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this book literally changed my life and completely upended way i think about consciousness. octopus intelligence is the closest thing we have (and probably ever will have) to studying alien minds and this man makes the absolute most of it.
bare fascinating especially if you already like biology shit, and if you don't, trust me this will change that.
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This book rec was inspired by sofeβs lil squid story. This book is about the evolution of sentient life; with a heavy emphasis on cephalopods, as their evolutionary tree branched off from our common ancestors so long ago. Octopuses have been my fav animal for ages but I hadnβt realised how cool squid are too! And cuttlefish fish! He describes the process by which they change colour and it blew my mind, they essentially have biological pixels, for cuttlefish anyway, they have two different kinds of pixel-like cells/muscles that control two different colour spectrums. Itβs a really brilliant book, and for those who are put off by too sciency books (myself included tbh), this book is a philosophy/science hybrid!
Jun 6, 2024
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my brain wants to know more about other brains and itself but its been stuck on a sci fi tear for a few years
Sep 24, 2024
I almost never read informative nonfiction, only essays and the occasional biography. I just finished Metazoa by Peter Godfrey-Smith - a really cool look into the evolution of consciousness and different types of brains/nervous systems!! Will I immediately go read a bunch of books about biology? Probably not. But I enjoyed learning about something I knew very little about and I will definitely be reading some more books about brains in the future
Feb 20, 2025
Top Recs from @eyelid
if you start zooming in on a pattern, and the pattern doesn't seem to get more simple as you close in, there's a very good chance you're looking at a fractal shape. my new computer hobby is going on google earth (clean setting - no borders or labels) and zooming into random places to see if i can find these patterns. and they are everywhere. in rivers, mountains, deserts, forests, coastlines and on and on. its genuinely stunning, and a little bit frightening, how the same shapes appear over and over again. the beating heart of iterative processes is plastered all over the globe at every scale. from above, the shape of a forest can look like a leaf, or a neuron, or a blood vessel.
great place to have a zoom is at the bottom of tibet, where theres a sharp cutoff between the icy mountain range and the grassy forests of nepal and bhutan. pic below is of the nile river in southern egypt. happy travels everyone
Mar 25, 2024
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i feel like im learning a lot abt u guys.
Jan 29, 2024
Jul 13, 2024