The Daily Dinosaur

the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.

DOST THOU WISH TO EAT A TASTY??? WOULDSTNTVE THOU LIKE THE TASTE OF BERRIES???

Violet-backed Starling (Cinnyricinclus leucogaster), EAT A TASTY BERRY!!!, family Sturnidae, order Passeriformes, South Africa

photograph by Andre Botha

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), EAT A TASTY FISH!!!, family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Florida, USA

The fish is a Black Crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus), family Centrarchidae, order Centrarchiformes

photograph by Matthew Paulson

Black-headed Parrot (Pionites melanocephalus), EAT TASTY FRUIT!!!, family Psittacidae, order Psittaciformes, Colombia

photograph by ruedacamara

Crested Honey Buzzard (Pernis ptilorhynchus) EAT A TASTY HONEY!!!, family Accipitridae, found across much of South and East Asia.

photograph by mikewang151

Ornate Cat-eyed Snake (Leptodeira ornata), famly Colubridae, EAT THE TASTY EGGS of a Reticulated Glass Frog (Hyalinobatrachium valerioi), family Centrolenidae, Costa Rica

photograph by Steijn Pulles

Limpkin (Aramus guarauna) EAT A TASTY SNAIL!!!, family Aramidae, order Gruiformes, Cillinan Park, Sugar Land, TX, USA

photograph by Allen Tsao

Coconut Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus), EAT A TASTY MANGO!!!, family Psittaculidae, order Psittaciformes, found in part of Indonesia, New Guinea and some other Indian and Pacific islands

photograph by Meng Kuang Han

California Newt (Taricha torosa), EAT A TASTY WORM!!!, family Salamandridae, California, USA.

Poisonous (Extremely).

It may seem like it should be a pepper, since that would go better with the flavour of a tomato (and the mass produced modern ones are admittedly more pepper shaped), but it is and has always been a strawberry. Here are some antique emery strawberries, which are much more strawberry shaped, and some of them have seeds.

(source)

(source)

(Home Needlework Magazine, 1899)

And it's for cleaning needles, not sharpening them. I can't imagine how jamming a blunt needle point around in a bunch of loose grit could possibly sharpen it in any significant way, and all the historical sources I've seen only talk about cleaning.

"Every sewer's work basket or work box should contain an emery bag, as shown in Fig. 2, through which to push a needle when it becomes rough, squeaks, or sticks in the material. An emery bag is usually shaped like a strawberry and consists of a rough denim bag filled with emery powder, which is a very hard material used for polishing metals. Such a bag may be purchased for 5 or 10 cents in any store that sells sewing materials. Needles often become rusted from the perspiration of the hands or from being left in damp places. The beginner may use a small emery bag to remove rust; or, a small piece of emery paper may be used instead."

-Woman's Institute Reference Library, 1916.

"Use an emery whenever your needle does not slip through the cloth easily."

-The Improvement of Educational Administration in Massachusetts, 1916.

"An emery bag is inexpensive and is useful to keep needles polished and smooth. If the hands perspire and it is difficult to push the needle through the cloth, running the needle through the emery will relieve the condition."

-Boys' and Girls' Clothing Club, 1915.

"It was very hot to sit and sew. The needle would get sticky in spite of all the little emery strawberry could give it, and Beth's fingers had never felt so clumsy and uncomfortable."

-The Unitarian Register, 1908.

"She polished her needles to nothing, pushing them in and out of the emery strawberry, but they always squeaked."

-Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, 1910.

This patent from 1873 mentions an emery slab for sharpening pins, which is quite different from a cushion, and which sounds like it actually would work for sharpening.

"C is a slab of emery or other sharp and fine grit, for sharpening needles or pins"

Then later down the page it also says

"E is an emery cushion, secured in the body of the holder A, and is used for polishing needles and keeping them smooth."

So. Strawberry for cleaning. Not pepper for sharpening.

Discord announced on Monday that it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults. Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

It goes like this:

Post 1: [example of state propaganda claiming the victim assaulted a woman]

Post 2, same poster: "and even if he had, that wouldn't justify what ICE did"

Post 3, new poster: "yeah, someone said he deserved it because [long list of heinous and improbable criminal allegations] and that's wrong! no one deserves it!"

Multiple major news outlets have reported that his only "criminal" record was a couple parking tickets. Not even FOX is saying what the last poster's saying. And yes, this fucking matters, because MAGA really needs normies to think this guy deserved to die. The easiest way is to spread damaging misinformation about him, and the easiest way to do that is to bury it in a post that affirms other things you agree with.

Try to focus on and boost posts that state the truth with little or no reference to the lie. Repeating the truth, and only the truth, will make it stick better.

This is another cherry-picked, garbage comparison.

They just took bright exposures from the old movie and compared them to darker exposures from the new movie. And then they heavily cropped the compositions, removed all context from the scene (time of day, light sources, desired mood) and declared the new movie looks terrible—despite only a minute of footage existing.

These examples are in completely different environments.

They could have at least matched scene for scene.

Wait a goddamn second...

Something is awry.

THE TWEET IS FULL OF LIES.

Someone cranked up the exposure of the original movie to 11.

As if someone was trying to create nostalgia rage bait for internet points.

They were correct about one thing, exposure is an artistic choice. A lot of photographers fall into the trap of "correct exposure." You should always trust your eyes over a light meter. And a brighter exposure is not always better.

Contrast is a ratio, not an absolute.

There is a concept called "scene white." Your eyes adjust to different exposure levels and the brightest white in the scene is your brain's reference for contrast. And because contrast is a ratio and not absolute, your eyes will adjust to the exposure of the scene.

You can have two scenes with very different white levels, but the amount of perceptual contrast could be very similar. Your brain goes, "what is the brightest thing and what is the darkest thing?" If the difference is small, you will perceive low contrast. If the difference is vast, you will perceive high contrast.

This looks like a bright exposure on its own.

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And so does this.

The "scene white" in the old movie was actually a *tad* brighter. But your eyes adjust and perceive them both as bright.

And if you put them side by side, the brightest white wins and your perception is skewed. If you compare two different compositions with different scene white levels, your eye is going to gravitate to the brighter exposure. Even though, in isolation, you may not notice how much brighter one scene is over the other.

The original movie had plenty of darker exposures with a lower white ceiling.

And not every frame of the old movie was a visual spectacle.

It's actually a bad thing if you make every scene a spectacle. The visuals need to serve the story and if they are constantly overwhelming, that can actually hurt the immersion.

If I cherry pick, I can make the old movie look bad and the new movie look great.

Boy, the old movie sure looked bland.

But look at how much depth the new movie has!

Look at this squished subject composition in the old movie.

The new movie has much more balance and symmetry.

Visual spectacle should be used dynamically—just like music. If music doesn't have quiet parts, the loud parts will have less impact. And sometimes the quiet parts allow you to hear important detail that the loud parts obscure.

The trailer had several spectacle moments.

That looks great!

I have no idea if the new movie looks better or worse. I literally do not have enough information.

But if we're going to edit images for rage bait...

LOOK AT HOW LIFELESS THE ORIGINAL WAS!

The movie needs to be judged holistically. You can't take extreme crops of single frames, edit them to be 200% brighter, and compare them to make any kind of determination.

I’ve been asked why we don’t see wheelchair users in specific jobs. I wanna expand on that, and talk about why we don’t see wheelchair users working in general.

As a wheelchair user (to be clear here I’m talking about full-time wheelchair users), there’s a massive list of things you cannot do:

Walk

Stand

Step over anything

Crouch

Climb

Operate any machinery with foot pedals

Keep your hands clean enough to handle food or work in a sterile environment (your hands touch the wheels and the wheels touch the floor)

Carry an object with both hands and move at the same time

See over a standard counter top

Make yourself narrower to work in narrow spaces (i.e, turn and move sideways)

Given this list, what jobs are available to wheelchair users? I’m sure you can sit here and find “reasonable accommodations” or creative workarounds for some of these, but there’s one that’s impossible, and it’s the one that blocks most forms of employment for wheelchair users: you can’t step over anything.

And I know this seems ridiculous, but really think about it. If someone spread a thin line of dog shit across a hallway and then lined up 10 non-wheelchair users and 1 wheelchair user to go from one of end of the hall to the other, only one person is going to get shit all over them. Not being able to step over anything is a massive disadvantage in the workplace. Any obstacle - broken flooring, cables, or a spill make a space impassable to wheelchair users. Would you hire a forest worker who can’t step over a few fallen branches? When it comes to labor, the only reason companies hire anyone is because they haven’t found a robot who can do it better yet. Why would any company hire a worker who can only do part of the job?

What about office jobs? Surely a wheelchair user can handle a job that (notoriously) requires sitting all day? Yes! Wheelchair users are very well suited to traditional office work. But a lot of office jobs require some kind of degree in order for you to qualify; and a lot of colleges are notoriously inaccessible to wheelchair users, to say nothing of the cost.

Additionally, a lot of office jobs (still) require you to commute into a fucking office (despite years of proof showing that’s not needed). How does a wheelchair user get to this office? By car? What car? It’s not like they could just borrow friends car or get a cheap used one they can drive right off the lot. No, it has to be a special car, heavily modified so it can be driven with hand controls and large enough to hold a wheelchair. These modifications cost a lot of money. Money that one would usually get from a job. But without reliable transportation, a lot of places won’t even consider hiring you in the first place.

So now you’ve got a situation where, as a wheelchair user, you’re underqualified for even the most basic labor job; you can’t afford the education to get the skills needed to do a more accessible job; even if you can pay for the education, a lot of colleges and universities are physically inaccessible; and if you manage to snag a job where you can use your mind more than your body, you’re still denied affordable access to reliable transportation to get to the office.

Are there exceptions to all of these rules? Sure. I knew a paraplegic who worked at McDonald’s. I worked retail jobs in high school even though I could only stock the bottom 4 shelves. I myself have worked in tech and had a steady office job for 20 years. Just because you can find exceptions, doesn’t mean the system isn’t still shit.

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Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

Spix's Macaws were extinct in the wild for 70 years, and now captive breeding and conservation groups have reintroduced a small population (with more on the way) and there are babies being successfully raised in the wild again.

And what else is there, but hope? We exist for the grace of hope. Those who have lost all hope don't stay here. If you are here to send an ask like this, it is not because you have given up, it's that you are hoping someone will show you that that hope is worth having.

It is!! It always is!!

The population of an entire island working together to eradicate every last rat and mouse to save the native bird populations. They had to trap a bunch of the birds and keep them in captivity so they wouldn’t be hurt by the rodenticides, and released them after the rodents were gone. Normal residents helped by phoning in tips whenever they saw rodents. And they did it. Lord Howe Island, last I read, remains rodent free, and the native bird populations are rebounding!

Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer, both of which were terrifying specters of my childhood, have been largely dealt with. Ecosystems devastated by acid rain are also recovering.

In 1991, the first captive-raised condors were re-introduced to Big Sur, Pinnacles, and Bitter Creek.

In 2006, three months before I turned eighteen, the first wild pair of condors was seen nesting in Big Sur in over a hundred years. A hundred years.

We did that. We fixed it.

How about another example.

When my mom was small, in the 1960s, there were many, many days of the year she was not allowed outside. Days and days they had recess indoors, because the air was so poisonous to breathe. Here's an article about it, with some good pictures.

My mom was 13 in the picture on the left. She was 50 in the picture on the right.

In 1987, there were 27 California Condors in the world, all captive.

In 2024, there were 566.

369 of them fly free.

That happened within my lifetime, and I'm not even 40 yet.

When you lose hope, think of our stories we're telling you. Recount them to yourself like a prayer. That's what I do.

There are 369 California Condors flying free in the sky right now.

There is no more acid rain.

There is an ozone.

There are wild tigers.

There are still birds on Lord Howe Island.

By 2013, there were approximately 1,200 living wild, across 18 dens. Their numbers increase regularly, and while the face challenges due to habitat loss, climate change, and their limited genetic diversity, they're in a much better place than they were.