someday, together

something of a redraw of this from 4 years ago and a complimentary piece to my cg one ^^

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Revolutionary sword pull

Gently releasing this take from Sylvanaqua Farms into the Tumblr ecosystem like a field ecologist releasing a bird with a brightly coloured leg band 🤗

Um what???

Sorry I'm just??? Leaving the leaves will cause your yard to succeed to forest???

I get that this guy probably does know a lot but this seems outside of what I can find about his expertise as a farmer and former software engineer and this take is absolutely wild.

Also, leave the leaves *can* mean leave them where they fall on your lawn (How do you get forest succession from that?? And to my knowledge historical burning did not normally take place in the late fall - how is this even comparable?) but the actual articles from Xerces also have advice for not killing your lawn with too many leaves, avoiding conflicts with neighbors, and using the leaves as mulch if that's more your thing. So if you want to "clean up your damn yard" then you should probably actually read what Xerces has to say about how to do that without destroying insect eggs that might be on the leaves.

As someone who studies fire-adapted systems for a living (mainly rooted in the alternate stable state hypothesis, which is what seems to have been alluded to), what Sylvanaqua Farms said was at best mostly untrue. Basically, burning was a practice undertaken only in certain areas for a variety of different reasons, but does NOT serve the same function AT ALL as raking the leaves. Flipping the switch from forest to grassland or back is very difficult.

Longer post to follow tomorrow. The original post really irked me. @riparianmoon has some great points about insects and time of year at which burning occurs (I'll get into that more).

Reblogging this with more comments.

What I’ve found funny here in the Southeast—I’m in the Piedmont, which used to be a fire-controlled oak savannah maintained by Indigenous people, and about an hour from the Sandhills, which need fire just to survive—is that it’s usually hard to KEEP the fire going. At the local botanical garden, they use flamethrowers and it takes ages just to get some of the grasses to light. So a lot of the local burning is done in summer, when everything is hopefully dry enough to actually burn. (Because, y’know, 40+ inches of rainfall a year and all.)

When I first started doing flame-weeding in my garden, I was used to the West Coast, which will burn if you give it a sufficiently smoldering look, so I had multiple buckets and the hose running and the fire department on speed dial. I was ready to pounce on anything that so much as looked like a spark, only to find that, at least around here, if you parked the flame directly over most weeds and waited, it would boil more often than ignite. We live in a swamp.

Fire is super important for many specific ecosystems! But as always, what may be true in my area’s ecosystem is very likely not true in yours.

I live in the aforementioned Sandhills which do require prescribed burns as part of the life cycle and good forest management (Longleaf pine trees NEED fire); and friends let me offer the hilarious information that they essentially drop little tiny napalm bombs by air to set the fires over the large land tracts. It’s great.

I’ve been out there when they were doing the burning, it’s wild to watch - like being in the middle of a forest fire but it’s controlled so you’re standing there on the road just going “wow that sure is some fire! but it can’t get me over here” Very fun experience.

Actual photos:

(As you may notice, the trees are totally fine)

But they are professional foresters with lots of resources who know when, where, and how to safely handle fire! These folks have some good info:

Oh, that’s amazing! (Howdy, semi-neighbor!)

Honestly, anybody who doesn’t know the Sandhills but is interested in cool ecosystems should look it up—it has comparatively short burn periods compared to most prairies, because longleaf pines really do need fire, the dominant grass is wiregrass, and the burns take out oak seedlings that might otherwise start to crowd in. But also the soil really is, like, SAND. Sand-sand. Nutrient poor, drains like a beast. So you get very little in the way of understory shrubs, but some truly weird and unique vegetation, including a bunch of carnivorous plants and orchids. It’s really cool.

frankly I think a lot more people would be open to postmodern art if we all stopped pretending you had to be very smart to understand it and start acknowledging that the starting point for deriving meaning from it is frequently ‘this is stupid bullshit’

To clarify- it’s not just ‘this is stupid’ and then you’re done, finding the meaning in something that seems meaningless can usually be found by starting with that base feeling, ‘This sucks.’ Okay- why does it suck, specifically?

‘This is just a vaccuum cleaner, it doesn’t belong in a museum’. Okay, follow that thread- why is that weird? Is it the elevation of normal commercial products to be put on a pedestal? Does that sentiment remind you of anything? How does that make you feel?

“This is just splatters, anyone could do this.” Anyone could, couldn’t they? Anyone can create things, anyone can make these movements and gestures. Dancing does the same thing, doesn’t it? How do the splatters imply the artist’s movements? What does it say about them?

“This person made a mobile out of twine, flower pots, and pictures of cats. How is this art?” What mediums do you define as ‘art’? Paint? Marble sculpture? Photos? Why are you so sure that this is what art is? Doesn’t this remind you of the kind of crafts a child would make, or maybe a first-time DIYer? Is that intentional? Does the construction or material evoke any other emotions?

This isn’t an end-all be-all, of course- among many other things, there’s postmodern art that’s just for a show of mastery, there’s art that’s commenting on a very certain time in history or about something within the art community you may not be privy to, and there’s art that’s simply about creating and the creative process. It’s hard to approach a full narrative with just a single sentiment. This can’t cover every single topic, obviously.

That being said, it’s just as important to note that in many cases, there’s no wrong answers in art or interpretation. If your takeaway is completely different from the artist, as long as you don’t try to insist that the artist has no real say over their work’s meaning, that’s totally fine. A large part of non-representational art is reliant on emotions, and emotions are informed by your experience as a human being. Your interpretation is just as right as anyone else’s. And you don’t even have to LIKE everything- I hate Jeff Koons and his stupid balloon dogs! Cremaster makes me incredibly uncomfortable and even if that’s the point it’s still uncomfortable enough that it makes me not like it! You can just not like certain art, it’s not all-or-nothing it’s good or it’s not.

TL;DR- if you have a hard time ‘getting’ art, try listening to your base reaction to what you’re looking at, and then ask yourself why it makes you feel that way, and why it’s constructed the way it is.

*stays crunchy in milk*

impressive

You ain’t seen nothing yet *makes your milk into chocolate milk*

Get out of here!

I’m not done yet! *Is part of a complete breakfast*

This can’t be…!!

So I wanted to know what kind of crystal could go in a wizard staff, right? so I googled “big crystal,” as one does, and got an Etsy ad for This

And as you all know I Am currently taking a geology class, so I am probably more emotionally invested in minerals than usual. But that is...very obviously not a natural crystal.

So I did some looking around on Etsy.

Now, these shops all seem to advertise to the “witchy”/“spiritual healing” type of person. And there are a lot of them. Crystals are a Big Thing on Etsy. And ALMOST ALL of them are obviously artificially cut into the same sort of prism with a triangular pyramid top, regardless of the actual sort of crystal it is supposed to be.

Even like, fucking, obsidian. Obsidian is volcanic glass, it doesn’t form crystals at all, it is not a crystal

I’m not throwing any shade at people who are into crystals for like witchy reasons, but it really seems like if crystals are spiritually important to you, you should know what a crystal is...right...?

So there I am. Caught in the helpless anger and distaste of looking at geologically inaccurate Etsy crystals.

And as I scroll, I start to see items in...interesting shapes:

“Oh,” I think to myself. “Oh no.”

But it is too late. I have heard the siren’s song, singing to me of knowledge that will destroy me, but that I cannot help but seek.

These...elongated objects are almost always ambiguously described as “massage wands,” “crystal healing wands,” and other such innocuous things. The egg-shaped objects are, um, “yoni eggs.”

...Right. Okay.

Maintain the youthfulness of my sacred organ.

IT’S A SEX TOY. SAY IT. BITCH, IT’S A SEX TOY, IT’S OKAY, SERIOUSLY, THERE’S NO SHAME IN IT, SAY IT WITH PRIDE, SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST,

OKAY.

Okay. I’m good. I’m fine.

Actually, you know what, never mind. There is shame in this and I want it to be never acknowledged again.

Additionally, I am not fine.

Why the fuck are there so many of these—

At this point I stop and start googling.

Now, Selenite is the crystalline form of gypsum. It is also known as satin spar. Selenite is brittle and breaks easily, and has a Mohs hardness scale of 2.

For those unfamiliar with the Mohs hardness scale, a mineral with a hardness of 2 is soft enough that it can be easily scratched with a fingernail. It also is dissolved by moisture.

NO. DON’T PUT THAT IN YOUR BODY???? DON’T PUT THE GYPSUM, WHICH HAS A MOHS HARDNESS SCALE OF 2, IS BRITTLE AND BREAKS EASILY, AND IS WATER SOLUBLE, INSIDE YOUR LITERAL ACTUAL VAGINA??????????

I try to reassure myself with the fact that these things are probably not actually selenite, because making a dildo out of such a soft mineral in the first place would be very difficult. Having seen fluorite before, I feel pretty certain that the fluorite yoni eggs are probably actually just glass.

I google fluorite.

Okay.

Further exploring online shows me that fluorite is soluble in various strong acids.

Some guys on a forum in 2004 have strong contradictory opinions on this.

(I google the pH of the vagina.)

I don’t understand how pH works. I give up on the solubility question and google the toxicity of fluorite:

I now know at least one orifice fluorite does not go inside.

Science.

No, dear followers, my journey did not end here.

I have opened Pandora’s box, except Pandora’s box is filled with minerals God did not intend to be anywhere near the vagina carved into the shape of dildos. Etsy is advertising me sex toys I wish I could forget.

And vaginal steam herbs.

It seems that there is potentially a correlation between wanting to steam your vagina and wanting to put rocks in it. I know, groundbreaking discovery.

Okay, so we’re talking therapy substitute therapy substitute.

(I begin to think about how desperately we need universal health care. Maybe I just need someone, something, to blame.)

At this point, I realize that I haven’t done any googling on whether dildos made of rocks are a good idea at all. So, very tentatively, as if typing it more slowly will make it any less observed by the FBI, I google whether quartz should be used...internally.

First result that pops up:

That’s, uh. That’s reassuring.

I decide I’m incapable of unpacking this particular suitcase.

There are, of course, a small handful of articles debating the safety of rose quartz sex toys. But I’m getting the feeling that this is not a normal question to have in the first place. I close the tab with little relief.

Etsy is still enthusiastically recommending me things that hurt me psychologically.

...pleasure chalk?

How can I describe the fear that this image struck in me, reader?

Pleasure Chalk? What could that be?

Is knowing worse, or is not knowing? I scarcely have a choice:

I check in with my emotions.

Is this relief? Am I relieved that they are eating the dirt instead of fucking it? One review complains about the taste. I don’t know what they expected.

I try in vain to struggle against the tide, to return to the relatively normal side of Etsy. I begin to resent, no, hate, these deceptively aesthetically pleasing hippie shops eagerly spreading medical misinformation and things as yet unknown.

This, unlike the other “crystals” I have shown, appears to show naturally grown crystals. They are, of course, quartz crystals, and $45 comes off as extremely overpriced. I have a quartz crystal I got for a dollar at an Eastern Kentucky rock festival, about the size and quality of the ones in the photo.

Quartz is the most common mineral in the Earth’s crust. But at least this is regular levels of annoying.

Then I see this:

Well, I see the photo and the price, and I think, that looks like a regular quartz crystal. There’s no way a regular quartz crystal is $1,347.

I read the description:

I am crying. I don’t want to google any of this. I am beyond googling. I no longer desire knowledge.

THATS A QUARTZ CRYSTAL. MOTHERFUCKER THAT’S QUARTZ. SIO2, MOST COMMON MINERAL IN THE EARTH’S CRUST. ITS FUCKING QUARTZ IM—

I click on a malachite.

The malachite promises to protect me from emails. And at this, darkest hour, I want to be protected.

I have been broken. I have been lured to my demise.

Big Brother: loved.

Geology lab I’m supposed to be doing: incomplete.

God: unmerciful.

This post has everything. Price gouging quartz, eating dirt, and fucking poisonous rocks.

I love this, though, because my favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. I love Batman too, but Superman isn’t a dude who decided to live his life in pursuit of a vendetta against society when he was eight and then just did nothing for the next two decades but get super jacked, become the world’s greatest detective, and memorize every strategy used by every winner in every field of competition in history. Superman is a very good-hearted person who knows how to bale hay, use AP Stylebook, and break meteors into manageable bite-sized pieces by hitting them real hard. And I’m not saying Superman isn’t smart. He’s a bright guy, he’s just not like, one of the celebrated geniuses of the DC Universe. The best thing about Superman is he is basically a normal dude who happens to be orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else. Normal dudes have brain farts. Normal dudes are presented with a life-or-death situation they have less than four seconds to resolve and make a decision that is not optimal. Normal dudes aren’t typically asked to rescue a child from a 10,000 ton machine bearing down on him at 85mph, but if they were, they would probably sometimes panic a little and do dumb shit like ruin a train when they could have just whisked the child to safety.

I think sometimes Superman makes the wrong decision, not necessarily to the result of extreme catastrophe, but something like this, where everyone is standing around clapping and cheering and the kid’s parents are weeping in gratitude and they want to pose for a picture for the 6 o’ clock news with Superman and the conductor, and in the crowd someone is like “Why didn’t he fly the kid out of the way?” and rather than rolling with the fact that the emperor is naked his friend just says “Shut up, Drew, it’s Superman.”

And then, because I also love Batman for very different reasons, I imagine that later on the same day Bruce Wayne gets a phone call and Clark Kent is like “Hey, Wayne, I uh, need a favor.”

“Do you now.”

“Yeah, I, uh, kind of owe the Union Pacific Railroad $60,000.”

“Oh, and why’s that?”

“Come on, don’t do this to me. It was all over the news.”

“I’m prepared to write you a no-strings-attached check for the full amount on the condition that you explain your entire thought process from beginning to end.”

Anyway, that’s why I like Superman.

this is god tier commentary

mean girls the movie (2004) is obviously super gay and doesn't know it, in the way every teen movie from the 90s and 00s was super gay and didn't know it. that was part of the fun. bring it on. empire records. 10 things i hate about you/lesbian icon patrick verona. but how to explain mean girls the musical (2018), which SHOULD know how gay it is, but somehow DOESN'T

related: the only valid mean girls futurefic to me is when regina george is still an unrepentant maniac. i get that some people enjoy cute character rehabilitation but i am bamboozled by its prevalence in the little stories we tell each other here on the internet. garbage woman representation is also important. regina should be a human adult monster, that's her job. if we must rehabilitate her, i think at BEST we just channel her sociopathy somewhere constructive, like crime. wheres my mean girls nonfiction where janis runs into regina dyeing her hair in a gas station bathroom bc she is faking her own murder and framing her idiot husband about it

you know, regina's "she's channeling her aggression into sports!" arc never really worked for me because regina george's problem isn't JUST aggression and evil, her problem is being about 100 times smarter than everybody else and getting absolutely no joy out of it!!!! to be a hot teen girl is to be told you have power. to be a SMART hot teen girl is to discover that what "power" you have is no currency. it is something people tell you you have so that they can either 1. blame you for things or 2. wriggle into your light. it takes the heat off the people with actual power (ADULTS), and it gives you nothing that lasts!!! "you are the most powerful shark in this inflatable dog pool." wow, thank you so much! this is great! i love having the """power""" to, at best, destroy my own environment and then die to spite you!!! but the only vengeance you can get for this fucking GROSS DECEPTION is on other hapless teens who are no worthy prey and whose pain provides no lasting satisfaction. and that is why i will write a novel where she marries and destroys a thinly-veiled mark zuckerberg analogue

chaotic muppets interview

These are the words of puppeteers who should not be up this early

The sardonic, reductionist headline here could be "Scientists finally figured out why you get more colds in winter: bEcAuSe iT's CoLd!"—but the actual science involved here is both interesting, and potentially very relevant to everyday life and especially the immunocompromised:

Want to avoid catching or spreading respiratory viruses like CoVid-19, RSV, influenza, or a common cold? Mask up, please, but also bundle up! Wrap up in a scarf, wear a balaclava, and just generally keep your face warm. There's no single magic solution, but that's not a reason to do nothing. Rather, it's a reason to take several simple precautions that help avoid the spread of disease and protect those around you. (I can't tell you how much "this isn't 100% effective so I shouldn't do it at all" frustrates me.)

Oh, and #knitblr? This is your time to shine.

This is tragic news because it means my mother was RIGHT

WEAR A SCARF

And my grandmothers. And their grandmothers. And when snotty young Neil told his grandmother who had told me that if I went out like that I'd "catch my death of cold" that illness didn't work like that... I was wrong.

a very quick poem i just wrote, made from excerpts of texts my mum has sent me this year.

HELLO???

I hate leftist infighting so much. We could be exploring each others bodies instead 🙄

you heard about mutual aid how about mutual laid?

Gold posey ring inscribed "My Heart You Have/ And Yours I Crave" English, 17th-18th century

from Timeline Auctions

i know hearing people on this website love to pass around those posts with links to free sign language lessons but you know you need to actually put effort into learning about Deaf culture, too, right?

if you are currently learning ASL, you need to read Introduction to American Deaf Culture by Thomas K. Holcomb

resources for other Deaf cultures include, but are not limited to:

It's drawing comfort character hours

i love when people use slight seemingly typoed versions of words as new words in themselves to evoke completely different feelings. i love yeag i love woag i love ouppy i love fuckign and switching -ing's to -ign's. i use them Often and their usage could not be replaced by the actual words im trying to say