Life is shorter than you think.

While working in the garden today, I noticed an unusual scene unfolding at the edge of our pond. A dragonfly had come down to lay her eggs, dipping delicately to the water’s surface. As she was focused on her task, a group of backswimmers (small, predatory water bugs that often glide along on their backs) seemed to take an interest.

The dragonfly, preoccupied with laying her eggs, didn’t seem to notice the backswimmers gathering below. In a sudden move, they closed in, managing to drag her beneath the water's surface. The dragonfly, vulnerable in this brief moment, became their prey.

It was a surprising sight to witness in the quiet of the garden. I’ve always known about the life around our pond, but watching this interaction up close was a reminder of the hidden, and sometimes brutal, dynamics in nature that happen all around us.

Butterflies taste with their feet! Their feet contain special sensory organs, called chemoreceptors, which help them detect the chemical composition of the plants they land on. This ability allows them to quickly determine if a plant is suitable for feeding or laying eggs, ensuring the best food sources for their larvae.

Butterflies use their feet to taste plants, helping them find the best places to feed or lay eggs.

Bees are not just good at finding flowers—they are also capable of recognizing human faces. While bees don’t have the same complex brain structures as humans, they use something called configural processing, which is the same method humans use to recognize faces. Instead of seeing a face as a whole, bees break down a face into individual components—such as the eyes, nose, and mouth—and remember how these parts are arranged.

This ability was proven in a 2005 study where bees were trained to associate certain human faces with rewards (sugar water) and others with no reward. Over time, they learned to differentiate between the faces and fly toward the one that would give them the sugar reward. This is particularly remarkable because a bee’s brain is incredibly small compared to a human's, yet they can handle this complex task.

The octopus is an extraordinary marine creature, not only because of its three hearts but also due to the presence of nine brains. These unique adaptations are crucial to its survival and efficiency in complex underwater environments.

The three hearts function in a specialized manner: two of them, known as branchial hearts, pump blood to the gills, facilitating oxygen exchange, while the systemic heart circulates oxygenated blood throughout the body. Interestingly, the systemic heart stops beating during swimming, which explains why octopuses prefer crawling—they conserve energy by avoiding prolonged swimming, as it limits oxygen circulation.

Even more remarkable is the octopus’s neural system. In addition to a central brain, located between its eyes, each of the octopus's eight arms has its own mini-brain, or neural cluster, dedicated to controlling arm movement. This brings the total to nine brains. These decentralized brains allow the arms to function semi-independently, enabling the octopus to multitask efficiently. For example, an arm can explore, manipulate objects, or hunt prey without direct input from the central brain.

Moreover, the octopus’s blood is blue, due to the presence of hemocyanin, a copper-based molecule that excels at transporting oxygen in cold, low-oxygen environments. This, combined with the circulatory and neural systems, makes the octopus exceptionally well-adapted to life in the deep sea.

The octopus’s complex anatomy—three hearts, nine brains, and hemocyanin based blue blood—demonstrates a remarkable example of evolutionary specialization, allowing these animals to thrive in a wide range of challenging marine habitats.

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Not really a good sample count 😩

So the top post in the facts bounty is not a fact because it is a wasp 🤔😅

I used to drink coffee a lot but when i was about 30 i started feeling sick when i drank coffee. Stopped trinking it then and i must say i do not miss it now. Was a bit hard in the beginning though.

Did you correct for inflation?

As a german i do not understand why this is not normal.

Fiat money is a pyramid scheme used in societies where pyramid schemes are illegal.

Thank you for the details, i understand the problem better now. Maybe you could put aside some yield from fees to an "insurance fund". This fund could be used to mitigate the impact on users in case of the cancellation of a market. This would only be possible if a cancellation is a rare case, otherwise the fund would never get to a decent level ;) All in all this is a problem to be addressed later on i guess.

This sounds nice, as long as the team is not invested in the bets it resolves. I do not suggest this is the case, i just want to highlight the contra of centralized resolving.

Regarding the cancelation of a market: would it be possible to refund at the individual price the participants entered the market? Otherwise it would not really be a refund but more like a forced liquidation at marketprice.

I like the concept of decentralized prediction markets a lot but i have seen the shortcommings from decentralized prediction markets. Maybe you can help me understand with 2 real life examples how predyx would handle those better:

One good example would be what happened in polymarket.

The market was "who wins the venezuelan election" with the primary source "venezuelan official statement". So most participants betted Maduro Yes, because they expected it to be rigged. And the official statement was as expected: Maduro won. There was a catch though. The second source was "consensus of reporting". The market went through UMA multiple times and resulted in Maduro No.

How would you avoid this mess? Only a single source of truth?

Another example: "Will Kennedy withdraw from the presidential race by Friday" (The Friday he announced supporting the Trump campaign)

The market resolved to yes despite Kennedy repeatedly stating that he will only suspend his campaign while still running in the race. He made a deal to withdraw from the ballot in some states while still running in most states and even applying for new states. He also explained a way how he still can become president.

Things like those destroyed trust in the platform and made people think twice if they are really betting the event or betting on betting the event.

So please explain for the two examples how you would avoid this problem. There is a lot of money at stake and actors from both positions (yes and no) will try to influence how the market resolves, also using scam tactics.

How do you plan to resolve markets? Especially when they are controversial.

Living in a world that often feels like it's getting worse rather than better, I sometimes question whether having children was the right decision. After all, they will likely face more challenges than I did. However, I always find comfort in knowing that the world is better with them in it, and it would be worse without them. This gives me hope that humanity might eventually focus on what truly matters and come together to address the challenges we all face. Perhaps the next generation will be better than mine and those that came before.