Acnestis

 I found another old word that no one will ever remember but is really awesome. 

Acnestis: That one spot on your back that you can never manage to scratch. Somewhere between shoulderblades and pelvis, that itches and you can't reach. 

Amusingly, this applies to animals too, so that dog rolling on his back to scratch an itch is dealing with Acnestis. So is the cat rubbing it's back against everything. And bears rubbing on trees, like Baloo in the Jungle Book. Pretty much any animal, really. If it can have itches, it can have this itch. 

So...shockingly, I'm going to go rub against a doorway now to see if I can hit the itch in the middle of my back that I didn't have until I started thinking about this too much. Have fun, I hope you don't have issues with the itches now that I've got you thinking about them, and feel free to use it against people to sound smart. 

Just to prove that I didn't come up with it, here are some Sources. 

Living With Dyslexia-- 26 lost English Words We Love

CSoft-- Wacky Word Wednesday-- Acnestis

Medium-- Peter Flom Blog-- Acnestis

Wonderland Press- Word of the Day-- Acnestis

Salute the Pig-- Acnestis

Wordsmith-- Word a Day-- Acnestis

Wiktionary-- Acnestis

Galaxy Frog

 Google's probably tired of how many times I've done a search for this one. I think it looks really cool and I know a few people who like frogs, who then said something about it later so I pulled it up again. And again. And now I'm going to tell you about it, at least some. 

This picture, from A-Z Animals, is a Galaxy Frog from India. They're pretty rare and only grow to about an inch long, so it's hard to do pictures. 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who found out about these awesome frogs and started hurrying in to get more pictures. It's especially hard because these frogs only live in a small area, which is under threat from construction and whatnot. Even worse, if handled with bare hands, photographers can easily kill these frogs or make them sick, same for using flash on their cameras, but I doubt most nature photographers would think twice about that. 

This is from Discover Wildlife, link below. 

These guys have their own branch of the Frog family tree, but I haven't been able to find out much information that describes how these guys are different from the other frogs, and what makes them special. Part of that is because of their rarity, part of it is because there are limited funds for studying things like this. 

Again, Discover Wildlife link below. 

I look forward to seeing what they discover about them in the future, and hope they hang around long enough for us to learn about them. I understand, unfortunately, that they might not. Either way, this is a really fun frog to show to frog lovers and kids. 

Sources:

Discover Wildlife-- The Rare, Starlit Frog

A-Z Animals-- Exploring the Unique Celestial Frog

ZSL-- Star Studded Galaxy Frog

Mongabay--Photo Tourism Threatens Rare Frog

Edge Of Existence-- Survival Blueprint for Galaxy Frog

Parrot Waxcap Mushroom

I came across a picture of this and I thought it was AI generated, but it's not. It's a
real thing. 

See why I thought that? Seriously. 

This isn't AI generated, but it is a very carefully done picture of a very specific phase of growth, so most pictures don't look like this. You can see why it's interesting to me though.

They're from the UK, which is hilarious because that's the home of Wonderland and I really think this would be a better mushroom for that weirdness than the red and white one, but they can also be found...pretty much anywhere. They're a bit rare, only in acidic-soiled grasslands, so don't expect to find them much. 

Unlike alot of mushrooms, these guys aren't poisonous. Instead, they're slimy. There's a chance they might give you an upset stomach, but some people say they're edible. 

They do fade from that lovely sliminess to a normal mushroom that would be overlooked by most people. 

There isn't a lot of information on these guys for me, but I really wanted to share because that picture is insane. 

Mushrooms are awesome and likely to show up a lot now that I've seen some really cool looking ones. 

I hope you have fun with them, have fun with life, and have an awesome day. Seeya again soon. 

Sources: None of which had much awesome information, which is why I don't have much here. 

First Nature-- Parrot Waxcap Mushrooms

Wild Food UK-- Parrot Waxcap

iNaturalist-- Parrot Waxcap Mushroom

Mushroom Expert-- Green Parrot Waxcap

Totally Wild UK-- Parrot Waxcap

Arbor True-- Mushroom Monday-- Parrot Waxcap

St. Patrick

 Since it's St. Patrick's Day, I thought I should share some things about the guy it's named after, who you probably don't know nearly as well as you think you do. 

Before you object- here's one fact you probably won't know. He wasn't Irish. 

Yeah, no. We don't have a lot of information about the guy's start and whatnot, but he was brought to Ireland as a slave. After 6 years, he escaped and went somewhere, possibly France. After more time I don't know a lot about, he got promoted to Bishop at age 43 and had a dream that the people of Ireland needed him to bring Christianity to them, so he left to preach at them with some effectiveness. 

He used shamrocks to explain the trinity, so it seems a bit amusing that everyone is looking for the four-leaf one.

He supposedly banished all snakes from Ireland. It was probably a metaphor for the 'evils' of paganism, since they're considered a sign of the devil from when he took the form of a serpent in Eden. Archeologists say there weren't any snakes then, and there aren't many now, so don't that's kinda a weird choice, but I'll leave that alone. 

Everyone knows he's the Patron Saint of Ireland, but apparently he's also the Patron Saint of Nigeria. Yay? Not sure how that happened. 

And while everyone knows him for Green...his favorite color was Blue. He was most often associated with blue, but everyone knows Ireland is 80 shades of green, so they switched it over. 

So, now that I've told you that the Irish Saint isn't Irish, that the three-leaf clover is the one he liked more than the one we all search for, that green isn't his color, and I assume everyone already knew that he really didn't have anything to do with leprechauns, I'll leave you to the rest of the holiday. 

Maybe I should have posted this yesterday so you could grumble at people today, but this way I don't destroy any celebrations you want to do. Life's short, have fun. Even if the holiday and the saint don't match up well.  

Sources: 

Tourism Ireland-- 10 Things You DIdn't Know about St. Patrick

Franciscan Media-- Saint Patrick

Catholic Online-- St. Patrick

Encyclopedia Britannica- St. Patrick Facts

Pi Day

Ok, a little bit late. I was planning to something for the last week, but I've been feeling really off and sleep takes precedence right now. Sorry. 

Anyway. 

Pi day. My favorite mathematical holiday. 

3.14-- March 14. The first 3 digits of mathematical Pi. 

My family celebrates it with Mom making our favorite pies, but sometimes we're a bit off on the exact day because of things. 

Either way though, you now have a mathematical holiday to celebrate and an excuse to eat pizza and pies. Though not cobbler. That's a different thing. 

I hope you have fun with it in the future and remember next time it comes around. If you already knew about it, what kind of Pie did you have? Was it good? 

Hopefully I'll be back soon. Have fun. 

Clarke's Third Law

Firstly, sorry for disappearing for a week. Had to go off some meds for a test and it made keeping track of time a bit weird, but I'm back on them now and I can remember that I did not in fact post already today, so I go post. 

Secondly- the third law. 

This is the one that gets quoted most. I know it's popped up in Marvel, and probably DC, and probably half of the science fiction shows ever created. 

Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic. 

There's a theory about a lot of old mythology and gods were created to explain the world. Thunder and Lightning are because a God is mad, not because electricity. (I should have chosen a different example because I can't remember the science of lightning right now. I now assign that to myself as homework.) The seasons changed because of magic, not getting closer/further from the sun. Magic. 

Alternatively, show a video to someone from Ancient Rome and you'll definitely be called a magician. Predict the weather correctly and you'll be a magician or god (This counts right now still, at least for me). Use your phone to call someone. Cars. Printers. Depending on how much you know about things, these pieces of technology are simple, or they're magic. 

I'm not saying there's no magic in the world, but there are a lot of things we call magic that I bet will be figured out in 50 years. They'll just find more magic then. 

Now that I've got this posted, I'm going to do a magical thing called 'Sleep' that we still haven't explained but is essential for health even if we can't figure out how. 

Sources:

My favorite place to look through these laws, which is a compilation from several places

Statistical Modelling--Columbia University-- Clarke's Laws

Twitter-- Physics in History-- Clarke's Three Laws

Geoff Marlow-- Substack-- Clarke's Three Laws

Ebsco-- Clarke's Three Laws

New Scientist-- Clarke's three laws