quixote

Usually found Elsewhere, so this should be the perfect place for me. Longer thoughts at Acid Test (http://www.molvray.com/acidtest/) and Reimagining Democracy (http://www.molvray.com/govforum), (1st ed. 2010). The header pic is the Eastern Sierras not far from Bishop, California, looking west (Rockies behind, Pacific ahead). #tootfinder #searchable

Reimagining Democracy: http://www.molvray.com/govforum/
Acid Test (general rants): http://www.molvray.com/acidtest/

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quixote_at_mastodon.nz@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-09-19 07:46:15 UTC

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You may already know this. An interesting factoid I learned from a fellow field biologist is that baby rattlesnakes haven't yet learned how to calibrate amount of venom to size of prey. (Don't want to waste something that's 'expensive' to make.) Adult rattlers can do that, but babies apparently not. So a bite from a baby can be _more_ dangerous than an adult rattlesnake!

2026-08-19 21:48:34 UTC

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I'm guessing Liatris spicata, aka gayfeather.
Very handsome, and rather unbothered by the drought.

2026-07-11 20:05:09 UTC

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Some ferns are very, very, _very_ tough. I bet the ones on that chimney are. That group of plants has been around since before the dinosaurs. Don't underestimate them!
I did that with several different ones in my garden. Now they're in the process of ganging up and trying to get under the roof before I notice.

2026-06-21 17:51:43 UTC

Oh my God. I just understood why the Washington DC Reflecting Pool has turned green.
It's a Message from the universe.
Go Green!

2026-06-19 20:19:21 UTC

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For a while I thought the red was sunset colours, but that's obviously not the case or we wouldn't be seeing it in midwinter.
Is it red rear lights of a vehicle as the photographer takes a picture looking back?

2026-06-13 19:31:44 UTC

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Him and his Nazi, ahem, excuse me, Roman salutes.
It's odd to watch how "we didn't know" actually is, on one level, true.
"He didn't mean it." "Did he?" "He couldn't have." "He's just being an internet troll." "Wait, now he's egging people on to riot." "Wait, wait! now he's -- this is gonna get people killed!" "It HAS got people killed." "Oh my god." "Why didn't we stop him when he was just Paypal?"
Now we know why.

2026-06-10 01:58:26 UTC

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You can see how leaving the other bits behind really bothers that bird!

2026-04-13 21:22:30 UTC

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Sorry, but as a biologist all I can think is that the testicles on those things are seriously undersized. (😜 )
Whatever works tho

2026-04-13 03:22:55 UTC

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That's been my experience too: grow small tomatoes, like cherry tomatoes, in containers. The giants don't do that well.

2026-03-25 02:23:23 UTC

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Strange. Yours is the third time this question was asked about GrapheneOS and the GOOG VPN bug, but nobody answers.
Consider this the fourth request for an answer!

2026-03-22 05:35:50 UTC

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The blueness or pinkness of hydrangeas depends on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil.
I'm guessing whatever creates the acidity in this location is a very weak acid which neutralizes very soon after reaching the bracts? A wonderful effect!

2026-03-21 01:07:23 UTC

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The other throwback feeling in the linked post is how there's not one mention -- even after 1990 or 2000 -- of how it might, just maybe, make sense to take a good look at EVs, solar and wind. It's all very 1950s-feeling.

2026-03-16 22:52:23 UTC

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God, I love umbrella mosses!

2026-02-27 02:25:51 UTC

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😂 🤣 😂
Edited to add: 😱
Also FreddyB's @npub1d26…72uz contribution (if that's the right word 🤣 )

2026-02-06 05:06:00 UTC

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To say nothing of the Vireya branch of the genus.
Rhododendron konori, individual flowers about as big as a hand with the fingers spread, very fragrant, colour from white to ruby red.
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/021/932/471/988/351/original/f72551c09d4186a3.jpg

2026-01-14 21:22:46 UTC

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Agree that it's probably an angiosperm. In Madeira, the alt text says. The 'Tillandsia' looks to me more like the terminal leaves of a seaside shrub of some kind.

2026-01-02 03:58:48 UTC

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Beautiful owl pics!
Re freezing feetsies: some birds - though not owls, I think, they just fluff up - have countercurrent circulation in their legs. Seagulls and penguins do, don't know which others.
The major leg vein and artery are touching and the hotter artery transfers heat to the cold returning blood in the vein.
That way the blood is already cooled by the time it reaches the feet and less heat is lost to whatever cold surface the bird is standing on.

2025-12-29 01:48:13 UTC

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Yes, I do realize that. I still think it's good to see what's possible. It could open up new ways of getting real grapheneos onto more different kinds of hardware.

2025-12-29 01:04:45 UTC

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Thanks for posting. Shows it's possible!

2025-09-20 13:18:38 UTC

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I read the link. It's not clear there what, exactly, the offending toot was. It is clear that it's about Israel-Palestine.
For all I know, we're in Kimmel-land here, where the "offense" is some general statement about something else.
Plus, expecting mastodon admins to always rule in agreement with every user on pain of withholding support for network administration seems quite overheated to me.
May I respectfully suggest sticking a bit closer to the subject?

2025-09-16 21:19:04 UTC

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Color film is another whole level of difficult, but developing b&w film is just a matter of punctiliously following instructions and not forgetting anything in the total blackness of the darkroom. Even I've done it, Champion Butterfingers. Oh, that, and a high tolerance for vile chemical fumes.

2025-09-14 22:06:17 UTC

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Moss in the desert always feels surprising, even when I know (intellectually) that it's really good at drying out and coming back.

2025-08-08 23:43:25 UTC

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(Amazing dahlia! but this isn't about that. I'm a bit haunted by your story of the relatives who saw you as a lesser retail girl critter. What appalling people. You have a large and generous spirit to be dealing with them so kindly! As for them, all I can think is they must walk through a world filled with nothing but reflections of themselves. Possibly the definition of hell.)

2025-08-03 23:05:48 UTC

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The place to look for enabling gender freedom is our social sctructures.
Sex in eg temperature-dependent fish has exactly nothing to do with sex in vertebrate mammals. Drawing that equivalence is like saying that because starfish can regrow limbs, so can humans. It doesn't work that way.
What does work is changing society so that it's less of a straitjacket.

2025-08-01 12:21:58 UTC

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Wall St has been drooling over all the money in Social Security trust funds since Reagan's day.
It's been one of those "first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" progressions (but in a bad sense).
It's gone from being absurd to feeling near-inevitable. Simply because too many voters cannot understand that, no, they won't be billionaires. Ever. (Nor should they or anyone else be billionaires!)
Horrible, watching the future full of elderly pushing shopping carts approaching like a Death Walker out of Star Wars.

2025-07-03 18:58:24 UTC

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So ignore it. Who cares. The OS works regardless of the social skills on display.

2025-05-23 21:37:38 UTC

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Try Lois McMaster Bujold. She does both sf and fantasy which is excellent (without leaning on overused spices).
I'm more pro-sf, but recently I think she's written mainly fantasy.

2025-05-21 18:33:36 UTC

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The article points out that it's 1000x as efficient as a standard barium titanate PV panel. So this isn't comparing it to regular silicon panels.
Still, a real breakthrough.
Article has a link to the Science paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 "Strongly enhanced and tunable photovoltaic effect in ferroelectric-paraelectric superlattices | Science Advances"

2025-02-15 05:16:53 UTC

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12 for a hen is probably equivalent about 140 in human years. _And_ she laid four eggs?? I am astonished.

2025-02-09 19:59:04 UTC

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Not so sure it was _Biden's_ weak spot.
I'd say it was the media's weak spot because there was no point reporting much on him since he didn't generate outrage clicks 24/7.

2025-01-27 05:40:06 UTC

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The tell was how they weren't equally incensed by women losing ownership of their bodies with Dobbs, by the wholesale imprisonment and destruction of Uighurs, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The list could go on. Somehow it was Hamas, which throws gay people from buildings, (to say nothing of what they do to women) that was the true underdog.
But we'll all suffer the consequences. It's enough to make me want to pitch a tent in front of the White House and demonstrate.

2025-01-03 01:18:21 UTC

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They're magnificent! And you're a good photographer ... 😆 .
One word of caution about them: kangaroo paws grow naturally in some weird soil type that has very little phophorus. You have to keep all fertilizers containing phophates away from them.
I found out the hard way by killing a gorgeous red and green kangaroo paw that I'm still mourning. (It's only been 20 years. 😢 .)

2024-12-09 07:22:06 UTC

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Very interesting! all the info in alt text

2024-11-28 06:08:01 UTC

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I think it may be South Pole humour. A dark matter telescope is there. I'm pretty sure the dark zone in the photo is courtesy photoshop.

2024-11-07 06:09:18 UTC

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As another person whose spent years in the US and here, that doesn't sound like a Kiwi approach to me.
Maybe just shake your head hopelessly (it'll be too easy) and say, "It's effed as."
The situation isn't any Kiwi's fault.

2024-10-28 06:14:46 UTC

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although, just to be a killjoy here, it's some kind of grasshoppery creature. Have you seen how big their brains are? It's probably limited to "Food? Not Food?" and "Predator? Prey? Irrelevant." (The last said in a dalek voice.)
Enjoying a few more cc myself, it is a wonderful photo ☺️ !

2024-10-24 23:53:24 UTC

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I'm beginning to think we need to lose the phrase "by 2030."
All the catastrophes we've lined up all need X to be done "by 2030."
I'm sure what's happening is a feeling of, "Oh well. Time enough. We'll start in 2029."
We should shift the language. Say 100% is needed right now. Then, maybe, if we're lucky, we'll actually get 10% of the way there by 2030.

2024-10-12 05:43:32 UTC

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Some views of that wonderful municipal toilet building in Kawakawa. Possibly the only place on earth where people travel hundreds of miles to marvel at the toilets 😆 .
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/113/292/782/118/030/161/original/3cebd7c975be42af.jpg
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/113/292/803/117/230/007/original/723e67659fbe3134.jpg
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/113/292/825/479/147/163/original/1a18724809661a19.jpg
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/113/292/834/906/592/257/original/4744d8c7bcf180b6.jpg

2024-10-11 03:46:45 UTC

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Colors are so close to actual king parrots that it's within the color variation of monitors. Meaning I can't tell whether my monitor's calibration is minutely off or the colors are. There's also variation among king parrots. Some of them are more purely scarlet red and the super-green of some mosses.

2024-08-29 17:50:57 UTC

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I had the same thing recently! Sort of cured by turning off wifi, but I think I still missed at least one significant call that didn't ring.
Anyone know what's up with this?
Deeply disturbing! (Mainly because I'm in a situation where every once in a while I get absolutely vital calls. It's not all just, "Hi. Wassup?")

2024-08-22 21:37:51 UTC

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And, of course, the worst thing of all: the big utility and energy companies haven't yet found a way to force the situation to funnel money into their pockets.
(New Zealand, as usual, has outrun the majors: you just jack up the line charges into the stratosphere.) (Line charges= the daily fee paid to utilities for distributing power, i.e. past a certain very small percentage, pure rentrobbing. Don't let them do it wherever you are!)

2024-08-17 12:42:06 UTC

@npub1c8e…56ne @npub1kwa…e0nj Yeah. Goog-ish Pixels only. They do explain: don't have the people or resources to work out multiple forms of hardware. Which is a giant shame, but not really their fault.

2024-08-14 23:33:20 UTC

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Hilda Bastian @npub1cjn…05q3 has an extensive database of all the different covid vaccines. Well worth following. Some nasal vaccines are in phase III trials now. Some are approved (India, China, Iran, and?) but none from WHO top tier regulatory bodies. Periodic summaries of covid vaccines also on her blog: e.g. https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2024/07/31/more-signs-of-broad-protection-from-next-generation-covid-vaccines-update-19/
Yes, nasal / mucosal vaccines are the bees knees. Yes, we'd have them already if governments funded them like they did the mRNA ones, when they were scared.

2024-08-09 22:51:46 UTC

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It happens. This is who visited our garden in suburban (!) southern California about ten years ago. You can't see them all but she had _three_ kittens.
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/112/934/508/100/758/647/original/efcc36245ddf353b.jpg

2024-08-09 21:38:15 UTC

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Well, caats, in the sense of lions and lynxes and everybody, are all too elegant to actually dangle, but they don't usually look as smooth as the bobcat jumping that fence. Really is a beauty!

2024-08-09 20:15:45 UTC

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Minor point, but I'm pretty sure "he" is a "she" judging by the clip, unless you know different.

2024-08-06 10:26:43 UTC

Mastodon netiquette question: I thought you were supposed to include all "@" mentioned in a post to which you're replying. Sometimes that's a paragraph's worth (and on my instance they all seem to count toward the 500 char limit).
Recently I saw a comment that implied doing that was a cousin of an email "reply all" and you should only include the @ you're actually replying to.
Which is it? Polite or stupid?? 😬
@admin@mastodon.nz ?

2024-08-01 19:01:02 UTC

This is exactly right.
https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/112/888/273/989/947/332/original/6e1b4398f0f3307b.png