Cade | they/them/theirs

Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you

No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.

Ok but this is actually one of the easiest ways to tell what something is made of! I did a textiles degree and one day as part of a class we all went outside with a pile of scrap fabric and set fire to the little pieces and recorded how they burned. We were given a chart that looked something like this to tell what each fabric was (it gets a little tricky is it’s a mix of fabrics though). Why did we do this? There is very little regulation in the textiles industry so a lot of materials are mislabelled as something they aren’t and sold for more than they should be, also sometimes people buy fabric second hand or discounted which doesn’t have any label at all. If you have a fabric you are having doubts about, cut a tiny piece off and do the burn test and you should know pretty fast what you are dealing with. Anyways your fabric store should be lighting things on fire because this means that they are actually checking what the fabrics are and aren’t trying to pass cheap stuff off as more expensive than it is.

Ooh! I knew it was a standard test but I hadn’t seen a chart as detailed as this thank you!

This also works on yarn!!!

I wish more people got this because some ‘low-empathy’ people are the most compassionate and sympathetic in the universe, and I hate it when that’s taken to mean ‘unfeeling and probably hostile’ when nothing could be further from the truth

Or, as my dad put it,

Sympathy: I know how you feel Empathy: I feel how you feel Compassion: is there anything I can do to help?

Sympathy: that sucks bro empathy: I feel that compassion: want me to send you some puppy and kitten pictures to make you feel better?

Posts like this make me feel so much better. It always seems like society treat responses to others pain as though empathy is the most important kind. I am around 85% compassionate and this post helped me not feel like I am a monster because of that for once.

I reblogged this yesterday, but I want to reblog it again. Diabetic ketoacidosis turns your blood acidic and will essentially burn you from the inside out.

The stories you hear of people dying from rationing, this is what happens to their body.

Affordable insulin isn’t just a right, it’s a necessity.

No one should have to die like that when it’s preventable with access to proper medication.

This.

@staff Hey, why am I shadow banned after a ton of my not-explicit posts (a ton of which were sfw lgbtq posts) were wrongly flagged?

No one can send me DMs or posts, and I can't send them either. My blog no longer is searchable. The wrongly flagged posts have no option to appeal.

Messages I send to tumblr support using the email on my account won't go through either. Ones I send using my other email will go through... only to recieve a response that I have to use the email on my account to send support, due to account security. That'd be fine and well... if it would go through.

What's going on, and can someone look into it?

@thetimetravellercat Here's more details on it - apparently I can't send replies on my own posts either or I would've replied to you there. :(

One of the things that struck me about Robin Wall Kimmerer's perspective when I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass was the way the ethical obligation to life she discussed contrasted with the colonizer's culture.

It is increasingly popular to find it inherently unethical and exploitative to kill animals for food or to farm them for animal products, and instead eat and wear "plant-based" things. This is an impulse toward ethical treatment of non-human living things.

But this way of seeing animals as "lives" and behaving accordingly, depends on seeing plants as non-lives. Asking whether we have ethical obligations toward plants is so absurd, it's dismissed as trolling.

I've known many people who farmed or hunted animals who had a great reverence for their lives. Some people would think that this is not genuine and that it is never morally acceptable to take a life for your own use.

Kimmerer discusses Indigenous use of animals. But when a tree needs to be cut down or a plant uprooted, there is the same vivid awareness that a life is being taken, that the plant's life is A Life.

Now I'm troubled by the dismissal of plants as providing total freedom from guilt and moral responsibility among many people and organizations who see animal life as deeply sacred. Plant based products are cruelty-free alternatives to animal products and plant-based diets mean nothing had to die for your meal.

I understand not wanting to support cruel industries or being uncomfortable with eating animals, but the more I learn about plants, the less I believe that all animals have something all plants lack, that means we have moral obligations toward animals and not toward plants.

Plants are incredibly unlike us, but they respond to their environments, they communicate with other plants, and they engage in behaviors. Objection to potential plant intelligence and sentience (ability to feel) is more cultural than scientific; we are just only beginning to scratch the surface of the inner world of plants. What if we have to respect plants as life? What does respect mean then, if we have to explore the idea that it doesn't necessarily contradict taking life?

@foofily "A silly little prayer?" Really? Is that really how you want to word that? Are you sure

There is strong scientific evidence that plants are sentient and capable of rational decision making, unique forms of communication, and an awareness of their surroundings that humans are only just starting to really study. We've been aware that plants have eye-like structures for over a century now but the idea that they're capable of actually seeing things is still controversial for some reason.

We know that plants share nutrients with each other and make decisions based on their environments that give them the strongest chances to either survive or produce successful offspring. We know that the distinct smells that many plants release when trimmed or cut are often panic responses to ward away predators and warn other plants of dangers. We know that plants decide to either compete or cooperate with neighbors based on many factors.

Are those things not an indication that plants have some level of consciousness? That they also have a drive to live? Why can we attribute those traits to animals whose forms of communication are obvious to us and then deny them in life forms who communicate in different ways?

And these things are just the tip of the iceberg! Plant sentience is a foundation of many cultural and spiritual beliefs around the world and, in terms of Western science (because that's all people tend to care about), study of plant sentience is a field that's been growing rapidly over the years and is being discussed more and more in ecological and botanical circles. This isn't some new hippy thing, it's a thriving field of study that can completely change how we as humans interact with our world and approach environmental renewal efforts.

I'm not making a universal general statement here but maybe this will help some people who are afraid of bugs.

I'm terribly arachnophobic. horribly. I get it, the irrational fear you can't fully erase. Yes I'm an entomologist and yes everyone at work thinks it's very funny.

But the more you pick away bit by bit at that general massive ball of fear, the more you can understand it and turn fear to wonder. I started small, just learning some facts about spiders but still unable to stomache looking at pictures.

And then I realized I could look at jumping spiders fine and made an effort to try to appreciate what I could about them. From there I could realized I could look at and Touch harvestmen and that there was a whole world to them to learn and love too. And by turning that Ambiguous Ball of Fear into curiosity and respect I've gotten to a place I can live side by side with my arachnophobia and approach spiders with appreciation, even if I will cry if forced to touch one.

And I guess it makes me sad when people's response to their fear is hatred and to kill. I understand the phobia and bugs and wasps especially is real and I'll never try to convince someone they're wrong for it - but treating insects with intentional ignorance will only make it worse and keep you from a whole world of wonder.

@bookcub Oh I hope you do.. it's one of my all-time favorite books, in my top 3. If you do and want to, feel free to tell me your thoughts! I've been considering rereading it.

snail chores... snores...