🐟🐟🌕🐟🐟🐟🐟 // swallowtail shiners // gouache on hot press paper
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Kaledo Art

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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
YOU ARE THE REASON

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cherry valley forever

#extradirty
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@feather-books
🐟🐟🌕🐟🐟🐟🐟 // swallowtail shiners // gouache on hot press paper
official fish post
Critical PSA for anyone with Android devices!
I got the following email this morning:
Basically Google is rolling out the ability to track you via your android devices even when you're offline and you have to manually opt out of it. Many android devices no longer come with a wired headphone jack, so if you have Bluetooth headphones or a keyboard or anything, your location will be tracked and stored by your device unless you opt out of this.
I tried using the link they gave me in the email to opt out of it, but it didn't really seem to do anything. So I looked up how to opt out and found the following steps, which worked for my phone:
Opting out from the Find My Device network is as simple as tapping a toggle in your phone's settings. 1. On your Android device, go to Settings. 2. Tap the Google setting. 3. Tap the Find My Device setting. 4. Tap the toggle to off next to "Use Find My Device." 5. Confirm with pin, pattern, or biometrics. That's it. Your device is no longer participating in the Find My Device network. To rejoin, just flip the toggle back on.
Please reblog to spread awareness. My husband has the same phone as me and he didn't get any emails about this.
Deactivated this (thank you), but found even MORE bullshit (of course) they've been tracking all the apps I was using on my phone.
Bonus take: I fucking hate how they genuinely manipulate you to be anxious about deleting your data (using phrasing like 'permanently' and making you go through multiple confirm dialogues) because now their data scraping is seemingly the only way you can gain access to YouTube without being mistaken as a child. They are actually evil and I think that is on purpose
Posting this for people whose phones don't look the same.
Find this in your settings
It will try to give you recommended apps. You don't want that you want the button on the right that says "all services."
The option you're looking for is the "find hub."
Then toggle this off. All done! Feel free to tinker with these settings to shut off as much or as little monitoring as you like.
Osprey !
baltimore oriole with their favourite snack
I think one of the Worst Things about wanting to find period clothing from other cultures, is trying to find fucking casual/work clothes. Like no, I do not want to see all these fancy intricate kimonos, I want to see jinbei, and field work outfits so I don't put a damn obi on this poor boy so he has a belt to hang his knife from.
ok but i found the best picture ever
look at her she's so cute and happy i love this photo
source
This image comes from a whole gallery of Taishō era b&w photos, many of them showing everyday work clothes.
The pants she's wearing are called monpe. I just made a pair yesterday in a day.
You can learn how to make them here, but this video is in Japanese. If you have basic sewing knowledge, you should be able to get it.
There is no pattern, only a cutting guide. 2 meters of fabric is able to do it perfectly with no fabric waste whatsoever.
Perfect for people who always feel like their clothes never fit! If you are concerned about the size, here are the pants on me (5', 90lbs) and my husband (6'1, don't know but he looks like fanart of Laios).
if you think you are bigger than my husband, all you have to do is scale the rectangles up so this measurement is 1/4 of your waist measurement.
But don't worry if it isn't perfect.
You can wear them as regular pants, or over kimono.
I want you to make these pants. Make monpe and experience the joys of adjustable clothing that will stay with you for years. Experience the joy of sewing something you know will fit and be well-made and usable, with no precise measurements besides hemming them to your height. Put on these pants and feel superior because you made something that the store could never give you.
Weight fluctuations? Pregnancy? Really thick kimono? Need to wear a lot of layers? No problem. Monpe will help you. Monpe will always be there for you. You can't get that at the mall with the rest of the slave labor clothes.
Oh no it’s one of my hyperfixations.
So fun fact I am currently in school to learn how to build affordable housing. They don’t teach you how to murder strip malls so I must learn this on my own. Someday the two will fuse and I will be an angel of death for shopping centers. This is my calling.
There have been attempts to turn malls into affordable housing. Sadly retrofitting commercial properties into habitable living spaces is usually more expensive than just making a new building. All that big empty space with uniform climate control is cool and all but it’s not habitable living quarters. you know what it’s GREAT for????
HYPER-LOCAL AGRICULTURE BAYBEEEEEEE
Indoor farming got a bad rep recently because it couldn’t become profitable fast enough to satisfy the capitalists funding it. But these places have loads of height for more space-efficient vertical farms, and while plants won’t need the blasted AC of most shopping malls, they probably do appreciate a steady climate (something that’s getting harder to find outdoors).
“But wait,” you say, “the food court has all those fully outfitted kitchens. It would be a waste not to incorporate that into daily living.”
hello????????? Literal farm-to-table restaurants that grow their vegetables right across the hallway are you KIDDING ME??????????????? (better keep that shit cheap tho no gentrification on my watch)
“But wait wait wait,” you say again, “how can it be *local* farming when there’s no housing nearby? Also this isn’t about food we need fucking housing????”
I hear you, man, I hear you. But you know what is right around a shopping mall? Acres upon acres of the most depressing use of land in history: fucking dog shit crusty ass empty fucking parking lots.
The amount of space these bad boys take up is STAGGERING, and it’s often enough to fit an entire neighborhood. Just check out what this one architect in Maine did to replan the Portland mall (they won an award for it):
*everything on that map that’s in color is currently flat cement*
One mid-sized mall in Maine can fit an entire downtown area WITH GREEN SPACE in its parking lot, and *still have room for parking.*
So yeah, the housing in malls idea is cool thinking. Think bigger. WAY bigger.
Think of all the space strip malls and their parking lots take up. Imagine all that space becoming housing and small businesses and third spaces and NATURE.
These stores are dying fast. The real estate is cheap as fuck. It is extremely doable within the next decade. We just have to fucking do it.
Another banger from /r/stupiddovenests - at least the tag is appropriate this time
1890 René Lalique, Swallow Brooch/Hair Ornament Combination, diamond and enamel.
Hat tip @eldriwolf !
Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus)
© Aidan Brubaker
that one thing about blue jays being the one funky colorful guy in a family of goths is fake actually. theres a lot of blue corvids esp in north america. even some of the gothy ones have blue bc corvids just fucking love being blue.
Blue Jay, Stellar's Jay, Pinyon Jay
Florida Scrub Jay, California Scrub Jay, Woodhouse's Scrub Jay
Mexican Jay, Black-billed Magpie, Dwarf Jay
Sri Lankan Blue Magpie, Eurasian Jay, Taiwan Magpie
Unicolored Jay, Black-throated Magpie Jay, Turquoise Jay
Beautiful Jay, Azure-hooded Jay, Black-throated Jay
this is nowhere near all of them. Corvids love being blue
They really do
White Throated Magpie-Jay, Azure Winged Magpie, Red Billed Blue Magpie
For #NationalHummingbirdDay:
Ernst Haeckel (German, 1834-1919)
“Trochilidae - Kolibris (Hummingbirds)”, chromolithograph, Pl. 99 in Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904).
Biodiversity Heritage Library
1. Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird
2. Male Horned Sungem
3. Male Crimson Topaz
4. Male Red-tailed Comet
5. Male Tufted Coquette
6. Male Sword-billed Hummingbird
7. Buff-tailed Sicklebill
8. Male Dot-eared Coquette
9. Male White-vented Violetear
10. Male Hooded Visorbearer
11. Female Juan Fernández Firecrown
12. Male Booted Racket-tail
Tumblr Tuesday: Avian Art
Birds. We love 'em. Whether small, skrunkly, or majestic, in full flight or clumsily flapping, it's no secret that birds are big on Tumblr. If you, too, enjoy a good bird, check out the #birblr tag and the #avian august art challenge, and feast your eyes on these beautiful renditions of the sweet swoopers.
@scottpartridge:
@mushbeast:
@lochnessieart:
@jagalart:
@sleepy-sluggo:
@aris-middleearth:
@alula-arts:
@jabuticabadoodles:
@judas-isariot:
@nepeteaa:
@wolfusimagius:
@lichen-bones:
@honeyhobbs:
@maggotmuncher:
@serozvero:
@awkwardbirdsdreaming:
@thebriarpatchart:
@thestrangeforest:
@ashwilliebeee:
@blessedscavengers:
@shalmonsdraws:
This is absolutely catastrophic.
Internet Archive Responds to Appellate Opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive | Internet Archive Blogs
Let Readers Read: An Open Letter to the Publishers in Hachette v. Internet Archive:
Internet Archive has created a petition/letter to publishers asking to restore access to everything (500,00 items) removed from the library. Please sign it.
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Executive functioning skills range from working memory to cognitive flexibility to inhibitory control, and beyond. They power our daily func
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Practical Strategies for Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults With Autism - Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.
False Knees Print Store
These practices are very disruptive and destructive for a wide variety of aquatic creatures.
via: National Park Service
Folk were really into the post I made about Tandie, the zoo lion with a (then) undergrown mane due a period of time on testosterone blockers. He's having quite the glow up this summer.
But!
Did you know that manes are hormone dependent in both sexes of lion?
Let's talk about maned lionesses!
To recap the previous post quickly: the existence of a mane, and it's color, appear to be pretty heavily androgen-dependent. Neutered males or males put on testosterone blockers, like Tandie was, will drop their manes - but like Tandie, if taken off the meds, it will generally grow it back. Darker manes are indicative of higher testosterone levels, and long/lush manes are generally a good signal of a male's fitness and mate quality. Females seem to show a preference for males with longer, darker manes and other males will preferentially avoid scuffles with them. (Yes, as many comments have pointed out, that means Scar was actually a hunk. Do with that as you will.)
The fascinating thing about androgens being linked to manes in lions is that it goes both ways - females with higher levels will also grow manes!
Mane growth in females lions is most commonly seen with elderly animals who have stopped cycling and are basically in lion menopause. And they have to get pretty old for it to happen - captive lions generally only live into their late teens and early second decade, and most of the maned ladies I know about started growing manes around like, seventeen.
Not all old female lions grow manes, but some of the career cat people I've talked to said it happened to about a quarter of the females they've worked with over the years. Which... is an interesting contrast to the news articles about Zuri, who we'll meet in a bit, that breathlessly reported in 2022 that her mane growth "left scientists baffled."
Old lady lion manes are just... precious. They grow in first at the chest and then around the sides or on the back of the head, but they don’t normally get the length, density, and connectivity seen in the mane of an adult male. It leaves the lionesses manes kind of awkward, in the way I associate with very young males, and they're absolutely adorable. Prepare yourself for the photo spam.
I have to start with Daisy, because she's the only maned lioness I've had the privilege to meet in person.
I don't know exactly when she started growing her mane, but she was over 20 years old when she passed in 2019 with these luscious locks.
Here's another female at the same facility, named Adeena. On the left is a photo of her from 2021, on the right is from this spring (I think she's mid-sneeze in the photo). She turns 20 in October.
If you've heard about maned lionesses before, it’s probably because of Zuri, at Topeka. She’s the most recent one to get media coverage and she went a little viral.
(Just a side note here, but I have some strong feelings about knowledge loss in the exotic animal management world due to political/philosophical schisms. This is one of those topics where it's clear: Topeka told a reporter that the zoo had “never" heard of this happening before, but it's common enough to be well known as a thing in other sectors of the exotic cat world. There's so much expertise and knowledge being lost due to infighting between accrediting groups, and it drives me up a wall).
Anyway. Zuri had one of the best manes I've seen on an elderly lioness. It grew long and lush and she totally could have done shampoo commercials. I mean, look at this.
Zuri lived with her sister, who didn't grow a mane in her old age. Here's the two of them together, Zuri on the left, Asante on the right.
We don't completely know what's going on with these golden girls to cause them to grow manes. It's theorized to be related to the end of estrus and higher levels of androgenic hormones, although it's not clear if that's just due to lower levels of other hormones during "meownopause" or if there's something else also going on.
There was some speculation with Zuri's mane growth that it was caused by the death of the male she lived with, in some biological need to "take over the role." The zoo dismissed that idea pretty quickly, and it makes sense, although there is one other instance where I've heard of that happening before.
The cat people I've talked to say that older lionesses who grow manes don't tend to act differently - they're not taking over new social roles in their prides or anything. Sometimes they can be less active, or be a little more nervous around males, and want to be left alone more, but it was emphasized to me that those behaviors could also just be associated with the fact that manes tends to develop in elderly lionesses.
The mane growth can happen pretty quickly, as we saw in the photos I've posted of Tandie over the last year. Here's Bridget, from the Oklahoma Zoo. The left photo was taken in March of 2017 and the right in November - look how much hair she gained over six months!
The zoo did some research into what might have cause Bridget's mane growth, and found that she had elevated levels of androstenedione, which is a hormone that can be converted by the body into either testosterone or estrogen, depending. In AFAB people, it's known to have a masculinizing effect. The zoo theorized that this was the cause of her mane growth, and that the elevated levels might have been caused by a benign tumor. Fascinatingly, though, blood draws revealed that her testosterone levels were the same as her mane-less sister, Tia.
Tia is on the left in the photo below, Bridget and the beginnings of her mane are on the right. Bridget was 17 when her mane started growing in.
I don't think there's any formal hypothesis that there might be a genetic component to lionesses growing manes in old age, but it's interesting to note that one of Tia's daughters, Zari, also grew a mane. (And she grew it young! It started around age 13, interestingly, also right after their male died). She's on the left in the photo below.
And to circle back around to where we began: Tandie is related to a number of maned ladies! His father, Xerxes, was Bridget's son; Zari was Xerxes' half-sister.
Here's a few more beautiful maned ladies to leave you with. In order, Ngala, Pepper, Skye, and Dandy Lion.
Next up, and last in this lion mane series, is the story of five younger lionesses in Botswana who not only have manes but also express a range of masculine behaviors.
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A huge thanks to all the folk who shared photos of and stories about their golden girls for this post: M. Townsen, S.W. Simpson, E. Day, S. Cook, M. Stinner, M. Paul, K. Vanaman, D. O'Halloran, R. Simpson, D. Souffrant.
Something that's kind of interesting, but not about lions, is that masculinization happens to elderly human females, too! It looks quite different in us, though. With us, it's skeletal.
Our bones are never actually done developing. They change in composition throughout our entire lives, and the smaller and more delicate the bones are, the more obvious the changes become.
When you go through menopause, your estrogen production dramatically reduces. However, your testosterone (believe it or not, all humans produce both) has a different production pattern. In women, testosterone peaks in your 20s, and tapers off with age. By menopause, your levels are about a quarter of what they were when you were in your 20s. But after menopause, testosterone picks back up, and by the time you're in your 70s, if you have a typical female endocrine system, those levels are pretty high again.
This has several effects on your bones. The one most people know about is osteoporosis; it's one of the many reasons that menopausal women are prescribed HRT, to help protect their long-term bone health. But it also impacts the continued remodeling of the facial bones, making cranial sex estimation much more challenging in older individuals.
This is a Bone Clones cast of a masculinized female skull. This individual's life history was well-understood; she was in her late 60s when she died, and exhibits several traits that are consistent with a masculine sex estimation. The squared jaw, large mastoid processes, the two prominences on the forehead, the clearly defined nuchal region- all of these would tell an archaeologist that this person was likely male. But she wasn't!
This sort of thing happens to a LOT of older women. Not all of them, and often times it's not even that visible externally due to elasticity loss and general skin droopiness that also comes with age. But this sort of thing is a big part of the reason why biological anthropologists do sex estimation, not assessment, because traits related to sex can and do change over time just based on natural hormonal changes!