The silence of the owls | Hacker News Reader

The silence of the owls

knowablemagazine.org

57 pointsknowablemag34 comments

IANAO but I do voluntary work at a Raptor conservancy.

Owl silent-hunter stealth mode has one significant penalty not mentioned in the article: in some species (e.g. Barn Owls) the feathers are not waterproof because they lack preen oil [0]. Consequently Barn Owl mortality increases in extended periods of wet weather (they get wet and then cold), forcing them to hunt in the day in some cases.

Edit: IANAO = ... Ornithologist, not ...Owl, in case anyone was wondering.

[0] https://ww2.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife...

YOLO (You Obviously Love Owls).

Here's one of my favorite passages from a field guide:

Silent flight enables owls in flight to hear the movements of small rodents, while in turn it keeps the sharp-eared prey in the dark over someone coming for dinner. This tempts one to fancy that mice live in utter ignorance of owls except as invisible agents of disappearances from the family.

This is my least favorite thing about Wikipedia -- it's taken all of the whimsy out of general knowledge resources.

In the same way as any encyclopedia that's not deliberately whimsical (in which case its general utility of obtaining knowledge may be more limited than, those multi-tome things or, well, Wikipedia).

But the best encyclopedia, Brittanica, had flights of whimsy. Sentences like "Bostonians are incorrigible jaywalkers." Wikipedia killed Brittanica, and ultimately is far more valuable to the world, but I miss those sentences in Brittanica.

Yeah but then, do you want "whimsy" in sensible articles like political/religious/ethical related ones? Then would one expect wikipedia editors to enforce this policy on top of the work they already do? And using what criteria?

No, Wikipedia is not set up for whimsy. This kind of thing has to come from a single author with a point of view, not from a crowdsourced article with conflicting points of view.

I'd say Wikipedia is generally less dry than the average technical book.

It's less whimsical than some blog posts, sure, but Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia (roughly speaking).

I wouldn't say it's taken all the whimsy, but the community attempts to keep an "encyclopedic" tone.

In same cases it's turned into overcorrection from the good old Wikipedia days when, for example, the article about vampires was mostly not about actual vampire bats, or even about folklore vampires, but about a self-proclaimed "lifestyle" of people who supposedly consider themselves "real vampires". I remember those days! It was fun to see the rampant edit wars between serious and fringe editors.

Watch the exact scene how an owl catches its prey while they are totally ignorant. Watch for pair of lights(owlEyes) to see the onset of owl. https://youtu.be/2Ol4rbYPYQc

A great quick video from the BBC on the subject: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_FEaFgJyfA

Standing in a barn full of barn owls gives me kind of an eerie feeling. All you hear is little clicks above you, then you feel a whoosh of air above your head as they fly over and another soft click as they land. It's really cool though.

Short version - very big wings to body ratio, less flap rate, less noise.

This diagram made it easier for me to see what they meant by "comb structure"...

https://cdn.hswstatic.com/gif/owls-silent-flight.jpg

"The quieter you are the more you're able to hear."

Let's be honest: owls are birb ninja assassins.

Let's always be honest (a scientist cannot lie out of principle because experiments produce evidence that if not properly observed will destroy any chance of replication and thus the ultimate eventual adoption of new useful technology into society). I've heard some workers in this region (aged 20-30) preface their verbal dialogue with phrases like "seriously, honestly, I'm not gonna lie, for real though, literally".

I know that these are akin to "loading time" phrases that people habitually use to interject into a talkative group or to introduce their vocal tone before the meat content is transmitted to multiple listeners. But it is the nature of the phrases that suggest the existence of lies or an exaggerated reality that fascinates me (you had me thinking of honesty or lying before you had me thinking about the nature's ninja assassin metaphor).

I do not see it as a bad thing - this is only our natural response (clues are in these "harmless" phrases inserted into everyday conversation) to a few decades of concerned tax paying citizens being fed questionable or far-fetched content from their media outlets as a method of attempted economic subjugation?

Most recently, I’ve heard sentences starting with the phrase “No meme, <some statement>”. I personally find it frustrating because it makes it more difficult for me to communicate if the veracity of any thing I say is assumed to be false by default because I am too used to communicating the truth by default. It is something I can adapt to, but I cannot help but feel sad that we have lost trust in each other to such a damning degree that the immediate reaction to any statement unadorned in this way goes beyond healthy skepticism to outright default assumption of falsehood, which I find to be both hostile and insulting.

I have not yet heard "No meme". Interesting. I saw the word "meme" in Richard Dawkin's book before I was noticing it on the internet, something about how flocks of chickens and their pecking order have memes of behavior that are remembered and retransmitted if useful - so the idea has existed before the internet gave it to us (theme or target subject is the picture, text overlay is the pitched opinion) - such an image is worth a thousand words so its a fast (shortcut without research) Information Age method of "voting" for or against a pitched idea?

"No meme" could suggest "Don't try to shortcut and assume things about <some statement>" because we have realized that memes are a lazy way to transmit ideas without research? Disinformation seems to be the consequence of exponentially increasing bandwidth for all....

I encountered the “No meme” that I mentioned on Twitch (twitch.tv). Over there, “No meme” is similar to “No joke” and “memeing” is similar to “joking” except that there is an overarching theme/meme that is being referred to as part of the joke in question. Sorry, I should I have been more clear.

No need to apologize, because this is a matter of intellectual discourse. Being "clear" (also a Scientology concept) implies that you wanted me to "see it your way" instead of inspiring my new thought vector (which you have - my past 72 hours have been positively altered because of your input on this surrogate-preface-phrasing matter).

But now that you have clarified your intended description of your twitch.tv banter encounter - it makes sense. "No meme" is a synonym for "no joke". Joking exists as an informal method of addressing (challenging?) a certain idea, and laughter reporting (lol, rofl, lmao, etc) confirms reception. Twitch seems to be a social arena for leisure, where workers exchange ideas and bond after-hours over a shared virtual experience with allotted "free" time (virtual/comfortable, therefore abundance of "joking" because nothing is at stake). But when a user desires to "get down to business" and submit concepts to the local chat space because her/his mind has been prompted to consider more pressing issues, then the surrogate-preface-phrase "no meme" can be applied in order to summon the "real world" empathy of connected compatriots also confined to the same virtual space.

It's a way to prime others in the convo to start focusing in you. Then once focused, you deliver the meat. It's a very, very old technique. The reason we write those conversational techniques down is our increased literacy (we use written words more and more) and the acceptance of writing informally basically everywhere.

This makes sense - talking with fingers and leaving records of our dialogue to be eventually read at the leisure of recipient(s) is does not require the instantaneous turn-taking auditory announcement devices we are referencing.

I wonder if people will gradually become less quick and witty over time with this increasingly standard mode of communication.

But there are benefits to be reaped from our ebb & flow of commenting and pondering throughout our day.

You see this with political parties (we have a multi party system here). I don't know if it's rehearsed, maybe they had an event with some communication consultant. Or maybe they just pick it up naturally from each other since they spend a lot of time together. But suddenly they all are starting every other comment with some awkward pre-phrase, for example "it is a known fact that..."

I suspect modern politicians are far-removed from their predecessors, in that these historical figure heads performed other roles in society and as a result of their effectiveness they were elected [by the citizens they had already benefited] to wield political power (determine the direction for tax-derived resources to be deployed [1] [2])

Now, the modern "career politician" may be one who can say many words and appear reasonable and educated [3] despite having only spent his/her life in classrooms and "seats" of progressing political levels.

I'm assuming that for the past few decades, POTUS has been just a ceremonial role for mass media consumption. If you need a metaphor (American football), the POTUS is a lineman, the vice POTUS is the quarterback, (Queen Amidala and Handmaiden Padme) the coach/offensive&defensive coordinator/ team owner are people you will never see on a screen (sidelines).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoninus_Pius

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-green-eggs-and-ham_n...

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

How about no, control freak.

While I agree with you that some folk may become obsessed with controlling people (inefficiently) as a method to inflate their own ego (freak) - I err on the side of "dang" in this scenario where you have rejected the request (not just because she/he is our common moderator on this platform). Your comment prompted me to address some communication abnormalities that I have been noticing across the past few election cycles, which is why I still find your past few permanent text inputs valuable (representative of the common worker).

Over the years, I have expected this forum (HN) to be reserved for people who will digest internet content and output thoughtful responses - "dang" is my warden.

Reddit migration is understandable (you are seeking more substance). The simple act of including more word variation in your responses is enough to avoid the text-shade-lightening that is being naturally inflicted upon your simple-minded input.

However - the quantity of words in a comment issued is not necessarily proportional to the value provided.

Ahahah, this reminds me: after I learnt unicycling and started practising it on longer paths, I started hearing a weird regular "tick" sound from somewhere in the uni(cycle). I was wondering if something's broken, but it was hard to "debug":

- the sound obviously stopped when I stopped riding,

- just turning the uni's wheel on the ground didn't seem reproduce the noise,

- you can imagine it's kinda not very easy to look down and esp. reach for various parts of the uni when you're riding.

At some point I finally managed to look down for long enough to discover, that it was the sound of my shoelace flailing around and hitting the shoe with every turn of the wheel... I realized that this sound must be there even on a "normal" bike, but uni is apparently so much quieter...

Yes, I learned to use a bell well in advance of approaching people on a unicycle after I had a few people scream in response to a gentle “on your left” as they had no idea of my presence.

I wonder if your shoelace became untangled prior to mounting the Uni - or if the extra pedaling required to sustain balance on a single wheel was the force that undid the lace (single tied means you did not plan for your novel experience of a "longer" path - a tight double keeps mine intact during vigorous activity).

Looking down seems risky, because a Uni implies increased balance difficulty and frequent knowledge update of path ahead, perhaps more effort than a Bi which grants extra available mental real estate at the cost of increased local noise pollution.

I suppose the lesson you are trying to teach us is that the drawback of being silent (via Uni) is that one must spend extra time during the preliminary equipping phase (shoelace).

At first glance I wondered about a flailing shoelace becoming a tangle hazard (gears/chain/rotation within proximity).

It is the same with one's ego: the less noise your ego makes, the more you are able to see of other people.

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

There's a rock band called Third Eye Blind and I imagine that name describes the effect of considering your own pleasure and/or reinforcement of power (power implies subordinates) before the welfare of others (teammates that also build the world you and your children will share).

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