@futurebird@sauropods.win
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

futurebird

@futurebird@sauropods.win

pro-ant propaganda, building electronics, writing sci-fi teaching mathematics & CS. I live in NYC.

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futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

An overactive imagination is seen as a good thing, a fun thing but it can be a little annoying and overwhelming to have a breathless 5 year old telling a wild story about everything in your mind who never stops. Everything is like six other things— and part of a story that never slows down or stops. I have to spend a lot of energy thinking about what’s normal enough to talk about. Increasingly? I’ve just been giving up. Let the chips fall where they may. LMAO

futurebird, (edited )
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@llewelly People will say “oh don’t try to be normal just be yourself” they don’t mean that. Or rather they don’t know what they are inviting. Really it’s one of the reasons I’m happy to advise the role playing club— I feel for the kids who need that space. I think I might do a playwrighting workshop next year too— that’s what helped me most as a kid— writing up the scenes I’d keep imagining— dialogue is the most fun way to write. You don’t need to explain everything. It just happens.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I’ve been noticing the color blue more this spring. I will see a blue object and the shade is more vibrant than it ought. Photos don’t really capture the world exactly as my soft fallible eyes see, yet, I still try to take photo of the phenomenon. First it was this mailbox. A slightly lighter, more saturated shade than standard. Then it was these confounding Hydrangea serrata— the blooms are a pale lavender yet also glowing blue. Could it be the light? My overactive imagination?

A US mailbox on a NYC sidewalk that is a slightly wrong shade of blue— it’s a bit too bright.

gregeganSF, (edited ) to random
@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Every solid object, such as the rods in the image below, has an inertia tensor. We can write the inertia tensor for the black rod, which keeps changing its orientation, as a sum of various multiples of the inertia tensors for the 6 fixed rods. The plot at the bottom shows how these 6 components change as the black rod points in different directions.

But why do we need 6 components? In 3D space, shouldn’t 3 be enough?

To see why we really need 6, let’s look at the inertia tensor. This is a matrix, I, that we use to multiply the angular velocity vector of an object, ω, to get the angular momentum, L.

The velocity of a point mass whose angular velocity is ω is given by:

v = ω × r

where r=(x,y,z) gives the coordinates of the point mass.

The linear momentum is:

p = m v = m ω × r

and the angular momentum is:

L = r × p = m r × (ω × r)

To get the same thing using matrices, note that we can write the cross product of r with any vector like ω as:

r × ω = C(r) ω

where C(r) is the matrix:

0 –z y
z 0 –x
–y x 0

This lets us write:

L = m r × (ω × r)
= –m r × (r × ω)
= –m C(r)^2 ω

Minus the square of the matrix C(r) is:

y^2+z^2 –xy –xz
–xy x^2+z^2 –yz
–xz –yz x^2+y^2

So the inertia tensor for a point mass is:

I = –m C(r)^2

This is the matrix above, multiplied by m.

In general, we add up (or integrate) over all the point masses in the body, to get the inertia tensor for the whole thing.

The inertia tensor we obtain this way will always be a symmetric matrix, so it can be specified with 6 numbers: 3 on the diagonal, and 3 above. So the inertia tensors belong to a 6-dimensional space.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@gregeganSF Higher dimensional spaces aren’t always so alien. Here are six axis we need to describe something ordinary— but are they at right angles to each other? Are they in any sense mutually orthogonal as normal (pun not intended) spatial axis must be?

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Hey @john these are the kind of gothic clouds I meant. "The Flying Islands of the Night"
1913 art by Franklin Booth

Franklin Booth is the deco huge clouds man-- also really cool redwoods.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I have never been more disappointed by a spelling error:

https://dp.la/item/9383481d7c3b1a327cbdf34ba6255d14

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

An emerald jewel wasp looks at those cute posters that have been all over that have a drawing of cicadas and the quote

"Shed your old skin and scream!"

jewel wasp: ... don't see why it has to be my old skin ...
roach (who is on a date with her): --what??
jewel wasp: (eyeing him) ... nothing...

futurebird, (edited )
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Maybe the jewel wasps are attracted to roaches because they remind them of their childhood... and a warm cozy feeling of being... "home"

"I grew up in someone just like you."
"You mean with someone like me?"
"oh uh... yeah. Totally!"

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Jewel wasps are my "toxic fav" forever.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

How did ants become farmers of fungi? I want to suggest that the behaviors found in nearly every species of ant centered around nest building, and maintaining gradients of temperature and humidity within their nest to raise their young were transferable to fungi farming.

Ants that practice "higher agriculture*" keep their brood and eggs inside of the fungal sponge. It's not just food, it's a nursery, the fungi and larvae enjoy the same humidity levels.

1/

futurebird, (edited )
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

"Higher agriculture" means that the ants are obligate fungivores and the fungi are a domesticated crop that can only be grown when cultivated by ants. Many ants do "a little light gardening" opportunistically taking advantage of edible fungi in their nests. I wonder if the piles of silk cocoons that my carpenter ants keep, or the strange piles of odd leaf bits in isolated chambers are a kind of victory garden?

My carpenter ants have "proto repletes" why not proto fungi gardens too? 2/

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

One of my colonies has decided they like an improvised dirt nest as much as they like the fancy human-made nest I bought them and are using both... It's a little annoying, but I must remember they they know best.

My only qualm about letting them have a full terrarium is how their population would explode. The dirt nest is as much dirt as it is ants, it's a remarkable structure. With a whole tank of dirt I seem myself needing to feed a one-pound colony soon.

3/3

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@llewelly

Something about the arthropod body plan, without blood vessels, but rather the whole body filled with hemolymph makes them very vulnerable to fungal infections and parasites. Their body is all one big container, so it can spread and access all of the organs of the body.

It seems harder for this to happen to even very small mammals.

We are also protected by the way our bodies passively maintain temperatures different from the surrounding environment. This lets us kill pathogens.

futurebird, (edited )
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@llewelly

"Unlike us, humans, like many vertebrates, have passive automatic body processes that maintain their temperature without any thinking or planning on the part of the human required. It is perhaps our daily struggle to keep our nests and young ones warm or cool that has allowed us to evolve to be the more intelligent and far superior species."

  • Intergalactic Ant Encyclopedia of Life, Vol. 238, entry on "evolutionary biology of ant intelligence"
futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

What is the point of littering the feed with "upcoming" videos on youTube? All I ever think is "oh I want to watch that... oh I can't"

Do people really watch youTube like... like it's broadcast TV and IDK plan to turn it on at a ... time... like you have a little thing in your schedule and you have to do it like it's a chore?

I don't get this.

I'm drifting away from youTube anyways. Going back to the newspaper and audiobook lifestyle. Only the ants keep me there...

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Ever find a video so funny you had to describe it so no one would miss it?

https://www.tumblr.com/futurebird/752487199245729792/video-description-a-marketplace-in-a-busy-town?source=share

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Can anyone help me tell these two images apart? I'm having a lot of trouble.

The annoying boss from the movie "Office Space"

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

She keeps making up all these goofy "assignments" like a teacher assigning busy work.

It's so annoying.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Write 5 paragraphs about how you feel about the concept of maybe laws not being real.

Please don't ask me to do anything unless you have had three conferences and turn in your conference note forms.

TPS reports? Why not? Ask for TPS reports you monster you know you want to!

Strandjunker, to random
@Strandjunker@mstdn.social avatar

If Fani Willis had a conflict of interest because a man might have paid for a meal, imagine how serious it would be if Supreme Court justices heard cases related to an election their wives had tried to overturn.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@Strandjunker

When people complain about Fani Willis I feel a little stab of anger. These accusations that she hasn’t been “professional enough” fail to recognize the invasive & vindictive nature of the opposition research she faces. It wouldn’t shock me if she was regularly being bugged, tracked— her old friends & acquaintances tempted with bribes & gifts to turn against her. Rather than recognizing the ugly effort to put her in her place it feels like the critics are joining in.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@Strandjunker
As the M. Garlands of the world stall— differ the odious job of cleaning up this mess to (braver) people— some how it’s mostly black people and black women who have been left holding the mop. Cleaning up this country’s damn messes then also being the first ones suspected of stealing the silverware if it goes missing. I don’t like to think that things never change but in some ways they seem to fall back into the same old BS expectations.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

@Strandjunker

Conveniently the words “weaponization of the justice system” have been played out by the opposition to the point of meaninglessness. But that is exactly what we all witnessed as they prosecuted the prosecutor for less than nothing. She did nothing wrong ethically, morally, legally, professionally. Any concession on these points is to further embrace a double standard— no and absence of standards! The judge should be ashamed to have let it happen.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

TransitApp just jammed the phone lines of the governor of NYS with an in-app call to action to support congestion pricing. Neat! @streetsblognyc

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I’m crying on the bus (again) because some middle school kids decided that for their “design challenge” they’d envision an emergency food delivery drone that could fly high enough and fast enough that no one could shoot it down. And no one asked why someone would want to shoot down a food delivery drone— or why you couldn’t just drive a truck.

futurebird,
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

They did all this research on drone visibility— even found out what colors to paint it.

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