Mammoth tusks came to be known as “ethical ivory” after China banned imports of elephant tusks in 2017, closing the market that elephants were being slaughtered to supply. China and Hong Kong are home to the world’s most developed tusk-carving industry, in which a single piece can sell for as much as billions of rubles (tens of millions of dollars). Meeting that demand fell to Yakutia‘s tusk hunters, who dig the frozen ivory out of the permafrost. The independent Siberian outlet People of Baikal describes how this punishing trade works — and what the hunters may be costing science and themselves. Meduza has translated the story in full.
Seems the Chinese are busy, getting involved in all kinds of things. They seem to be our biggest competitor these days. Russia seems to be rather preoccupied with Ukraine, but they are still messing about in Africa, though I don't know how effective that is. On the other hand, we are doing something about Iran, or at least I thought we were. I still think Iran needs to be pounded flat until the clerics lose their hold over the country. I mean Iran is basically a boil on civilization and it needs to be popped. Remember, they killed 30,000 protestors less than a year ago. I guess Russia and China don't mind dealing with Iran as they are familiar with mass murder as well.
King crabs or stone crabs . . . are found chiefly in deep waters and are adapted to cold environments. They are composed of two subfamilies: Lithodinae, which tend to inhabit deep waters, are globally distributed, and comprise the majority of the family's species diversity; and Hapalogastrinae, which are endemic to the North Pacific and inhabit exclusively shallow waters.
King crabs superficially resemble true crabs but are generally understood to be closest to the pagurid hermit crabs. This placement of king crabs among the hermit crabs is supported by several anatomical peculiarities which are present only in king crabs and hermit crabs, making them a prominent example of carcinisation among decapods. Several species of king crabs, especially in Alaskan and southern South American waters, are targeted by commercial fisheries and have been subject to overfishing.
Alaska's commercial king crab harvest for the 2025/2026 season has a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 2.68 million pounds for Bristol Bay red king crab. For the Aleutian Islands golden king crab, the total quota is set at 4.19 million pounds.
It's a polyphemus moth. Probably Antheraea Polyphemus. They're related to silkworms (I don't know if you can make silk from the cocoons, though, and I don't know that they're destructive in the way Lymantra dispar is (the common name on that contains what some now regard as a slur to the Roma people, so, I don't know if we have a new common name* or not but I can remember it as Lymantra). Of course Lymantra is an invasive in the US and Polyphemus is native here.
(*oh hey yes, you can call it the "spongy moth" which makes me laugh so maybe I use that with my classes now)
These creatures don't live long; they don't have functional mouthparts (unlike some moths and butterflies that eat nectar); they only live about a week and they exist to mate, lay eggs, and die. Which looking at that with a human bias, that seems kind of sad, but then again: will moths ever write symphonies or novels or draw maps?
The other thing that always weirds me out if I think much about it is the metamorphosis process: lepidopterans dissolve into a puddle of goo, leaving behind "imaginal disks" that direct reorganization of what's left into the adult.
There's a short essay here (Scientific American) that talks about it, and here are some photos from a natural historian who raises silkmoths and had one that "oopsied" and somehow metamorphosed without a cocoon (so apparently the "puddle of goo" was an overstatement)
We tried watching Remarkably Bright Creatures but I found it tedious. They do have some good shots of their star - Marcellus the Octopus - have to give them credit for that.
They Tried to Kill Swift’s Fridge Car — and Created a Monster Instead
Ewan Hargreaves
Swift and Armour, boy, those names are a blast from the past. I haven't come across them in a coon's age, but evidently they are still in business. Swift was purchased by Brazilian company JBS in 2007 and continues to operate. Armour has become Smithfield Foods.
Reefer Rail Car
I vaguely remember having a book about trains when I was a kid. It had pictures of various kinds of railroad cars, like boxcars and reefers, and they were loading ice into the reefer. I'm old, but I don't think I'm that old. Turns out the last ice cooled reefers were built in 1957, and the first mechanical refrigerated railcars were built in 1958.
Remember these old milk trucks? I got a look at one once. They had a weird refrigeration system. They had big blocks (tanks?) lining the freight compartment. These blocks were hooked up at night, chilled all night long, and then kept the truck cool all the following day. DIVCO stands for Detroit Industrial Vehicle COmpany.
On our way down we noticed a couple of elk standing in a field. Then we noticed a bunch of lumps sticking up out of the grass. They were the heads of elk that were bedded down in the grass. There must have been a couple of dozen of them. Very cool.
Part of our journey took us on US Highway 101 along the Oregon coast. Much of the road was nice, straight two lane blacktop in good condition. There were patches though that had suffered from subsidence. They had been repaired, but pavement now had slumps and small hills. Since there are like 8,000 miles of two lane blacktop in Oregon so I suspect the road crews are kept busy. Our tax dollars at work.
Somewhere along the way we went through a tunnel. I spent a couple of hours examining the map without finding one. Through happenstance I stumbled over the the Elkton creek tunnel, which is not on the coast, but we did go through there on the way down. Since it seems to be only tunnel on our route, it must be the one, which is weird since I could have sworn it was on the coast.
While I was looking for the tunnel, I recorded every bridge I noticed. Most of them are small, simple bridges over creeks, but there are four big, impressive ones, all designed by Conde McCullough.
Pretty good murder mystery set in Yosemite National Park, so lots of cool wilderness scenery along with a number of big animals. Six short episodes (45 minutes each) and we watched three of them last night. We've got four murders so far and even though they are separated by a period of years, you just know they are all going to be tied to some evil nut job. Meanwhile, we've got all the typical cop show pathos: the tough cop who antagonizes his coworkers and family, divorces, traumatized citizens, annoying high level bureaucrats and sleazy druggies hanging out in sleazy places, plus the usual assortment of skin colors. On the plus side we have plenty of scenes of out in the wilderness.
Yosemite is roughly the same size as Rhode Island, they are both a shade over 1,000 square miles. This is the only map I found that showed the park in relation to its neighborhood. There are lots of maps of the park, but they typically only show the park and just a bit beyond the borders. Google Maps only shows a placemark, it doesn't show the borders of the park at all.
Show opens with a scene of a couple of guys climbing the face of half dome. I hate these kind of scenes, because if in it's in a show you just know somebody is going to fall and die, and somebody does, but it's not one of the climbers.
P. S. Cute little bit of bio-metric tom-foolery - Our guy finds the dead girl's phone, but it's locked using facial recognition. The coroner helps him out by first opening the dead girls eyes and then putting eye-drops in. That doesn't work, so he swabs her face with formaldehyde saying it will warm her skin and it might be enough to get past the bio-metric lock, and what do you know? It does, the phone is unlocked and our guy finds some crucial evidence. Ain't technological fairy tales wonderful?
Bestest movie ever! At least in 1962. Three years later my brothers and I were bouncing around the farm on an ancient Chevy pickup truck reenacting scenes from the movie.
Funny Orangutan Learns to Saw Wood | 4K Video | Spy In The Wild | BBC Earth
BBC Earth
Hard to believe that these animals could figure out what a saw was without having ever seen one in action. I wonder if they heard about saws from the previously rescued orangutan. Course that presupposes that orangutans have some kind of language.
