with violets in her lap

oldimgurpics:

(via headspace-hotel)

violetsandshrikes:

oh man. do you ever read something and just. oh man.

(via nateconnolly)

zinjanthropusboisei:

Toads of the future

at first glance i thought this was a rosary

(via fantasticait)

headspace-hotel:

bugtistic:

I think one of the absolute most frustrating things for me personally about the current climate crisis / late stage capitalism hell is that ontop of people just outright denying it and acting like the rising temperatures are normal- there’s been like. A VERY noticeable decline in the amount of insects yearly. As someone who goes out of my way to see bugs, every single year for the past decade there has been a sharp decline in bugs. What used to be fun filled summer months running around, catching grasshoppers and petting caterpillars… there’s nothing. I’ve seen one grasshopper this year. I’ve not seen a single caterpillar! It’s currently the ant nuptial flight season in my area and I’ve seen 0 winged ants. They used to all but infest my home during flight season

I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.

And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!

Anyways. Fellow entomology nerds, have any of you also noticed a drastic decrease in bugs you’re finding yearly or is my area just in a bug deficit.

I believe you. I also believe that this is a terrible fate that can be changed.

The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.

No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.

It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.

The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere… This is so ingrained in us that “grass” might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children’s books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.

This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.

For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)

And I’ve started to see bugs I’ve never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.

I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.

Outside isn’t supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.

And remember that “Weeds” are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.

Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.

So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that’s because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.

It’s actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!

We make Weeds…and Weeds make Us.

Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants’ heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.

Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.

When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.

We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.

(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA’s most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it’s literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)

(since industrial agriculture is probs the biggest cause of insect decline…I think there is very real reason to feel encouraged.)

moonbroth:

little morning thought

(via moonbroth)

foone:

wizard-of-docs:

fipindustries:

sevengummisharks:

imsobadatnicknames2:

imsobadatnicknames2:

imsobadatnicknames2:

The fact that there’s an actually functional website for the library of Babel is one of those things that fucks me up more and more the more I think about the implications.

So, if anyone hasn’t encountered the concept of the library of Babel, the idea comes from a story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges, which is set inside a seemingly infinite library which contains every possible combination of letters, periods, commas and spaces that fits within 410 pages.

So like… It isn’t THAT out there that someone was able to make a digital version of it. Making an algorithm that randomly generates every possible combination of those 29 characters within that space and making a website that lets you explore those combinations are things that are pretty squarely within the scope of things you’d expect someone to be able to make a computer do.

But it begins to get pretty out there when you start thinking about all the things that are technically contained there (and that someone randomly browsing it could THEORETICALLY stumble upon) just by virtue of being one of those possible combinations of letters, spaces, commas, and periods.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that specifically mentions me by full name before giving an accurate, excruciatingly detailed, 410-page long physical description of me. There’ also many more books that SEEM to be that but are actually factually inaccurate. There’s also versions of all of those containing every possible combination of every possible typo, spelling mistake, and grammatical error.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s a perfectly accurate prediction of how and when I will die narrated in third person over the course of 410 pages. There’s also a book that contains the exact same events narrated in first person. Not only for me, but for every person in the world. There are many more that claim to be that but are actually inaccurate.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s completely blank except for the world’s funniest dick joke written right at the end of the very last page.

But chances are no one browsing that website is EVER going to see any of that because for every book we would consider useful, interesting, or even intelligible there are millions upon millions upon millions more that are just completely full of gibberish from cover to cover.

Every single thing I will ever write (barring punctuation marks that arent periods or commas and the letter ñ) is already contained somewhere on that website.

I have a volume from the Library of Babel! it’s one of my most treasured books.

on the second to last page, about halfway down it reads “OH TIME THY PYRAMIDS” a singular grain of order in the sea of chaos.

The library of babel contains every book to ever exist and moreover it contains all information that can be encoded in a finite string of characters from its alphabet.

I cannot overstate how much I love the Library of Babel. it’s wonderful, it is my heart and soul.

at last we created the perplexing nexus, from the novel “wouldnt it be weird if there was a perplexing nexus?”

hey @foone what font is that printed in?

I dunno, I’m about digital fonts, not real-world ones.

sweatermuppet:

love all my t4t friends because it means getting texts like this

honeyfaun:

(via keroppingg)

strawberryamanita:

Observation #1: The prefix “a-” means “none”, such as in “asexual”, “apolitical” and “Atheism”.

Observation: The word “unicorn” is a combination of “uni”, meaning “one”, and “cornus”, meaning “horn”.

Conclusion:

ALT

This is an acorn.

(via gallusrostromegalus)

roach-works:

is-the-owl-video-cute:

herd-reject-arts:

So I’m leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like… a whole ass hawk. Dude’s gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it’s just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn’t budge. And there’s only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn’t moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I’ll talk to them, so I’m just like, “Hey, man. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. This feels really threatening. I’m just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You’re a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t, ok?”

It didn’t move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I’m as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn’t going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just… there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

This is so funny because that’s a freshly-fledged juvenile red tailed hawk.

It didn’t leave simply because it didn’t really know the giant gorilla thing walking towards it was a threat. You were menaced by what amounts to a teenager who just passed their driving test just chilling under a tree.

This thing weighs all of 1 pound and barely knows it’s a bird.

the bird got a nat20 on intimidation from a die it knocked off the desk

(via gallusrostromegalus)