Garden Spider

「Intel said to me, "Girl, never take a step into those woods." I replied, "Sir aye, rest assured I haven't understood."」

[poxychoo]

Bar date

[sabertoothwalrus]

I hate the videoification of everything. If I have to hear one more video of someone speaking closely into their shitty mic and I have to have all their yucky wet mouth noises and plosives and nose whistles and throat clearings and sniffles I am going to dig a vertical hole the exact dimensions of my body and I’m going to slither in head first

[sabertoothwalrus]

as someone with misophonia, the widespread popularization of asmr audio editing + people that are being pushed to make video content with no formal training and have no idea how to edit their audio (ex college professors, average joe tiktokers, etc) is literally my nightmare scenario. this is hell I am in hell

[sabertoothwalrus]

this is actually the last straw for me I need to start sending people emails

[piksiew]

bacteriography portrait of Five Pebbles I made from yeast , mold , acrylic paints and other stuff i found

[pennaraptor]

emotional responses are deeply evolutionarily advantageous in any animals that are making complex decisions and behaviors (in many vertebrates, say) because they act as a reinforcer for a behavior. a bird taking a vigorous bath in a puddle is probably happy because if that behavior didnt elicit a positive feeling they wouldn't do it (it is dangerous to be on the ground and wet!). if an animal can feel fear, which i think is a less contested assertion to make, then it can certainly feel the opposite, that is, happy.

[pennaraptor]

Bernd Heinrich in his book Nesting Season

[ms-scarletwings]

Cephenemyia ulrichii (the moose throat botfly) is the funniest insect alive to me and there is no competition because

This species will have the most innocent adorable kissable marketable appearance of any fly evolved, but then you look them up and they have blood curdling lore able to turn your stomach in a sense rivaling Nick Cutter’s novels. I couldn’t even keep it together trying to read up on their life cycle for the first time because of

1. How convolutely messed up of a parasitism method they chose to thrive by

2. The extremely stupid reason behind why they accidentally end up in humans and the horrific location where

3. The images-information whiplash happening in my head that I hope this editing gets across.

[plantnerderyallday]

Me a few months ago: Oh, so it's hard to mow here in this "drainage ditch"?🙁 It has really steep sides, too steep for lawn mowers?😱 What if we maybe plant some native willow live stakes and then mulch like 4 to 6 inches deep? 🥺🥺🥺 Do you think we could do that? Please, it would be so cool 🥺🥺🥺 to support native pollinators and birds and prevent erosion and make it so you don't have to mow there 🥺🥺🥺 Oh, and this willow happens to need pruning and we have wood chips from taking down a hazard tree so it's basically free? 🥺😇🥺 And it happens to be a species that has been used since pre-colonial times for basketry? 😇

My bosses: Sure 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Me a few months ago: Cool, I'm gonna go do that.

Me today, seeing that they're rooted, growing new leaves, and that there's very few weeds: Grow my babies, grow!🥳🥳🥳 In the future I'll be able to coppice you for more live stakes! (And someone who definitely is not me will be able to harvest basketry materials)(like I'll probably take some, but now there's a reliable, sustainable, accessible source of basketry willow. In a city park!) And spread the joy to other moist areas that are hard to mow!🥳🥳🥳

(It is no where in my job description to make suggestions, or initiate plans, or design plantings, or anything like that. I'm a seasonal, but I have enough experience and enthusiasm that they let me do things. It's cool. )

[night-the-starfish]

Happy family, a paper craft.

[great-and-small]

Don’t invite me to the function unless this is the exact vibe

[sanctus-ingenium]

nereid

[catchymemes]

[plantnerderyallday]

I am so happy to see these little seedlings. This is an area that I pulled ivy from last year, in little spurts over the course of the growing season, while waiting for coworkers to finish other tasks. The little seedlings in the center are Maianthemum racemosum, Solomon's plume, and they're a native flower here. This is what they'll grow into:

It's just really cool to see what a spare 10 minutes here and there can do.

[omegasmileyface]

Montana Supreme Court Rules Its Constitution Entirely Protects Trans Citizens In Landmark Ruling

The ruling will have enormous impacts for transgender residents in the state.

HOLY SHIT

[definite-human]

"The Montana court separately declared that transgender people constitute a suspect class under the state's equal protection clause. In legal terms, a suspect class is a group that has historically faced such severe discrimination that any law targeting them must meet the highest level of judicial scrutiny to survive—the same standard applied to laws that discriminate on the basis of race. [...] The practical effect is sweeping: any Montana law that singles out transgender people will now face strict scrutiny, meaning the state must prove the law serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve it—a standard that laws almost never survive.

"Because the decision rests entirely on the Montana Constitution, it is insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the principle of adequate and independent state grounds, the federal Supreme Court cannot review a state court's interpretation of its own constitution, so long as that constitution provides more protection than the federal one. [...] What this means in practice is that Montana's transgender residents now have a constitutional shield completely independent of the Supreme Court of the United State’s decisions."

(emphases mine)

[verysupersilly]

Don't trust collectors who say that nasal turbinates don't matter.

The inside of an animal’s nasal cavity tells us lots of information about the environment it lived in and the family it belongs to. Aggressive treatments such as boiling damage them: anyone who uses those methods to “clean” bones is not a true enthusiast.

In the photo: harp seal, wolverine, striped hyena, cheetah.

[spinmeround]

Red Sky in the Morning. 2008, Leonard Koscianski

[shithowdy]

from a certain standpoint birdwatching is a sort of gacha

[shithowdy]

-reliant on RNG random encounters

-instills a deep sense of fomo

-seasonally-cycled releases

-becomes increasingly financially prohibitive the more you want to expand your list and/or document your encounters

-achieved goals sound meaningless to those not in the hobby

[shithowdy]

never give up!

[innerchildabortionclinic]

it is always odd to me that there is a sort of masculine strength associated with conservative politics (this is an actual phenomenon that has been studied) because to me it all comes as a confession of weakness and mediocracy--an inferiority complex disguised as a superiority complex. maybe the reason conservatives dislike other conservatives so much is they do have to admit they're engaging with a loser by their own standards.

[wild-e-eep]

Smooth, wiggly algae going with the flow. If I look at them under a microscope, I'm sure they'll be even flowier and wigglier, right?

No: it's mostly weirdly hinged rectangles.

There are a few normal looking cylindrical algal filaments in there as well.