recovery is not just the option, it is the inevitable
little quick thing. i know how to wield a pen and paper sometimes
sibling relationships are so strange... like i love you. you will never understand me in a way that matters. we are the same person in drastically different ways. we are sewn together. we don't talk. we are attached at the hip. you wish i was never born. can i call you. let's eat together. i forgive you. etc
i don't have enough photos of you on my phone to make one your contact picture. we got the same tattoo completely by coincidence. why do you always get to be mario. i love the meals you cook. we live in different universes. you can stay at my house if you need. we have never been friends. you are more important to me than anyone on this earth
nessimaki-deactivated20141106
Babe, you okay? you reblogged “and we were nice to each other” like 12 times again
I think one of the absolute most frustrating things for me personally about the current climate crisis / late stage capitalism hell is that ontop of people just outright denying it and acting like the rising temperatures are normal- there’s been like. A VERY noticeable decline in the amount of insects yearly. As someone who goes out of my way to see bugs, every single year for the past decade there has been a sharp decline in bugs. What used to be fun filled summer months running around, catching grasshoppers and petting caterpillars… there’s nothing. I’ve seen one grasshopper this year. I’ve not seen a single caterpillar! It’s currently the ant nuptial flight season in my area and I’ve seen 0 winged ants. They used to all but infest my home during flight season
I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.
And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!
Anyways. Fellow entomology nerds, have any of you also noticed a drastic decrease in bugs you’re finding yearly or is my area just in a bug deficit.
I believe you. I also believe that this is a terrible fate that can be changed.
The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.
No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.
It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.
The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere... This is so ingrained in us that "grass" might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children's books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.
This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.
For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)
And I've started to see bugs I've never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.
I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.
Outside isn't supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.
And remember that "Weeds" are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.
Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.
So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that's because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.
It's actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!
We make Weeds...and Weeds make Us.
Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants' heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.
Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.
When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.
We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.
(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA's most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it's literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)
(since industrial agriculture is probs the biggest cause of insect decline...I think there is very real reason to feel encouraged.)
I was reminded earlier of an article I read ages ago detailing a survey about accents and how American accents were considered more attractive than UK accents, and - internationally - the southern accent (but which one I wonder?) was considered one of the most attractive English accents there is, and I just...
Have you ever been read poetry in a Georgia lilt?
An Appalachian-tinged gasp in your ear huddled close under heavy blankets on a December night?
The growing breadth of a Piedmont voice when they're excited to see you for the first time after months apart?
man, seeing the two right next to each other like that really hammers home how ecologically desolate tree plantations are. Compared to the natural forest that pine plantation may as well be a graveyard.
“Planting trees” is nothing but a buzzword.
D&D has become so much more fun since it clicked for me that I'm not the character, I'm the writer in charge of the character
If you're the character, bad rolls and bad calls reflect badly on you. You want to Win because that means you're doing D&D right, and if things go wrong, it's because you're doing it wrong.
If you're the writer, your number one job is to do things to your character that the character does not like because that gives them the chance to be interesting.
Found on a 16 miler on 08/20, mid-80s and sunny after a cooler week. Flat and partially shaded environment.
I think it is a golden milkcap (lactarius psammicola).
Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a big deal in feminist science fiction for being one of the first widely popular and critically acclaimed works to do cool shit with sex and gender (which was certainly nothing new, but previous such works had rarely "taken off" the way LHoD did). It was criticized for referring to the genderfluid characters with the indefinite "he," which was a la mode in style guides at the time, instead of using alternating or gender-neutral pronouns. In time Le Guin came to agree with this criticism; she considered her decision not to take things further one of her biggest literary regrets, stating that "I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns."
I tell you this only because the phrase "I am haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns" is one I think about a lot.
I wish I could search for music in hyper-specific ways that make sense to me. Like, right now I’m looking for “instrumental music that sounds like Southern California” and “instrumental music that sounds like the deserts of the southwestern United States.” There is no algorithm that can help me with this.
Spoilers for Barbie I guess
As a trans woman, whoever wrote this is cool as hell. Cooler than whiney shits who try to hide in tumblr tags, anyways.
I wanna know what they meant by “Kate McKinnon (ugh)”
like what’s that supposed to mean
Try gendering me correctly and ill tell ya
wait, that’s your review?
Mhm
Oh fuck, my bad fam. Uh, here, lemme try that again...
I wanna know what *she* meant by “Kate McKinnon (ugh)”
Kate McKinnon has been in multiple transphobic comedy skits, and though she's probably not a terf or anything, she has consistently been apart of transphobic stuff that's very grinding. And I dont think she's funny. So "ugh" is the text form of me rolling my eyes.
i have neither a good imagination nor aphantasia, but a secret third thing
When I do this the apple always spins way too fast like bitch calm down you have no where to be wtf
"damn I'm crying over an insect" "why am I having such strong feelings over how the sky looks" "it's weird how happy this small thing made me feel" THAT'S BECAUSE YOU LIVE HERE!!!! you live on this earth. everything all the time is an experience, no matter how common or mundane. this world is unique. so are its small moments. it is good to enjoy a tiny thing. you love the world even at its smallest scale.
it does more harm than good to prop up the myth of the ‘neurotypical’ who completes tasks cheerfully with no issues. this person is a capitalist fantasy. the more you define yourself in comparison to this myth the more you justify social structures staying the same with minor accommodations to the ‘exceptions’ and the continued pathologizing of discomfort under hostile conditions
sometimes i wish i had facial hair
like sexy stubble or something that would be so cool
perfect
im not coming back to tumblr i just needed to find this post in order to dunk on my younger self. you absolute baby buffoon. you dumbass
I feel like practicing any skill would be way more fun if I could have a lil level increase thing that pops up in front of me every time I do good like in Skyrim
“Push ups increased to level 5”
“Writing dialogue increased to level 37”
“Coping mechanisms (healthy) increased to level 18”
being transfem these days is so surreal. like you're in a room where the walls keep moving towards each other and the door is locked, and on top of it there's someone on the intercom telling you not to be so tense about it
when İ grew up, the notion that trannies should be treated with respect & dignity was ludicrous. then cis ppl started acting like that was never the case & we were crazy for thinking it was. and now we're more or less quietly moving back to the first state. like some sort of bizarre mandela effect u-turn