Interesting Links for 04-08-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Butterflies accumulate enough static electricity to attract pollen

(tags:electricity butterflies )

2. Why are British place names so hard to pronounce?

(tags:UK history names location video )

3. Neil Gaiman Sexual Assault Link Round Up and Timeline

(tags:neilgaiman assault )

4. A bit more context on the Olympic shooting competition.

(tags:olympics guns )

5. The massive transphobic fuss over Imane Khelif seems to lead back to...Russian corruption.

(tags:russia corruption bigotry lgbt transgender OhForFucksSake sports olympics )

6. "We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase

(tags:software development )

7. What happened to the swans in St Margaret's Loch (in Holyrood Park)

(tags:swans disease Edinburgh Scotland death )

8. How to visualise (and display) incredibly long periods of time. The vast sparseness of the visualisation is overwhelming.

(tags:time visualisation )

9. Olympic women's boxing eligibility controversy is a reminder of the harm in trusting bad faith actors

(tags:Olympics bigotry Russia )

Comments

[nancylebov]

9.https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/uk/southport-stabbing-vigil-violent-protests-intl-hnk/index.html

I'd missed it, but there was a Russian source behind the Southport riots, too.

[andrewducker]

It's all rather worrying, isn't it?

[bens_dad]

1.Butterflies and pollen.

This is the first evidence to suggest that the amount of static electricity an animal accumulates is a trait that can be adaptive, and thus evolution can act upon it by natural selection.

Why would evolution affect the ability of butterflies to attract pollen ?
Butterflies go to flowers to collect nectar. Collecting pollen is incidental; it is the flower that gains by the butterfly taking the pollen, and only if the pollen then falls/rubs onto another flower.

[simont]

On the other hand, the butterfly benefits from there being more of those plants that produce nectar that it likes! A butterfly that more effectively propagates the plants that feed it will be more able to find food.

[danieldwilliam]

And if the flower finds it beneficial to supply nectar to that particular species of butterfly it is more likely to evolve to provide nectar.

[cmcmck]

A massive transphobic fuss over someone cis at that.

[andrewducker]

Yup.

[melchar]

I very much appreciate #4's greater coverage of Olympic shooting & the gold medalist looks adorable!

[andrewducker]

She does!