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Glacier Mice (en.wikipedia.org)
jameshart 13 hours ago [-]
Huh

> they have been observed in Alaska, Chile, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Uganda and Venezuela

Well, today I learned, Venezuela has glaciers.

Then I googled that, and…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/...

And so today I learned, Venezuela used to have glaciers.

hammock 12 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, the US has ADDED a glacier in the last 30 years, that of Mount St Helens, which was able to form after the explosion in 1980. It is the youngest glacier on earth
nsilvestri 11 hours ago [-]
It had 13 glaciers pre-eruption, so perhaps "added" is doing a lot of heavy lifting :)
BenFranklin100 13 hours ago [-]
We need to go nuclear with the newer type of plants. Built at scale, they are cost effective. Otherwise we are cooked, perhaps quite literally.
pineaux 11 hours ago [-]
Venus scenario? I wonder if that could happen. Time to explore that rabbit hole
noncovalence 13 hours ago [-]
Always love seeing a link to wikipedia.org on the front page. Pretty much guaranteed to make me go "oh, neat" :)
vismit2000 2 hours ago [-]
Related: https://www.orangecrumbs.com (nice weekly summary of top wikipedia posts on HN)
hrldcpr 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. I would follow a bluesky/mastodon/rss thing that shares every time a Wikipedia article hits the front page.
lostlogin 10 hours ago [-]
When I used Kagi, my favourite feature was pinning Wikipedia to the top of all results.
yard2010 9 hours ago [-]
Why don't you use it anymore?
lostlogin 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not happy to have any of my money go to Russia (Yandex).

The number of US companies I support is usually queried, and I do avoid several of them too.

It's certainly tested my will more than more than I expected - Kagi is an amazing search.

enjrolas 15 hours ago [-]
I did a bit of searching, and couldn't find a single timelapse of glacier mice movement. Time for a trip to the mountains with some cameras!
mettamage 13 hours ago [-]
Volunteering as a potential random travel buddy here. I’m not sure if I have the time but let’s see if we can figure something out if you are potentially up for it. My email is in profile
enjrolas 37 minutes ago [-]
Heck yeah
networked 10 hours ago [-]
I have found a video (under a minute long) of a backpacking group walking through a herd of glacier mice in Alaska: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fHfDrfoJw. I'd love to see a timelapse of glacier mice moving.
Aboutplants 10 hours ago [-]
I’m actually surprised there isn’t Timelapse of it already. Seems like a simple enough setup to gather basically all of the information needed for finalizing how they move.
andrewflnr 8 hours ago [-]
If you put me on that surface I don't think I would have any idea it was a glacier.
comrade1234 17 hours ago [-]
Here in Switzerland when children order shrimp at a restaurant I tell them that they come from the shrimp mines in the glaciers.
soupspaces 14 hours ago [-]
If they don't know about tapioca pearls, please keep in mind they resemble fish eggs.
nyanmatt 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sanex 14 hours ago [-]
It's ok they're just bugs
nannal 14 hours ago [-]
I use the same argument with dog meat.
halflife 12 hours ago [-]
You managed to talk with the dog from fallout 1?
NuclearPM 14 hours ago [-]
Dogs are bugs?
ArekDymalski 6 hours ago [-]
I would say they are features.
throwaway173738 13 hours ago [-]
I think you’ll find that words have definitions that can be changed.
the_gipsy 12 hours ago [-]

    #define bug dog
encomiast 13 hours ago [-]
Aren’t we all.
asmodeuslucifer 2 hours ago [-]
Slightly related, ice worms

https://glaciers.nichols.edu/iceworm/

Aardwolf 8 hours ago [-]
I clicked the picture first without reading any of the article and was wondering "where are the mice? they must be well camouflaged!"
jtd_wakeseed 8 hours ago [-]
same!
kaffekaka 12 hours ago [-]
jökla-mýs is a wonderful name, you gotta love icelandic. A swede might also associate it too "jäkla mys" - god damn cozy!
glimshe 17 hours ago [-]
TIL. Life never ceases to amaze.
davidjade 14 hours ago [-]
Wait until you hear about Ice Worms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worm

dekhn 9 hours ago [-]
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
I like how they installed a GPS module into one of the rocks to track its path.
grvbck 13 hours ago [-]
Thanks to your comment TIL that snow algae is a thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_algae

Aboutplants 9 hours ago [-]
Another fun one is Mima Mounds, mounds found all over and especially in North America that don’t have established causes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds

Rendello 2 hours ago [-]
From your article:

> "Mima" is a name derived from a Chinook Jargon term meaning "a little further along or "downstream".

To keep the random learning going, Chinook Jargon [1] is fascinating in itself. A few years ago someone on this site suggested a book called You Can't Win, an autobiography of a reformed hobo/thief/addict written in the 20s. It's fantastic, especially the audiobook version on Spotify. Googling now, I'm seeing it got a (poorly reviewed) movie adaptation this year [2].

Anyway, when locked in a British Colombia jail around the turn of the century, the thief/author used it to communicate with his Chinese cellmate [3]:

> A priest visited the jail one day and gave me a pamphlet on which he had printed the Chinook language. In answer to my question he told me it contained about three hundred words—nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It was created by the Hudson Bay traders, years before, and taught to all the Northwest Indians to simplify trading with the different tribes. […]

> One day he came in with a scared-looking China boy about twenty years old. “Yank, here’s a cellmate for you.” He locked the Chinese in, thinking he was punishing me. The China boy later proved the jailer’s undoing and my deliverance. He knew some Chinook, but not one word of English. I learned from the Indian trusty that he was held for trial, charged with stealing a considerable sum of money from his employer, and that his case was about as hopeless as mine.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon

2. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1402593/

3. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69404/pg69404-images.ht...

alexpotato 15 hours ago [-]
Also a reminder that a lot of life is basic physics and a simple state machine.

e.g. even the development of eyeballs started with a slightly photoreceptive skin cell and then evolution hill climbing took care of the rest.

glimshe 15 hours ago [-]
But that's fine too. If the complexity of the natural world is just emergent behaviors, then emergence itself never ceases to amaze. Because one wouldn't normally expect that our "cold" physical laws could lead to the variety of life.
chrisweekly 15 hours ago [-]
I highly recommend the book "Deep Simplicity" by John Gribbin.^1

It explores precisely this topic: the emergence of unexpectedly rich, complex behaviors from very simple rules given feedback and sensitivity to initial conditions.

1. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/71851/deep-simplici...

FabHK 14 hours ago [-]
Another recommendation, with a biological slant: One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind by Nikolay Kukushkin.

https://nikolaykukushkin.com/book

ck2 15 hours ago [-]
reminds me vaguely of "Sailing Stones"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones

dualarte 14 hours ago [-]
> This suggests that this water buoyantly lifts the ice floes with embedded rocks until friction with the playa bed is reduced sufficiently for wind to move them and cause the observed tracks.

Wow, that's nuts!

eleventen 14 hours ago [-]
My first thought as well!
sooperT 13 hours ago [-]
Dunno about you, but I was really hoping to see mice not moss :/
dburkland 12 hours ago [-]
Remember seeing these in Iceland
joe-esquibel 10 hours ago [-]
...Poppa was a rolling stone...
trindell4469 11 hours ago [-]
Am I the only one who immediately thought of tribbles?
jb1991 10 hours ago [-]
Yes
emirenesergin 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
aaron695 16 hours ago [-]
[dead]
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