I find it strange that they are out-bidding each other like this when there are over 8 days left. I am not too experienced with bidding, but I thought that the normal strategy was to maybe place a placeholder bid if there is no activity, but more generally one waits until the last second to set a reasonably high bid. Going on a 1v1 with fast out-bidding over a week early seems bad for everyone except the seller. Perhaps someone can explain.
Someone needs to explain to Musk how to debug with the JSON so that the ipv6 GUI does not overflow into the git API front-end
This is a Trachycephalus typhonius, formerly Trachycephalus venulosus, from Yucatan.
These frogs secrete a sticky and irritant milk-like fliud through its skin when bothered. Several years ago I got some some of that fluid into my eyes by accident - that hurts similar to scratching one's eye after touching a spicy pepper. So, they are not terribly toxic but I certainly do not recommend the experience.
Funnily enough I just ran a search and found a publication of someone who describes a similar but worse experience: https://www.thebhs.org/publications/the-herpetological-bulletin/issue-number-152-summer-2020-1/3101-09-a-caution-on-handling-i-trachycephalus-venulosus-i-anura-hylidae-toxic-effects-of-skin-secretion-on-human-eyes/file
You may notice that the finger pads of this frog look green. That's because its bones are green! A characteristic feature of this species. Here is a photo (not mine) of a skeleton of one of these : https://www.pybio.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/t-ven31.jpg
A new paper on a Bolitoglossid showed up in my alerts today! 🥳
It is a one-pager and comes with a beautiful photo of a foraging arboreal salamander 😄
Found this Imantodes cenchoa sleeping on top of a leaf in Punta Laguna, Quintana Roo.
Here is a photo of where it was sleeping:
There are a few different snakes of the genus Imantodes in Yucatán. What sets this species apart is that the row of scales on its back consists of enlarged scales. Here is a closeup emphasizing that row of scales. The green arrow points at an enlarged mid-dorsal scale, the blue arrow at a regular scale.
In comparison, here is a photo from an Imantodes tenuissimus that I took back in 2009 in Mérida, Yucatán (with a less sharp camera), and a closeup of its mid-dorsal scales that does not show this enlargement.
One of my favorite frogs! Spent some time specifically looking for it. Managed to find two near Cobá, in Quintana Roo (in the Yucatán peninsula). This frog hides in holes in lime stone and tree trunks, and makes use of its flat head to block the entrance. This type of defense is known as phragmosis.
Some other shots:
Found this anole in Yucatan. I am not sure of its exact species - probably an Anolis sp..
Anoles often sleep at the tips of leaves and twigs. My guess is that this is a strategy to prevent nocturnal predators sneaking up on them through the branches without making its bed vibrate. When woken up they can quickly drop down.
These are quite common in Yucatan, Mexico.
The leatherleaf slugs belong to the family Veronicellidae. This particular one could be Sarasinula plebeia, but it is not so easy to definitively ID these.
I originally identified this species a few years ago from the description on this website, but since then they have added an update stating that my original source is also unsure on this one.
UPDATE: It seems that IDing certain slugs by pictures isn’t a good idea. In 2024 when pictures on this page were uploaded to iNaturalist, another user suggested a different species in the genus Leidyula, and then user “deneb16,” a mollusk specialist at UNAM, Mexico’s main university, added the comment that all Mexican species of the family this slug belongs to can’t be identified without dissecting their sexual organs. The family, she agrees, is the Leatherleaf Slug Family, the Veroncellidae.
So, I am not 100% of the species, but it is a leatherleaf slug.
Found many of these frogs under a wet trash bag in a back yard in Mérida, Yucatán. I made use of a handheld flash with a remote trigger for lighting, and a Sigma 105 mm as my macro lens.
These frogs do not seem to match with any of the local frogs reported in Julian C. Lee's field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of the maya world.
From a reverse image search, I mostly found images of the green house frog Eleutherodactylus planirostris. Eleutherodactylus planirostris is native to Cuba and the Bahamas, and is often introduced with plants that come from green houses in those areas. These frogs go from tadpole to frog while still inside of the egg, which explains why the baby frogs are so small.
The visual aspect, the incredibly small baby frogs, and the fact that they were found in a back yard in the city with greenhouse plants, all lead me to conclude that it is likely Eleutherodactylus planirostris.
If the timing is right, I would bring a mushroom grow bag with mushrooms sprouting.
If not... probably my radiacode gamma spectrometer and some of my radioactive items. Maybe a clock with radium painted dials and a piece of trinitite. I think that there are many different points of discussion that can be of interest to a broad audience (radioactivity, spectroscopy, electronics, US labor law story of the radium girls, nuclear explosions, background radiation.... etc). As a bonus I can bring a UV flash light and show the radium fluorescence. Adults love UV flash lights.
I think that they are referring to Paxillus involotus
It is quite an interesting mushroom. It was considered "safe to eat" for a long time, but it contains an antigen that a human's immune system can learn to attack.
The antigen is still of unknown structure but it stimulates the formation of IgG antibodies in the blood serum.
I once looked into whether this immune response builds up over many exposures, or if it is a random event that has a probability of happening for each exposure. I don't remember finding a convincing answer... If it is a random event, then mushroom could be considered a "Russian roulette" mushroom that will usually provide a nice meal, but, if unlucky, you may experience the following:
Poisoning symptoms are rapid in onset, consisting initially of vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and associated decreased blood volume. Shortly after these initial symptoms appear, hemolysis develops, resulting in reduced urine output, hemoglobin in the urine or outright absence of urine formation, and anemia. Hemolysis may lead to numerous complications including acute kidney injury, shock, acute respiratory failure, and disseminated intravascular coagulation. These complications can cause significant morbidity with fatalities having been reported.
I agree with you that this is probably unrelated to the "generally similar to humans" comment. I feel like this fantasy is a combination of the above fact mixed in with the fact that the Fungi belong to the Opisthokonts, which places them closer to animals than plants, and so they share some interesting cellular characteristics with us. This places them closer to animals than plants, but "generally similar to humans" is perhaps a bit of a stretch ^_^
But, it is just a meme about a guy being hyped about mushrooms. Hopefully people don't expect memes to be super accurate 😁
First of all, congratulations for bringing a baby girl into this world!! You must be really excited! I am very happy for you!
This looks very cool. I set up a wiki (https://ibis.mander.xyz/) and I will make an effort to populate it with some Lemmy lore and interesting science/tech 😄 Hopefully I can set some time aside and help with a tiny bit of code too.
Search engines like google aggregate data from multiple sites. I may want to download a datasheet for an electronic component, find an answer to a technical question, find a language learning course site, or look for museums in my area.
Usually I make specific searches with very specific conditions, so I tend to get few and relevant results. I think search engines have their place.
Password hashing occurs server-side. Even without removing the hashing step an admin can intercept the plaintext password during login. Use unique safe passwords.
An admin can intercept the jwt authentication cookie and use any account that lives in the instance.
Private messages are stored as plaintext in the database
Admins can see who upvotes/downvotes what
These are not things that are unique to Lemmy. This is common.
To avoid having to trust your admin, run an instance.
Full genome sequencing.
The price of sequencing continues to decrease as the technology evolves. I have already seen claims of under $1,000 for a full human genome. I haven't looked carefully into those claims, but I think we are around there. In some years full genomes will be so cheap to sequence that it will be routine. I want to buy one of those small Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencers in the future. I'll use it like a pokedex.
Cool. Thank you for doing this!
Really cool! I'm excited to learn more about you and the project!
What's the format? Should we submit questions beforehand, or will you process questions that arrive at the start time? I've never participated in an AMA 😅
My view is: I don't like this cultural element, and I am glad that I live in a country without it. But if I am a visitor from abroad I would not resist the local culture and try to impose my own values. If I am aware of this cultural element and I dislike it, my options would be to either avoid restaurants and other tipping situations as much as I can, or simply account for the tip when making my financial decisions, and pay it.
If I live in the country then it is different, because then I am more entitled to be a driver of change. Personally, my approach would be to support businesses with explicit no-tipping policy, and to refuse receiving tips myself.
EDIT: As indepndnt mentioned in a comment below, the OP was posted on February 14, which pre-dates the wikipedia edits. So, my conclusions below about the timeline are not valid.
Hah, sure, let's investigate 🕵️♂️
The term 'Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl' was added as a potential Aztec name to the English wikipedia page on February 15, 2025, by user 'Mxn'.
The description of the edit is the following:
If we investigate a bit further, we can see that the term Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl is described to be a name for the 'Gulf of Mexico' in the spanish Wikipedia: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl
This page was updated to include the description of Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl as the 'Gulf of Mexico' in September 16, 2018. I don't have access to the citation so I don't know if the citation specifies if this term is still known/used.
If you check the history you will find that the same 'Mxn' fixed a typo in this page on February 15, 2025.
So, from this sequence of events it is highly likely that the term 'Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl' was included into the Gulf of Mexico wiki page as a result of the user Mxn performing an active search for Aztec names for the Gulf of Mexico, and finding this connection between the term an the gulf by searching on Wikipedia. This information did not come from recent news about the term being used by natives.
I can find no evidence of native people referring to the gulf of Mexico as 'Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl' more frequently or at all. I can find no mention of this becoming viral in Mexico.
I find it highly unlikely that:
AND
More likely....
And this concludes my little investigation 🧐