This is a monarch butterfly migration arriving in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. None of these butterflies has ever been here before. Their great-great-grandmothers left this exact grove in March. By July those grandmothers were dead. The butterflies you're watching are four to five generations downstream, born somewhere between Texas and Ontario, and they just flew up to 3,000 miles to a tree none of their parents ever saw. The brain doing the navigation is smaller than a grain of rice. The mechanism is a sun compass time-compensated by a circadian clock running in the antennae. Cut the antennae and the monarch loses orientation within hours. The clock corrects for the sun's position drifting across the sky as the day moves. Add iron-bearing magnetite particles for magnetic field detection on cloudy days, and a 0.5 gram insect is running redundant inertial guidance. The destination is more specific than the navigation. They cluster on a few dozen oyamel fir groves in the Sierra Madre at 9,000 to 11,000 feet. The microclimate has to sit between 32 and 41°F. Below freezing kills them. Above 41°F burns the fat reserves they need to survive five months without feeding. The right band exists a few hundred meters thick on a few specific mountains. Outside it, the migration ends. One generation each year is built differently from the rest. Summer monarchs live two to six weeks. The fall generation lives eight months. It postpones reproduction, fattens up, and carries the entire round trip in a single body. The map is genetic. Nobody has fully decoded how. A monarch hatched in a backyard in Toronto in September has never seen a mountain, never smelled a fir, never met an ancestor. It flies south for ten weeks, picks the right peak, and lands on the tree its bloodline has been returning to for tens of thousands of years. The forest knows the families that come back.

I love this porcelain tea strainer like a little umbrella.

This is why you should never stay near the exit of a railway tunnel

I'm letting in the duck…

بصفتي شخصًا تزوج لمدة ستة أشهر ثم تطلق، أستطيع أن أقول إن هذا هو جوهر الزواج.

Opening scene from the Always by Steven Spielberg. Two fishermen are caught completely off guard as a Consolidated PBY Catalina — a legendary WWII flying boat turned aerial firefighter — swoops down onto a lake to scoop water.

Bloody Truth: The Nuclear Test Veterans’ Search for Justice crowdjustice.com/case/nuclea… via @CrowdJustice my dad took these photos showing how close his group got to the site and how inadequate the protective clothing was

these photos were taken by my dad, the protection his group got was much less

More one-star reviews of the Ruminati. ★☆☆☆☆ - "I've been vegan for eleven years and I've spent the last six months losing arguments about sheep to a farmer called Brian who has a spreadsheet. I resent this." - forum post Brian has fourteen columns. Brian sends his regards. ★☆☆☆☆ - "Gerald is being used to make people comfortable eating meat by making a bull seem like a philosopher. A bull is not a philosopher." - @ ClimateFirst Gerald is not a philosopher. Gerald has a rumen, 40 acres, and a south corner that has gained seven wildflower species in four years. Philosophy is for people who don't have a south corner. ★☆☆☆☆ - "I had almost convinced my parents to try a plant-based month. Then my dad found the Keith posts. He's read everything. He now refers to their garden gate as 'the Keith problem.' I don't know how to come back from this." - DM, shared with permission There is no coming back from this. Keith is at the gate. Keith is always at the gate. ★☆☆☆☆ - "These animals are being used as propaganda for an industry that is actively..." (Keith ate the rest of this. Keith found it in Dave's recycling. Keith did not find it nourishing.) ★☆☆☆☆ - "Doris got cast in a dip and the farmer helped her and they've turned this into some kind of Stoic parable. She was just a sheep that fell over." - comment She was a sheep that fell over, came out, and grazed. She didn't carry it. She didn't build an identity around the dip. She came out and grazed. The Stoics spent three hundred years trying to describe this. Doris managed it by falling over.

Did you know the Duke of Wellington lived long enough to be photographed? This image, taken in 1844, captures Arthur Wellesley, the hero of Waterloo, in one of the earliest photographs ever taken.

Beggars belief! who is in charge of advertising?

If “not fucking around” was a Dog

“If they’re boys, I’m out of here” 😭😭

Well done Sig Singh Hira for completing the Battersea Half Marathon today in full @1914_Sikhs Uniform carrying 10kg in honour of Sikh Soldiers who fought in WW1 #BritishArmy #Sikh #WW1 #Marathon

Which one of these people would you most like to be Prime Minister in these dangerous and worrying times?🤔 Repost after voting please.

It's clear we have a crisis with our British media. It's not even bias,it's total opposition to anything our PM or this govt do.The more right wing leaning press even appear to support another country over our own.Perhaps it's because their owners are not Brits.We deserve better.

RT @Vinc_Ev_: I have to say, at time of grave danger for the world, the reaction of ALL opposition has been appalling. Badenoch, Davey, Pol…