The mounds that certain species of termites build above their nests have long been considered to be a kind of built-in natural climate control—an approach that has intrigued architects and engineers keen to design greener, more energy-efficient buildings mimicking those principles. There have been decades of research devoted to modeling just how these nests function. A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Materials offers new evidence favoring an integrated-system model in which the mound, the nest, and its tunnels function together much like a lung.

Watching the video of Dick Proenneke living Alone In The Wilderness is an escape, allowing us to imagine a life free from the suffocating technological and bureaucratic grips. //

One my favorite documentaries is of Dick Proenneke building his Alaskan cabin Alone in the Wilderness. I’m not sure when I first saw it, but it was well into adulthood, and I think it was on PBS.

I watched it whenever I could. There was something so appealing about not just the story, but the life alone.

I thought about it today when I saw a link to a video of a Swedish 18-year-old building a cabin by hand, I Spent 3 Years Alone Building A Log Cabin:

https://youtu.be/FtiaSn5iCg8 //

alaskabob
December 25, 2022 at 10:25 pm
When he had to fly out from his cabin…it was a challenge for the bush pilot.
Proenneke never bathed much. That aside he was an amazing character.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x89c6yg

One thing is for sure, most reindeer don’t have glowing cherry schnozzes—but the Eurasian mountain variety living in the Arctic Circle have a magic trick not seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. They can change their eye color from yellow to blue. //

In the summer, reindeer’s tapetum lucidum—a mirror-like layer at the back of their eye—is a luminous gold streaked through with turquoise, iridescent like a golden opal. But in the winter, that layer turns a deep, rich blue. //

Learn Something @LEARNS0METHlNG_
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A Reindeer's eyes turn blue in the winter so they can see better in low light, blue eyed people can also see better in the dark than brown eyed people!
10:19 AM · Dec 19, 2022 //

“You add these things up and the sensitivity of their eyes is at least a thousand times higher in winter than in summer,” says researcher Nicholas Tyler at the Arctic University of Norway.

Collective Nouns of birds

A newfound species of millipede has more legs than any other creature on the planet — a mind-boggling 1,300 of them. The leggy critters live deep below Earth's surface and are the only known millipedes to live up to their name.