agentredsquirrel

[agentredsquirrel]

Get Out the Big Lens

We embarked from Cape Town early March 5th, hopping a flight up to Hoedspruit. From there it was less than an hour’s drive to Milima Safari Lodge. As we bounced down the road toward the lodge, we passed a giraffe (not sure who looked more surprised, the giraffe or the pile of us). And as we checked in and signed waivers by the pool, we watched as a family of elephants finished up their afternoon…

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#elephant #giraffe #lion #milima #photography #safari #South Africa #travel

[agentredsquirrel]

Art Tour!

Mostly pictures, this one. We met up with X (Xolani, a fashion designer who moonlights as a tour guide) for a rainy hop around an up-and-coming neighborhood in Cape Town to check out the vibrant street art scene. We talked politics, street trees, the desperate need for student housing (apparently this is a truly universal problem) and upcycled denim fashion. Every piece X showed us had some kind…

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#photography #South Africa #street art #travel

[agentredsquirrel]

Cape Tour and the Golden Oldies

*Editor’s note: I’ve gotten out of order! I guess I got too excited to write about Mzansi and skipped a day and a half of Cape Town. This post should follow our day in Bo-Kaap, before the art tour and Mzansi Restaurant.* We knew ahead of time that March 3rd would be a long day. On the group agenda: a full tour of the cape, from the top of Table Mountain to Cape Point, with a visit to the…

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#cape tour #Kirstenbosch #penguins #South Africa #table mountain #travel

[agentredsquirrel]

Mzansi Restaurant

March 4th was a two-post kind of day — while we spent the morning snapping photos in Bo-Kaap, we were thrilled that a combination of luck and Dana’s persistence rewarded us with a fantastic and fascinating dinner at Mzansi Restaurant in Langa Township. Mzansi (which is a colloquial name for South Africa, derived from a Xhosa word) is almost a home visit/cultural experience/restaurant all at…

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#Langa #Mzanzi Restaurant #photography #South Africa #township #travel

[agentredsquirrel]

Colorful Bo-Kaap

The day before yesterday we gave ourselves a little walking tour of the Bo-Kaap neighborhood in Cape Town. Once a neighborhood of former slaves, it became a multicultural community of majority Muslim Cape Malay people, and then a strictly Cape Malay zone under the “Group Areas Act” as part of Apartheid. Bo-Kaap today is a hip-and-happening attraction perfect for Insta-interested locals and…

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#Apartheid #bo-kaap #photography #South Africa #street art #travel

[agentredsquirrel]

The Train Leaving the Station

I’m a few days behind posting, but still aiming to do a post about each day as a sort of travel journal! So my fourth full day in South Africa had us meeting up with the women in whose company we’ll spend the rest of the trip photographing and exploring. For a nice easy start, we hopped an Uber to the wine tram in the Stellenbosch area — poshness, gorgeousness, and deliciousness abounded. Think…

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#Babylonstoren #frogs #photography #South Africa #travel #wine tasting

[agentredsquirrel]

happy pride from me and all these flowers i saw today ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[agentredsquirrel]

The Philly Squid Quiz has launched

The Squid Quiz has hit the streets of Philadelphia this morning!

Over the next couple days about 10 of these squid will be posted around the Fishtown/Northern Liberties area. 5 went up this morning!

Each squid is paired with an "exam" (each one slightly different wording) which states the challenge. For example:

--

Many squid I have explained

But how much have you retained?

Prove yourself with my squid test

I'll reward you for this quest

Limitless number of tries

Ace the quiz, you’ll get a prize

Text "Squiz" to 1-833-SCI-TEXT to begin

--

When participants succeed, they are given the location and code to a lock box, which I have SNEAKILY placed in my own "front yard".

Inside the box, I have prepared prizes for those who reach the end of my 13-question, not-very-easy quiz.

I couldn't land on a wording I liked, so I put a bunch in there and people can take whichever one they like. 

Each little squid came individually and I punched a hole into their mantle to add them to a keychain. This was the crafting equivalent of sinking your teeth into a starburst, and I have to recommend the experience.

So now all we can do is wait and see if people like it! Let's cross our fingers for a good reaction!

Do you LIKE projects like this? Do you want to see more of them in the world?

Welllllllllllllll I have good news and great news. Good news, I do this for a job (in addition to connecting people with science in many other ways)! Great news, if you want stuff like this to keep existing, you can support us so we continue existing! Support us on Patreon or donate directly to the nonprofit that makes this stuff happen, Skype a Scientist.

[agentredsquirrel]

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[agentredsquirrel]

i really love safety quizzes that are like.. "When handling hazardous chemicals, what should you do? a) Run around and skip and pour it on pedestrians b) Drink it all immediately c) Use the correct handling procedure d) All of the above"

[agentredsquirrel]

Source

[agentredsquirrel]

Also important to note that pre-industrial or pre-colonial landscapes were often altered or stewarded or maintained by indigenous people. We shouldn’t imagine even those as “untouched” or even solely shaped by non-human forces.

something i've noticed. people seem to think the most nature-y nature is forests. so forests are always prioritized for conservation, and planting trees is synonymous with ecological activism. my state was largely prairies and wetlands before colonization. those ecosystems are important too. trees aren't the end-all be-all of environmentalism. plant native grasses. protect your wetlands.

[agentredsquirrel]

80% of the ocean is unexplored by YOU GUYS. i've seen the whole thing

[agentredsquirrel]

I'm a squid biologist on a mission. To teach everyone about squid.

Even you.

Especially you.

Want squid facts? I have you covered. I have a squid facts hotline, 1-833-SCI-TEXT. Text SQUID to that number (1-833-724-8398), and it'll send you squid facts aplenty.

I have even created an advent calendar for you to learn squid facts throughout December. It's an 11 by 14 inch scratchy lottery, but instead of taking a chance at winning money, you are guaranteed to learn about squid.

I have a street art campaign to bring squid facts to the people. You might see wheatpastes (like the squid below) if you live in Philly, Boston, Austin, or New York, or stickers if you live in hundreds of other cities and towns across North America.

When you buy a calendar, you're supporting my undying mission to bring squid to everyone. Did you know that squid have donut shaped brains? That their class, cephalopods, have been on earth for longer than TREES? That scientists estimate that there are literally millions of giant squid living in the deep sea?

People deserve to know about squid. Help me spread the word.

[agentredsquirrel]

[agentredsquirrel]

i love that seals can just

[agentredsquirrel]

Australian Raven (aka Little Raven) being harassed by a Willie Wagtail