zevveli

cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act

clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)

using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)

twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)

feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)

head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)

flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)

mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)

wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)

audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)

maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)

pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)

slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)

hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)

snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)

making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)

loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)

building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)

slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)

wiggling tail tip to attract prey (various animals)

wiggling tail tip as a warning (snakes)

plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)

raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)

Geckos chirp and bark, some of them quite a bit.

Baby crocodilians make laser noises to summon their parents. A long, repeated bout of laser noises is an affiliative call, but chirps with pauses in between is "mom come pick me up I'm scared." (If you ever hear the laser noises in the wild, get away from the water's edge, there are few creatures as scary as a mother crocodilian defending her babies.)

Adult crocodilians hiss and bellow, and when they bellow, there's an infrasonic layer we cannot hear but a rider would feel... and it makes water dance on their backs. They do this in groups during mating season.

Many lizards make a huff sound when they're annoyed. I don't have a video for this one but it's like the audible equivalent of a teenage eye roll.

When the Chihuahuan hook-nosed snake is scared, it farts dramatically.

Not a reptile in the classical sense of the word, but a reptile in the taxonomic one- a parrot's syrinx shriek (the bad noise)

Another terrible bird noise

Like, this mindset makes everything that happens in the story absolutely hilarious, in particular the whole first interactions bit.

From Rocky's point of view he sent a simple model of the local star systems to indicate where he was from hoping these new creatures would indicate where they were from. He put it in a protective cylinder and sent it over to the ship. Something enormous climbs out of a hole in the side of their ship... Wait, did one of the creature go OUTSIDE its ship in a a god damn plastic bag just to catch it??? I better aim it at where it came out of so it doesn't do that again. Then when the cylinder gets back, the creatures have indicated where they're from by attaching a lollypop stick with chewinggum to the model... which has mostly fallen off in the heat. Also they put distilled fire in the cylinder???

The creature then climbs outside its ship, again, chiseles a lump off its ship with a hammer and throws it at you so it can send you a sample so you can join to it and... its made of thin sheets of soft lead???

Then on finally talking to this large creature you realise it's incredibly delicate like a jellyfish, so god damn stupid, has essentially no memory, and cant do basic maths. And you're supposed to be saving your entire civilisation with this squishy idiot. But then a while later it turns around and explains relativistic time dilation and background radiation like its something you should have figured out already.

Ive heard multiple people describing Rocky seeing Grace like the equivalent of a dog, but he's really more like a three and a half year old blind jellyfish. Its living in a frozen semi-vacuum of highly explosive gas, can't remember anything, needs to nap constantly or it becomes noticeably more stupid, and it's here to save the world.

The blurb said the shot was taken in Granada, Spain, by Agneta Fondén.  No other info, so I have no idea how old, etc.  There's a game (from 1988) that uses a similar pattern on one of its pieces, but this could predate it by at least a thousand years  — or not.  But the pattern intrigued me, so I made a texture map and used Blender's geometry nodes (no generative AI) to set up a hexagon grid with random rotations for the tiles:

That's all done with a single design:

You'd think this would have a name, right?  (For its historical use as an architectural / decor tile — although I've found out more about its use in games, that's not what I'm looking for.)  Like the Penroses do (and no, it's not one of those).  But I've had no luck finding it, or any other info.  Any (human only, please) help?

I'd image having an alien who relies so heavily on cycles and repeated patterns in order to function normally would be mind-boggling to the Eridians. What do you mean it celebrates the exact day of its birth every so often, just because? Wait we need to program a reliable change in light levels to simulate its planet, which has almost no atmosphere? And we have to schedule any interactions we have with it around this cycle? Wait it tracks its age by the scientific year, not by life experience and physical aging?

"Gifted" students, as well as those who were labeled as "prodigies" or "geniuses" were often never actually taught how to study. Why bother? They're already acing the tests. And that serves them fine for a while, but then the expectations catch up to their ability, and suddenly the kid who was able to just whip through coursework is struggling, and they don't know how to study, so the only thing that they can know how to do is try harder, but they just keep failing and failing and they can't ask for help because they're supposed to be smarter than that. And then they just burn out. Meanwhile the kid who was always struggling, and had to learn all the different ways to study suddenly starts to flourish, and then the next thing you know, the kid everyone said was going to grow up to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist is struggling to get their life together but slowly making headway at their retail job, meanwhile the kid everyone said was destined to be just another statistic in the papers has just finished defending their dissertation and has a job lined up to start doing field research in the Arctic Circle.

TikTok of retired (but still active) American competitive figure skater Ryan Dunk performing a routine on the ice to Queen's "Killer Queen".

Ryan's tight-fighting outfit (including a black tank top), 70s-style mustache and proudly flamboyant turns and flicks on the ice more than call to mind Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury. Quite, quite joyous.

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Ryan's TikTok is linked here: