500 days of workouts is amazing! Congratulations to you and Norma!

Congrats, a great streak

Congratulations!

Congrats on 500 days!! That’s fantastic!!

Thank you:

Fremen
sleep_twitch
NancyTree
Zastria
CaptainCanuck
CODawn
DorothyMH

When I started this journey with my mother back in March 2020 I certainly never imaged we would survive working out together for this long!

I had an awesome but long day yesterday. Had lunch and went hiking with a friend. Then signed up for the YTT. Details (and photos) to follow in subsequent posts.

It turns out my day yesterday was even more awesome than I had originally thought! My friend and I were hiking a trail that ran along a riverbank, and I saw a turtle basking on a rock on the far side of the river. With my naked eye I could barely discern that I was seeing a turtle, but I did not know what kind. I snapped a couple of photographs which, from such a distance, and in less-than-ideal lighting conditions, were not great. But I thought they'd be good enough for an ID. Looking at the images on my camera in the field, I thought we had a Snapping Turtle. When I finally got the images up on my big wall screen just now, however, I can see that it's not a Snapping Turtle (which I have seen and photographed many times before) at all. This beauty is a Spiny Softshell Turtle (Apalone spinifera)!





I have only seen Softshells in the wild twice before, and both times I missed the shot.

The first time, I was paddling, and the turtle swam right underneath my board. I got a great view, but I had my paddle in my hands, not my camera. These turtles are fast swimmers, and the turtle was long gone before I could get my camera ready.

The second time I saw a Spiny Softshell in the wild I was also paddling, but the turtle was basking on the sand spit at Rondeau's South Point. If I had been calm, I might have been able to exchange my paddle for my camera in time for a shot. But I was not calm. I gasped out loud in my excitement. And the turtle was gone in the blink of an eye. (Spiny Softshells are also impressively fast runners on land!)

So, even though the focus is soft and the colours are washed out, I'm super happy to have captured these photos.

I will post more photos with stories below. But if you don't want to wait, you can find all of my wildlife photographs for the day here: https://www.inaturalist.org/calendar...ragon/2021/8/4
Be warned: that page contains a really bad (out-of-focus and only partial view) photograph of a snake, and also a pretty awesome photograph of a pretty big spider.

I love the turrle. Thanks for sharing!

Cool Picture RD!

Today I received an email from YouTube which reads:

The video in question is raw footage of a butterfly hanging out on my ankle while I walked down a park trail. That's it. A couple of times I stopped walking and zoomed my camera in closer on the butterfly. At one point I placed one finger in front of the butterfly and very gently encouraged the butterfly to climb onto my finger. It did--but then it immediately flew off my finger and resettled onto my foot. After ~ 5 minutes of this behaviour, the butterfly finally leaves me. This is the entire video.

The visuals include the butterfly, my legs and feet (clothed in 3/4 length tights, ankle socks, and running shoes), and the trail on which I'm walking. The audio includes the sound of gravel on the trail crunching under my feet, the calls of a Grey Catbird, and general background noise of birds chirping and insects humming. At some points in the video my own breath, and noise from the wind on my camera's microphone are also audible.

I am completely baffled. Is there some kind of weird sexual fetish that involves butterflies clinging to people's socks? It's true that I lack experience in most of the things which violate YouTube's Community Guidelines. But I don't think I'm that naive.

If YouTube is going to take offence to a completely innocuous video of a butterfly hitchhiking on my ankle, whatever will they do when they notice that my video "Watersnake Tango" depicts a pair of Northern Watersnakes making sweet, sweet, watersnake love?

This AI algorithm thing on YouTube is absolutely broken and I guess nobody reviews what the "videos in question" contain.

That's what I think too, Matan . The first sentence of their email to me should more properly read:

Oh great are you making butterfly fetish videos now? Keep them coming

Today's email from YouTube:

Well, duh!

It appears AI isn't quite ready to take over the world yet.

And thank goodness for that!