Party Split

SINCE WHEN CAN BOTS CREATE POLLS??? EXCUSE ME?? ALSO WHAT ARE THESE OPTIONS?

The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment

Better Ungulate than Never: The Hamtelopes

A small, but abundant and diverse herbivore common across the land during the Middle Rodentocene are the hamtelopes (family Cervimuridae), which are found on most of the continents by this point in the planet's history. Looking a fair bit like small ungulates, hamtelopes are browsers, feeding on higher vegetation such as bushes and shrubs, and thus avoid competition with grazing cavybaras when the two coexist on the same turf.

Among the many species of hamtelopes, the most remarkable is the Rusty Hamtelope (Erythrocervimys bambini), which is unmistakable due to its distinctive reddish-orange hue of its coat. On Earth, such a color for a forest-floor browser would be highly disavadvantageous, sticking the animal out into plain sight and leaving it vulnerable and visible to predators.

However, HP-02017 is distinguished by the presence of a second minor sun, Beta, that orbits further out from the main sun Alpha and for a large portion of the year is opposite the main star, making Beta appear by night and illuminate the landscape in a phenomenon called "Beta-twilight". Beta-twilight is when the rusty hamtelope is at its most active, as well as dawn and dusk: and in the fiery glows of sunrise and sunset, or the red-orange Beta-twilight landscape, the rusty hamtelope demonstrates that Earthly life can adapt even in conditions not normally found in Earth, camouflaging perfectly in the forest floor while the forest is bathed in a faint, scarlet hue.

But as remarkable as the rusty hamtelope is, the clade of hamtelopes is not merely limited to this one genus. Hamtelopes have reached peak diversity in the Middle Rodentocene, spanning several genera and dozens of species. Some, such as the long-legged ratzelles (Cervicricetus spp.) are daytime grazers of the forest floor, and indeed even share habitat with the rusty hamtelope by different times of activity to minimize competition. Others, such as the ramsters (Capramys spp.) are more at home in the alpine tundras and high plateaus, leaving a lifestyle akin to that of mountain goats, agile and surefooted as they climb up steep cliffs to graze on mountainside vegetation.

But by far the most unusual members are the toponies (Microhippoides spp.) which are plains-dwellers resembling tiny, tailless equids. What makes them particularly odd is how small they are, compared to the other genera: this in fact is due to competition with larger, bipedal hopping jerryboas that have usurped their niche out in the open plains. Able to travel longer distances with their more energy-efficient bounding gait and defend themselves from predation with sharp hind-limb claws, the jerryboas very quickly dominated the open grassland and savannah, leaving only the niche of small grazer vacant for the toponies.

As new lineages emerge and diversify in the Middle Rodentocene, their more divergent forms begin to clash with one another in ecological terms. In the end, some families will dominate, others will barely hang on and others will completely die out, as hamster diversity climaxes in the Rodentocene's halfway mark.

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪

Some white goy: Your Ashkenazi family aren't from the Middle Ea--

Me: I literally can eat za'atar for breakfast. You don't even know what that is. I can eat whole peppercorns for snacks. CUMIN FLOWS IN MY VEINS

A Laboratory for Star Formation

Location: In the Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy

Distance from Earth: About 20,000 light-years

Object type: Nebula and open star cluster

Discovered by: Sir John Herschel in 1834

Imaged here by the Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 3603 is a collection of thousands of large, hot stars, including some of the most massive stars known to us. Scientists categorize it as an “open cluster” because of its spread-out shape and low density of stars. Surrounding the bright star cluster are plumes of interstellar gas and dust, which comprise the nebula part of this cosmic object. New stars are formed from the gaseous material within these clouds! NGC 3603 holds stars at a variety of life stages, making it a laboratory for scientists to study star evolution and formation. Astronomers estimate that star formation in and around the cluster has been occurring for 10 to 20 million years.

Read more information about NGC 3603 here.

Right now, the Hubble Space Telescope is delving into its #StarrySights campaign! Find more star cluster content and breathtaking new images by following along on Hubble’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

“The average US president has been convicted on .75 felonies” factoid isn’t true. average US president has been convicted on 0 felonies. Felonies Donld, who has been convicted on 34, is a statistical outlier adn should not have been counted

I have a Twitter account devoted to Aeniith only now! Go follow me on @Aeniith_ if you’re so inclined!

Tidbits, musings, ideas, fact, and more on worldbuilding, conlangs, etc.

If you can’t reblog this, unfollow me now.

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Metadata Specialist and Genealogist

As someone who has built language archives, and spent a lot of time poking around in archives built by other people, I appreciate the importance of well-structured meta-data. It’s good meta-data that tells you what is in the giant pile of data you’re working with, making the whole process much less of a needle-in-a-haystack scenario. Mallory Manley is doing the important work of managing data across multiple languages in the field of genealogy. I appreciate Mallory’s honesty about the challenges of stepping sideways out of linguistics, and sharing that experience with us in this interview. You can follow Mallory on Twitter (@ManleyMallory).

What did you study at university?

I studied a Master of Arts in Linguistics at the University of Essex. My favorite subject in linguistics is morphology, so I continue to study it on my own. What is your job?

I work for a genealogy company as a cataloguer. I receive digital copies of historical records and I organize them by place, record type (birth certificates, census records, etc), and year to prepare them to be published online. I am responsible for records coming from Scandinavia and South Eastern Europe. How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

When I applied for this job, I had no working knowledge of the Scandinavian languages or the languages of Eastern Europe, except for Russian. I definitely oversold my abilities by stating in my cover letter that I could learn any language. But knowing how to analyse language has helped me learn these languages. And being able to identify patterns in language helps me read those documents when I get stuck on words I don’t know or simply can’t decipher. Learning the orthographies of each of these languages has also proved to be a challenge, partly because orthographies change over time, and partly because many of these languages didn’t have a standardized orthography at all until relatively recently. So even though I don’t use my linguistics training as much as I hoped I would in a career, it has helped me succeed in this role. Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university? 

I think when we’re young and planning for our future, we get specific ideas about how our career path will look, and it becomes the only path we envision. I had to learn to be flexible and accept changes. My first year of college, I wanted to be a lexicographer (which I still think would be an awesome job). I ended up instead building a career in genealogy, and though it’s not where I expected or planned to be, it has been fulfilling and joyful.

Related interviews:

Interview with a Data Scientist

Interview with a Data Analyst

Recent interviews:

Interview with a Developer Advocate

Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster

Interview with a Juris Doctor (Master of Laws) student

Interview with the Director of Education and Professional Practice at the American Anthropological Association

Interview with a Research Coordinator, Speech Pathologist

Check out the full Linguist Jobs Interview List and the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews