#learning2025_ — Public Fediverse posts

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/pages-does-not-open-odt-files-10-13-25/

I am collaborating with my friend Victor V. Gurbo (NLJ profile, official website) on a New Leaf Journal article which will go live tomorrow (October 14, 2025, if you are reading this after). I converted my markdown draft to LibreOffice for my final edits. I then sent the draft to Victor for him to review and ensure that all of the information is accurate. I sent it as an .odt file. Victor (unfortunately) uses a Mac. He tried to open it Pages. It didn’t open. Today I learned that Pages cannot open .odt files. I used LibreOffice to re-save it as .docx and he could open that. I am glad Apple is out there giving us more proprietary rich text processors with weird formats and restrictions. Thank you.

#apple #documentFormats #learning2025_ #libreoffice

Things I Learned: 13 U.S. States Ban Ranked-Choice Voting

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/03-25-25-us-rcv-bans/

I read an interesting January 15, 2025 article by Bob Holmes at Knowable Magazine titled The Caterpillars that can kill you. One may thing that I will offer a caterpillar fact as something I learned from the article. Not so. I present a lizard fact:

[A] forerunner to the new blockbuster drug semaglutide — better known by brand names such as Ozempic and Wegovy — was based on a molecule extracted from a venomous lizard, the Gila monster.

I present a Gila monster for those of you (which included be before finding this link) who are not familiar with it.

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/02-05-25-ozempic-comes-from-lizards/

#caterpillars #learning2025_ #lizards #pharmaceuticals

According to a January 19, 2025 report by Molly Liebergall in Morning Brew, Mars, which I knew for being a candy maufacturer, “controls nearly half of the ~6,600 corporate-owned pet clinics in the [United States]…” The report notes that Mars decided to enter the vet business about 30 years ago and “[r]evenue has spiked 284% since then…” How is this working for pet owners? “The average vet bill is ~60% more expensive than it was in 2014…” [Source: Molly Liebergall for Morning Brew] You would think Mars could use some of the windfall to make some exciting new M&Ms or something.

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/02-04-25-mars-vets/

#learning2025_ #pets

On December 18, 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. authorities are investigating whether a Chinese company whose popular home-internet routers have been linked to cyberattacks poses a national-security risk and are considering banning the devices.” I learned a few interesting facts beyond the top-line story:

• “The router-manufacturer TP-Link, established in China, has roughly 65% of the U.S. market for routers for homes and small businesses.” TP-Link’s home and small business marketshare for routers was only 20% in 2019. The Wall Street Journal attributes the jump to an increase in working from home beginning in 2020 and TP-Link’s low prices.
• “The Justice Department is investigating whether the price discrepancies violate a federal law that prohibits attempts at monopolies by selling products for less than they cost to make…” (Note: For whatever it is worth, I do not think TP-Link is strikingly cheap compared to other “popular” consumer routers and access points, but I could be off.)
• TP-Link devices are used by the Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Agency, NASA, and other agencies.
• “An analysis from Microsoft published in October found that a Chinese hacking entity maintains a large network of compromised network devices mostly comprising thousands of TP-Link routers.”
• According to the Journal, people familiar with the TP-Link investigation have stated that the company does not engage with security researches complainted about security flaws in TP-Link products.
• “TP-Link routers don’t appear to be related to China’s alleged breaches of at least eight U.S. telecom firms by a group dubbed Salt Typhoon…” Chinese hackers instead targeted out-of-date routers built by Cisco and Netgear.
• Taiwan has banned government and educational facilities from using TP-Link routers. India issued a warning in 2024 that TP-Link routers present a security risk.

[Source: U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese-Made Router in Millions of American Homes (Wall Street Journal). Original Link. Archived Link.]

I used a TP-Link router for several years before upgrading to a MikroTik hAP ac3 router. As of the writing of the instant post, I still use a TP-Link wireless access point (it is a pure AP, no router capabilities), but I am in the process of swapping it out for a Netgear router with OpenWrt, which I will use as an Access Point instead of a router.

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/01-06-25-tp-link-security-issues/

#china #cybersecurity #learning2025_ #routers #tpLink

Project Owlnet is in the business of banding saw-whet owls to learn more about them. Kayla Randall of Smithsonian Magazine explained how they accomplish this:

The group uses an audio lure to entice the birds, capturing them in mist nets to bring back to the banding station. Once there, they place aluminum bands on the birds—’friendship bracelets for science,’ as they’re called within the project. Project participants also measure the owls’ bills, wings and tails.

While I did not know how one would catch and band a saw-whet owl despite having written All About the Saw-whet Owl back in 2021, that passage is not the thing I learned of the day. What caught my attention was how the researchers estimate how old individual Saw-whet owls are:

They use a blacklight to look at the underside of the owls’ wings and see their molt pattern, which helps determine their ages, a difficult task. Old feathers don’t glow as brightly under the light because the pigment has faded, while new feathers have a brighter glow, Boyle Acuti says.

I would not have guessed that they use blacklights to estimate the age of Saw-whet owls. [Source: Kaya Randall for Smithsonian Magazine]

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/01-03-25-saw-whet-owl-age/

#birds #learning2025_ #owls

According to animal cafes[dot]com, the Machida Squirrel Garden not only hosts “[h]undreds of adventurous squirrels,” but also “a guinea pig village housing at least a hundred guinea pigs, and some fenced-in pens inhabited by rabbits, small tortoises, chipmunks, and prairie dogs.” [animalcafes.com] I’m sold.

(PS: Don’t tell the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation about this place.)

https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/til-machida-squirrel-garden/

#animals #japan #learning2025_ #squirrels #tokyo