King of Trash.

happy new year -------------_--------------------

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri, commonly known as the chameleon semi-slug, and an unidentified species of semi-slug from the genus Sheldonia

The term "semi-slug" is used to describe an intermediate stage of evolution that occurs as snails evolve into slugs. Nearly 1,000 different species of semi-slug are currently known to exist, and these bizarre little creatures can be found on at least four continents.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri and Varadia amboliensis

Each species of semi-slug is technically still classified as a snail, but its shell is noticeably reduced, becoming smaller and more internalized as the species evolves. A semi-slug officially becomes a regular-slug once its shell is no longer visible at all.

As this article explains:

If life were simple, there would be snails and slugs. Snails carry their homes on their backs; slugs are naked and embarrassed. But life isn’t simple, so of course there’s secret option #3 – the semi-slug, a bizarre creature that sits exactly between the snail and the slug.

Above: genus Satiella and genus Euaustenia

This article describes the distinction between a snail, a slug, and a semi-slug:

In contrast to snails, which have an external shell large enough to accommodate the body, or slugs, in which the shell is completely internal or absent, semi-slugs have an external shell, but the shell is too small to accommodate the animal’s entire body.

Above: Megaustenia siamensis

The evolutionary process that causes the shell to recede is known as limacization, and it's especially common in moist, low-calcium environments where a snail's shell may be more of a burden than a benefit:

Terrestrial slugs are not a monophyletic group, but a case of convergent evolution in which the slug form evolved from different lineages of land snails that gradually lost their shell through a process called limacization. Limacization resulted in adaptive radiation in land snail lineages, as slugs became adapted to diverse moist and protected spaces, such as crevices in rocks and wood debris. The loss of the shell also allowed for more movement and less calcium dependence, making slugs more successful as pests.

Above: Gaeotis nigrolineata, also known as the Puerto Rican semi-slug, has a neon green shell that is almost completely internalized, but the shell is clearly visible through the semi-slug's translucent body

Some semi-slugs have shells that are still opaque and largely visible, with a patch of flesh covering only the outer edges of the shell, while others have shells that are more significantly reduced, transparent, and/or concealed.

Above: Ibycus rachelae, commonly known as the green-shelled semi-slug, and a species of semi-slug from the genus Durgella

This topic was mentioned in my previous post about Ibycus rachelae, but I wanted to write a more detailed post about semi-slugs, because they're just so fascinating and weird.

Above: a black-and-white semi-slug from subfamily Sheldoniinae

Above: Fastosarion brazieri again, but this one is especially spiky for some reason

Sources & More Info:

Australian Geographic: Meet the Semi-Slug, a Snail without a Home

Carnegie Museum of Natural History: What's So Good about Being a Slug?

Frontiers: Terrestrial Slugs in Neotropical Agroecosystems (PDF)

iNaturalist: Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, & 12

The Shell-Makers: Introducing Molluscs: On Becoming Sluggish

Land Snails and Slugs of Sabah and Labuan, Malaysia: Semi-Slugs

I feel like this applies to.