empiricalsciencecats

[empiricalsciencecats]

Kusuo- 1, Kokomi- 0

(based on post by @incorrectpsinan)

[empiricalsciencecats]

Horned gophers, how did I not know of this before...

Ceratogaulus sp.

Artwork by Lucas Lima

The horned gopher had a pair of large extensions from its nose, but the exact function is not yet known. At 30 cm (1 ft) long, it is the smallest known mammal to have had horns.

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252MYA creates custom-made artwork for private collections and editorial, scientific, or educational project.

[empiricalsciencecats]

In a remote stretch of rainforest on Canada’s Pacific coast, a unique population of wolves has taken to a life of the sea.

Along the wild Pacific coast of British Columbia – a misty wonderland of craggy glacier-gouged shores and temperate rainforest – there lives a population of wolves genetically and behaviorally distinct from the rest. They’ve traded in deer and sheep and mountain goats for the bounty of the sea. They’ve been known to swim up to eight miles to get from the mainland to an island; they live on barnacles and herring roe, seals and dead whales. Some 90 percent of their food comes directly from the ocean…

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Bristol Bay, home to half the world’s Sockeye salmon population, is about to be destroyed.

“For more than 15 years, Northern Dynasty Minerals, a Canadian mining company, has sought to build a gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay. And this spring, the Trump administration took swift action to make that prospect more likely. Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt met on May 1 with the CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of the mining company, CNN reported on September 22 based on interviews and government emails. Little more than an hour later, according to internal emails, the administrator directed his staff to reverse Obama-era protections for Bristol Bay, which had been created after years of scientific review. Based on that work, the previous administration had aimed to pre-emptively veto certain mining activities in the ecologically important region.” (Src)

If this mine goes through: Thousands of jobs will be lost, an entire ecosystem will be destroyed and the world’s Sockeye salmon population will be decimated.

We have til October 17th to let the EPA know this decision is wrong.

You can also help by sharing this post and telling others that this is happening, awareness is key!

[empiricalsciencecats]

[empiricalsciencecats]

WHAT.

HAS.

HAPPENED.

TO.

EDUCATION.

[empiricalsciencecats]

So sad that it’s true in the 21st century

[empiricalsciencecats]

Earth's first mission to a binary asteroid, for planetary defence

Paris (ESA) Jun 26, 2018 Planning for humankind’s first mission to a binary asteroid system has entered its next engineering phase. ESA’s proposed Hera mission would also be Europe’s contribution to an ambitious planetary defence experiment. Named for the Greek goddess of marriage, Hera would fly to the Didymos pair of Near-Earth asteroids: the 780 m-diameter mountain-sized main body is orbited by a 160 m moon, in Full article

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The logic here is fascinating.

1. Care about what this animal thinks enough to emulate it.

2. Don’t care about what animals/others think because this animal doesn’t.

3. Otherwise, you’ll be inauthentic.

Learn from your kin

Have you ever seen a bear fret over the thoughts of a sparrow? Or a wolf worry over what the deer think of him? Then you shouldn’t either. Be fearlessly authentic and live through the wild that inhabits your spirit.

[empiricalsciencecats]

And it continues.

I think this might be one of my favorite pages so far, although I quickly ran into spacing issues of both what could fit on one page and of what could be interesting to accompany with a picture, and of my own lack of knowledge. Technically, the Greek had multiple systems which led to Aristotle’s 5 elements which became extremely popular. One thing I also thought about adding (and maybe they’ll get a mention on another page) is ‘mana’-type systems like the Aztec’s teotl (hopefully I remembered the term right), but I wasn’t sure these could really be considered an element.

The Aztec concept of sacrifice and generation, both of Gods and to Gods, definitely has some similarities to Chinese concepts of elements giving way to other elements or destroying them, but I don’t know enough to say definitively that they believed it was teotl/mystery energy that was being transformed into new forms. They had some weird beliefs, like that you could make people out of maize, although that isn’t any weirder than thinking you can make people out of breath, clay and dirt or speaking special words.

The Australian system where dreams take on huge importance in shaping the world is also very interesting, but I know even less about it and I’m not sure they’d call dreams/thoughts an element, although I wouldn’t count against it either. Maybe another thing for a future page... or even the next page. Hm.

As for Africa, people often forget Africa wasn’t some big isolated continent but was basically, trade-wise, frequently in contact with the Middle East and Greece, and probably would have quickly become familiar with the Greek element system. Some Greek and Roman people were certainly even African in origin themselves, like Emperor Severus, who is my favorite emperor purely because I think Severus Snape is named after him and so I keep imagining him as black Emperor Snape. >_> Which, awesome.

[empiricalsciencecats]

Jugulator, a predatory prehistoric contemporary of Utahraptor and fairly large for a mammal of that era (bigger than a shrew), was probably as close as we’ll ever get to flying (or gliding, in this case) cats.

Happy Holidays.

[empiricalsciencecats]

Random cat spiral. Don’t ask why I doodled this, I have no idea.

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can we all please just assume by default that no artist is okay with having their art reposted unless they state otherwise instead of the other way around

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Because you haven’t had any sex all year, and as an average person, the laws of math now demand you are going to have sex 89 times this month? Yeah, that must be crazy for you. /snark

I hatelove to be that one guy to ruin a joke, and this has probably already been pointed out, but... Well, how was the average calculated? If the group is ‘1,1,1,1, 1,1, 20, 30,1000′, that random outlier is going to totally skew the average of the whole group. The typical person and the average person aren’t the same.

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I completely forgot to add this last one even though I had it done months ago.

I admit, these are just scribbles, but I can’t help but like the last image a lot. Although looking at it, I just realized I correctly flipped black cat’s marker but not gray cat’s markers, whoops. Oh well.

[empiricalsciencecats]

Kitty is puzzled.

And I also forgot their markings. Bad me.

[empiricalsciencecats]

Gasp! Where could the idea of ideal plantness loving and requiring sun (fire), earth, and water gone wrong???