Yesterday, there was a brief break from more urgent tasks (just kidding – I wanted to take a break and do something fun), so started checking my latest video clips for something interesting to post.
My original target was a set of ants in flower(s) clips, but before those were three hummingbird clips taken 2026, October 15th, that might make something viewable. Poststabilized, trimmed, cropped and with fade through black transitions.
Hummingbird feeding in red flowers
It was a sunny day, and I had been neglecting my flower walks, when I saw a hummingbird that was intent on feeding from red flowers. A couple of times she flew aside when pedestrians walked past, but returned to feed nearly instantly after they had passed. She must have been hungry.
And she was most likely she because of her muted colors – male hummingbirds have brilliant, iridescent coloration, females are better camouflaged. Although spotting a bright green, leaf-shaped male hummingbird singing in a tree can be very challenging, and often I just walk away knowing that he was there but I could not see the bird from the leaves.
An ant in a flower. Some of the ant clips taken were not very happening ones, the ant kept on feeding(?), not walking much.
Since it is October, and one needs to be seasonal, I decided today to splice and post a couple of spider web clips (post stabilized and muted) taken on September 28th, 2026. I don’t know if they are aesthetic, but they should be topical to the season.
Today has been very hot, Berkeley temperature peaked (according to my phone) at 33C. I know there are some who consider this to be a symptom of climate change, I am pretty sure this is not Masonic plot, but this hot is a bit unusual for this time of the year in California. In Berkeley, 33C would be unusual even for August, we don’t get that many heat waves thanks to the breezes from Humboldt Stream through the Golden Gate.
The weather has been quite warm through the September, and butterflies have been bountiful. I have spotted skipper butterflies even towards the end of September.
Cobwebs on tree trunk or trunks. They are old enough to have collected dust and debris, at least the latter web.
And I almost forgot – I am currently running a This Month Only-sale for my moodier or darker items at Etsy, 25% off within United States (apologies to my non-US readers, but still not selling in EU due to very complicated regulatory hurdles…)
Inflorescences of Year Past Black Mug | Nordic Gothic Floral Ceramic Mug, 15oz left, front and right views, available by PlanktonPunkt Designs at Etsy within USA.
A couple of clips of fruit fly (fruit flies?) being fruit fly on my door.
Species unknown, footage clipped to square and joined with fade through white, text added but otherwise unedited. Shaky hands were filming these, but the stabilized versions were even worse.
Fruit fly (or two)
Once I had the grainy video, I started thinking what could be done with screenshots, and here are four, after image manipulations and resizing.
At approximately 4s, the first frame, adjusted brightness and contrast.
At approximately 4s b (less than second away from the previous, I presume). Increased brightness and contrast and glow diffused filter.
At approximately 9s. Increased brightness and contrast and glass effect.
At approximately 11s. Brightness, contrast, sharpness, inverted colors. The dark fruit fly in the right has devolved to near abstraction.
I think these types of image manipulations can be applied to get art out of many a failed video clip that cannot be shown as a video. What do you think?
White butterfly (looks like a Pierid) seen on 2026 Aug 03, (in sidereal Cancer, if that bit of info is topical to this post)
When I was very small, some auntie had asked me what my zodiac sign was. I did not know how zodiac signs were assigned, I just assumed one picks an animal, so I answered that I am a butterfly.
It was only recently that I realized that butterfly could actually be interpreted as a valid zodiac sign, if you are a Cancer. Insects are part of Pancrustacea, albeit closer to Brachiopoda, such as waterfleas, than to Malacostraca, such as lobsters and crabs.
Carcinisation has happened in at least five groups of Decapod Crustaceans (within Malacostraca), I presume due to ecological advantage. Evolution is very flexible, and the morphospace within Pancrustacea is staggering, ranging from parasitic barnacles, through coconut crabs (a hermit crab, not a true crab) to fairyflies (very small flying insects.) Thus, I would speculate that even insects, when exposed to sufficiently long evolutionary opportunity might undergo carcinisation, though at the current levels of ecological occupancy, this is extremely unlikely on Earth. Maybe on some terraformed environment…
Assuming the insect potential to carcinisation, I would then expand the postulate that insects could be considered equivalent to crabs. At least, if squinting hard from some non-Euclidean, deeply imaginary angle. Thus, butterfly would be a valid zodiac sign.
Of course, considering the deep divergence of Decapod and Insect crown lineages (Communostraca and Allotrichocrdia, respectively) some time during Cambrian or even Neoproterozoic era, on the same logic Leo, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Capricorn, Sagittarius and Aquarius would be interchangeable, whereas Scorpio would still form an evolutionary outgroup. I do not include Virgo here, because the presumed fertility/judicial deity is represented by constellation Furrow with Spica (signifying grain), and Furrow is neither a Chordate nor an arthropod (or maybe the constellation was named after the things she represents and Virgo should be among Chordata). Also excluded is the putative thirteenth zodiac, Ophiuchus, since the standard calendar uses only twelve signs. And to fully confuse the issue, astronomically, the Buttefly Cluster resides within the constellation of Scorpius, which after all, is another arthropod.
As the origins of the zodiac signs would require another, deeper dive into Mesopotamian mythology, and the origins or Western calendar, mathematics and astronomy, none of which are my strong points, I’ll skip them here. And what do I think of astrology in general? I presume that during the Bronze Age and earlier times, human biology was much more connected to annual variation in circadian rhythms and seasonal variations in diet, and thus a baby born in summer months would have different gestational environment and early infancy than a child born in winter or spring. The differences were probably strong enough to affect the later health and psychological development of the individual, causing observable differences between cohorts born, e.g, when Sun was in Leo rather than in Sagittarius. Modern horoscope warnings about tall dark strangers approaching on Tuesday, are nonsense, I think.
Summa summarum, I consider butterfly to be approximately as valid a zodiac sign as the zodiac signs in general, and depending on taste, equivalent of Cancer or Scorpio.
Brown butterfly seen on 2026 July 17th, still in tropical Cancer
A clip from May 9th, 2026. Summer has been blasting hot and busy, and the annual fire season has begun, but here flowers are getting scarce many having gone to seed and dried. I have managed to get more material, but not really processed it, having been preoccupied with getting my Etsy sales channel to EU shape (unless something dramatic happens, over halfway though). However, I have some older clips ready for those times when I need to post something quickly.
Not sure what the purple flowers are but they smell and look kind of like mint. The white flowers are one of the many jasmine smelling species. The big black insect looks like a carpenter bee but I could be wrong.
As for posting, I have also a couple drafts of longer posts that have been waiting for suitable time and reference checks and links, years have taught me not to trust my little bubble brain before publishing. Unless it is listed under Speculative writings or at least Unorthodox Ideas. Wettenhovi-Aspa tag is for deriving meanings from extremely implausible, if not chance associations. Maybe I should one of these days try reductio ad absurdum, but it is very difficult to parody modern world. Which is why I prefer to just do news commentary, as grim as it may from time to time get.
Been busy, but managed to get some photography and short video clips, joined three together into a short silent video (standard stabilization artefacts apply), two clips of giant white poppies, probably Romneya or Matilija poppies which are native to California, and one clip of bees foraging in lavender.
I like the floppy petals of the poppies. The lavender and bees seem to be an all year feature – when one lavender bed withers, another seems to begin to bloom somewhere else, if not immediately, then soon.
Not all flowers are showy – here is Plantago (I don’t know the species, but it’s not Plantago major based on the narrow .leaves). I would love to process some day a photo of a Plantago flower from close up, they are quite funky to look at but difficult to photograph so as to show it.
While walking with intention to snap photos of urban vegetation, I noticed a skipper butterfly within videoing distance. Quickly, a clip before it flies away! It did not. I took a second clip. The butterfly had slightly shifted. I waited and took three more clips in case the butterfly would do something interesting. It id not. It was mostly concentrating on florettes. Eventually, I continued my walk and left the butterfly at it.
A bit of a slow paced video, but maybe somebody will find it ASMR despite the stabilization errors. Maybe I should invest on gimbal, but that would be one extra thing to carry for a rare moment (that will without gimbal be shaky or distorted depending on whether the original or the stabilized clips are used.)
Sucking nectar. Occasionally shifting position.
Some yellow flowers from July 10th, 2026, image cropped and colors adjusted brighter.
I have been busy designing but still keeping an eye (or ear, in case of YouTube videos, which I treat as partial podcasts) on commentary online. Here are some niggling vignettes:
Meanwhile, fuel crisis in Russia (not due to the Iran war, the other war, remember?) has caused the central government to prioritize deliveries in western parts (most of the Russians live west of Urals), which means agriculture in Irkutsk region did not get fuel. I don’t know how much Irkutsk region contributes to global food supplies, but I doubt we can afford to lose any more capacity, anywhere and Russia is one of the main exporters.
And now a big warehouse for frozen goods, Big Bear 7, meant for consolidating all Los Angeles frozen food storage under one roof, has caught fire. Bad news for Angelenos, but since all centralized systems are vulnerable to catastrophal collapse when a critical node fails, one must wonder about the wisdom of concentrating all food in one spot… In general, the Western food systems are overly consolidated with four seed companies having a stranglehold over 80% of corn seeds and nearly 80% of soy bean seeds, and USA occasionally having a chicken shortage due to failing fertilization rates in one of the few chicken breeding corporations.
Molten Salt Cooling
Normally, when I think of this term, it invokes nuclear power generation. However, there is a domestic molten salt cooling method, which may be of interest in saving electricity costs on air conditioner. Note: I have not tested this myself, but it looks relatively cheap to experiment with, so it might be of interest.
Apparently, Glauber salt melts at 32.38 degrees Celsius, storing heat in the process, and by mixing the salt with polymers and nucleating agents (chemical, not nuclear physical) to prevent sedimentation, one can build a flat container (to maximize the surface to volume) heat sink to suck the afternoon heat from a living space. Whether it is as cheap and easy as these, clearly AI assisted/generated videos promise is a different issue. One genuine caveat is that what goes in must come out, i.e., for the cooler to work the next day, the previous day’s heat must dissipate over colder night, so this method will not work in steady heat but will require hot days – cold nights environment. YMMV.
Weather
Has been warmer this year. The spring in California has advanced earlier than I recall from previous year. Flowers are blooming (and withering) earlier and I have snapped a fraction of my photos as a memento to haphazardly ‘document’ their blooming times. Scientists were earlier this year worried that week’s earlier season of Joshua tree bloom would be out of sync with yucca moth breeding, but I haven’t heard any news after the initial worry. I suppose the moths figured it out, probably by using the same environmental cues as the Joshua trees.
Despite lots of No Kings-signs, monarch butterflies continue to flit around Berkeley, CA. This one was filmed perching on a flowering tree on April 15th, 2026.
Another, smaller insect makes an appearance at about 9 seconds into the video.
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