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Per Ahlberg

@perahlberg.bsky.social

5.6K followers 4.2K following 3.1K posts

Palaeontologist at Uppsala University. Early vertebrate enthusiast. Moderately effective gardener. Views my own.🇸🇪🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱

Per Erik Ahlberg is a Swedish palaeontologist working with the earliest tetrapods. He took his Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Cambridge in 1989 under English palaeontologist Jenny Clack. He is currently professor at the Department of Organismal Biology, University of Uppsala. He has collaborated with Clack on a number of projects. .. more

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Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 7h

Oh, you're describing the US as "Western Russia"! OK, then I understand what you mean.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 7h

Annexed western Russia??

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 8h

+1

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 11h

You do realize that most of the NATO members are European? And Canada would never side with the US against Europe. Obviously the US could turn traitor and align with Russia, but a "NATO against Europe" scenario is simply impossible: it's a contradiction in terms.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 11h

No. Russia lacks the strength to do this.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 12h

Supported by a crack regiment of massed cardinals, no less.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 14h

At the time the Nobel Prizes were created, Sweden and Norway were in a (not entirely happy) political union. Alfred Nobel decreed in his will that the awarding of the prizes should be split between Sweden and Norway.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

Can you get seal costumes as well? That would be even funnier.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

Meanwhile, the Solomon’s Seal is just…strange. Why does it do this?

A plant stem with leaves - each one half green, half yellow.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

Autumn in the garden. The pond vegetation is settling into tousled senescence, but behind it the giant Veronica vies with a self-seeded hazel for brightest autumn colour.

An overgrown pond with yellow autumn foliage behind.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

favourite trick - but we hugely enjoyed the whole episode. Junior was entertaining company, but above all we felt strangely touched by the way the parents obviously felt they could entrust us with the most precious thing they had. As if they said to us “we know you are good people”.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

one of the stems. Janet and I go “Noo!” and wag our fingers as you would with a naughty toddler. Crow stops, looks at us, walks deliberately round to the far side of the plant and pecks at it again.

The garden sustained a minor amount of damage - pulling leaves off our bearded irises was another

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

about and poking its beak into things, and - in typical corvid manner - trying to get a rise out of us. Case in point: Janet is very fond of her peonies. At one point we were sitting about 2 m away from a prize specimen of ‘Soft Salmon Saucer’ when the crow walks up, looks at us, and pecks hard at

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

far away, one on our roof and the other in a neighbouring tree, but they left junior alone to explore our garden while we were out there. This carried on for several hours until the parents called their baby away and they all left. The process repeated day after day. Junior was great fun, hopping

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

In raising one chick. Then, one day, we were out in the garden (as so often) when both adults came over and started, well, checking us out. This carried on for a couple of days. Then the parents arrived with their chick - almost full size but still with a juvenile look - and left. They were not

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 17h

We had an amazing experience this summer, though sadly I don’t have any photos to document it. A pair of hooded crows had been nesting in a pine across the street, and frankly made a bit of a menace of themselves by repeatedly raiding our pond for frogs. But we left them to it, and they succeeded

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 1d

Wonderful! There's a certain feeling of 70s metal about it, just a touch of Ritchie Blackmore perhaps.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 1d

It has branch offices in Normandy as well.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 2d

Sentences. There's your first clue right there.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 2d

What’s his end game? I don’t see what this achieves except buying a very small amount of time.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

Has anyone told him that the Insurrection Act isn't an Insurrection Enabling Act? I mean, given that he's plainly engaged in an insurrection against the United States?

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

The Genesis version is a crashingly obvious knock-off of this story, probably inserted during the Babylonian captivity (in Babylon, everyone will have known this story, kind of like the Iliad in ancient Greece) to align the Hebrew origin with with what 'everyone knew' about the distant past.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

The Flood is caused, not by YHWH, but by a conspiracy of the great gods Anu, Enlil, Ninurta, Ennugi and Ea. However, EA is a turncoat and snitches to Utnapishtim (whispering through the wall of his reed house), commanding him to build his ark. After the Flood, Utnapishtim is granted immortality.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

...and in any case a flagrant copyright violation. This is an earlier version, part of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, but even this isn't the oldest; the original is Sumerian. "Noah" is called Utnapishtim (or Atrahasis, or Ziusudra, depending on the text) and lives in the city of Shuruppak.

A broken clay tablet covered in cuneiform script, recounting the epic of Gilgamesh.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

I love how the headline implies that there can be "not excessive" amounts of chemical munitions used against civilians. Teargassing your own citizens AT ALL is not generally a sign of a well-functioning democracy.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

This is correct.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

There are obviously the specific problems of the here and now, but I would add broader and more general point: in countries that have free and fair elections, gerrymandering doesn't exist. Period. They are literally mutually exclusive: fairness =/= gerrymandering. Ditto voter suppression.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 3d

Also a good illustration of how being evil doesn’t make you happy.

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 4d

If you have no soul to destroy I guess it doesn’t matter…

Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 4d

As a research group head, I am constantly surrounded by young colleagues born around the year 2000, but as a child I hung around with family members born in the 19th century. It’s disorienting sometimes.