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'US Climate Imperialism' seems to be becoming a thing. Whatever, it's the focus of my short story "The Rockets' Red Glare", one of the ten in my new collection #IrishTales
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Nick Larter
19.4K posts
Nick Larter
@thremnir
Author of "Irish Tales" - a cycle of new fairy stories for adults. Out now!
Ennis, Ireland Katılım Temmuz 2011
3.5K Takip Edilen959 Takipçiler
@Richard_Kadrey Sounds like you need to check out Robert Aickman's short story 'Never Visit Venice.' :)
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The reason I came to Venice was because of a dream: I was by a canal at night and David Bowie’s Subterraneans was playing. I have no idea what any of that means, but tonight I got to make the dream real. The perfect end to a long, beautiful trip.
youtube.com/watch?v=FVY2ER…
YouTube
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@ViciousCheese Yeah my first thought was flea beetle too, but I pretty quickly decided that the hind femur didn't quite have flea beetle levels of chunkiness :) so I started to look wider.
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@thremnir All the flea beetles that were vaguely close clearly had shiny scutella, not matt..
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At #TheGlen yesterday: the Scirtid (Marsh Beetle) Odeles marginata. Nice to find, as the adult phase is quite short (late March - early May):-
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@ViciousCheese Haha - yes, wet woodland marsh beetles are a bit of a curiosity! The pale patch on antennal segments 2/3 is diagnostic for this species, so far as I can tell.
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@thremnir Snap and thanks. I saw one just like this a week ago and it seems I was looking in the wrong place which is why I couldn't get a match - thought it was one of the flea beetles. Receipts:
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I think I read somewhere that Marsham's Nomad Bee, Nomada marshamella, is Ireland's commonest nomad bee. Whatever, there were loads at #TheGlen (#Ballymacraven) this afternoon:-
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Another find from #LimerickBookFair today. The latest infrequent addition to my very modest 'fearfully abstruse' shelf 🤣
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I can see I'm going to be tweeting from Newman for months! Ubiquitous are aberrations, 'in the cabinet of Mr Bond.' That's Frederick Bond (1811 - 1889).
Also, I love the chutzpah of doing a monochrome engraving of the Valezina variation! #SilverWashedFritillary
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Think it's the Hardwicke & Bogue 1874 Edition. There's spectacularly little printing information in the volume. People might ask why the interest - well, mainly, accounts of this vintage are good for showing what we've lost since!
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Interesting find at #LimerickBookFair - a pretty beaten up Edward Newman - a snip at fifteen quid. With the added bonus of someone's pressed flower collection - 40 odd specimens interleaved through the pages:-
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Finally got an ID for this sorted - it's a Proctotrupid not an ichneumon at all 🤣 (thx to Alf Tore MjØs), probably Proctotrupes sp.
Nick Larter@thremnir
A small-to-medium-sized ichneumon at #Bishopsquarter this evening. The downcurved ovipositor looks distinctive. ID to follow:-
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Nick Larter retweetledi
Love this💚
How one woman's love of beetles led to a discovery not seen for nearly a century
Hobbies and interests come in all shapes and sizes, but one woman's passion for beetles has led to the remarkable rediscovery of a species not seen on the island of Ireland for almost a century.
Last spotted in 1934, the Saprinus semistriatus – more commonly known as the carrion clown beetle - has remained a mystery to experts with occasional sightings contained to Great Britain, primarily the south of England.
That was until a self-confessed "beetle enthusiast" from Northern Ireland made the discovery during what she described as "a routine after-work survey" of Benone Strand in County Londonderry
The 2024 sighting has been verified by experts and remains the most recent recording of the species in the UK and Ireland.
"I was really lucky to come across a dead hedgehog in the sand dune slacks and when I took a look underneath I found the little beetle," Mel McQuitty told BBC News NI.
"It's a really fantastic looking beetle, it's very unique and records show it hasn't been seen in quite some time which is great news."
More here:
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
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Had a Jane Street phone interview in 2016. "Price a 6-month forward on carrots."
There's no carrot futures market, so I build one from scratch: seasonal harvest cycles, USDA demand elasticity, cold storage decay rates.
One trader stops me. "Your storage cost function– you're modeling the carrot as dead inventory. Like grain in a silo." He asks me the metabolic respiration rate of a post-harvest carrot at 2°C. I estimate.
"Your forward is overpriced by exactly that shrinkage. The underlying is consuming its own sugars. It's alive." Good correction. I adjust the model. I think I've recovered.
Rejection email comes the next morning. Subject: "Ethical Review." My framework, they write, "relied on the severance of the root organism from its growth medium." The question about respiration was a test. The carrot was still alive and I'd built an entire derivatives structure on top of its death without questioning whether harvest was an acceptable act.
I pull up the recruiter's original email. It doesn't say Jane Street. It says Jain Street– a non-violent quantitative commodities fund.
The carrot was never supposed to be priced. It was supposed to be refused. I later learn the only candidate who passed that round was a former monk from Gujarat who sat in silence for eleven minutes and said, "I cannot put a price on life." He's now a partner.
Deedy@deedydas
Jane Street made ~$40B in 2025 with 3,500 employees, a ~2x from the year before. At ~65-70% profit margin, that's $8M profit / employee, the highest for a 1000+ ppl company. High-frequency trading continues to be the most efficient money making engine. I want to share an old story about my Jane Street interview in 2014. Jane Street was known for hiring a lot of math, physics and CS olympiad winners from top universities and putting them through many rounds - including, for trading roles, a gauntlet of mental math. It was my 6th interview and my final round and I recall being asked "What is the next day after today in DD/MM/YYYY where all the digits are unique?" They'd toy with you and say "You can use a pencil and paper, if you want" but you knew that was an instant no. Painstakingly and as quickly as I could, I came to an answer. "How confident are you that this is correct on a 0-1 probability scale?" the interviewer said. "0.95", I blurted out, not fully knowing how to answer that. "Are you sure?" After thinking harder for a few more seconds, I realized I could've flipped the digits around to get a closer date. I gave the interviewer my answer. It was correct. "0.95 huh?" he chuckled. That's when I knew I failed. Note: fwiw, other companies that come close in efficiency are - Tether ($90M+ profit/emp) - Hyperliquid ($80M+ profit/emp) and on revenue: - Valve ($50M/emp) - OnlyFans ($37M/emp) - Craigslist ($14M/emp) - Anthropic ($12M/emp, run rate) - OpenAI ($8M/emp, run rate) For comparison, Nvidia is very efficient at scale and is $4.4M/emp.
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Nick Larter retweetledi
Nick Larter retweetledi
Went out to #Knockaunroe Turlough this afternoon:-
1. Male emperor moth, Saturnia pavonia; 2. Spring Gentian, Gentiana verna; 3. Mountain Avens, Dryas octopetala; 4. Feral goats.
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@johnkellyjkcs @GrahamDenny9 Haha - I never realised nomads dispersed much that way!
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@GrahamDenny9 @thremnir Those easterly winds in spring are called Cuckoo Winds .. I wonder why.. 🤔
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