Asshole to Engish Translation
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by Letter Writer #657 at Captain Awkward. Only the original questions/updates are reproduced here - to read Captain Awkward’s advice, click through to the original links.
Hello Captain!
Something has been bothering me for a long time — I have been accused of “leading guys on.” When this happened in college and grad school, I shrugged it off because the guys who would accuse me of this were always ones that took any female attention as romantic interest in them or they had a crush on me, but I had told them, usually several times, that I was not interested in them romantically, only as friends.
I am a friendly, smiley person who is easy to talk to/confide in (which is good since I am a healthcare provider now), so I am guessing that helps lend to their idea that I am romantically interested in them. But if they paid attention, they would see that I am like that with everyone! However, I do make a point of not flirting at all, not touching them in any way, and only meeting with them in groups to avoid any accidental messages going through to guys that I suspect have interest in me.
But I feel like it keeps happening! And it is really starting to make me angry because I am trying to make professional connections (and hopefully friends!) and I am so tired of guys coming onto me out of nowhere or when it is clearly inappropriate.
For example, I went to a business lunch with two professionals. The second person never showed up, so we had some drinks and chatted. We talked about our relationships a bit (me = my boyfriend is awesome, him = having a child completely changed his life and marriage). We went back to his office to talk more (business, I thought), when he said, “if I was younger, I would have thought that you coming back to my office meant you wanted to sleep with me.” I was shocked. I wrapped up the conversation and ran.
Something similar happened with another healthcare provider. We were exchanging treatments, and because he was so easy to talk to, I ended up confiding much more in him than I usually would with someone. He ended up confiding his marriage problems to me and a few sessions later, he stated that he “could not be alone with me” because he was “afraid something he would regret would happen.” I assured him that I would never cheat on my boyfriend, so he had nothing to worry about from me, but I respected his wish to stop our exchanges. I was upset about this for a few weeks because I thought I had finally found a new friend to talk about our practices and daydreamed about double dates with him and his wife.
There is a third guy with the same basic thing of us hanging out, him coming onto me when I thought we were just friends, me having to leave ASAP, and then never talking to him again AND actively avoiding seeing him (which means I have to skip professional events I would like to attend but not enough to risk seeing him).
Both times, these guys were married AND we had talked about my wonderful boyfriend. I know they are unhappy with their marriages, but I am clearly happy with my relationship, and even if I wasn’t, I would never cheat and I really resent the implied accusation that I would do so. With the unmarried third guy, the same still stands because he knew about my boyfriend.
My boyfriend only knows about what happened with the third guy because I was so distraught over it (it was actually the first event). He said that I am too nice and naive. I know I can be pretty oblivious when reading signals that are related to me (it’s so much easier to observe what’s happening with other people!), but I am actively doing everything I can think of to avoid sending misleading signals and avoiding “compromising” situations.
What am I doing wrong? I can’t possibly be leading every guy on, can I?
Thank you for reading (and thank you for all of your previous posts!), Not Leading Them On (On Purpose Anyway)
5 Jan 2017: UPDATE
I ended up dumping my ex-boyfriend (finally) in June 2016. What the Captain wrote about how his response to me was unacceptable really hit home for me, even though it took a while to break up. Thank you so much — getting him out of my life was the best decision I made in 2016.
I ended up seeing the professional once at a networking meeting where I only gave him a brief “hi” and avoided him. I have seen the healthcare provider actually stopped by my office in the summer. He wanted to grab coffee sometime, and since I felt like I was in a good place, I said “ok” and recommended somewhere very public during the day. He ended up emailing me saying it “wasn’t a good idea” and canceled, so I let it die. I have seen him a few times in passing the past few months since then, but have maintained very limited interaction. I never heard from the friend who came onto me again (thank goodness!).
In the fall of 2016, I lost two friends, a married couple, because the wife accused me of trying to steal her husband. Apparently she was cheated on in the past by her ex-husband so she has trust issues. I told her I would never do that and never intended to hurt her feelings, but she did not believe me so I let the friendships go. I was very upset about this situation, but also realized with the help of my therapist that it was the wife’s insecurity that was the problem and she was projecting it onto me.
I have realized (with the help of my therapist and two close friends) that I am an intimidating woman to some people. I am beautiful, strong, smart, determined, successful, and sexy — and some people are intimidated by that or find me threatening. It also makes me an easy and convenient target for blame.
I am also naturally friendly and touchy-feely, which some people misinterpret as flirting. So I have become more aware of my presence and the effect it can have on people, so I try to be more careful about what I say, how I say it, and whether or not being touchy is appropriate. When in doubt, I tone it down.
However, what I have also realized is that some people will choose to misinterpret my words and actions no matter what I do, so I do not overly control myself. Some people will like you, some people will not, and the rest are neutral and that’s ok.
And for those who were concerned about my appearance in the thread, I am a 5’3” petite blonde woman who is conventionally beautiful with a thin body that makes it hard to hide my DD’s and butt. I dress very, VERY conservatively and professionally at work and try to minimize my curves to avoid unwanted sexual advances from my male patients (but as we all know, some people will sexually assault you no matter how you are dressed). I wear black work sneakers because my job is hands-on and physical so no, I cannot wear heels to work. When not at work, I dress pretty much the same but in jeans instead of slacks.
I used to wear giant sweatshirts and baggy jeans to hide my body because I was ashamed and scared of the attention I got, but not even that worked so I dress how I want in a way that I think looks nice but professional, and I will not be shamed by anyone for that. I was disappointed in the commenters who tried to blame how I dressed for how these men acted.
But thank you to all of those who poured out support, and Captain Awkward for taking the time to reply to me (and to everyone else!). You are the best!
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Baby Sleep Training and the Older Sibling
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by at the Advice Smackdown on AlphaMom
The original question-writer’s words are reproduced here - to read Amy Storch’s advice, click through to the original link.
5 May 2014: Baby Sleep Training & the Older Sibling
Hi Amy!
I know you’ve answered a billion questions about sleep here, but I’m hoping you can make it a billion and one. I just don’t know what to do here….
My daughter is 21 months old and has never been a good sleeper. She used to cry inconsolably every night as an infant and since then bedtime has been a struggle for us. When she was about 6 months old we started a bedtime routine and we used the progressive waiting method from Ferber to get her to fall asleep on her own. For over a year she would cry herself to sleep every night—never more than a couple of minutes, but still. Every. Stinking. Night. Only in the past month or so has she started to sometimes lie down in her bed and go to sleep quietly like a reasonable human being. She still wakes up at least once or twice a week and cries for a while before falling asleep again. If she doesn’t get enough sleep at night, she is a whiny, tantrum-y mess all day. Needless to say, sleep is a very precious and delicate thing in our house.
Anyway, all this background info sets up my question: How do I sleep train my 6 month old son?
His room is right next to his sister’s and we have hardwood floors so the sound carries very well. Ever since he was born, I’ve been so afraid of him waking up my daughter that I jump up immediately at every little snort or snuffle he makes. And I do whatever it takes to get him to go back to sleep quickly and quietly (this mostly consists of rocking and/or nursing). It’s worked well; my daughter is very rarely woken by him in the night. But that has basically taught him nothing as far as self-soothing goes and he still, at almost 7 months, wakes up multiple times during the night, and nurses virtually time.
I usually put him to bed between 6:30pm and 7:00pm and he’ll wake at about 10:30, 1:00, 4:00, 5:30 and 6:30. It’s ridiculous that I’ve let it get to this point; I know he’s completely capable of sleeping through the night, but in reality, he’s never slept more than about 4 hours straight in his whole life. I’m exhausted and I need it to end, but I’m not sure how to go about it.
I got out our copy of “Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems” (which I got on your recommendation, for my daughter, over a year ago) and have halfheartedly tried to start training him. But it seems when I let him cry, it wakes up my daughter and the situation quickly spirals out of control—my daughter’s cries keep the baby awake, the baby’s cries keep my daughter awake, my husband get frustrated because he has to wake up and help calm the kids (usually night wakings are my realm since he works outside the home and I don’t). It seems like no one in the whole house gets any sleep, so I wind up nursing/rocking the baby to get some peace and sleep for everyone.
You had to have dealt with this kind of thing when you had Ezra and Ike, right? Please tell me you (or your fabulous readers!) have some tips on helping an older sibling sleep through the baby’s sleep training.
Thanks in Advance!
So. Very. Tired.
4 July 2014:Advice Smackdown Update: Sleep Training & the Older Sibling
Hi Amy,
I just had to email you again to thank you and your readers so much for the fantastic advice you gave about sleep training my baby without disturbing my almost 2 year old daughter. I am happy to report that we used several pieces of advice from both you and your commenters and now everyone in my family is getting much more sleep and we are all happier for it.
First I want to say that I feel my husband got a bad rap from my first email. The fact that I have been taking care of night wakings on my own is not a result of him checking out of his parenting duties or claiming that he deserves more sleep than I do. It was a decision that we made together based on our family’s particular situation (I don’t really need to get into the details here, but trust me; it’s what works best for our family). But you were right that he needed to be more on board and involved with the sleep training. So the first thing we did was sit down together to make a plan that we both could get behind.
My husband took a day off work and spent a long weekend with my daughter at his parents’ house (3 hours away). This gave me three nights to focus on sleep training the baby without worrying about waking anyone else. They were three somewhat rough nights, but we definitely made progress. By the time my husband and daughter got back I had totally eliminated the baby’s first waking at 10:30!
Having them gone also gave me time to get some Flor tiles (I’d never heard of those before but they are super cute! I’m really glad you suggested them!) and to make some easy noise canceling panels that I found on Pinterest to hang on the walls. Both seemed to really help dampen the noise in both rooms. Why isn’t this something I had thought of before? Anyway.
We got my daughter a stuffed animal that plays music when you squeeze it and we talked to her about how she should squeeze it when the baby cried. The first week or so she did wake up a few times when the baby cried, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. My husband was in charge of going in to comfort her and he would tell her that it was ok that the baby was crying and remind her to turn on her stuffed animal. After only a few nights we started to hear the music playing in her room without her crying. Now it’s rare that she wakes up at all.
One other thing we did on the suggestion of your commenters was to put a fan in the hallway near the kids’ rooms. The white noise helped to drown out the baby’s crying for my daughter, but it also helped me. It made it much harder for me to hear the baby’s little snorts and whimpers so I wasn’t jumping up at every little noise he made, which allowed him to work on settling himself down more and allowed me to sleep a bit more. I could still hear his actual cries, so I was still able to do the whole Ferber back patting, progressive waiting thing, but I was able to sleep through the other little noises he made throughout the night (he’s a surprisingly loud sleeper!).
I still get up once a night (around 4:00) to nurse the baby but that’s it and I’m totally ok with it (we’ll probably phase that out in the next couple of months). Most nights that’s the only time he wakes up (or at least it’s the only time I hear him) and my daughter is back to sleeping through the night most nights too. And that means that my husband and I are sleeping much more as well. One night last week, I slept for 8 hours in a row! I can’t remember the last time that happened.
So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the wonderful advice! Between this and the 2-3-4 nap schedule magic I learned from you a while back, I owe all my sleep to you. I am forever in your debt. 🙂
Thanks Again!
Not Tired Anymore
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September 21, 2023 sleep training infants parenting siblings
A Mystery That Should Not Exist
This is a repost blog.
Original post by S. Elizabeth, author of the upcoming book The Art of Fantasy, on her blog ‘Unquiet Things for Kindred Glooms’. Click through to the original blog entry for the full text and blow-by-blow of the investigation.
Mystery solved by the crew of Endless Thread at WBUR. Click through for complete text and audio, and to find out who the illustrator was.
Hat tip to Metafilter for surfacing this story.
9 May 2023: A Mystery That Should Not Exist: Who Is The Cover Artist For This Edition Of A Wrinkle In Time?
Why is it that in this current year of 2023, no one seems to know who the cover artist is for this iconic Dell Laurel-Leaf A Wrinkle in Time cover art?? In a time when we have so much information available to us at our literal fingertips, how could it possibly be that the above marvelously and terrifyingly iconic imagery is perpetually credited to “unknown artist”? Even the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, always an excellent and trusted resource, does not have an answer.
1 Sept 2023: Artist: Known — Illustrator for ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ gets long-overdue credit
By Amory Sivertson and Emily Jankowski for WBUR
A couple years ago, as the writer Sarah Elizabeth was working on her book, “The Art of Fantasy” (out September 12th), a particular illustration kept popping into her mind’s eye. It was the cover for the 1976 Dell/Laurel Leaf paperback edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic sci-fi/fantasy novel “A Wrinkle in Time.”
She wanted to include the piece in her book, but she didn’t know who the artist was. “I thought, ‘Oh, pish posh! Surely I’m going to find this in the first page of Google.’ No. No, no, no!”
The answer isn’t on any page of google, or any page of the physical book itself — not the copyright page where the rest of the credit information is, not the front or back cover, NOWHERE. Sarah posed the question in the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit. “This would be the kind of thing that the folks over at Endless Thread would have a field day over,” someone commented.
And, indeed… we did! In this episode, Amory uncovers the artist behind this iconic illustration.
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September 20, 2023 illustration fantasy art attribution book covers A Wrinkle
Breakup second thoughts
This is a repost blog.
Original material written by Letter Writer #141 on Captain Awkward. Click through to reach Captain Awkward’s advice.
25 Nov 2011: Question 141. Breakup second thoughts: Can these pants be fixed?
Dear Captain,
This is a question about tailoring ill-fitting pants.
So there’s this lady in my life. She’s a fantastic lady. I met her last summer and we connected pretty much instantly. I was coming off some serious heartbreak, she was coming off some other drama. So we took things slowly, but we started to develop feelings for each other.
After a couple months, I moved back to school and she moved back to work a few states over. I was hesitant to get into a long-distance relationship: I’d done it before and hated the logistics and the lack of face time, and I didn’t want to take things with her any faster than they’d been going. But we decided to stay in touch and see how things developed on their own.
And they did develop. We talked every day. I liked talking to her on the phone, which was new for me. We wrote back and forth. We sent each other poems and pictures and articles and random things that made one of us think of the other. I went to visit her and loved her company as much as ever. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I might be falling for her.
But then a lot happened. I had a depressive episode that lasted for a couple months. I hated my program and being a student and living in my town. I was nervous about the future. I cried a lot and had a panic attack once and felt really trapped and awful. There was a day that was the worst day of my life where I wondered what it would be like to step in front of a bus. And somewhere in the midst of that, I realized that this woman was not the woman I was supposed to end up with.
Or that’s how it felt, anyway. It was this weird, strong intuition. It felt like all the “taking it slow” had been because I hadn’t been sure if she was the right person for me, and now I was sure that the answer was “no.” And I couldn’t be with her in good conscience, knowing that, because I suspected that she didn’t feel the same way. So — trying to be as clear and kind and gentle as possible — I broke up with her. It was miserable.
She took it hard, but she understood that she couldn’t change my mind for me, and didn’t want to try. That’s not how love works, she said. And it’s not.
But I still feel that connection for her that I felt the first day we met. There’s nobody else in my life I’m interested in at the moment. (In fact, I don’t want to date anyone right now. I want some time off from the heartache, and I’m kind of a serial monogamist and feel like I don’t know who I am outside of relationships, like I haven’t built real boundaries for my self yet. This is a big deal.) We’re still friends, we still talk every day, we still love each other. I am doing my damnedest to be totally honest about my feelings and not lead her on in any way; she assures me that she knows where things stand between us and is okay with that. I’ve more or less climbed out of my depression and have just started therapy, which is awesome.
Oh Captain, is there a way to make this relationship work? Being less depressed doesn’t make my intuition about the two of us go away. I still don’t think she’s the right person for me to be with. But I want her to be, so badly. She’s smart, down to earth, supportive, gorgeous, with an incredibly beautiful soul. (Also, we’ve barely scratched the surface of our sexual potential together and that drives me crazy.) It’s just this FEELING, this not being as in love with her as I wish I were. It feels like a limit — like, I’ve reached the maximum amount I can be in love with her, and it’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like I’m not getting to be with this person because of something I can’t control. That thing just happens to be this knowledge in the pit of my stomach.
Will that ever change? I’m not quite waiting around for that to happen — after all, we are still broken up — but I’m not NOT waiting around for it to happen, either. I don’t want to get back together with her if I feel this ambivalent; that’s not fair to either of us. She deserves all the love in the world. Could I ever be the person to give it to her, or should I just give up on this? Can you tailor pants to make them fit, even if you’re not sure why they don’t? Is it possible for them to fit eventually? Will the pants size of my love change to accommodate them? In a month, or a year, or five? Does that ever happen?
[FWIW, I’m a 25-year-old woman. She’s 28. And thanks for your whole website full of amazing advice…I am a dedicated reader and lurker.]
Fix My Pants, Please?
25 Jan 2017: LW #141 here, from the distant past of November 2011!
My particular situation ended up working out differently from how I’d expected. I went to therapy for a while and realized I’d been depressed for, well, pretty much my whole life. I played medication roulette and continued talk therapy with a kind and patient therapist. It took a while, but I ended up being able to tease out the “I’m not ready for a serious relationship” (true!) from the “I don’t love you enough” (actually, not true!). Commenter who asked whether that was depression speaking had actually hit the nail on the head. I wasn’t feeling love because I wasn’t feeling much of anything other than numbness and pain.
Five years later, my depression is 95% managed, I still talk to the kind and patient therapist occasionally, and the lady and I are going to get engaged sometime in the next couple of years. It’s really amazing to be able to feel intense emotions and not be too afraid of being sucked into the maelstrom of misery that I used to experience so often. But mostly, I just wanted to write again to thank the Captain and the commenters for their wise and compassionate advice. This site has taught me a lot about how to set boundaries and create healthy relationships, not just with my partner but with everyone in my life.
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September 19, 2023 Captain Awkward relationship advice depression romance
Deep sea octopus gardens intrigue scientists
This is a repost blog.
Original stories appeared on KAZU and in Scientific American.
Hat tip to Metafilter for surfacing this story.
8 Nov 2019: Deep sea octopus gardens intrigue scientists (click through for many beautiful images)
By Erika Mahoney/KAZU
A team of scientists spent the week exploring an octopus garden in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The garden is a nursery of sorts, a place where hundreds of female octopuses come to lay and take care of their eggs. Brimming with brooding moms, it’s the largest octopus garden ever discovered.
KAZU News connected with some of the local scientists involved in the expedition while they were out at sea.
“It’s almost freezing down there. It’s clearly a place humans can’t go scuba diving,” said Chad King, lead scientist on the cruise and a research specialist with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
So, they rely on underwater robots. The expedition was a team effort between NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit that owns and operates the trip’s exploration vessel. It’s called E/V Nautilus. Onboard were two remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that can operate in the deep sea.
King says these robots, called Hercules and Argus, worked together to collect samples and capture video. As the scientists watched the footage inside the Nautilus, the public has been able to see it too, from their living rooms, classrooms and more.
Lead Scientist Chad King views underwater footage of the octopus garden inside the research vessel’s control room.
The team’s dives into the octopus garden were live streamed at nautiluslive.org. Footage showed hundreds of lavender-colored octopuses nestled among rocks and a few clinging to the robots.
It’s called the “octopus garden” in honor of the Beatles song. But also because octopuses bury the shells of the animals they eat like underwater gardners.
King says the garden is a nursery to over 1,000 female octopuses who are brooding.
“So brooding is essentially taking care of their eggs. It’s almost like a bird in a nest, nesting their eggs. So they protect them because these eggs most likely would be preyed upon by shrimp and other creatures,” King said.
In fact, a highlight clip captured a face off between a newborn octopus and a shrimp.
Female octopuses come here to lay and take care of their eggs. The moms die soon after.
King says this is only the second cluster of brooding octopuses ever found and by far the largest. It’s located about 50 miles off the coast of San Simeon in the Davidson Seamount Management Zone. The Seamount is an extinct volcano that last erupted about 10 million years ago. It’s also home to corals and sea sponges the size of sofas. The zone was added to the protected Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2008.
The octopus garden was first discovered in 2018 during the tail end of an expedition. King was onboard and describes the moment as a slow realization. They kept running into more and more octopuses.
“And that’s when it really hit us. This is special. This is unusual. We need to know what’s going on here,” King said.
And that’s been the mission of this trip, to figure out why these octopuses are congregating here. The underwater robots took samples from the area and collected temperature readings. King says they’ve discovered that warmer water is seeping out of the seafloor here. You can even see it shimmering in the video footage sometimes, like when asphalt shimmers on a hot summer day.
“So there’s something going on there. There’s some relationship attracting the octopus to these areas,” said King.
The public was also able to ask questions about the garden via Nautilus Live. Questions came in from around the world. Amity Wood, Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, was also onboard. She says they video chatted with students from across the U.S.
“Usually we get our science through produced documentaries or scripted television shows. But in this case, it’s, you know, unfiltered livestream science,” Wood said.
During the expedition, scientists also captured video footage of this whale fall.
The team onboard also captured footage of a dumbo octopus, a flapjack octopus and a whale fall. A whale fall is a whale carcass that’s sunk to the ocean floor and provides nutrients for all kinds of creatures.
Although the six day trip has wrapped up, people can still view highlight videos on Nautilus Live and all of the video footage will be uploaded to YouTube.
23 Aug 2023: The Hot Secret behind a Deep-Sea ‘Octopus Garden’ (click through for images)
By Stephanie Pappas in Scientific American
Thousands of usually solitary octopuses gather to brood eggs in a special spot off California
Thousands of deep-sea octopuses gather on the flanks of a seamount off California’s coast. But until recently, scientists weren’t sure why these otherwise solitary animals were congregating. New research suggests they are seeking warmth to help their babies hatch more quickly.
The Davidson Seamount’s “Octopus Garden” was discovered in 2018, when researchers onboard the Ocean Exploration Trust research vessel Nautilus were exploring a rocky spot on the seafloor that was about two miles below the surface. The team spotted a pair of octopuses through a camera on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), says Amanda Kahn, an ecologist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and San Jose State University, who was on the Nautilus that day. After observing the pair for a bit, the operators started to lift the ROV off the rocks to move on—until they saw something unusual. “Up ahead of us were streams of 20 or more octopuses nestled in crevices,” Kahn says.
Octopuses are usually solitary, so it was immediately clear that something strange was happening. The researchers dropped their plans and started to investigate, discovering many more of the pearly-hued, grapefruit-sized octopuses—as well as strange shimmers in the water that suggested the presence of some sort of underwater fluid seeps or springs.
Now, after more than five years and multiple return trips to the Octopus Garden, the researchers estimate that the 1.29-square-mile area may contain more than 20,000 of the cephalopods at any given time. Females of the Muusoctopus robustus—the octopus species found in the garden—hover protectively over their eggs, their arms facing up, ready to swipe away any potential predators.
“This Octopus Garden is by far the largest aggregate of octopuses known anywhere in the world, deep-sea or not,” says James Barry, a benthic ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and leader of a new study, published on Wednesday in Science Advances, that reveals why the animals are gathering. Barry, Kahn and their colleagues found that the octopuses are there to find cozy spots for their nests.
By placing sensors around nests, the researchers discovered that the octopuses were choosing places for their eggs where the temperature hovered between 41 and 51.8 degrees Fahrenheit. By contrast, the surrounding ocean waters are about 34.9 degrees F. Based on patterns seen in other deep-sea octopuses, brooding eggs at 34.9 degrees F would lead to extremely slow development rates, Barry says, with eggs incubating for at least five years and perhaps up to 13 years.
By repeatedly observing the female octopuses and nests in the garden, the research team found that these octopuses were instead hatching their eggs in a little less than two years, Barry says. That’s very close to what established equations would estimate for water temperatures in the 40s, he adds. A quicker incubation period likely means fewer offspring will be lost to predation, parasites or other threats. “It’s a neat sort of accelerator,” Kahn says.
The octopus breeding ground also creates a sort of oasis for other ocean life, the researchers found. Octopus moms die after brooding, and the concentration of octopus bodies in the area injects a source of carbon—a crucial nutrient—into the local ecosystem. “We’re now interested in getting back there and looking at the halo effect of the breeding ground,” Barry says.
The researchers also found a smaller breeding site, which they call the Octocone, about five miles from the Octopus Garden. These sites (and similar nurseries off Costa Rica and Vancouver, British Columbia) are the only ones where this kind of octopus accumulation is known, says Beth Orcutt, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, who was not involved with the Davidson Seamount study but was one of the discoverers of the nursery off Costa Rica. “We predict there should be more,” Orcutt says. “That’s because there are tens of thousands of these small seamounts in the Pacific Ocean, but they just haven’t been explored.”
The new study was unique because the scientists had access to research vessels and ROVs for repeated visits to the site, says Jorge Cortés, a marine biologist at the Center for Research in Marine Sciences and Limnology at the University of Costa Rica, who co-discovered the Costa Rican nursery but was not involved in the new research. Costa Rica depends on international science collaborations for research vessel access, Cortés says, which limits the kinds of studies that can be done. He and his team placed temperature and water-chemistry sensors in the Costa Rica nursery this year, however, and they will return to collect data after six months, potentially shedding more light on another octopus breeding ground.
The warm springs the octopuses at the Davidson Seamount seem to seek are much more subtle features than the dramatic hydrothermal vents that spew out what looks like black or white smoke on the ocean floor. In the case of the Davidson Seamount, it was the octopuses that were noticeable before the warm water, Kahn says.
The Octopus Garden is within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, so it is somewhat protected. The researchers say that many other obscure sites in need of conservation may still be out there, however. “There are some very important breeding grounds that are sites we really need to understand and protect,” Barry says.
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September 18, 2023 octopus octopus gardens MBARI science Scientific American
Found Gold MIT PHD Class Ring
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by TheDetectorGuy on subreddit r/Cooking/ on Reddit
26 Dec 2021: Found Gold MIT PHD Class Ring - (Owner located soon to be returned) (click through for pictures)
This is a very cool gold ring my friend Freddy found. It took some time and research but I did some computer sleuthing and found the owner of the ring , who graduated with a PHD a from MIT In 1976 ( He actually might be a rocket scientist and is over 70 years of age) and is excited that his ring will be returning to him soon.
NickelNibbler:Thanks to you and Freddy for doing a good deed.
TheDetectorGuy: Thank you, it’s always nice to return an item if possible. I have found hundreds of rings over the years and have returned several myself. Sometimes the sentimental value out ways the ring value. One of my favorite stories that I have heard is of a father giving his daughter a ring with her name inscribed on it for her 16th birthday. He later went off to the war and died, and she cherished that ring. One day she lost it at the local swimming hole. Many years passed and a detectorist hunted that old swimming hole and found it. Being a small town he researched the last name and found a relative, and as it turns out , the girl who lost the ring it was her birthday in a week. It was a special moment when she opened the present and saw the ring her father had given her. It was the girl’s 80th Birthday when she got it back.
GogglesPisano: That’s awesome! Good on you for tracking down the owner and reuniting him with his ring - no doubt it was a prized possession.
Class rings from MIT are known as “brass rats” (for the Beaver on the ring, the school mascot, nature’s engineer) and have the letters “IHTFP” hidden somewhere in the design (the school’s unofficial motto - “I Hate This F****** Place”).
Civil_Appeal678: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/brief-history-brass-rat
20 Mar 2022: 14k MIT,PHD Ring Returned to Owner (click through for pictures of happy reunion)
He is very happy he got his class ring back!
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September 17, 2023 metal detecting ring lost and found MIT good deeds