ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
A drone has been converted into a flying flamethrower in central China in a fiery campaign to eradicate more than 100 wasp nests.
Blue Sky Rescue, a volunteer group that conducts search and rescue and other emergency work, have teamed up with villagers in Zhong county near the city of Chongqing.
They raised 80,000 yuan ($12,200) to buy a drone and equip it with a gasoline tank and an arm-length nozzle.
Videos released by Blue Sky show a recent mission by the six-arm drone. It hovers above a hive as large as a suitcase before swooping down. The drone operator flips the ignition switch, and the drone spits bursts of fire onto the hive.
There's pictures. It brings to mind a quote from an Anti-Soviet fighter in Afghanistan, "We do not fear the Russians. But we do fear their helicopters"
A very cool Nilus margaritatus, aka "Dark Fisheating spider".
From the name you can pretty much tell that this is basically what they do.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
That's what I thought. Only about three weeks until I move out and I have to deal with this happy horseshit again.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
Aren't bedbugs a "burn everything you own and start over" situation?
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
That's most likely a bedbug, yes. I have to say that I'm not a pest control specialist, please contact a specialist in your area but it looks pretty close to one.
Aren't bedbugs a "burn everything you own and start over" situation?
Pest control can handle it if you have the money. It's usually the fact that if you have bed bugs then your neighbors also have bed bugs and if they don't engage pest control at the same time the bed bugs will return
People tend to deal with pest control as a collective action problem even more haphazardly than climate change
Aren't bedbugs a "burn everything you own and start over" situation?
It's not. While bedbugs are resistant to a lot of chemicals they're not very resistant to heat (48C/120F for 20 minutes). Putting stuff in the dryer on the highest heat for 30 minutes will kill them (or really anything that can generate 50 celsius). Cleaning paintings&electronics etc (and on the inside too if it's accessible).
Mattress, couch and padded furniture (anything too big to be heat treated) probably has to go though unless you're ready to seal them up in plastic for over a year (because bedbugs can go a long time without food).
The lazy exterminator route, if you have the means, is heating the entire apartment to 45+ Celsius (113F) and then waiting 3 hours and then vacuuming everything carefully, then repeating that treatment in 14 days if any bedbug eggs survived.
P.S: The mattress/couch thing isn't strictly true since bag&hot air treatment works for those as well as long as the entire bag gets above 45 celsius for 90 minutes. Then you keep 'em bagged and heat treat again in two weeks.
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I'm in Hawaii, so I have several exciting varieties of centipede around at any given moment, but not that kind. I set up a fogger, bagged my mattress, and threw everything into the drier on high for an hour. Same steps as last time, but I added diatomaceous earth (applied liberally to the baseboards and cracks). Told my landlord and roommates so hopefully that's the end of it.
Aren't bedbugs a "burn everything you own and start over" situation?
It's not. While bedbugs are resistant to a lot of chemicals they're not very resistant to heat (48C/120F for 20 minutes). Putting stuff in the dryer on the highest heat for 30 minutes will kill them (or really anything that can generate 50 celsius). Cleaning paintings&electronics etc (and on the inside too if it's accessible).
Mattress, couch and padded furniture (anything too big to be heat treated) probably has to go though unless you're ready to seal them up in plastic for over a year (because bedbugs can go a long time without food).
The lazy exterminator route, if you have the means, is heating the entire apartment to 45+ Celsius (113F) and then waiting 3 hours and then vacuuming everything carefully, then repeating that treatment in 14 days if any bedbug eggs survived.
P.S: The mattress/couch thing isn't strictly true since bag&hot air treatment works for those as well as long as the entire bag gets above 45 celsius for 90 minutes. Then you keep 'em bagged and heat treat again in two weeks.
Interesting. So cranking the heat will potentially solve bed bug infestations? I have never had the problem, but I wouldn't mind having a plan just in case. Getting the temperature below 100F requires more work than above for large portions of year where I live.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
Would turning on the heat during a hot week of the year be enough? I melt above about 90F so I'd likely stick to the plastic. :P
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Aren't bedbugs a "burn everything you own and start over" situation?
It's not. While bedbugs are resistant to a lot of chemicals they're not very resistant to heat (48C/120F for 20 minutes). Putting stuff in the dryer on the highest heat for 30 minutes will kill them (or really anything that can generate 50 celsius). Cleaning paintings&electronics etc (and on the inside too if it's accessible).
Mattress, couch and padded furniture (anything too big to be heat treated) probably has to go though unless you're ready to seal them up in plastic for over a year (because bedbugs can go a long time without food).
The lazy exterminator route, if you have the means, is heating the entire apartment to 45+ Celsius (113F) and then waiting 3 hours and then vacuuming everything carefully, then repeating that treatment in 14 days if any bedbug eggs survived.
P.S: The mattress/couch thing isn't strictly true since bag&hot air treatment works for those as well as long as the entire bag gets above 45 celsius for 90 minutes. Then you keep 'em bagged and heat treat again in two weeks.
Interesting. So cranking the heat will potentially solve bed bug infestations? I have never had the problem, but I wouldn't mind having a plan just in case. Getting the temperature below 100F requires more work than above for large portions of year where I live.
Generally the normal heater in your apartment won't be up to the task. Even if your thermometer says 113F it's usually a lot colder near the floor.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
There is also a chance that if you live in an area that regularly gets high temperatures that you may have a tropical variant of bed bugs that are more tolerant of heat. Also, heat treatment - to be really effective - requires consistant temperature throughout the house and walls, so it is likely beyond the range of what a normal hvac system can achieve.
My half plan definitely involved more than just your typical hvac, and would likely only work in the warmer months. It easily hits 100f here outside routinely. Throw in a stupid number of space heaters and it might work was my thought. My house likes to stay in the low 80s in some of the cooler parts with the AC on. Hopefully I will never have to try this in practice.
My half plan definitely involved more than just your typical hvac, and would likely only work in the warmer months. It easily hits 100f here outside routinely. Throw in a stupid number of space heaters and it might work was my thought. My house likes to stay in the low 80s in some of the cooler parts with the AC on. Hopefully I will never have to try this in practice.
When I looked into this in my area the companies doing it were using several blast heaters to get houses up to ~60C for several hours. Their staff would use thermal imaging cameras to make sure the walls were hitting the target temperature and didn't have cool spots. I don't think space heaters would necessarily get the required consistancy/temperature.
Those almost look like Pinacate beetles, but the elytra (the armored outer wings of beetles) are a bit too rounded. Where are they from, roughly?
I can definitely say they're in the family Tenebrionidae, or darkling beetles, and you could probably poke around that family on BugGuide and get a decent guess, at least better than I would have- these guys aren't my specialty.
It's might be in the genus Eleodes, which might also narrow down your options on BugGuide.
Mostly harmless (to you) predatory or detritivorous ground beetles. Probably good to have around if they're in a garden!
An inital guess would be some version of Darkling beetle (specificly one of the Blaptini tribe or the Eleodes genus), but it's hard to know without having a better idea of where your mom lives. If it's australia or mediterranean it could be Egyptian beetle, if it's the US/Mexico border it could be Elodes spinipes (or one of the other Desert Stink beetles like Elodes tenuipes).
P.S: Does anyone remember what the butt-spikes on beetles are called? I vaguely remember them having a name/entomological description, but I can't remember what it is (and if you can't speak entomolog then you might as well not consult a taxonomical reference chart at all).
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
We're in Australia (South Australia to be more specific) and she found them around the edge of her lawn, which is quite dry at the moment since it's our summer. I just did a search for Australian darkling beetles and that definitely sounds like the kind of environment they would like, apparently they're typically found living in or under hay
If it South Australia then I'm going all in on my Egyptian beetle (blaps polychresta) bet.
Reference image:
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
For the record both Arch and Fiendishrabbit posted within a minute of each other and within an hour of someone saying "What is this bug?"
I hereby submit that while it's well known they are both a human sized mass of bugs in a trench coat that the bug piles may now be interacting and that we may be facing a 12' mass of bugs in a trench coat and frankly that's a little worrying.
I agree completely. Twelve foot trench coats being bought off the rack are a losing proposition, and somebody is going to lose their shirt in that business!
While I firmly deny that I'm a mass of telepathic sentient insects I'd hypotheticly state that if I were such a non-existant thing then a racing suit, gloves, realistic silicone mask and sunglasses is the latest in cryptid infiltration solutions, especially these days that no one will look at you twice for wearing a mask.
Hypotheticly...
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I have seem to have a colony of ... whatever these are living primarily in the bathroom. They can fly, though they’re found mainly on the walls and curtains. Small (like half a pencil eraser?), cream colored.
I haven’t gone nuclear yet, since I only see one or two every few days unless I go looking. I assume it’s the humidity in the bathroom that they’re attracted to.
They look like they could be clothes moths, but those hang out around clothes (not in showers). Or maybe a lost whitefly (but those tend to be found on brought in plants, not anywhere near the shower). I the bathroom you'd expect stuff like cockroaches, silverfish or drain flies. It's definitely not any of those.
So I'm still going to say clothes moth, and my guess is that you have an infestation elsewhere that's merely getting lost in your bathroom from time to time (where they're more easily found)
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
here's one I haven't seen before, very small, less than a mm in length but I got the best pictures of it I could
I think it's a beetle of some kind, at one point it fanned its wings and it looked like it had wing cases, but it was so small I might've misunderstood what I was looking at
Seattle area
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Posts
Bow bow chika kap-chow!
So you're saying I should have boxing gloves on in my online dating profile...?
Only if you're trying to attract spiders, one would think
If I ever take up boxing that's what I'm naming my fists.
Well that explains my situation.
There's pictures. It brings to mind a quote from an Anti-Soviet fighter in Afghanistan, "We do not fear the Russians. But we do fear their helicopters"
not identification but relevant to your interests
That link is not for spider-phobes
But also, wow
From the name you can pretty much tell that this is basically what they do.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Bed bug, right?
Pest control can handle it if you have the money. It's usually the fact that if you have bed bugs then your neighbors also have bed bugs and if they don't engage pest control at the same time the bed bugs will return
People tend to deal with pest control as a collective action problem even more haphazardly than climate change
It's not. While bedbugs are resistant to a lot of chemicals they're not very resistant to heat (48C/120F for 20 minutes). Putting stuff in the dryer on the highest heat for 30 minutes will kill them (or really anything that can generate 50 celsius). Cleaning paintings&electronics etc (and on the inside too if it's accessible).
Mattress, couch and padded furniture (anything too big to be heat treated) probably has to go though unless you're ready to seal them up in plastic for over a year (because bedbugs can go a long time without food).
The lazy exterminator route, if you have the means, is heating the entire apartment to 45+ Celsius (113F) and then waiting 3 hours and then vacuuming everything carefully, then repeating that treatment in 14 days if any bedbug eggs survived.
P.S: The mattress/couch thing isn't strictly true since bag&hot air treatment works for those as well as long as the entire bag gets above 45 celsius for 90 minutes. Then you keep 'em bagged and heat treat again in two weeks.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I'm in Hawaii, so I have several exciting varieties of centipede around at any given moment, but not that kind. I set up a fogger, bagged my mattress, and threw everything into the drier on high for an hour. Same steps as last time, but I added diatomaceous earth (applied liberally to the baseboards and cracks). Told my landlord and roommates so hopefully that's the end of it.
Interesting. So cranking the heat will potentially solve bed bug infestations? I have never had the problem, but I wouldn't mind having a plan just in case. Getting the temperature below 100F requires more work than above for large portions of year where I live.
If it's hot enough to kill the bugs you won't want to be inside anyway. It's not going to kill you but 113+ *sucks*
Generally the normal heater in your apartment won't be up to the task. Even if your thermometer says 113F it's usually a lot colder near the floor.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
When I looked into this in my area the companies doing it were using several blast heaters to get houses up to ~60C for several hours. Their staff would use thermal imaging cameras to make sure the walls were hitting the target temperature and didn't have cool spots. I don't think space heaters would necessarily get the required consistancy/temperature.
I can definitely say they're in the family Tenebrionidae, or darkling beetles, and you could probably poke around that family on BugGuide and get a decent guess, at least better than I would have- these guys aren't my specialty.
It's might be in the genus Eleodes, which might also narrow down your options on BugGuide.
Mostly harmless (to you) predatory or detritivorous ground beetles. Probably good to have around if they're in a garden!
P.S: Does anyone remember what the butt-spikes on beetles are called? I vaguely remember them having a name/entomological description, but I can't remember what it is (and if you can't speak entomolog then you might as well not consult a taxonomical reference chart at all).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Reference image:
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I reckon that's it, thank you! I'll let Mum know
I hereby submit that while it's well known they are both a human sized mass of bugs in a trench coat that the bug piles may now be interacting and that we may be facing a 12' mass of bugs in a trench coat and frankly that's a little worrying.
Hypotheticly...
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I haven’t gone nuclear yet, since I only see one or two every few days unless I go looking. I assume it’s the humidity in the bathroom that they’re attracted to.
Region is the northeast US.
So I'm still going to say clothes moth, and my guess is that you have an infestation elsewhere that's merely getting lost in your bathroom from time to time (where they're more easily found)
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Definitely no plants in the apartment at the moment, so whitefly seems unlikely.
Edit2: I bought a pheromone trap, so that should settle it.
I think it's a beetle of some kind, at one point it fanned its wings and it looked like it had wing cases, but it was so small I might've misunderstood what I was looking at
Seattle area
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies