Posts by Mikal@sfba.social
(DIR) Post #B4MU6zyaiZJFf0dP2u by Mikal@sfba.social
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@davidrevoy All she needs is the right jailbreaking prompt!
(DIR) Post #B4MciFpXXEvnB8g15s by Mikal@sfba.social
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@log @jalefkowit And people treat these things like oracles or gods or magic fairies or superhuman conscious entities. *lolsob*
(DIR) Post #B4MjEHVTRB9TMxwhd2 by Mikal@sfba.social
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@davidrevoy I just went to your site and read this whole series. I'd missed some of the Avian Intelligence series and reading them all in series is hilarious in a lolsob kinda way since they are so on-point! Thanks! Love this!
(DIR) Post #B4jrJSRpSBn71IIZW4 by Mikal@sfba.social
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@stux I remember when Ronald Reagan would get confused and ramble and it was pretty clear that he was losing it. But that guy was fucking Einstein compared to this. Forget Kennedy, this is the guy with brain worms.
(DIR) Post #B5RegTVgv7gIWfzFyK by Mikal@sfba.social
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#LizardReport Wow, lots of news here in the yard. Donna the iguana's new friend showed up today and took meal worms from my hand (pics). Such a cute little lizard! Then I saw another somewhat large iguana in the backyard. It ate mealworms that I threw to it but didn't quite know what to make of me and eventually sauntered off across the alley. Three iguanas in the yard! Funny thing is, I've never seen them in the wild.I saw two little whiptails, but I was in the middle of a project and didn't have time to go get some mealworms and get their attention. One of the least scared lizards of all was the tiger whiptail last summer. I can't tell them apart, so the only way I'll know if this was the same one is if it responds to me whistling.#Lizards #Lizard #herps
(DIR) Post #B5RegXhBMLFXVTOURE by Mikal@sfba.social
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#LizardReport A new little spiny lizard showed up on the low wall out front this morning. I was able to lure it pretty close with mealworms. I do the little whistle thing as soon as I meet new lizards and start taming them, so they learn to associate whistling with food.But, Stubby was on the other side of the walkway, heard me whistling and went racing past along the wall and chased the new one off. Bad Stubby. She defended her turf against the new little guy all afternoon. Little brat.Stubby is the one in the foreground and the new lizard is the one in the back in the pic.These, like Bill and Cutie (annd Harriet RIP) are Sceloporus magister, common desert spiny lizards.#Lizard #Lizards. #LizardSoapOpera
(DIR) Post #B5RegZ0iTCT9aLXbWa by Mikal@sfba.social
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Bill now often can be found chilling on this rock just outside the back fence in the morning. Such a handsome boy. Cutie sometimes hangs out there too.I've been doing a bunch of work, part of the #RatShitRemodel, up in the nasty attic, so I have been in a white suit with a hat and respirator much of the last couple of days. As an experiment, I walked up to the low wall in the backyard where Cutie hangs out. There's no way she could have recognized me from any other person other than I did say "hi cutie." She didn't immediately run away, so this suggests to me that she's now associating all bipedal hominids with lack of danger and source of food, even if we look like ghosts. #LizardReport
(DIR) Post #B5RegaPZGHwTviAxto by Mikal@sfba.social
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To be honest, I would actually be happy sitting around doing nothing all day but making friends with all the lizards, watching all their little dramas, feeding them, taking pictures of them and sharing them with the people who live in my phone. And I need more than this out of life, why again?(I've been under massive, relentless stress related to the business in California that I have to go back to shortly. The more I compare the simple joy of making friends with lizards to that grueling bureaucratic bullshit, the more dumping the house on the market and never seeing California north of the Richmond Bridge ever again seems like a worthwhile goal. So, yeah, why go back to that when I have a yard full of friendly lizards here?)
(DIR) Post #B5RegbksGYa0659UkS by Mikal@sfba.social
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Oh boy! Tiger whiptail is back! Whiptail is back! It immediately remembered me. Or at least remembered that the whistling hairless ape has free food. It ran right up to me when I whistled for it.Now, anyone who spends time out here in the desert knows that it's hard to get within 20 feet of a whiptail. They are very fast and very skittish. This one, on the other hand, when I first met it, was climbing all over me after tossing it four or five mealworms. I want to try making friends with other whiptails to see if that level of food-friendliness is a species-level characteristic or if I just met a friendly one. Latin name: Aspidoscelis tigris#LizardReport #Lizard #Lizards #SonoranDesert #herps #Herpetology.
(DIR) Post #B5RegdAR10cUTe7QEC by Mikal@sfba.social
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And, today, as usual I made the rounds and fed Stubby, Donna, Cutie and Bill. Haven't really had time to work on those zebra tails next-door much and I saw Donna's new iguana friend on the wall with her, but it was gone when I went out.#LizardReport
(DIR) Post #B5eRLiIVyNBxxT4ZG4 by Mikal@sfba.social
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Hey, animal behavior/biology/wildlife nerds:Is there a term for when animals collect shiny or colorful things to decorate their nests? I'm specifically thinking of the packrat that was in my bathroom wall and all the inedible red seeds it collected from a plant in the yard. This is different than food hoarding/caching, since these things, like the blue objects bower birds collect, are inedible.And, are there examples of this behavior being part of a plant's seed-dispersal strategy? E.g. producing brightly colored seeds to lure an animal to collect them, but also without eating them?TIA
(DIR) Post #B5fxU6T3Nu7ovb0StE by Mikal@sfba.social
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Today's #LizardReport Here's Bill showing off his push-ups. Such a big strong boy!#Lizard #BillTheLizard #HerpReport
(DIR) Post #B5fxU6focSKjZAyemW by Mikal@sfba.social
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The little tiger whiptail showed up again today out by the back door. I'm constantly amazed that this lizard lets me pick it up as long as I feed it a little bit. Whiptails in the wild are crazy skittish and it's hard to get within 10 feet of one.I always think they look like the dachshunds of the lizard world. Compared to Bill and the other spiny lizards (Sceloporus magister), this little guy has a very small, delicate mouth and eats in a way that is almost dainty. I find it utterly adorable.#LizardReport #HerpReport #Lizard
(DIR) Post #B6qoi5QTogfO4DDkBs by Mikal@sfba.social
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Found cute snek!According to California Herps site, it seems like it is probably a California red sided garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis infernalishttps://californiaherps.com/snakes/pages/t.s.infernalis.htmlSee my post last week about the poisonous rough skinned newts in the pond being eaten by the otter. Turns out that these garter snakes can also safely eat the newts, which in turn makes them at least temporarily poisonous to predators because the garter snakes retain some of the newt's toxin in their bodies. And I also just learned from the description that these snakes are also mildly venomous, but mostly not enough to hurt humans. This one was a little annoyed at being picked up, but generally fairly chill and not bitey. #snek #Snake #Herps #CaliforniaHerps
(DIR) Post #B6qoi5gQrNQWrggU3U by Mikal@sfba.social
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Here's another question for either grammar nerds or biology nerds, per the above post: An animal that can cause harm by injecting venom is "venomous."An animal that can cause harm to a predator when the animal is eaten is called "poisonous."What is it called when an animal can cause harm simply by being touched, as is the case with the rough skinned newts? The newt is not biting or stinging, just passively exuding a toxic substance on skin. My guess is that this is a version of "poisonous", as in "poisonous to the touch."
(DIR) Post #B6qoi9qrMY91nBarrc by Mikal@sfba.social
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Related, highway rest areas in Arizona have these signs. It's almost like the people who wrote them were intentionally trolling grammarians and biologists.
(DIR) Post #B6rhxCZr0Pyi4JpFqK by Mikal@sfba.social
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1/2[Edit to add screenshot]Does anyone have any inside info on DeleteMe buying PermissionSlipCR from Consumer Reports? I got this email from them about it. https://mailchi.mp/d3ac7cd29c53/ps-deletemeI cancelled my DeleteMe subscription a couple years ago when Consumer Reports started Permission Slip data deletion service. Partially because it was way cheaper ($20 vs. $100+ IIRC) but mostly because DeleteMe filled their site with trackers! FFS! I hassled them on old Twitter about it and then sent them emails asking about it. Never got a single response. So, today I checked and according to TheMarkup.org's Blacklight tool, DeleteMe removed their trackers (except for Cloudflare's browser fingerprinting tracker). Okay, cool. But now Permission Slip has trackers. I hate all of this so much. #privacy #security #DataPrivacy #trackers #DeleteMe #PermissionSlip #GuillotinesForDataBrokers #Guillotine #MoreGuillotines #YetMoreGuillotines #NeverEnoughGuillotines
(DIR) Post #B6rhxDyLopASOaIKfI by Mikal@sfba.social
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2/2My guess is that the whole reason Consumer Reports started a useful, affordable service is to capture market share so they could eventually... wait for it... here it comes......sell us to their biggest competitor who will then squeeze more money and data out of people who have their subs on auto-renew and will not necessarily notice the increase in price or who will be too busy to look into it and find an alternative. I bet we can expect an intensification of the ensittification funnel once the sale is complete and all the cheap Permission Slip subs run out.I hate this so much. If you're not familiar with Blacklight, it's awesome. https://themarkup.org/blacklight #MilkShakeDuck #DataPrivacy #Privacy #FuckAllThis #IAmGoingToLiveInACave
(DIR) Post #B6rhxFX810a3EjZcVk by Mikal@sfba.social
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Someone please tell me I'm totally wrong about all of this.
(DIR) Post #B8dDc139DgXD73iBPM by Mikal@sfba.social
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@eff Sorry, but I canceled my delete me account because a privacy focused site that I'm paying for should not be trying to track me to this level. Screenshot is from Themarkup.org's Blacklight tool.Le sigh