Random, Random 2.0

[ponchi101]

On a serious and personally upsetting news. Apparently, even for us vennies that have visas the government is only stamping our entries for a maximum of 28 days, instead of the customary 180.
The ridiculous part is that there are no Venezuelan mafias; if they really wanted to go after criminal organizations that national, we would be way low on the list.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

[Suliso]

If you randomly shuffle a deck of playing cards (52) the resulting exact card order has virtually certainly never happened before and never will again till the end of the universe. Statistics and probability are so counterintuitive sometimes...

[Suliso]

Another funny factoid: if India had the same population density as Australia's Northern Territory there would be only 630k Indians.

[Suliso]

The other way around we could cram 568 million people in the Outback...

[ti-amie]

I think this gets posted every year about this time.

[ti-amie]

A different view

[ti-amie]

[Owendonovan]

I'm going to attend the Mamdani swearing in block party with more than 40k other folks. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the real possibility of some crazed right wing gun nut either plows through the crowd in his extra-cab pick up or unloads an automatic weapon into the crowd. Here's hoping it's just a bit of healthy paranoia on my part!

[ponchi101]

But..., do stay close to the buildings, please.

[ti-amie]

I'm going to attend the Mamdani swearing in block party with more than 40k other folks. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the real possibility of some crazed right wing gun nut either plows through the crowd in his extra-cab pick up or unloads an automatic weapon into the crowd. Here's hoping it's just a bit of healthy paranoia on my part!

I read that he will be sworn in inside of that beautiful abandoned City Hall subway station so maybe that will be safe?

[ponchi101]

That looks like a place where an acolyte of the Illuminati will be "made".
But indeed beautiful.

[ti-amie]

That looks like a place where an acolyte of the Illuminati will be "made".
But indeed beautiful.

The first time I saw it - the train still goes through it or it used to - I was stunned.

[ti-amie]

Thousands of fish nests accidentally found under Antarctic ice
12 January 2026


Far beneath the southern ice, researchers stumbled on a hidden construction site where small polar fish reshape the seafloor.

What looked like a flat, lifeless stretch of the Weddell Sea suddenly turned into something else: a carefully organised breeding ground built by thousands of fish in water close to freezing. That chance glimpse now forces scientists to rethink what really happens under the Antarctic ice sheet.

Under the ice, a world that stayed invisible for decades

The discovery began with a completely different mission. A research team aboard the icebreaker SA Agulhas II travelled to the Weddell Sea to search for the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, crushed by ice in 1915. To scan the seabed, they sent down a remotely operated vehicle, nicknamed “Lassie”, under the thick pack ice.

Instead of only twisted pieces of wood and metal, the cameras started picking up regular shapes punched into the soft sediment. Depressions, all roughly the same size, dotted the floor in every direction. They were not scars from icebergs, nor random holes carved by currents.

Scientists realised they were looking at a vast network of active fish nests, stretching for kilometres across the Antarctic seafloor.

The setting is extreme by any standard. The site lies in the Weddell Sea, off the Antarctic continent, where sea ice locks the surface for most of the year and water temperatures hover just below zero, buffered by salt. For a long time, many researchers assumed these deep, dark zones hosted only a sparse sprinkling of hardy organisms.

A key trigger for this new window on the seabed came in 2017, when the giant iceberg A68 calved off the Larsen C ice shelf. The break-up exposed around 5,800 square kilometres of ocean that had been sealed from the atmosphere and light for many years. That sudden opening gave survey vessels a narrow physical and political gap in which to work before sea ice closed again.
A fish-built city beneath the Weddell Sea

Careful analysis showed that the circular pits, each separated by narrow ridges of sediment, were not geological at all. They were nests built and guarded by a small Antarctic fish: Lindbergichthys nudifrons, often called a rockcod. Adults reach only a few tens of centimetres, but they carry a useful trick: antifreeze proteins in their blood that stop ice crystals forming at sub-zero temperatures.

Each nest holds a clutch of eggs, cleaned and defended by a parent that barely leaves its patch. The robot’s cameras recorded adults hovering just above their depressions, fanning the eggs with their fins to oxygenate them and chasing away invertebrates or other fish that came too close.

The sheer scale shocks even veteran polar biologists: researchers counted thousands of nests in a relatively small survey area and estimate that the full field may contain millions.

The seafloor around the colony tells its own story. Outside the nesting area, the ground lies under a blanket of organic debris: dead plankton, fragments of algae and fine particles drifting down from the surface. Inside the field, each nest has been deliberately cleared, almost swept clean so that eggs rest on bare sediment. That contrast makes the structure stand out in sonar images like a patterned quilt.
Six distinct nesting patterns hint at social behavior

What really caught the team’s attention was not only the abundance, but the geometry. The nests do not scatter randomly. They form recognisable patterns that suggest social strategies at work on the seabed.

Isolated nests, standing alone, often occupied by larger, apparently stronger individuals;
Arc-shaped “crescent” groups;
Oval clusters wrapped around a slightly deeper centre;
Straight lines, nest after nest, like rows in a field;
“U”-shaped formations, with an open side facing a slope or current;
Tight clusters where adults guard eggs just a body-length from their neighbours.

This spatial variation suggests that different positions bring different risks and advantages. Fish near the middle of dense clusters enjoy what behavioural ecologists call the “selfish herd” effect: by staying in a crowd, each individual reduces its chance of being the one eaten by a predator. The outer ring takes more of the risk.

In contrast, solitary nests probably belong to robust adults capable of defending a territory alone. From there, they may gain better access to food drifting past and larger patches of clean sediment, at the cost of less cover from predators.

Measurements indicate that neither temperature, nor light, nor sediment type fully explains the layout of the nests. Biological interactions drive the pattern.

Similar principles show up on tropical reefs, where damselfish and other species farm patches of algae or guard eggs in intricate colonies. Seeing comparable organisation in Antarctic waters undermines the idea that cold, dark seas only support simple or scattered life.
What lives off a city of fish nests?

A giant spawning ground does not stand alone. Every egg laid in those nests feeds into the wider Antarctic food web. Many will never hatch, and even hatched larvae will face heavy losses to predators. From a distance, the nest field probably acts as a seasonal buffet for benthic invertebrates, starfish and larger fish drawn in by the dense concentration of potential food.

The Weddell Sea also connects upward to krill, penguins, seals and whales. If a key breeding site like this failed for several years in a row, the ripple could reach far beyond a single fish species. That is one reason why polar ecologists now treat such areas as more than a curiosity.
Feature Why it matters
High nest density Boosts reproduction but also attracts predators and fishing interest.
Parental care Raises egg survival, makes adults vulnerable while guarding nests.
Spatial patterns Reveal social strategies and collective responses to risk.
Remote location Offers natural protection today, but complicates monitoring and enforcement.
A fragile ecosystem that regulators now watch closely

The nest field sits inside a proposed marine protected area in the Weddell Sea. Conservation groups and several governments have argued for years that this sector of Antarctica deserves strict limits on fishing and industrial activity. Until recently, many negotiations ran on models and indirect data, because hard evidence from the deep seabed was scarce.

Images of an active, structured breeding ground give policymakers something concrete: a clear example of a vulnerable marine ecosystem that could vanish with just a few wrong decisions.

Under rules developed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, or CCAMLR, such vulnerable ecosystems require special care. Bottom trawling and other destructive fishing methods can flatten delicate habitats in a single season. Even scientific visits need careful planning, so that camera sleds and sampling gear do not crush nests they came to study.

The discovery also lands in the middle of a wider climate story. As the Antarctic warms and patterns of sea ice change, breeding success for cold-adapted species may shift dramatically. If ice retreats earlier in the season, predators such as seals and penguins could reach areas like the nest field more easily. If circulation patterns change, oxygen and nutrients at depth might fluctuate, altering egg survival.
What this Antarctic fish colony tells us about life in extremes

For biologists who study adaptation, the Weddell Sea nests form a real-world case study in how life organises itself under pressure. Instead of dispersing their eggs across a huge area, these fish bundle them in dense colonies. That raises local predation risk but seems to pay off through protection by numbers and intense parental care.

The behaviour highlights a key idea in ecology: cooperation and conflict sit side by side. Each adult guards its own eggs, yet the colony as a whole becomes safer because so many eyes scan for danger. At the same time, individuals compete for the best spots in the layout and may shift nest positions from one season to the next.

For students and researchers, this system offers a natural laboratory. Computer simulations of selfish-herd dynamics, social spacing or predator–prey interactions can now be tested against the real geometry of the nests. By feeding measured distances, current speeds and egg survival rates into models, teams can watch virtual colonies grow or collapse on screen, then compare them with what the cameras show beneath the ice.

Beyond pure science, the find also speaks to the risks and benefits that come with industrial attention. A dense breeding ground may tempt future fishing operations because, in theory, it brings many adults together in one place. Short-term catches could look very attractive. Yet targeting a site like this might cut into the very core of the population’s reproductive engine. The gain of one season could translate into a long decline across decades, especially for slow-growing polar species.

At the same time, the nest field reminds policy makers that protection does not always mean locking everything away forever. Controlled access, low-impact research and strict bans on heavy gear can still allow science to advance. That knowledge, in turn, helps anticipate how climate stress, pollution or new species introductions might interact with carefully tuned behaviours like the Antarctic fish colonies now taking shape under the ice.

https://thaihut.org/12-168622-thousands ... entally-n/