Cricketeria, Too

From FastCompany, “This Giant Automated Cricket Farm Is Designed To Make Bugs A Mainstream Source Of Protein“.  Eeewww!!!

Inside a new building in an industrial neighborhood near the airport in Austin, a robot is feeding millions of crickets, 24 hours a day. The facility–a 25,000-square-foot R&D center that opened this month for the startup Aspire–uses technology that the company plans to soon duplicate in a farm 10 times as large. It’s a scale that the startup thinks is necessary to begin to make cricket food mainstream in the United States.

 

Eating bugs–or at least products made from bugs–has been growing in popularity. For a few years, it’s been possible to buy cricket snacks such as protein bars made with cricket flour or cricket chips (like Chirps) at some grocery stores or online. But for insect food to fulfill its sustainable promise of supplying protein without the massive carbon and land footprint of beef, it will have to be much more widely available, and more affordable. Aspire believes its farms can make that possible.

Here’s the actual ‘Automated Cricket Factory’. And I thought all you needed to do to ‘farm’ crickets was drop some crumbs on the floor and turn off the lights.

‘Stop Action’ Genius or Poster Child for International OCD Foundation

You judge, but do watch. His project is wonderful.

Phil Tippett has spent a lifetime in the film industry, working as a model-maker, visual effects supervisor, director and stop-motion animator.

He’s been involved with big-name productions such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop among others. But his real passion lies in handmade stop-motion animation. For over 30 years, Tippett has been working on an incredibly detailed film called “Mad God”. He describes it as being set “in a Milton-esque world of monsters, mad scientists and war pigs.” Amazingly, each character is painstakingly constructed by hand from foam, clay, latex and wire. Despite all the arduous toil, Tippett sees “Mad God” as a form of therapy and a way to reconnect with a time when special effects and animation were all done by hand.

Daily Darwin – Vying For ‘Numbnut’ of the Year Award

Darwin points out that although the little balloon retriever’s genomes could be somewhat at risk, it’s Dad’s still immature genomes that are truly in harm’s way. Darwin guarantees, with utmost certainty, that as soon as Mom gets home and sees the Facebook video Dad posted about his day with Jr., Dad’s genomes will be residing in the back of his throat. Ack!! Urp!! Gluck!!

Natural selection deems that some individuals serve as a warning to others. Who are we to disagree? The next generation, ever and anon, is descended from the survivors

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