonia - Stories! The Vertigo Project
sonia - Links: Anti-AI
ysabetwordsmith - Poem: "Preparing Every Nook and Cranny"
ysabetwordsmith - Notes for "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability"
ysabetwordsmith - Poem: "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability"
sixbeforelunch - (no subject)
brithistorian - QOTD: Jim Henson on life goals
ysabetwordsmith - Poem: "To Form a New Idea"
hannah - Narrative.
ysabetwordsmith - Poem: "No Trouble So Great or Grave"
princessofgeeks - you kids get off my lawn
brithistorian - SOTD: NMIXX, "Blue Valentine" (plus bonus music theory)
ismo - Siskin of Ember
lannamichaels - Superman (2025)
edenfalling - wherein Liz buys stuff (at a con and then at IKEA)
sovay - Open up your mouth, but the melody is broken
flemmings - This living in the future sucks
cosmolinguist - Twenty years

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