membracid

[membracid]

DANG IT! Will be removing some of my more personal-focused posts. Word is WP.com will have an opt-out soon; no info on whether Tumblr will also have an opt out.

#AI #data scraping #ai scraping #wordpress

[membracid]

It turns out there is an even WEIRDER live action version of the Terraformars manga! Mars is terraformed by roaches. Which get swole? and kill people? Then humans adopt super bug powers (bombadier beetle and mantis, etc) Here's a video summary.

#Movie #insects #roaches #manga #mars

[membracid]

Terra Formars Anime

Ok, so today I discovered the Manga series Terrafomars. Mars is terraformed and taken over by extremely swole murderous roaches. Humans altered with the characteristics of insects (bombadier beetle, mantis, silkworm, etc) travel to Mars in order to fight the Roaches.

Synopsis: In an attempt to colonize Mars, 21st century scientists seed the planet with algae to absorb sun light and purify the atmosphere, and cockroaches who in turn spread the algae as they feed. 500 years later, the first manned mission to Mars loses contact with Earth, and a second ship is sent to investigate.

#mars #terraforming #roaches #movie #Youtube #insects #sci-fi #entomology

[membracid]

So, you may have noticed that people are looking all over for the next Twitter. I’m slowly uncovering all my old accounts and making them look lived in. Also, this story is SUPER COOL

#insects #electricity #butterfly effect

[membracid]

2018 Annual Report

For the last 6 years I’ve been writing a personal annual report. It’s a useful way to evaluate what I did, and a lot of times a year that feels like a failure looks better when I take a longer view.

This will also include some 2017 stuff, since I completely skipped even trying to write a report last year. If you look at these reports over time, you’ll see a pattern: my health has steadily declined since I started working at Purdue. 

I really love what I do there (see adorable photo above), but it’s not much of a surprise that it’s a physically demanding job with a lot of stress associated with it. And as I’ve devoted more and more of my life to this job -- so that I have health insurance, which is REALLY important as you will see below -- the rest of my life has shrunk.

My first year running Bug Bowl in 2015, I had what I thought was a stroke. I’m in charge of a massive outreach event for >30K people, and I’m a part-time employee. Seems reasonable that I might over do it.

I stopped writing for WIRED in 2016, because I didn’t have the time or energy to keep it up. In late April (right after Bug Bowl) I discovered lesions on my spinal cord were the reason I was having trouble walking.

 I turned down most speaking invites in 2017, because I didn’t have the time or energy to travel. I’m pretty sure I had more health things going on, but because I was still paying off my 2016 health bills, I didn’t go to the doctor.  I did still do three awesome things:

I attended SciFoo in August at Google Headquarters

I was a visiting scientist at DragonCon in September

I got to hang out with Mary Roach for a day in December.

I think the big thing I realized in 2017 is that I don’t have do do everything myself. Other people can go hang out at Google or take over my work at Sci Fi Cons. Bug outreach will be more sustainable long term, if more people are doing it.

So 2018. Well.

This year I decided to try to run a crowdfunding campaign for Bug Bowl, since a lot of our equipment was over 20 years old.  The video helps show the scale of Bug Bowl:

Success! Thanks to my many online friends, and community members, we did fund repairs. (you can still make a tax deductible contribution here). THANK YOU!

In 2018, in addition to the successful crowdfunding, I also:

Had a paper accepted to Annals of the Entomological Society of America, and I’m co-author on another that’s been submitted to American Entomologist. 

Did a super fun training for librarians about how science news gets made and covered 

Collaborated with Indiana Humanities on a bee project

Survived 4,800 girl scouts

Had someone in a position of authority at Purdue text me a penis photo

Did a bunch of media interviews, including this one which is about native bees, I SWEAR

My advice to anyone considering a crowdfunding campaign is: don’t. It’s a huge amount of effort. And I was an idiot to take it on during the busiest part of my year. Which is probably why this year’s crop of central nervous system lesions were in my brain, and I finally got my official diagnosis: MS.

I’ve suspected it for quite a while, but it’s only this year I’ve started talking about it. And seriously, folks. Please. Please don’t make your first response to someone telling you they have MS be “Oh, my [aunt/mother-in-law/nephew] had that and they died.”

This is not a fatal disease. It is a pain-in-the-ass disease, and yeah it will get worse over time. I’m gonna die, but so are you. We all will die. “Multiple sclerosis is seldom fatal and life expectancy is shortened by only a few months.”

If you look back at everything I’ve accomplished in the last 15 years: I did that with untreated MS. It’s a pretty decent list of accomplishments for anyone. 

#annual report #annual-report #navel gazing #disability

[membracid]

If you want to restore a Druid priesthood you can't do it by offering prizes for Druid Of The Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests.

William Arrowsmith, 1967. The Future of Teaching, American Council of Education

#teaching #education

[membracid]

I have a new project! Follow PestControlFails

Pinterest is not great about preserving links, so I’m migrating my old board of fails over here.  Follow my new tumblr for... really sad stories, actually. 

I  document these so that the scale of the problem is more apparent.

Over the next months, I’ll move all my old pins here. 

Link to the original if you can’t wait: 

https://www.pinterest.com/membracid/incredibly-bad-ideas/

#fail #so much fail #fire

[membracid]

ZOMG this is adorable

#food #cuteness #bugs

[membracid]

Magicicada septendecim Pharaoh cicada / 17 year locust

ft. Gwen Pearson

“Just as I was starting my career as a research scientist, I was run over by a drunk driver.” The event left Gwen Pearson disabled. She then decided to abandon pursuing an academic career because it wasn’t good for her health.

“It was actually one of the best choices I ever made. I did a lot of unusual things — software development, career counseling, and managing a big research station, among others. Somehow, I ended up in the perfect job for me decades later: running an insect zoo and teaching people about bugs.”

When talking about underappreciated creatures, Gwen strives to get people emotional and leave them with good experiences. ”Making happy memories of that time you and your family got to hold a tarantula — that will create more changed attitudes than me telling you a billion factoids about them.“

Though her career is unconventional, she is primarily focused on why insects do what they do. She’s proud of how her childhood love of observing animals can now help solve real-world problems in agriculture. For example, by knowing how bugs mate, we can devise a “bug birth control” to control specific pests without killing any other species as collateral damage.

Among her favorite bug mating stories is one of the periodical cicadas. “The adults seem to appear like magic, but like most insects, they are always here, just unnoticed.”

Their larvae live underground, quietly sucking on tree roots. Once every 17 years, they will emerge en masse to mate, making headlines and causing commotions. It is thought that this unusual life cycle allows them to outlive predators, who would otherwise feed on them every generation.

Gwen believes that getting people to look deeper into the soil and around them is the first step to make them think differently about the world. Though often overlooked, small animals like insects make up the “cogs and wheels” that keep the world running.

Besides, each one of them has their own unique story for us to discover, like Gwen’s aptly named cicadas.

“You can’t beat a name like Magicicada!”

—

Gwen Pearson is Education and Outreach Coordinator at Purdue University’s Department of Entomology. Get to know Gwen and her insect and spidery friends.

Twitter · Instagram · Facebook · Website

—

My main blog · Ko-fi · Patreon

[membracid]

I LOOOOOVE this art. So much.

Magicicada septendecim Pharaoh cicada / 17 year locust

ft. Gwen Pearson

“Just as I was starting my career as a research scientist, I was run over by a drunk driver.” The event left Gwen Pearson disabled. She then decided to abandon pursuing an academic career because it wasn’t good for her health.

“It was actually one of the best choices I ever made. I did a lot of unusual things — software development, career counseling, and managing a big research station, among others. Somehow, I ended up in the perfect job for me decades later: running an insect zoo and teaching people about bugs.”

When talking about underappreciated creatures, Gwen strives to get people emotional and leave them with good experiences. ”Making happy memories of that time you and your family got to hold a tarantula — that will create more changed attitudes than me telling you a billion factoids about them.“

Though her career is unconventional, she is primarily focused on why insects do what they do. She’s proud of how her childhood love of observing animals can now help solve real-world problems in agriculture. For example, by knowing how bugs mate, we can devise a “bug birth control” to control specific pests without killing any other species as collateral damage.

Among her favorite bug mating stories is one of the periodical cicadas. “The adults seem to appear like magic, but like most insects, they are always here, just unnoticed.”

Their larvae live underground, quietly sucking on tree roots. Once every 17 years, they will emerge en masse to mate, making headlines and causing commotions. It is thought that this unusual life cycle allows them to outlive predators, who would otherwise feed on them every generation.

Gwen believes that getting people to look deeper into the soil and around them is the first step to make them think differently about the world. Though often overlooked, small animals like insects make up the “cogs and wheels” that keep the world running.

Besides, each one of them has their own unique story for us to discover, like Gwen’s aptly named cicadas.

“You can’t beat a name like Magicicada!”

—

Gwen Pearson is Education and Outreach Coordinator at Purdue University’s Department of Entomology. Get to know Gwen and her insect and spidery friends.

Twitter · Instagram · Facebook · Website

—

My main blog · Ko-fi · Patreon

#cicada

[membracid]

Oh my goodness. <3 

This amazing bracelet from @chaseandscoutjewelry finally arrived and I’m completely in love with it. #chaseandscout #wolfspider #hognamiami #bugluv

#spider bling

[membracid]

Hey, I’m on Instagram, and actually post more often there :) 

#instagram #bestnine #2017

[membracid]

You might have seen this story last week; gosh the jokes just write themselves, don’t they? 

Because I am a nosy curious person, I thought I would take a look through the FOIA report, posted in full here. 

There were indeed roaches in some food prep areas. That’s to be expected in an enormous, public, and old building. Honestly, I found the multiple requests to remove safes (presumably for storing important documents) and fire extinguishers (presumably for putting out FIRES) from offices a lot more of concern. 

Here is a summary of some of the more interesting bug reports. 

There were a lot of requests for “bug lights.” 

Unsure if these were bug zappers (ineffective and not for use in food prep areas) or just the yellow lights that are supposed to not attract insects at night.

Chief of Staff had ants: 

There were cobwebs with dead bugs in them. Shocking! 

In August the ants and roaches came back, because....August. 

The Vice President had mice, which since I’m from Indiana, is extra hilarious. 

In general, nothing that shocking other than government people apparently can’t pick up mice and bugs and put them in the trash. So many requests for trivial things that would take a normal person a couple of seconds to do.

It seems to me that the bigger issue is plumbing. Which, again....jokes write themselves. 

#POTUS #pest control #white house #ants #bugs #roaches

[membracid]

The Butterfly Effect I (of IV) Details from the wings of Chinese butterflies from my image collection. Click individual images for IDs…. by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr. Pu’er, Yunnan, China See more Chinese butterflies on my Flickr site HERE…..

[membracid]

The Butterfly Effect II (of IV) Details from the wings of Chinese butterflies from my image collection. Click individual images for IDs…. by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr. Pu’er, Yunnan, China See more Chinese butterflies on my Flickr site HERE…..

[membracid]

Long-horn bees are my FAVE

[membracid]

This is ADORABLE!

Tonight I gave myself my first tattoo and I’m feeling so good about it. I need better supplies (I literally used knockoff crap from wish.com) but as far as learning goes this is was great. I wanna do more, v badly.

Like, imagine if I wasn’t tattooing myself in the leg that was also controlling the power supply, at a funny angle and with a dog barking directly at me at random intervals?

If you’re in the Pittsburgh area I will tattoo you if you buy me the ink to do it with (I wouldn’t use this crap on another human being lol)

#tattoo #pseudoscorpion