iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I don't swear because we have pet birds who will hopefully out live me and need to be rehomed. It's easy to teach a parrot to swear. But parrots that do swear are difficult to stop and lessen the chance of adoption. Parrot Tax attached.

Rob and Cirrus the Congo African grey parrot from an odd angle. And yes, my hair is thin.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

@astrohelena.bsky.social A friend saw your presentation at Allegheny Observatory last night. You went way beyond his training and he was very impressed I hope to see you here among the astronomers. I used this book for Earthbound things, but the number of citations in astrophysics are amazing!

A very worn copy of Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot's (BSL) red Transport Phenomena book.

I learned this for Earthbound chemical engineering.

It shocks me how many times BSL shows up in astrophysics papers and the like. We joked about relativistic fluid flow.

It's apparently not a joke. If you study the book, you'll figure out how to adapt it for Special Relativity. I would have no hope of adapting it for General Relativity.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

It says "Moopsy!" in an adorable voice.

Star Trek Lower Decks: A Moopsy: the cutest, most dangerous predator in the galaxy.

A Moopsy can inject chemicals into your body that liquifies your bones and allows them to drink your bones while you are still conscious and are suffocating because you can't breathe.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

@whysharksmatter.bsky.social Found at: www.thetakeout.com/2057732/90s-...

Article about Shark Bites Fruit Snacks, molded out of some kind of fruit slurry and gum and solidified into shark shapes

Continuation of article about Shark Bites Fruit Snacks, molded out of some kind of fruit slurry and gum and solidified into shark shapes

End of article about Shark Bites Fruit Snacks, molded out of some kind of fruit slurry and gum and solidified into shark shapes

I woke up to check my blood glucose and saw this while doom scrolling. I'm doing a lousy job on the alt descriptions. I'm sorry. I'm half asleep. Ask me tomorrow and I'll look up the entire text and paste it up if anyone cares. Tell me I sent pictures to David about Shark Fruit Snacks. I probably won't remember this when I wake up, or I'd offer to do it.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

@badmedicaltakes.bsky.social Check out Dr. Aliza on Facebook. AI "videos" of female human reproductive anatomy that are more like H. Bosch might have painted on Psilocybin. I'm stupider for having watched.

A still from a psychotic computer AI about human reproduction that includes air for the baby to breathe.

I don't know how to describe how wrong it is. I think my brain is horrified. It's absurd, ridiculous, and the human associated with it should be ashamed.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Das war zu Kompliziert für mein schwaches Deutsch. Ihr habe Android Übersetzer benutzt. Ich habe mich für ein paar Minuten gefragt, was OBJ meint.

Photo of Android translation of post into English. The OBJ is in capital letters and actually means my phone saw a marker for a letter it couldn't type and put a placeholder there, the letters OBJ in a box

Accessibility and inclusion is a matter of attitude, awareness, and decision.

This is where social democratic competence OBJ is apparent.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Nobel Prize in Chemistry Richard Robson is a professor at the University of Melbourne Susumu Kitagwa received his Ph.D. in 1979 from Kyoto University Omar M. Yaghi received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign They won it for organometallic frameworks.

Blue sky search showing no articles on the Nobel Prize in Chemistry at 7:18 am EST.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Blood Moon Total Eclipse. It's Pittsburgh, which usually means horrid seeing for astronomical events. There's a haze & some acrid pollution. I can only see a handful of stars. Around here, that's amazing. Cataract surgery: I can see this without glasses, for the first time in probably 58 years. 🧪🌌🥮

Moon and four stars. I can see the four stars with my eyes and if I enlarge the picture a bit on my phone. Need to look them up.

Photo taken with Night Sight on a Pixel 6a.

Blood Moon. A bit brighter with the phone photo than the naked eye.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

I can't find my memes! Will this do?

There are a lot of parrots drawn cartoon style, but with my eyes recovering from cataract surgery I'm ironically having trouble reading the writing for the ALT description.

Lovebird, Budgie, Quaker Parrot, Green Cheek Conure

Pionus, African Grey, Ringneck, Sun Conure,

Hawk Headed Parrot, Scarlet Macaw, Cacique, Yellow Headed Amazon,

Sulfur Crested Cockatoo, Blue and Gold Macaw, Hyacinth Macaw, Moluccan Cockatoo,

Military Macaw, Galah, Eclectus Parrot, cockatiel

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

It's January 20th, the celebration of MLK Jr., and something else I'm pretending to forget about. And this came along:

Fishbourne Roman Palace Writes:

For Blue Monday we can't think of anything more appropriate than this charming depiction of a man getting his face eaten off by a leopard. #MosaicMonday

There's an ancient (looks to be Roman) mosaic of a man having his face eaten by a Leopard-Luke animal. Someone may be using the man as a shield (pieces are missing) and a javelin appears to have just missed either the leopard or the man.

Fishbourne Roman Palace writes:

We did actually have a USA-specific post planned for today, but are having to delay it while we deal with the whole "Man being brutally devoured by a big cat" thing.

Ginge & Tonic replies:

I thought this *was* the US election specific post.

Fishbourne Roman Palace replies:

Nope. Once again we've dropped a banging post completely unintentionally.

Rob Carr (me) replies Ok, *THAT* is the funniest thing I've read today!

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Tobor, the 8th Man (8 Man in Japanese translated directly into English) is an android that received the mind of a murdered detective. He smoked to get energy. Yes, this was an actual cartoon children watched, including me. Personally, as a child, I hated adults smoking.

Tobor the 8th Man, an android, got energy boosts from smoking. Tobor is from an earlier time.

Tobor has a black helmet with yellow clear covers, a black sleeveless shirt with a 8 on it in red, and armor covering his arms. He's smoking a cigarette. Above him, it reads "Super Energy Boosters taste good like a Super Energy Booster should.

To the left of Tobor is a pack of energy boosters that say 8th Man and look like the old Marlboro cigarette packs.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

This is why I have sleep problems. The alt text for the image contains the intro from "Pavlov Trains Pea Plants." Yes, it's 5 am and I'm a bit silly. But it gets the point across sussinctly. 🧪🫛

Learning by Association in Plants

MonicaGagliano1, VladyslavV.Vyazovskiy2, AlexanderA. Borbély3, MavraGrimonprez1 &
Martial Depczynski4,5

In complex and ever-changing environments, resources such as food are often scarce and unevenly distributed in space and time. Therefore, utilizing external cues to locate and remember high-quality sources allows more efficient foraging, thus increasing chances for survival. Associations between environmental cues and food are readily formed because of the tangible benefits they confer. While
examples of the key role they play in shaping foraging behaviours are widespread in the animal world, the possibility that plants are also able to acquire learned associations to guide their foraging behaviour has never been demonstrated. Here we show that this type of learning occurs in the garden pea, Pisum
sativum. By using a Y-maze task, we show that the position of a neutral cue, predicting the location of a light source, affected the direction of plant growth. This learned behaviour prevailed over innate phototropism. Notably, learning was successful only when it occurred during the subjective day,
suggesting that behavioural performance is regulated by metabolic demands. Our results show that associative learning is an essential component of plant behaviour. We conclude that associative learning represents a universal adaptive mechanism shared by both animals and plants.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

@johnmoffitt.bsky.social I got my 6 y/o niece a small trilobite fossil for Christmas. She's a dinosaur fan. When I explained to her what it was and how old, relative to the dinosaurs she was amazed. The rest of the night, she went around showing people her fossil.

Trilobite fossil. Some segments in the middle appear to be split off. I don't know if that's the trauma that killed the trilobite or occurred during fossilization.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

My 6 y/o grandniece was so thrilled with her trilobite fossil she was going around showing it to everyone at the party. She doesn't have to become a scientist. But I'll give her all the opportunities I can. 🧪🦴

Trilobite, possibly with a broken back. No idea if that was perimortem.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Look, we all know that I like birds. And somehow no one ever got around to making the Bald Eagle the official National Bird™. But this is what they're working on? Really? Even Cirrus the CAG is annoyed.

Cirrus the Congo African Grey getting a head skritch and looking skeptically at politicians.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

The oven runs low. I cranked it up and it browned!

Browned focaccia bread decorated like a Christmas tree with parsley, rosemary, yellow sweet peppers, and cherry tomatoes.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

There's a certain irony about a biochemist cook failing to get his focaccia bread to brown. Tastes amazing, though! 🧪🍞⚗️

Focaccia bread with an embedded Christmas tree artwork made of rosemary and red, orange, and yellow small sweet pepper rings. The pot for the tree is a rectangular piece of red pepper. The pot, ornament rings and rosemary show browning, but the bread itself browned very little. The bread is paler than I am, which is saying something, as I'm pretty pale. I have some leads on what might be causing the problem.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I'm a biochemist. I saw this article. It looked interesting and I started reading it. The more I read, the more I started thinking this was nonsense. I wanted to rip it apart, but I thought "What do I know?" I left the tab open to take another look later on. I looked at it again today. 🧵⚛️🌌

Paper from Astroparticle Physical retracted.

Quote:

Astroparticle Physics

Volume 164, January 2025, 103036

RETRACTED: On the same origin of quantum physics and general relativity from Riemannian geometry and Planck scale formalism

Chavis Srichan, Pobporn Danvirutai, Adrian David Cheok, Jun Cai b, Ying Yan b

Text copied using Google Lens:

Quote:

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal

(https://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.

After publication, the journal was made aware of concerns about the research explained in the article and the validity of its results. These were investigated by the editors in accordance with the policies of the journal, including giving the authors the opportunity to respond to the concerns raised. As a result of the investigation, the editors concluded that the paper contains errors in the initial formulation, which propagate throughout the paper and make the findings and conclusions unreliable. Chavis Srichan agrees with the decision to retract the article. Pobporn Danvirutai disagrees and disputes the scientific arguments for it. Adrian David Cheok, Jun Cai and Ying Yan have not responded to correspondence about this retraction.

Apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the publication process.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I love how the sous vide London broil turns out: flavorful and tender. I got into sous vide mostly because it was using biochemistry and information about bacterial growth to cook my food in a strange way. Cooking something in only 56.7 C (134 °F) for 22 hours is different! 🧪🧑‍🍳 🧵

London broil (cheap at local grocery store) cooked by sous vide for 22 hours. London broil is sliced on a wood cutting board. Seared outside, pink inside (looks a bit more done in the photo than real life).

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

I like birds and live with several parrots, including Cirrus in the attached picture. You say "I do NOT like segregation in any way." I oppose segregation, yet I participate in a group on BlueSky that focuses on birds. 🧵 1/n

Cirrus, the Congo African grey parrot looking annoyed because I'm typing on BlueSky rather than making her breakfast.

Cirrus has a shiny black beak, a white face mask, a gray ring around the visible nostril, grey chest and wing feathers (and one back feather that is red and white). She's looking at me suspiciously with one eye that's a pale yellow iris with black flecks and a pupil. Head feathers are gray, edged in white and you can see a bit of her red tail feathers in back of her legs.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Chauncey the Moluccan Cockatoo snuggling up to me. 🪶

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Let's face it, I'm weird. I do believe Chauncey the Moluccan Cockatoo could remove one of my fingers if he wanted to. So I stay on his good side.

Chauncey the Moluccan Cockatoo (left) with me (right). Chauncey is snuggling up to me.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

My wife carves bird pumpkins every year. 🦉

Orange pumpkin with a carved out picture of an owl sitting on a branch in front of a crescent moon. Candles make the cut-out material. Glow bright orange.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 15/10/2024

I'm assuming I don't have to explain how bad this New York Post headline is to the people of BlueSky. PS: The AP does not appear to have suggested the headline used by the New York Post. 🧪🌌

New York Post headline:

NEW YORK POST

SPACE

NASA rocket begins 5-year journey to Jupiter's moon Europa to find right conditions for human life

By Associated Press
Published Oct. 14, 2024, 12:38 p.m. ET

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 07/10/2024

One Pot French Onion Pasta with Gruyer Cheese and Rigatoni. At one point, the rigatoni looked like the drawings of one of the nuclear pastas from a Neutron Star. Except what I thought were drawings of rigatoni were drawings of nuclear spaghetti. I don't know neutron stars or pasta very well. 🧪🌌

French Onion Pasta with Gruyer Cheese that reminded me of Neutron Star nuclear pasta except I misunderstood the drawings of spaghetti and thought they were rigatoni.

I'm a biochemist and don't know my neutron star astrophysics or my cooking pastas. Should have gone with small shells.

Also, I didn't have anything to grate the cheese with so I used my knife skills. At one point I had a pile of cute 1/32 of an inch Gruyer Cheese cubes.

I do have decent knife skills for cooking.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 22/09/2024

There's a picture claiming to be the first picture of a sunset on Mars. It's not. The first picture of a sunset on Mars was taken by a Viking lander. The one I've posted was taken 8/20/1976 by Viking 1. I don't know if it was the first or not. I loved this picture when it was released.

Words:
Thousands of years of Humanity, and you are alive to witness the first photo of a Sunset on another World; Mars.

Photo: Sunset on Mars.

Small image of photo taken by the Viking Launder on 8/20/1976, and the data file to go with it.

Red sky with concentric rings getting brighter toward the sun on the horizon. Mars regolith is very dark red.

"Stepping" artifact of the sunset (the rings) due to the primitive technology and low color resolution.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

Einen Arzt hat gesagt dass Sie "tote Politikern mit Gras ausstopfen, um CPR Puppen (?) zu benutzen." Ich erinnere das!

Wie viele liberale Parteien gibt es in Deutschland?

Was Duolingo hat mir über Deutschpolitik gelernt.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

This is the result of the second die. It's still a 37% probability of happening, so it's not significant. I thought 5 and 6 would be over-represented. 5 occurred 108 times, one less time than 3, and 6 occurred 94 times, less than 100 times. More analysis later. 🧪🎲

Chi-square test results
P value and statistical significance:
Chi squared equals 5.420 with 5 degrees of freedom.
The two-tailed P value equals 0.3668
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant.
The P value answers this question: If the theory that generated the expected values were correct, what is the probability of observing such a large discrepancy (or larger) between observed and expected values? A small P value is evidence that the data are not sampled from the distribution you expected.

Statistically, 1 through 6 should occur 100 times on average.
1 occurred 82 times.
2 occurred 106 times
3 occurred 109 times
4 occurred 101 times
5 occurred 108 times
6 occurred 94 times

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

I copied the data, sorted it in another column, and the spreadsheet counted the number of rolls. I checked the results by simple subtraction from the ordered column. I used the GraphPad Chi-Square test and found that the data was not significantly different from chance. 🎲 🧵 5/n

P value and statistical significance:
Chi squared equals 2.920 with 5 degrees of freedom.
The two-tailed P value equals 0.7123
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant.
The P value answers this question: If the theory that generated the expected values were correct, what is the probability of observing such a large discrepancy (or larger) between observed and expected values? A small P value is evidence that the data are not sampled from the distribution you expected.

1: Rolled 107x, expected 100
2: Rolled 100x, expected 100
3. Rolled 93x, expected 100
4. Rolled 103x, expected 100
5. Rolled 89x, expected 100
6. Rolled 108x, expected 100.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

I ordered two Chaos Dice from DiceMakers.com . Note: The two dice are identical, which means I kept them separate. This is the report on the first die I tested. Based on my idea of fun, I decided to test whether the dice were fair. 🧪 🎲 🧵 1/n

Two glow-in-the-dark pale green with black pips dice from dicemakers.com. The pips are placed in an abnormal position. The pips are placed randomly, but the totals of opposite sides add up to 7 as on normal dice.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

Are the Chaos Dice from Dice Masters on Etsy statistically fair? I want to find out. It may take a while. Two dice, and at least 600 tosses each.

Two glow in the dark Chaos Dice from Dice Makers on Etsy. Greenish glow with irregularly spaced pips.

Are they fair? I want to find out.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

Got them! Two glow in the dark Chaos Dice from Dice Makers on Etsy. Are they fair?

Two with a florescent green glow.Glow in the Dark Chaos Dice by Dice Makers
On Etsy! Black irregularly spaced pips

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 27/08/2024

Your post and Phil Plait's were side by side. You may be on to something.

Post by Matthew Francis talking about a stack of books almost falling down, followed by Phil Plait talking about gravitational wave detection possibilities.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/08/2024

Couldn't fit these two pictures in from tonight's Mingo Star Party: 🧪🔭🌒 3 of 3

Binary stars through the large scope on a monitor!

Young person looking at the moon through the smaller telescope (still big!) while you can see the moon in the picture.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/08/2024

The Mingo Creek Observatory telescopes. I thought I had more photos of the smaller scope. Watching kids look through them was fun! 🧪🔭🌒 2 of 3

Smaller scope on left, larger on right at the Mingo Creek Observatory

Little girl looking at an apparent binary stars (may not be orbiting each other) through the big scope.

Looking down the barrel of the big telescope.

Big scope aimed toward a binary while the moon hangs in the sky between clouds. Red lights to help people get around reflect off the large telescope.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/08/2024

I (and a lot of other people) had a great time at the Mingo Star Party tonight! It was put on by the Amateur Astronomer Association of Pittsburgh at the Mingo Creek Observatory! 🧪🔭🌒 1 of 2

Cars parked, people setting up telescopes, kids playing, two honkin' big telescopes in the background

Kids playing, telescopes being set up at the Mingo Creek Observatory for the Star Party

Scopes being set up, people standing around talking.

Interesting Dobsonian scope with a telescoping telescope. The mirror and the eyepiece extend out from the body of the main mirror and tube extending the length of the telescope!

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 01/08/2024

I love this graph. We used to raise various species of Betta. I've seen and worked with data like this tabulated as numbers and percentages, but this graph is spectacular. The information is easy to grasp.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 01/08/2024

At least that makes sense. Often, it seems they pick the most unrelated image possible. These would have been cooler:

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 16/07/2024

The ad that went with the article about the first lights in the universe:

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 14/07/2024

...the expansion of the universe. He would find examples, and others would demonstrate the objects weren't actually related. Ultimately failing to prove discordant redshifts, he helped demonstrate redshifts were due to recessional velocities. 🧪🔭 2/2

Arp 142, JWST photo of "Penguin and Egg," credit NASA

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

The version sold in stores in the USA has chiral ink but the panels are all hexagons and pentagons. Another ball with a different paint job has both right handed and left handed areas around hexagons and appears symmetrical. I have a headache. I'm not great at 3D visualization.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 07/07/2024

I'm so old, my brain is fascinated by how much incomplete or wrong information I learned in college. In a great article on placentas and a retrovirus, I saw the following:

Screenshot of a portion of an article with the following highlighted:

Anyone who reads papers about natural selection gets used to thinking, "WTF, evolution?!?"

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 27/06/2024

Names of groups are fun in English: a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, or a pandemonium of parrots. Scientifically, the names are mostly fun at parties. I can vouch for pandemonium.

Moluccan Cockatoo thinking of destroying cellphone/camera. Salmon crest feathers not visible, crest is up!

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 26/06/2024

That cradle reminds me of the NOAA-N Prime satellite. (It was launched successfully. After repairs.)

The bolts holding the NOAA-N Prime satellite to the cradle were borrowed and not replaced. The picture shows the satellite tipped over, the head smashed into the floor, the base on the cradle. Caption: No matter how much you screw up, you'll never ever have to tell your boss, "Sir, I toppled that 290 million dollar NOAA-N Prime satellite right onto the shop floor." For the record, it was repaired and launched.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 10/06/2024

No! Trump has had an obsession with sharks, and he recently went on a rant about sharks and batteries. I'm stealing the idea from "Birds aren't real." And, as a parrot owner, it's a go-to joke. I was joking about starting a rumor and don't want to start a rumor! I have a weird sense of humor.

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Rob Carr @robcarr.bsky.social · 23/09/2023

Starlink train again, south of Pittsburgh PA, shot with a handheld Pixel 6A. I invited my wife and neighbors to see. I'm glad they showed up! They're spread out compared to last night, as expected. Nancy counted 22. They disappeared into Earth's shadow. 🧪🔭 🌌🚀

Starlink Satellites in a "Train" in a somewhat hazy late dusk sky.

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