iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Joe Lapp

Hannah Alexander Artwork @hannahartwork.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Moth 🔦 first picture in my October series!

A digital illustration of a giant moth fae with glowing yellow eyes clinging to a lighthouse. At it's base, a lighthouse keeper emerges from his house to investigate.

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A lot of the progress in Africa recently has been the Black Mambas, an all female, unarmed anti-poaching force: helpingrhinos.org/black-mambas/

helpingrhinos.org

Black Mambas - Helping Rhinos

Rhinos Need Your Help

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We need art enclaves strictly for humans.

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Tylan Berry @tylanberry.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

One of the most incredible photos I have ever been sent, courtesy of Chloë James of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust Seagrass Restoration Team. Yep, that's Philodromus margaritatus...under seawater using...an air bubble to breathe and move about. I am utterly speechless!! @britishspiders.bsky.social

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mentalfoundry.bsky.social @mentalfoundry.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Some art made by me that features some invertebrates alongside other critters 🐍🐦🐳! Btw I am open for commissions if anyone would want to add one of their favorites to this little collection !! #insect #inveretbrate #snake #Sciart

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You're right. The statement is false taken literally. I've encountered other hyperbolic statements in the book too. Thanks for cuing me to research before quoting.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"It is likely that every tomato you eat was pollinated by a bumble bee... [Their anthers] will only release their pollen when they are vibrated at a frequency of around 400 Hertz, and bumble bees do this by grabbing hold of the anthers and vibrating their flight muscles." - McGavin, The Hidden World

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MOTH👑MONARCH 🤖🔪 Robot Knife Fight Recovery Zone @mothmonarch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

THE SHOP IS BACK OPEN!! Check out my bugdanas, pins, stickers, prints, sketchbook downloads & more! October's around the corner & the perfect time for a spider bandana in black or vibrant purple!! 🕷� 🐛👉 shop.mothmonar.ch 🐝 #sciart #insectart #bugsky

Photo of a black bandana with an assorted spider design printed in white ink. It's folded in half diagonally and resting on a wood and metal bench as a backdrop.

Photo of an enamel pin of a celestial-themed bumblebee. The bee is facing right in a rounded pose with wings sticking out above it. It has a large round eye and sparkles on the body with constellation-like patterns as the wing veins. The antennae and some of the legs are mostly depicted by gold metal. The pin is resting on a blue cloth surface with some round gold accents. Mark at the bottom of the image reads "shop.mothmonar.ch"

Photo of two vinyl stickers of stylized millipedes posed to resemble infinity symbols. Both have metallic color areas for their legs and between their black body segments - the top is rainbow, the bottom is red. They are on a brown-grey background. Text reads "Shop.Mothmonar.ch"

Photo of a lavender sticker sheet with whimsical celestial-themed moths and related accent stickers. Nine moths have moons, stars, and small constellations on their wings with purple, blue, and pink palettes. Their shapes are inspired by real species like the luna moth, comet moth, cecropia moth, sphinx moth, etc. Accent stickers include four-pointed stars, five-pointed stars, a moon, a planet with a ring, and a four-pointed comet as well as a line of moon phases vertically in the middle of the sheet. Some of the stars, moons, and markings have metallic details catching the light here. The top of the sheet reads "Magic Moon Moths" and the bottom has the artist's name, "Moth Monarch".

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I googled umbrella crabs and now have a smile I think I'll carry to the end of the day. Thanks for this!

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wow that's a nice spider bandana! Now I need to think of a reason to get a bandana...

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I struggle to find realistic line drawings of terrestrial arthropods for shirts and sweaters - there aren't many. Most designs are solid-colored or cartoonish. I can't wear shirts with solid-color fills because they don't breathe and I get itchy - and I only want to wear shirts with bug designs.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Try to fathom this: A tangled brown pelican repeatedly tapped on the *door* of a facility of scientists *equipped* to assist the pelican. www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-stor...

fisheries.noaa.gov

Knocking for Help: A Pelican’s Unlikely Rescue

It is not every day a patient knocks directly on the doctor's door, but for one clever seabird, desperate times called for an unusually precise house call.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Wow. Looks just like one. These were the spiders that helped me overcome my phobia. I had to choose between walking while being carpeted in mosquitoes or running through webs. I ran through webs, and the spiders dropped off one by one. Once safe from mosquitoes, I looked closely at one and saw this.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

SCOTUS made the same argument for allowing voter disenfranchisement: as long as it wasn't the stated intention of gerrymandering minorities out of representation, it's fine.

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

Frank Ashwood @frankashwood.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

If you're into nature writing and/or scientific nonfiction and you haven't yet bought my debut book The World Beneath Our Feet, what are you waiting for? Grab yourself a copy today and come on a safari into the soil with me! Available at your favourite bookseller now! 🪱📚🧪 @hodderbooks.bsky.social

A photograph of my hardcover book ‘The World Beneath Our Feet’ in a plastic cover with a Toppings and Co book sleeve

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

There's actually no single answer to "how a computer works." The description in this thread refers to single-core processing, which must be time multiplexed. Multi-cores expand that in creative ways. And NPUs are being designed specifically to imitate neural processing. www.ibm.com/think/topics...

ibm.com

What is a Neural Processing Unit (NPU)? | IBM

A neural processing unit (NPU) is a specialized computer microprocessor designed to mimic the processing function of the human brain.

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

samcannonart @samcannonart.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I don't like autumn as much as like Spring. But the colours - the colours I love. I could have posted 30 pictures with the autumnal colours.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"An elephant cannot move from an air temperature of 50° C to a much more bearable 30° C by simply walking around to the other side of a leaf." - George McGavin, The Hidden World: How Insects Sustain Life on Earth Today and Will Shape Our Lives Tomorrow (2023)

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Looks like it's struggling with static electricity.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Insect "total biomass is at least 10 times that of all humans and our livestock combined. It is hard to imagine a terrestrial or freshwater ecosystem that does not depend on insects. The world isn’t ours at all. We are newcomers on a planet made and maintained by insects." –McGavin, The Hidden World

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I once watched a bright white Mecaphesa sitting conspicuously atop green pepper grass take male Checkered White butterflies that systematically visited her in search of females, a pile of Checkered White wings on the ground below her. Pepper grass is the butterfly's host plant.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

According to Morse's book, Predator upon a Flower, the camo isn't for prey capture but for predator avoidance. M. vatia is conspicuous to pollinators in UV, thought to imitate the UV patterns of flowers.

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

marshy @dolomedes.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

piglet bug, PIGLET BUG. and they live up to that adorable name, and then some~ #bugsky #cute

a dark brown insect with a thin white stripe along the top

it looks like a weevil but it is a planthopper. the wings are short, leaving the abdomen exposed

the white stripe follows from tip to tip, and has a thin reddish line in the center

SNOOT
Bruchomorpha sp., family Caliscelidae (piglet bugs!!!)

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

Marc A. Milne @forthespiders.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The elephant mosquito (Toxorhynchites rutilus) is one of the largest mosquitoes in North America with a wingspan of 12mm! They also do not bite, as females do not use blood for their eggs. They're also predators of disease-causing mosquitoes like those in the genus Aedes. So, friends! #invertefest

A large green iridescent mosquito sits on a yellow coneflower bloom.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Why is the video tracking the truck? Is that reasonable? Just wondering if this is AI.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Monarch caterpillar on milkweed vine. Charlottesville, VA.

Small caterpillar on partially-eaten spade-shaped leaf.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Monarch caterpillar on milkweed vine. Charlottesville, VA.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Amazing. What's with all the tapping?

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

Leslie Levings @handle.invalid · 20/08/2026

Teapotting

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Schmidt Ocean Institute @schmidtocean.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

This is a deep-sea isopod. Dr. Johanna Weston, a deep-ocean biologist and guest investigator at @whoi.edu, is confident this is Bathyopsurus nybelini, one of her favorite animals. Learn why via the YouTube caption: youtube.com/shorts/DenUj...

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

LLMs are probabilistic; they will never be 100% right. To get them to write good code, we instruct them carefully, as one would a junior developer or researcher - cite your findings, cross-reference, etc. We also have secondary prompts dedicated to verification - like an editor or reviewer.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

What model did you use? The models have dramatically different capabilities. Lower end models are frequently wrong, hallucinate. Higher end models do verification, are less frequently wrong, but cost more and have greater environmental footprint. I'm required to work with them, see this first-hand.

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The Onion @theonion.com · 29/07/2026

Teacher Required To Provide Own Salary theonion.com/teacher-required-to-pr…

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I saw a small green caterpillar ballooning today over a parking lot, though I can't be sure it wasn't a sawfly larva. I didn't know that caterpillars could balloon.

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

Zen Faulkes @doctorzen.net · 19/03/2026

Taxonomist Appreciation Day post I am in freakin' AWE of people doing primary taxonomic work. To do it well, you need deep scholarship to track past naming (and misnaming) efforts. You may need to hunt down specimens only to discover they are damaged, misindentified, or lost. 1/3

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Six weeks ago: tied my shoes too tight and tore a ligament. I had tied and pulled the laces of my shoes, when a lace broke. After rummaging around, I found a spare pair, but after putting them on, I found them too short to tie. So I pulled them tight enough to squeeze out another inch and tie a bow.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

I just saw a glitch in the matrix. I put a bowl on the kitchen counter and dropped a handful of kibble in from a few inches up. One kibble rebounded up two feet to the height my eyes and landed behind the sink. That kibble had more kinetic energy than the potential energy of its drop would provide.

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Reposted by Joe Lapp

KetrinaDrawsALot @ketrinadrawsalot.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

#Crabmas is nearly upon us! Reposting "The 12 Days of Crabmas" is my new holiday tradition 🦀🎄 #throwback #12daysofchristmas #crab

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Our market got cancelled tomorrow (😭) so we have a bunch of these left now! They're beautiful! You can learn about animals! So many people in the last 2 weekends have said "Oh we should get this for your mom", and then they get one for the other person's mom. Just sayin' SquidFacts.net

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

This is so much fun to watch!

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I've been avoiding casein because it's supposed to be the ingredient of dairy that promotes mucus production, giving me sinus headaches when my allergies act up. I'm pretty sure cheese and yogurt make things worse for me, but you have me wanting to investigate further.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Every once in a while I have to remove a large Pholcus phalangioides spider from my bathtub before my morning shower, but this morning I have to relocate three!

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Every time I read about insect trachea, I think of grasshoppers. I vaguely recall having read something about the efficiency with which oxygen delivers to the cells that power flight.

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Joe Lapp @josephtlapp.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

We know this specifically for the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

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