Big Dreams, Little Means @fluidsoul - Tumblr Blog

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jenarion

A baby pika! Listen to his little cry. Someday it will be much louder.

nourishyourturtleheart

* W I G G L I N G I N T E N S I F I E S *

palaeoplushies

I’ve been busy making a whole bunch of fish! They’re for sale here! I’ve made: Kuhli Loaches Golden Sucking Loaches Clown Loaches Pygmy Cories Sterbai’s Cories Bronze Laser Cories SO MANY FISH YOU GUYS.

magical-boy-art

These are so cool!

incidentalcomics

How to Finish

I drew this poster for Jon Acuff and his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.

dedalvs

Love this, but reblogging it specifically for “Get rid of secret rules.” That’s one of the most amazing illustrations—and points—I’ve ever seen.

iverna

Facebook is launching a Patreon-like “Fan Subscription” thing and it’s got red flags all over it already.

One part of the terms is that they get a lifelong, transferable license for your content, which persists even if you stop using their service. They can transfer or sub-license it to third parties, and you can’t stop them, because you agree to that when you sign up.

Another is that once they start taking a cut, which they will once this launches officially, they can take up to 30%. For comparison, Patreon takes 5%. So you sign up, you post content, they raise the fee, you decide it’s no longer worth it and stop using it… and they get to keep using your content anyway.

You can read more about it here. But basically, the takeaway seems to be that this is another example of Facebook trying to make their own version of a good thing, and turn it into a worse thing, and sell it to you as the best thing ever. Don’t buy it. Please, please, do your research before you sign up for anything.

aerypear

DON’T USE IT. EVEN THE MEDIA KNOWS IT’S FULL OF SHIT!!

listen, if you’re an artist, you need to get the fuck OFF of Facebook. Facebook has done nothing to rectify their terms. Your account could be private, doesn’t matter. Your account could be public, doesn’t matter. If you post art (or images) on Facebook, they own the license to that piece.

But Aery! How will I grow an audience if I’m not on all social media!? You know how if you click water mark on DeviantArt and it covers almost the WHOLE image; do that but make sure it coveres the important bits. Make a box signature with a disclosure on the bottom half “Property of (insert website or common username you use everywhere)”

Redirect your Facebook fans to a different website, be it your own or a site that won’t steal your fucking license in their TOS/TOA (Terms of service/terms of agreement).

Honestly, at some point, make the transition where you HAVE your own site. You can start with cheap alternatives and grow into better options, but don’t feel like you have to rush. Artists aren’t made of money when they start out after all. Only make the transition when your able; but STAY AWAY FROM FACEBOOK IF YOU CAN’T PROTECT YOUR ART.

Don’t have a digital software to put the water mark on? AVOID.

Don’t have the time to inform yourself of the websites shenanigans? AVOID.

If a stranger can’t look at your art and know it’s your art. You need to actively protect your art and start signing shit. I know I’m guilty of never signing my works, but it is a form of claiming a piece. Some sites you have to do the WHOLE image, other sites you have to do partial an image. And if that shit is reposted, YOU GIVE THEM HELL.

Send them a cease and desist (you don’t need a lawyer to type this up. There are plenty of examples online to help give you an idea). If they still don’t, you contact staff of the site and let them know you have sent a cease and desist to stop and they have not. If the staff does nothing, you have two options. Raise hell in the fandom, or take it to court.

Artists are not free content providers for websites or thieves.

actualaster

Basically all websites have a clause in them about the license so they can legally host your work. That’s normal, and you’ll find that on any site you look at. Things like being allowed to do a transformative work, etc. are so they can produce thumbnails and that kind of stuff without getting hit legally. They’ll also state it’s non-exclusive, meaning they aren’t demanding you only host that work on that website.

When looking at these, you’ll note they stop holding effect when you remove your work from the website. Meaning that if you take it down, you are revoking those rights and they acknowledge and will (theoretically) respect this.

Facebook’s terms include after you leave and/or remove your work. Basically other websites you retain your creator rights and just give them the legally required rights in order that they can host your work. Facebook wants you to sign your rights over to them entirely.

dct239394cvvd098dffgggp

theres scientific proof of colors we cant see and sounds we cant hear and some people still refuse to believe something other than us could be living a little to the left of the perceivable and known

hundondestiny

Can these directors please learn to use dark palettes without making all the details in the shots imperceiveable? I can’t fucking see!!!

vivaciousarcanist

the characters: go into a darker room me:

hundondestiny

this is by far the funniest thing tht could have been added to this post

More like

I fixed it

incredible

There we go.

Hey, you. You’re finally awake. Walked right into that imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.

isa-ghost

God fucking damn it

catchymemes

the-headless-vulcan

Capitalism will put the bill on your grave and harass your grieving family until they pay

theludicrousrival

One of my cousins passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35, and had been paying back a loan from the bank. About two weeks after his death, my great aunt received a statement from the bank (his mail was being delivered to her house) about a late payment. She called the bank and explained the situation and the only thing a manager could say was “Well, that’s unfortunate. We can arrange so payments will resume in 30 days, that should be enough time to have already paid for the other arrangements.”

On top of the unexpected $10,000 funeral, cremation and burial bill, my aunt had to finish paying my uncle’s $5,000 loan. She’s a disabled retiree, on a fixed income, and could barely afford to pay for her insulin for diabetes. She nearly lost her home of more than 40 years. Fuck the system.

lawful-evil-novelist

She didn’t need to pay. When people die, their debts are not their family’s responsibility.

In fact, it is outright illegal to try and collect those debts from a person who didn’t cosign the loan and isn’t executing the will.

Who is responsible for paying off the debts of your deceased relatives?

Here’s a link to the detail on that one.

eudoxiav

Banks count on people not knowing that last comment so that they can still get money

niniblack

They really do.

My great-grandmother had her identity stolen before she died at the age of 93, and thousands of charges were racked up on credit cards in her name. After she passed away, they called my mother to try and collect. My mom laughed at them, and told them: “She’s dead, good luck collecting.” The credit card asked my mother, “Don’t you want to clear your grandmother’s debts? Don’t you want to clear her good name?” My mom laughed at them again. “No,” she said. “Because a 90 year old wasn’t watching porn with those credit cards, and her name is fine. Don’t give credit cards to old women likely to pass away soon. This is on you.”

Which is how I learned as a young child to always question collection agents, and to never pay off debts that aren’t your own. They often can’t even collect that money from the estate, if there is one, depending on how you write your will and what kind of account the money was kept in.

nephrastar

DO NOT EVER PAY OFF DEBTS THAT AREN’T YOUR OWN.

If a loved one of yours dies and bill collectors (credit cards, loans, etc etc) start calling you off the hook and request that you pay off their debts, tell them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves.

The reason being is that the moment you give them a single penny, that debt is now on YOU because you’ve now agreed to pay it off.

Do not agree to pay off their debt. Do not pass go, do not give them $200.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

Boosting this to let people know that if any of these greedy little dog-fuckers start harassing them to pay off a relatives debt the correct thing to do is just tell them to piss off and not pay them a single thing

And that there is NOTHING they can do if you do this

jadelyn

Never, ever, EVER pay so much as a single cent on a debt owed by someone who’s passed away. You make even a single payment and that’s considered you accepting responsibility for the debt, and they can then legally expect you to repay the whole thing.

They’re like vampires - they can’t collect unless you let them in. Don’t invite them in.

princesstigerbelle

I also want to take the time to appreciate Charcoal Bengal cats. Absolutely gorgeous babies.

friendly-animals

(Source)

princesstigerbelle

This cat’s name is Ruble and I need him

bob-belcher

endmyreign

zafojones

Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.

gwydtheunusual

Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together. You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits. Frankentrees.

beautifuloutlier

As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.

On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.

reallifescomedyrelief

But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:

[source]

sashiscorner

I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be

jadedsoggy

I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.

rooksandravens

I need to be more like tree

azzandra

I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.

fuckyeahwomenprotesting

what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?

sailorofships

Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).

As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “ including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”

It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.

Shit’s tight yo.

Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.

Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.

HOLY SHIT

THE LAST ONE

Solarpunk as fuck!!

Reblogging for “I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.”

sove

Improvise, adapt, overcome

botanyshitposts

whats the deal with proven winners?

okay. so. this is actually how i got into botany in the first place; i got an unpaid internship at a greenhouse in high school and realized, very quickly, that we live in a jurassic park hellscape where big companies breed plants solely for their looks and performance, and i found that so fucking weird that i couldnt get enough of it and fell down the rabbit hole. i don’t find them bad per say; i find them weird and how they manage their product in terms of policing their retailers is very sketchy to me, but they’re not like, monstanto-level off the shits (yet). with mother’s day next weekend we’re coming up on one of the biggest greenhouse/ornamental plant industry sales days of the year, next to valentines’ day (which favors the rose industry especially), so this is an exceptionally convenient time to talk about this.

proven winners is one of the biggest ornamental plant companies in the united states, possibly the world. you might know them from their patented white flower pots. they’re centered in california (as, actually, a lot of these large flower producers are) and they manage a HUUUUUUGEEE network of giant industrial flower greenhouses.

like, you have to understand, all garden retailers have to buy their shit from somewhere, and although the centers and local greenhouses selling proven winners stuff are often small and independent (unless ur talking like…flowerama or something), a large portion of the plants themselves, like many things in capitalism, form an industry of their own dominated by a handful of oligarch corporations, of which proven winners is one. small retailers order bulk products from these companies, should it be through full-color paper catalogs (which exist, btw, and are wild in and of themselves to look at; i actually have a few back home that i keep around solely bc they’re incredibly fascinating in a slightly offputting jurassic park kind of way), online, or through a sales representative for their region.

it depends on what they’re ordering, but they can buy seeds, plugs (the black trays of like….tiny plants you buy at garden centers to put in planters? the ones that come in, like, six packs? those are called ‘plugs’), and in the case of perennials, woody plants of various ages, among other things. these plants are bred, marketed, and sold on a goddamn industrial scale. it’s wild.

now….this is where it gets absolutely fascinating to me. this isn’t just proven winners, but proven winners is one of the top contenders of this. some highlights of how plants are actually marketed on an industrial scale:

-plants come out in collections. like, you have horticulturalist designer people who put their names on some stuff and they all go out as like, The New Hot Thing™.

-they always promote their top selling stuff, and the plants that won awards, and like, the most popular flower arrangements and stuff. this in and of itself, again, isn’t like…..bad, it just feels weird how plants are marketed as objects rather than living things, you know?

-these plants are 100% bred and optimized for their commercial value and how they look. see the above point about how it feels like they’re treating them as objects.

-every year, there are new plants, which are put at the front of the catalogue and like, show them off as the Hit New Products. these are all part of the year’s collective collection, so like, proven winners has their 2019 collection all ready on their site in a special little tab:

FUN INDUSTRY SIDE STORY: looks like they have some new orange petunias this year, which reminds me fondly of the 2017 purge ordered by the USDA of a ton of illegally GMO orange petunias….

you see, orange petunias don’t exist naturally, so what companies do is either 1. systematically breed orange into them, which can take years, or 2. take red petunias and just put in some coding for yellow from the maize genome, which makes them orange. usually, you have to submit all this paperwork and go through a ton of government red tape to sell GMOs, including required trials conducted by the federal government, but what some of these large ornamental seed companies were doing was just….not telling the government and just kind of…pretending that they bred them. so in 2017, a netherlands team noticed that these were like….kind of Suspicious™, and started doing some tests….and accidentally uncovered like, this huge international orange petunia scandal across all these companies, over 30 varieties of illegal petunia being sold internationally. they had to alert the actual EU, which then alerted the USDA, who then gave an actual government order for these large companies to literally burn, bury, or otherwise destroy all their industrial stock of the proven illegal GMO orange petunias.

small retailers who had bought them assuming that they were legal were allowed to keep and continue selling what they bought, but the actual producers were ordered to just fucking. violently destroy everything. the USDA informed these companies that they could sell them again, but only if they were put through the proper government channels and received proper certification. i checked the old recall list and didn’t see these, so i’m assuming they’re like…Legit, but. im 👀 somebody test these lol

AAANNNNYYway that aside, if you would like to see the Proven Winners 2019 Flower Collection Showcase™, they have a bunch of……weird kind of ads on their youtube channel showing artsy pics of their new shit. to this day i can’t pin down exactly what about them makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, but you really do get a sense that they’re selling an object to preform, which i guess is the point, but…idk, it’s just a very different view of plants, i think, then i personally have. very sci-fi-y, if you will. all their ads are like this; these video are essentially very similar to what you get from their print sales booklets, but in video form.

see, last but not least, my biggest beef with proven winners is the weird way they handle their company.

you get inspected by the plant police.

im not kidding. for those not very familiar with plant reproduction, you can grow vegetative clones of plants through a process called taking cuttings, where you cut off a part of the plant and put it in a new pot under the right conditions, and it develops a root system and becomes a genetic clone to the parent. obviously, anyone can do this with a lot of the proven winners plants, especially because PW plants, as i’ve noticed, tend to be bred to be more vigorous.

proven winners wants to ensure that there’s no Illegal Plant Downloads taking place, so they literally like….send people out to these small retailers and ask to see their stock to make sure that all the plants are going in the Patented Proven Winners White Pots™ with the Patented Proven Winners Information Tags™. you MUST plant proven winners stuff in the pots they send you, with the instructions they send you, and they will check you for this. the first time my internship mentor ordered from them, they accidentally planted the plugs in generic brown pots instead of the white ones, and the weird proven winners police rolled in unannounced for an inspection and told them that the next time it happened they wouldn’t sell to them anymore. what they’re worried about happening is that the growers will order a small amount and then just make a bunch of cuttings without paying them, and it’s just……weird. like i get why they do it but that’s always struck me as really, really shady lmao

gallusrostromegalus

OH BOY STORYTIME

ok so a couple years back I worked at a local greenhouse and we sold Proven Winners and they were HANDS DOWN managment’s least favorite company to deal with because:

The aforementioned Plant Police, who are the worst possible version of ‘police washout mall cop’ and ‘geriatric bitchy HOA snitch’. Our local Plant Cop was this woman named “Elise” and her picture was stapled up in the breakroom with instructions to Radio 3 if we saw her.

I’ll get to Radio 3 in a minute.

their product was uhhh… kind of crap? everything we ever got from them was real leggy, prone to carrying Sudden Death Mold, and frankly just didn’t do as well as some other brands in CO.

They attracted the WORST customers. You know the kind- the infamous haircut, knows more about plants than the people with actual horticultural degrees and sixteen cupons but only two of them are for this store, and either on their phone or screaming at their children at the register instead of checking out.

The only reason managment dealth with them at all was 1. People would request PW by name, so managment maked it up a ridiculous percentage and made bank on brand loyalty 2. PW’s delivery trucks would actually show up when scheduled with what was actually ordered so they could be relied upon to deliver, unlike pretty much every other grower :/

So it’s fucking MOTHER’S DAY, aka Hell On Earth for greenhouse retailers, and we’re understaffed in Greenhouse because some popular band was playing at the local indie bar Saturday night and everyone but me and Kate called in “sick”, so it’s two of us and sometimes assistant manger craig dealing with literally 3K customers an hour.

Fucking Elise decides it’s a good day to do a surprise inspection.

I’m breaking up a fight over at tomatoes when this woman grabs my arm, physically pulls me away from the woman whose order I’m writng down and hisses like a rattler at me “I need to see your greenhouses.”

I winch my arm out and get gouged by her nails. “Sorry, our greenhouses aren’t open to the public, and I’m working with her now.” I’m seven hours into a twelve-hour shift so far after coming in at 5 to unload the trucks, I can’t hear myself think over the echo in the greenhouse, and my panic over crowds has reached such a frenzy that I think my heatbeat could rival a hummingbird’s. I’m dehydrated despite my best efforts, hallucinating smells and my forearms are bleeding profusely from moving roses earlier. I no longer expirience pain or fear from exhaustion, but this woman makes me uneasy.

“I’m with Proven Winners and I’m here for an inspection.”

“Proven Winners are over there by the fairy garden supplies.” I say, still not sure what she’s on about. I don’t do faces at the best of times and in the current retail-induced feuge I barely register her as a human being. I go back to trying to write ‘amish paste’ for what feels like the fortieth time, and Elise grabs my arm again and DIGS HER NAILS IN, before physically pulling me out the back door and towards the greenhouses.

The first of the Quanzat huts/greenhouses is filled with columbines, one of the few non-crop plants that’s grown on-site because they’re in such demand and grow well here. Elise points at the rows and shakes my arm.

“WHERE ARE THESE FROM?” she demands.

“Here? Ma’am this place is off-limits for customers, if you have questions I can get the greenhouse manager-” I fumble for my radio (we all got walkie-talkie type radios because yelling over a 13-acre property is impractical) , and try to call the manager. “Radio Adam? There’s a lady who needs some questions answered in Greenhouse 1?”

“NO I NEED TO SPEAK TO JEFF.” she shrieks, name-dropping the owner. “TELL HIM ELISE [REDACTED] IS HERE FROM PROVEN WINNERS AND IF HE DOESN’T GET HERE FOR AN INSPECTION I’LL HAVE THE POLICE SHUT DOWN THIS ENTIRE FACILITY!” she howls at me.

This Woman, I decide, Is Out Of Her Goddamn Gourd. The mangers are all up to their armpits today and even if they could hear me wouldn’t be able to physically wade through the crowds for a good 10 minutes. I click my radio over to Channel 3. Channel 1 is for directing delivery trucks. Channel 2 is for staff. Channel 3 doesn’t work- it doesn’t connect but it DOES make your radio make a very loud higher-than-most-people-can-hear EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE noise.

This summons The Dogs.

Jeff’s family is from West Texas where the land is vast, the coyotes are many and nobody fixes thier animals, which is how he found and adopted two of the strangest dogs I’ve ever worked with. Teddy and Bob are Anatolian Shepherd/Rhodesian Ridgeback hybrids, which is to say they clock in at 125lbs each, with body-bulder like reddish gray bodies, black masks and mane of fur that tapers into a full-body mowhawk of long hair along thier backs. Jeff had to dock thier ears and tails for health reasons which really only adds to the illusion that Jeff has a pair of hyenas.

I can hear the crowd outside shouting as they race out from thier hole under the potting shed and they barrel into the Quanzat hut and stand on either side of me, snarling and bristling like they were trained to, which makes Elise finally let go of my arm and back up. In an impressive feat of teleportation, Jeff turns up three seconds later.

“YOU!” Elise and Jeff mutually bellow at each other. The Dogs snap at the air.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU STILL HAVE THOSE THINGS.” Elise shrieks, picking up a potted columbine to throw.

“I’M SURE THAT YOU STILL HAVE A RESTRAINING ORDER. GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND LEAVE MY STAFF ALONE.” counters jeff.

“oh shit i’m bleeding.” I say, belatedly realizing she’s gouged holes in my arm that have been freely bleeding for at least three minutes now. Everyone takes a moment to stare at my arm which is looking like a prop from a Tarintino film.

“Actually, go have a seat in my office.” Says Jeff, suddenly, coldly calm. He takes out his cell phone and dials 911.

Elise screams, throws the potted columbine, and is promptly tackled by assitant manager Craig, who had gone around the back. Jeff ducks and the pot clips me in the face becuase that’s just how this day was going.

Anyway, I got a zillion pictures taken of my arm, had to give a statment and then went back to work because it was literally me and Kate covering the entire greenhouse on our busiest day of the year and as shit as that was I couldn’t abandon her to the Hordes. Got double overtime and hazard pay for the full day so I wouldn’t narc to the labor board over it, and The Dogs refused to leave my side which really improved customer’s attitude towards me.

Elise got charged with assault, trespass and violating her parole, Jeff got a warning from the sherrif about “you can’t sic large dogs on people in city limits even if they really, really deserve it”, so the dogs had a vacation out in the county for a fortnight until the cops stopped driving by, and that’s the story of how we stopped carrying Proven Winners.