A Few Days Ago A Coworker Asked Me To Explain Hanukkah And I Asked Her If She Knew What A Menorah Was.

I have a Twitter account devoted to Aeniith only now! Go follow me on @Aeniith_ if you’re so inclined!

Tidbits, musings, ideas, fact, and more on worldbuilding, conlangs, etc.

Nēnē (Branta sandvicensis)

© Melanie Barnett

“The average US president has been convicted on .75 felonies” factoid isn’t true. average US president has been convicted on 0 felonies. Felonies Donld, who has been convicted on 34, is a statistical outlier adn should not have been counted

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Quick Before The Hamyenas Come: The Hamyenas

As larger and more specialized forms become more common in the Late Rodentocene, the diversity of predators has also become more populous. On most other continents, the ferrats become the dominant carnivores, but on the continent of Ecatoria, a different predator reigns supreme: the hamyenas.

Descended from the hammibals of the Middle Rodentocene, the hamyenas are the top predators of the continent, and have expanded into a great diversity to take full advantage of the wide array of biomes on the continent. Some smaller species such as the dwarf hamyena (Microcutamys minimus) thrive in the Great Ecatorian Desert, while others, such as the black bear-sized greater plains hamyena (Crocutacricetus magnus) make a living on the continent's open grassland, preying upon the large grazing jerryboas and hamtelopes that are abuntant in these regions.

Some hamyenas, however, have begun to diverge away from the stocky, short-limbed bodyplan, and taken on different carnivore niches available in Ecatoria: some, such as the maned biteyeena (Barognathomys shenzii) has developed a powerful jaw for cracking apart bones, often scavenging the leftovers of other hamyena species and chewing apart carcasses to get at the bits of meat inaccessible to other carnivores. Others, such as the fox-sized prairie zingo (Cynocricetus canioides) specialize on smaller prey, and thus have developed a much-more slender build, adapted for running and making fast turns in pursuit of its agile and elusive prey.

Like all rodents, the hamyenas lack canines: however, they compensate for the lack of these trademark killing tools with the help of highly-specialized jaws and teeth. The upper incisors, which grow continually as typical of rodent teeth, merge together into a single stabbing point that is kept well-ground and sharp by the whetstone-like lower incisors, which grind against the fused upper 'fang' and keep it in deadly shape.

Hamyenas are typically solitary ambush hunters, pouncing on their prey after stalking them at close range. Their jaws, which can open extremely wide up to an angle of 90 degrees, allows them to get their jaws over the necks of their victims and puncture the carotid arteries: once sufficient damage is done the prey quickly bleeds to death, making a safer and more efficient kill for the predator as opposed to a suffocating bite to the neck, which risks injury to them as the prey struggles for a prolonged period of time.

The larger species of zingoes, however, have discovered a new tactic of hunting: cooperation. Multiple individuals, usually a mated pair and their adult offspring, work together to take down larger prey, especially the browsing forest hamtelopes of the continent. These species are less agressive toward their own kind compared to other hamyenas, and adults stay and hunt with their parents and siblings until they eventually depart the pack to find new mates and territories of their own.

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You’re welcome.

What would the UK flag look like if it represented its constituent nations proportionally?

This point cannot be emphasised enough. I would never have been able to make any grammar at all without doing things this way.

Constraints are an amazing tool that actually make you more creative. Instead of trying to give your language ALL OF THE FEATUREs, try putting more constraints on it.

Curious about how NASA will land the next mission to the Red Planet – the Perseverance Mars rover? Here’s your chance to ask our expert! 

After nearly 300 million miles, our Perseverance rover completes its journey to Mars on Feb. 18. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, it has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing. Mission engineer Chloe Sackier will be taking your questions in an Answer Time session on Thursday, Feb. 4 from noon to 1pm ET here on our Tumblr! Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask. 

Chloe Sackier is a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. She works on the Mars 2020 Entry, Descent and Landing team, tasked with safely delivering the Perseverance rover to the surface of Mars.

Landing Perseverance on Mars – fun facts: 

The landing system on the mission includes a parachute, descent vehicle, and an approach called a “skycrane maneuver” for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the final seconds before landing.

Perseverance will use new technologies for landing, including Terrain-Relative Navigation. This sophisticated navigation system allows the rover to detect and avoid hazardous terrain by diverting around it during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. 

A microphone allows engineers to analyze entry, descent, and landing. It might also capture sounds of the rover at work, which would provide engineers with clues about the rover’s health and operations.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Same but I'm terrible at thinking of ways to do this

God i missed you dude but umm, what would you say is your favorite way to add new words to your lexicon? Are you a suffix guy, prefix, infix if you're feeling spicy? Or something else?

For me, the most satisfying coinage is a natural metaphorical extension that I hadn't thought of previously. For example, keligon is "stop" in High Valyrian, and kelinītsos is a pause or a break, but I extended the latter metaphorically to mean "chance" or "opportunity"—a moment when things stop briefly, and you have a chance to do something. Rather than it being your chance, it is your pause: What will you do while things have stopped very briefly, affording you a window of opportunity?

That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.