Timasomo is a chance to create something/anything!

There are no restrictions on what you can choose to make.

The best way to get a feel for Timasomo is to check out the previous showcase threads:

• 2022 Showcase
• 2021 Showcase
• 2020 Showcase
• 2019 Showcase

These showcases are the culminating event of Timasomo -- a public gallery of participants' creations. Each item in the showcases was a project that community members chose to complete for the event.

In the weeks leading up to the showcase, discussion threads will be posted where people can share their progress.

Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! Please make sure you are subscribed to ~creative.timasomo.

The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome!

If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.

Make sure you are subscribed to ~creative.timasomo.

On October 1st, there will be a Roll Call thread. By posting your plans to participate in that thread, you have formally signed up for Timasomo!

Yes. Timasomo was originally inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November.

Initially, I wanted people participating in NaNoWriMo to be able to share their work with Timasomo as well. In the entire time it has run, however, no participant has publicly submitted any work from NaNoWriMo to Timasomo. Instead, Timasomo has gained its own identity independent of NaNoWriMo.

Many participants from previous years have shared that October would be a better month for them personally, so we moved the event to October.

Also, the event was so fantastically popular that it regularly upstaged American Thanksgiving, thus we only felt it fair that Canadian Thanksgiving be targeted as well.

Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected.

On October 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of October.

There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!

Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!

Timasomo begins October 1st and ends October 31st.

All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time.

This week prior to the start of October is for planning. There will be a few days at the beginning of November given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works.

Below are the dates that I will be posting weekly threads:

Sunday, October 1, 2023: Roll Call Thread
Sunday, October 8, 2023: Update Thread #1
Sunday, October 15, 2023: Update Thread #2
Sunday, October 22, 2023: Update Thread #3
Sunday, October 29, 2023: Final Update Thread
Sunday, November 5, 2023: Timasomo Showcase Thread

Tildes is a privacy-respecting site, and you are not obligated to share your creation here if you do not want to. We'd still love to hear about it though, if you're willing to share process and details!

Either.

I personally use "Timasomo" because I think it looks cleaner and because too much time on the internet has made my brain incapable of reading "TiMaSoMo" as anything other than sarcasm, but go with whichever you prefer.

The best option, however, is “𝑻𝑰𝑴𝑨𝑺𝑶𝑴𝑶” for reasons that are self-evident.

That network, it turns out, is more sophisticated than you might assume. On Friday, researchers published a report in the journal Current Biology indicating that the box jellyfish species Tripedalia cystophora have the ability to learn. Because box jellyfish diverged from our part of the animal kingdom long ago, understanding their cognitive abilities could help scientists trace the evolution of learning.

The tricky part about studying learning in box jellies was finding an everyday behavior that scientists could train the creatures to perform in the lab.

• Roots of mangroves

Anders Garm, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen and an author of the new paper, said his team decided to focus on a swift about-face that box jellies execute when they are about to hit a mangrove root. These roots rise through the water like black towers, while the water around them appears pale by comparison. But the contrast between the two can change from day to day, as silt clouds the water and makes it more difficult to tell how far away a root is. How do box jellies tell when they are getting too close?

“The hypothesis was, they need to learn this,” Garm said. “When they come back to these habitats, they have to learn, how is today’s water quality? How is the contrast changing today?”

• Setup

In the lab, researchers produced images of alternating dark and light stripes, representing the mangrove roots and water, and used them to line the insides of buckets about six inches wide. When the stripes were a stark black and white, representing optimum water clarity, box jellies never got close to the bucket walls. With less contrast between the stripes, however, box jellies immediately began to run into them. This was the scientists’ chance to see if they would learn.

After a handful of collisions, the box jellies changed their behavior. Less than eight minutes after arriving in the bucket, they were swimming 50% farther from the pattern on the walls, and they had nearly quadrupled the number of times they performed their about-face maneuver. They seemed to have made a connection between the stripes ahead of them and the sensation of collision.

• “It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,”

Going further, researchers removed visual neurons from the box jellyfish and studied them in a dish. The cells were shown striped images while receiving a small electrical pulse to represent collision. Within about five minutes, the cells started sending the signal that would cause a whole box jellyfish to turn around.

“It’s amazing to see how fast they learn,” said Jan Bielecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physiology at Kiel University in Germany, also an author of the paper.

Researchers who were not involved in the study called the results a significant step forward in understanding the origins of learning. “This is only the third time that associative learning has been convincingly demonstrated in cnidarians,” a group that includes sea anemones, hydras and jellyfish, said Ken Cheng, a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who studies the animals. “And this is the coolest demonstration, replete with physiological data.”

The results also suggest that box jellyfish possess some level of short-term memory, because they can change their behavior based on past experience, said Michael Abrams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the neuroscience of jellyfish sleep. He wonders how long the box jellies remember what they’ve learned. If they are taken out of the tank for an hour and then returned to it, do they have to learn what to do all over again?

Future work

In future work, researchers hope to identify which specific cells control the box jellyfish’s ability to learn from experience. Garm and his colleagues are curious about the molecular changes that happen in these cells as the animals incorporate new information into their behavior.

They wonder, too, whether the capacity to learn is universal among nerve cells, regardless of whether they are part of a brain. It might explain their peculiar persistence in the tree of life.

“There are organ systems popping up and going away all the time,” Garm said. “But nervous systems — once they are there, they very rarely go away again.”

Perhaps the ability to learn is one reason they are still here.

Source: F1.com

And Red Bull win the Constructors Championship! 623 points after today's race.