alt0151

Onward and awkward!

[byjove]

Please watch this video if your sad.

(No kitties were hurt.)

[roo-tee-ah-deactivated20160720]

“you’re probably two days old”,

[scarlet-vision]

“this is the flower crown I wear when shit’s about to get deep”

[jonut2]

i love this

[sunlitallegory-deactivated20171]

“Alright I got my flower crown on. This is the flower crown I wear when shit’s about to get deep, shits about to get fucking deep in here. I heard you were sad so I decided that I needed to come and rescue you, like some sort of like, prince. Okay, here we go. I’m gonna cheer you up. Here you go! (Small meow, another meow.) Here. Here we go (meow meow), here. Two days old, right? (mew mew mew mew mew) Two days old.. two days old, already cute as hell, has lots of potential. I’m gonna return it right there. And you? You’re a lot like that kitten, whoever you are. You have lots of potential, you’re probably two days old, aaand you’re very cute.”

[pleasantlyweepingphantom-deacti]

@spacebunboi

[blackwoolncrown]

This is one of the most tumblr posts on tumblr but unlike many ‘Very Tumblr’ posts this one is actually harmless and good

[becausebirds]

🦢 Wearing is caring. 🦢

[alto151]

SWAN SAYS WEAR A MASK

[teaboot]

You know what’s wild?

Your body- like, the one you’re existing as? Your mind prison?- it’s not a wholly independant entity. It’s an ecosystem. You’re a bog that’s self-aware

[teaboot]

Imagine if a swamp could telepathically communicate a desire for Chicago style deep dish and then just. Have it

[teaboot]

No wonder my stomach hates me, the fish are confused as fuck

[lazyevaluationranch]

27/6/2020 It has been a rough year for the garden. There was hail, there was a cold snap, but mostly there were deer. The garden is now overrun by equisetum, the only thing the deer won’t eat and the sky cannot crush.

Equisetum are strange and ancient plants. They collect silicon from the soil and make little glass strands.  Pulling them out of the garden, you can feel the grass breaking inside the stem. It feels like snapping tiny glow sticks. We know dinosaurs ate them, because we’ve found scratches on hadrosaur teeth from the glass bits. Hadrosaurs grew new teeth in “dental batteries” to deal with eating the equisetum glass. Not much eats them today. 

They’re older than seeds. They have spores instead. Each spore has ribbony bits curled around it. When the spores get wet, the ribbons fill with water and uncurl and straighten like the party horns that go FWEEE and uncurl when you blow into them. The FWEEE pushes the spores up into the air. If they land somewhere dry, the water evaporates and ribbons curl up again, until the next time it rains. FWEEE. They dance all around the yard and get into everything. They like disturbed ground and in between places, where the other plants have been removed: railroads, roadsides, graveyards, deer-eaten gardens.

They are three hundred million years old. Older than dinosaurs. Older than trees. Older than the continents and seas. Hadrosaurs grew hundreds of teeth to eat them, and it still wasn’t enough.

They will outlast us, and dance on our graves. FWEEE.

[letsgetsalty]

Agdgsgsgsg I’m LIVING for this Reef2Reef thread. This guy was worried about his urchins getting sunburnt so he made them little hats

[letsgetsalty]

IT GETS BETTER

[bogleech]

In the wild these urchins will in fact carry a small rock or shell exactly on top like this and im so happy there's people taking advantage of that and who care about their urchins as pets.

[commander-ledi]

i visited an aquarium at some point, and our tour guide told that when the staff had a party, they put a little decorative plastic hat from a booze bottle into the sea urching tank, and just left it there because the sea urchins liked it, and kept taking turns in wearing it.

[goingknowherewastaken]

Discovering that sea urchins wearing hats is a thing in this world means so much to me rn

[a-fucking-velociraptor]

Cool Tip

If you are like me and always need to be working on something to keep your anxiety under control, during this quarentine why not helping scientists by looking at pictures of some neat penguins? or even galaxies?  There’s this site call Zooniverse, where you can help on scientific projects by analyzing pictures and data!  Right now my favorite project has returned, called Penguin Watch (where yeah, you get to watch penguins, it’s amazing)

you basically have to analyse photos looking for penguins, their chicks, eggs or even predators and human interaction But there are lots of interesting projects you can help in areas such as biology, physics, history or even art: 

Oh and the best part, some institutions even accept it as volunteering/service hour requirements for graduation and scholarships!! It’s helping me a lot during this time, so I thought it was worth sharing 

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

Oh to be the man in these stock photos...

[dykejokerr-deactivated20220726]

You guys are totally missing the best pictures from actual mycologists

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

All That the Rain Promises and More! I have this book and I love it. It's so full of joyful pictures of people and mushrooms:

[wahtdahel-blog]

[alto151]

The top of this post was like an oracle for me, thank you.

[typhlonectes]

[foxlady3]

“One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers – you can find it in the choreographer Martha Graham’s biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: ‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’”

— Zadie Smith (via campaignagainstcliche)

[weepingandgnashingofteeth]

To Whom It May Concern:

[scurviesdisneyblog]

Sherri Stoner and Joshua Finkel’s live-action reference for The Little Mermaid

[nintendosbitch-archived]

If no one else is gonna say it- she looks like a psycho

Imagine if real people acted like that all the time

[alto151]

Are we just not going to talk about the sheepdog?

[mackincaid]

“Here are three elements we often see in town names: If a town ends in “-by”, it was originally a farmstead or a small village where some of the Viking invaders settled. The first part of the name sometimes referred to the person who owned the farm - Grimsby was “Grim’s village”. Derby was “a village where deer were found”. The word “by” still means “town” in Danish. If a town ends in “-ing”, it tells us about the people who lived there. Reading means “The people of Reada”, in other words “Reada’s family or tribe”. We don’t know who Reada was, but his name means “red one”, so he probably had red hair. If a town ends in “-caster” or “-chester”, it was originally a Roman fort or town. The word comes from a Latin words “castra”, meaning a camp or fortification. The first part of the name is usually the name of the locality where the fort was built. So Lancaster, for example, is “the Roman fort on the River Lune”.”

— A Little Book of Language by David Crystal, page 173. (via linguaphilioist)

[mosseffect]

for some reason in my (cursed? blessed?) sims game i am able to invite the grim reaper to parties, and now he regularly shows up even if i don’t invite him. he often brings ceviche. normal quality. he’s a decent party guest except for the fact that the only interaction you can have with him is to slow dance. naturally i made one of my sims slow dance with him, which gave him the notification ‘we have a lot in common! id love to get to know you better’. so anyway, a couple of days and parties later, it’s 6 am and my sim gets a phone call. it’s death. he wants to know if i want to go on a date. 

naturally my sim accepts. death takes him to the school stadium in the rain and stands outside, unable to be interacted with, while a thought bubble containing my sim’s face pops up over his head for a simlish hour, over and over again, carrying a rainbow umbrella while my sim sits on the ground and considers the hollowness of life. 

remembering that all i can do is slow dance with him, i drive him to moonlight point, where there’s a couch and a record player, and i slow dance with him for about 5 hours. every 2 seconds he steps on my sims’ foot, to the point where it was hard to get decent pictures of them actually slow dancing. 

after a while my sim got hungry so i let him go drink some juice, and death went and started reading a book on a couch. i went and sat next to him, wondering if there would be any new interactions since you get different ones when you sit on a couch or bench, and lo and behold i discovered, not only can you slow dance with death, you can also cuddle with him. naturally i did so because the quality of dates is determined by the number of positive social interactions you have with someone, and slow dancing unfortunately doesn’t give you any of those, but cuddling does. anyway, once you start the cuddling animation, you get fancy new options like kiss and make out, so my sim spent the next six hours making out with death on a shitty couch at the beach in a thunderstorm while listening to sim!bastille. 

after a couple dozen make out sessions, a single option appeared under the Romantic… heading: ‘take a romantic photo together’. this only shows up once you’re a romantic interest of someone. i have now successfully wooed death. knowing that selecting this option would make death stand up from the couch and i likely wouldn’t be able to get him to sit again, i decided to end the date at the tender hour of 3 am (i guess death doesn’t sleep) with a kiss. it takes a while- death can’t seem to figure out where to stand or how to walk around a foosball table- but eventually i get my picture.

but apparently death doesnt like having his picture taken. 

i try to slow dance again with him, but the option has disappeared. i have committed an irreparable social faux pas. i sit on the couch again in the hopes that death will resume reading his book and i can cuddle with him again, but instead he stands in front of the bookshelf for an hour. i take a break, leaving my sim to his own devices for a while while i check in on my other sims, since one of them just went into labour. i deal with that. when i return, i find my sim drinking juice in silence with death still standing in front of the bookshelf, but he’s changed into this sick new outfit in the interim. 

beekeeper chic. finally, at 6 am, death decides he’s had enough. he will never forgive me for my social blunder of taking a selfie while lipping at his shadowy veil. he opens up his rainbow umbrella and leaves. 

the date doesn’t end until i get home. i receive no date notification. death doesn’t even deign to let me know how badly i fucked up. all i have to remember my 24 hour gay liaison with one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse is a single selfie. i hang it over my sims bed, a constant reminder to him that he has achieved ultimate goth status, and a warning to the others he dates: i have kissed death, and he never called me back.

[mosseffect]

[star-anise]

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

[freedom-of-fanfic]

“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

[aphilologicalbatman-deactivated]

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

[brs-love]

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

[star-anise]

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad).  Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. 

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.  

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

[bogleech]

Bog, how do you deal with climate anxiety? Sometimes it gets so bad, I feel suicidal.

I don’t really deal with it well either and really the only positive takeaway for me is knowing that some animals will thrive pretty much no matter how bad it can get, which means those will be the animals re-diversifying and dominating the planet in an evolutionary explosion of new species long after we’re all gone.Past extinction events were what filled the ocean with fish, turned huge dinosaurs into tiny birds and flooded the planet with mammals, to name a few big shifts.One thing that seems to love the warming oceans are soft-bodied cephalopods, who also seem to love that we’re eating up their fish competitors, so we might just be handing the ocean over to an octopus-based future.On land, the predictable roaches, ants, wasps and rats are doing well, as are clever corvids.The BEST equipped land mammals in my opinion, however, are all of the armadillos. Their range is already rapidly expanding because many armadillo species are opportunistic omnivores well adapted for harsh, unpredictable climates and can establish themselves anywhere from flooded swamps to barren deserts. They burrow and they swim and they can scavenge almost anything.

When the huge dinosaurs disappeared, it left tiny rodent-sized mammals free to diversify into every furry milk-making thing we have today; wolves and whales and bats and humans. That’s UNBELIEVABLE. That’s so many absurdly different things that all came from basically a shrew. 50 million years from now, what if there’s a planet full of wolfadillos and whaleadillos and battadillos and….I don’t know if anything as monstrously brained and imaginative as us will ever re-evolve, that already took almost a billion years to accidentally happen the one time, but, anything is possible. Maybe they’d be a gentler people.

[elodieunderglass]

That’s lovely! My husband has a similar response: life always survives. However…

Climate anxiety, or more generally, ecological grief, is common but perfectly actionable, because it’s anxiety. Anxiety is a thing that you can treat. Here are some things that may help.

Treat it like any other anxiety. I’m serious. You may be like, “Well, Elodie, the difference is that [my other anxiety] is about things that ARE NOT REAL, and my Climate Anxiety is about THINGS THAT ARE VERY MUCH EXTREMELY REAL. So therefore it can’t be treated, and therefore I must feel horrible. This extremely SPECIAL anxiety is just too REAL to treat.” And I’m like: hey! first off, don’t act like [your other anxiety] needs to be ‘real!’ it IS real! all that matters is that you have anxiety. it literally does not matter whether you’re anxious about something “real” or “valid” or not, okay? Stop that mindset, it isn’t helping you (and it’s really bad for other anxious people to hear.) Any anxiety that happens is here, and it affects you, and THAT is real. Treat it. It’s the same issue.

After addressing it as anxiety, the best cure for the causes of climate anxiety is climate action.

Ensure that you are getting your information from reputable sites and reliable sources. There are a lot of blogs, products, programs and influencers who have built their platforms on monetizing people’s eco-anxiety, deliberately cultivating a state of anxiety and fear (and a neat little market to go with it). Resist this and stick to the evidence, choosing research that is meant to educate and inform.

Don’t fall into the trap of obsessing over individual actions. A lot of anxiety will come from whether you recycled a plastic spoon, and then you might get upset by seeing a person leaving their car running, and then you might be overwhelmed by how disgusting and polluted your city seems, with all these people who just don’t appear to care. Instead, convert that anxiety, energy and desire to do something into Actually Useful climate actions. Psychologists, economists, scientists and policymakers awkwardly agree that focusing on individual actions is bad for your mental health, unproductive, and ineffective. Make the decision to cut off these thoughts and treat them as intrusive.

In particular, try to stop yourself from negative hyperfocus on what everyone else is doing. If the sight of other people eating meat makes you feel ill because you can’t stop picturing them EATING YOUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE, or if you find yourself on Facebook berating people for using disposable diapers, or if you’re terrorizing your coworkers by sorting their trash, then this is a clue that this eco-anxiety is affecting your ability to relate to people and you need to stop. It is not a good road, and you can be better.

Also, you are more than just a Unit of Consumption. Humans are more than that, too.

Read about how environmental victories, such as closing the hole in the ozone layer and removing the lead from gasoline, were achieved. What’s the difference here? What needs to be done? How do you actually win these fights? Remember that they all seemed impossible and terrifying at the start. Nobody enters a war thinking that the only outcome is victory.

There are plenty of resources to direct you to Actually Useful Climate Actions, but some good first steps include

Find your local, in-person group that is concerned about the environment and join them for literal, actual, real-life meetings/activities/protests/events. 

Learn about the relevant charities and choose one that aligns most closely with your interests. Some charities may have some stances that you don’t agree with, but the good thing is, researching this is a productive use of your time. Friends of the Earth? Extinction Rebellion? The World Wildlife Fund? 360Degrees? Greenpeace? The YEARS Project? Our Children’s Trust? Survival International? THERE ARE DOZENS. Choose one that operates in your country and aligns with your own goals and values. Most of them can do a lot of good actions with a regular donation of £3/$5 a month. If you can’t donate money, you can still sign up for newsletters, sign petitions, participate in their campaigns, write to your local politicians on their behalf, fundraise, and volunteer. Seriously, don’t try this alone! There are literally dozens of powerful and influential charities who can make an enormous difference, who are BEGGING you to come and participate. They NEED you.

Signing petitions and writing to politicians are honestly powerful and necessary actions that you can do, and they are often accessible if your abilities are limited. There are plenty of good reasons why your abilities may be limited, like disability/work/finances/mental health/time/energy.

If you have the resources, direct actions like marches, strikes and protests are incredibly powerful - but they work best when more than one person is involved. Who can you join? If the answer is “nobody,” then who will join you? Do you have allies in your classmates? Would friends and family do it for love?

Learn about what is actually needed (generally, it isn’t chasing plastic bottles; but do you feel a calling to do so? Where does that come from? what can you do?) and reflect upon what you can provide.

If you have skills, experience or connections, how can you bring them to bear on climate action? This article talks about psychologists and journalists who thought about this, and the career/hobby/life decisions they made.

 If you are an artist/writer/creator of fiction, there’s an interesting book called “The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh, which wants to drag the entire concept of fiction for never talking about climate change. It’s difficult! Read it!

If you cannot get away from worry about your individual impacts, calculate your carbon footprint; there are plenty of easy free calculators. Then, find and research a carbon offset service that will plant a tree to suck up your carbon. It isn’t perfect, but neither is focusing too much on What One Person Can Do, and at least this way you can think about your tree. This is more a “quick cure for immediate anxiety” than an Actually Useful Climate Thing - but what a nice displacement activity!

Maybe individual displacement activities mean a huge amount to you and help your anxiety. That’s amazing! Do them! Why not make a commitment to do them joyfully? Share a plant-based meal with your friends/family/colleagues, or plan a plant-based party (maybe a vegetarian potluck? Lots of people will actually enjoy the challenge!) Plan a super-low-carbon vacation or break. Really get into your vegetable garden as a source of pleasure. Make your individual choices as joyous additions to your life, rather than sacrifices.

Some individual actions we don’t talk about much are incredibly useful, but people don’t know they exist. If you’re lucky enough to have some, and I know that a lot of people don’t, divest your pension/retirement/savings money to green/ethical/eco holdings. (Did you know that a lot of banks use your money to invest directly in fossil fuels? Hey! Did you know that you can literally say no to that!) Change your energy supplier to renewable energy. Are eco holdings or green energy not available where you live? Fabulous, that’s your action for a week; calling your bank or power company and explaining what a good offering that would be.

Politics. SORRY BUT THERE IT IS. YOU CANNOT GET AWAY FROM IT.

Talk about it. It’s hard to be anxious about an existential threat when friends, family and colleagues may not even notice or believe in the threat. Without being a proselytizer, you can actually talk to the people you respect about your concerns, and even ask them to share in them.

Talk to a therapist. They know how to do this.

Hey, maybe this is an interesting career direction for you! If it really means a lot to you and your life… then how can you serve? Is this your Job? Maybe it is.

STAY AWAY FROM DOOM-AND-GLOOM PEOPLE. Generally, they know fuck about shit!! They really don’t have anything useful to say!!! Also STAY AWAY FROM CLIMATE DENIERS. They know even fewer fucks about even fewer shits! Just keep away from these people! They’re mean, nasty, incorrect, wrong and ignorant - and they’ll drag you down with them. Don’t give them the keys to your mental health! They’ll drive it off a cliff! It’s what they WANT to do.

There are plenty of websites talking about this, all with their own conclusions, many of which I’ve said here. Here they are:

Climate anxiety doesn’t have to ruin your life. Here’s how to manage it.

Climate anxiety is real, but there’s something you can do about it

What To Do About Climate Change Anxiety, According To Experts

Eco-Anxiety Isn’t New, and It’s Time to Deal with It

Don’t Allow Climate Change Anxiety to Ruin Your Life: Five ways to handle your (or your child’s) “eco-anxiety”

Hope and mourning in the Anthropocene: Understanding ecological grief

Make a folder, Tumblr, or box full of things that reassure you and bring you joy. perhaps like this:

And here is an image that is one of the most useful and succint ways to answer this question that I’ve seen (it’s strictly USA-based but you can take what applies to you). Source, which is easier to read.

AND FINALLY,

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY,

If you feel suicidal,

CALL FOR HELP.

Search for your region + suicide hotline on the net. Talk to family, friends, colleagues. Call the emergency services on yourself. Make contact with a therapist. If you feel suicidal then treat that as something that needs to be fixed. Because it can be. And it will.

You are not alone.

[br3adstic]

Why are we silent???

[sonicrainbooms]

we’re silent because we didnt know. thats the whole problem. how can we talk about a problem we literally dont know about because of a media blackout.

here are some links.

Shahd Khidir uses her platform to spread awareness 

Nahid Jabrallah tells DW about the sexual violence 

Authorities Are lying about the death toll

Government is killing people during an internet shut down

Central Committee of Sudan Doctors confirms that it’s still going (i linked their whole facebook for updates. these doctors are sided with the protestors) 

a lot of information is from the 3-4 of june but this appears to still be a problem. stay aware.

[discoursegoose]

Thanks for the links!

You said it yourself, media isn’t covering it so how are we just magically supposed to know OP?

[ashghal]

its a developing issue and with the internet shutdown, its a great struggle to truly find out what is happening at the scene. spread the word and let news media know!

[angelically-fragile]

I don’t care what type of account you have please reblog this 🌻