Living Fossils - Creatures that remain seemingly unchanged by time. Here's the Coelacanth, the Sturgeon, the Gar, the Horseshoe Crab and the Nautilus! (Gouache on 50x40cm canvas, available for purchase)
i promise im going to stop posting about it soon but the most insane thing about the Banana Discourse is that like. there are already lots of fruits that are of limited availability in the USA because they're not grown there and they haven't enforced massive export economies for them at gunpoint. you'd think by the way these people talk that usamericans are rioting in the streets and committing mass suicide because they can't buy a papaya or a durian or a dragonfruit at the gas station. like there's already fruits that are comparatively scarce in the USA and everyone seems to have survived that being the case but you point out that socialist revolution would require a scale back from Total Banana Ubiquity and people legitimately act like it's white genocide
Pretty much the only time I have grapes that are to my tastes is when I fly back to Korea/Japan, and I feel like if these fucking yankees traveled like more than 50 miles from where they lived or admitted to themselves that their pov is myopic from lack of experience, they'd grow some perspective for understanding things that are as simple as, "if you're too far from where things are grown, you won't be able to eat the thing every day."
I think that one of the reasons our food system seems so disconnected from our land is that a big tool of USA colonization was to make the natives food insecure. There are plenty of photos of dead bison piled insanely high. Colonizers intentionally destroyed the food available in this land to starve out Natives and now to get food they use the military to steal it from other lands.
Also the United States has a lot of fruits that are native to the area that are basically never sold in stores. Pawpaws & persimmons grow all over where I'm from but it's only seen as a thing that weird forager people eat. I can pay for an expensive star fruit that tastes like a wet glove because I live too far away from where it grew.
Food is really fucking essential to survival, but being aware of food from our own land is too powerful of knowledge. Food sovereignty is so important. We want food sovereignty, not just food security.
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT THING TO ME!!
Do y'all have any idea how many edible plants there are that we don't eat for cultural reasons (racism and classism?)
Example #1: Amaranth
Amaranth refers to any of plants from genus Amaranthus for our purposes, some of these are domesticated to varying extents
Amaranthus species are primarily important in the USA due to being our most costly agricultural weed.
This plant has declared war on industrial monocrop agriculture. Like all the best weeds, it is ridiculously adaptable. Its resistance to herbicides like Roundup keeps getting stronger and more expansive. In 2022, Amaranthus palmeri was found with SIMULTANEOUS resistance to SIX herbicide modes of action (six separate families of herbicide!)
So remember Roundup Ready corn? Yeah, that shit is basically obsolete in many places because every weed under the sun has evolved glyphosate resistance. So Monsanto spent ten years developing crop varieties resistant to Dicamba as well so crops could be sprayed with Dicamba to control weeds, and within 5 years, Dicamba-resistant weeds were proliferating.
I could go on forever about how european agriculture ran roughshod over the north american continent fucking up things you wouldn't think COULD be fucked up through pure malicious ignorance, but rest assured the era of chemical-dependent agriculture is in its decline because weeds can evolve faster than we can develop new technologies.
Guess what, though? Amaranth was a CROP for Native Americans and still is, domesticated varieties are popular in Mexico, and it's high in protein, gluten free, and a dual purpose crop where you can harvest the leaves as vegetables 2-3 times a year without impacting the eventual seed harvest.
Researchers are already investigating it for its utility as a crop in areas that will be heavily impacted by climate change.
North America USED to be flourishing with food sources cultivated carefully by Native Americans for the benefit of the whole ecosystem, we had abundance of oaks (boil out the tannins and acorns are edible!) hickory nuts, pecans and American chestnuts, but Europeans stopped doing controlled burns and chopped down virtually all forest in the East, and now they're dominated by more fire intolerant species rather than the nut-producing species...and of course the American chestnuts fell victim to introduced chestnut blight.
Canebrakes! Ough! Did y'all know we have native BAMBOO?? The Southeast used to be covered in immense swaths of bamboo forest, and it was almost entirely obliterated (extincting the Carolina parakeet and helping with extinction of passenger pigeons in the process). Genus Arundinaria, you can look it up. American bamboo shoots can be used culinarily just as bamboo is eaten in Asian regions where bamboo grows.
Arundinaria bamboos have been called "the plastic of the Southeastern Native Americans" because they used (and still use) it for EVERYTHING. Bedframes, baskets (WATERPROOF!), backpacks, containers, fish traps, blowguns, flutes, you name it. Unlike some introduced Asian bamboos you may know, it grows very straight and has no groove (sulcus) in between the nodes, meaning it's hard and doesn't deform at all as it grows.
If you cook milkweed, it's edible! In ethnobotanical databases it's referenced a TON as a vegetable. The flowers can be used to turn lemonade pink. Virginia springbeauty has tiny potato-like tubers that can be eaten the same way as potatoes.
Did y'all know we have wild grapes? They're referenced in To Kill a Mockingbird, they're called scuppernongs. Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries...all native to the USA. We have passion fruit (Passiflora incarnata), we have mulberries (Morus rubra), we have native wild plums and cherries, and PAWPAWS.
I got to eat wild pawpaws last year. I got a whiff of something unbelievably sweet and banana-y in the woods and climbed down the hillside to find the source, and spent like half an hour messily devouring ripe pawpaws in a pawpaw grove. It was literally the most incredible fruit experience I've ever had. They are like a perfect blend between a mango and a banana, with a velvety, creamy, soft texture that is way better than either. You can show me a picture of a pawpaw and I'll start salivating.
These trees grow wild all over the place in rural areas. Why don't we sell pawpaws in stores then? Capitalism. Pawpaws are way softer and more fragile than bananas and spoil really quickly after ripening, so they can't be shipped long distances, and thus they're almost forgotten because a fruit that can only be obtained from small local growers is useless to Walmart.
So many of these plants grow eagerly in disturbed environments. Wild strawberries love gravelly, rocky areas. Sunflowers were actually considered noxious weeds a hundred years ago. Why aren't we aware of them? Mowing, weed-whacking and bulldozing has extirpated food plants to be replaced with useless, invasive grass.
"Oof ouch we have to figure out how to feed the planet aaaaaa there's too many people on Earth to grow enough food" Over thousands of square miles we literally obliterated dozens of edible food plants and replaced them with invasive lawn grass
Adding To or Starting a Garden
AKA, the beginning of the Plants-Related section of this series.
This is my third post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps!
Got an area of lawn you’d like to convert to a wildlife haven? An area you can stick some hanging baskets in? Want to know how your garden of tomatoes and zucchinis is already putting in a lot of work? This is the section for you!
It would be dumb of me to not acknowledge that the act of gardening can come with a lot of costs. Buying seeds, buying plants, buying soil, raised bed materials, mulch, etc. … it can all get a bit daunting, let’s be honest! But there’s quite a few ways to get seeds and plants for free or extremely cheap, which I’ll be addressing in this section! The next section will be all about addressing the other Costs in gardening and how to mitigate or eliminate them entirely.
Also, do keep in mind; there’s no need to try and convert a whole area from lawn to garden or unused to garden at once. In fact, it could actually be extremely beneficial to do it a little at a time--maybe four or five square feet to start out,
Front Lawn (or Managing Principles)
If you live in a place where you’re required to have a grass turf lawn (HOA’s come to mind…), try replacing it with native grasses instead! You could even possibly use a low-growing ground cover plant like clover to a similar effect! Reseeding/replacing an entire lawn can be a big upfront cost, but even just letting the lawn be a little messy and tall helps. If the lawn gets patchy, leave the bare spots for a little while and something different will likely pop up! Pioneer species will fill the gaps and provide benefits to other plants around them, support animals, and more! If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you could always research what the pioneer species are in your area and plant the ones you like most.
Obtaining Seeds for Cheap or Free
The cheapest way to start a garden is by far via seeds. However, seeds can be a bit complicated to grow, and some sources make them… way overpriced. Fortunately there are ways to get seeds for little to no cost!
Some places sell seeds for as low as a dollar, 50 cents, or 25 cents! The packets may not have a lot of seeds, but it’s definitely a good start for a low budget! I’ve personally bought cheap seed packets at Walmart--the Ferry-Morse and Burpee brands are not what we’re looking for here. Typically the cheaper ones I’ve found are American Seed (which is owned by Green Garden Products, which also owns Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed, McKenzie Seed, and Seeds of Change. Do with that information what you will), but they’re rarely stocked near the Ferry-Morse ones in the Formal Gardening Section. I’ve most often found them on end caps near the gardening section, so you may have to weave through a few aisles to find them, but once you do there’s an array of flower and vegetable seeds to select from! Alternatively, I’ve found seeds at Dollar Tree sold 2 or 4 for a dollar in Spring as part of their seasonal product; however, when they’re out of stock, they’re typically out of stock for the year. Try to check them out early in the year!
Otherwise, other seed companies like Urban Farmer or Botanical Interests will often have semi-frequent sales in spring and fall, when people are stocking up on seeds--joining their email lists can help you be the first to know when a good sale is going on!
Some foods from grocery stores will provide seeds that you can use in the garden as well. I’ve had the most luck with store-bought bagged beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Some people have had luck with watermelons, apples, citrus, squash, and more. Do keep in mind that you likely won’t get the same variety of fruit/vegetable as the one you bought--the resulting plant may look different and taste different.
Give it a shot! Pick some beans you like--if they don't grow well, at least you can eat the rest!
If you live in the US, food-producing live plants, bare roots, and seeds can often be purchased with SNAP benefits. But what does growing fruits, veggies, and herbs have to do with boosting biodiversity? While food crops aren’t typically native, they still provide valuable shelter for native insects. Some plants even have intricate relationships with native fauna--like the squash bee, a solitary bee which exclusively pollinates cucurbits like pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. And we get to benefit more directly as well! If you’re planting a diverse range of foods in your garden (as opposed to the swaths of single-plant farms that typically produce what’s sent to grocery stores), you’re supporting high levels of biodiversity by providing a variety of plants for creatures to live and hunt around.
Most of the time, when we think of boosting biodiversity with a garden, we think of a colorful flower garden teeming with pollinator species. However, if we’re striving to use native species, it can be a bit difficult to find some species in stores. I can say from experience that trying to find any wildflower seeds other than butterfly weed, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans is… challenging, if you limit yourself to stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. You might occasionally get lucky with an ACE Hardware or a local nursery, but even then sometimes it can be hard to track down who in your area is selling what--let alone if you live in an area where no one really is selling native plants or their seeds. Not to mention, even once you find a local or online store selling the seeds you want, they can sometimes cost a pretty penny. So what do you do?
If you have the option to, consider gathering native seeds yourself! Get good at identifying the native flora and fauna--or at least, a few target plants and their lookalikes--and get ready to go! Learn where they tend to grow, when they’ll be seeding, etc. Try to identify the plant before it goes to seed (for most plants, it's easiest to identify when flowering), then check back regularly to gather seeds. Typically, if I want to learn how to collect seed from a specific plant, I just search it on Google or YouTube--oftentimes, I'm lead to the GrowItBuildIt Youtube page, so it may be a helpful resource for you as well! Of course, make sure to leave plenty of seed behind so the wild population can repopulate, and seed can feed other creatures in the area. A good rule of thumb is to take no more than 1/3rd of what's available.
Buying seed in bulk is an option if you can afford the upfront cost. Try teaming up with a few friends to buy some bulk seeds and split them amongst yourselves--you’ll get tons of seed! Prairie Moon is a popular site that'll sell seeds by the pound if you can afford the price--though they're in the US, and I believe they focus on Midwest and East Coast natives.
If you want to cheat the system, don’t buy bulk sunflower seeds--buy bags of sunflower seeds being sold as birdseed. They’re typically all black oil sunflower seeds, but they’ll sprout, and they’re fairly cheap for the amount you get!
However, beware generic wildflower seed mixes! Many brands like to sell wildflower seed mixes in big box stores like Home Depot, Target, or even Dollar Tree, but they’ll often include flowers that aren’t native or possibly even invasive in your region! Before you make any purchases, double check to make sure the contained seeds won’t do more harm than good! A quality source of native seeds will provide English and Latin names for all seeds included, and will be native to the region or at least non-invasive.
See this? I don't trust this.
There’s a good handful of programs online that’ll send you free seeds if you’re planning to start a native habitat project! Poke around online and see what you can find; you might get lucky! The best time to start looking for these is fall and winter, I find--by early spring, many of them are either done or beginning to wind down... though some also start up in spring. Ultimately--just check regularly! You never know what you can find!
Other Ways to Get Plants
Don’t want to start from seed? That’s fair! You can try cuttings! Just be sure not to take too much of the plant while you do so. Make sure you’ve gotten a few leaf nodes on your cutting, and cut any flowers you may have gotten. Make sure to leave some blooms and foliage on the original plant for the creatures in the current habitat--you don’t want to destroy one habitat to make another in your garden. There’s tons of methods of rooting cuttings, many of which have different efficacy rates for different plants, but that’s a topic for another post.
If you find seedlings growing in a place where they won’t be able to sustain themselves long-term, or are in danger of being destroyed, consider relocating them! You may be able to gently dig up and transplant the seedling to your garden. Don’t do this if they’re in a place where they can easily survive--ideally, you’ll be taking plants from sidewalk cracks, heavily maintained public gardens, roadsides, etc. Do be careful while doing this--ensure your safety first!
You’re totally allowed to join gardening communities like clubs, facebook groups, and more before you’ve even put a trowel to the dirt. These are great places to learn information and advice! Many gardeners are more than happy to help out a new gardener, and will eagerly provide seeds, cuttings, or even baby plants! Talk to some people about your gardening journey and what you’re hoping to do, and you just might find some kindred spirits--or at least get more people interested in the topic!
Seed and plant giveaways and trades happen all the time in gardening clubs, as well as online! Just poke around and see what you can find! Some are explicitly trades, meaning you’re expected to send something in return, but once you get your feet on the ground with some plant knowledge you’ll be stellar! You may be able to explain you’re just starting out, and someone may send you seeds without expecting a trade, but I’d suggest trying giveaways first.
Poke around online and see if there’s a local chapter of your state’s native plant society. From there, you’ll likely be able to find a calendar of events--many of them will host plant sales in the spring, with a bunch of native plant seedlings ripe for the pickings if you can make it out and have some money to spare! Fair warning, though, you’ll want to get there early if you can. If they say they’re starting at 10, try to get there by 9:45. Year after year, there’s always record turnout, and they sell out of plants faster than ever. Just trust me on this. I’ve been let down; hopefully you won’t have to be.
Some libraries are beginning to host seed libraries! Check around and see if your library has one! Ideally, the system works best if you also have seeds to contribute in return, but if you’re just starting out I’m sure they won’t mind you taking some seeds! Just consider saving some seeds to contribute in the future and pay it forward. If your library doesn’t have a seed library? Consider asking if they’d be willing to start one! Community interest is a great way to get the ball rolling on projects like these, but they’ll only know the community is interested if the community tells them they’re interested!
Volunteer to Garden for/with Someone Else
Maybe someone in your area wants to garden, but is struggling to find the time/energy. Many elderly people who used to garden simply can’t anymore but still would like a garden. Other people may love to have a helping hand in their garden. You might even find a few people in your area interested in renting and sharing a community garden plot with others, so they don't have to handle it all on their own! They may be interested in increasing biodiversity right now, or may be willing to if it’s brought up to them. You might be just the kind of person someone needs! Since it won't be your garden, you’ll likely need a bit of permission and collaboration to get anything in particular going, but it’s worth a shot and a way to maybe even make friends!
Again, your mileage may vary with some of these. You may not know where there's a bunch of wildflowers growing in your area, or maybe your local library doesn't have a free seed library. That's okay! Do what you're able to, find what you can find, get what you can get! And there's never any shame with starting small--in fact, starting small can make the project easier to manage and expand when you're able!
That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to start growing plants cheaply--low cost seed starting set ups, essentially. There's a lot of good options, many of which I've used myself even! Until then, I hope this advice is helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!
"... “I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.
“It’s the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” Kalmus continued. “World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don’t get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point.” ..."
Corporate media will not cover the climate crisis.
Until it is too late to do anything else.
This article documents the severe and ongoing specimen neglect I witnessed over 12 months working at Florida State Collection of Arthropods. FSCA actively solicits donations, then picks and chooses what specimens to care about based on individuals' personal favorites. The rest are left to rot.
Please take a look and consider sharing this, it's extremely important for people (especially in science, taxonomy, natural history, museum curation, etc) to know how and why scientific material is being lost.
Favorite thing about renaissance faires is that they have fuck all to to with the renaissance. This thang is not about historical anything this is about dressing up like a fairy and watching a joust
This. Is my pride and joy. A gift for my dad, who played Zork with me when I was a kid, and with his dad when he was a kid. I designed this pattern myself and had a great time puzzling out how to hide the glow in the dark letters!
Pattern: “West of House” by me Fabric: 2x1 on 18ct Blue-Grey Aida Started: 11/27/2021 Finished: 12/25/2021
This is approximate since calculations vary, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution have come from destruction of terrestrial ecosystems—wetland destruction, deforestation, degradation of grasslands and so on
Soil, soil communities, root systems, carbonate rock, wood, living plants, and peat in wetlands—all holds carbon
Now consider what plants do for you
The mere sight of plants and trees improves mental and physical health. I won't elaborate much more upon this, the positive effects are incredible and overwhelming.
Trees and vines that shade your home and outdoor areas: reduce the cost of cooling, meaning less electricity is used. Shade reduces the risk of death in extreme heat events.
(Trees also reduce light and noise pollution)
Edible plants (many wild plants and many plants you can grow): provide you with food reducing your dependence on industrial agriculture and cars to reach supermarkets
Community gardens and orchards: creates resilience and interdependence among small local communities, reducing the power of capitalism and increasing the ability of individuals to organize and create change. Makes more sustainable and plant based diets accessible to people for whom they would ordinarily be inaccessible
Compost piles for gardening: less greenhouse gas emissions than result from waste breaking down anaerobically in landfills
No more traditional lawns: much less use of gas powered lawn mowers, weed whackers etc. which are, by themselves, significant contributions to carbon emissions and urban pollution
Crafting and creating using plants: Locally available wild plant species can be used by local crafters and creators for baskets and containers, yarn, fabrics, dyes, and the like, resulting in less dependence on unsustainable and unethical global industries
More people growing and gathering edible and useful plants and using them = larger body of practical, scientific and technological insights to draw from in order to solve future problems
In conclusion: Plants
Articles and websites focus much on feedback loops with bad consequences (such as the Amazon rainforest degradation potentially accelerating climate change).
We need to focus more on feedback loops with good consequences (such as the restoration of a keystone species increasing the resilience of the ecosystem)
One of the most powerful of these cascade effects is this one: anything that increases the stability and safety of a community of people, will increase the ability of those people to act in a positive way and fight against the forces that oppress them
Isolated, scared, constantly threatened people who depend on Buying Product for all their needs = Unable to easily change, most energy goes to survival, cannot advocate for things bigger than themselves
Community of people caring for the ecosystem that surrounds them = Buffered against the threats imposed by capitalism, stronger sense of efficacy, Sharing of knowledge and wisdom instead of individuals struggling to learn from the hostile and dishonest internet, growing some food and other useful plants creates a slight safety net, can organize and therefore harder to defeat
^^^Everything about the ideal of life under capitalism...is made to STOP you from doing this
Whenever you learn something, teach someone else. Especially plant identification. And grow something you can give as a gift to a neighbor.
Currently sat in a summer school type thing we're hosting in work and some English architect is telling us about sustainable design in Wales, except she hasn't bothered learning a single Welsh name and if I have to listen to one more "I don't know how to say 'Welsh name' so I'm going to use 'shitty English name/nothing while laughing at it' I'm going to throw this slanty drawing desk at her head
Spot the unforced errors:
"Wales has three national parks. There's the one I can't pronounce so I'm going to say Brecon Beacons, there's Pembrokeshire Coast, and there's Snowdonia."
Said with that lil laugh English people do when they say this stuff, because they think they're being funny and charming in a 'what am I like' way rather than disrespectful and arrogant as fuck
"This one is by a reservoir in Gwent I can say, tee hee! Landy something, but-"
Me: Llandegfedd
Her: uh... yes, so difficult! Tee hee!
FUCK OFF
"This one is called... Um... I don't know how to say it tee hee!"
Me: Ysgir.
Her: I'm so bad at Welsh haha
YOU ARE DELIVERING A THREE QUARTER HOUR LECTURE TO WELSH STUDENTS IN WALES ABOUT WELSH INFRASTRUCTURE
YOU HAVE MULTIPLE WELSH SPEAKING COLLEAGUES CRAWLING OUT OF THE WOODWORK WHO COULD HAVE TOLD YOU
LEARNING TO PRONOUNCE THE PLACES SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRIORITY ONE YOU ARROGANT BITCH
Like listen. LISTEN. I know this is entirely normal. I know this is so exceptionally common that about 80% of English people do it, I know they think it's funny, I know they don't even see there's a problem, I know I'm basically kicking off at rain in a wet country. I don't know why this extremely normal and commonplace occurrence is nettling me this much today.
But last year, I gave a lecture on grassland management. As part of it, I told the students about the ngitili silvipastoral systems in Tanzania. I am in no way saying I'm perfect!!! I am not a template to be copied!!! But ahead of that lecture, I scoured YouTube until I found a video of an indigenous person in Tanzania talking about the system!!! And I listened to how they pronounced it, and I memorised it, and then I even wrote out the phonetic pronunciation on the slide so my students could learn too, because not bothering to learn that while then presenting myself as an authority on the subject would have been grossly appropriative and colonialist and also plain fucking rude.
And none of those students were Tanzanian for me to insult to their faces
I would like to see the lecture on ngitili silvipastoral systems in Tanzania.
it’s been long enough i’m making an executive decision that we all need to go reread the tgi fridays infinite mozzarella sticks article
still just as good as i remember it
POV: you went diving at night and spotted Ordovician nautiloids feasting on a eurypterid carcass, after a while the commotion has attracted the giants, slowly creeping into view
It’s already happening. Like guys I cannot emphasize this enough the studios are going to make content creators the deal of a lifetime because they have a void to fill and those content creators will then be on the do not work list for the rest of their professional lives.
There's going to be a LOT of attempts to get people to scab.
...People who scab during a strike don't get to join the union. Ever.
Studios are going to try to claim "hey here's your chance to get a start on this career." They lie. This is a chance to end this career. Sure, they can get a few weeks or months work during the strike. Maybe even have a contract for a year or two, if they're savvy.
And then their career in Hollywood is over. No more work, ever, because they can't join the union and the studios can't hire outside of the union.
Oh, and they'll have trouble getting jobs anywhere else in the entertainment industry, because unions remember who the scabs were.
twitter @ Catieosaurus: "Listen I am a literal nobody regarding the SAG/WGA strike but I can tell you that a Netflix producer who ghosted me a year and a half ago slid into my DMs this morning wondering about picking the project we'd discussed back up and it smells a lot like nervous desperation to me"
This man took so much longer to crack than I would have what a PROFESSIONAL
Plotting, scheming, etc.
THANK YOU FOR THIS IMPORTANT ADDITION.
I have enjoyed this video so much and am very happy to share ways to help the babies!!
That man held it in until he knew for a fact that they’d need another take anyway, and not a moment less.
fireflies lighting up a rural Pennsylvania field at dusk
As a european i sometimes forget furefkied are actually real and not american folklore/cryptids. Like you’ve got friendly little bugs that glow in the dark….. b r uh