All posts tagged: tiny

Eric Oglander’s Tiny Curiosities Summon a Sense of Simplicity and Play

Eric Oglander’s Tiny Curiosities Summon a Sense of Simplicity and Play

Published by skeptic

Eric Oglander makes his sculptures—poetic and odd, searching and guided by a sense of play—in the back of an eccentric antique shop. Hidden behind a wall in Tihngs, a store he stocks with one-of-a-kind finds, and operates on Sunday afternoons in Ridgewood, Queens, is a workshop filled with scraps of wood, piles of button-down shirts, and other cast-off materials that Oglander crafts into curious contraptions, often at minuscule scale. Some are elaborate and mechanical, like the homespun catapults and trebuchets he builds and coats in white paint; others are crafted from the simplest of gestures, like tiny wooden totems bearing curves and curlicues whittled with just a knife and a thumb. All of them could blend in on shelves full of offbeat objects. Related Articles “I was always into stuff,” Oglander said of his upbringing in rural Tennessee, where he obsessively collected things like arrowheads, fossils, and rocks as well as fish and other organisms. “I had 14 snakes at one point,” he said, expressing a persistent interest in pythons. Both of his parents and …

Are these tiny insects the world’s most bone-idle bugs?

Are these tiny insects the world’s most bone-idle bugs?

Published by skeptic

At less than 3mm long, you may not think Dunatothrips aneurae seem like much. And – as I have shown in a new study – you’d be absolutely right. That’s because these may be the world’s laziest insects. Dunatothrips live in the remote Australian outback where they bother nobody. They almost never leave their near-invisible miniature nests, built on Acacia trees from silk they extrude from their bottom. No known predators bother with Dunatothrips and their biggest threat is drying out in the heat if their nest is damaged. Pacifist vegetarians, they feed harmlessly on the plant surface, with no discernible effect on it. No bigger than the hyphen on your page, they belong to the thrips, which you may know as thunderbugs owing to a myth that they come out during thunderstorms. Almost everyone gets their name wrong (one thrips is a thrips, not a thrip). Some species make a nuisance of themselves as tomato pests. But for the Dunatothrips I investigated, that sounds a bit much too much like effort. I spent a …

New Pompeii Excavations Reveal Decorated “Tiny House”

New Pompeii Excavations Reveal Decorated “Tiny House”

Published by skeptic

Murals in the House of Phaedra (2024) in Pompeii. Source: Archaeological Park of Pompeii.   Archaeologists at Pompeii recently unearthed an atypical ancient Roman dwelling. Deemed the House of Phaedra for the contents of its murals, it makes up for its small size with its sumptuous interior decorating, shedding new light on how Pompeiians showed off their wealth and style.   Murals at the House of Phaedra Mural detail (2024). Source: Archaeological Park of Pompeii.   The unusually small residential unit was found during ongoing excavations at Pompeii‘s Amanti Island insula. Despite its diminutive size, the Pompeiian “tiny house” was decorated with well-preserved fresco paintings that are just as extravagant and detailed as those in wealthier villas nearby. It has been provisionally named the House of Phaedra, as one of the frescoes depicts a scene from the ancient myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra.   Many of the murals feature erotic scenes, including an embrace between a nymph and a satyr and a couple believed to be Adonis and Venus. Another more damaged mural depicts the …

Crypto Bro and Alleged Fraudster Appointed Leader of a Tiny “Micronation” in Eastern Europe

Crypto Bro and Alleged Fraudster Appointed Leader of a Tiny “Micronation” in Eastern Europe

Published by José

What happens in Liberland stays in Liberland. Liber Free A crypto bro who’s been accused of fraud has just become one of the most powerful men in a 2.7-square-mile, self-proclaimed “micronation” of Liberland. As Quartz reports, crypto network Tron founder Justin Sun was elected this week in a so-called “blockchain-based election” as the Speaker of Congress for the tiny state wedged on previously unclaimed wetlands between Croatia and Serbia. Shortly thereafter, the disputed country‘s Czech-born right-wing libertarian president and founder Vít Jedlička nominated Sun to be the country’s prime minister as well, effectively putting him in charge of two of Liberland’s three most powerful positions. “The election process, governed by a simple set of rules, was entirely algorithmic, providing transparency,” reads a statement from Liberland’s spokespeople, per Cointelegraph. “This system has a unique ability to eliminate doubt regarding election outcomes, a challenge faced by many countries still relying on traditional methods.” Yes, we’re aware that this all sounds like madlibs — and reader, we’re just getting started. Baby Country Sun, as Quartz notes, gained notoriety in the crypto …

8 Tiny Signs You’re Abandoning Yourself To Please Others

8 Tiny Signs You’re Abandoning Yourself To Please Others

Published by skeptic

Anxiety feels different for everyone who experiences it. For some people, anxiety manifests in their minds, making their thoughts loop and worst fears echo. Others hold anxiety in their bodies, their hearts racing and stomachs twisting, finding it hard to breathe. Georgie Collinson, an anxiety therapist in Australia, posed a thoughtful question to Instagram, wondering if anxiety, though distinctly unpleasant, is actually a message that lets us know when we’re abandoning ourselves for the sake of making other people happy. “What if this pesky, annoying inconvenience of anxiety was actually a friend beckoning you to come back home to yourself?” Collinson asked. Here are 8 tiny signs you’re abandoning yourself to please others: 1. You’re always doing what’s nice for them, not right for you If you often find yourself compromising your own needs for those of other people, you’ve likely lost touch with what makes you feel fulfilled. RELATED: 10 Ways To Say ‘No’ Without Feeling Guilty, According To A Psychologist This can come up when a friend asks a favor you don’t actually …

The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants | Trees and forests

The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants | Trees and forests

Published by skeptic

The giant sequoia is so enormous that it was once believed to be indestructible. High in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains, the oldest trees – known as monarchs – have stood for more than 2,000 years. Today, however, in Sequoia national park, huge trunks lie sprawled on the forest floor, like blue whale carcasses stranded on a beach. Many of these trees were felled by a combination of drought and fire. But among the factors responsible for the rising toll is a tiny new suspect: the bark beetle. You could have a feedback effect, where warming becomes more rapid if we lose the carbon fixation of boreal forests Thomas Seth David Along with wildfires and rising temperatures, scientists fear that the insects could contribute to the breakdown of Earth’s northern conifer forests, including the potential dieback of the taiga, the vast ecosystem that stretches across Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia and Alaska. The boreal forest spans 11.3m sq km (2,800m acres) and stores about 272 gigatonnes of carbon. Its possible collapse is considered a climate tipping point: …

Tiny Dot of Human Brain Tissue Reveals Unexpected Insights

Tiny Dot of Human Brain Tissue Reveals Unexpected Insights

Published by skeptic

Remember when we would have total control of our problems once we grasped everything we needed to know about the brain? Over the years, with a lot of effort, we have succeeded in learning a lot more about the brain. Recently, a group of Google Research neuroscientists succeeded in mapping a cubic millimetre of human brain tissue. Not a lot, really, just a teeny fragment. Here’s what they said: “The word ‘fragment’ is ironic,” [Jeff] Lichtman said. “A terabyte is, for most people, gigantic, yet a fragment of a human brain – just a miniscule, teeny-weeny little bit of human brain – is still thousands of terabytes.” Harvard University, “Amazingly Detailed Images Reveal a Single Cubic Millimeter of Human Brain in 3D,” EurekAlert, May 9, 2024; Shapson-Coe A, et al. A petavoxel fragment of human cerebral cortex reconstructed at nanoscale resolution. Science. 2024 May 10;384(6696):eadk4858. doi: 10.1126/science.adk4858. Epub 2024 May 10. PMID: 38723085. The paper is not open access but the data is online . So, in one little dot of brain tissue there is …

Google helped make an exquisitely detailed map of a tiny piece of the human brain

Google helped make an exquisitely detailed map of a tiny piece of the human brain

Published by skeptic

Many other brain atlases exist, but most provide much lower-resolution data. At the nanoscale, researchers can trace the brain’s wiring one neuron at a time to the synapses, the places where they connect. “To really understand how the human brain works, how it processes information, how it exports memories, we will ultimately need a map that’s at that resolution,” says Viren Jain, a senior research scientist at Google and coauthor on the paper, published in Science on May 9. The data set itself and a preprint version of this paper were released in 2021. Brain atlases come in many forms. Some reveal how the cells are organized. Others cover gene expression. This one focuses on connections between cells, a field called “connectomics.” The outermost layer of the brain contains roughly 16 billion neurons that link up with each other to form trillions of connections. A single neuron might receive information from hundreds or even thousands of other neurons and send information to a similar number. That makes tracing these connections an exceedingly complex task, even …

All Creatures Great and Small’s Rachel Shenton showcases tiny waist in towering heels

All Creatures Great and Small’s Rachel Shenton showcases tiny waist in towering heels

Published by skeptic

Fans of Channel 5 period drama All Creatures Great And Small are used to seeing Rachel Shenton in demure outfits, so her attendance at the LA Premiere of The Strangers: Part One, came as a surprise when she rocked a gorgeous modern dress. Rachel, 36, cast aside her character Helen’s country attire for all-out glamour, rocking a figure-hugging floral-print dress paired with skyscraper open-toe platform heels. The mini dress accentuated Rachel’s figure, while the delicate puff sleeves added an air of whimsy to her attire. The actress’ long hair was styled into a bouncy blow dry to complete the look, while she added a slick of rose lipstick for the occasion. © GettyRachel Shenton looked a far cry from her All Creatures Great and Small charact Rachel’s latest project, The Strangers: Chapter 1, is a horror film, making it a stark departure from her All Creatures Great And Small role, but ever the pro, the former Hollyoaks star is effortlessly handling all of her characters. She delighted fans of the Channel 5 drama last month when she shared the …

The Tiny Nation at the Vanguard of Mining the Ocean Floor

The Tiny Nation at the Vanguard of Mining the Ocean Floor

Published by Sam

Two ships arrived in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific in March of last year. One was a familiar sight: a massive cruise ship, bringing hundreds of tourists to the pristine shores of this nation of 15,000 people. The other, a neon-orange vessel hauling complex scientific equipment, was more unusual. On a nearby wharf, Prime Minister Mark Brown and many other prominent citizens had gathered to celebrate the smaller boat’s arrival. To Mr. Brown, the cruise ship represented his country’s troubling dependence on tourism. He described the other vessel, owned by an international mining company, as a harbinger of incredible wealth. The Cook Islands is at the vanguard of a quest to mine the ocean floor for minerals used in electric car batteries. Mining these deposits has never been attempted on a large scale, but their reserves are so vast, proponents argue, that extracting them could power the world’s shift away from fossil fuels. It would be a transformation for the Cook Islands, as well: Seabed mining could generate tens of billions of dollars …