Category Archives: LOUD ZOO

BULLSHIT, LOUD ZOO, READING MATTER

DISTINGUISHED ANIMALS

May 14, 2026 LRS

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ART, FREE ADVICE, LOUD ZOO, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

SPIRITS AND UNIVERSES

May 13, 2026 LRS

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ART, FREE ADVICE, LOUD ZOO, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

THE THOUGHT YOU CANNOT THINK

April 28, 2026 LRS

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Patricia “Pat” Christine Hodgell (born March 16, 1951) is an American fantasy writer, artist and professor. She taught for many years in the English Department at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, but retired in 2006 to pursue a full-time writing career.

Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979) is an American artificial intelligence researcher known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence.He is a Research Fellow and co-founder at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LOUD ZOO, MORTALITY MECHANIC'S MANUAL, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

CATS AND MICE AND GODLESS PARASITES

April 25, 2026 LRS

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“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

~ Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860

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Ichneumonidae is a family of parasitic wasps, and one of my particular research interests. If you’ve never heard of a parasitic wasp before, think chest-burster from Alien, but for insects. A more scientific definition is that parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside or on top of other insects; those eggs then grow and develop by feeding on their host’s tissue, resulting in the eventual death of the host. Estimates of the total species range from 60,000 to over 100,000.