The 12yo is declaring it Lesser Rough-snouted Gecko Awareness Day! Rhacodactylus trachycephalus is a critically endangered gecko who only lives in humid forest habitat in a couple of areas of New Caledonia. Unlike most geckos it is viviparous! He wants you to know too many geckos are endangered.

You’re tempting to suggest it! 😂

Also mutes take alt text into account. If you mute a word and it shows up in alt text, you won't see that post. I deeply appreciate people who use alt text!

The ability of my very bright and usually observant child to be completely oblivious to food prep never ceases to surprise me.

My child, who knows we’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner tonight and who has heard us discussing really-not-remotely-secret very obvious turkey plans even if he didn’t technically see me put turkey in the oven: What’s for dinner?

Thanks!

We missed this for yesterday but Squid and Cuttlefish Day!

on the shores of Japan visitors come to see the blue glow and they are a boon to fishermen who collect the dying squid. Thea adorable Bobtail squid (actually, not a squid, but a cephalopod of order Sepiolida, closer to cuttlefish) are also called dumpling squid or stubby squid.

are bioluminescent and emit blue light from photophores. The print shows the squid against a white background so you can see the whole animal and then its reflection is shown against dark blue so you can see how its bioluminescence would appear underwater with fluorescent blue spots. When they spawn

thanks to bioluminescent organs and its unique slow oxygen metabolism. Its eyes are disproportionately large. Despite its name it feeds on detritus, not blood. The firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans), also called sparkling enope squid or hotaru-ika in Japan live at depth (200 to 400 m) and they

temperate and tropical oceans with two long retractile filaments, located between the first 2 pairs of arms on its dorsal side, unlike either octopuses or squids. Though most closely related to octopods it is the only surviving memeber of its own order Vampyromorphida. It survives in the deep sea

October 10 is Squid and Cuttlefish Awareness Day - or Squittle Day for the tentacular cephalopods, so enjoy my linocuts of a vampire squid, firefly squid & bobtail squid! The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis)or the ‘vampire squid from hell’ is a small deep sea cephalopod found throughout

Thanks! She was amazing.

of the NASA Flight Handbook Vol. III about flight to Mars and Venus. ⁠ ⁠ After retiring in 1973, she devoted her time to recruiting and mentoring women and Indigenous people to engineering. At 96 she participated in the opening ceremony for the National Museum of the

and much of her work there remains classified! It included preliminary design concepts for interplanetary travel, crewed and uncrewed space flights and the earliest plans for orbiting satellites. She worked on the Agena rocket, so important to the Apollo moon mission (shown) and was an author

but she was indeed farsighted. After the war Lockheed sent her to UCLA to study engineering and celestial mechanics. She was one of the 40 engineers selected to start Skunk Works, their Advanced Development Program, an in-house top-secret think tank. She was the only woman and only Indigenous person

she find a technical job in California. Lockheed Aircraft hired her as mathematician in 1942, troubleshooting the P-38 Lighting fighter plane (as shown). She knew already that her interest was in interplanetary flight, but didn’t mention it in 1942 for fear that her credibility would be questioned,