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My friend, Professor Shellbadore McSmithagall has started a school for Wayfinding and Dragon-Taming and she’s heard that LiD Quest students would be excellent recruits.

You’re invited to this Direction Ceremony where you’ll hear from the Professor, together with the Head of Explorare House, Raegan Force, and the Head of Optimus House, Maxine Pointe.

Enjoy, and let me know which House calls YOU.

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Shelley's LiD Talk: So... you wanna be a Dragon Tamer?

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@Andy Wright's LiD Talk/Masterpiece that he put together at the end of one of our previous cohorts.

I really enjoyed Andy's Mad Lib and the way he highlighted the weirdness and wonderfulness (?) of coral in this talk. Definitely a great example of the Muse of Bewilderment.

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Well, I didn’t have time to finish it, but here is my animation so far! There are 2 parts, so don’t forget to scroll to the second. I’m sorry it’s a bit unimpressive, but even this much took over 200 drawings! I will be slowly adding more.

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1. The Early Stone Age (Oldowan & Acheulean Tools) ~3.3 MYA – 300,000 YA

Significance: The birth of lithic technology (toolmaking).

Key Advancements: The earliest known tools, dated to 3.3 million years ago (Oldowan), were crude flakes used for cutting, likely made by Homo habilis. By 1.7 million years ago, Homo erectus created Acheulean handaxes—a more complex, "bifacial" tool requiring planning and shaping.

Impact: Enabled early ancestors to butcher meat, crack bones for marrow, and access new food sources, which fueled brain growth.

2. Controlled Use of Fire

Significance: The first, and arguably most influential, chemical technology.

Key Advancements: While fire was used occasionally earlier, controlled fire was fully adopted roughly 700,000 to 1 million years ago by Homo erectus.

Impact: Fire allowed for cooking, which drastically increased calorie consumption and reduced the energy needed for digestion, leading to further brain evolution. It also provided warmth, protection, and improved tool making (e.g., hardening wooden spears).

3. The Upper Paleolithic "Great Leap" ~50,000 – 12,000 YA

Significance: The appearance of complex, diverse, and specialized tools.

Key Advancements: Modern humans (and some Neanderthals) began creating sophisticated toolkits, including bone needles, fishing hooks, spear-throwers (atlatls), and harpoons. This period also saw the first widespread evidence of art and symbolic expression (40,000 years ago).

Impact: These tools enabled more efficient hunting, tailored clothing, and improved survival in harsh environments (e.g., Ice Age Europe), accelerating human migration and population growth.

4. The Neolithic Revolution (Agricultural Tools) ~10,000 – 3,000 BCE

Significance: The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture.

Key Advancements: Tools changed from foraging to farming. Humans began polishing and grinding stone to create axes to clear forests, adzes for woodworking, and hoes for cultivating land. Pottery was also developed for food storage.

Impact: Settled life required sustainable technology, leading to the domestication of plants and animals, the formation of permanent villages, and rapid population expansion.

5. The Metal Ages (Bronze and Iron Age) ~3,300 – 600 BCE

Significance: The shift from stone to metallurgy.

Key Advancements: Humans learned to smelt copper, then alloy it with tin to create bronze (around 3,000 B.C.), a much harder and more versatile material. By 1,200 B.C., the harder, more accessible iron began replacing bronze, allowing for the mass production of superior tools and weapons.

Impact: Enabled efficient plowing with draft animals, the development of the wheel, and the building of complex urban civilizations.

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Ocean - Leatherback Turtles Presentation

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Ocean - Leatherback Turtles Presentation

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I chose to do a Canva presentation focusing on the migration journey during the nesting season of leatherback turtles, drawing on the narrative I wrote on the same thing a couple weeks ago.

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Here, at long last, is my masterpiece. The transcript for the video is below as well.

My mom said we should also include the sources we used and a bonus link if you really want to get weird and read about research into plant emotions.

Sound perception in plants

Sound perception in plants: from ecological significance to molecular understanding - ScienceDirect

Fungal network

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7617349/

Plant signaling, behavior and communication

https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/13/8/1132#B10-plants-13-01132

Volatiles/smells

Birch (Betula spp.) leaves adsorb and re‐release volatiles specific to neighbouring plants – a mechanism for associational herbivore resistance? - Himanen - 2010 - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library

Plant volatiles as cues and signals in plant communication - PMC

Lets get real weird!

Plant Emotions

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-026-02169-y

Hello everyone to my Learning in Depth Masterpiece, Trees are Weird

Imagine for a second that there are bugs trying to chomp on you, but you no longer have arms to swat them away. And you no longer have legs to walk away. In fact, you are rooted to the ground, and you have to stay in that place for your whole life! It could be hundreds of years for you in the same place.
But there are bugs! Or perhaps, it’s a deer, a boar, or a  giraffe trying to have a nibble upon your hair! What are you going to do to get them to go away?

Welcome to the life of a tree, our much viewed and often ignored friends of the forest. If you’re curious how you might be able to protect yourself from predators.

I'm going to give you three clues on how trees protect themselves from predators.

#1.Nosey neighbors.

#2 A bunch of fun guys playing in the dirt

#3 A corny joke.

Lets start here: How are trees like nosey neighbors? There’s lots of evidence to show that trees are able to release what are called plant volatiles, or for today, the tree sniffs. The tree sniffs are able to help trees respond to insects by emitting smells that can attract pollinators. The tree sniffs can also attract the predators of insects that might be munching on the tree. The tree sniffs can be sensed by other trees nearby and let the other trees know they also need to attract predators or release their defensive chemicals that taste bad to the attacking insects. Scientists call this associational resistance, but I like to think of it as the trees helping their buddies nearby to let them know to avoid the pest party.

The next way a tree might be able to communicate about danger is through a huge underground

network.These are called mycorrhizal networks, or a party of fun guys. Fun fact: the word mycorrhizal comes from the ancient Greek myco, meaning fungus, and  riza, meaning root! The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network.

This appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi. This means the trees and the fun guys work together and both of them benefit from the relationship. And there are A LOT of the fun guys.

The fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees. The fun guys help the trees communicate danger to each other, such as insect attacks or diseases by sending out chemical and electrical  messages across this vast, interconnected, underground world.

And last, but not least, an old, corny joke, “What has ears but can’t hear?” The answer is corn. But there is a possibility that the joke might not be all the way true. There is an exciting field of research right now which is trying to answer the question of whether or not plants and trees are capable of hearing sounds. Scientists know right now that plants can respond to sound vibrations caused by chewing herbivores as an alarm bell to tell them to activate their defense machinery. This is extra weird because even when the

Researchers only played a recording of an herbivore eating the bark of the tree, the tree still sends out the same defense chemicals. Sounds made by water can also help a tree's roots grow in the direction of the water. Scientists don’t know exactly what sound frequencies trees respond to, but they do have lots of ideas about what parts of the tree might help it the trees to hear their environment.

This is only the beginning of why trees are weird. There is so much to know and so many more ways people are still learning about trees and the forests they live in.

Thanks for listening!