sethoflagos

When hyperbole just won''t cut it, you need superbole (presumably pronounced 'SUPERBOWL')

Such as birds being subject to ZW sex determination, for example?

Wonder if we'll ever see Trump in Scunthorpe

In lieu of a 'serious birder', perhaps I'll do for now. 😝 Where's the payback in amassing say 5 years worth of personal observation of a particular taxon only to have it generally dismissed by the better qualified receivers as 'an exceptional case' simply because it jars a little with their pet statistical model. Maybe doesn't quite mesh with someone's projection of idealised human gender norms, or rational economic behaviour patterns (which seems to get excessive attention in creating these models). I'm only being a tad ironic here. Also, here's my entire life records for the male white morph African Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone viridis ferreti). (not many folk have knowingly seen one of these) Where would one even start to get fine-grained population dynamics data on a subject whose behaviour was clearly significantly influenced by th observer's proximity.

And yet Euplectes is so deeply embedded in the weaver clade Ploceidae. It's ancestors were clearly obligate male nest builders, and they still retain the habit with varying reduced degrees of commitment, down to the token efforts of the male red-collared widowbird, Euplectes ardens. In addition, Euplectes males also invest heavily in producing brilliant carotenoid-based red or yellow patches of plumage as an honest agonistic signal to other males in establishing a breeding territory. The substantial energy costs of producing these intense pigments (from their diet), if not fully mitigated by the avoidance of physical violence, is going to compete with their investment in their tail growth, display, and nest building. As @CharonY points out, things can get complicated quite rapidly. It does appear that in finding the evolutionary balance between these competing forces, it is (in Euplectes at least) the male nest building activity that tends to decline. And not apparently for the first time in superfamily Ploceoidea. If current taxonomy is correct, the earliest divergent extant member of Viduidae is the cuckoo-finch (Anomalospiza imberbis) which to my eye is morphologically indistinguishable from some generic Ploceus weaver. Now this doesn't actually prove that the mid-Miocene last common ancestor of Viduidae and Ploceidae was a weaver, it may well have been some archetypal Estrildid finch, but it's extant descendants split cleanly into two distinct clades: weavers on one side; obligate brood parasites on the other. For the latter, nest building behaviour simply vanished. This may well have a lot of truth in it. The paper certainly seems to be pushing in this direction. But having slogged my way through it, my immediate response to the literature collectively is 'what a #@$!! shambles'. And 'where's the field data?'

I get this. And also @CharonY 's clarifications on the criticality of marginal returns as opposed to absolute costs. However, I still have a nagging doubt here. It is the females who chose which index is important to them, and where to set performance benchmarks. The exquisitely woven nests or 'arseloads of plumage' actually cost them nothing but the time taken to make an inspection. The selection driver would therefore appear to be not the metabolic cost of the index parameter but the relevance of the index as an honest measure of genetic suitability.

Is there really such a thing as a 'norm' in mate selection? Doesn't it depend where you look? The whydahs and widowbirds typify one norm, yet Ploceidae proper selects via male nest weaving skils - and that is a huge family that includes some of the most populous undomesticated bird species on the planet (eg. Quelea quelea). By sheer numbers, that has some claim to being a norm doesn't it? And where do we place the quid pro quo sexual habits of Bonobos or the murderous male coalition takeovers of lion prides, or the sneaky female mimicry strategy of non-dominant giant cuttlefish etc? Looks to me more of a behavioural landscape with encampments scattered all over the terrain. A few more densely populated nodes here and there for sure reflecting various locally stable optima. But I'm not seeing anything approaching a one size fits all mechanism here. More like an exercise in behavioural niche partitioning. If there's a way of doing it, something somewhere will be doing it that way. X-posted with @CharonY

You're a raptor scanning a sea of two- to three-foot-high grass in (typically) woodland savannah mosaic. Do you go for a) the drab, capable fliers hiding amongst the grass stems that you can't see, or b) the attention seeker in the hi-vis vest perched atop the big stick who flies like a plastic bag in a breeze? (If you want something a little more authoritative, we're going to have to employ a few field researchers for a while. I do have the contacts if you're still interested....) Like the other 18 or so species in genus Vidua, they're polygynous brood parasites (which does impact the energy economy) so they synchronise with the breeding season of the host species. I have photographic records for Apr-Jul (Lagos area early wet season) though the full season may well extend beyond that. (Literature gives late wet season as typical for Vidua) It's a cost. Keratin and melanin don''t come FOC. I think brood parasitim (very common in sub-Saharan Africa for some reason) could well make this a special case. the potential reproductive success from defending a suitable territory for just a couple of weeks could far surpass anything a monogamous non-brood-parasite could achieve in a lifetime. All they have to do is turn grass seed into eggs. And Nigeria isn''t short of grass seed. The closest reference I've been able to get my hands on is COSTS OF SEXUAL ADVERTISING IN THE LEKKING JACKSON'S WIDOWBIRD This is from the closely related (Superfamily Ploceoidea) genus Euplectes, and is not a brood parasite. Doesn't positively support my assumption of increased predation, but it firms up the plumage cost side of things.

Okay, I'll bite. This is the non-breeding plumage (both sexes) of the Pin-tailed Whydah, Vidua macroura, a bird that's fairly common in non-built-up areas near my Lagos base. Come breeding time, the females become a tad duller (bill loses distinctive colour) and they become proper 'little brown jobs' . However, the males switch to something altogether different: They grow a greatly extended tail, perch all day in the most conspicuous place they can find, and take off every ten minutes or so to perform a little aerobatical dance. Their flying capabilities are really hampered in this plumage, and many quickly fall victim to the many small to medium-sized local raptor species. If there truly was only a nominal penalty to the stronger individuals in this plumage, why would they be so quick to expend more energy in reverting to non-breeding plumage when the females lose interest?

As I remember it, Harry and Hermione's personal clocks never run backwards, so within their personal timelines, they are never duplicated. However their worldlines have been 'magically' bent back on themselves temporarily effectively akin to taking a hypothetical superluminal round trip in our universe that has returned them to a spacetime location adjacent to where they were some hours previously (in Hagrid's hut). Focussing purely on their personal clocks, there is no period when there are duplicate Harrys and Hermiones in existence at the same time. Therefore there is only ever one now and one chain of events in all timelines. The past is never altered. Merely an number of adustments to future outcomes based on hindsight. However, Buckbeak will almost certainly be aware of an apparent duplication of Harrys and Hermiones for some period in his own timeline. But as a magical animal, this may not be entirely unexpected.

Have you considered the possibility that the over-bearingly conceited tone of your posting style may have something to do with it? A more appropriately modest approach perhaps? Show a modicum of respect for the viewpoints of others rather than uniformly disdainful contempt?

Where I might take issue with this is, yes, we should acknowledge that there certain nebulous conditions that affect our ability to realise our full potential, but where does it end? None of us were born perfect. I'm certainly not going to list them here, but if pressed, I could could probably run off ten self-diagnoses of personal genetic and environmentally induced negative conditions that render me less than ideally placed to function independently without breaking sweat, and I'm sure that's true of most of us. And yet I (almost) never allowed those challenges to prevent me from turning up to work and doing at least the bare minimum of what was expected of me. This is what was expected of me in the culture I was brought up in. I left it to others to earn the nickname 'sicknote' if they had the strength of character to handle that. Where is it written that some challenge that doesn't physically prevent us from honouring our responsibilies excuses us from honouring them? We have no God given right to be forever happy, or free of pain, angst, whatever. But we do have obligations to others, and I feel that these days, these are all too easily forgotten. For me, it's one of those glass half full things. If I'm feeling a bit rough, my mind turns to my uncle who was born profoundly deaf (German measles), and the challenges he had to overcome. Yet he was invariably cheerful, friendly, and well-turned-out. Made me remember how lucky I was.

I asked my wife about this. She's currently working with a number of patients diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: Clearly, Wikipedia isn't the last word in this field, but by all accounts, this is an extraordinarily difficult condition to manage.

On and off over the last week I've been working my way through A New Approach to Estimating the Limit of Predictability that presents a theoretical absolute ceiling of 129 days to accurate weather forecasting based on considerations of quantum uncertainty in solar influx. Obvious implications for block universe and strong determinism schools of thought also.

Škoda vs Wartburg & Trabant Fair comment. There's only so much nuance I could fit into a ten word critique of 30 years of a national economy. Suffice to say that the GDP of the former East Germany has stubbornly remained at ca. 75% of that of the West, and the median family wealth distribution ratio is even more marked at ca. 3:1 in favour of the West.

Agree. Science has got pretty good at modelling simple, idealised, reversible processes. It's barely scratched the surface of the hard stuff.

Yes, the region has been largely deindustrialised via economic austerity policies resulting in a braindrain to the West leaving an aging population many of whom feel betrayed by 'liberal democracy' and yearn for a return to the certainties of authoritarian rule. In addition to @iNow 's comment on the influence of social media, it should also be noted that Merz is really unpopular just now so the ruling centre-right CDU party is leaking votes like a sieve.

Tad eclectic! Riddle-me-ree: Snort celeriac? It emetic. Air electrons.

Is it you dishing out that flurry of neg reps, even in conversations in which you haven't participated? If so, then what point are you trying to make?

The shirts put me more in mind of the BUF

And lacto-fermented veggies in general?

Even if Reform were an orthodox political party (it's currently a non-profit corporation limited by guarantee), it would amount to very little without Farage's charismatic leadership. He does not hold the reins of power, and the UK judiciary has far more political independence than their US counterparts. Even ex-PMs Johnson and Sunak got fingered for infringing COVID restrictions. Over 50!

Recently mired in sleaze, Farage and some of his most senior lieutenants seem to have been caught hook, line, and sinker by a team of investigative journalists in a sophisticated undercover sting operation that could well, if verified in a court of law, result in substantial servings of porridge. Aired on Channel 4 last night. Popcorn time!

I live in a city with a Muslim population around 50%. Before that, I lived for 20 years in Huddersfield that currently has a Muslim population of 22.9%, one of the highest in the UK. So please don't tell me what it's like to have Islamic neighbours, sunshine. You're insulting both me and my neighbours. Just mistaken. What actually turned your town into a shithole? Was it really the immigrants? Or was it deindustrialisation and long term neglect, lowered value properties with many left vacant for years. Somewhere very few native Brits would care to move to?

Small correction: Apparently I underestimated Mrs Seth here (not for the first time). Just received notification today that she's been awarded First Class Honours. Still just a village girl, one of eight children raised by a woman widiwed while still in her thirties who can't speak a word of English. Another small blow to fallacious statistics.