Martin Jambon 🌍🌎🌏 @mjambon@qoto.org

@swiftidea I view (a * b * c) as (((1 * a) * b) * c).

Updated my /robots.txt to block the big AI image scraping bots: https://martinj.art/robots.txt

@clarkesworld thanks for posting this. I'm concerned about AI-plagiarism of images of my artworks and just updated my robots.txt accordingly.

@UP8 I will find them, I'm not giving up!

@UP8 my main problem is to find them where I live (a drier area in northern California) but I think I found a promising area to explore in the fall.

@UP8 by the way, if you're adventurous and finding many A. muscaria, they can be prepared to be safe to eat by parboiling in plenty of water 5+ min twice and discarding the water each time. (some people are interested in the psychoactive effects but prep and use are trickier)

@UP8 striations on the cap are a key feature for this group of amanitas (section caesareae).

@UP8 you can tell they're amanitas because we can see the edge of the volva on the specimen in the back (the white sac at the base). They should open up unless something goes really wrong for them because that's how amanitas release their spores.

@UP8 it's possibly Amanita jacksonii https://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/caesar-mushrooms.html

PSA: It's fine and recommended to use the term "mushroom" to mean "mushroom". Don't use "fungus" when you're referring only to the fruit body because it would be wrong. The term "fungus" is normally used to refer to a whole organism* or a whole species/group of fungi.

*The notion of an organism in fungi is a bit special because the mycelium can freely be broken into isolated patches - but mushrooms are formed by many strands of mycelium (hyphae) from the same organism/strain getting together and making a beautiful mushroom with a single genome. Mushrooms are not chimeras, normally in most species (for what I know). However, if you mix multiple "individuals" i.e. mycelium from the same species with different genes, it's war. This can be observed on agar plates when growing mycelium from many spores that germinate and mate, resulting in different diploid patches that won't overlap and will slow each other's growth.

#mushrooms #mycology #fungi #biology #individuality

Don't Answer Me by The Alan Parsons Project (1984). I (re)discovered this song 3 weeks ago and then by chance, I watched 'Demon 79', a Black Mirror episode set in 1979 with which I've been obsessed since. This episode has great music from that time and I could swear "Don't Answer Me" was in it but it's not - of course since it was released 5 years later. I think it matches the mood of 'Demon 79' pretty well. The closest song in there would be Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes'.

Even my favorite 70s songs were released in the 80s, isn't it great?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLvFbBR4XOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb2_w0JYFz4
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27731671/

#blackmirror #music #seventies #tv #movie

@Da_Gut I wouldn't assume but it's possible they don't know and more likely that they don't care. Or maybe it's just too much for them to eat and they need new friends to give them to?

Don't be bored! Take my 5-min survey consisting in deciding between 10 pairs of my paintings. https://forms.gle/kUy9M5ymKgh2EzEB9
#art #survey #artistonmastodon

I have a soft spot for Albert Bierstadt's paintings that depict California's wilderness as he found it in the 19th century. The composition is romanticized but overall the elements of this painting - including the size of the trees - are realistic.
https://www.thehistoryofart.org/albert-bierstadt/giant-redwood-trees-of-california/
#art #painting #california #trees #giantredwoods #redwoods #nature #wilderness #conservation #bierstadt

How to write a negative product review that people will find useful:
- don't be a dick regardless of how much they deserve it.
- give an uncommon 2-star rating that shows some nuance over the overused 1-star minimum rating.
- describe the terrible things as if they were things that some people may not mind.
- describe the great things and why you don't care so much about them.
- conclude something like "it's not for me", leading others to realize by themselves it's not for them either.

#review #writing

@johncarlosbaez I didn't see that. What was too much for me was when they blocked the art bots, which were free non-commercial feeds from 500+ dead artists posting paintings 24/7 because of new API rules and apparently nobody at Twitter was able to recognize their value. The other thing for me was this week when TweetDeck suddenly required a paid subscription (which could be fine) without a basic courtesy email announcing the change.
So I guess I agree with you but I try to not blame Musk but rather view him as a piece in a system that would otherwise see a Musk replacement emerge if he were to disappear. In the old days, we had Bill Gates at Microsoft and I had much to hate about him. While these characters are to blame, they keep respawning in a system and culture that are friendly to them.
On my personal end, I prefer now to not blame individuals as a way to keep an emotional distance and overall maintain a greater peace of mind.

Today, I realized I am my own husband-in-law.