A Lawyer Woke Up In The Hospital After Surgery

Zombie setting where the undead are drawn towards unhygienic scents, so survivors constantly bathe to avoid being eaten.

Zombies are docile when adorned with flowers.

Settlements overgrown with herbs and flora.

Barely any banditry; everyone is focused on farming and gathering.

Different human factions and towns named after flowers like Lilies, Orchids, Roses, etc.

Instead of immediately killing an infected survivor, they’re given special funeral rites - the zombie is covered with flowers to keep them calm, and  allowed to walk out from the settlement to join the hordes.

The Argent 

A Ghoster mini-comic. 

Read online

Apparently there's an evolutionary theory that the reason why Africa has so much wild big-ass megafauna while the big-ass megafauna on all the other continents went extinct is because they evolved right beside humans, and knew us well enough to not get hunted into extinction.

So while everything from giant koalas to giant sloths barely had the time to think "what the fuck is that" before getting pierced by a spear and getting their bone marrow gently fed to babies and the toothless elderly, Africa had elephants who had all the time in the world to learn to tell apart human languages and teach the next generations of their herd which human sounds mean that this tribe won't hurt you, but humans who make this kind of sounds are a danger. And hippos learned to conclude "I think I'll fuck up this two-legged weird shit on sight."

A part of being an adult is living with regret and not allowing it to consume you. The older you get, the more mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve missed, people you’ve disappointed. And every day you have to remind yourself to be kind and forgiving of yourself. You accept and love the you from the past and understand that it’s all a part of the process. Then you move on and live your best life, knowing now as old as you feel today, you’ll never be this young again.

A limerick:

Doesn’t look like a limerick to you? Try this:

A dozen, a gross, and a score Plus three times the square root of four Divided by seven Plus five times eleven Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Science News

Water beetles can live on after being eaten and excreted by a frog

After being eaten by a frog, some water beetles can scurry through the digestive tract and emerge on the other side, alive and well.

Imagine yourself as an insect, a water beetle to be exact, swimming around searching for food when all of a sudden, a giant frog swallows you whole! What would you do then?

For Regimbartia attenuata, the only option besides accepting your fate and dissolving quietly is to search for the rear-end exit. Shinji Sugiura, an ecologist at Japan's Kobe University, discovered that these amazing beetles actively escape death by swimming through a predator's digestive tract and exiting from its butt, intact with no observable damage.

Regimbartia attenuata escaping from the vents of Pelophylax nigromaculatus and Hyla japonica (4× speed). Video credit to Current Biology

While rare, the phenomenon is not unheard of as certain snail species are known to seal their shells shut and await excretion to survive being eaten by birds or fish. However, what makes this particular research fascinating is that the prey (water beetle) is actively escaping the predator (frog) rather than passively waiting for the digestion process to be complete.

Hypothetical escape route of Regimbartia attenuata through the frog digestive system. Photo credit to Kobe University.

For further reading, you can click on the following link for the research article published in Current Biology on August 3, 2020.

The Columbus Dispatch

For first time in 45 years, endangered American burying beetle found in Ohio

When she saw the plump orange-and-black insect crawling on the rotting rat corpse, Andrea Malek didn't know whether to cry, laugh or scream

In 2019, wildlife researcher Andrea Malek discovered evidence that the critically endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) may have successfully bred itself in the wild, providing a future where these elusive beetles may once again become a part of the native American ecosystem.

An American burying beetle (N. americanus). Critically endangered though the possibility of species re-establishment now seems brighter. Photo credit to The Columbus Dispatch.

Once common throughout the United States and Canada, it is believed that N. americanus dwindled in population due loss of appropriately sized food sources, light pollution, and competition from larger scavengers among other things.

A pair of mating beetles are about to be placed in their makeshift home where they will feed, mate, and produce new offspring, all on top of a warm cozy carcass. Photo credit to the Columbus Dispatch.

To re-establish the American burying beetle population, breeding programs at The Wilds in Muskingum County, Ohio were initiated with new populations released every summer. However, none seem to have survived the winter period, until now.

Click on the link above to read more about these fantastic beetles and the breeding program maintained by The Wilds and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife division.

Sleepy baby

‘Our Town’s Libraries’ which I drew for the @nytimes recently… Speaking of libraries, I have a new book out titled REVENGE OF THE LIBRARIANS and I am visiting Brooklyn NY, Philadelphia PA, and Columbus OH with it in the next week. Visit tomgauld.com for details…