e. hashman @ehashman@toot.cat

first water lily bloom of the year #florespodence

Mr. Temba Catface, looking good

it's been Two Actual Years since Cloud Island launched.

Can you believe that?

The sequoias are clearly not native, and they're also genuinely struggling with our climate (long dry period in the beginning of spring) and circumstances (sandy very poor soil).

Seeing them around French castles as a kid I've always wanted one though. So over the last four years I've tried to grow about 200 of them from those tiiiiiiiny seeds from a French and Dutch tree. About 30 survivors at the moment. Here's some Sequoiadendron giganteum baby photos:

Mutual care on #caturdayeveryday

This watercolour is of the other end of Beesands in South Devon. I really enjoyed painting this one.

TIL, in birds, what we call "female" is actually the heterogametic individual and "male" is the homogametic.

Some folks make a big fuss about "females always being XX and males being XY" (incorrect even for mammals).

But the egg laying bird is ZW (or just Z) and the sperm maker is ZZ.

Which means, had we gendered birds based on familiar mammalian chromosome patterning, it is the male that lays the egg and the female fertilizes it.

I love this.

Centuries before we had American Sign Language (#ASL), Native "Hand Talk" was thriving across North America. Plains Indian Sign Language (#PISL) was used so widely across the Great Plains that it became a universal language for both deaf and hearing people to communicate between tribes. At one point, tens of thousands of indigenous people used PISL for trade, hunting, conflict, storytelling and rituals. It formed the basis for ASL and has largely been lost to history. https://youtu.be/s1-StAlw3aE

Nereid gloves for #MerMay! I'm so pleased that the mirrored lace pattern turned out okay on the second glove, phew!

Busy airports have controlled airspace, in which aircraft must identify themselves and stay in radio contact. To keep a clear picture of what planes are where, there are a few available technologies:

Radio self-reporting: incoming aircraft identify their altitude and relative position when entering the airspace.

Ground-based radar: sees planes, but doesn't know which is which

Mode-C transponder: transmits altitude with a 4-digit identifier assigned by ATC

& ADS-B...

His #majesty #kingofmycastle Amadeus chilling on #caturday

Die achterste #eend is de lastpak van het gezin

#Laapersvijver #Hilversum

Forget-me-nots and stonecrop (I think) along the Niagara River.

#florespondence #mosstodon

He has something for you #mastoart