Animal facts!

I did it. I did all of the school and now I am done with school. I buried a hatchet yesterday, which felt emotionally and metaphysically fantastic. Today I accidentally dug up the hatchet again, and now I've kinda kicked some dirt over the hatchet and am staring at it warily. We'll see where this metaphor goes. Anyways, things are drawing to a close. So now, I'm going to do something that I've wanted to do since late in my first semester here.

It's time for some animal facts.

A Black Soldier Fly, Hermetia illucens.

Black soldier flies are neat. Their larvae are used for composting and then subsequently for feeding. The coolest bit about them, though, is their adult stage. Specifically, their abdomen. If you look right behind the back legs, you can see that there's a little bit of their abdomen that is see-through. No, it's not just colored green. That bit is genuinely clear. I know this because one of the students in my Terrestrial Arthropods lab last year (I can't remember her name, which is embarrassing because there were literally eight people in that class) collected one of them for her bug board and wrote a little thing about it. Apparently there's been almost no investigation as to why they have this clear bit, other than to say that it's probably to disguise the fly as a wasp.

A Strepsipteran. Note the evil emanating from the eyes.

Strepsiptera are terrible. They're an order in the family insecta, and they're sometimes called "spiral-wing flies" or "twisted-wing parasites." They engage in "hemocoelous viviparity." Viviparity is when an animal's young are formed within the body, as opposed to oviparity which is when animals lay eggs (this is of course simplified because nature be cray). The hemocoel is essentially the blood of an insect, but it is different from our blood in that it isn't confined to veins but instead freely floats within the organism's body, distributing nutrients via diffusion. Hemocoelous viviparity is viviparity but in the hemocoel. Instead of having anything analogous to a womb, Strepsiptera babies just float around inside their mother's body, crawling through her blood between her organs. Of course, then the babies have no nice way out when it's time to become adults. So the babies eat their way out of their own mothers. THESE THINGS PARASITIZE THEMSELVES! There is more to say about them, but I will have none of it because I have no respect for these creatures. If you'd like to learn more about these unholy abominations, click here.

A Lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae.

Lyrebirds are beautiful and are wonderful singers. There's only two species of them, together making up the genus Menura. They can imitate the songs of birds they hear around them. I'd say more, but really it's best if you just watch this video. Anyways, an interesting fact about lyrebirds, and all other songbirds that we know of, is that they have absolute pitch. They can sing back their calls at exactly the same frequencies every time, never drifting above or below the "key" they're in. More to the point, they do not have relative pitch. Relative pitch is the ability to distinguish between different intervals in frequency. It's how we can tell that the first two notes in Happy Birthday (a whole step) are a different jump than the first two notes in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (a fifth) but the same jump as the first two notes in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (also a whole step). As far as we can tell, we humans are the only species who can do this. I might explain this more later, in another medium entirely. The point is, the Lyrebird is pretty, but humans are alright as well. Also lookit dem tail feathers. Pretty.

An adorable squid, Doryteuthis opalescens.

So, this semester I worked (and am still working I guess) at the Peabody Museum photographing slides for their digital collection. I'm all excited because I managed to finish my second box of slides (each box has 80 trays, each tray has 30 slides) pretty much exactly when my shift was up on Friday. Also, the last trays in that box were all parts of crustaceans, so I got to take some pretty rad photos (if I do say so myself). But before I had the pleasure of seeing all these rad crustaceans, I had the pleasure of seeing item 73992-1: a baby squid of the genus Doryteuthis. I named them Squoonchy. Squoonchy the Squid. According to Wikipedia, "In Dortteuthis the tentacular clubs are expanded and bear suckers in 4 series. The hectocotylus is on the left ventral arm IV with unmodified suckaers near the base, lack f a vntral crest while the reduced on elongated stalks form papillae on the dorsal series or on both dorsal and ventral series. The fins are situated in a posterior position. The spermatophore has a short, cement body cement body and they do not have any photophores." I'm not quite sure what "suckaers" are, nor what "f a vntral" signifies, nor can I hope to grasp the importance of repeating "cement body" twice in one sentence. I may never know.

Humans in their unnatural habitat.

Lastly but not leastly, humans! They're a neat species. They made me this computer! Now I can type things. Also, they've got a lot of neat stuff going for them, so they kinda took over the world. Which is great for me, because I am currently a human! Also they're kinda breaking the planet. It'll be fine. For some people. Probably. Anyways, I took a whole class about humans and animals and human infants and how the three relate in their mental states. I've already talked about the relative pitch thing, but there are also lots of other things that make humans unique. I might in the future expand on this list, but for now here they are without explanation: marathon running, generative and recursive language, desire to punish complete strangers, desire to aid complete strangers, desire to be like others, intentional teaching, complete alliance with in-group, creation of fiction. We're a strange bunch.

Well, that's enough for now. It is, after all, half an hour into tomorrow right now. And I do have things to do. But hey, at least this is not one of the things I have to do anymore. Anyways, midnight and all. Bye!

Things that made me happy this weekend

You can always do with a good list to cheer you up.

• It's the weekend! Everybody loves the weekend.
• I ran into Nash like three times just on the street by coincidence. They're rad.
• I met with Savannah and Leo to chat about MathCounts, and got super pumped about my evil class-planning plan.
• I started the Circle Fights document! It's progress.
• Speaking of progress, I got like a third of the way to proposing a Doomsday Contest team with my friends.
• Speaking of the Doomsday Contest, I have a rad idea that I super want to try but I need friends oh no.
• Speaking of the Skippyverse, I finally read the entirety of this page on Pattern Screamers, and all the related links and everything.
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• I obtained this ^ reaction image, and I don't think it's ever going to be useful, but I'm still keeping it because it's somehow hilarious to me.
• Watched an anime about a phychokinetic girl, and one about a megaloboxing man, and one about the war of the spacefuture. Rad times.
• I finished the Physics homework hours before it was due.
• Speaking of due dates, I learned today that the Math 230 and Music 115 psets were both pushed back to Wednesday! Which kinda sucks because I have a midterm Thursday. But still!
• I made some progress on the math pset, and I think I can finish it on my own tomorrow if I can just focus. Which I can! FLAWLESS VICTORY IS IMMINENT!
• I got to hand out with friends in the Math Lounge! We did some math, but mostly chatted about nonsense.
• Also, in the Math Lounge, I got to do Sajan's arms. That was all sorts of fun. 
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• Here's ^ a picture of what that looked like. Courtesy of Nash.
• And I got to see OM SHANTI OM!!!
• Well, the first part of it. We still have an hour left.
• And like a whole bunch of people came and they're all really nice and I want to be friends with them!
• Also Grace and I provided snacks. We had fun.
• There was bacon today at breakfast, which doesn't happen often.
• Gabe, Ryan and I were given the opportunity to test some of the MathCounts questions during dinner, and I think we easily got over half of them right. (We're all in Math 230, and these questions are for middle schoolers.)
• I'm waking up in seven hours! I feel very tired. But it makes me happy! It means I had a full weekend.
• Oh, yeah! The Beethoven and Bernstein concert! That was super fun. Beethoven's Ninth is a bop.
• I lost my backpack and later got it back from Devin. What a nice man.
• I made a blog! With a list! I haven't done that in so long.

That's all for now. Honestly, it's more than enough. Also, it's 1:05 AM. As ever, I need to go to sleep.

Snaw Doy

I didn't even know you could have a snow day at a university. Makes sense, I suppose. I've been holed up in my room reading about Anabasis for most of the day, and it's been– nice, I guess. I still have things to do, but not nearly as many as before the announcement. Midterms were cancelled, you see. I found out yesterday right before my math volunteering thing, but it didn't really sink in until dinnertime. School is cancelled because of a snow day.

So, that was some pretty wonderful news. Amazing, actually. Without it, I'd have had four back-to-back midterms every day of the week, and Friday I'm leaving for Mexico. With it, I now have two finished midterms (which is equivalent to no midterms at all) and all the time in the world to pack and do things. In theory. In practice, I did just spend multiple hours reading and doing nothing else. Whoops.

Anyways, I was planning on using this post to talk about how good a day yesterday was. Then I kinda spent too much time on the internet and bled yesterday into today a bit and now it's all blugh. But that's okay! Because! I did really well on the Math 231 midterm. Like, optimally well. And I mananaged to finagle a few jokes into my answers. And then Pat said nice words to me and I was happy. I'm incredibly susceptible to surprise validation.

Is that... it? I think that's all I had to say. I feel like yesterday I just assumed this would take longer to write. I guess it would have if I'd have made it into a story. Eh. This is good.

On the Destruction of Worlds

The Blogger app was removed from the App Store and replaced with a $2.99 version(which currently has two stars), but that won’t stop me. I’ll just write this in my notes, then email it to myself, then copy-paste it into my blog, then reverse timestamp it so that it’s like nothing ever happened. Genius!

Dangit, I was hoping to start writing the main body before January 6th. Ah, well. At least I got the little intro thing in. Anyways, lately I’ve been thinking about destroying the universe. Like, in principle. See, my sister and I just finished playing a few games. OneShot yesterday (the 5th) and Doki Doki Literature Club a few days earlier. Also been reading Soonish and a lotta skippy-related things. All in all, lots of world ending to go around. For example, I just realized that although the text editor prints a regal Times New Roman font, on the actual blog it's written in some sans-serif thing. My beautiful Timesy world has been shattered.

What's most recently messed me up (besides the font thing) is of course OneShot. We named ourselves Neveah, which worked really well. I did all the voices except Niko's and Silver's, and honestly I think I might be getting good at it. We did the "true ending" or whatever. I don't want to spoil anything, but I also kinda do. Let's just say that I liked it. Wish we coulda played it once more though. We missed a few achievements, and we even did all the work of cultivating the thing only to–.... Well. No going back now. If you do get the game (which I recommend) then try playing it through a few times. Like, at least three. Definitely not two though. I can confirm that two is a silly number.

Doki Doki Literature Club was alright. We named ourselves Bruh, which honestly worked almost as well as Neveah did in OneShot. It wasn't nearly as scary as most people claim. There was exactly one point where we screamed, and it wasn't really from fear. It was kinda fun slowly figuring out what was going on, though. We also did crazy voices for everyone, which was fun. I voiced Sayori (an ever-excited little girl), Natsuki (an angry Russian/Japanese/American/French/Mexican girl/man), and Yuri (a charming southern belle), while Lucia voiced Bruh (self-explanatory) and Monica (a no-nonsense drill sergeant). The ending was not as good as OneShot's, although it went better.

What kinda sticks with me is how we reacted to the conclusion of the games. After Doki Doki Literature Club ended, we put Monica's file back, as I sent it off with an "everything is as it should be." (Then the game deleted itself from our Steam library, which was freaky.) After OneShot ended, we sat silently for a moment. Then we both started up and said some variations of "that was nice" and "well, that's done" and we walked away. It kinda struck me as callous somehow. Like the ending of The Truman Show.

Woah dang, I didn't even notice, but the two old movies I watched for the first time this break (The Truman Show and Total Recall) both kinda relate to these ideas. They both pose questions as to what is real and what is only seems-to-be real. OneShot and Doki Doki are full of dips into reality, some things being marked "part of the game" and some being marked "real." They're all done now, of course—Doki Doki was destroyed, The Truman Show ended, OneShot is out of reach, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is still alive so I guess Total Recall went okay actually. The point is, they're all in some sense gone, but also in another sense they were never there in the first place.

That's really the source of my– let's call it a conundrum. Can a fictional world end? Is it rational to care about the characters and try to make their lives better? Is it okay to sacrifice a world so that a friend is happy? Is it wrong to destroy something that isn't there? TL;DR: no (kinda), yes, yes (sometimes), and yes. These things are real, in my opinion. Real as you (my potential future reader). Real as Heaven (and sure as Hell). Real as Borges. Real in that the folks inside are real. Real in that they think they're real, or at least they think they think they're real, or at least I think they think they think they're real, so they must be.

And they live on in my heart and in my head. Because that's where I keep them. A world destroyed and a world preserved are identical give or take a word. It's all the same to me, and the worlds i keep.

I'm reading Story Thieves by James Riley. I bought it today, right before going to an AR experience. (Fekkin hall, I just realized that the whole concept of AR also ties into these themes. Not to mention the game Super Hot. It's like the universe is trying to tell me something.) The book's not that good, but it's fun. It involves a girl who can jump into books, and a boy who she unwillingly brings along. One of the first things the boy asks, upon hiding from the aliens of War of the Worlds, is "For real? Martians?" After some deliberation, the girl responds with "It's real here, in the book." And, I mean, yeah. That fits.

Well, it's 11:54. I should publish this quickly if I want to get it in on the 6th. This might have all been a bit silly, I guess. I dunno. This kinda thing is important to me. Now, then, I need to get to sleep soon if I want any hope of waking up at a reasonable hour in Connecticut. Until next time!

No More Lyrebirds (or some equally irrelevant title)

It's never over. Not in an absolute sense. Well, depending on what "over" means. Like, eventually there's not going to be any lack-of-entropy left to do things with. So things will be over in that sense. There will still be time-asymmetric phenomena, as I learned today watching this video, but like, those won't happen everywhere. It's kinda strange to think about, that time could be either a local or emergent phenomenon. It's like how the best definition of dimension I've seen makes it a local property of a specific point.

What I'm trying to get at is that I'm not done with finals yet, and even after I'm done with finals I'll have more to do. That's how life works. Not sure why I decided to start with that. Well, no going back now. It's not like I can erase what I've done and start over. That would be ridiculous.

I'm done with most of my classes now. The half-credit Patnam seminar ended quietly enough, with me sleeping through the first half of the Putnam. [I am informed that I am waking up in nine hours. That is false.] Then there was a quasi-party in which I played Werewolf and was the Private Investigator for four out of four games. Le sigh.

The half-credit Bio lab is also done. Biology of Terrestrial Arthropods, indeed. I am now super hyped and at the same time very intimidated by my impending quest to write about every family of every animal. There's a lot out there. But not an insurmountable lot. In other news, I worked for 18 hours straight and until 6:00 in the morning to finish the project for the bio lab. I've done the math, and I got at most a B. Welp. I did my best.

The full-credit freshman seminar (Cosmology in Literature) came to a nice exciting end. The last reading was "Tlön, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, and it was a doozy. More than half of the class had not realized that the outer-text was just as false as the inner-text. It was incredibly entertaining to watch their brains explode. Then it was revealed that one of the folks mentioned in "Tlön..." was in real life the person who funded the library that became the foundation for Yale. So, in some ways, and to a lot of people, Yale is Tlön. That freaked us all out. I'm still not even sure if it's true. I proceeded to write my final essay about my second-favorite cosmogony: the reality-as-narrative themes in the work of Borges. It was good.

So yeah. Those are the endings that have happened so far. Been so busy these past weeks that I didn't even remember to call up my reps to not repeal net neutrality. Whoopsie daisies. This might be trouble. But hey, it's not over yet. I have breathing room now. I'll try my best. For now though I should get to sleep.

P.S.: One more thing. I've done it! Double triple digits!

A Week Elsewhere

New York was fun. Pleasant, at times. Monday we went to Times Square to get tickets and see the view from the 8th floor of the Marriott Hotel. We also ate the most wonderful churros.

Tuesday we went to the Museum and saw some stuff. It wasn't as cool as the first few times. The exhibit on the senses was okay. The butterflies were fun, although they reminded me of the upcoming quiz on leps for Bio of Terrestrial Arthropods. Then we had churros again. And... I think we watched Spiderman: Homecoming? Or maybe that was Monday. Or Wednesday.

Wednesday we watched Dear Evan Hanson. I didn't get as into it as I anticipated, but it was good. The lead was played by someone other than the original lead, who is apparently said to be better than him. I can confirm that the lead from the show was a better actor than the lead from the official soundtrack. Then we went back, eating some delicious waffles (I got a s'mores waffle).

Thursday was Thanksgiving! We watched Coco, which was a really good movie. I liked it a lot. Then we ate a big dinner, filled with mashed potatoes and bacon. I ate so much mashed potatoes, and so much bacon. We might have done other stuff, but if we did I've forgotten.

Friday we went to the Met. Looked at art. I had fun. Impressionist paintings still get me every time. How do they DO that with the water? There was also a freaky deer covered with glass orbs. After eating at Shake Shack we had drinks at the Vue, taking a neat timelapse of the revolving city.

Saturday we drove back. Ate breakfast at the Cosme. Watched Summer Wars, which was fun.

Sunday was yesterday. We went to the "best aquarium in New England," which was nice. We ate dinner in Morse, and I discovered the ice cream section. Then we watched 9 and said goodbye.

Three weeks remaining. What else happened this week? I talked a lot of film review stuff with my mom. Theming and characters and such. I got to the 3-warp stage in Flow, and noped my way out. I'll get to it soon, probably. I also made this:

Together again with my family

Yeah, we met up in New York. It's not home, but it's okay. Today we ate at Eataly and went to the MoMath. Well, actually just the MoMath gift shop, but it still counts. We watched all of Over The Garden Wall and all of Your Name. Very good. Quality series and film. I'm really tired though. And I want to go home. I've been trying to connect with friends again. It's not really working. I guess I need more sleep. Bye.

P.S. I started a OneSecondEveryDay thing today. We'll see how it goes.