My conservative family members seeing me taking up embroidery:
One week later when I post the finished project:
I had to reblog this as soon as I stopped laughing
My sister did this. Only her masterpiece that my parents HATE is
Express yourself through handicrafts 😁
May I add:
and my mother's all-time least favorite that I have hanging in my bathroom:
Proud of my city tonight
y'all ever reach the end of google
I'm starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.
I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.
This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests
@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.
Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches
And THEN.
I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.
HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.
I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."
Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.
I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.
It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research
There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA
Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."
The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.
It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.
I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.
Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.
The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.
Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren't living long enough to reach mature size or aren't healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.
You'll never guess what I spent a month frantically researching myself to madness about earlier this year!
[Image 1: tags that read, “There's bamboo native to the United States??? Hello??? Is this gonna turn into a research thing like @inneskeeper 's soy sauce saga? Either way, this is some of the most information of all time.”
Images 2 to 4: photos of plants.
Image 5: tags reading, “This reminds me of how my professors told me, there's likely so many undescribed extinct species because there's more fossils than there is manpower to go through and analyze them, and the specimen storage space for so many research places/museums are chock full of specimens that have been sitting for YEARS if not decades, that like. Yeah, no one really examined it. I don't know what it is.”
End description.]
I find it personally offensive how many bad writers can get published so easily.
I used to find it reassuring, like, "Haha, wow, if THIS can get published..." but now I take it to mean "It doesn't matter if your book is good or not, all that matters is if you're in the right social circles (and you're not)"
still so charmed by the way rose tyler is so unapologetically lower class without the narrative like. consistently telling you that. it’s all stuff you see between her flat and her bottle blonde hair with roots poking through and and her clumpy mascara and her clothes that don’t fit quite right and her passion for looking out for the underdog. it’s just so refreshing to have the protagonist of a show not be so squeaky clean and polished or a complete antihero but just some completely normal girl shaped by the way she grew up
Rose Tyler met aliens and immediately went “Hello, do you know what unions are? Do you want to learn?” and that’s so powerful of her.
Do not talk about your abusive family on tiktok. Do not talk about your closeted identity on tiktok. Do not talk about your traumas and mental illnesses on tiktok. Do not talk about your plans to move out from your abusive household on tiktok. Do not talk about the ways you disagree with your bigoted family on tiktok.
Do not attach your face or voice to anything on tiktok that you do not want your family members, neighbors, coworkers, or classmates to see. Be smart and stay safe.
Before posting ANYTHING on tiktok, ask yourself what could happen if your video is recommended to someone who recognizes you in real life.
If you're talking about your abusive mother, what will happen if one of her friends sees your video? If you're talking about being a closeted trans teen, what will happen if your friend's parents see your video? Will there be consequences? Will you be in danger? Are you in a safe enoigh position where that information getting out wouldn't put you at risk? What information do you want circulating about yourself?
Hey, I'm seeing some concerning tags on this post so I want to clarify something:
Your parents not using tiktok/not being good with the internet in general does not mean you're safe from them finding your videos. I have a cousin who posted about her mom's abuse on tiktok and that video was recommended to a family friend who showed it to her mom.
Your videos could be seen by a classmate who tells their parents who tells your parents. They could be seen by a teacher who calls your parent about them. They could be seen by one of your parents' coworkers or your cousins or your siblings or one of your neighbors or a hundred other people who could eventually lead it to your parents somehow.
Do not attach your face to this shit. Do not share any identifying information. Tiktok specifically reocmmends videos based on location, your phone contacts, and any other social media you're connected to. Your videos will reach someone you don't want seeing them, even if you turn off location settings.
ok maybe there are still some funny people on twitter
[image ID: a tweet from user @ TawandaGona that reads “Ima say Candyman 5 times while my homie says Beetlejuice 3 times and we gon make em fight”. Followed by a screenshot of a blue iPhone text that read “ * WWE Announcer voice * : AND HERE COMES BLOODY MARY WITH THE STEEL CHAIR” /end ID]
Deep Frog
do you think this is what lovecraft meant whenever he described something as being beyond description
“It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.”
— H. P. Lovecraft,
At the Mountains of Madness
This.. actually makes a fine reference to what a lovecraftian eldritch abomination SHOULD BE. not just.. tentacles and darkness. Perpetually changing, not cemented in form, with an otherworldly feel to it. Completely unrecognizable by most human descriptions, and only able to be viable perceived by those fine enough to be an adept wordsmith.
I think that this is very nearly an ideal representation of a lovecraftian eldritch horror, because the video that we see is (I’m fairly certain) footage that has been fed through Google deep dream.
The reason the frog looks so weird is because the program is trying to look at the frog, figure out what it is, and then overlay other images of the same thing.
The the thing about lovecraftian horrors issn’t just that they look conventionally weird or gross or scary. Instead, they are things that are so utterly alien that the human mind cannot properly comprehend what it is looking at. They defy description because they defy understanding.
And here we have a video of a computer, a simple silicon substitute for the human mind, struggling to understand what it is looking at, in much the same way that you would be hard pressed to understand a shoggoth.
deep frog
forbidden knowledge
LGBT students at Yeshiva University are in trouble. Here’s how you can help.
If you don’t want to click the first link the TLDR is that LGBT students at YU formed a student group. The school refuses to recognize them so the group doesn’t have access to all the resources that other student groups have, so the students in the group brought the school to court. The New York County Supreme Court said that the school had to recognize the group so now the school is taking it to the Supreme Court saying that the New York County court order infringes on their religious freedom.
The second link is where you can donate to Jewish Queer Youth, an organization by and for LGBT Orthodox Jews who are working closely with YU LGBT students.
I see a lot of people making comments about how religion is bad or that Judaism is homophobic and I just want to say that there are many queer observant Jews, not just because their family or community has them in a position where they don’t have a choice (although that is the case for many people as well), but there are many queer Jews who do find meaningful experiences within Judaism, including probably many of the students at YU who are bringing their school to court. If you want to be in solidarity with queer Jews you have to support both the Jewish and the queer parts of our identity.
#my wife is on the SOR for being gay #no joke #she hit on a girl in a straight bar once #in 1997 #and while the girl was into it #the off duty cop sitting nearby was not #and so he arrested her for ‘soliciting homosexual activity’ #which in our state was still a felony #in 1997 (and would remain so until Lawrence v Texas in 2003) #and since ‘soliciting homosexual activity’ was a felony and a sex crime #she got put on The List #she is still on there to this day #because it costs MONEY to ask a judge to take you off #and she has tried four times#since 2003 #to get taken off the SOR #but every time the judge has said something like ‘no you pled guilty to the crime i can’t possibly take you off the sex offender registry’ #with no acknowledgement of what the actual crime was #(the crime of being a butch lesbian hitting on a cute girl who was into it) #(in 1997)
Reposting these tags with consent from the person that wrote them. The post about the Sex Offenders Registry is locked, but these tags are too important to go unnoticed.
Younger queer people need to realize that the SOR being used against queer people simply for being queer isn’t some ancient history thing. It still impacts queer people today. And it can quite easily be used that way again.
i hope something goes sooo fucking wrong at the funeral lol like a pallbearer sneezes and the quarter ton coffin just goes spilling into the street
[image description: a set of gifs of Miss Piggy of the Muppets, wearing her trademark pearl necklace, but also a pink hard hat and a flannel shirt. The captions read: “People underestimate me because I’m so glamorous. What they don’t understand is I’m a strong woman. And that strength comes from my values, my courage, and my dogged pursuit of vengeance.”]
For those who aren’t getting the brilliance- this couple (?) is streaming World of Warcraft and I think are dressed up as their characters. Two normal sized people, one of whom is playing a dwarf. And who takes it upon himself to pretend to be too short to just get off his chair and then, aware that his SO also has her camera going, proceeds to walk across the frame on his knees to give the illusion that he’s actually that short.
