Sara Orell

Three shots of a green-silver colored caiman wreathed in 4-6 colorful yellow and orange butterflies. He blinks in two of the shots, looking delighted somehow, while the butterflies swarm his head. CREDIT: Mark Cowan.

This photograph series by Mark Cowan documents a phenomenon called 'lachryphagy' ("tear-feeding").

The caiman excretes salt in their tears & the butterflies need the precious minerals for their metabolism & reproduction.

So, they're feeding on crocodilian tears.

(📷: Mark Cowan, Curtin Uni.)

It's Friday.

Time to chill.

#FighterFriday #Gripen #Sweden

📷 Peter Degerfeldt Blue Sky Aerial

Efter teknikstrulet – Försvarsmakten stöttar sjukvården på Gotland I veckan har Visby lasarett haft stora problem med steriliseringstekniken – något som bland annat lett till inställda operationer. Nu stöttar Försvarsmakten upp.

Efter teknikstrulet – Försvarsmakten stöttar sjukvården på Gotland!

www.svt.se/nyheter/loka...

A cosmic ray simulator for extreme science on Earth

🆕 Cosmic rays simulator in Darmstadt, Germany.

⚛️ For the first time in Europe, researchers are accelerating charged atoms up to around 90% the speed of light to recreate the full spectrum of cosmic radiation. 🧪🔭

🔗 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

(Pic: GSI/FAIR)

BREAKING: Swedish coastguard have boarded Russian shadow fleeet tanker SEA OWL I The Swedish Coastguard cutter KBV 001 POSEIDON have boarded the Russian shadow fleet tanker SEA OWL I.

BREAKING: Swedish coastguard have boarded russian shadow fleeet tanker SEA OWL I

cornucopia.se/2026/03/brea...

Ping @auonsson.bsky.social @covertshores.bsky.social

Stor satsning på luftvärn

It's easy to miss major changes when they are drip-feed as part of several different packages. So here's a good overview of everything Sweden has done in ground-based air defence during the last year, amounting to 4.7 Bn EUR(!) in announced programs.

🇸🇪 #Arctic fighter.

Swedish Air Force JAS 39 #Gripen C - deployment to #Iceland and #NATO Air Policing.

📷Flygvapnet #ArcticSentry

🇸🇪🇺🇦 Ukraine Prepares Down Payment for First #Gripen and Rafale Fighter Jets

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this during a briefing after a joint meeting with the members of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Verkhovna Rada."

militarnyi.com/en/news/ukra...

Spring forward... Fall back... whatever.

Can we just pick ONE & stick with it once & for ALL?!!! ⏰

Ok...so monk seals snort eels. But I hear you asking: What about me?

You can too!

According to a 1440 book of medical advice, you can cure a bloody nose by crushing up dried eel skin & snorting it like blow (through your "nose thirlles").

Don't let the seals have all the fun!
🗃️🧪

A whole fish sits next to salt and rice filled barrels, I think. It's got stylized kanji in vertical lines along the side. There are trays of cuts of fish, or vegetables next to the barrels.

I'm craving sushi: let's talk about who *invented it*.

Our story starts in the Mekong River valley: Laos, Cambodia, Thailand.

Locals realize they can preserve river fish in barrels with layers of salt & rice for YEARS, a precaution against drought, famine.

Idag är World Wildlife Day idag så jag bjuder med glädje på fyra av mina bästa bilder på vilda djur.

War and Peas Comic Panel 1: A narrator's voice begins, "The Sun has risen. Its golden orb quietly—" The Sun, depicted with a grumpy face, interrupts with, "EXCUSE ME, I do not 'rise.'" Panel 2: The Sun, now with an angry expression, shouts, "You all revolve around me!" Panel 3: The Sun continues, "Without me, you idiots would all be DEAD!" The background remains a clear blue sky with mountains in the distance and people looking at the sun. Panel 4: The narrator's voice resumes, "The Sun, a narcissistic asshole, has risen." The Sun glares down at the tiny people below shooting sunrays. The people flee.

Read an Excerpt From The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon - Reactor Gods rule this planet. Demons stalk its canyons while Kings beg for mercy. Can three mere humans rewrite its destiny?

You say horror science fiction, I ask you where to put my money. We're excited to share an excerpt from The Demon Star by @jvawrites.bsky.social! And why yes...there are maps.

Meme. Photograph of the sculpture "Eel Walker" by Mark Newman, showing naked woman walking an large eel on a leash. The eel -- a massive moray-looking thing -- is floating along off the ground, so we can assume that they are walking through a stream, or on the bottom of the ocean, or through space. OR that it's a magical eel, and it just flies. The eel is fierce and terrible, and probably is expensive to feed. The woman is done in a golden bronze color. Her hair is floating backwards, suggesting that there is a breeze or an ocean current catching it. I've cleverly (or obnoxiously) written the meme text over her breasts. Sorry, folks; she saving those for the eel. She is muscled and powerful, and the way her left foot is places in front of makes her seem more like a dancer than a walker. She looks like the goddess of eels, taking one of her minions out to gnaw into the dreams of unbelievers and scientists. Meme text reads: "Let's talk eel sex, baby"

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so let's talk about sex.

Eel sex!

Well...we can't, really.

We don't know exactly where, or how, eels get busy. It's a 2000+ year old puzzle. It's not like we haven't tried. But the sex life of eels is a mystery smothered in secret sauce. 1/5
🗃️🧪

The cover for Uncanny Magazine Issue 67, "Mushroom Mother of Us All" by Paul Lewin. In the center, an elderly Black woman has her eyes closed, a brown-orange nose piercing on her right nostril and an orange line/mark on her chin. Her hair are the green leaves of trees, trunks growing out of the side of her face, and mushrooms growing through the leaves. She wears earrings of orange, sienna, with aqua and white lines and dots. Her hands hold a bowl lined with Black faces and mushrooms. In the center of the bowl is an orange sun surrounded by a dark pink halo like a globe. The quote reads: "The first time Kittu teleported was into the lavatory of a plane bound for London, fifteen seconds before it crashed in a field south of Gatwick. One moment she was brushing her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror in her apartment in Toronto, wishing she had the money to go on vacation, and the next moment she was thrown upward, hitting the ceiling of a tiny, smelly, enclosed space."

ICYMI! Reading 2025 fiction?

Try the short story "The Teleporting Disaster Fairy" by Rati Mehrotra @rati.bsky.social!

You can read it here!

buff.ly/Vx4qdNX

A book, looking old and tatty, open so that you can see both pages. On the verso (left) is a set of poems, next to B&W drawings of eels, a frog, a goat, and a hare. On the rector (right) are colored versions of those animals. The eel is swimming with an oyster and a seal. The frog is sitting on a log reading. The goat is strutting his stuff in a maroon robe, and the hare is in a chair. Around the edges are the letters E, G, F, and H, large and orange. The goat *looks* sophisticated and classy. But that's packaging. He's absolutely showing a bit of leg to passersby. Standing by the fence, teasing his wares; that classy goat is for sale. The poems read: E is an eel that danced a round reel With a very large oyster and very fat sea. F is a frog that sat on a log and sang a nice song to his friends in the bog. G is for goat that wore a long coat that made him look quite like a wise man of note H is a hare that sat in a chair and thought of course no one would know he was there.

It's Friday. And I want you to enjoy these fabulous eels from a 19th C. children's reader, printed on cloth.

Also note the resplendent goat. That's a goat you could take home to meet your mother. Or...is it?

Have a eely good weekend, 'y'all!
🗃️🧪

The Parsley Girl - Uncanny Magazine I. The parsley girl is trickier than you think. Wouldn’t you be, if your own mother sold you to a witch for a bundle of parsley? Winter had come and she was craving anything green, would have eaten gr...

New poem, in the lovely Uncanny Magazine. :)

The parsley girl is trickier than you think . . .

www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-...

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, denies it fucks underage ducks, is mentioned 5000 times in secret documents about fucking underage ducks, is best friends with other underage duck fuckers & holds a competition to find the prettiest underage ducks, it's Donald the Duck Fucker. 🐤🦆

Panel 1: A tech bro strides across a stage. The word “PeoplBOTS” is in huge letters behind him. He says: “Our journey began with a simple question:” Panel 2 “Can we create a robot that is enormously powerful, but also completely safe?” Panel 3 “The answer to that question was 'No'.” A huge red armoured metal robot trundles across the stage belching smoke. It has a flamethrower for one arm and large shears for the other. Its eyes glow meanly red. Tech bro announces “So I give you: Dangerbot900!!”

A recent cartoon for @newscientist.com.

p.s. my new book of science cartoons, ‘Physics for Cats’ is out now. Links at www.tomgauld.com

3-panel comic. (1) [Three small arthropods on ocean floor.] ARTHROPOD 1: Now that we’re multicellular, what are your plans? I’m gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them! ARTHROPOD 2: I’m gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff! ARTHROPOD 3: I’m gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals. (2) [Silence] (3) ARTHROPOD 1: *Dude.* ARTHROPOD 2: Can you *please* just be normal about this? ARTHROPOD 3: *What??!*

Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/

System Collapse 🙂

📍Sweden | 🇫🇷 Rafale & 🇸🇪 Gripen together in Swedish skies
 
✈️ Agile Combat Employment : rapid projection, minimal logistics footprint.
 
🎯 Allied forces responsive and united to safeguard NATO nation's freedom of action.

Spot on 😄

BREAKING: Massive anti-U.S., pro-Greenland protests have erupted in Copenhagen

Let that sink in, one of America’s closest allies is publicly protesting out of fear we might invade their territory

So much for the claim that “the world respects the U.S. under Trump.”

The reality? It’s the opposite.

Comic. Standard 16-Part Epoxy. [Epoxy applicator with multiple labeled chambers in different colors: resin; hardener; filler, softener; rosin; stuff that bonds permanently to skin and nothing else; stuff that will turn white and crack over a few days, for decorative appearance; placebo; minced duct tape; acetone Fragrance; powdered bar magnets; polyethylvinylesteracetate; 2-polyethylvinylesteracetate; salt and pepper to taste; blood sample from the Gorilla Glue gorillas; stuff that bonds to every known material except yours]

16-Part Epoxy

xkcd.com/3194/

Trump’s Most Dangerous Gambit His irrational obsession with Greenland could lead to global conflict.

Danish and Greenland ministers just left the White House. It did not go well.
I have a long discussion here of Trump's attempt to get Greenland and why it could lead to World War III.

(Gifted.)

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Svenska Natotruppens utrustning: Radio och kompass Den svenska Natostyrkan som snart ska åka till Lettland tröttnade på att vänta på ett modernt sambandssystem.

”När grejerna väl fanns bygde hennes informationssystemsoldater själva ihop det på mindre än två veckor.”

Ping @andreasbraw.bsky.social @taktisk.se

www.dn.se/sverige/sven...

NASA continues to work toward February launch of Artemis 2 NASA says it is continuing to prepare for a possible Artemis 2 launch as soon as February, but with remarkably little publicity for the historic mission.

NASA says it is continuing to prepare for a possible Artemis 2 launch as soon as February, but the agency has provided remarkably little publicity for the historic mission. Preparations are ongoing even as public communication about the flight remains limited. - More on hype.aero