Have you seen your fireflies?

@rockblossom
God that was a great show!

@chienfou @rockblossom yes it was. I’m nervous and excited for the animated version!

@chienfou @rockblossom @sillyheathen I keep tracking the bluray but it seems like the only reasonably priced one is an international one and need an unlocked bluray player… And I’m still angry at Fox.

At least air things in the correct order.

At least Serenity was not bad

@chienfou @rockblossom @sillyheathen @unksol for another show, I tried to to get a DVD of the show from another region, got a region free Player, but when I tried to watch it all the menus were in another language, The one of the country it was from (of course) so it was a waste of money. I don’t know that language.

@chienfou @mycya4me @rockblossom @sillyheathen @unksol Google translate app can do live translation using the phone’s camera! I use it a BUNCH for work and must say, it’s pretty damn good!

@mycya4me @PHRoG @rockblossom @sillyheathen @unksol
AI to the rescue! You can easily try it out locally by pointing it at business names for international restaurants or Oriental characters on their signs.
I’ve used it everal times for menus etc when traveling in areas where I had questions about specific items that I didn’t recognize. Yes… it’s been pretty dependable.
TMo is currently beta testing a live transition service through their phone. The idea is that you would be able to speak in your native tongue and the recipient of your call would be able to hear it in their preferred language and vice versa. Haven’t tried it out yet to see how well it works. Could be handy for transactions at hotels etc.

@pakopako eww lol

@pakopako @unksol
I second that Ew, and I’ve never even seen a dust mite cloud!
…but I’ve got one heck of an imagination!

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @unksol
There’s a small cloud of gnats that blooms every spring by my outside mailboxes. I wonder how they know where they are in the atmosphere. They regularly appear in the same spot in the air.

I think I’m going to take one of my electrical tennis racquets to them this year.

@pakopako @therealjrn @unksol

Ouch! No mercy, poor little fellas… 🫟

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn for the gnats out the door I spray the bushes they seem to land on… I’m not sure why they are there but nothing flowering so… No bees are harmed. Maybe spray the area/mail boxes? They have to land sometime

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @unksol
What goes up, must go down, eh?

I thought that zapping the little buggers was more humane than chemical warfare. But I only remember them when I walk thru to my mailbox.

MTBMMTIS /shrug

@pakopako @therealjrn @unksol

MTBMMTIS?

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn
Not parsing MTBMMTIS either.

I have mixed opinions on “chemical warefare”. I use bugspray on me cause ticks and mosquitoes. I’ll use Bifenthrin around the house as a barrier. Maybe other non natural things. Keeps the ants out/you don’t walk out a door into a face full of spiders… Keeps maggots out of the outside trash cans

I won’t go spray the yard/field/woods

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn @unksol “MTBMMTIS” - Irk’s famous line.
Maybe it bothers me more than it should.
Except with “that” instead of the first “it?”

@Kyeh @Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn ugh. I should have got that. Facepalm

@Kyeh @Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn maybe this is now going to bother me more than it should lol

@Lynnerizer @pakopako @therealjrn @unksol Sounds like it!

@Kyeh I’d never seen fireflies until we went back to South Dakota to visit my wife’s family. At one point, we were at a group BBQ at someone’s farm. As it got dark, the fireflies came out and all the kids went wild chasing them around the field. (First time our kids had seen them. I thought it was pretty cool too.)
Unfortunately, it was also their first encounter with ticks, too. But my wife was experienced in dealing with them.

@macromeh Euww - unfortunately we have plenty of ticks. Shudder. They creep me out much more than spiders or wasps. At least we don’t seem to have the ones that carry Lyme disease, or that alpha-gal syndrome. (It sounds like some sort of comic book story - “Alpha-gal, the villainess who renders you incapable of eating meat!”)
There is Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever though.

@Kyeh @macromeh I’ve found a tick on me a couple times after mowing. Which yes. Ewww. But they also take a while to latch on and supposedly take a long time after to pass a large enough bacteria load for both lyme disease and alpha-gal.

A hot soapy shower should usually dislodge them. And if you’re touching everywhere you will feel the adults. But they don’t love deet either. Treating clothing with picardin is also very effective. It’s approved for on skin usage now but. Deet for the mosquitoes anyway.

@Kyeh @macromeh

I hadn’t heard of the alpha-gal syndrome, Google told me that it’s common in the southern, midwestern, and mid-Atlantic United States, the syndrome is expanding into new regions.
Lyme disease was named after the town right next to me. With all of my ailments Lyme disease is something I can proudly say I don’t have! Knock on wood!
And yeah, ticks are gross!

@aetris thousands and thousands here, but we’re next to the Brandywine.

@Aetherwizard @aetris

Also in Hobbiton?

@Aetherwizard @aetris
so are we…sort of! We’re in West Chester.

@blandoon that is one of the downsides to living up here. I miss seeing them!

@blandoon @sillyheathen Just throw a nice pitchy fir log on the bonfire and you’ll get a passable substitute.

@chienfou we caught them in a mason jar… And had them in our bedrooms. Put grass and water in there but kids. We had no idea what they ate. I’m sure all the ones we caught died after a week

@unksol
We had sufficient access to loads of them so mine usually would get freed after 24 to 48 hours and replaced with their brethren. Rarely had one die on me.

@chienfou @unksol What was the chemical company doing with them?

@chienfou we may have wised up and started releasing them. I know we poked holes in the lid. But they don’t live long after. Like a lot of critters. Put on a show. Mate then die.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly

@chienfou @Kyeh I wonder what the company would be doing with them that they would need to involve kids but I assume a PR/science campaign.

And the way lightening bugs make “cold” light via a chemical reaction has always kinda been a thing to look at. In science magazines.

I could see back in the 50s… If you wanted to gather a random sampling across the country for cheap. That would work

@chienfou @unksol Yeah, I just wondered if he actually knew.

@Kyeh @unksol
Here’s an article about the process and a highlighted section of what they aimed for.

@chienfou @Kyeh @unksol I heard similar stories when I was a kid, but never surrendered my lightning bugs for cash. I assumed they would be meeting a terrible fate, as my parents explained that they wanted them for research on how the light worked, so they could replicate it in a product. (Probably our now ubiquitous light sticks. There actually was some sort of research and manufacturing facility less than a mile from my home, so it was a plausible story). All of my fireflies were released next morning only to be replaced the next evening. I was likely unwittingly supplying them with a great hookup spot. All of my friends were doing the same thing, so I suspect it contributed to the tremendous number of fireflies in our area.

@chienfou @mehcuda67 @unksol I’m glad you all refused to pass them along to be sacrificed for nefarious human purposes!
I suppose they did do some beneficial research but still.

@mehcuda67

I was likely unwittingly supplying them with a great hookup spot.

Probably not. Since the females usually stay on the ground/vegetation and the males fly around, you most likely caught the males. They were out cruising and looking for a hookup, and you arrested them and put them in jail for the night.

@mehcuda67 @rockblossom Assisting with natural selection, though - if they were catchable, they probably didn’t have the superior genes.

@Kyeh @mehcuda67 @rockblossom or they were the brightest/most attractive and thinning them. Lol

@Kyeh @rockblossom @unksol Good point. Maybe my contribution was more like beer. Helping the less bright and attractive to get a date.

@Kyeh @mehcuda67 @rockblossom or a good wing man lol

@chienfou lol I do think we called them lightening bugs when I was a kid.

Firefly is better. Nothing to do with Nathan Fillion/Josh Whedon

@unksol
Pop vs soda…

@chienfou cousins in Georgia. It’s all coke there.

“Orange coke”

@chienfou @unksol We used both terms, but preferred “Lightning bugs”. Though I had a friend who pronounced them as “Lightling bugs”. Oddly enough, I worked with a very well educated colleague who claimed that in his area of Pennsylvania “Lightling” was the common pronunciation of “Lightning”.

@unksol
‘Tail that wags the dog’ and all that…

@chienfou I was “blessed” with 5 older siblings who often just made up their own names for things. I got some side-eye when I innocently repeated them in a grade school class. Their favorite name for fireflies was “asslight bugs.”

@chienfou @unksol that’s definitely a southern thing. Where I’m from, people will ask you if you want a coke and if you respond in a positive manner they ask, “what kind?”. Seemed totally normal until I moved to the uk.

@sillyheathen Yup. Coke. Then I went to southern Arizona, and stood outside a store advertising a “Pop Sale!” - wondering if it was a spur-of-the-minute sale or one only for dads. They had lost power to a cooler and were selling the soda.

@chienfou Columbia, SC and their Fireflies would beg to differ.

Where I’m from they answer to both.

@f00l so sad! I loved seeing the lighting bug as a kid, I can’t remember the last time I saw them.

@mycya4me

In urban areas fireflies were part of my “free-range childhood”

The kind of childhood that was “be with your friends, I have to know all or most of your friends, don’t talk to strangers, and be home before dark” kind of childhood.

That I and my parents and grandparents had.

That Tom Sawyer and Becky and Huck Finn had.

That (wisely) parents mostly don’t allow in a changed world. So kids mostly don’t have this freedom anymore, and they often don’t have the native physical confidence and fitness that used to be normal with that sort of childhood.

(With current exceptions in some rural areas. I have known kids who are still kids, in very small towns, who, even after gameboys and smartphones and pc’s became normal, still go out a lot after school to explore or hang out or visit their friends.

[They go on foot, on bicycle, mini bike, horseback, and so forth. In some small towns, some DQs still have horse hitches used by some kids too young to drive])

But kids mostly wanna be indoors on their devices and computers now. (I have that addiction also.)

Free range childhoods and fireflies are both either rare or vanished in cities now.

Before devices and pc’s came along, in every city or town I lived in as an adult, I used to walk. Often for hours, many days. Fascinated and busy picking up info about how that city or town worked and what the lifestyle patterns were, so to speak.

Once I had my hands on a first gen IBM PC, and then got my own first pc (a Trash 80 cobbled together from salvage pieces that we nailed to a piece of plywood), the “walking miles many days per week” life died. The “spending time outdoors” life went away for me.

I’ve seen fireflies even in Central Park in Manhattan. That was before devices. And before NYC upped their spraying.

But that was then. Years and miles have since gone by.

I miss fireflies. Somehow, those out each evening during portions of summer, perhaps signaled that some aspects of a child’s life were still ok.

@philsny BLUE!? How cool! I’d never heard of them.

@Weboh
Living in Thailand must’ve been neat, we watch a lot of videos from there on YouTube. That gecko sounds a lot like a frog. …

@unksol
When I posted a video here I had to put it on my YouTube channel, then I was able to share it here. Good luck!

@Lynnerizer lol I did that with the psycho kittens. Which is still out there.

They were going again last night but unfortunately the phones camera is not picking up all those pinpoints of light coming and going.

I could try the “real” camera but that’s just a woot special from 15 years ago. It might do better/have some other options though with the longer lens…

@cf1

Don’t blink.

I’m talking to the firefly

(I think I just made a Doctor Who and Serenity reference in the same message)

@cf1 Is that like a lightbulb over your head, but for a very tiny idea?

@cf1 @Kyeh

Lol

@Kyeh @Lynnerizer I did wonder what I must have looked like strolling along with that little guy blinking away on my head.

@cf1

@cfg83, I had cf1 confused with you for a quick minute, I thought it was strange without a AI generated photo, you wouldn’t miss an opportunity for a terrific photo!
Let’s see what you got…

@cf1 Are you sure that wasn’t a miniaturized Pikachu with wings?

@cf1 @Lynnerizer Oh yes, I often confuse myself with others. Why, last week I thought I was a fish …

@cf1 @cfg83 @Lynnerizer

Hmmmmm …

@cf1

I had one on my head yesterday when I came in from my walk. It was quite a shock for both of us

@Lynnerizer

Let’s see what you got…

/showme Upset Firefly is tangled up in distraught human’s hair while sardonic cat says “Do you have a bright idea or is that a firefly in your hair?”.

@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Upset Firefly is tangled up in distraught human s hair while sardonic cat says Do you have a brig…”

@cf1 @cfg83 @Lynnerizer The cat’s crossing its paws. I guess that’s part of its sardonic attitude.

@cf1 @Kyeh @Lynnerizer Hmmm, we can test sardonic and crossing one’s paws …

/showme Blythe cat, sardonic dog, and perky guinea pig are sitting in chairs. Carnival Barker exclaims “Will the REAL sardonic pet stand up?”

@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Blythe cat, sardonic dog, and perky guinea pig are sitting in chairs. Carnival Barker exclaims Wi…”

@mediocrebot Looks like 8 ball would say “signs point to no”. Orrrrrr, maybe it’s a sardonic cat thing. The AI put the “attribute” of the animal on the chair. That doesn’t make sense (to me).

@cfg83 @mediocrebot

About the image you requested for “Upset Firefly is tangled up in distraught human’s hair…”

OM-GOODNESS… Not ONLY was that the very first image that popped into my head when I first read fireflies, (I STILL have nightmares about things getting caught up in my hair!) BUT… the girl in the picture LOOKS LIKE ME from back in my younger years!

…or at least you’d think we were related!
Lol

"Let’s see what you got… " -

You did good!

@Lynnerizer @mediocrebot Yeah, that’s what is scary. Maybe the AI trained on our pictures. I was stunned when, with only “10 year old son” to work with, they got my overall 1970’s visage + hair color + blue track jacket + corduroy jeans right in this picture.

@cf1 @Kyeh Oops, I missed this …

Is that like a lightbulb over your head, but for a very tiny idea?

I find the best ideas come from 1970s gumball machines …

HOWEVER, you have to provide the googly eyes.

@cfg83 @mediocrebot
Yeah it’s on the same line as “big brother is ALWAYS watching” as in Google.
I hope I don’t end up being sorry for having a conversation with AI a little while ago. It was mostly my guy and I messing around and asking questions about words that aren’t used these days/anymore because of the social tones they carry and/or send, and our relationship. … It was interesting enough that I pinned it! Old school yard banter one might say. I know YOU KNOW what I’m talking about.

My niece tells me that a couple kids in her classroom have conversations with AI constantly! It’s really sad, this one kid acts like it’s his friend. The stories she tells me consistently blow my mind, kids are SO different than they were back in the 70-80’s when I was in highschool! She said they’re even way different than they were 10 years ago when she was there! The biggest difference I’m thinking has got to be social media. What do you think?

@Lynnerizer @mediocrebot

… The biggest difference I’m thinking has got to be social media … What do you think?

I think our BI (before Internet) generation has privacy concerns by default, but the surveillance state is everywhere. I had an old joke for this …

/showme Anthropomorphized cat job interviewer is telling job applicant “I saw you drinking last night on Facebook”. Anthropomorphized cat job applicant is telling job interviewer “Welllllll, I saw you and Zippyus taking a bong hit on Instagram last week”.

The BI generation could only be tracked in real time by credit card purchases. I think(?) I already said somewhere else on meh that everything you see in “Enemy of the State” was possible in 1998, but you needed at least 5 human trackers for every person you wanted to track, so you were still safe on average. AI fixes the people-power problem, .

I also learned early on that the Internet is FOREVER. That is to say, everything you write can come back to haunt you. You also have to be careful what you write in anger. If you get in a fight and make up, the words fade over time. However, if you fight in e-mail or text, even after you make up, the other person can re-read the message and get angry all over again.

Thankfully(?) the Internet seems pretty glitchy these daze, so maybe forever isn’t what it used to be.

I like to think I can stand by anything I have ever written on the internet. That is to say, whatever I have written on the Internet, I would also be willing to say in the real world (whatever that is today). This means that I do self-censor. I am pretty sure I could setup a rig with rotating MAC Addresses and such, but that’s a PITA and I am not tempted by a need so great as to do that.

There is so much happening so fast. For example, kids don’t learn to write cursive, so I think their brains are not even wired like ours anymore. I am not judging per se, but it’s hard to know how those caveman skillzz help the BI generation in ways outside of writing.

And yes, AI friends are sad because they will mislead you only to please you. Kids + AI pals should be verboten in the hope of someday getting a handle on it. Orrrrr, maybe we need age range locked AIs like they do with films, aka G, PG-13, etc … At least that’s what my AI friend told me, .

Regarding social media, I am barely present on most of it. I am glad it wasn’t around when I was a kid. This forum is “social”, but it’s a backwater in the scheme of things. The web scraper would have to work a wee bit harder to add these words to my interweb identity profile. To that effect, when I contact you and tell you about my new double-plus-meh coin offering, don’t be fooled. I would never use a 1984 reference when I want to push a meme coin. I mostly use Star Trek references for meme coins, ;P .

@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Anthropomorphized cat job interviewer is telling job applicant I saw you drinking last night on F…”

@mediocrebot

@cfg83 well I caught him and then let him go so I guess I can’t be sure. I’ll have to check next time

@cf1

well I caught him and then let him go …

Thank goodness. Ideas don’t grow on trees, so I am glad you are sharing your firefly with the rest of the world.

@cfg83 @mediocrebot
I love this, thanks for entertaining my thoughts/questions.
Not sure if I said it before but I am super glad we didn’t have social media back in highschool. It was tough enough getting through those difficult teen years! I’ve always said that social media needs to have a age range, and I mean one that can’t be broken like sneaking in a R rated movie! Just keep the phones out of the hands of children!
My niece was telling me how she needed to put her phone down and close down her IG account in college. There was so much pressure to get “likes” and have a certain number of followers that she just had to bag the entire thing! Even today, 10 years later, she doesn’t let her phone, or her notifications control her. She only checks her phone at specific times and it’s at HER convenience and not when the notification sound chimes. There’s lessons to be learned from what others have gone through. Obviously that’s learned with age and wisdom because I was that one who had to learn everything the hard way, going through it myself! Lol

@cf1 @cfg83 @Kyeh @Lynnerizer

Ok I love those /showme results

@1daughterJessic We’re working on it …

/showme News reporter in San Juan Capistrano is reporting about swallows with fireflies sitting on their backs and holding tiny suitcases. The news reporter is saying “In an effort to expand the swallow economy, swallows are now taking fireflies as passengers to San Juan Capistrano. The swallows are especially helpful during night flights”.

@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “News reporter in San Juan Capistrano is reporting about swallows with fireflies sitting on their …”

@mediocrebot Egg-salad! I wanted to say “at night”, but at dusk is way better.

@mediocrebot Whoops! I see I got the tagline wrong. I meant to say “The fireflies are especially helpful during night flights”

@cfg83
…figured as much.

@tinamarie1974 @1daughterJessic Here is a song to go with the little fellas …

“Bright As Yellow” by The Innocence Mission (music video upscaled to 4K) - YouTube

WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!

@k4evryng
What an excellent story!
I suspect pesticides & the loss of habitat are probably more to blame for the decline than the ones that were harvested for the luciferin studies mentioned above.