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Post something Weird or Random

@Outdated, it's amazing what you guys have down there, I have never seen an ant nest like this before. 😮 Spinifex termites.


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Forest Cat said:
@Outdated, it's amazing what you guys have down there, I have never seen an ant nest like this before. 😮 Spinifex termites.
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We've got all sorts of termites here. Look up Magnetic Termites, we have those up the top end. Their mounds are flat sided and all run on a north south axis. Looks really weird when you first see a valley full of them, like a giant's graveyard. They're all 5 metres tall or more.

MagneticTermites.jpg
 
Boogs said:
I've tried to get my head around all this, looking at individual related climate studies, such as glaciation, and sea changes (temperatures, currents, sea level, changing bio-diversity, etc etc etc ...) and more, and I came to the conclusion that we know far too little about how everything interacts (hardly surprising considering the complexity and lack of knowledge) never mind fully understanding the individual systems, and attacking particular targets won't help (or not enough) and will very likely have unintended negative effects elsewhere.

It seems to me the real problem is the current human population, being artificially and unsustainably far too large, and the current global commercial and cultural system of expansion being the fuel that our societies run on, regardless of their political bias.

The only way I could see a 'fix' would be a fundamental change in how humans live, requiring a complete change of how we view our place in the biosphere that created and sustains us. Global government of some sort would be needed with the collective power to control even the most powerful nation states and to try and force that would just result in world war. It's clear we lack the motivation to make this change voluntarily, so nature will do it for us.

But that shouldn't be a reason to be downhearted. Without the last mass extinction we wouldn't have evolved. It can be viewed that we are just an indivisible part of the whole of whatever is considered living matter on the planet. Just as birth requires death, so the creation of new species comes from the diminution and extinction of others. We sometimes speak of our own evolution, but don't think of all the possible ways this could happen and what would come from us.

We are all subject to being cursed to "live in interesting times".
Still, it's a bit of a bummer really! 😉
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Aye, tinkering with nature will probably always be full of surprises. I can imagine a vast effort to clone new Mammoths only to find out that Mammoths kill humans on sight, unlike Elephants, which I hear find us cute.

Agreed that the mastery of nature that fuel and machines have given has led to us overrunning every wilderness, and degrading a lot of fertile land. The population boom is so extreme that the fossil record will now show a new age, the Anthropocene. We can't continue if we try to live as our grandfathers lived, but we would just change our diet, we could return half of the land to nature and avoid the bust that usually follows a population boom.

I think that our basic problem is that Ma Nature, in her crapshoot selection of genes, didn't rule out psychopaths because in tribal times, they were not dangerous and sometimes very useful. However, with agriculture came granaries big enough to get a city through a year with no crops, and that concentrated wealth both attracted the psychos like nothing else, and gave them the means to stay in control. I don't know how to get the world back from the tiny number of owners, and get it to serve the common good, not the greedheads.

I'm not worried about a total cessation of life on Earth, but I would really mourn the loss of knowledge. The prospect of another thousand incarnations with people who don't know why the wind blows or the stars shine seems frustrating and boring.
 
Outdated said:
We've got all sorts of termites here. Look up Magnetic Termites, we have those up the top end. Their mounds are flat sided and all run on a north south axis. Looks really weird when you first see a valley full of them, like a giant's graveyard. They're all 5 metres tall or more.

View attachment 134956
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Australia has weird ants. :)

I watched something yesterday called "Opal Hunters Red Dirt Road Trip". That's a pretty good series. Australia is an interesting place. And weird. :) 🦘
 
Outdated said:
We've got all sorts of termites here. Look up Magnetic Termites, we have those up the top end. Their mounds are flat sided and all run on a north south axis. Looks really weird when you first see a valley full of them, like a giant's graveyard. They're all 5 metres tall or more.
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I guess being north/south oriented, they'll probably get the best exposure to the sun all year round? i.e. could it be an external heating effect they've evolved to exploit?
 
Boogs said:
I guess being north/south oriented, they'll probably get the best exposure to the sun all year round? i.e. could it be an external heating effect they've evolved to exploit?
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That's exactly it. They catch the early morning sun and the late afternoon sun full on their flat faces, but during the middle of the day the sun is mostly striking them on the edge so that the poor little ants don't fry.
 
Forest Cat said:
Australia has weird ants. :)

I watched something yesterday called "Opal Hunters Red Dirt Road Trip". That's a pretty good series. Australia is an interesting place. And weird. :) 🦘
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I love opals. If I were given the choice between an opal and any other valuable stone, diamonds, etc. I would choose the opal.

I am afraid I will be unable to travel anymore, but if I can, I’d love to go to Australia (and Norway ;) ).
 
I'm not sure why but Australian opals seem to show a lot more blues than those found in the northern hemisphere.

Opals are made from bones and sea shells. We've found a few partial skeletons made of opal, and one almost complete one, a Pliosaur called Eric. A few years back there was news of another complete skeleton being found, but that went all quiet again. They probably did find one, the same thing happened when they found Eric, too many people knowing where it is would make it a huge security concern.

Umoonasaurus demoscyllus
 
Forest Cat said:
Have you seen this?:

Outback Opal Hunters (TV Series 2018– ) ⭐ 7.0 | Documentary

I have been watching this series for a while and I think it's very interesting, good series. Opals are special, amazing colors.


View attachment 134986
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I’ve seen the trailer but can’t see the show without spending a lot of money.
Outdated said:
I'm not sure why but Australian opals seem to show a lot more blues than those found in the northern hemisphere.

Opals are made from bones and sea shells. We've found a few partial skeletons made of opal, and one almost complete one, a Pliosaur called Eric. A few years back there was news of another complete skeleton being found, but that went all quiet again. They probably did find one, the same thing happened when they found Eric, too many people knowing where it is would make it a huge security concern.

Umoonasaurus demoscyllus
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Australian opals are far superior in quality to any others. Within Australia there are different mines and the characteristics of the opals varies from mine to mine.

I am partial to the vibrant blues, but some opals like those from the Cooper-Pedy mines are mostly white. Apparently reds are considered the most valuable.

Learning skeletons and fossils could be opalised was new to me. Also just rocks.

I had to stop going to the opal websites because I was spending too much money on opals. :confused: I just can’t buy every opal I see just because they are pretty.
 
If you needed money, would you sell your organs?
I mean seriously this happens in Africa and trying to figure out who would be wanting to buy these organs?
Maybe Hiroshima victims, who knows.
 
WhitewaterWoman said:
The trouble with those one night only freezes is that’s all it takes to ruin the harvest of any frost sensitive crops.
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And that's exactly what happened. A warm dry spell with no rain when we were supposed to be having winter so the crops were in very poor condition, then frosts when they were in no state to survive. 75% crop losses in South Australia and western Victoria.

Most can't even be harvested for animal feed which is also in short supply.
 
Outdated said:
And that's exactly what happened. A warm dry spell with no rain when we were supposed to be having winter so the crops were in very poor condition, then frosts when they were in no state to survive. 75% crop losses in South Australia and western Victoria.

Most can't even be harvested for animal feed which is also in short supply.
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I’m sorry to hear that.
 
WhitewaterWoman said:
I’m sorry to hear that.
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Normally about now is when we're getting ready to harvest, especially wheat, but there's not much to harvest this year. This means we'll have none for export and that's going to create hardship in a few of our neighbouring countries, especially Indonesia. A lot of Asian countries are too overpopulated to feed themselves and rely heavily on our exports.
 
Is it just me in my insular fashion who's missed reading anything much in the general news media about this, but the food industry, especially at the source of production of raw materials, farming in the main, has a negative environmental impact second only to fossil fuel and including carbon pollution (though that's far from all), and most of the methods used for bulk production rely on a moderate and consistent climate?

So they are essentially playing a significant part in destroying their (our?) very means of production in the long term.

We've pushed the efficiency of these legacy farming methods to their extreme limits which have come to rely on current conditions as being essential to the system not breaking down. So as one of the most important attributes relied on (the weather) begins to change with negative results to farming and production drops, more and more intensive methods of farming are encouraged that have an even worse impact on the environment.

And with the food industry following the methods of the tobacco industry with regard to other area's such as ultra processed foods, to the extent that they've been recruiting ex-big-tobacco exec's!
But I'm sure that's coincidence, and the manufacturers wouldn't be looking for experience in how to subvert public safety for profit? Naaah! Surely not? 🤔
 
Boogs said:
Is it just me in my insular fashion who's missed reading anything much in the general news media about this, but the food industry, especially at the source of production of raw materials, farming in the main, has a negative environmental impact second only to fossil fuel and including carbon pollution (though that's far from all), and most of the methods used for bulk production rely on a moderate and consistent climate?
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There's been a lot of changing trends in Australia the last few decades. Farmers are starting to realise the benefits of more eco-friendly practices, some for idealistic reasons but many simply forced to accept it through climate change and adversity. Maintaining a certain percentage of native bush on their properties because this reduces the amount of insecticides they need to use by attracting natural predators, etc.

There's also been a big shift in people's attitudes towards food in Australia for the last few decades. You'll see different products advertising everywhere - No Added Colours, No Added Preservatives, No Artificial Ingredients, etc. Most of us just won't eat that chemical rubbish any more. We always had pretty strict laws regarding what was allowed to be in foods here and a lot of products from other countries are banned here, but what's really driving the market is simply people's preference for fresh food.

Supply chains around the rest of the world are pretty tight though. Australia has a population of 27 million people but on an average year we grow enough to feed 180 million people. In a bad year we still feed ourselves with barely a second thought about it but other countries lose out.

Some countries are going to have to start seriously considering controlling the numbers of people they have because current situations aren't going to be sustainable for much longer. For every 1 million more people we get in our own population there's 3 million less people in the rest of the world that we can feed, land and water taken away from farming as well as domestic food consumption increasing.
 
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