flora_explora

@flora_explora@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you can't make it yourself, store bought is fine⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  From Wikipedia on dopamine:

  The brain includes several distinct dopamine pathways, one of which plays a major role in the motivational component of reward-motivated behavior.

  So it is a neurotransmitter but has many different functions as such. But also:

  Outside the central nervous system, dopamine functions primarily as a local paracrine messenger. In blood vessels, it inhibits norepinephrine release and acts as a vasodilator; in the kidneys, it increases sodium excretion and urine output; in the pancreas, it reduces insulin production; in the digestive system, it reduces gastrointestinal motility and protects intestinal mucosa; and in the immune system, it reduces the activity of lymphocytes. With the exception of the blood vessels, dopamine in each of these peripheral systems is synthesized locally and exerts its effects near the cells that release it.

  So dopamine is important for all kinds of cells to function correctly. So just chugging a bunch of dopamine would do all kinds of stuff to your body…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Strawberries are nuts 🍓⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, seems like you’re right about kurz. It’s mostly just walnuts although you can find recipes where they say nueces and use pecans. Almendras seem to be classified as a separate thing from nuts, interesting. Wasn’t aware of that before! I’d just use the term “nuez” like I would in German maybe that’s why I never noticed :D

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Strawberries are nuts 🍓⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess things can have multiple names, too. In German you would also say Waldfrüchte (forest fruits) to mixed berries, but they are still Beeren (berries) as well. If you search for “postre de bayas” or “pastel de bayas” many recipes pop up. And sure, Spanish is obviously a diverse language with the divide between Spanish from Spain and from Latin America.

  Disclaimer: I’m part of the scientific bubble so that’s why I may here more terms that are botanical in Spanish ;)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Strawberries are nuts 🍓⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Bayas y nueces… Tubérculo is closer to the botanical definition because it is a tuber (storage organ) and not a fruit (like most vegetables). And I would think that tubérculo could be any tuber vegetable, not just papas/patatas

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Frigging peas 🫛⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you got any links? A quick search didn’t show up anything in that direction, only how important Mendel was for modern genetics…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaves have evolved at least twice 🤔⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hm, I was intrigued and looked at the evolution of plants. This made me realize how paraphyletic gymnosperms and angiosperms really are! We just don’t know how angiosperms exactly started out and if they might be monophyletic. And in case of gymnosperms, they are consisting of many very different plant groups that evolved independently.

  So gymnosperms were probably the first plants to evolve seeds and they “include conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetophytes, forming the clade Gymnospermae”.

  It was previously widely accepted that the gymnosperms originated in the Late Carboniferous period, replacing the lycopsid rainforests of the tropical region, but more recent phylogenetic evidence indicates that they diverged from the ancestors of angiosperms during the Early Carboniferous.[12][13] The radiation of gymnosperms during the late Carboniferous appears to have resulted from a whole genome duplication event around 319 million years ago.[14] Early characteristics of seed plants are evident in fossil progymnosperms of the late Devonian period around 383 million years ago. It has been suggested that during the mid-Mesozoic era, pollination of some extinct groups of gymnosperms was by extinct species of scorpionflies that had specialized proboscis for feeding on pollination drops. The scorpionflies likely engaged in pollination mutualisms with gymnosperms, long before the similar and independent coevolution of nectar-feeding insects on angiosperms.[15][16] Evidence has also been found that mid-Mesozoic gymnosperms were pollinated by Kalligrammatid lacewings, a now-extinct family with members which (in an example of convergent evolution) resembled the modern butterflies that arose far later.

  Wow, so there was already pollination going on before flowering plants even existed??? By scorpionflies who’s ancestors I frequently see? And there were butterfly-like insects long before real butterflies existed? This is wild!!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what is north?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, you’re right: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weddell_Sea?wprov=sfla1

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MEN.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hm, I’d see the joking about men in this case as a way to blow off some steam caused by the frustration of how the people in our society with the most power and who are the most violent continuously refuse to change anything or make concessions. Men not going to therapy and working on their issues results in heightened patriarchal violence. And it is just utterly frustrating how many decades people have fought for systemic change just to see the vast majority of men blocking any change or even pushing back against it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MEN.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I get that it’s hard, I was in the same boat multiple times. Everyone experiences the problems you list and I guess women and non-binary people actually have it worse because of on average greater financial instability and dependence on others.

  But the issue is, for therapy to work you have to acknowledge you have a problem, be willing to reflect upon yourself and change some own misconceptions. I feel like cis men have great difficulty with that and therefore avoid therapy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨50 shades of green⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m trying to understand this figure now. So, on the right in grey is the Phytoplasma bacterium that is hitting the plant with its SAP proteins. What I don’t get, if this is a fifty shades of grey analogy, then the plant must be consenting and enjoying this. But the bacterium is a parasite damaging the plant and even apparently benefitting other parasites. This doesn’t make sense!!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's been a massacre!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just think how inefficient most of what we do is. Most of our modern society is based on indulgence or complex societal norms (very inefficient from an energy perspective!). It is frankly absurd to think we would do anything only based on its efficiency… Similarly, an intelligent alligator society may just eat their young out of fun or because of societal norms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Piss off!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol didn’t even see that! :D

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨On trees...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, like monocots don’t have secondary growth so they have to use some tricks to get that large. Like palms first grow to a certain stem size on the ground (or below) and only then grow up. I wonder how lycopods grew that large considering they are not really ferns even… Oh and ferns also can grow to be trees!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨they come⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: “roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast”. A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[14] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants.

  (Wikipedia)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨they come⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL calling beetles by the month they appear in is a mess. In Europe, may beetles are Melolontha, june beetles are Amphimallon (or Mimela), july beetles are Anomala (at least in German). Rhizotrogus is also in the mix, but didn’t get a month assigned.

  But then in North America, there are different genera for each month. Phyllophaga in may, Cotinis and Polyphylla in june, none in july…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Piss off!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  With one data point as sample size, it could have been a baby, a huge bodybuilder or anything. Same goes for the human cow. All of this isn’t reliable data and we shouldn’t even discuss it here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We're good, thanks.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This reminds me of an unfinished crochet project of Anomalocaris I got lying around… If anyone is interested, here is the pattern I’m using: etsy.com/…/nur-muster-anomalocaris-burgess-shale

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I mean... I don't see the problem?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That makes it even worse

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Wars Shows the Future of AI Special Effects and It Sucks [404 Media]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that was weird to watch. Not sure if the speaker realizes how bad this new tech still looks.

  And in the end he said that it is very important to use these AI models “with the full permission of the talent” and that they “had full access and the rights to the training data”. He obviously just considers Harrison Ford in this moment, but does he realize what that would mean regarding the AI models and their training data they use? And was the presented short film also created with full permission of all artists contributing to the training data? Was this just a blatant lie to make it sound like they work responsibly with AI?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's My Nature⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Was curious, so I looked it up: knowyourmeme.com/memes/o7-slang

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here kitty kitty⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think baby-like facial features are just a part of the domestication syndrome. There has been this long-going domestication experiment with silver foxes that could show that when only selected for tameness the foxes still expressed most of the traits found in other domesticated animals, too.

  Belyaev was correct that selection on tameness alone leads to the emergence of traits in the domestication syndrome. In less than a decade, some of the domesticated foxes had floppy ears and curly tails (Fig. 2).

  Over the course of the experiment, researchers also found the domesticated foxes displayed mottled “mutt-like” fur patterns, and they had more juvenilized facial features (shorter, rounder, more dog-like snouts) and body shapes (chunkier, rather than gracile limbs) (Fig. 3).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good to see someone caring about BiLions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Aw sorry, didn’t get the irony in your original statement…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Banananananananana⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The older, nicer version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYbWjJsLymE

  The newer, more extreme version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=COOxP3_HFcM

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🔪🔪🔪⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s shows a wasp and not a bee…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good to see someone caring about BiLions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, if you look at any animal species, assume variations to occur. There are so many different sexes, genders and sexualities out in the animal kingdom, but our society’s cisheterosexual bias has conditioned us to believe that all animals are straight and cis…

  As a reading suggestion you may look into Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ms paint tree⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Cycads have palm-like leaves though, so veeery different! I’d say baobabs are not too different in their growth habit from other Bombacoideae (Malvaceae). Compare with e.g. Ceiba, Pseudobombax, Cavanillesia. And the leaves look just like most Malvaceae plants as well ;)

  Fun fact: Pseudobombax trees can actually do photosynthesis with their trunk, which is green (or at least has green streaks).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You cannot learn without failing.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1000%!! Over the years I’ve lent it to various people and they all loved it very much. It has been the most influential book for me regarding how I view society, capitalism and anarchism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You cannot learn without failing.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the right is how science unfortunately works. My professor told me that science progresses one death at a time. We argued in various papers that the terminology in our field was really messy and didn’t hold up to actual findings, but the old generation of scientists didn’t want to allow any changes. In most research fields there are a few scientists that hold a position of power and that don’t like sharing that power.

  Reading Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and her idea of an anarchist world caught me off guard when she starts exploring exactly this problem in science…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wednesday, my dudes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This isn’t even true, but a useful simplification.

  Wikipedia says the following:

  Etymology and taxonomy The use of the common names frog and toad has no taxonomic justification. From a classification perspective, all members of the order Anura are frogs, but only members of the family Bufonidae are considered “true toads”. The use of the term frog in common names usually refers to species that are aquatic or semi-aquatic and have smooth, moist skins; the term toad generally refers to species that are terrestrial with dry, warty skins. There are numerous exceptions to this rule. The European fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) has a slightly warty skin and prefers a watery habitat whereas the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki) is in the toad family Bufonidae and has a smooth skin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PUT. HIM. BACK.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Reading the introduction of the study (first link), they completely fail to explain why they call this language. Like, first they explain that fungi also have action potentials and that this seems to work like neurons and then they immediately jump to talk about how this could be a language. Am I missing something here? This seems like a legit paper, but why don’t they even attempt to explain or discuss this?