Kwust

by Lisa Yallamas: storyteller, student, person. ✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮✿⊱╮ Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever. Walt Disney

[lisayallamas]

Evolution Flunkies | – ☞ Magnificent Madness From Year Dot to Kapoot

Have passport.

Will travel.

[lisayallamas]

A Lockdown Flora of Melville Street, Edinburgh: Chloris Via-Melvilliana

Henry Noltie Introduction In 1823 Robert Brown published an account of the plants collected on Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic

On the street where you live

[lisayallamas]

All the balls are the same colour

Brown

[politicsprose]

15 Words You Never Knew Came From Literature (via Electric Lit)

[lisayallamas]

The word freelance invented by Sir Walter Scott in one of my favourite novels: Ivanhoe 1820.

[teded]

Why are we so attached to things?

After witnessing the violent rage shown by babies whenever deprived of an item they considered their own, Jean Piaget, a founding father of child psychology, observed something profound about human nature. Our sense of ownership emerges incredibly early. Why are we so clingy? 

There’s a well-established phenomenon in psychology known as the endowment effect where we value items much more highly just as soon as we own them. In fact, in one experiment, neuroscientists scanned participants’ brains while they allocated various objects either to a basket labeled “mine,” or another labeled, “Alex’s.” When participants subsequently looked at their new things, their brains showed more activity in a region that usually flickers into life whenever we think about ourselves. 

Another reason we’re so fond of our possessions is that from a young age we believe they have a unique essence. Psychologists showed us this by using an illusion to convince three to six-year-olds they built a copying machine, a device that could create perfect replicas of any item. When offered a choice between their favorite toy or an apparently exact copy, the majority of the children favored the original. In fact, they were often horrified at the prospect of taking home a copy.

This magical thinking about objects isn’t something we grow out of. Rather it persists into adulthood while becoming ever more elaborate. For example, consider the huge value placed on items that have been owned by celebrities. It’s as if the buyers believed the objects they’d purchased were somehow imbued with the essence of their former celebrity owners. For similar reasons, many of us are reluctant to part with family heirlooms which help us feel connected to lost loved ones. But, sometimes our attachment to our things can go too far. Part of the cause of hoarding disorder is an exaggerated sense of responsibility and protectiveness toward one’s belongings. That’s why people with this condition find it so difficult to throw anything away.

Perhaps there will always be something uniquely satisfying about holding an object in our hands and calling it our own.

From the TED-Ed Lesson Why are we so attached to our things? - Christian Jarrett

Animation by Avi Ofer

[lisayallamas]

Ode to a tree

I could not scream; or run, nor breathe. I felt my lungs collapse. Severed veins, then arteries; severed by a bone-grinding, flesh-tearing, silent bipedal, wearing goggles; wielding his ego in one hand and a snarling in the other.

A flash of blue; light danced - sweet, the butterfly born yesterday signed his sad note of thanks. "Farewell!" "Go safely." Our pulse was one.

My pain was his also, together we carried the code snarlings have forgotten. Well, we served him life, the gift we gave him. But life is cheap today, especially when not snarling.

My roots are older than my years, in my sinews the story of all of Time, parsed in code among us, unacknowledged by the snarling, but humming in the still, dark nights, by day, drowned in dins of snarlings’ flights. Our story is their story. But they have forgotten us.

So nimbly he climbs, kicking metal spikes into my flesh. He marvels at his strength. He feels as tall as ... me.

He reaches out, I press away under his weight and sway. I brace my roots, and spread my arms to the sun ... With barely a moment's quiver...

Biting pain runs my limbs though. The green snake unseen, slithers. Thud! I shudder and the spider on a silk leaps. The snarling stomps the kookaburra's nest and kicks it with contempt. "No feathers or eggs," it yells.

I bow ashamed. Sweet the life it gave upon this patch. And again, the searing pain cut through my existence. Piece by piece, chip by chip. Progress.

We were once a mighty civilisation. Life givers, not life takers bent upon destruction. These snarlings! Once, they too sheltered here. They too gave birth beneath our wings. Side by side, breath for breath. I did no wrong. We did no wrong. We honoured each other, except these snarlings have forgotten.

The story of our ancestors lives on yet. But they! They have forgotten.

These snarlings who nash their teeth, who burrow through dirt, and drive their piles, who strive to keep their little hands clean, just like any of those who nestled here with me, under stars with their little families.

And yet, here we all are. Together. All of us swept up in the reverie of a macabre death spiral. No escape.

I die, but the snarling finds a kind of peace in grinding down my pieces.

He will not cease until all suffer his grinding hell. He will leave until the deed is done. I grip the Earth still lingering in death. But as in life, I am not alone.

Mother Earth, the Sun and stars from where we come they sing in me. I am not forsaken. We are not defeated.

Our stories yet live on yet. Tho’ snarlings have forgotten.

[lisayallamas]

Young Sabrina Pasterski, considered the next Einstein, built her plane and flew it solo at 14

Sabrina is committed to creating a path for other young women and other minorities to pursue science.

[lisayallamas]

Great Barrier Reef In Crisis As Australia Votes

Australia’s iconic reef has been hit by its worst ever bleaching event this year. Without urgent government action the future looks worse. Much worse.

Never mind where's Dory or where's Nemo, where's the reef?

[lisayallamas]

(via Conservation parks are growing, so why are species still declining?)

biodiversity problem

[lisayallamas]

TedTed

[lisayallamas]

Aesop

...was of loathsome aspect, worthless as a servant, potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped - a portentous monstrosity. Daly

[lisayallamas]

[bearcreekfelting]

The baby Lambs at Bear Creek.

[lisayallamas]

Social justice is determined by collective ideas of fairness, correctness and reciprocity. It ensures that everyone enjoys a minimum livelihood and recognition of civil and human rights to health, social security, public participation and employment protection, irrespective of economic performance or productivity.

https://opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/costas-douzinas/very-european-coup

[politicsprose]

15 Words You Never Knew Came From Literature (via Electric Lit)

[lisayallamas]

The word freelance invented by Sir Walter Scott in one of my favourite novels: Ivanhoe 1820.

[anglophilemeetsbibliophile]

[lisayallamas]

You know it was a good day if ...

[lisayallamas]

“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.” Jonas Salk