They are fascinating. I think you understate a little just how aggressive they can be when they are nesting nearby. You literally neeed to run for your life if a local magpie decides you are not to be trusted! Their attacks can be vicious, it makes the news regularly :)
Oh and I saw videos of them opening garbage cans in teams! One cannot possibly do it but they manage it by partnering with their friends.
A while ago they stopped research with backpack-like trackers on magpies because the magpies figured out a way to take the trackers off each other. The first instance of magpie-cooperation that was purely altruistic! No food reward involved.
Down here in Tasmania we have Black Currawongs (strepera fuliginosa) that patrol around on bin night calling out to each other when they find a wheelie bin they can smell food scraps in. An individual bird can open the lids on their own. Our neighbours countered this by zip tying full 600ml water bottles to the lid handles. Heavy enough that a bird couldn't lift the lid, but not heavy enough to stop the lid opening when the truck lifts the bin.
In response to this, the birds now work together in groups of 3 to open the lids. So people started zip tying two water bottles to the bins... the birds can't get past that as there isn't enough room for them to work in a group of 6.
Me, I just put some green waste on the top of my bin before I take it out. We've also replaced our front lawn with native plants and there's lots of things in there that the birds like to eat. When something in there goes to seed we'll often have 20+ currawongs.
I couldn't find a link, but there's a Bizzaro strip that shows a sculptor putting the finishing touches on his latest work: an elderly mannequin made of peanut butter and bird seed, dressed and seated in a wheel chair. The artist smiles as he imagines the reaction he'll get when he wheels the sculpture through a park full of pigeons.
Yep, i was surprised to see no mention of Condors since seeing one today gives you a very good idea of how big the Haast's eagle was. Add in crazy large talons/beaks and you begin to understand why Central-Asian nomads in Kazakhstan etc. trained (much smaller) Eagles for hunting! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_with_eagles
I use AI to program at my job but at home I am trying to keep writing everything by hand. It’s very tempting to just let the AI do stuff for me when it gets tiring, especially when tests are failing and I know the AI could fix it for me in seconds while I have to spend hours figuring it out, but I try my best to do it without AI. I just ask the AI questions sometimes for things I would have used StackOverflow in the dark ages. I feel like people need to do this if they want to keep being programmers in the old fashioned way! Junior programmers especially.
Agreed, though the very existence of these tools changes the feeling of doing the work, which I can only assume changes the result in the brain. I hate the idea that these tools affect what my brain does and the value it attached to an activity even when I choose not to use the tool.
Are you nuts or just misinformed? China is investing everywhere. Africa, south America, Russia, EU. And they do have immigrants, as a Western person it’s actually quite easy to move there to study or work. Lots of Europeans I know have studied and worked in China and Taiwan.
I have EU, Australian and Brazilian passports, so I could live in even more countries including the Mercosul region. I actually live in the EU because of its culture, food, more advanced startup scene and tech companies. Living quality is very similar here and in Australia, what makes the difference is whether you prefer to avoid too cold or too hot weather. Swedens finances are actually better than Australia s as far as I know.
I couldn’t imagine a better place to live than Northern Europe, but Australia is a close second for me. Been to China, Japan, Canada, the US and I think parts of those countries are also really nice to live, just not a good match for me culturally.
Now South America is a different story. If you like good weather and a festive atmosphere it’s actually the best place to live, just don’t expect to have money or to live in a functioning state where services work!
People say one thing and do another. It’s tiring. Long before LLMs we had the joke that a PR with 10 lines changes got 10 comments (all nitpicking), a PR with 1000 lines got just one, LGTM. We’ve had several bugs where PR review would almost certainly never catch the issue, people are terrible at reviewing things thoroughly. Guess what can do that much much better?
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