Lmst

@ChouvencL Yes, cattle. They either get milked or slaughtered, and act like they don't mind.

Photo of a hoverfly larva swallowing an aphid. More aphids are sitting in a cluster in the center of the leaf, waiting for their turn.

@RFancio @petergleick They've added an expert statement on SRF news now. Sounds like the landslide above that accelerated the glacier would have been less likely without the permafrost melting.

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The dozens of eyes of scallops are quite intricate. They have a lens up top like ours, but that doesn't do most of the focusing. Instead the light passes through to a mirrored retina, covered with a field of guanine crystals (yes, that guanine, the G in the ATCG bases of DNA!). The reflective layer is used to focus the light back towards the second retina where the rod cells are. In this way, the eyes of scallops work more like our mirror telescopes than the eyes of most other creatures. Using these eyes, scallops can resolve images in surprising detail, allowing them to discern the shape of predators, navigate while swimming, and even figure out the good places to seek food (they tend to reach out to smell/feel objects based on what they are seeing!) #clamFacts

a cross section diagram of a scallop eye. a cornea on top, then a lens, then a lens, then a dual-layer mirrored retina, then rods and cones, then a pigment layer. From Wilkens 2006

$a schemaitc showing how the nerves connect to the dual-layer retina, and how light is refracted through a top lens, reflected from the bottom retina to focus, and absorbed by the second retina where the photons are absorbed, sent down the optic nerve. From Wilkens 2006$

A close up from Palmer 2017 of the microstructure of the eye via electron microscope. One of the retinal layers is made of little plates of guanine, around 1 micron across, looking like fish scales

A close up of the vividly pigmented blue eyes, with the corneas visible.

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I had the pleasure to meet the great Andy Lomas at #VIZBI last week. His custom CUDA-based simulations led me to recreate the diffusion-limited aggregation process in #GeometryNodes. Here are a few of my results, each consisting of somewhere between 2-4 million points.

#Blender #B3D #Simulation #GenerativeArt

A diffusely lit complex organic structure, made from countless tiny simulated points, roughly resembling a coral plant, colored in pale blue.

A diffusely lit complex organic structure, made from countless tiny simulated points, roughly resembling fungal or mossy growth, with a lot of horizontal spread. Stronger greens in the center and fading to a more pastel green at the outer edges.

A diffusely lit complex organic structure, made from countless tiny simulated points, roughly resembling a coral plant, colored in red, white and coral.

A diffusely lit complex organic structure, made from countless tiny simulated points, roughly resembling a coral plant, colored in eerily glowing blue hues, with thick strands revolving around themselves and growing upwards.

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We created a set of sculptural award plaques for an interdisciplinary fund at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. @danzeeeman commissioned us to design a unique set of award plaques that will hold the names of recipients over the next 75 years https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9778

Carved from rich walnut, these plaques have flowing, sculptural contours that evoke natural growth processes. Instead of a traditional grid, the black nameplates are arranged within an intricate, algorithmically generated pattern—reminiscent of plant cells or the skeletal structures of microscopic radiolaria.

@JenMsft probably needs to warn about this, too: https://xkcd.com/456/

@angrybunnyman Fascinating, I agree! But the maxy you're looking for is not me, but @mncmncmnc

@oldshabbyhat @jk Over a decade ago I heard a song that went like: "the future is in the hands of the machines; their electronic brains learn exponentially" right after looking at a training/validation plot of a neural network. Yes, exponential decay of progress. Happens with every machine learning model. Not worried.

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This is my favorite photo for demonstrating the impact of #LightPollution on physiology. The image was taken by shows a soybean field illuminated by a badly directed streetlight.

What's happening here is that soybeans are supposed to grow leaves in the early part of summer, and as nights get longer, they should make #soybeans and turn brown. In the green area, the plants don't understand what time of year it is, and it's therefore a complete loss for the farmer.

The reason I love the photo so much is because you can see the shadow of the light mast on the field.

The photo was taken by Dwaine Eddie McGriff & Ben Tankersley, and originally posted to Xitter (the post no longer exists).

The problem could be entirely solved by using a streetlight with strong backlight shielding (i.e. shining the light only on the roadway).

(4/17)

Image of a field next to a roadway with a light mast. The plants nearest the light are green, the plants further away are brown. A brown area corresponding to the shadow of the mast extends to the bottom of the image.

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No, don't go to the collision monster little square! Nooooo... !
(tweeking some parameters in the plugin while also understanding how it made the bodies. This behaviour was happening a couple of times before too)

@toxi Aww, don't look at that. Humans are so bad at bragging about their pointless stuff, this is just a sad display. Watch this peacock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLuoJpml0Bs&t=124s

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The shells of snails and clams look quite different, but every clam shell actually contains a hidden spiral, hinting at their shared ancestry. In a classic series of papers in the 1960s, David Raup figured out that all mollusk shell shapes are governed by a logarithmic spiral model. Varying four parameters, a vast variety of shapes can be made. Others built on the model since, but the Raup model was an important advance in reverse engineering the brilliance of the mollusk shell. #clamFacts

A schematic showing a sequence of shapes between a long spiral cone of a snail and less coiled shapes with comparatively larger whorls, leading to a clam shell, which has a hint of a coil at the "beak" but is otherwise just a giant concave shell opening (aperture)

I've transplanted my growth simulation into a hand-drawn map. There is some rainfall too, collecting at the bottom. I wonder if I can now evolve them to collect water.

Screenshot of a small hex grid simulation growing something from a seed. Below is a window with the tiled level editor showing the hand-drawn map that constrains the growth.

@simontatham The use of long (horizontal) threads for the half-tones (as opposed to dithering patterns) also has parallels with compression under RLE (run-length encoding). Not sure if computer artists ever changed their style just for a few bytes under RLE, but I wouldn't be surprised.

@peterfr @verbeeld It's not anything personal, it's just .art being very strict with moderation / federation. Have a look at https://www.patreon.com/posts/silencing-social-74474015 for details.

They also don't like the instance I'm writing this from, because it has lots of AI generated images. Which I think is good - if I'm on .art I don't want to guess if something is AI generated (because people don't label it here). Just different communities.

(Though ironically, now I'm not sure if you'll even see this reply.)

@oppen now awaiting the rendering of a thread made from multiple lines ;)

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