Whales blow bubble rings--And they might be talking to us

Newly documented behavior in a recently published paper by SETI Institute and UC Davis team members may offer insights into nonhuman intelligence--and help shape the search for life beyond Earth.
Humpback whales have been observed blowing bubble rings during friendly interactions with humans a behavior never before documented. This surprising display may be more than play; it could represent a sophisticated form of non-verbal communication. Scientists from the SETI Institute and UC Davis believe these interactions offer valuable insights into non-human intelligence, potentially helping refine our methods for detecting extraterrestrial life. Their findings underscore the intelligence, curiosity, and social complexity of whales, making them ideal analogues for developing communication models beyond Earth.

Books on pre-order:

1. Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in May:

• and read:
  1. Copper Script by KJ Charles
  2. Red Boar's Baby by Lauren Esker
• and unread:
  1. The Wrath & The Dawn by Renée Ahdieh [3]
  2. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan [3]
  3. Kidnap on the California Comet by M.G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman [3]
  4. Betrayal (Trinity 1) by Fiona McIntosh [3]

Borrowed books read in May:

1. The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell
2. One Christmas Wish by Katherine Rundell
3. You Have a Match by Emma Lord [2][6]

I continue to not read much (by my standards). I did not manage to read any of the physical books I had out of the library until they needed to be returned, and I've got several half-finished books in progress. (Oh, and in writing this I've realised I already have the Renée Ahdieh book in ebook, and haven't read it there either!)

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

Today is partly sunny, mild, and damp.  It rained thoroughly last night.

I fed the birds.  I haven't seen much activity today though.

I put out water for the birds.

On the old picnic table, a cucumber is blooming.











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The 2023 Second Edition corebook, TECHNOFANTASY, and more

Bundle of Holding: Fantasy AGE 2E

No rules, no bureaucracy, just some randos messing around with the past, present, and future.

Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale

Rok continues to be the best at everything, and deserves all the hugs. Though I remain baffled how ST thinks they can on one hand have post-scarcity nearly everywhere (including, one presumes, in places just outside of the Federation where they can easily abscond with probable Federation citizens) and also have seedy underbellies everywhere as well. The problem is that they never actually worked out how it all works, and I think the only solution is to ditch the idea that even the Federation really has no currency and is totally post-scarcity. Everybody has their basic needs met, I'll agree is supported by the writing. Anything past that, no.

Anyway, Rok's friend in her tragic backstory was clearly no more able to leave that situation than she was and though I can see there's too much plot for that to happen in canon I really hope they could rescue him.

Speaking of tragic backstories, I cannot believe a. that Dal tried to say his was the worst and b. his version of being "the worst" absolutely skips past the part where ( Read more... ) But seriously, dude, you grew up as a slave on a mine full of child slaves. It's not a situation people get into because their life was just so great beforehand. If everything was hunky-dory, none of you would've been targeted in the first damn place. You all have a terrible backstory, you don't need to prove it!

Moving on, Murf continues to also be the best, but ffs, can somebody get him an AAC? Or a whiteboard, at least? Teach him sign language? This is a solved problem even in the real world, surely Starfleet can figure it out!

Nothing to say about Jankom, he's just there. *shrug* And I feel kinda ditto about Zero, tbh. I mean, I like them, but....

Ma'Jel, between her cool hair and her increasingly consternated expression as the turbolift got more and more crowded, is clearly not one of the most unemotional Vulcans out there. (I don't care what Vulcans say, the opposite of "logical" is not "emotional", it's just "illogical".) I feel like she and our darling T'Lyn would have a lot to talk about.

The adults on the ship - this show is clearly trying to walk a fine line between keeping them competent and allowing the kids to run circles around them. I'm not sure it always works, but I appreciate the effort, and also I appreciate how they were careful to make it clear that the adults, whether they're being strict or a bit Too Much, are only acting the way they do because they're sympathetic. (Frankly, all the kids could stand to appreciate their new situation a bit more - except Rok, she already gets it - but I understand why they're struggling a bit.)

( Gets a bit spoilery )

**************

( Ugh, the news )

OMG I did a crude tutorial for how my make my MS Paint art (On Desktop! With Mouse!), not because I think that shit is so great but because the method I use is so much fun! And I want to share!
That should be also possible with better programs (if not they aren't better :P), but I only know how to do this in Paint.
Disclaimer: I did not find the input sequence to drag a selection for the smear effect. That was my chess friend with his differently configured disabled keyboard. But I sure as hell improved on his trick since.

And because this is about Paint I made sure the tutorial looks the part! Forgive me! It ended up slightly less user-friendly than intended.


( Behold my 3 steps tutorial! Idk, a mild warning for sensory issues or dizziness for the first one )

2000: The theft of an Enigma Machine comes too late to play a significant role in World War Two, Sellafield highlight British dedication to nuclear saafety, and the Conservatives, informed polling has them 2% ahead of Labour, discover that they are actually trailing by 13%.



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2000 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Distraction by Bruce Sterling
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Silver Screen by Justina Robson
The Bones of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Time by Stephen Baxter

Love for our Elders is a program to send handwritten letters to older adults. "Our mission is to alleviate social isolation among older adults through handwritten letters and intergenerational connections."

And we're back to Monday again! Yesterday ended up being a mostly chill day. We played a game at noon with Jess' friends, but the afternoon got cancelled on account of our DM having a really bad cold. Which honestly was okay. The game would have been super fun, but the rest was nice too.

So, I got the "Too Good to Go" app, which will put up restaurants in the area that sell "suprise packages." Mostly leftover food, or little meals for cheap. They're usually worth about $18, and sell for $6.99. I've used it a couple of times to gread effect, and decided to do it again. We tried a food truck called "Y'all Hungry."

It was the sketchiest food truck in existence, but the food was really good. I think they're just starting out, so theirs was $4.99 a portion. For that $4.99, you got an enormous pulled pork sandwich with this slightly spicy bbq sauce that I loved. Baked beans and corn on the cob, a piece of cornbread and a bottle of water. Not half bad.

Today, I ordered an IKEA bag. Last time I did IKEA, I got a shitton of chocolate, so this should be interesting. I wanted to go over there anyway to look at a cabinet that might work as a pantry for us. I need to see the actual size, to see if it'll fit all the shit that currently lives on our counters. It's called the Skruvby. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/skruvby-storage-combination-black-blue-s89561337/

I think it might be enough, and I know I can put together IKEA furniture. I had 7 years to practice that shit.

Tomorrow is farmer's market! Apparently the first raspberries have arrived--excite! I will get my little bag and go find some things!

First, though. Monday. It's going to be super busy, I have no doubt. But on the plus side, I have extra strong Tim Horton's Dark Roast coffee. (Good lord Canada, you okay? This shit is straight motor oil-I love it, but wow.)

And on that note, I'm going to hop off and go get myself together. Everyone have a stellar Monday!

HBO has a 3-episode documentary series called The Mortician. Episode 1 has some horrifying events and you think you know the basic shape of how things will get worse and who's involved. Episode 2? Mwahahaha. Surprise! I'm curious to see how the final episode goes.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying today's birthday gifts: a top, 3 CDs (Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism and Plans, and Jack's Mannequin's The Glass Passenger) and this keychain.

I like Ken Follett's books, and I like airplanes, and I like historical books, but this one was just kind of lackluster for me, unfortunately. It kept me reading, and parts of it were very engaging, but I ended up feeling kind of "That was it?" at the end. I mean, to be fair, this book is set early in WW2 and there's a lot of war still to go, but it feels like we didn't quite get the full plot or the amount of airplane that was promised by the title. The airplane-promising title manages to be a big spoiler while not actually delivering on its promise. (Although, to be fair, I guess it did get me to read the book.)

( Spoilers in general )

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I made a GF variant of Emma Goldman's blintz recipe this morning. (It's because for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I happened to have farmer cheese in the house.)

When I went looking for something snappy to turn my blintzes into a post, the first quotation on wikiquote is from a newspaper report after her arrest:

I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.

Anyway I am not an anarchist by any measure whatsoever, but I have generally found reading Emma Goldman to be informative and fulfilling (My Disillusionment in Russia is gutwrenching and honestly I think keyboard warriors should read it). Her wikiquote page is so chock full of evergreen statements that I can't even cherrypick anything else to quote. But how about this one?

The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.

You can make blintzes vegan, too, if you use banana instead of the egg and flip the blattlach very gently. That can be potato or blueberry blintzes, although I've seen a recipe for blintzes with cashew cheese.

In conclusion, blintzes! Mine had strawberries.

1. I had another quiet day at home, though I did go out for two nice walks, including a longer one in which I stopped for ice cream to cool off. (It wasn't that hot today but it was late afternoon and quite sunny and muggy.)

2. Molly is a super cutie.

Today's luxurious disappointments are in the fields of scheduling issues and data preservation.

The latter is because a hard drive stopped working. I got a couple error messages about moving and deleting files - "Error 0x8007045D: the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" - which was soon followed by Error code 43, then "Cannot open drive for direct access". At this point, I'm pretty secure in saying it's not going to get fixed by trying the hard drive on another computer, or that I can fix it myself. As such, I'm going to leave it alone in the hopes it doesn't get worse and look into local data recovery centers to see which one can best help me.

In the former's case, it's because Escapade is scheduled opposite a few movie screenings at the MOMI I'd very much like to see. I can probably juggle them around, pick which movies versus which panels, and it's more than a little annoying to have to choose between two fun things to look forward to. As I said, luxurious disappointments.

31 Ideas To Take Action & Celebrate Pride Month In 2025

June is Pride Month! This month-long celebration is an opportunity to celebrate the very human and very beautiful spectrum of gender and sexuality, all while coming together to fight for widespread equality and justice in the LGBTQ+ community.

Or, anyway, I glanced at the headlines and oh fuck no. Can I just go back to bed, and somebody wake me when things improve?

Looks like the wildfire smoke got me, in spite of there being no air quality warning. Or else I've started having hours-long anxiety attacks. Went up to Loblaws, halfway there began feeling tight-chested and dizzy, couldn't breathe deeply,  and didn't get much better inside. Now sinuses are swollen but I can kind of breathe. So much for laundromat, and now of course it's raining.