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Tag: Silly

  • Is Butterfly A Valid Zodiac Sign?

    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

  • Cookies and Milk

    Doomscrolling my news sources, I stumbled on these two gems, cookies and milk:

    cookies

    https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-overhaul-to-milk-production-would-use-up-to-96-less-land-than-cows-study-suggests

    and milk.

    The purpose of microbial ferment of plastic into proteins (and metabolic byproducts, I suspect) is to compress them into cookies that can feed people. Most of whom, according to some poll, would eat it if resource constrained.

    My comment to that:

    “First they destroy farming, pave the nature with concrete and solar farms, and then they offer plastic cookies. This article is probably a psychological test to see if it actually works on masses. Methinks there will be a mass extinction of anything larger than rats and a global desertification to the tune of Sahara before we reach that level of resource constrain.

    More ominously, the elites may have realized that they have destroyed too much of the food system, and the resource constrained conditions might cause social instability like torches and pitchforks, i.e., Arab Spring II. The fact that this sort of dystopia is even attempted to be normalized shows what level of famine they are expecting in their pipeline.”

    was missing the risk of microplastics and exotic chemical impurities.

    I have already cut down eating certain foods for their suspected plastic content, would not trust the cheap mass manufactured plastic cookies, could not afford expensive mass manufactured cookies.

    Lots of current plastics contain many toxic elements or chemicals from manufacturing, and even those that were inert in the original product might be freed during fermentation process. Others, like phthalates were not safe to begin with. And then there are microbial metabolic side products which cannot be cheaply removed fully and may convert inert to toxic. Not to mention that recycled plastic has encountered many environments during its travels and may have collected dangerous souvenirs. I remember from years ago that granola in boxes made of recycled cardboard needed to be bagged into clean plastic bags, because of the hazardous impurities in recycled cardboard.

    As for the milk, I believe in whole milk to be the healthiest alternative, unless one is lactose intolerant or is allergic to milk (different ailments but both unpleasant), and I would not trust the manufacturing processes to be safe enough for microbial milk substitutes, especially for people who have yeast allergies.

    But based on my understanding on the linked original article, it discussed substituting milk in point of view how much land is saved when rapeseed oil and sugar beet residue is used instead of dairy cows. The paper’s point was not improving human nutrition. The final product is supposed to be nearly as good as milk, but without lactose or cholesterol, and fats coming from rapeseed oil, minerals, vitamins and other nutrients were assumed to be added from somewhere but even the authors admitted that since the fat profile differs from milk fat profile, the milk substitute might not be a substitute for all milk uses.

    Why do we want to ‘save’ land? Rewilding, settlement and other agricultural uses were mentioned, as was Net Zero. I have previously discussed rewilding and destruction of food production, but why exactly do we need more settlement when most of the worlds population lives in countries where fertility rates are below replacement level, and soon their populations are beginning to collapse?

    I do not trust the nutritional value of microbial milk substitute. Having read some of the baby formula ingredients lists, I am not surprised that babies fed with formula develop lower IQ than breastfed babies, though I am not condemning their mothers, who often do not have a realistic alternative option for formula. Economics may be too brutal to stay home to nurse, and not all mothers produce enough milk to feed a baby. I have not seen the microbial milk ingredients list, the original paper was speaking of rather generalized data, but whatever the final products to be pushed to us are, I expect their industrial requirements to be about as healthy as an average baby formula.

    Summa summarum, these milk and cookies would be something I would leave for modern Winter Holiday Santa, the commercial one that is supplanting Christmas Santa and older characters like Joulupukki and Krampus. Even if the hypothetical Winter Holiday Santa would leave me lumps of coal as gifts after such skimpflation, those probably would be welcome in the approaching fuel shortage. And if it were anthracite coal, it might even contain a fossil or two!