i almost wrote "sideeyeing anyone who tells me they like that book" but then realized that
i only saw through that book's flimsy science because of two university courses i took, one with a module on How to Lie With Statistics, and one that was explicitly about epistemic failures in science journalism. probably anyone who recommends me pop-science books hasn't taken philosophy courses to train this specific spidey sense and i need to remember to be charitable instead of derisive!
The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.
First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.
As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.
When people speak of the wood-wide web, they are generally referring to CMNs. But there’s very little that scientists can say with certainty about how, and to what extent, trees interact via CMNs. Unfortunately, that hasn’t prevented the emergence of wildly speculative claims, often with little or no experimental evidence to back them up.
One common assertion is that seedlings benefit from being connected to mature trees via CMNs. However, across the 28 experiments that directly tackled that question, the answer varied depending on the trees’ species, and on when, where, and in what type of soil the seedling is planted. In other words, there is no consensus. Allowed to form CMNs with larger trees, some seedlings seem to perform better, others worse, and still others seem to behave no differently at all. Field experiments designed to allow roots of trees and seedlings to intermingle — as they would in natural forest conditions — cast still more doubt on the seedling hypothesis: In only 18 percent of those studies were the positive effects of CMNs strong enough to overcome the negative effects of root interactions. To say that seedlings generally grow or survive better when connected to CMNs is to make a generalization that simply isn’t supported by the published research.
Other widely reported claims — that trees use CMNs to signal danger, to recognize offspring, or to share nutrients with other trees — are based on similarly thin or misinterpreted evidence. How did such a weakly sourced narrative take such a strong grip on the public imagination?
Source: undark.org
#i read The Secret Life Of Trees years ago#and was astounded at how unscientific it was#everyone was heralding it as a revelation#but there was no PROOF#also it was a weirdly imperialist book#as he frequently extrapolated from european ecology to insist that his pet theories must be true worldwide#it's great if you take it as scifi because it is literally science fiction
don’t like it when people say you can’t have potatoes in ur fantasy novel without detailed explanation. who gives a fuck
“ohh in europe they didnt have those until” well its not europe is it. its middle earth its earthsea its some country somebody made up
when people say that though they are not necessarily doing a cinemasins gotcha about Realism though they are often pointing out that colonialism and its results are so deeply ingrained into the global north’s understanding of its own history that they backport those results into their cultural imaginary of the european past where these fantasy worlds clearly and transparently draw from innit
roofbeams-deactivated20180202
Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you
Why are your stupid little wizards and knights eating potato stew in your dumb European middle ages fantasy world. Where did they get potatoes from. Where is the center of domestication of potatoes, do you have a fantasy Andean civilization? What are the social and economic consequences of having such a calorie rich crop in cold climates. I don't care about "themes" or "enemies to lovers with found family", I didn't ask about that. Where does your idiot space captain gets their shitty coffee from. Is it imported from Earth? Are there coffee growing worlds? Is it an alien species replacement with the same name? What are the social consequences of that? Don't try to change the subject, I'll stop pointing the gun when I want, I'm trying to have a conversation here,
middle schooler obsessed with using perfect grammar online -> adult who uses like every text abbreviation possible
Master the rules then grow beyond them obviously
“I read in a pop-science book called How We Learn that both hard problem-solving and creative projects work best when started as early as possible and interrupted as often as possible. Starting the project, even if you’re just making notes, flips the brain into a kind of open mode, where everything seems to have relevance to your project. When you’re in open mode, work happens even when you’re not actively “working”—indeed, all evidence suggests that you do your best work when you’re not trying. Maybe you’ve experienced this while working on a problem—you drive yourself nuts over it, finally give up, and then have your epiphany while playing a video game. In many ways the unconscious mind is smarter, and more creative, than the conscious one.”
— ‘Personal Data: Notes on Keeping a Notebook’, Elisa Gabbert
In 1934-1936, trans brothers Mark and David Ferrow of Yarmouth, UK, both transitioned at age 13 with full parental support. Mark medically transitioned first in 1939 at 17 and his brother soon followed. “Though we have been girls, we have both felt men at heart,” Mark told a reporter. Their stories show that trans youth can grow up to be happy, celebrated adults.
David lived in their hometown of Great Yarmouth, UK for the rest of his life. He became a local icon. At 15, he started selling books. He later ran a wildly successful bookshop until death in 2006, age 81, 68 years after transitioning. He had a daughter, Jan, who supported his work. The whole town adored him. Why, yes, that is a mug of his face. Mark, always passionate about art, joined the Kirby Muxlue Players troupe as a writer and traveled throughout the UK. His David Gower painting is currently in the UK’s National Portrait Gallery! His art still hangs in collections all over the country - although it’s almost never recognized as being by a trans artist. Mark married Edna Hall in 1942 and died in 1991, age 68, in Leicester. It’s important to mention that it’s unclear if both men are intersex despite the reports. At the time, it was customary for non-intersex trans people to claim intersex conditions in order to access care (e.g. Roberta Cowell). Regardless if they were trans or intersex and trans, I would hate their underreported stories to be forgotten!
[id: a wikihow image of a four-lane road with a fifth lane in the middle separated by yellow lines and marked with white arrows pointing to the left from both directions, indicating that anyone driving in either direction can use this lane in order to make a left-hand turn. a red arrow has been added to the image pointing to the lane in question.]
BONUS: tell me where you're from in the tags if you like.
#there was one of these at my old bus stop#and it was great to fun to watch people struggle to use it correctly#once i even saw a car pressure another into reversing - in 5pm rush hour traffic#i think here (nova scotia) they're added to roads when people are habitually grinding traffic to a halt by turning left#as a subpar bandaid fix and not as normal urban planning#anyway we call them two-way lanes or suicide lanes
last d&d campaign it took me till session 69 to kill a PC. now in our new campaign it's session 4 and i turned a level 2 rogue into paste with a runaway train
i don’t care if picrews are cringe, this one is the cutest!! so glad that the options let me represent my true self - someone who wears socks to the beach
on the edit compilation i put in this track which i can only describe as Scary Backstreet Boys. it uses one of their songs i genuinely was terrified of when i was around 5 because i didnt understand what the fuck was going on in it and it sounded like someone was going to die. now that its 20 years later i can actually make it as sinister as it was in my head back then and you are welcome
i gardened for 8 hours a day, 3 days in a row, getting so hyped about weeding and mulching and digging, and just as garden fever fully overtook me it started raining. this is the 3rd straight day of staring sadly out the window waiting for the rain to stop so i can get back out there :(
i don't want to do my indoor tasks anymore :( i just want to garden
i was sooooooo brave at brunch today while my relative told everyone that all pigeons worldwide are feral and they haven't existed in the wild for thousands of years. while i know that's not true in at least 3 ways. but i let it go while everyone else was like Wow tell me more, because i know i am autistic and tactless, and have not yet learned how to push back in a way that doesn't embarrass people. but maybe there isn't a way at all, and letting people feel clever is more important at a light-hearted brunch than objective pigeon truth.
#you think will smith et al captured all those birds from desolate hebridean cliffs for fun?#only one of us at brunch has read the relevant journal articles and it's not her!!#(obviously a different will smith)#the Um Actually reflex is so strong and resisting it makes me feel like i'm lying but#this family has been sceptical of me for 12 years and i have to behave