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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Some things just amuse me too much not to share. Thing is, this is one of those times when you absolutely have to visit the link (which is from SoraNews24) in order to get the full effect. There are illustrations there that, were I to attempt to describe them, I would fail, and even if I didn't, you wouldn't believe me. Kids, hell. I want one for myself. Christmas is just around the corner, and many of us have children in our families that are really hard to shop for. Another argument for remaining childfree. Itâs difficult to keep up with the changing trends, and even if you do, how can you know which Skibidi figure the kid already has? Well, if they're YOUR kids, why aren't you keeping track of these things? Itâs a problem our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma was facing, so he decided to check out Amazon Japan for some ideas. However, after years of seeking out the lowest-rated items sold there, his algorithm is a little skewed towards the abysmal. This amuses me almost as much as the toy itself: how if you look for low-rated items on purpose, the site's algorithm will feed you only crap. Well, worse crap than usual. The body of the train is see-through, and having young ones view the rotating gears inside is thought to help them develop early mechanical concepts, imagination, cognitive ability, and motor skills. I don't think their "cognitive" pun was intentional, so I'm making it intentional. Criticisms mentioned that âIt has the vibe of a seedy Shinjuku bar,â âIt spins so fast you canât see the gears moving,â and âThe music is like weird EDM, so it doesnât seem like itâs good for education.â On the contrary, what could be better for education than weird EDM? The locomotive began to emit brilliant colors in all directions. Maybe I should get one for my cats. And then it started spinning wildly⊠"Oh hell no" -my cats This, by the way, is where you really need to go to the site for full effect. There are gifs. In addition to rotating at insane speeds, it played some sort of ear-splittingly loud Chinese techno music. As I've mentioned before, I run a script blocker, and there are certain domains I refuse to let through. So I don't know if they reproduced the music. It's disappointing to me that I don't get to hear this thing. It begged the question, what is a train? He wasnât familiar with any actual trains that spun around in one place and sounded like a rave in Kowloon. Sure, it was shaped like a train, but is that enough to call it a train? We donât call a train-shaped cookie a âtrain,â so why should this be one? Ah, yes, the eternal philosophical question. How do you say "ceci n'est pas un train" in Japanese? In that way, maybe this was an educational toy, but not in the sense of mechanics. Rather, it made Masanuki consider existentialist principles... The world needs philosophers as well as engineers. And if that's not enough contemplation of the absurdities of existence for you, consider this other article I found on the same site: Hello Kitty says hello to Godzilla in new kaiju/Sanrio crossover collaboration  Ah, yes. My most hated and most loved Japanese creations, together at last. Makes me re-examine my life as well as all of existence. |
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