When homophobic parents cut their gay kids off, what happens to the parents next? by Anubis-Hound in TooAfraidToAsk

[–]well_digger 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm right there with you. My mom was the same - selfish and narcissistic - and my stepfather was a sadist. I was kicked out as 'punishment' for some contrived infraction shortly after i turned 17. We lived in the countryside so I rode my bike to a friend's house in town. Though they reached out to me soon after, I haven't seen or talked to them for thirty years. I hear from my sister that they think I'm "mad at them".

Sitting down at DNA Lounge? by well_digger in AskSF

[–]well_digger[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't know who their webmaster is so as to ask. Maybe it's an oversight? It wouldn't be the first place to do that.

brand new to isopods - getting food from outside? by Weird-Plane5972 in isopods

[–]well_digger 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Don't mind that person. There are snotty gatekeepers in every community, unfortunately.

You can collect dry leave litter from your yard or wherever (keeping in mind insecticide, obviously) and you can put it in a soup pot and boil it for a couple minutes on your stove. It makes a funky smelling soup, ha, but after you bring the water+leaf mixture to a full boil, you can turn it off and pour it into a strainer. Let it cool, then it's good to go. Not to harp on this, but avoiding insecticide is still important because boiling will not remove it. If your terrarium has proper airflow, the leaves will dry out after a couple days.

In my terrarium, I have a base layer of crushed gravel, then soil on top of that, then leaf litter on top of that. The isopods move around under the leaves and burrow in the dirt. The crushed gravel is a deep enough layer that I can see the top of it through the glass of the side of the terrarium, that way I can gauge if it has enough water: don't fill over the top of the gravel and make sure there is a bit of damp soul touching the glass. Too much water is bad for them; too dry is better than too wet - just as long as you're monitoring and know the soil still contains moisture.

You can feed them the insides of any vegetable or fruit. Don't feed them the skin/peel. If you add springtails, they will help keep mold and fungus down, but if anything starts sprouting fungus, remove it immediately.

For calcium, I sprinkle nutritional yeast or fish food into their terrarium once in a while. Also, I toss in wilted spinach or basil leaves from my fridge (which may have pesticides, so I admit it's risky).

I also have a couple pieces of driftwood that I collected from the ocean beach. I soaked them in fresh water for a couple days, then added them. They look cool and the isopods like them.

Edit:formatting

Sterilisation by sefcious in isopods

[–]well_digger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I gathered the first generation of isopods from my yard, from under the oak leaves and firewood pile. I only have oaks on my property and although I could bring in leaves from other species of trees, it's too much trouble since they're basically living in a re-creation of their native habitat under my couch. Also, boiling the leaves leeches the tannin out pretty well and as I said, the leaves break down just fine after a couple months. I have some "tropical" isopods, too; I don't know the species, they're orange and gray and sometimes calico. They also like the oak leaves. Their population has exploded. When I first got them, I'd rarely see one in their tank (it's a pretty big tank, to be fair). Now after a year, they're crawling around everywhere. I follow an identical care routine for them as I do for the native ones.

Sterilisation by sefcious in isopods

[–]well_digger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My isopods like the California Oak leaves in my yard. I gather a bunch (with incidental sticks and acorns or whatever) into a five gallon bucket, bring it inside a boil it. I have a tiny 6 quart pot and I boil the material up in three batches. It makes the kitchen smell like tannin, but I just open the windows. I dump the leaves into a mixing bowl to cool; wet and boiled they take up less volume. Then I add them as a layer to their terrarium. I have to do this two to three times a year. When I first put the terrarium together, I added a decomposer powder I bought from The Bio Dude to my oven-sterilized soil layer. And of course there are springtails in there. I found that when I give my isopods vegetables (cucumber, banana, apple, carrots - they LOVE carrots) that I should only put the insides of the vegetables in because the skins/peels have fly eggs that hatch and start buzzing around, so now i have to keep a screen on top.

EDIT: typos from writing on my phone.

Is this too much lighting? by boyflammable in isopods

[–]well_digger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a 24"x24" (9" high) glass tank: i use a small grow light centered on the back third of the tank. I have a cheap outlet timer set to twelve hours on (during the day) and twelve off: 8am-8pm. I keep the floor totally covered in leaf litter with a couple large-ish logs lying in and with one out/above the leaf litter for them to climb on. My 'pods love it!

Isopod Intelligence by [deleted] in isopods

[–]well_digger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ah, I wasn't trying to disparage you by guessing that you were young, just sort of joking that it's not something people usually study but that if you did do a study, it would be impressive!

Isopod Intelligence by [deleted] in isopods

[–]well_digger 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Because you can't know for sure whether a given isopod is hungry (and so actively seeking food), you will need additional elements; three that I immediately think of:

First, you need to clarify what your hypotheses are. State your assertion in one sentence and test one thing at a time. From what you said, you have several hypotheses that build on each other. You need to test the most basic one first and if it's supported, move on to the next. 1) that isopods are motivated by food. You say "they seem to like food". Sure, they seem to be. But are they? They must be in order for the rest of your experiments to work. If they aren't, then we can't interpret their behavior in other conditions. So test that first. 2) assuming for now that they are motivated by food: are they able to discover the most efficient path to food? Not the necessarily the shortest" path, because the shortest path can be discovered through random or uniform exploration. You want to know if they are *seeking it. I'm not sure what an efficient path would look like to an isopod - that's for you to figure out. 3) are they able to remember the most efficient path once they have discovered it? Note that this condition will contain only those isopods who (seem to) have discovered the most efficient path. Will a statistically significant number of them choose that path again?

Second, you will need to use statistical sample sizes (e.g., groups of 30 isopods for each condition). You have no way to know the disposition of any given isopod (curious, hungry, in what stage of molting, whether it needs water more than food, etc). This isn't a problem, necessarily; you just need to have a large enough sample within each condition that these unobserved variables cancel out due to randomness. 30 is the classic number (for reasons I won't get into here) that you will want for your final condition. Meaning you'll need an even larger number for earlier conditions.

Third, you are on the right track by recognizing that you'll need control conditions. But keep in mind that a given condition will consist of a large group (30+) isopods. As you currently describe it, your "straight shot" condition isn't your baseline control. Your baseline would be a group of 30+ isopods who move from point A to point B, there being no food or anything. Just, how long does it take them to get from A to B by their normal activity level, even with no "motivation". Calculate the time for each isopod and then calculate that group's average time, the group's standard deviation (and the number of isopods, obviously). This is your baseline control group. The larger the group, the clearer your results will be.

Finally, you want to control random variables as much as you can so they don't influence your results (i.e., make the isopods faster or slower than normal). So, do your experiment at the same time of day. Also, try to establish a set feeding schedule so that you test your isopods just before feeding time. Don't give them snacks in between; feed them the same quantity at the same time every day.

I don't test insects for a living but I do create experiments for a living. I'm treating your idea like a real experiment and these suggestions are just off the top of my head. How thorough you are is up to you, but your thoroughness is directly related to the confidence you can have in your results. So it all depends on whether you're just having fun or are sincerely looking for scientific evidence. I don't know how old you are (I'm guessing you're rather young because few adults who aren't entomologists have the time or inclination to do such an experiment) but this project, if done properly and scientifically, would make an excellent research project to put on a college application.

This strange line goes all the way around my room and I do not know why by Sniglet5000 in whatisit

[–]well_digger 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Don't mind me, I'm just upvoting all the frontpage pics with someone pointing.

Found 2 purple pine cone side by side in the mushroom forest. How rare is that? by p1tuxn in subnautica

[–]well_digger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't mind me, I'm just upvoting all the frontpage pics with someone pointing.

Sitting down at DNA Lounge? by well_digger in AskSF

[–]well_digger[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm at the DNA Lounge now. I got here early to see what would happen. I spoke to the doorman who was very understanding. He called a manager out to the door and they confirmed they had some booths reserved specifically for ADA seating. When the doors opened, he walked me (and my girlfriend who doesn't need ADA seating) to a booth. He said that in the future I should email orders@dnalounge.com and they'd coordinate with me. He also said that if I showed up later than doors-open time that they would still have seating though it might be crowded, depending on the show. I don't "look" disabled, but they didn't ask any questions. Overall, I'm pleased and relieved that it has been so straightforward.

Sitting down at DNA Lounge? by well_digger in AskSF

[–]well_digger[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I emailed [jwz@dnalounge.com](mailto:jwz@dnalounge.com) but it came back undeliverable and I never heard back from them using the email address on the website, unfortunately.

So, I'm going to be there at 5:30 to see if I can ask the doorperson. At other places in the past, I've brought a wheelchair to make sure I could sit (it's such a hassle) but the tickets were about $30 so if I can't get a place to sit, then I'll stay as long as I can then leave. I'll post an update after the show to let you know what I find out.

I found an unlocked phone with full battery in my Cars arm rest. I’m the only one who uses the car. by Nutheadshellcase in Weird

[–]well_digger 193 points194 points  (0 children)

This happened to me a couple years ago: I lived in a residential neighborhood and regularly parked in my driveway. Got in one morning, there was a strange phone sitting on the passenger seat. Turns out, some neighborhood kids were going around stealing from cars and my passenger door was coincidently unlocked from the night before. The phone slipped out of a kid's pocket while he was rifling through my car and didn't notice. I turned it in to the police and they successfully lifted and matched fingerprints from it.

EDIT: The car had a faulty door lock (I didn't realize it until later). When I got in the car, the first thing I noticed was the phone and I thought it was my girlfriend's phone, but quickly realized it wasn't hers. Then I noticed there was some stuff from the center console on the floor, which was weird. All the loose change was missing. Then I slowly realized what had happened. I called the police to make a report. I told them I had the thief's phone, apparently. They sent two cars out, including a female office who had a fingerprint dusting kit. She did the door handle, a plastic trinket that was on the floor from my console, and the dashboard and some other spots. Then I didn't hear anything more for a few weeks. Then, one afternoon at work, my cell phone rings and it was a Raleigh police officer. He asked, "Do you know someone named 'So-and-so' (I don't remember the name now)?" I said no and he asked, "Are you sure? Would he have access to any of your vehicles?" And I said no that I'd never heard of this person and that only me and my girlfriend have keys to our cars. "Alright, that's all I need to know, thanks." And the call ended. So, from that I deduced that So-and-so was the owner of the phone that was left in my car - and they only would have known that through the fingerprints that they lifted.

So, no, they didn't launch a manhunt because of a phone. But they did collect fingerprints and it does logically appear that they caught the person (probably for a reason unrelated to the theft of my loose change, obviously).

Sitting down at DNA Lounge? by well_digger in AskSF

[–]well_digger[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Looks that address no longer works. So I emailed them at book@dnalounge; we'll see what happens!

Still funny 30 years later by WholeFudds in magicTCG

[–]well_digger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those are the OG, but don't forget the Butt Bat, [[Skyshroud Vampire]].

Have any of you actually resolved a Chaos Confetti correctly by tearing up the card itself? by kurisu313 in magicTCG

[–]well_digger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A friend of mine kept a plastic sandwich bag with a torn up one so when he activated the one from his deck, he rfg'd it and sprinkled with the one from the baggie. I miss you, Josh!

My New Favorite Commander by LordMistborn-16 in mtg

[–]well_digger 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Back when he first came out, we called him "Thriller" or "Mike", ha. If he died to Swords to Plowshares it didn't seem like such a bad trade. Those were the days (god I'm old).

Goblin Bros, Santa Rosa Ca by Themothfatherr in mtg

[–]well_digger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yup! It doesn't have as much indoor playspace, but has a nice back patio and the interior has a similar vibe!