Ancestors

Written by Aaron on 2025-01-14 at 22:58

• KICKS DOOR DOWN*

Hey everyone! Hate AI web crawlers? Have some spare CPU cycles you want to use to punish them?

Meet Nepenthes!

https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes

This little guy runs nicely on low power hardware, and generates an infinite maze of what appear to be static files with no exit links. Web crawlers will merrily hop right in and just .... get stuck in there! Optional randomized delay to waste their time and conserve your CPU, optional markovbabble to poison large language models.

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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-14 at 23:11

The software gets it's name from a genus of carnivorous pitcher plants with a climbing vine-like growth habit and often vividly colored traps to consume insects. They were popular in Victorian times as decoration in greenhouse.

He's one of mine, a hybrid cultivar. (This is almost #bloomscrolling )

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Written by My camera shoots fascists on 2025-01-17 at 04:55

@aaron

Dunno about this species, but many pitcher plants have downward facing hair likes spines that make it impossible for its insect pray to back out. The bug just keeps going deeper and deeper until it lands in the little pool of the plant's digestive juices at the bottom. Truly devilish.

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Toot

Written by Aaron on 2025-01-17 at 05:05

@Mikal I don't recall hairs on the inside of any of my nepenthes plants, but, I've also not looked inside the pitchers in detail. My favorite detail is how the upper and lower pitchers vary in color.

Carnivores are really cool in general! I love sarracenia and darlingtonia quite a bit too but never acquired any.

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Descendants

Written by My camera shoots fascists on 2025-01-17 at 05:56

@aaron

I've seen lots of Darlingtonia in the wild in Northern California and southern Oregon.

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Written by Aaron on 2025-01-17 at 14:49

@Mikal That's awesome. I'd love to get out that way. I spent a weekend in Seattle but never left the city to see any of the real ecology.

Exploring the west coast has been on my list for a long time now, but it's such a long way to go.

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