etc

Things you can see in places with clean air and plenty of rain. Not enough of either where I spend most of my time.

The papery looking lichen might be Platismatia glauca, and I’m guessing the fluffy one is an Usnea but I don’t know what kind.

#lichensubscribe

A satisfyingly woolly rock.

#lichensubscribe

First of the summer fruit! Raspberries and dwarf mulberries. The mulberry suffered a bit from the weather last year and dropped most of its fruit, but it’s looking much better now.

#garden #fruit

RE: @MAKS23@mastodon.social

Spotted on bluesky where it was suggested that this was the opening of a new william gibson book.

I was thinking more peter watts. More depressing than gibson’s work.

I’ve seen double flowering opium poppies quite often… they have a tissue substitution thing that replaces stamens with fluffy petals, but this ridiculous pompom mutant has taken it a step further and is nearly. spherical.

#doubleflowering #poppies

Another one from last month when I didn’t have my nice camera. I think this is female large red damselfly showing the “melanotum” colouration where the abdomen is much more black than red.

#damselfly

@oglaf@socel.net apparently there’s a guy called “doctor randy” who has engineered some goats to make silky milk. Funny old place, the real world.

https://agfundernews.com/what-happened-to-those-gm-spider-goats-with-the-silky-milk

i don’t recall seeing this before, which seems odd, so maybe I’m misremembering. It’s got the dead-nettle look, but it’s much taller than the white and purple deadnettle that are much more common around here and the flowers are smaller and more numerous.

Wikipedia says it might be a Ballota nigra, which has the common name “black horehound” which I’ve definitely never heard before. It’s not in the Lamia genus, but is in the Lamiaceae family, which explain sthe similar appearance.

#wildflowers

Hoverfly on an oxeye. Apparently it’s called a “long hoverfly”, but I feel like it’s too small to deserve that name. Should have been a “skinny hoverfly” instead.

#insect #daisy #hoverfly

RE: @NationCymru@toot.wales

This seems like a bit of a non-starter. Hydrogen has absolutely terrible energy density compared to conventional fuels… even liquid hydrogen is pretty poor, and it has all the associated cryonic storage issues.

This means you can’t fit enough hydrogen on a plane for long distance flights, and I don’t know if small passenger aircraft could carry enough for useful distances.

If you’re going to keep flying, I don’t think you can realistically use plain hydrogen to do so.

One day, I like to imagine that we’ll get more sea travel and less air travel again. Looking at how to get to iceland from the uk without flying and it is A Bit Of A Hassle. 20 years ago there was a ferry from the shetland islands, but not anymore 😕

Bah, openvibe is having issues with bluesky again, which is unfortunate as they’re trying to sell people a “pro” version. If I update to fix the problem, my crosspostings will get a little advert tacked on the end, unless I pay up, which I’m not entirely inclined to do right now 😕