Lego Caltrops

Blue-footed Boobies, to be exact

it looks like a fucking muppet are you kidding me? 

the Blue-footed Booby is a type of fish-eating seabird closely related to gannets and frigatebirds, though they will both deny this if you ask them

blue-footed who?

(a little judgey for what looks like an attempt to include a working airbag in a bird, but we digress)

while graceful and daring in the air, Blue-footed Boobies are just kind of a shambling mess on land, barely coordinated enough to get by.

HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT

early Spanish explorers noticed this trait and named the species, well… Boobies. because they’re a bunch of fucking clowns. 

it’s pretty self-explanatory.

I thought it was a term of endearment

like their relatives, the Boobies lack external nostrils of any sort. this is because their entire feeding strategy is to slam themselves face-first into the ocean at speeds approaching 60mph.

you can laugh, but every fish in that patch of water is shitting itself right now

Blue-Footed Boobies form monogamous pairs to raise chicks, and you might have heard of their mating dance. it mostly involves a lot of drunken shambling.

I’m sure it’s very special to them.

the pair work together to hatch two or three eggs, which fairly quickly becomes just one as the strongest chick murders its siblings in front of its uncaring parents

adorable! nature is just the worst, guys. the worst.

in spite of all this, though, we can’t help but love these goofy bastards. must be the muppet factor.

sing along, children! this is how we count to ten!

A tale from 2ch of girls, emails, and hamsters. (Posts from the thread-starter are labeled #OP, the people replying to him are labeled #2ch.) #OP There’s this girl I’ve had feelings for since high school, and now we’re in college together. We’ll call her Denko. Once we hit second year, we went out drinking, and I worked up the courage to exchange numbers. We started out talking often, but she hasn’t answered me in three days now. I’m getting depressed just thinking that Denko might be sick, or that something happened to her… (´･ω･`) Please, somebody give me some advice. #2ch SHE DOESN’T LIKE YOU. GIVE IT UP.

Since it’s Black History Month, I’m making sure you folks know about Mike Pondsmith.

Mike designed, amongst other things, Cyberpunk 2020 and its wonderful spin-off Cybergeneration. He designed the critically-acclaimed Castle Falkenstein. A black man kicked off interest in two incredibly white-dominated genres in a white-dominated hobby is a remarkable achievement.

Video Clip SS218421 (Tardigrade Walking Through Algae)

Tardigrade (Hypsibius dujardini) walking through algae, microscope view.

Tardigrades are commonly known as water bears or moss piglets. They are found in practically every habitat on Earth, from hot springs to beneath ice sheets, and are renowned for their toughness. 

See More Tardigrade Videos

Experiments have shown they can survive being frozen to nearly absolute zero and heated to 150 degrees Celsius. They have survived pressures of more than 6000 atmospheres, and have survived after prolonged exposure to the vacuum and radiation found in space. 

In unfavorable conditions they can dehydrate to 1% of their normal water content and remain alive in stasis for over a decade. In more normal conditions, they prefer moist environments where they feed on algae and bacteria. 

This tardigrade is often used as a model organism in biological research, and its genome is being sequenced.

The shell of the nut itself:

contains a resin that’s so toxic just touching it causes burns to the skin, similar to poison ivy. Which is why cashews are never sold unshelled, because processing them requires safety measures like this:

There’s this plant that’s eaten by aboriginal people of australia around where I live. Only certain parts of this plant can be eaten, and even then only if those parts are cooked exactly right, kept at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. And it has to be exactly that amount of time as both undercooking it AND overcooking it are deadly.

please watch this