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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
December 7, 2025 at 10:24am December 7, 2025 at 10:24am
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I found another rare (these days) article from Cracked which isn't all about celebrities or movies.
It's not that I have some sort of snobbish disdain for the entertainment industry. I like shows and movies. But I don't give a damn about their actors' personal lives, usually, and I'd simply rather talk about what I consider to be more important things, like the pooping from yesterday.
So the website is kind of a pale echo of its former self, though I still get highlights from them. This was interesting enough to share. And wonky enough to quibble about.
We learn more and more about our universe all the time, but there’s recently been a huge spike in stunning cosmic observations.
Also a huge spike in stunning bullshit, like the nonsense about Comet 3I/Atlas. Yes, it is, by the most technical interpretation of the term, an alien invader. No, it's not "aliens." One of the reasons I'm sharing this article is that it mentions that comet without giving the "aliens" hypothesis the oxygen it truly doesn't deserve.
As an aside, I miss the days when they'd name comets after the people who discovered them. As I understand it, most early comet detection is automated now, hence the naming after robots instead of meat. Could we at least give them fun names? Even if we have to name them after celebrities or some shit. I'd suggest letting people bid on naming rights, but Muskmelon would win every time, and the comet names would be like X, X-1, 2X, X3, XXX, X35 (which is "sex" spelled backwards), or 3I/Atlas.
Anyway, the article is, as usual, a countdown list, and there are pictures, and I'm only going to comment on a few of them (no pix).
15 Astronomers recently discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn
To date, Saturn now has 274 known moons.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this, or something like this, before. You know how when they redefined what "planet" meant, and the definition ended up excluding Pluto, and a whole bunch of people who otherwise only gave a shit about celebrities and who they were doinking suddenly became space critics? Well, I think they need to do a definition for "moon." See, right now, as far as I know, there's no fixed lower limit on how big something has to be to be called a "moon;" it just has to orbit a planet or dwarf planet. So, Saturn also sports the second-biggest moon in the system: Titan, aptly named. That fat bastard's bigger than Mercury.
But I'm also guessing Saturn also controls one of the smallest moons in the system: a tiny grain of dust somewhere in its awesome set of rings.
Yes, every particle in those iconic rings can be thought of as a moon, because it orbits the planet.
Point is, Saturn doesn't have 274 moons; it has millions. Just because we can't resolve all of them individually doesn't make what I'm saying less true. We can't resolve individual stars in distant galaxies, either, but they're still stars.
It is, however, a categorization issue, not a science one.
13 Uranus' 29th moon
A convincing argument against free will is that you just now thought of a "your anus" joke.
Hidden inside the planet's dark inner rings, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope found Uranus’ 29th moon.
And that you're trying desperately to make a "dark inner rings" joke to complement that.
Anyway, see above for "what's a moon" quibbling.
11 Martian Dust Devils
Someone really needs to make that a band name. Or a sportsball team name.
8 Jupiter’s neon light show
This is cool and all, but this made me do actual research to see if "neon" meant the pretty colors, or the actual noble gas called neon that, when properly stimulated, makes pretty colors. But neon isn't a significant component of ol' Jupe's upper atmosphere, so I'm gonna go with "pretty colors."
5 Comet C/2025 R2 SWAN
Seriously, folks. If you can change the definition of "planet," you can change the comet-naming convention. No one wants to call them by something more suitable for being an OnlyFans password.
4 The universe is getting colder and slower
Aren't we all? Welcome to the party, pal.
Like I said, there's more at the link, and pretty pictures too. You might have to put up with ads and popups; I don't know, because my computer wears two condoms when it probes the internet. |
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