We stopped in and chatted with a woman about a jeep that's been sitting in her yard. We found out it would take a ton of money to get it going, so that's out. She did tell us about a guy that lives on our road, we knew his name but never met him. He was once a big music producer in Nashville, TN and was married to one of Lorretta Lynn's daughters. Even after their divorce he stayed friends with Lorretta. This house is just one of many that he has in different states, but that was so cool to find out that someone famous was that close to us. She had so much history to tell us. We also found out she has no internet, not on her phone, no computer, no tablet. That is one smart lady.
I still do not understand why prototaxites had to be three to nine meters tall. Nothing was tall back then. Plants are tall to avoid the shade of other plants. Prototaxites (probably) didn't "need" sunlight.
Spore dispersal isn't a good reason to be tall IMO.
If Prototaxites were just the stalk of a "fruiting body" of a fungus the network of mycelium must have been massive. Some prototaxites fossils show evidence of creatures/fungi colonizing them.
weren't these the object of a 2022 study concluding "What tree? They had to be on their sides, they are means of moving nutrients and water between places"? cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/… It really does put a question mark on those and on so many other things we assume have a correct taxonomy from the 1800 forward.
it's worthwhile to remember that evolution isn't maximizing, especially back then. It's always been a good enough function. The only thing that drives things into efficiency is competition. If there wasn't anything to stop them growing, why would they stop growing?
I have heard of, and even deployed the notion that there were fewer evolutionary pressures in the deep past, and therefore things could exist then would never survive today. But, I also worry this kind of thinking can be a trap, especially when attempting to understand the ecological role of ubiquitous organisms. If something is common it will be exploited. We assume that if we attempted to grow prototaxities today it could not compete— but what if, instead it took over?
Things capable of thriving, given the right conditions. Sometimes something makes a temporary bottleneck like a meteor that blocks out the sun for few years, or less spectacularly, humans, and a whole bunch of plants that don’t have some seeds that can wait two years to germinate gets wiped out.
Then everyone is left wondering why all the creatures on earth are immune to microplastics even though they are very rare or descendants of cockroaches etc etc.
1/3 personally, I am skeptical of the notion that there were "fewer evolutionary pressures" in the deep past. To me it seems unlikely that "evolutionary pressures" are a one dimensional thing where all evolutionary pressures can measured and combined on a single metric.
I read somewhere that very early life, long before the Cambrian explosion, was more sloppy in how it translated DNA to phenotypes.
If true, this would mean more of a disconnect between genetics and who wins at natural selection. So 'tightening up' DNA interpretation would speed up advantageous genetic change.
Evolution itself does seem to evolve. And don't get me started about sex!
Oh, man. I read about it on PZ Meyers' blog Pharyngula. It had to be before or during the previous Trump administration.
I did some googling to see if I could find it again, but PZ has been writing about a billion words a day for a couple of decades now, and it is well buried. If *you* find it, share a link, and I promise the same.
Whether the paper was any good or not, it is plausible that right after abiogenesis DNA transcription would have been pretty crude.
There is this very quaint idea that in the Eidiacarian life was simple and basic— because it was the beginning of some journey in mounting complexity. And this is true in the sense that ecosystems seemed to have fewer layers. But is that because they were somehow less refined by evolutionary pressures and time? Or was it just a function of a less rich environment with fewer niches— but the creatures were every bit as sophisticated at what they did as us today?
@quinn @econads oh, I love horseshoe crabs, and I admire their stability ... but ... if you're not already aware of it, this introduction to their much greater past diversity in the Triassic and Carboniferous is wonderful:
I wonder if a prototaxite could be like a living termite mound. It houses and protects small animals and in return they bring their meals inside which decay and feed the fungus.
my favorite hypothesis is that Prototaxites was adapated to survive at high paleolatitudes, where most of the light comes in a t low angles, and is thus better absorbed by a nearly vertical surface. But it's not clear to me what portion of Prototaxites fossils are actually from sites with high paleolatitude. This hypothesis also depends on the hypothesis that Prototaxites was doing photosynthesis, which comes in several forms, but the best form is probably the lichen hypothesis.
Could it be a similar reason to why termite mounds are so tall? I think one reason termite mounds are tall is to maintain internal temperature/humidity conditions suitable for fungi growth. And Prototaxites are thought to be fungi, right?
Yes, but termite mounds are like smoke stacks, hollow so the pull down cool air to circulate in the nest. Most of the termites aren't even up in the stacks, they live just above and below ground, but use the soil they excavate to make their nest to make chimneys to bring in air.
Prototaxites was the first giant organism to live on the terrestrial surface, reaching sizes of 8 metres in the Early Devonian. However, its taxonomic assignment has been debated for over 165 years1-7.
"Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. ... We therefore conclude that ****Prototaxites was not a fungus***** (WHAT), and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage. (OMG GIRL STOP)"
This is crazy! From what I've seen everyone hates it when someone tries to say organisms are from entirely extinct lineages. The bar for this is high. WOW.
If this makes it past peer review... which won't be soft or kind I expect, it's a big deal. I'll do my best to understand the details but I have not been happy with the idea that it was "just a big fungi" for a whole bunch of reasons.
@astory This could be simply a semi-symbiotic multi-species and taxii construct. It provides height, light, housing for burrowers and sapro-recycling of their crap for the fungus, security for flying/floating stuff on top, a good launching pad for spores of all sorts (fungi, vegetals), a concentration of chlorophyllian beings on top, if linked to a burrowed veins system could generate succion and liquid circulation towards the top, some sort of multispieces vascular system... etc.
@astory I rather suspect the fact that plants are the nearest dot in their 2d graph combined with the lignin-like stuff may cause the "maybe it's actually a plant after all" hypothesis to rise from the dead. Maybe we'll see the dreadfully confusing term "stem-land-plant" used in the cladistics sense of "an entirely extinct group most closely related to land plants", (compare to stem-bird or stem-arthropod).
@astory well ... that's all that's known to be preserved and connected with the holotype. Wouldn't be the first time a fossil thing had lots of other features which nobody knew it had for many years. Plants in particular are the worst for this; for example, the Devonian fossil forest of Gilboa was found (in upstate NY) in the 1920s, but the crowns and foilage of its cladoxylopsid trees wasn't known for nearly 90 years.
@mattmcirvin @astory well maybe the yeast needed for the standing baguette hypothesis would have left something that would fossilize like the fungi the paper compared it to, since yeast is fungi. But on the other hand, yeast don't produce chitin, so maybe not. That said, I think a standing baguette that contained lignin-like chemicals would be quite tough, and soaking it in your coffee or your broth probably wouldn't help.
@astory huh. Now it's a weirdo non-plant entirely extinct eukaryote, but it convergently evolved something that fossilized the same way lignin does ... potentially millions of years before land plants evolved lignin! (I don't know if lignin itself evolved multiple times convergently among land plants, but since the tree habit did, I assume lignin did too.)
I almost tagged my post "prototaxities fan fiction" ... but then realized I'd need to make it "SFW prototaxities fan fiction" for obvious reasons... and decided that even THAT was causing trouble where none was wanted.
But I'm bringing it up now anyways.
Those enigmatic dildos of the deep past, what were they doing???
One time I went to a famous massage place in Jakarta, put my pants in a corner of the place. When I was done I put my pants back on and hurriedly got on the back of a motorbike taxi to go on a 1h trip back to the city for a meeting. While riding pillion I realized that my pants were full of fire ants. We could not stop anywhere for that hour and my motorbike taxi guy also got fire ants in his pants
If you are part of a community of faith in a deep suburban or rural area, do you feel the members of your community, as a whole, have the tech skills they need for the modern world?
I’d really appreciate boosts for reach on this one ✨
Provided to YouTube by Columbia/LegacyWhen It's Springtime In The Rockies · Gene AutryThe Essential Gene Autry℗ Originally Released 1938 Sony BMG Music Enter...
Interessanter Text über die fehlende Aufarbeitung der Nazi-Zeit in Deutschland, die den Grundstein gelegt hat für den heutigen Rechtsruck und den Umgang mit dem Konflikt in Israel & Palästina.
»Germany embraced Israel to atone for its wartime guilt. But was this in part a way to avoid truly confronting its past?« theguardian.com/news/2025/jan/… (frei mit Registrierung lesbar)
Germany embraced Israel to atone for its wartime guilt. But was this in part a way to avoid truly confronting its past? By Pankaj Mishra. Read by Mikhail Sen
Kurzgefasst mit meinen Worten die These des Autors: Deutschland hat nur wenige Täter verurteilt, aber die Taten und die zugrundelegende gruppenbezogenene Menschenfeindlichkeit & Ideologie nicht aufgearbeitet. Deutsche, insbesondere die die was zu sagen haben waren weiter antisemitisch as hell. Projektion von Schuld, von Verantwortung und ihres Weltbilds auf andere ersetzten die Aufarbeitung.
Der Fehler, vor allem im Osten, war auch, den Mai 1945 als Befreiung zu betiteln. Aber das Land war ja durch die Niederlage nicht plötzlich frei von Faschismus. Die folgende Entnazifizierung bewirkte, das gesellschaftliche Problem auf einzelne Schuldige zu legen und dadurch zu verstecken.
How a small detail in #DataViz can change your understanding of the data. I have these 20 scatterplots for 20 various climate models. It seems that in some models there's a relationship, in other not so much, and in some it's clearly non-linear while in others is harder to tell. Next, I used a fixed scale for all panels and also added all dots in gray to each panel. Whoa, that's different! Now it looks like each model is representing a different part of the population!
Recently, I have had a fascination with wanting to try out hiking in the darkness of the night.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about night hiking and what the benefits might be, including being able to stay cooler in the summer heat, experiencing the fascinating sounds of the nocturnal wildlife, and seeing the night sky up above.
`Without underlying warming, a record-shattering jump [in Sea Surface Temperatures] as observed in 2023–2024 is practically impossible. We found indeed no record-shattering jumps in our synthetic time series without a long-term warming trend, irrespective of the variability or autocorrelation characteristics`
Observations and climate models suggest that the global sea surface temperature jump in 2023–2024 was not unexpected and would have been nearly impossible without anthropogenic warming.
🔥 Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! 🔥 Chapter terbaru dari Aishiteru Game wo Owarasetai (Chapter 54) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! 🎉 📖 Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya. ✨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya! 👉 Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/241493 ⏳ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya! #EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Comedy #Romance #School #Shounen #SliceOfLife
🔥 Pecinta Komik, Ini yang Kamu Tunggu! 🔥 Chapter terbaru dari Aishiteru Game wo Owarasetai (Chapter 55) sudah hadir dalam Bahasa Indonesia! 🎉 📖 Gabung bersama ribuan pembaca lainnya dan nikmati kisah serunya. ✨ Jangan biarkan orang lain tahu kisah ini lebih dulu, baca sekarang dan rasakan sendiri keseruannya! 👉 Klik di sini untuk mulai membaca sekarang: e-komik.org/komik/241493 ⏳ Jadilah yang pertama tahu apa yang terjadi selanjutnya! #EKomik #Komik #Comic #Manga #Comedy #Romance #School #Shounen #SliceOfLife
Not what you had in mind but I use emanote. It turns markdown files into a website with backlinks. So it's like an automatic mindmap where the nodes are notes.
Three times a day I share translations of German folk tales. Now, while I have translated a _lot_ of these tales, my backlog is not infinite - and thus, every few months I have to start "recycling" tales I have shared previously.
Thus, I am curious: How many of the tales you see in your feed are new to you personally, and how many have you seen before?
Most tales are new to me (88%, 24 votes)
About an equal number of known and unknown tales (7%, 2 votes)
Własny serwer Red Hat – cz.5: serwer poczty SMTP. W piątej części z cyklu Własny Serwer Red Hat zainstalujemy serwer poczty SMTP w systemie kompatybilnym z Red Hat – Rocky Linux. Można go również zastosować w innych, kompatybilnych systemach, takich jak: CloudLinux, AlmaLinux, EuroLinux, CentOS Stream, MIRACLE Linux, etc. linuxiarze.pl/wlasny-serwer-re… #linux #server #email #redhat #almalinux #rockylinux #centos
A Canadian entrepreneur detained by ICE is speaking out after she got arrested while trying to enter the San Diego border to obtain a visa last Monday.
the tesla protest might objectively be among the most successful in history already just in terms of immediate response, if you consider they forced the world’s most powerful person & its most wealthy to fully degrade themselves like used car salesmen on live TV while the whole world watched agog.
Has anybody seen real evidence that Trump actually paid for, with his own money, that Tesla he claims to have bought? Because if Musk gave it to him as a gift, isn't that's illegal?
Hoe stap je over van Twitter naar Mastodon, van Instagram naar Pixelfed, of van Google naar NextCloud? Ontdek alternatieve platforms tijdens een hands-on middag op do 13 maart, 16:00-18:00u 📍 Minerva Groningen (Groene Zaal+ Praediniussingel 59. Gratis aanmelden via info [at] noorderlicht.com
A civil rights activist who ran for president twice and became a Democratic power broker, Jackson is an American political icon. But above all, he’s a Southerner.
(a lil bit)
Thomas Sturm
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •João Tiago Rebelo (NAFO J-121)
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •It really does put a question mark on those and on so many other things we assume have a correct taxonomy from the 1800 forward.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
Quinn Norton
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •@quinn
I have heard of, and even deployed the notion that there were fewer evolutionary pressures in the deep past, and therefore things could exist then would never survive today. But, I also worry this kind of thinking can be a trap, especially when attempting to understand the ecological role of ubiquitous organisms. If something is common it will be exploited. We assume that if we attempted to grow prototaxities today it could not compete— but what if, instead it took over?
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@quinn
Things capable of thriving, given the right conditions. Sometimes something makes a temporary bottleneck like a meteor that blocks out the sun for few years, or less spectacularly, humans, and a whole bunch of plants that don’t have some seeds that can wait two years to germinate gets wiped out.
Then everyone is left wondering why all the creatures on earth are immune to microplastics even though they are very rare or descendants of cockroaches etc etc.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
llewelly
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@quinn
1/3
personally, I am skeptical of the notion that there were "fewer evolutionary pressures" in the deep past. To me it seems unlikely that "evolutionary pressures" are a one dimensional thing where all evolutionary pressures can measured and combined on a single metric.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
Phosphenes
in reply to llewelly • • •@llewelly @quinn
I read somewhere that very early life, long before the Cambrian explosion, was more sloppy in how it translated DNA to phenotypes.
If true, this would mean more of a disconnect between genetics and who wins at natural selection. So 'tightening up' DNA interpretation would speed up advantageous genetic change.
Evolution itself does seem to evolve. And don't get me started about sex!
myrmepropagandist
in reply to Phosphenes • • •@Phosphenes @llewelly @quinn
Any chance you could find that paper? I’m curious how seriously it was taken—
Phosphenes
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@llewelly @quinn
Oh, man. I read about it on PZ Meyers' blog Pharyngula. It had to be before or during the previous Trump administration.
I did some googling to see if I could find it again, but PZ has been writing about a billion words a day for a couple of decades now, and it is well buried. If *you* find it, share a link, and I promise the same.
Whether the paper was any good or not, it is plausible that right after abiogenesis DNA transcription would have been pretty crude.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to llewelly • • •@llewelly @quinn
There is this very quaint idea that in the Eidiacarian life was simple and basic— because it was the beginning of some journey in mounting complexity. And this is true in the sense that ecosystems seemed to have fewer layers. But is that because they were somehow less refined by evolutionary pressures and time? Or was it just a function of a less rich environment with fewer niches— but the creatures were every bit as sophisticated at what they did as us today?
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •I think it’s the latter. I think a half million years is plenty enough time to get very “refined” —
econads
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Quinn Norton
in reply to econads • • •llewelly
in reply to Quinn Norton • • •@quinn @econads
oh, I love horseshoe crabs, and I admire their stability ... but ... if you're not already aware of it, this introduction to their much greater past diversity in the Triassic and Carboniferous is wonderful:
palaeocast.com/horseshoe-crabs…
Phosphenes
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Phosphenes
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •llewelly
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •Isaac Ji Kuo
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to Isaac Ji Kuo • • •@isaackuo
Yes, but termite mounds are like smoke stacks, hollow so the pull down cool air to circulate in the nest. Most of the termites aren't even up in the stacks, they live just above and below ground, but use the soil they excavate to make their nest to make chimneys to bring in air.
Alec Story
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •new prototaxites lore just dropped (if it passes peer review)!
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20…
Prototaxites was an extinct lineage of multicellular terrestrial eukaryotes
bioRxivmyrmepropagandist
in reply to Alec Story • • •@astory
"Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. ... We therefore conclude that ****Prototaxites was not a fungus***** (WHAT), and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage. (OMG GIRL STOP)"
This is crazy! From what I've seen everyone hates it when someone tries to say organisms are from entirely extinct lineages. The bar for this is high. WOW.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
myrmepropagandist
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •@astory
If this makes it past peer review... which won't be soft or kind I expect, it's a big deal. I'll do my best to understand the details but I have not been happy with the idea that it was "just a big fungi" for a whole bunch of reasons.
But... I'm just in the fandom as it were.
myrmepropagandist reshared this.
franebleu
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •This could be simply a semi-symbiotic multi-species and taxii construct. It provides height, light, housing for burrowers and sapro-recycling of their crap for the fungus, security for flying/floating stuff on top, a good launching pad for spores of all sorts (fungi, vegetals), a concentration of chlorophyllian beings on top, if linked to a burrowed veins system could generate succion and liquid circulation towards the top, some sort of multispieces vascular system... etc.
llewelly
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •myrmepropagandist
in reply to llewelly • • •@llewelly @astory
Even more confusing because it's morphology is just... a big ol fat stem.
llewelly
in reply to myrmepropagandist • • •well ... that's all that's known to be preserved and connected with the holotype. Wouldn't be the first time a fossil thing had lots of other features which nobody knew it had for many years. Plants in particular are the worst for this; for example, the Devonian fossil forest of Gilboa was found (in upstate NY) in the 1920s, but the crowns and foilage of its cladoxylopsid trees wasn't known for nearly 90 years.
Matt McIrvin
in reply to llewelly • • •llewelly
in reply to Matt McIrvin • • •llewelly
in reply to Alec Story • • •huh. Now it's a weirdo non-plant entirely extinct eukaryote, but it convergently evolved something that fossilized the same way lignin does ... potentially millions of years before land plants evolved lignin! (I don't know if lignin itself evolved multiple times convergently among land plants, but since the tree habit did, I assume lignin did too.)
myrmepropagandist
Unknown parent • • •@WeeMadHamish
I almost tagged my post "prototaxities fan fiction" ... but then realized I'd need to make it "SFW prototaxities fan fiction" for obvious reasons... and decided that even THAT was causing trouble where none was wanted.
But I'm bringing it up now anyways.
Those enigmatic dildos of the deep past, what were they doing???