There’s a type of bacteria that infects caterpillars and produces a toxin that makes them lose all rigidity. The toxin is called MCF.
MCF stand for Makes Caterpillars Floppy
That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.
oh man you really don’t want a flaccid caterpillar, total mood killer
Yeah, if the mood called for that wavy, reach-for-the-sky dance that caterpillars do. On the other hand, if the mood called for a thick, rigid caterpillar, throbbing with pent-up intention, you might want to reconsider the parties you attend.
scientists work their asses off, its nice to have a little fun and make the endless hours all worth it.
Physics is a mixed bag with this stuff. Gell-Mann came up with the name quarks after a line from Finnegan’s Wake because Joyce referenced them as coming in three. It was a nonsense word inserted just to rhyme with Mark, Park, etc, so its pronunciation in physics isn’t even correct, but it was fun and physicists were just having a good time with it.
Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he has not got much of a bark And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.
Then we got the strange/charm and top/bottom (which was originally the beauty/truth, so bullet dodged there) so the quarks really got all the fun names. Strong Force physics in general gets the good stuff: Axions were named after a detergent because they helped “clean up” the strong CP-violation problem of the standard model. Fantastic, no notes.
Neutrinos (my field of study), had so much potential for fun, stupid naming that was squandered. The neutrino was originally proposed with the name “neutron” by Pauli, but then the actual neutron was discovered and observed first, so the name got pinched. To remedy this, the electron neutrino was dubbed “neutrino” or little neutron (they didn’t know that other flavors of neutrino existed). Meanwhile, the muon neutrino was originally supposed to be the neutretto (before they realized that the neutral leptons were related by the different particle generations), so we could have had a world where each generation of neutral lepton was just another combination of neutron + diminutive italian suffix.
- Neutrino
- Neutretto/neutronetto
- Neutrello/neutronello
Then, when the mass eigenstates were confirmed, we could have diversified and gone with big suffixes to indicate that neutrinos have mass.
- Neutroni
- Neutrachione/neutronachione
- Neutrozzo/neutronozzo
But noooooo, particle physics decided to just give neutrinos the lamest possible names, electron/muon/tau neutrinos for flavor states and m_1/m_2/m_3 neutrino for mass states. I am ashamed of my predecessors for what they’ve done.
Don’t even get me started on the J/Psi debacle…
The time derivative of position is velocity. The derivative of velocity is acceleration. Derive again and you get jerk. Then it’s snap, crackle and pop.
(For those too young, these are the names of those characters they use to sell Rice Krispies)
TIL I’ve pronounced quark wrong my whole life (rhyming with park).
Though I’ve heard it done that way elsewhere - perhaps it is also considered acceptable at this point.
You need it to make the quantum duck joke. Quark quark.
Waitwhat.
Gell-Mann said it sounds like “quart”, Joyce rhymed it with Park, it is a silly word and the pronunciation is as fluid as you desire.
Wait, how is “quark” supposed to be pronounced? Not like the Star Trek character or the German cheese?
I pronounce it with the a sound I’d use in “warp”.
I pronounce it like cork with a w
“Work?”
Kw(schwa)rk
“Quirk?”
Kinda yeah, though with the a-schwa transformation not quite complete. As I describe this I’m realizing it may be influenced by my accent which is similar to the tv American accent but with a bunch of dropped sounds.
Apparently it rhymes with spork
In physics- Like “quart” with a k In the Joyce novel- rhymes with park.
My favourite is the barn. Hmm what should we call this 10^-28 m^2 cross sectional area? Ten times less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a square metre. Hur hurr wow it’s so BIG it’s like hitting a barn door, let’s call it a barn.
So… It seems that you feel let down by your predecessors in physics’ inability to tell the future… Hunh. Odd, that.
To be honest, love the “Ferrous Wheel” pun. It’s too good.
Can you explain it? I don’t get it.
Ferrous means iron. When they say Ferrous wheel, it means how the iron is stored and used in the biosphere and lithosphere. It is a pun on Ferris Wheel, which is an amusement park ride.
Google Ferris wheel. The London Eye is an example of a Ferris wheel.
These are hilarious. I NEED MORE!
there is a species of mushrooms named Spongiforma Squarepantsii.
there is a beetle named Agra vation
a spider named Apopyllus now
apparently, a sea slug Yoda purpurata. (but I don’t see the resemblance.)
and a waterbug named Ytu Brutus,
(compliments to ChatGPT…lol)
Same lol
there’s also a protein involved in visual signals in the brain named Pikachurin,
there’s a wasp in austrialia named Aha ha,
(again, chatgpt sourcing… but I did check to make sure they’re real… lols)
The predicted outcomes of sinus surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis may use the SNOT scale (sinonasal outcome test)
Relevant username. Also wow sinonasal is hard to read correctly, I got sinusoidal a few times
Half a byte being a nibble is too cute to hate.
There was an early trend of giving tech stuff fantasy terms, too. Programs that do something for the user being wizards and programs that do things when triggered being daemons, for instance.
To be fair, that was coined by Larson and then adopted by the scientists, whereas the previous examples were coined by those in the field, specifically.
My favorite.
Fun fact (not really) about Nim: he and the other ASL chimps were HORRIBLY abused. Basically every single one of them.
And it was all for nothing, not a single bit of evidence shows that teaching chimps ASL worked and allowed any form of actual communication.
Yes, even Koko.
Well, communication is definitely shown.
But… “speech”, “language”, “sentient thought”? That’s the subjective bit, imo. Communication is easy.
There is also a good You’re Wrong About podcast episode on this.
Meanwhile, in immunology:
“Can we have fun names?”
“NO! Now shut up and keep isolating proteins and cell markers!”
The stupid terminology in immunology made me hate it so much, even though the actual mechanics are fascinating. At some point my brain just reached saturation with all the CD proteins. Enough is enough!!!
After looking this up, TIL that Knuckles is an echidna. I had no idea!
Yeah, that’s probably why they called him “Knuckles the Echidna.”
I don’t remember ever playing any of the early games, but I can only ever remember him being referred to as “Knuckles”, as in “Sonic and Knuckles”. I guess I was just a little too far removed from the game to ever follow the characters.
It said it in the title screen of the games.
Haha wow. It just must have never registered into my long term memory.
Interesting fact: Echidnas, like platypus, have no stomach.
Wait til you find out about their penises!
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/N/nybble.html
Worth noting that at the time of documentation a half-byte was a nybble, and the more mundane spelling came along later
edit: ooooo I just remembered the Cox-Zucker algorithm too! Evidently the two guys behind the algo only decided to work together because of their last names.
I appreciate that some fucking guy recorded himself reading that goddamn article and his accent makes Cox Zucker completely indistinguishable from cock sucker.
Meanwhile psychologists just name things as exactly blandly as they can. There’s a neat phenomenon where a relationship can immediately be viewed as deeper and more connected, merely by one of the individuals sharing deeply personal information. It even works at the very first interaction. In other words, if someone tends to overshare, or blurt out info about themselves, we measure their blirtasiousness and its effect on relationships. Not even kidding. I think the folks who came up with it were Scottish, which is why the blirt rather than blurt.
17, 18, and 19 on the periodic table spell out ClArK, guess what’s below 18. Krypton. I can’t remember which one came first, but superman is baked into the periodic table and I can’t help but remember that everytime I think about chemistry.
It’s a nybble…
Nope.
Yes. Two nibbles make a bite. Two nybbles make a byte.
