YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Nine-Inch Snails

74 points zdw 12 hours ago 36 comments

soupfordummies 10 hours ago | parent

Excellent headline and graphic

sublinear 10 hours ago | parent

my whole existence is flan

teeray 9 hours ago | parent

Terrible Slime

kridsdale1 6 hours ago | parent

The Inward Spiral

zahlman 9 hours ago | parent

Closer (just give me a few hours to get there)

adzm 6 hours ago | parent

Happiness in slithering

sellmesoap 6 hours ago | parent

Fragile, and further down the spiral, sounds like snail attributes all along. I recommend the mollusk by ween while we're on the subject.

ai_critic 10 hours ago | parent

> The snails, which actually grow to about eight inches in length, but can stretch—if nothing else, for headline-writing purposes—to nine inches, have worried Florida authorities since 1969.

Delightfully self-aware.

drivingmenuts 4 hours ago | parent

The writer probably had to have a private moment when she realized she could use this title.

harperlee 3 minutes ago | parent

Awesome way to show you’re not an LLM, by the way.

zem 10 hours ago | parent

I remember when those snails invaded bombay in the 80s. saw one or two, and then they were suddenly everywhere. it was amazing how fast it happened.

giardini 9 hours ago | parent

paywall.

chihuahua 7 hours ago | parent

One of the world's most 1EET H4X0R5, who hasn't left his parents' basement in 10 years and is rumored to be the operator of 5chan, told me that you can use archive.is to circumvent most paywalls, including that of The Atlantic.

ggm 7 hours ago | parent

Or, and don't take my word for it, ask Abraham Lincoln, who told me to try "reader mode" in Firefox.

walrus01 9 hours ago | parent

We should get Trent Reznor's opinion on these.

codedokode 9 hours ago | parent

Small snails look cute but 8-inch snail sounds a bit scary. Also how do they avoid being eaten by predators if they are slow and vulnerable?

Also I recently saw small slugs which were crawling on the sidewalk along with worms who get to the surface after rain. I wonder what those slugs were planning to do given its middle of October and temperature is merely 10°C (50F)?

PeterHolzwarth 9 hours ago | parent

"but 8-inch snail sounds a bit scary"

Avoid Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

planckscnst 5 hours ago | parent

I've lived in Seattle for 12 years and have never seen a slug here let alone a large one. I have seen those sidewalk worms after the rain, though

derektank 3 hours ago | parent

Banana slugs are long but not particularly large. Also, you only rarely see them in cities

pixl97 8 hours ago | parent

Some things eat them like opossum and foxes, but the snails spread bad parasites so animals might learn to avoid them.

They can fertilize themselves so you only need one. And they lay 1600 or so eggs a year in batches of around 200.

They are breeding machines.

fermentation 4 hours ago | parent

These giant snails are actually also really cute

karim79 9 hours ago | parent

My personal favourite parasite is the human botfly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatobia_hominis

This bastard is a fascinating one. I mean there are others, but this one is close to my heart.

throwup238 5 hours ago | parent

I recommend reading accounts of traveling through the Amazon, like The Lost City of Z. The number of pests in rainforests that do horrifying things to the human body is astounding and the botflies are only one of them. Makes me thankful for modern conveniences like pure DEET.

duskwuff 5 hours ago | parent

> this one is close to my heart.

That sounds dangerous - you should probably see a doctor. ;)

skipkey 8 hours ago | parent

The salt river northeast of Phoenix has been infested with apple snails from central america - they get up to 6" or so. The forest service regularly runs events where people in kayaks and on paddle boards help clear that section of river of the clumps of eggs.

ButlerianJihad 8 hours ago | parent

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!

hypfer 5 hours ago | parent

Topic itself aside, that is some fantastic writing. A joy to read and a genuine value proposition.

That is what journalism worth its paywall looks like.

WarOnPrivacy 5 hours ago | parent

A FL county just north of Tampa has been dealing with GALS for a few years https://www.cityofnewportrichey.org/Departments/Public-Works...

wilbo 5 hours ago | parent

The article only briefly mentions the horrors of rat lungworm, but if you live in a warm, tropical climate where this is prevalent (Hawaii, increasingly Florida) you really want to avoid it.

Apparently there is some evidence that people born in regions where it is more prevalent have some natural resistance.

The main way to get it is accidentally ingesting an infected slug on raw produce, like leafy greens.

Here's a podcast on this parasite, what's known about it and how to avoid it: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-daniel-and-kellys-extraor...

3RTB297 4 hours ago | parent

I know people don't want to hear it, but when cooked correctly, wild-caught African land snails are actually delicious. They do take some work to scrub the foot pad, and you want to cook them for a long time to both soften them up, and obviously to ensure there's no parasites left. But in a Ghanaian spinach soup - amazing.

I say wild caught, because farmed snails are fed wilted lettuce, and taste like wilted, rotten lettuce.

MrDrMcCoy 1 hour ago | parent

Good flavor I can buy, but the last time I tried snails it was the texture that had me gagging.

10729287 35 minutes ago | parent

To be honest most of us French only love it for the garlic butter we serve them with.

chasil 3 hours ago | parent

https://archive.ph/CPsFp

whilenot-dev 1 hour ago | parent

OT, but giant African snails love to eat colored paper, and since their body won't absorb the pigments, they'll produce colorful excrements which can be used as experimental material: https://dornob.com/bright-blue-snail-poo-excrement-used-to-m...

xyxc 38 minutes ago | parent

My favourite band.