Digital Naturalism Laboratories

Hiya folks! For new people here's the big project we have been working on in Panamá! The Mothbox! It's a fully #opensource insect camera trap with loads of documentation to build the whole thing yourself from off the shelf parts! digital-naturalism-laboratories.github.io/Mothbox/

In this PhD project you will uncover the hidden diversity of fungi and the plant-fungal interactions shaping the ecology and evolution of Scalesia species in the Galápagos archipelago. Apply for this vacancy on our website: nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...

🎉 New preprint! We built a fully open-source, 3D-printable droplet microfluidics platform with strobe-enhanced microscopy — sharp images of fast-moving droplets without a high-speed camera. All files on GitHub. #Microfluidics #OpenHardware 🔗 biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.758223v1

Congrats brazil!!!

Congrats to Lula on overcoming Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump to defeat Hospital Pervert Jr., even as his opposition literally blocked off roads and turned off bus service during election day. Fascists are scary but they are always, 100% of the time, ultimately gigantic fucking losers.

I’m so happy for Brazil! They just dodged a huge fascist bullet.

If you missed this, absolutely go play Mini Mini Golf Golf! It involves, among many other things, an in-universe game design talk show video series which is also a vector for the future communicating with the past (because games are tunnels into the past, the future, and the lives of other people)

Politician: If the president decides 10% of all money is his money that’s the system working as intended. It’s called The Constitution

The image of - a coked out bro - sitting in his dark kitchen - making a giant AI hologram of his wife - with a big lizard walking around on the table pretty much sums up what's going on with US tech leadership. Also just an incredible scene in filmmaking

I'm hanging out with some academic PIs who like, are actually good? and like care for the students and their rights? It shouldn't be impressive, but the amount of non-great leadership i have seen has made my standards really low. Anyway, it's cool!

Oh man, just reminiscing about how a couple years ago Adafruit blocked me for calling out all their weird NFT crap they were hocking.

Our Zoos & Aquariums group leaders are hosting their first community gathering tomorrow! If you work in this space or are curious about how technology can connect conservation efforts in managed care and in the wild, join us. 🗓️ Oct 22 | 21:00 UTC 👉 Register: wildlabs.net/en/event/zoo...

OMG IS THIS MOTHS

disconcerting

Hot off the press! The Social Lives of Bats: From Roosting Rituals to Dinner Dates pelagicpublishing.com/products/the...

5/ Trump bought up to $1.6 million of Nvidia stock in August. But guess what? He did it because he knew Nvidia's stock was about to jump because he was about to announce the lifting of export restrictions on Nvidia chips. JD - did you not see that?

You wouldn't believe how many actual humans are killed for every white guy who thinks pronouns are the big problem in the world right now.

This pseudo-scientific garbage is, of course, published by @elsevierconnect.bsky.social (might remember them from killing Aaron Swartz),+ includes BS inflammatory gems like this "Results found Canada currently sacrificing one human life for 15 % pronoun use." crafted to get picked up by DailyMail

We’re trying to adapt an algorithm that we made for 3D blood vessel networks to make Christmas ornaments for our Patreon members. Usually we have two growth points to create a network with 1 inlet and 1 outlet (for perfusing blood) but with 5 growth points we get a star

This pseudo-scientific garbage is, of course, published by @elsevierconnect.bsky.social (might remember them from killing Aaron Swartz),+ includes BS inflammatory gems like this "Results found Canada currently sacrificing one human life for 15 % pronoun use." crafted to get picked up by DailyMail

I don't know how I missed this putrid garbage, but this guy decided, in a world where billionaires are draining rivers dry generating child pxrn, that the real prob was pronouns in emails www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Continuing my theme of "Why would a bat weighing 6g do this??" look what Mike did last night. 👀 (yellow highlight). At 18.40, he was holidaying in Prestatin. By half past midnight he was in Cardiff. In a straight line that's 130 miles in under 6 hours. #bats #wildlife #movementecology

Empire Cave pseudoscorpion pattern is now available yayy Any other arachnid patterns people would like to see for #arachtober ? 👀 #bsnm #crochet #invertebrates

Yeah there's the argument things are tracking your face no matter what, but - you don't have to volunteer your time (it often takes longer than scanning a barcode) or info to give free training to like palantir or whoever gets it - it's a simple act of protest against this silliness

Reminder that in US airports, no matter how much the people at the gates try to bully you, you can opt out of the face scans This is the TSA's own policy. www.tsa.gov/news/press/f...

I've complained on here a few times about synteny plots that are harder to read than they need to be. I decided it was time to actaully do something about it: introducing SynTangle, a tool for untangling whole-genome synteny plots github.com/Hanliconius/... 1/

On the other side, i like thinking about from the spider's point of view, it's butt just kinda happens to look like a tasty sandwich and other sandwiches start coming out to meet it when it walks near a sandwich nest.

Quote: "This is what real hope looks like... Real hope has its sleeves rolled up and is prepared to get messy. It leaves room for uncertainty and failure but refuses to believe that there’s nothing left to do. ...The opposite of hope isn’t despair. It’s inaction" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Like, UT student groups are primarily coordinating science outreach using Instagram, thus helping a platform complicit in removing the funding for their own careers. It is not sustainable

Reality. No virtue. Rogues gallery continues. One of Trump and Hegseth's 'Project Meridian' team members Palmer Luckey. I'm feeling UNluckey.

I'm at an AI conference, and the opening discussion about, "what's changed in AI in the past year," began with "Everyone HATES AI now." So good job everyone!

I think AI is going to do for nature what the internet has done for society. Which I think is a statement that would read a lot different in the 90's than now.

Can confirm. Back when I thought I was a Libertarian, I was, in fact, a child. Meeting adult Libertarians freshman year of college quickly showed me the error of my ways.

Spotted a gorgeous @nervo.us necklace in the wild on Macroecology Professor, Marta! @nervousjesse.bsky.social @nervousjessica.bsky.social

I think AI is going to do for nature what the internet has done for society. Which I think is a statement that would read a lot different in the 90's than now.

I'm at an AI conference, and the opening discussion about, "what's changed in AI in the past year," began with "Everyone HATES AI now." So good job everyone!

Man, the Avalanches are gonna drop some really amazing stuff soon i feel

A moth light, a Raspberry Pi, and an open-source AI pipeline that IDs every insect it attracts overnight. 🌙 Dr. Andrew Quitmeyer joins OpenCV Live to walk through the Mothbox: hardware, YOLOv8 detection, BioCLIP classification, and real jungle deployments at 9: youtube.com/live/9C2OgjZ... #OpenCV

My wonderful colleague @dinalab.bsky.social was on the @opencv.bsky.social weekly webinar today. Andy builds the Mothbox, an @oshwassociation.bsky.social certified open hardware project, that automates biodiversity monitoring for flying insects. Absolutely worth a watch.

HELP! ‼️🙏 I’m looking for animal behaviour/cognition videos for teaching students to record behaviour using different tools. Are there any open source resources, or do you have animal behaviour videos in the field or the lab that I could use?

www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/12/1...

Ai came up with a hell of a dare

Design a bat barn and win a residency to the Art Farm!

Oh no! Did you miss the EPIC 24 Hour Open Source Hardware Livestream this weekend? Well fret not! because you can still watch the recording! It gets good and weird! @oshwassociation.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GlD...

When newspapers like @apnews.com have this kind of slop in their headlines, is that just forgetting to erase their lazy AI writing or what?