FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

@IngaLovinde
Having an opinion and expressing it freely certainly does not make you a bad person. You know that.

# Do birds smell and taste?

The other day we bought a coconut shell bird feeder. Like this


After hanging it out on the balcony, kids became worried that birds won't come because they do not know how to find it. So we made a bet that in at most 3 days we'll see many birds coming. Well, it took only a couple of hours to welcome the first tits and then crows too.

But this exercise brought an interesting question: _How do birds find the food we offered them? _Can birds smell?_

A bit googling reveals that this is quite interesting stuff in its own right. For a long time people did not think birds can smell. After all, it however turns out that indeed, they have a relatively well developed sense of smell: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080716111421.htm.

> Sight and hearing are the most important senses for birds -- this is at least the received wisdom. By studying bird DNA, however, researchers have now provided genetic evidence that many bird species have a well-developed sense of smell.

But what about taste? Can birds taste? That turns out to be more involved. Some people run their own anecdotal experiments (e.g., https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/birding-basics/can-birds-smell-taste/) and birds apparently have taste preferences, yet seem to be oblivious to strong tastes like cayenne pepper. Yet, hummingbirds are known to be very picky about nectar - they go for sweetness. So how is it?

It turns out, some birds (chicken, hummingbirds) have good taste receptors: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140821141449.htm.

> Hummingbirds' ability to detect sweetness evolved from an ancestral savory taste receptor that is mostly tuned to flavors in amino acids.

Some other, like penguins, however, are taste disasters, they don't care: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150216131109.htm

> Penguins apparently can't enjoy or even detect the savory taste of the fish they eat or the sweet taste of fruit.

# Faithless - Insomnia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8JEm4d6Wu4


#music

# Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings

And finally the piece as it was originally imagined.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQsgE0L450


#music

# Tiesto: Adagio for strings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIgN7eICn4


#music

# The Showhawk Duo | TEDxKlagenfurt

Two guys playing covers of old electro-music hits on acoustic guitars.

Lots of energy.

https://youtu.be/FIrkhJut4Ew

* Faithless: Insomnia
* Tiesto: Adagio For Strings
* Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody


#music

# Quote investigator

https://quoteinvestigator.com/

A website ([and the person behind it](https://quoteinvestigator.com/about/)) checking the true origin of quotes.

Many famous quotes are attributed to people who never said them. Sometimes it's paraphrases, but sometimes just plain invention.

Useful.

> A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.
> — Mark Twain ([falsely attributed](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/))

# Stundenbuch des Todes (Hourly report of the death)

[Radio feature](https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/stundenbuch-des-todes.3682.de.html?dram:article_id=147978) of Deutschlandfunk Kultur radio. A radio play/reading about what exactly happens to a human body after death. A very detailed description of all the minutae processes of destruction of human body from the moment the breathing stops until weeks and months and in the end years after the death.

The original is read in a very suggestive and imagination-invoking way. Unfortunately there seems to be no publicly available recording. Produced in 1998.

[Full text](https://www.iphpbb.com/foren-archiv/27/1696000/1695040/quotstundenbuch-des-todesquot-kg-44931662-89326-21.html)

> ... minutiöser und lapidarer Bericht von den Etappen des Sterbens und der Verwesung mag in seiner Detailliertheit erschreckend wirken – er ist ein mutiges und versöhnliches Dokument vom letzten Aufbäumen des Lebens gegen das Ende.

# Indila vs. Hey Falcons - YouTube trip

Sometimes I get lost in the depths of YouTube. Starting from a single song, I go down the rabbit hole of associations and recommendations and then sometimes a theme arises. This is a record of such a musical trip from France, via Slovakia and Poland to Russia.

## Indila/Dernière Danse

This was a recommendation I got via YouTube when listening to some other French music.

[](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5KAc5CoCuk)

Very nice. I like it very much. But somehow the song had familiar features. Something about folk songs, the drums resemble something... Also the refrain features this rhytmically repeating pattern, I've heard that somewhere...

Yeah, right. Some folk music from Eastern Slovakia, or something like that.

## I.M.T Smile/Hej Sokoli (Slovak)

The refrain of this, has some resemblance to the Inidila song.

[  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R34LYNQDPmM)

This is a title song to the movie [The Line](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6134000).

The song is Slovak language version of a [Polish song](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hej_Soko%C5%82y), translated "Hey, falcons". It has good energy.

## Hej Sokoly - AnnaLu & Shavez (Polish)

Another good adaptation of the song with the same energy, but this time without a rock band, just a guitar, some drums and a lot of joy is this.

[  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1AmVd8OLd0)

## The Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble

And of course, I couldn't resist to give a chance to the Russian classic adaptation :-).

[  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KGRMiYBi7k)

## Final click: Hrdza/Stephen

At which point, YouTube recommended another piece in the same style. Known band, unknown piece, let's go for it.

[  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZALtzTmPz-E)

This is a pop-ish adaptation of another folk song by a Slovak band Hrdza (Rust). They do a lot of this stuff, it's always fun to listen. I just did not know this particular piece. The video is fun too, so why not.

Why this is piece called Stephen is beyond me. But it's fun to watch and has the same energy as the rest of the trip, so why not.

Well, let's stop for today, otherwise I waste more time than I want on this...

# Drawing 3D illusions on paper

[Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx7QdPOlCl0j5Oz7qBS3FuQ) of a guy drawing hundreds(!) of interesting drawings including many 3D illusions on a sheet of paper. Very interesting. Tested, works .

Inspired by [this toot](https://qoto.org/@peterdrake/105635821358497997).

@wion@writing.exchange it probably won't satisfy everything you want, but qoto.org supports markdown and richer formatting (besides character limit of 65k). Check the [instance about](https://qoto.org/about/).

# How butterflies fly

Source:
* [YouTube](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FfeiU_eIB1c)
* https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121132059.htm

> Until now, the common perception has been that butterfly wings are aerodynamically inefficient, however, the researchers suggest that the opposite is actually true.

> ... researchers studied the wingbeats of freely flying butterflies during take-off in a wind tunnel.

> _During the upward stroke, the wings cup, creating an air-filled pocket between them. When the wings then collide, the air is forced out, resulting in a backward jet that propels the butterflies forward. The downward wingbeat has another function: the butterflies stay in the air and do not fall to the ground._

@marathon No clue, never lived in one :-). Well, the second might look frail, but is a proper building structure - somehow. The former are just stacks of normal shipping containers.

@WilliamsStrangeFest