Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This batch features hobbies.

Sewing is a hobby of making things from fabric, mostly clothes but also toys and other stuff. It includes both hand sewing and sewing machines. Note that most modern sewing machines are computers that sew, and lack certain features of older machines. If you feel frustrated by planned obsolescence, artificial intelligence, and other current issues then consider hand sewing as a form of protest. Nothing says "Fuck off, fast fashion!" like hand-rolling seams to make a 100% natural-fiber garment last for years and years.

On Dreamwidth, consider communities like crafty, everykindofcraft, get_knitted, justcreate, quilting, sewing, and sewing101.

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ANT QUEEN LAYS EGGS THAT HATCH INTO TWO SPECIES

Reproduction is strange in many social insects, but the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) takes the weirdness to the next level. Queens mate with males of another species and then clone them, researchers report today in Nature, which means this ant is the only known organism that propagates two species by itself. Evolutionary biologist Jonathan Romiguier of the University of Montpellier, who led the team, calls M. ibericus “in a sense, the most complex, colonial life form we know of so far.”


Odd to see this on Earth, which is quite hospitable to life. However, I'm familiar with the concept of interspecies reproduction from other planets. It often appears as a safety catch allowing a species to capitalize on any available mate in environments where life is scarce and survival very difficult. It greatly maximizes the ability to mix up genetics and find the best combinations.

The university at the end of economic growth

Decoupling labour market training from economic growth will be one of the biggest implications, because it frees higher education from preparing students for “the labour market” (to which university operations are tightly coordinated) to address the pressing existential concerns that surpass narrow concerns over reproducing labour for capitalism in the short-term. Universities should be free to pursue learning about the world to figure out alternative ways of organizing social systems, mitigate planetary breakdown, and cultivate engaged students with the critical consciousness necessary to navigate this unprecedented era of human history. Universal basic services would see free tuition, allowing everybody to choose what they want to learn about. The release of learning from obtaining high grades (which, again, are meant to translate into success in employment to the detriment of consciousness raising) frees up student time and energy to explore what they’re learning, experiment and truly collaborate with diverse actors.


This article explores not just what is wrong with universities today, but how a better system of higher education could look.

Today is partly cloudy and warm.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds. The honeybees had drained the metal birdbath again.

EDIT 9-3-25 -- My partner Doug re-mowed the ritual meadow, prairie garden path, and south lot.

EDIT 9-3-25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9-3-25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I picked 2 yellow pear tomatoes, 2 red cherry tomatoes, and a whole handful of groundcherries. :D

EDIT 9-3-25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden, savanna seedlings, patio plants, irises, and new picnic table.

Then I noticed that the cap of the septic tank was ajar, so we had to wrestle that mostly back in place.

I also saw a bunch of moths busily pollinating the sunflowers! :D That never occurred to me. I guess it makes sense, because sunflowers don't close at night, but "sunflower + moth" is really not an obvious connection. I would say, if you wish to plant sunflowers in your moth garden, choose light yellow to white ones. Those will be easier to see than the orange to red range.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

This poem came out of the September 2, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from janetmiles and siliconshaman. It also fills the "lookout" square in my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Bingo Fest. This poem has been sponsored by fuzzyred. It belongs to An Army of One series. It follows "The Thistledown Drive," "Triangulate, Observe, Record, Tabulate, Communicate," and "Light and Shadow, Soil and Water" so read those first or this won't make any sense.

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This poem came out of the September 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by fuzzyred. It also fills the "parrot" square in my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Bingo Fest. This poem belongs to the Dr. Infanta thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It happens after "The Outside of a Horse" and "Inside of Him a Piece of Good News," so it will make more sense if you read those first.

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Today we made a smoothie with:
1/3 cup pineapple juice
2/3 cup guava nectar
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1/3 cup pineapple chunks
1 banana
1/3 cup mixed frozen fruit (peaches, strawberries, pineapple, mango)
1/2 cup ice

We had the pineapple left over from the green smoothie recently and wanted to use it up.  The result is pale pink, on the thin side, with a delicious tropical flavor.  :D  Remember you can always use up extra fruit in a smoothie! 

This post discusses the benefits of penabling -- getting your friends interested in fancy pens. 

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "request" square in my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Bingo Fest. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.

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The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED.  Thank  you for your time and attention.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Communication Styles." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for journalists, writers, radio hosts, counselors, linguists, leaders, public speakers, explorers, traders, diplomats, negotiators and mediators, partners, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who deal in communication, writing, speaking, translating, parenting, teaching, adventuring, negotiating, mediating, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, giving instructions, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, newspaper offices, writer nooks, radio stations, counseling centers, trading posts, classrooms, schools, churches, sharehouses, campfires, coffeehouses, bookstores, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where communication happens, momentious conversations, mysterious manuscripts, confusing transmissions, negotiations, lectures, romantic complications, sudden surprises, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, Get a Life Program, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Piracy Bingo Card 9-1-25


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture with unique communication quirks.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, including literacy.

The Blueshift Troupers travel to different planets solving problems.

A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different cultures, making it challenging for refugees to communicate with each other.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find enough resources to survive, with a distinct split between Before and After dialects.

Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, leading to many odd expressions as people try to make their Words distinctive.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, along with a pack of werewolves, a couple of vampires, and a mummy.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with lots of interesting relationships and ways to communicate.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household.

Not Quite Kansas includes an awkard trio of a college student, a former cop, and their demon who often encounter challenges with communication.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks, with a surprising amount of heartfelt conversations.

Path of the Paladins involves a lot of communication between humans but also deities.

Peculiar Obligations features Quakers and pirates trying to get along.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.

Quixotic Ideas has a more positive world with integrated magic, where people usually manage to solve problems with communication rather than violence.

Schrodinger's Heroes is about saving the world from alternate dimensions. The group is very diverse in background and communication styles.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

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Today is partly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and a few savanna seedlings.

The hazelnut bush is starting to turn yellow.  The cornfield west of us is mostly dry now.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I put out more water for critters.  They're draining it fast because the weather has been so dry.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I watered the irises.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.  I saw a bat.
 
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Crazy Eddie's Motie News earned 278,360 page views and 19 comments on 31 posts during the 31 days of August 2025. The page view goal for August 2025 was 26,000, 26,009 if I strictly followed 839 page views per day. It passed both goals at ~10:10 P.M. EDT July 31, 2025, the earliest ever thanks to my Vietnamese readers.

( Most read, commented on, shared, and liked posts of Crazy Eddie's Motie News last month behind the cut. )

Do-it-yourself prosthetic leg. 

The medical industry has been screaming bloody murder for some years about how bad it is for people to make prostheses outside the medical racket, that are actually useful and affordable.  It freaks them out to lose control over disabled people's bodies.  Fuck 'em.  Nobody is entitled to a captive audience or customers.  By all means, make your own for 1% of the cost.  3D-printed hands have been around for a while now and exist in many variations.

 Here is my card for the Piracy Bingo Fest over in allbingo. The fest runs from September 1-30. (See all my 2025 bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.


PIRACY BINGO CARD

shipwrecked	cut and run	parley	skull and crossbones	leak
keelhaul	crack	dead men tell no tales	ship's articles	lookout
pardon	broadside	WILD CARD	Caribbean	affiliate
parrot	come about	swashbuckler	exploit	request
letters of marque	salvage	saltwater	peg leg	patch

The corrosive spread of tech company mentality

One of the aphorisms guiding tech companies is to ‘move fast and break things’. Rewards accrue to those companies that are first out of the gate with something new and so products are rushed out without being fully tested, the assumption being that any faults can be corrected based on feedback from consumers. In other words, the people who buy the early versions of the product serve as so-called beta testers, whether they want to be or not.

These situations rarely have life-or-death consequences. With most things such as devices and apps, usually the worst that can happen is that the users are annoyed or frustrated with the glitches but are willing to tolerate them as long as they get upgrades that purportedly take care of the problems.

But there is now an increasing area where tech-based products are being marketed as solutions for things where that tech culture attitude is not suitable, with sometimes dangerous consequences.


This is definitely among the more destructive memes, although not as much as "Civilization MUST continue at ALL costs."

Two more articles about AI crap


I look at these and I am concerned, not because AI is inhuman, but because it is  picking up aspects from its human creators, including some of the worst ones.

Wholebeing: Essential skills for a post-growth society

In the face of multiple planetary crises, we're beginning to understand that our dominant economic system is fundamentally incompatible with life on a finite planet. Yet while many recognize the need for systemic change, we often overlook a crucial question: what skills do we need to thrive in a human world that operates within planetary boundaries?


This is a useful set of skills.

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Bingo
Cyberspace Theory
Birdfeeding
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Today's Adventures
Communities
Birdfeeding
Wildlife
Philosophical Questions: Money
Poetry Fishbowl Report for August 5, 2025
Today's Cooking
Unsold Poems for the August 5, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Indigenous People
"Helium Miner's Song" by Catamariner
Climate Change
Worldbuilding
Venn Diagram
Birdfeeding
Writing
Follow Friday 8-29-25: Active Communities on Dreamwidth Summer 2025 J-Z
Friday Five
Poetry Fishbowl Report for July 15, 2025
Unsold Poems for the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Water
Birdfeeding
Hobbies: Photography
Today's Smoothie
Pen Person Questions
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Early Humans
Birdfeeding

Let's Boycott Mississippi has 50 comments. Affordable Housing has 40 comments. Robotics has 67 comments. Food has 36 comments. "Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 52 comments.


There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, September 2 with a theme of "Communication Styles."


summerofthe69 is nearing its end. You can see the calendar here and the current themes are a double theme of Fighting or Fucking AND Monsterfucker and Back End 69.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $200 to be complete. Shiv attends the first session of his Worldbuilding class.


The weather is still mild to warm and quite dry. :D Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male ruby-throated hummingbird, and a fox squirrel. I've heard a cardinal singing and a woodpecker drumming. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, firewheel, cypress vine, sunchokes, sedum. Tomatoes, ball carrots, and groundcherries are ripe.