Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@farah

Yes. Yes you do.

(go for his SF under "Ian M. Banks" his fiction, written under "Ian Banks" is... Honestly it's very dark whereas his SF is filled with hope and wonder.)

I like "look to windward" and "the Algebraist"

@shlee

I would support an option for the person making the post to add a "dislike" button. Or to only have a dislike button for some kinds of posts.

@weirdestate

death stairs! there is *clearly* a safety net!

@mikeolson

Not at all.

@thekitmalone

Yes!

I wrote a letter for my congressmen Ritchie Torres. I will deliver it in person later and I have some things to say to him that I don't want to put in writing. Frankly, I think we may need to find a new rep. but it seems responsible to do this. Feel free to use bits of this if it is helpful. I'm still pushing the "money out of politics" thing because I don't see how they can say no to it.

It's the floor. The minimum.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K4vuwQ6SBPb31mbFSZw0ogjXRnuGTEwB/view?usp=sharing

@AnarchoNinaWrites

When I was but a tween girl in Ohio I used to do a lot of auditions, there's a kind of culture around that, kids just wanting to get into show business. Well. There was this VERY infamous "teen beauty" contest that I remember the local theatre people taking the time to warn us all NOT to try out for even though it was in with all of the other listings.

Being a child no one said directly exactly why, but even at that age I could infer things.

@AnarchoNinaWrites

That guy who ran Victoria's Secret? I just realized *that* was connected. And that nothing came of any of it.

@catsalad

*angry old lady noises*

Probolomyrmex longinodus are a species of ant that nests in snail shells filled with soil. The entire genus is cryptic. Alex Wild has one of the few photos of a living ant:

https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Taxonomic-List-of-Ant-Genera/Probolomyrmex/i-LLNndCn/A

They are eyeless, and live in leaf litter, or in the previously mentioned shells.

Hard to study, hard to find, tricky to ID when you do find them. Absolute legends. Ants with secrets. #ants #rareAnt

Creatures with scientific names that betray how frustrated the scientists got trying to sort out their taxonomy.

Probolomyrmex (multiple species)
Camponotus confusus

There have to be more of these. I'd love to know the full story behind the names. Really there is a place in the world for a book that just goes into interesting taxonomic controversies and frustrations.

Have you encountered any scientific names that hint at someone pulling out their hair?

This is absolutely wild. Two populations of ants (Cataglyphis hispanica) in the deserts of Spain, the same species but separate genetic lineages. All workers are hybrids of both populations but in both cases, through social hybridogenesis the reproductive queens and males are only of one lineage or the other.

Queens of both species must mate out to produce workers (hybrids) but the workers never in turn reproduce.

They show it's been like this for a long long time!
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.2396

I just realized that Messor barbarus can't sting. And now I need to rethink something I thought was obvious about seed collecting ants.

Pogonomyrmex and Veromessor (the genuses of harvester ants we have in the Americas) can sting.

It seems that much like "Army Ants" the group "harvester ants" isn't as cohesive as I thought.

That said... they are somewhat related, both practice social hybridogenesis.

I'm stunned. Ants shock me every single day! They can't keep getting away with this!