I've been deep diving a bit myself and found this article that explains another thing that's puzzled me over the years. Some birds have crazy vibrant coloration that almost glistens, like peacock feathers. Outside of the zoo, I've noticed it a bit in common grackles. They look black on first glance, but when you study them closely, they have this kind of purple sheen around their heads. Apparently, it's still melanin at work here, but it's structured in a very special way.
Right? I guess that's what puzzles me the most about it. It must be really hard for mammals to become green since you would think it would confer an advantage in many environments you find them in.
I guess there are a lot of mammal species that kind of make themselves scarce during the broad daylight hours, so maybe green camouflage is less relevant if you're only out between dusk and dawn?
Yeah fair. I had painted glass fish in my aquarium at one point and discovered the "paint" came from feeding them dyed food and eventually faded away when I gave them normal food back at home. They are naturally transparent for the most part which, frankly, I thought was cooler. I did have a gourami that was legit green though, as far as I could tell.
Yeah, I'm a big believer in shade trees! The one in our front yard has grown tall enough to provide blessed relief from a blazing afternoon sun. The only problem is the dude next door, who's heavy into solar, is worried it'll block his panels. And I'm a believer in solar too, so I don't know what to say. Maybe we can come to some sort of compromise…
I had to sleep on this before coming up with a reply. As an individual who is not what you would call religiously devout, you can take it with a grain of salt. But whatever the case, here goes…
I grew up without religion for the most part but married a Catholic, and as musicians, we wound up playing at the local church.
As it stands, I would not say that I have bought into the whole religious faith thing at the deepest levels. That does not come easily for me. But I think it is fair to say that certain aspects of the religious experience have rubbed off?
In particular, I am more invested in the welfare of others ranging from my immediate family and friends (many of whom I met indirectly through church connections) to the community at large. As such, I am in no hurry to shuffle off at this point, as I feel there are people who depend on me and so I guess I still have unfinished business?
I don't know what happens in any afterlife. Does anyone, really? Frankly, if we all just fade away into oblivion, I'd be satisfied to simply have a peaceful release from worldy concerns, but I don't have any expectations beyond that.
That's why we need passive daytime radiative cooling. In theory, it could completely eliminate the urban heat island, but it still seems to be mostly at the pilot project stage so far. I did read somewhere that you can DIY with some packaging tape (which somehow has the right properties?) over a reflective backing. Maybe I'll experiment a bit this summer.
Yeah, one context in which a subject is not required even with proper English grammar is in imperatives, which makes sense given the implied urgency. If "Watch out!" had to be something more long-winded like "You must watch out!" you'd probably be dead.
It wouldn't surprise me if this subject-dropping was introduced into English by non-native speakers? English is actually a bit peculiar as languages go in its wanting to put a subject in practically every sentence. It's raining. It's about time. What is the "it" here referring to? Linguists will tell you you're looking at a subject placeholder that doesn't convey any special meaning but simply completes the grammar. And people learning English from other languages that don't need this fail to see the point. So they just start saying "About time we dropped that stupid it!" and then even native speakers start thinking yeah, why not ditch the subject if we don't really need it?
I don't live in Scotland, but I can't even imagine what it must've been like to have that close referendum followed by Brexit only a couple of years later.
What I'm wondering about right now though is Irish unification? That seems to be building up some serious momentum from everything I've been reading.
IDE: Oh! You mean farfignewton right? I found that in some completely unrelated library you didn't write. Allow me complete that for you while you're not paying attention.
I don't really have an answer for you, but can say when recompiling older codebases (some in C and some in C++) using a modern C++ compiler, typing errors are among the most common I have to address. In particular, compilers seem to insist more on explicit casts for type narrowing, which is a good thing. But I don't know about modern C itself? It wouldn't surprise me if the language has become stricter.
Yeah that was my read of it. I remember actually seeing people hopping onto the train even as it was starting to move out. It took those locomotives a long time to build up any significant speed, so I don't think anyone was freaking out about getting cut in half or anything.
Never lived in the USSR but travelled through the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway with my dad years ago when just a kid. He spoke fluent Russian and struck up conversations with locals wherever we stopped. At one point, they broke out into gales of laughter before we reboarded the train. I asked him what that was all about.
He said he had asked if anyone practiced religion in the USSR? At first, they were reluctant to answer. Who wants to know? Why do you ask? And he said well, I notice there are signs all over the train station that it is forbidden to walk over the tracks. Yet I see people going so far as to crawl under one train to reach another. After a moment of awkward silence, that's when the laughter broke out. "Ah shit man, you got us. Religion is alive and well here!"
This was a struggle for me going from hobbyist programmer to working at a company. I tried to tone it down. Really. But eventually I got "promoted" to having my own office with a suspiciously thick door. Hmm…
Great read! That explains a lot.
I've been deep diving a bit myself and found this article that explains another thing that's puzzled me over the years. Some birds have crazy vibrant coloration that almost glistens, like peacock feathers. Outside of the zoo, I've noticed it a bit in common grackles. They look black on first glance, but when you study them closely, they have this kind of purple sheen around their heads. Apparently, it's still melanin at work here, but it's structured in a very special way.