Unemployment for all, not just the rich

Learn how to identify plants and animals with me!

[girldog]

GIRLS!!!!!! gather roung. we are looking at this pillbug

[determinate-negation]

the demand that the average menial worker “take initiative” and have a “self starting personality” and so on is one of the worst developments of capitalism and the neoliberal ethos bitch tf im just here to do whatever someone told me to do 🤣

[determinate-negation]

capital used to dehumanize the worker by reducing them to an undifferentiated cog in the machine, now your job essentially has the same function yet youre forced to act like your own manager and exhibit a self motivated can-do attitude

[mindblowingscience]

'Extinct' butterfly species reappears in UK

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner - a keen naturalist - has been on their trail.

Blink and you could miss them - but mysterious sightings of an extremely rare butterfly have set the hearts of enthusiasts fluttering.

The species, previously described as extinct in Britain for nearly 100 years, has suddenly appeared in countryside on the edge of London.

Small numbers of black-veined whites have been spotted flying in fields and hedgerows in south-east London.

To the non-expert, they could easily be mistaken for the common or garden cabbage white butterflies seen in Britain every summer.

But there's nothing common about the black-veined white on this side of the Channel.

Continue Reading

[kp777-deactivated20241106]

York groundsel blooms again in Britain’s first-ever de-extinction event

Yellow flower that only grows in York went extinct in 1991 brought back to life by Natural England experts

By Patrick Barkham

The Guardian

May 27, 2023

York groundsel was a cheerful yellow flower that slipped into global extinction in 1991, thanks to overzealous application of weedkiller in the city of its name.

But now the urban plant has been bought back to life in the first ever de-extinction in Britain, and is flowering again in York.

The species of groundsel was only ever found around the city and only evolved into its own species in the past century after non-native Oxford ragwort hybridised with native groundsel.

York groundsel, Senecio eboracensis, was discovered growing in the car park of York railway station in 1979 and was the first new species to have evolved in Britain for 50 years, thriving on railway sidings and derelict land.

But the new plant’s success was short-lived, as urban land was tidied up and chemicals applied to remove flowers dismissed as “weeds”.

It was last seen in the wild in 1991. Fortunately, researchers kept three small plants in pots on a windowsill in the University of York. These short-lived annual plants soon died, but they produced a precarious pinch of seed, which was lodged at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank.

Andrew Shaw of the Rare British Plants Nursery had a vision to bring the species back to life, but when tests were carried out on some privately held seeds very few germinated successfully.

So Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, quickly authorised a de-extinction attempt via its species recovery programme, which has funded the revival of the most threatened native species for 30 years.

“The Millennium Seed Bank said the seed was getting near the end of its lifespan and so we thought we would only have one more chance of resurrecting it,” said Alex Prendergast, a vascular plant senior specialist for Natural England.

Natural England paid for a polytunnel at the Rare British Plants Nursery in Wales, where 100 of the tiny seeds were planted. To the botanists’ surprise, 98 of the seeds germinated successfully. The polytunnel rapidly filled with a thousand York groundsel plants.

In February six grams of seed – potentially thousands of plants – were sown into special plots around York on council and Network Rail land.

This week, the first plants in the wild for 32 years began to flower, bringing colour to the streets and railway sidings of York.

This de-extinction is likely to be a one-off in this country because York groundsel is the only globally extinct British plant that still persists in seed form and so could be revived.

But Prendergast said the de-extinction showed the value of the Millennium Seed Bank – to which plenty of York groundsel seed has now been returned – and there were a number of good reasons for bringing the species back to life.

“It’s a smiley, happy-looking yellow daisy and it’s a species that we’ve got international responsibility for,” he said.

“It only lives in York, and it only ever lived in York. It’s a good tool to talk to people about the importance of urban biodiversity and I hope it will capture people’s imagination.

“It’s also got an important value as a pollinator and nectar plant in the area because it flowers almost every month of the year.”

[vague-humanoid]

PROOF POINTS: Do math drills help children learn?

Timed tests might be a more efficient way to memorize multiplication tables, but even advocates caution that there are many pitfalls

[esoteric-merit]

Out in my neck of the woods, schools stopped requiring times tables be memorized. They let students use calculators from that age up. In fact, they stopped a decade ago, so I can tell you with confidence how math undergrads deal with math when they can't instantly multiply 6x8 in their heads: They do great. They have less math anxiety as a cohort than my cohort did, although that's hard to pin down to a single variable. However, it in no way hindered their math learning as a cohort, or their current math ability. "Musicians repeat scales by the rapid tick of a metronome and athletes do speed drills to build muscle memory." Those are both muscle memory operations, why the fuck are we comparing cognitive ability to muscle memory? Moreover, do you know how you actually train muscle memory for scales and for complex athletic manoeuvres? You do them as slowly as possible without shaking, if possible for that manoeuvre, (You sure ain't going to train a jump that way :P), and then endeavour to do it even slower, with less shaking. The shaking is the direct result of your cerebellum trying to figure out how to coordinate muscles to work together, so you're directly training your cerebellum to learn exactly how to do those complex manoeuvres. The speed comes afterwards. Now, what would be the math equivalent of figuring out how to coordinate muscles? Oh right, there isn't fucking any, because muscles and math are entirely different things with different ways of learning. "Opponents of timed tests also want children to automatically know that seven times eight is 56 instead of conceptually thinking it out each time" I don't. I think it's silly and stupid to make people spend time on exact numbers when everyone in fact does go around with calculators in their pockets these days. But it was also foolish back before that, too. The only time you need speed computing, and understand I say this as someone who got bronze in a national calculation competition, is if you are hired as a manual computer, a job that was rare to begin with and doesn't exist at all anymore. Engineers and designers without computers should have taken their sweet fucking time making sure their calculations were correct. And the ability to spit out your times tables in random order with high accuracy doesn't help with that anyways! Listen, how many people, including proponents of timed math tests, even know a single algorithm for head-computing a square root outside of "guess and check"? I know 18 and I have opinions of which ones are good and why. I don't think you even have a seat at this fucking table unless you're on my level. Did my knowledge of head computing help my mathematical learning? Actually, yes, and I think it still does, but I think that taking the time to teach it to people instead of just teaching them the math, would just take more time than it's ever saved me, and the process of teaching it would confuse, annoy, and frustrate many kids. There are many things in math like that, and while it should be encouraged if any kid wants to learn more about them, esp. on their own time, they don't belong in a mandatory classroom. "One side worries that timed tests can produce so much anxiety that it overwhelms the working memory and prevents a child from learning" Actually, I'm worried that kids who find themselves behind the curve develop a permanent dislike for mathematics as a result. Something which effects at least 60% of adults, numbers vary per study. As a mathematician, I hear one of three things when people learn I'm a mathematician: "EW!", "I could never do that", and "Better you than me". (The secret fourth option is that they are also a mathematician or heavy-maths field) Automaticity is a horrible goal for many reasons, such as convincing people that if they can't immediately solve a problem, they should give up. But also, it just has absolutely no benefit in cultivating mathematical ability. Anyways, people are nowhere near radical enough about changing math education as they should be.

[elodieunderglass]

Ok so you and I are meeting up. Maybe in your home territory, or maybe somewhere that you know well - don’t doxx yourself - but we are meeting up to explore something particularly. you are in charge of picking the museum, bog, weird antique store, bog, bookshop, bog, gallery, arboretum, botanical garden, show, or bog. Where are you showing me and why?

[ms-demeanor]

If you come in March I am taking you to see the world's largest blossoming plant, the Sierra Madre Wistaria Vine, and we are doing that because Plants Are Cool but once that is done we can go to the Huntington Gardens (also because plants are cool) and spend some time in their domesticated bog looking at the carnivorous plants (which are cool).

[ms-demeanor]

GO TO THE AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC. You've got a kick-ass aquarium in Long Beach that is an excellent place to spend a day. It has a wonderful jellyfish tank in front of which to dissociate.

And because that one's pricey my favorite LA area aquarium is actually the Manhattan Beach aquarium which is a tiny pay-what-you-want aquarium at the end of the Manhattan Beach Pier that has a tidepool display and a bunch of eels and crabs and fish and is just generally speaking very good for a tiny little aquarium. You can go pay a couple bucks to park, spend a couple hours bodysurfing and enjoying the beach, change into dry clothes at your car, then walk to the end of the pier and look at the fish it's just a good way to spend a day doing cool shit in LA with a very low pricetag.

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

Everyone reblog with your most unemployable traits

[probablyasocialecologist]

People Are Shoplifting Their Way Out of the Cost of Living Crisis | Novara Media

As the price of food and other basics soars, more people are shoplifting. While some see stealing as necessary, for others it’s a form of resistance. Sophie K Rosa reports.

Shoplifters who spoke to Novara Media said the cost of living crisis had pushed them to steal more of life’s essentials. “A couple of times I’ve been on the verge of crying when I go to buy Sainsbury’s Basics apple and blackcurrant squash and realise the price has doubled in the past three months,” said John.

Lara, a culture worker from London, has started shoplifting groceries more frequently; she said it has become more socially acceptable in her circles. “I know that other people do it, and I’ve seen how other people do it, and that really helped,” she said. Previously, she avoided stealing because her upbringing and wider moralism had convinced her it was “a shameful thing” to do.

“Before, I would have described stealing as this really anti-Islamic thing to do,” she said. Shoplifting is also especially frowned-upon by “parents who come from a working-class or lower middle-class background,” she said, because of how classist ‘scrounger’ stereotypes “trickle down to how we surveil and shame each other.”

Nowadays however, Lara sees shoplifting as “one of the few guerrilla tactics we have available to us.”

Alan, a construction worker from London, who, like John and Anna, has been shoplifting around half his groceries in recent months, has “no moral qualms” about stealing from supermarkets. “I just think that the stuff in the world is ours, all of ours,” he said, “and that we’ve invented a really stupid system for the distribution of resources which doesn’t treat them as ours, and treats them as things that can be used for capitalists to make profit.”

He wouldn’t steal things if it meant that “someone’s labour went unrewarded”, he said, but all shoplifting affects is “the profits of shareholders” he said. “[I have] no concerns about that at all.”

[…]

While, for many, shoplifting feels like a form of resistance to untenable living conditions, no one who spoke to Novara Media was sure how to build solidarity between shoplifters. Alan shoplifts food for rough sleepers, but wishes there were more organised approaches to shoplifting – like the mass stealing and redistribution of food that occurred in Greece following the 2008 financial crisis.

Lara believes shoplifting could be “revolutionary” if it could be “more of an organised operation” that involved “getting workers on side”.

“I think it would be really radical if there would be a widespread recognition and acceptance of stealing as a necessary mechanism for resistance,” she says. “If you can’t afford the things that you have to buy, then the logic should be that you just take them.”

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[puppetmastery]

maybe i would like flies with that (ukbeetlemania on tiktok)

[wormyorchids]

New city inverts zine in the works! Here’s the foldout- all about flies!

[amelsewhere]

Bristol reportback:

Today marks two years since a protest in Bristol was attacked by the police, so a 300-strong demonstration hit the streets tonight to show solidarity with the over 30 individuals facing extreme prison sentences and awaiting sentencing.

The demonstration back in 2021 was against the patriarchal violence of the UK police in light of the case of Sarah Everard, as well as opposing the policing bill designed to criminalise protest. It escalated outside the Bridewell Police Station when riot police began attacking protesters with shields, batons, and chemical sprays, many protesters who acted in self defense were ganged up on by police and beaten then arrested. Protesters have been handed sentences up to 14 years, together the prison time totals to over 100 years, while at least 26 officers on the night committed misconduct not one has been charged or even removed from active duty.

Tonight the people of Bristol came out to show solidarity with the activists who are facing repression for fighting a tyrannical anti-protesting law, standing up to a mysognistic and institutionally violent police force, and trying to defend fellow protesters. Speeches were given by grassroots organisations set up to support the prisoners and their families, as well as police monitoring and legal support organisations.

Today a report was published stating the MET police is institutionally racist, homophobic, and mysognistic, the KTB protesters weren't only standing up to an oppressive anti-protest legislation but stood in the face of a blatantly violent mysognistic institution that victimises, assualts and denies women justice. The MET has blood on its hands, Avon & Somerset Police are guilty, the UK police protect abusers, r*pists and murderers amongst their ranks, while claiming grassroots political movements are the real problem to justify powers to control dissent. We will not cave in to their abuses of power, we will not forget the victims of their brutality, we will support those who have been left with life long consequences from their actions, and we will remember all those we've lost to their institutional violence.

[amelsewhere]

Because I was in a rush to write this and didn't want to make it too long I didn't even mention a few vital extra details.

The government has been drafting a law designed to break strikes by requiring services to have a minimum functioning capacity thus undermining the whole purpose of striking. This is happening while teachers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, post office workers, railway workers, and employees from multiple other sectors are organising mass strikes due to simply inadequate pay and conditions.

The very same tory party has also set up a plan to deport all those who enter the UK illegally, including victimscof human trafficking and modern slavery, to a detention camp in Rwanda. They've closed nearly all avenues to legally apply for asylum and will send anybody who doesn't apply off to a foreign prison.

It's also worth mentioning last year they gave themselves the power to revoke British citizenship without warning at their discretion. This is what we are up against, this is the force behind anti protest laws, behind systemic transphobia, racism, mysogyny, inequality and institutionalised violence against marginalised groups.

[bogleech]

FLY SWEEP But seriously good environmental message because yeah a diverse lawn will not really impact the “pesky” things. They are pesky to humans *because* they like our blood or our food or our houses rather than needing all that nature stuff. In some cases they are even benefited much more by urbanization; if anything the last image should also add a bunch of mosquitoes because we end up giving them way more places to breed free of predation. But also FLY SWEEP

[dsudis]

Have you ever donated blood?

Whenever I tell people I’m donating blood they seem to either tell me why they can’t (there are lots of reasons people can’t!) or just act like it’s something they’ve never known anyone to do. So have you?

Yes

No

Voting ended onMar 18, 2023

[dtf-collages-deactivated2023072]

An over 400 million year old, unproblematic dynasty

[onenicebugperday]

Southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, laying eggs on water’s surface

Photographed in Florida by Sean McCann

[onenicebugperday]

I don’t think mosquitoes get enough love can you please leave some positive comments for her to read thank you

[anarchoecology]

Something related to youth liberation that I don't think I've seen discussed much is the fatalist attitude some people have when a child (usually a teenager) does something wrong that's like "kids are just horrible, there's nothing you can do about it". Because I don't think this kind of behaviour is inevitable, and people, including kids, don't just treat each other badly for no reason!