A fireworm sting can leave you in pain for several hours and can even cause dizziness and confusion

Wednesday, August 21st, 2024

Everything in Australia is trying to kill you, but Texas now has Australia-worthy fireworms washing up on its beaches:

They really do sound like a sci-fi or fantasy monster:

The marine creatures are also known as bristleworms because they have hair-like bristles that are hollow and full of venom, so you can probably guess how they earned their other name.

“The reason it’s called a fireworm is because when it stings you, it feels like fire,” said Jace Tunnell, director of community engagement for the HRI in a video posted to the institute’s YouTube page.

[…]

A fireworm sting can leave you in pain for several hours and can even cause dizziness and confusion.

“As far as I know they can’t kill you, which I guess is the good news,” Tunnell said.

The bristles are hollow spines that are filled with venom. They break off and embed into your skin if you brush up against them.

And if they don’t already sound terrifying enough, Tunnell said the worms can produce asexually — if you cut one in half, it will regenerate into two worms.

Posted in Animals, Science | No Comments »

Bob Sykes: America does not have a gun problem. It has a black problem. Over 55% of all gun murders, and over 75% of all mass shootings are committed by underclass black men between 15 and 30. Without young black men, America’s crime statistics would be pretty close to Switzerland’s. People like Zaid Jilani are a major problem themselves, as they are committed to obscuring the problem and diverting attention away from the cause, which is black genetics.
Jim: Respectfully, the Gnomes of Zürich are unlikely to have “eagerly acquiesc[ed]” to the surrender of their ancient, cherished neutrality. Let’s not blame the presumed victims of vaguely articulated threats of bunker-busting nuclear rain for their submission to FATCA et al. For Americans, of course, the tragedy is in how the set of U.S. persons can be implicitly expanded or contracted to a truly shocking degree according with the objectives of the executive agency in question.
Phileas Frogg: Jim, That’s true, on both counts, but with regard to the second we’ll see if Switzerland and its reputation can survive the present imperial hubris inspiring the dictate’s coming from Washington, to which it appears to be eagerly acquiescing. There is still time to salvage their traditional neutrality, and the strength prestige it afforded them, but the portents are certainly disfavorable. https://www.nato.int/cps /en/natohq/news_213105.h tm?selectedLocale=en...
Buckethead: Isegoria, you seem to have a disappearing comment issue.
Brod Ross: I your interested in this subject Mail me. B
Jim: But it’s also possible to overfit the patterns of life. Switzerland has been the impenetrable mountain fortress of world banking for seven centuries.
Jim: Bomag: A harping of two themes: the libertarian love of trade as the source of wealth; and apologizing for Africa. Wondering if he dealt with the usual counter-factuals: Japan, rocky islands less than 200 miles wide, did so well; Argentina, lots of ports and resources, did not do so well. Why did Switzerland, no ports and difficult geography, do so well? Great comment, LOL.
Bomag: A harping of two themes: the libertarian love of trade as the source of wealth; and apologizing for Africa. Wondering if he dealt with the usual counter-factuals: Japan, rocky islands less than 200 miles wide, did so well; Argentina, lots of ports and resources, did not do so well. Why did Switzerland, no ports and difficult geography, do so well?
T. Beholder: Then it made England friendly to the United States. Then it made France friendly to the United States. Then it made Finland friendly to the United States. And then Canada and Mexico… uh… wait… Nevermind, «As of 2014 all — including Japan — are allies». And if you boosted a washing machine to spin as hard as the author spins this, it would be able to turn yarn into millinery felt. :]
T. Beholder: And then there’s… https://englishrussia.co m/2009/09/15/the-white-c itizens/ https://englishrussia.co m/2016/09/29/ways-how-to -protect-yourself-from-a -polar-bear/ https://englishrussia.co m/2018/11/19/why-does-th is-house-needs-those-spi ked-bars/ https://englishrussia.co m/2019/02/11/russian-tow n-is-invaded-by-polar-be ar-and-it-is-truly-shock ing-photosvids/ https://web.archive.org/ web/1/siberiantimes.com/ ecology/others/news/vill age-besieged-by-polar-be ars-as-hundreds-of-te...
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Jim: Some days I like hipsters more than bears, and some days I like bears more than hipsters. But at least they aren’t conservatives.
Phileas Frogg: Strategy games are actually pretty useful for developing, honing, and maintaining competitive thought patterns, but I’ve noticed that you can have several different successful patterns emerge when you observe a closed strategic eco-system (as it was with my friends when we used to have to do everything via LAN in the 90′s and early 00′s) My one friend was always good at optimization, he grasped the internal systems of the game quickly and then ruthlessly exploited them....
Bomag: I thought empathy was an important tool for successful people. Dole it out judiciously; don’t give it to every negative marginal utility person who sneaks across a border.
Jim: Back when I played first-person shooters semi-competitively, not only would I dream about it, I would “see” (à la blindsight) flicker-flashes of game movement throughout the day, eyes open. Whether they were memory fragments or simulation runs bleeding into consciousness I was never able to determine. The all-consuming relentlessness with which one pursues game objectives is an excellent lesson for life.
Jim: I have nothing against the legitimate government of the Han, and I am disturbed by the International Clique’s use of U.S. power to launch the Chinese Communist Party to hegemony, but it remains a fact that Mainland China is sixty-two times more massive than Taiwan. Numbers matter.
Gaikokumaniakku: Bob Sykes said, “Lai, the DPP candidate for president, won the presidency with only 40% of the vote, and the party lost its majority in parliament. So, the independence movement lost ground.” The Taiwanese people do not need to “declare independence.” The Republic of China has been a de facto country longer than the PRC has existed. Taiwan needs strong operational industrial connections, such as European countries that depend on cooperation with Taiwan. It already has some...
Bob Sykes: A pitot tube extends outside the aircraft, and it measures the pressure at the open tip. The Bernoulli equation then lets the pressure be converted into a flight velocity.
Jim: Thanks, Gaikokumaniakku, sincerely. Obviously, I make no claim to military expertise. I don’t know much about war. I do know a little about force and distance. Taiwan is a small island of twenty-three million located eighty miles off the coast of China and seven thousand miles off the coast of California. Thus, the U.S. military’s supply lines will be at least ninety times longer than China’s in any protracted conflict. Here is a rough analogy: imagine if Red China were occupying the Bahamas—or...
Bob Sykes: Back in January, Lai, the DPP candidate for president, won the presidency with only 40% of the vote, and the party lost its majority in parliament. So, the independence movement lost ground. Despite the attempts of US neocons to foment a war with China, time is on China’s side. Every passing year the US is weaker in all areas, including patriotism, and China is stronger. And these trends are not merely relative, they are absolute. So China can afford to wait us out.

Isegoria

A fireworm sting can leave you in pain for several hours and can even cause dizziness and confusion

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