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hello mothers and fuckers

@dykebutwithworms

carpenter - white - they/them - 19 - inclusionist. !!! i post untagged spoilers and i often do not tag triggers or nsfw (tho i will tag specific ones if asked)

Look if you follow me with a blank blog at this point you’re getting blocked. It’s not personal but if you hadn’t noticed we’re in the middle of a massive bot infestation.

Being on tumblr as a non-bot means participating. That means posting and reblogging. If you don’t do any of that there’s nothing to set you apart from the bots.

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new heights of extraversion - was at an airport, saw some guys repairing these friction lines, went up to them and asked questions

the lines turn out to be called 'grip strip' and they are using a 'putty knife' and a 'margin trowel' to apply it. The mixture will dry in 15m. Before it dries they also have to sprinkle sand on top and press in with the knife/trowel.

I was writing this down in a notebook, and they asked me what for, and I told them I'm sick of not knowing the words for things. Sometimes it feels like I don't know the words for anything! I've read so many words without ever mapping them to the physical things they corresponded to.

I'm going through the corridor that's outside of the airport building and leads into the airplane, I don't know what it's called either (edit: just asked the flight attendant, it's called a jet bridge)

There's yellow and black angled striped tape on the sides of the floor of the jet bridge, and I don't know why THAT'S there or what it's called. (edit: kind online people have informed me this is "hazard tape" / "hazard stripes" / "safety tape", and the general class is called "barricade tape".)

I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet but there’s a book called A Field Guide to Roadside Technology that’s got the names, what they do and pictures of 150 things you see beside the road.

if you’re having a bad day, here’s a cute little marching band

this actually made me cry with joy also one of them is eating noodles

It just keeps going and getting better. *^^*

Me two minutes ago: “cry with joy? an animation of cats playing instruments made someone cry with joy?”

Me now: (sobs into a tissue) “OH MY GOD THAT ONE IS PLAYING TWO RECORDERS AT THE SAME TIME” (blows nose)

CAT PARADE IS BACK

growth is pausing as i go to open twitter and thinking "actually we don't need to do that"

the difference is that twitter is like being actively hit in the head with hammers, whereas logging on to tumblr is like being a given a hammer and expected to hit my own head with it. which i do.

I’m sorry, if you are an anti-choicer and you call a fetus a “pre-born child” I am just straight up going to laugh at you

I myself am a “pre death corpse” which is why I should not have to pay any bills you see

Y'all ever get so excited about a scientific paper you're reading that you get chills???

So I thought to myself

Huh, a lot of our invasive species come from China and Japan

And then I thought, huh, I should look up what Kudzu is like in its natural habitat

And I found this article by a team of scientists investigating the history of Kudzu in China

And ohhhhh my goddddd. I'm vibrating with excitement over how cool this is.

The first bombshell that turned my brain inside out:

KUDZU IS NOT WILD. IT IS SEMI-DOMESTICATED.

In China, Kudzu has been a fundamentally important plant for food and textiles throughout history. We have Kudzu cloth that is 6,000 years old!

THIS PLANT CLOTHED AND FED ONE OF THE MOST POPULOUS AND MOST ENDURING HUMAN CULTURES ON EARTH

and in turn

HUMANS SHAPED AND SELECTED FOR ITS TRAITS

*AND*

in its natural range, humans are the main "predator" of kudzu

"Harvest by humans appears to be the major control mechanism in its native areas."

Kudzu is like that because it co-evolved with humans.

WHAT

YALL

This means

That Kudzu is so highly invasive because—just like most plants evolved to be grazed by herbivores and/or eaten by caterpillars, keeping them in balance with everything else—Kudzu basically evolved to be harvested by humans

The other half of the ecological partnership that keeps Kudzu in balance with everything else isn't a caterpillar or a hoofed beast. It's us.

I wanted to be really excited about this framing of the information contained within this paper. And I can definitely see how this interpretation of the paper comes across. But it's....not a fully accurate one.

There are a lot of reasons why Kudzu is considered invasive outside its natural habitat, not just its lack of adequate environmental moderators. And introducing human intervention doesn't actually make it non-invasive either.

Also, the paper doesn't say that kudzu evolved alongside humans to be controlled by them. It merely points out that humans may have had a hand in sustaining the high degree of genetic diversity within kudzu variations that we see as part of variable members of the same species. This variation does mean that it is more likely one is able to find a kudzu plant than another, less varied species, that is able to thrive in areas significantly different from its native lands, but this is not "kudzu evolving to be more invasive because humans are its main predator" unfortunately.

That said, this absolutely does indicate that effective commercial and personal use of kudzu plants could support control efforts! If people think of them as useful plants rather than nuisance ones, they might be more willing to put in the work to contain, cultivate, and harvest them properly.

On the other hand, this also poses an invasive risk. Introducing the plant to new regions for functional use risks its escape into the wild, at which point it is no longer guaranteed to be adequately controlled or curtailed any longer. This is how most invasives arrive in their invasive lands after all, so it should be no surprise that the idea of kudzu being a useful plant people cultivate on purpose isn't necessarily a wholly comfortable one.

People use kudzu for a lot of things, and if you want to rip up wild kudzu for fiber making or the like, I think that's a great idea. But I worry that this framing will give people the impression it's safe to plant kudzu anywhere they like as long as they plan to cultivate it, and that's not what this paper supports.

Oh, God, I would hope no one would get the idea of spreading it more than it's already spread.

But if you've been to the Southeastern United States—there's no shortage of the stuff.

Apart from that—humans continuously using the plant for 6,000 years or more is a selective pressure, even if no intentional artificial selection happened—and it appears that some artificial selection DID happen, so kudzu is definitely tailored for coexistence with humans to some extent.

This isn't an explanation for its invasiveness. But this paper hit me hard because almost all information about Kudzu that's out there deals with its invasiveness in the Southern USA, and there is barely any curiosity about how it behaves in its natural home.

Typically, a big reason for invasiveness is the absence of pathogens and herbivorous insects that eat the plant. But Kudzu, as discussed in the paper, has relatively few specialist insects that use it—its herbivores are mostly generalists, and they don't do much to limit its growth.

Instead, the paper argues that the main ecological force keeping Kudzu in balance with other organisms is humans.

So I am not concluding that humans made Kudzu more invasive—I am concluding that a major reason Kudzu is so ridiculously aggressive outside its native range is that outside its native range, humans don't perform the same ecological function of using Kudzu for everything!

It doesn't help that SE Asia and SE US have way more in common than the avg person realizes. Same climate zones and weather patterns, same patterns of biome, lots of similar/convergent lifeforms (alligators, giant salamanders, bamboo).

The overlap between SE Asian and SE USA ecosystems is so cool! They also both have magnolia and dogwood trees!

The genus Liriodendron, which has existed since the cretaceous period, has two extant members: one from the SE USA (Tulip Poplar) and one in SE Asia.

But, yes...This inquiry actually began with me googling species that are invasive in China and Japan, and it turns out that most of SE Asia's invasives are native to the SE USA

Pokeweed, Goldenrod, Amaranth, and Common Evening-Primrose are virulently invasive over there!

So it's basically a matter of parallel climates creating ideal conditions for species from the other continent, particularly weed species, which specialize in taking advantage of disturbance. And the ecosystem isn't properly adapted for them.

butch bi lesbian flags!

butch bi lesbian flags-

i made two butch bi lesbian flags (couldn’t decide which one i liked more!)

[Image ID: A flag with nine equally-sized horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colors are red-orange, orange, golden, pale golden, turquoise, pastel pink, hot pink, medium magenta, and deep purple. The bi lesbian symbol, a hot pink crescent moon partially surrounding a purple flower with a small teal crescent moon in the center, all outlined in pastel pink, is in the center of the flag. End ID.]

[Image ID: A flag with nine equally-sized horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colors are red-orange, orange, golden, pale golden, white, pastel pink, hot pink, medium magenta, and deep purple. The bi lesbian symbol, a hot pink crescent moon partially surrounding a purple flower with a small teal crescent moon in the center, all outlined in pastel pink, is in the center of the flag. End ID.]

flags by me :3 tagging @neopronouns@bi-lesbian​ 

I've seen a fair amount of fat liberation activists explain that they have always been fat, they're not about to stop, and that's natural and beautiful and fine. That's an incredibly important message.

What I've seen less - and what I want to remind people of - is this: if you've become fat, that's also natural and beautiful and fine.

When you're a fat person who has been thin in the past, that comes with its own brand of shaming. People take your history of thinness as proof that you don't have to be fat. You often fear the look of disappointed surprise in the eyes of someone you haven't met since you were thin. People try to determine "what happened". They don't see your fat body as just you, but as a sort of symptom that isn't part of you.

Becoming fat is not a tragedy, it's not a sign of failure, it's not a bad or shameful thing. The thin you is not the Real you. You are always real and always worthy of freedom, respect and peace. You are allowed to be fat no matter how or when you became fat.

Several of my friends who previously self-identified as bi are realizing they've lost interest in men, generally speaking

A friend of mine who's identified as a lesbian her whole life fell in love with a very sweet and shy man

I lost interest in men a few years ago, fell in love with a non-binary person, and now I give them their T shots

Life and love are unpredictable

And "queer" is a great word that all of us like and self-identify with (along with our other, more specific labels), and I love that no matter what else happens, we're still, always queer

I really don’t understand why some people are so hostile to the idea that attraction can be fluid. Let people love how they love.

if you hate this Thing, then the Thing you hate is actually just the female form

like................................be serious

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As a seamstress, that last meme is the truth. (I mean the message behind it, not literally.)

You look bad in your clothes because they are made to be cheap, not to fit your body. Modern clothing relies on stretch materials to fit around the largest possible range of bodies, not to be flattering to any body. For all of human history until recently, clothing was custom made for individuals, but that doesn't sell large volumes of clothing units so capitalism says it's not the clothes that are wrong, it's your body and your fault. You should buy more stuff.

Celebrities have clothes custom made or custom tailored. Some people just happen to have bodies close to the digital "ideal" models that are used to size clothes. But most people don't.

It's the clothes, I promise. They are made for profit, not for you.

The problem is once again. Capitalism.

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will. —Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism, 1995
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[id: Tweet by iconawrites, which reads: "I love public libraries because they are built on the principle that books are so important and so necessary to human flourishing that access to them cannot depend on your income." end id.]

I was a grown ass adult before I realized the library was free.  I went into the library and asked to join.  When they gave me the form to fill out for a library card, I asked if they took credit cards and the librarian had to explain to me that the library was free.  You did not pay to join it.

I cried.

ITS FREE?? YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO PAY MONEY FOR THE CARD??? THATS AMAZING

I think some librsries might have you oay a small fee for the card but most dont.

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Most don't charge for the card as long as it's your first one. There may be a $5 fee to replace it if you lose it.

Or not. Depends on the local library's funds. But their budget generally includes free cards for users.

Libraries are free! We may charge if you don't live in our county/state/down/district, but that's because your taxes don't go toward paying for us. Many libraries are even going fine free for late materials, so if you're forgetful like me, it's okay! And we offer e-book and downloadable audiobook services, so you can get books for free even from home!

Use your local library, we're pretty cool!

Accepting identities I don't understand is actually extremely easy because I just go "this isn't about me" and move on with my life unbothered by someone else's identity, it's truly that simple.