The thing with the stuff

A bee-keeper of Valeni village transports his bees in his bee wagon. Romania.

My 6000 children. I wasn't involved directly in planting most of them this year. But they're still my children. Once a day I gotta walk the field for Issues and Difficulties

I'm looking through powerpoint templates for a class presentation and was absolutely blown away by this one. I don't care what the topic is supposed to be, all of my future powerpoints have to have the Wizard

transparent gay rights wizard for all your transparent gay rights wizard needs

You cannot possibly guess where this is going

I ain't even ashamed how many times I watched this.

Lmao this is the content I am here for.

I have an essay brewing in my head constantly about lawns. Which, well, unsurprising, since I post about how I hate lawns all the time, but I think the "lawn" and "landscaping" centered way of thinking about Places Outside is a Bigger Thing that Connects to Other Things

(What isn't? Having ideas about concepts is always like this.)

I will introduce my ideas by a situation where they apply: Sometimes life-forms mimic other life forms. One form of mimicry is called Vavilovian mimicry, where weed species in crops grown by humans evolve over time to be more similar to the crops.

Vavilovian mimicry basically helps weeds survive because the weeds are adapted to the care-taking regimen of the crops, and because the human caretakers of the crop can have a hard time telling them apart, which means they might say "Ehh...I'll wait until it grows up so I can be sure I'm not pulling up my crop."

I think there's something similar at work among flower gardens and landscaping...but it's different.

Regular people don't know the name of every plant that might possibly grow in their flower beds, and they often pull up plants they don't know just because they don't know them. They sometimes say they pull up a plant that "looks weedy" or "looks like a weed."

I think to myself...what does "weedy" look like?

This question collided unexpectedly in my brain with an insight I had about invasive species that I could not explain.

I have to get rid of a lot of Callery pear, wintercreeper, honeysuckle, burningbush, privet, English ivy, and other plants that are invasive where I live. And strangely- many invasive plants look similar in ways they don't share with very many native species. They tend to have small, round or squat, glossy leaves, and they tend to have a very dense growth habit.

I can think of several possible explanations: Maybe these species thrive in North America today because of the loss of controlled burning, but their characteristics look so distinct next to native species because they relate to things that would make a species fire-intolerant? This doesn't seem quite right, since it doesn't predict level of fire-adaptedness in native species.

Another explanation is better: they were selected for these traits by humans for their usefulness in landscaping. Dense growth habit would be useful for creating hedges or ground covers. This is why many invasives were originally planted, right? And small leaves might feel or be perceived as less "messy" when they fall.

But I think this is a clue to something else going on. What does "weedy" look like?

Some plants go on one side of "weeds vs. flowers" and some on the other, and it's almost totally arbitrary...so how do gardeners make the call so decisively?

I think about the commonest "landscaping" plants- Knock Out roses, hostas, petunias, begonias, boxwoods and so on- they share a lot of the characteristics mentioned above. Shiny or at least smooth, typically small and squat leaves, dense and compact growth habit.

Then I think about some of the commonest and most important "weedy" native wildflowers, such as goldenrods, asters, milkweeds, Joe-Pye weed, ironweed, sunflower. They all differ from the above in at least one striking way. Mostly, they have hairy leaves and stems, long and thin leaves, and a tendency to grow up tall before blooming. Milkweed has smooth leaves, but its leaves are long and very big. Hmm...

And I think I can guess where this is coming from.

Landscaping and garden designs often look like this

See how the plants are drawn and arranged to cover a space in two dimensions, mostly not overlapping with each other? This is very easy to plan and design. And those common landscaping plants I mentioned—hostas, Knock Out roses, boxwoods, and so on—are very good at acting just like a two-dimensional representation of them does. Just look, you can see them:

Now look at those important native wildflowers I mentioned:

Goldenrod

Ironweed

Milkweed

These guys don't fill much space in a horizontal plane, they go straight up. They don't exclude other plants from very much space either. Plants could grow under them and among them. So they're not very good for "filling up" space, and their opener, lankier, less dense shape doesn't do a good job at blocking other plants from growing.

In a garden of North American prairie- or meadow-adapted plants, the plants wouldn't exclude each other and stay within their designated spots because they're evolved to intermix with a great variety of plants.

"Separateness" is a big part of the typical "landscape" aesthetic. These plants are very neatly separate from each other. This is what looks "neat" and well-kept to us...the opposite of "weedy."

This could mean our garden and flower beds are affected by a selective pressure a lot like the Vavilovian mimicry situation. But instead of weeds being selected to look like intentionally grown plants, the intentionally grown plants are being selected to look different from weeds.

The subtle difference makes perfect sense. In a field, the rule is "leave the plant there if you're unsure" because that's your food. In a flower bed, the rule is "get rid of the plant if you're unsure" because having weeds is more aesthetically unacceptable than having blank space.

The point is: Ecology needs to be a big part of gardening and landscaping, because you are DOING ecology. Even if you don't know the evolutionary principles, you're acting them out.

Just like the ineffable preferences of female birds give the males weird elaborate display structures, ineffable aesthetic "senses" that govern our "built" world slowly turn it into something weird.

Plague doctor outfits are so fucking cool. They're magic hazmat gear.

this shouldnt be the funniest thing in the world to me but here we are

looking at the independent article on this, somehow the original post he made is even more insane than the headline implies

shout out all my misfits, mutants, marxists, and communists

hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!

No no no! Jewish LGBTQ kinderlach! Go to Keshet! 

hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.

If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too! 

Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!

Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!

–BB

MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.

REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS

ok!

the catholic old white guy asked me to explain lgbtq+ to him and it was honestly kind of funny

“okay! you have 15 seconds to explain non-binary to me if there are only male and female genders”

me: if you lost your genitals would you still feel like a man?

“no”

would you feel like a woman?

“no?”

so you wouldn’t feel male or female

“yeah what’s your point?”

So, you wouldn’t fit into the gender binary of male or female? :)

him:

“so non-binary just means not feeling male or female?”

Yeah basically

“so why do they use “they” so much”?

if you were a woman would you want to be called a man?

“no…”

And the opposite?

“no…”

Why why would you want someone to call you male or female if you’re not male or female then?”

it’s not a perfect way of thinking but i had 15 seconds and i think it got the point across

Today my aunt was telling me about how one of my other aunts refuses to gender me correctly and is mad at me and I said I dunno why she’s so mad at me I’m just some guy and then my aunt said

“You’re not just some guy. You’re her fucking nephew and she should view you as a whole person instead of the stereotype about trans people she has in her head.”

And. I think I might’ve been putting up with too much in my personal life before now.

Who is that white specter who greets me with hollow black eyes and toothy grin? Do not fear dear wanderer, those sharp teeth tear only roots, and those dark eyes see only shadows. The dorra is not concerned with the living.

Ghost Dorra Room Guardian

Available this Sunday Nov 13 at 12 pm EST in my shop!

See how it’s made on my Patreon.

MYTH: Americans set off fireworks on the 4th of July, in honor of our Independence Day

FACT: Americans set off fireworks from approximately June 20th—July 20th, for no reason other than this is the time of year that you can literally buy them at any grocery store

Fun fact: in places where it’s illegal for Americans to purchase, own, or light fireworks for any reason without going through all sorts of red tape, Americans gather in large groups to watch Official Settings Off of Fireworks on the 4th of July, supposedly in honor of our Independence Day, but mostly because it’s the only day of the year that most of these people get to see fireworks go off without having to worry about the police and the fire department showing up to arrest someone

Myth: if it’s illegal for Americans to set off fireworks in their county, they don’t set any off

Truth: they go to the next county where it’s legal and set them off for at least two weeks. Including the same kinds of fireworks as in the official displays, and with no regard to the fact that we’re in the middle of a fucking drought, fucking hell, do you WANT to burn the entire neighborhood down???

bold of you to assume anybody bothers going to the next county to set them off

(to buy them, yeah, there’s plenty of state borders and county lines where there’s fireworks sales about fifty feet into the legal side of the boundary, for the residents of where fireworks are illegal to stock up and drive home)

i feel like every human should max out at one disability or chronic illness. like when i hit adolescence and my brain chemistry went “bipolar time now?” the response should have been an error message like sorry! this slot can only contain one (1) item and has been filled with childhood asthma. i would even allow the possibility that you can overwrite previous disorders like “you have equipped chronic migraines and so no will no longer display symptoms of bipolar disorder.” i just think it should work that way.

The millennial litmus test for sexuality was 100% Pirates of the Caribbean. I was 13 when the first movie came out. Literally everyone walked into that movie having been lured there by the attractiveness of Orlando Bloom in LOTR. The truly straight girls had been drawn in by his entry-level attractiveness and walked out lusting over the significantly older and manlier Jack Sparrow. The others had been unconsciously drawn in by Legolas's femininity and walked out with their eyes opened and lusting over Keira Knightley.

Important missed categories that have been pointed out to me:

Not yet mentioned:

I wanted to watch the credits on repeat for the awesome soundtrack

lichen lycan. is this anything.

this heat wave is bad enough here in texas but the core of it is in mexico and it looks real fuckin bad. straight up the worst heat wave in mexico in recorded history and it's only gonna get worse

if i ever write something set in the united states im just going to do zero research whatsoever and make stuff up to sound cool it’s equality

the lush impenetrable jungles of massachusetts

god gives his coolest girlfriends to his most loser reddit bros

Happy Pollinator week to the Baltic Isopod, the first underwater pollinator discovered by science! Lab studies imply that their activities help pollinate seagrass and macroalgea. Is there anything isopods can't do?

Sorry if I frightened you mate, rock on! by Tomislav Jagnjic via ImaginaryBehemoths