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Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

smithsonianmag.com

181–190 of 202 posts

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the Hindu belief system where you can reincarnate into any of those life forms depending on your karma in your previous life.

I'm not really up on Hinduism, but one of the implications of "atman is brahman" would be that, reciprocally "brahman is atman". Therefore, also it's not the case that "you can reincarnate into any of those life forms" but rather that all those lifeforms, including you, are incarnations of the same over soul. So, you always already are both those forms and not, and have just forgotten it was so. And, then, finally, w…

Huh, soul is like the one-electron universe postulate, then.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#182

My wife and I get into the ocean pretty often -- sometimes, every day. But when I leave my swimming attire hanging in the bathroom for more than a couple of days ( I try not to do that, but sometimes forget ), it starts to smell really fishy . My wife asks why it smells so bad after 2 days, but not immediately after getting out of the ocean. I tell her The ocean is a soup of life, and when you get out there are milli…

You're already married it's ok to admit that you peed in your wetsuit while walking to the car.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#183

This article reminds me that I’ve been meaning to buy a microscope to play around with. Any suggestions for an affordable, beginner-friendly microscope setup?

https://foldscope.com/

>Foldscope combines low-cost materials with precision optics to create inexpensive microscopes that are affordable for communities worldwide. With a magnification of 140X, Foldscope can visualize tiny things like bacteria and microorganisms as well as larger samples like insects, plants, fabrics, and tissues. Foldscope can also attach to mobile phones for imaging. This portable microscope is also waterproof. With that versatility, the possibilities are endless!

Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32864413

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#184

This title is about as close to a lie as you can get without being a lie. "Meticulously staged photos capture highly selectively curate life presented through bespoke drops of seawater". Cool? Absolutely! Accurate title? Hell no.

It’s literally life - a living thing - inside a drop of water. What is the problem here? The title doesn’t imply anything about how curated it is or isn’t.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#185
post #183

This article reminds me that I’ve been meaning to buy a microscope to play around with. Any suggestions for an affordable, beginner-friendly microscope setup?

https://foldscope.com/ > Foldscope combines low-cost materials with precision optics to create inexpensive microscopes that are affordable for communities worldwide. With a magnification of 140X, Foldscope can visualize tiny things like bacteria and microorganisms as well as larger samples like insects, plants, fabrics, and tissues. Foldscope can also attach to mobile phones for imaging. This portable microscope is a…

Very cool! I would definitely order, but unfortunately shipping to my country costs twice as much as the actual microscope.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#186
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can win a project from NatGeo and/or other organizations.. but that is not permanent income.

Lots and lots of people get by with unstable burst-y incomes like this. Those of us with well-paid salaried jobs have a luxury we easily take for granted.

There’s also a reasonably large set of people who do so because they have a significant trust fund or large inheritance coming so they can basically do whatever they like and the money doesn’t really matter. Don’t necessarily feel sorry for them!

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#187
post #105

These pics remind me of an indy game way back on the PS3 called Flow[0]. It was designed as a low stress, low impact, and a fairly calming game. You were a small underwater creature that swam around collecting things to become a bigger creature. You used the 3-axis feature of the controller instead of the d-pad and joysticks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)

Reminded me of Osmos: https://www.osmos-game.com/

Just bought it, no regrets. Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#188

These pics remind me of an indy game way back on the PS3 called Flow[0]. It was designed as a low stress, low impact, and a fairly calming game. You were a small underwater creature that swam around collecting things to become a bigger creature. You used the 3-axis feature of the controller instead of the d-pad and joysticks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)

On the topic of calm games... there's one on my mind that I played years ago on PC but I forgot the name. It's a very simple but gorgeous 2d top-down "strategy" game. It has calming music and a soft colour pallet. You control these flying boids/bird things by ordering them to conquer other "planets". The goal of the game is to conquer all planets on the map, with progressively more difficult stages. Each planet you o…

Also played Eufloria a long time ago and there was another game that had similarities called Galcon which maybe had more in common with RISK. The developer had Galcon Fusion and Galcon Legends on Steam back then which I think supported multiplayer yet were largely singleplayer, but they were removed from the store after they released Galcon 2 which is aimed at cross-platform multiplayer.

* https://www.galcon.com/games/

* http://www.galcon.com/g2/

* https://store.steampowered.com/app/294160/Galcon_2_Galactic_...

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#189
If you have access to 'dirty water' (like a puddle of muddy water from a dirty area... or seawater) and a laser pointer, you can make a DIY microscope at home and see the stuff inside yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYEuo3j2Ly0

(not a "real" microscope, but more like something for the kids to try out and see actually living, moving microorganisms projected on the wall)

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#190
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. What is it eating starting at ~36:00?

Algae. It's a mixture of https://www.carolina.com/invertebrates/water-bear-tardigrade... and https://www.carolina.com/algae/chlorella-living/152069.pr Then I use a special tool (really just a mouth tube that has a glass tube at the end) to single tardigrade to a glass-bottom petri dish that goes into the scope. I take movies, then label ~hundreds of frames manually with "tardigrade" "algae" and "junk" then fine-tune…

I used to do species population spot-check counts of the aeration basin floc thru a crappy optical scope back in the day at the municipal wastewater plant. I loved finding the tardigrades occasionally and watched them for ages.
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