#field a

[come-outside]

some new photos from field A, my local field! it is a wet species-poor grassland, which i believe is also nutrient poor. i’m not sure about the pH, but i assume it’s quite neutral!

the first photo shows some creeping cinquefoil, a type of plant that thrives in low-quality, nutrient-poor soil. it is a pioneering species similar to the black medick! it has small yellow flowers similar to buttercups from june to september.

i think there’s a multitude of reasons for this plant in particular to be present. the field has a downward slope on both the western and northern sides, which plateaus out toward the southeastern side. the most cinquefoil i saw was on the slopes where the soil would be most free-draining, so it makes sense it would be seen there.

the second photo shows some black medick, a pioneering plant that thrives in well-draining soil. i found this in the same area as the cinquefoil, further indicating the low soil quality and free draining conditions. i say it indicates poor soil quality as the black medick is a pioneer species, meaning that it colonises bare and rough ground to prepare it for less hardy species!

the third photo shows some fairy ring champignon that regularly occurs on the field! this only shows part of the total ring; a range of it was still covered in long grass, so there weren’t as many mushrooms on that side. it benefits from the freshly cut grass. their season is april to november, with the best season for collecting them being late spring! they prefer soil that is sandy, and with lower water / fertility. poorer nutrient levels line up with the other species present on the field, and while the conditions aren’t completely to its preference (this is definitely a wet grassland) it is still able to grow!

the fourth photo shows again some lesser knapweed, a hardy perennial plant that flowers in early summer to as late as september. it is a great contributor for pollination despite being considered an undesirable weed, which is a common theme. it is a generalist that tends to prefer wetter soils. this knapweed can be found throughout the field, both on the banks and across the flatter area as well!

the fifth photo shows a large patch of creeping thistle. this is an area toward the central-northeastern corner of the field that is regularly covered in tall thistles, and grows back whenever it’s cut! it is perennial, and being “creeping” means that its roots literally creep through the soil in order to spread, which allows the creeping thistle to be a competitive coloniser. this is possible due to the plant being dioecious, meaning it has both male and female parts. this of course means that the patch is a clonal colony that self-reproduces, too! it does this in tandem with regular reproduction via pollination. it blooms from june to august. this is another competitive generalist species that can be found in any kind of field, as well as along roadside verges and even growing on driveways!

the last photo wasn’t taken on the field, actually, but on the way back. it shows a dense (and quite tall!) patch of creeping buttercups beside a house! i just thought this was cool. i’m excited to see it flowering, hoping that the owners don’t mow it.

[bitchfitch]

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

[heylsgowt]

[jodielandons]

NOAH LYLES pulls out the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Exodia the Forbidden One Yu-Gi-Oh! cards before winning all of his 100m races at the 2024 Olympic trials

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[389]

sinkhole in Illinois, 2024

[sirfrogsworth]

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 40,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!

[critter-creature-or-beast]

The third one looks cool

[nasa]

Do You Love the Color of the Sun?

Get dazzled by the true spectrum of solar beauty. From fiery reds to cool blues, explore the vibrant hues of the Sun in a mesmerizing color order. The images used to make this gradient come from our Solar Dynamics Observatory. Taken in a variety of wavelengths, they give scientists a wealth of data about the Sun. Don't miss the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024. (It's the last one for 20 years!) Set a reminder to watch with us.

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[come-outside]

some new photos from field A (-:

the only new species i’ve found to be on the field is Shepherd’s Purse, which you can see in the third through fifth photographs!

otherwise, what we have here is

1) some kind of bee orchid! i’ll keep an eye on it to see when it blooms! i remember seeing a strange flower here a few years ago too. it might have been this orchid. i don’t know much about them!

2) lovely photo of puppy among the buttercups (-:

6) some kind of grass? i’m really not sure in this one!

7-8) kobe among the lovely bird’s-foot trefoil

if i find out what that weird grass is, i’ll update this post (-: it made me think of sand grass, but it’s… well obviously not in sand

[petitworld]

by Gianluca Grisenti

[heylsgowt]

[daftmooncretin]

spock’s room decor is actually fucking bonkers. The weapons??? the big red velvet curtain??? like ok phantom of the opera go crazy.

for reference jim’s room has some photos and a plant so we can surmise this is uniquely a spock being a dramatic weirdo thing