I Hate The Suburbs So Much It’s Unreal Bro

the colors of winter

my grandma has this 115 year old picture book, and apparently in 1907 they would just let you publish anything

Mouette à queue fourchue (Creagrus furcatus) Swallow-tailed Gull, Pascal Vagner

saw this stunning picture of jupiter the webb telescope took and i couldn’t just not draw her✨

✦ (prints of the drawing linked here)✦

Ok so Haumea, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto, spins so fast it gets elongated like this. This is just what it looks like. Something deeply unsettles me looking at it. Terrifying.

My understanding of phylogenetics is definitely limited so maybe I'm the one who's been getting it wrong this entire time, but if you haven't done so already would you mind explaining the studies about falcons being part of the Australaves clade? I find a lot of people saying things like "falcons are closely related to parrots" which I feel is a bit misleading, but again I could be wrong. Thanks in advance!

Sure! Australaves is the name given to a clade containing the seriemas, falcons, parrots, and passeriform birds. This group was first discovered by genetic analyses in the mid-2000s. As one might expect, this was a very unexpected finding, because prior to this no one had considered that all of these birds might be closely related to each other. (For example, seriemas were traditionally thought to be more closely related to cranes, falcons were thought to be more closely related to hawks, passeriforms were thought to be more closely related to woodpeckers, and so on.)

However, many more genetic studies on birds have been done since then by different research teams sampling different types of genes, vastly greater amounts of genetic data, and larger numbers of bird species, and Australaves has been consistently supported by nearly all of these. We can be pretty confident at this point that Australaves is a real clade.

Within Australaves, parrots and passeriforms are each other’s closest living relatives, and falcons are most closely related to the clade uniting both of them (which has been given the long name of Psittacopasserae). So it would not be incorrect to say that falcons are closely related to parrots, because parrots are indeed among the closest living relatives that falcons have.

However, I’ve occasionally seen people claim that parrots alone are the closest living relatives of falcons, and that is not correct. Instead, parrots and passeriforms are together the closest living relatives of falcons, and falcons are equally closely related to both (much like how a pair of siblings is equally closely related to their first cousin, instead of the cousin being more closely related to one sibling than to the other). The group containing falcons, parrots, and passeriforms (but not seriemas) has another mouthful of a name, Eufalconimorphae!

Could you please share the recipe for the soup you made with the bug noodles? That looks amazing and I want it in my tummy.

Sure!

The ingredients always include onions, garlic, and carrots. Usually potatoes too. It depends on what I have in the fridge, but it can also include celery, parsnip, grated turnip, cabbage, green beans, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, or zucchini.

I suppose corn would also be soup compatible, or perhaps bell pepper, though I can't recall ever putting those things in this kind of soup. All vegetables are friends when you boil them up together so it's probably hard to go wrong here.

I can't really give specific amounts because it will depend on the size of your pot, and I don't measure soup ingredients.

I chop up my vegetables and garlic and put them in a big pot with a little olive oil, and cook them on medium heat until the onions have gone clear and things are starting to look a tiny bit brownish on the edges. Or maybe not quite that long if there's a lot of stuff in the pot and it's taking a while and I'm feeling impatient.

Then I add water, or perhaps meat or vegetable stock, just until they're covered, leaving some room for the tomatoes. Sometimes when I boil parsnips and carrots together in the same pot (which is very good and better than having either vegetable individually) I save the water to use for soup because it's so dang flavourful and sweet.

At this point the salt and pepper also go in, and some Herbes de Provence, or something similar. I'm currently out of the blended H de P so for this soup I think I added thyme, basil, parsley, and dried chives. Might have put some ground coriander seed too?

The little noodles also go in now, or sometimes I do barley, or sometimes neither. I got these bug shaped noodles at the Bulk Barn, but that's only in Canada so I have no idea where people in other countries should look for bug noodles.

Then I bring it to a boil, and after it has boiled I turn it down and add a can of diced tomatoes and let it simmer for a while. If it has noodles or barley or something like that then it simmers until they're cooked.

Very shortly before it's done simmering I add some frozen peas, because they really don't need boiling, just to be heated up. If they boil then the colour and texture won't be as nice.

Then I eat soup for 2 or 3 days and it's nice! I like to have it with some buttered bread or rolls.

Usually I end up with so much vegetable stuff in the pot that there isn't much room for liquid, but that's ok, I like it when there's lots of soup in my soup.

I wish you a very good soup!

That smile at the end? Priceless...