The Whippet #173: Heavy Business Pigeon
For this project, scientists attached weights to some scrawny pigeons as a social experiment. Those pigeons became more aggressive and shot up the pecking order
Giving first aid / CPR does a lot of good, even if you don't save their life
If your loved one died, I think you would care a lot that someone was with them, trying to save them, vs finding out that no one attempted to help.
The Whippet #172: Skeuomorphic Ghosts
It occurred to me the other day that a ghost is a skeumorph. Specifically, the reason they look like this in pop culture, is because Europeans used to bury their dead in white shrouds.
The Whippet #171: A delicate, narrow snout and a pleasant disposition
You know all those videos of Floridians, like, leaf-blowering an alligator to get it to leave a dollar-store carpark or whatever?
The Whippet #170: The best thing I know about bones
It's not a single fact, it's completely changed how I conceptualise bones. I had thought of them as more or less inert scaffolding, not living organs
The Whippet #169: A feeling in search of a cause
We dignify big emotions and dismiss smaller ones, but maybe what we talk about in art/philosophy and what we're allowed to express in daily life are not the same?
The Whippet #168: An indulgent loss of focus
"During the rainy season, the valleys among the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons, prevented from draining due to the impermeable rock beneath."
The Whippet #167: Just trucking right along
World turtle! Reliability v. accuracy. Treat horseshoe. Neurological flexibility. Lashtabs. Task-saturation!
The Whippet #166: What part of rubeville are you from?
"There is something flamboyant about these boots which does not suit the average Englishwoman or go well with our sober English streets."
The Whippet #165: Blood, ink, shark, moon
Carl Sagan's plan to nuke the moon, squids create false bodies out of ink, and more