Art trade with @riddler-zs !! (*˘︶˘*).｡*♡ Edward with oc hhhh
a really messy doodle of susie and arvelle :) they're having a laugh about the achievement mix-up <3
This is Dendrocephalus proeliator, the rare fairy shrimp that I co-discovered in 2019. This is a mature male in a 1/4 teaspoon. They are found only in certain soils in central Florida and they refuse to hatch unless they have their special soil chemistry intact
It’s true. I started calling “the cloud” offsite storage, and the comprehension that dawns in my customers’ eyes is super gratifying. They understand external hard drives, but many couldn’t wrap their heads around this mystical floating in the air storage–because that’s not how it works at all. You’re just using space on someone else’s hard drive.
[Image is a t-shirt which reads:
There is no cloud It’s just someone else’s computer]
I explain this to eeeevery patron who comes in to ask for tech help etc. I find ways to explain it, because it’s important.
“Oh ‘the cloud’ is just what they decided to call it. What it actually means is that you use the internet to connect to some dedicated computer somewhere where your file is stored, and then you can access that file, which is why it only works with an internet connection. You’re just renting space on a computer the company owns.”
Suddenly everything is less mysterious.
When they started using the term, there was NO EXPLANATION. They very much wanted it treated like some new magic instead of managed offsite storage.
this submitted design was ai-generated and posted on deviantart with the purpose of sale, but ai-generated images aren’t intellectual property, so now it’s yours! free-to-use.
Moth Of The Day #106
Urania Swallowtail Moth / Green Page Moth
Urania fulgens
From the uraniidae family. They have a wingspan of 70-85 mm. They tend to inhabit tropical environments. It is found in Central and South America.
Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus), in transitional plumage, family Phasianidae, Alaska
photograph by Kristina Ellis
I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.
[image ID: a screenshot of the notes on this post, featuring several people indicating they want to know more. End ID.]
OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself “necessary” is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?
Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.
Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (I’ve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, there’s a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. I’ve been going for 12-24.
What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.
Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.
You will notice I didn’t suggest any further pretreatment, and that’s because 1) you don’t want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.
When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatment…to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to “well, it’s old” dinginess. I was planning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. “I need to reshape it” is nothing.
Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but we’ve been trained to believe it’s all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is “normal wear and tear” and can’t be fixed.
It’s utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from “I keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasons” to “I could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectable”! The pajama bottoms I’m wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!
I do not know how often you’re supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention it’s way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I don’t wear white, so I can’t test the “it will make whites look almost-new as well” claim, but I’ve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.
Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.
Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.
so i want to talk about kleptoplasty in sea slugs! im not an expert or anything but its something that really interests me. i promise it's interesting!!
essentially- a superorder of sea slugs called sacoglossa are known for their ability to (indirectly) photosynthesize. not all sacoglossans are able to do this, but many do. they are sometimes called "solar powered slugs" because of this! the famously adorable leaf sheep is in this group.
the way they do this is through kleptoplasty which is (in very simplified terms) the ability to retain chloroplasts from another source. sacoglossans eat algae, partially digest it, and then save the chloroplasts of the algae cells which they can use to photosynthesize for a period of time! they can literally partially sustain themselves off of sunlight. these are some of the only known animals capable of doing this, and this phenomenon is still being studied!
fun fact- the slug in the second picture can actually pop off its whole head and grow an entire new body! these creatures are incredibly weird and i absolutely love them.
the species in the pictures are a leaf sheep, an elysia marginata, and a lettuce sea slug.
