my last polaroid of 2020

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@plantyhamchuk
my last polaroid of 2020
We are still struggling through jetlagged, and today it was so hot we overheated and had to hide in the hotel room.
Yesterday evening we had an intense experience at this restaurant. The food was good, this pomegranate tea was excellent. But we were the last people there and they didn't want us to leave. V would ask for a check and they would be free dessert. Free tea. Still no check. By V's 3rd request he was really not playing and they finally brought the check and bagged up food (which we could've easily done, not sure if that was a service culture thing or another stalling tactic). I had started to stand up as if to leave while he made his last request and this finally got them moving. They didn't want us to leave, but they did want our money. V and I actually both dislike eating out. The inegalitarian nature of being served? Deeply uncomfortable. There's not many tourists here, IDK if it's early in the tourism season or what but we've agreed to get take out from here on out so we're not held as unwilling hostages again.
Devotion
Saw this news and I had to make a rough sketch about it. 🥹 We humans always underestimate the empathy and care of other animals..
This past Saturday was a glorious late spring day for a hike in the Allegheny Mountains: balmy, sunny, and low humidity. Timing was perfect. Spruce Mountain is one of the best places in Appalachia to view roseshell azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) when it blooms in late May through early June; something about the high elevation and rocky slopes really sets it off. But there are many other late spring treasures to admire also . . .
From top: trailing white monkshood (Aconitum reclinatum); Canada violet (Viola canadensis); woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca); Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense); fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia); golden ragwort (Packera aurea); minniebush (Rhododendron pilosum); pink lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule); bluebead lily (Clintonia borealis); bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), an adorable dwarf dogwood; narrowleaf blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), which is not a grass but a very beautiful mounding iris; false Solomon's seal (Maianthemum racemosum); and one of my all-time favorite mountain plants, cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), a photo-toxic beauty much prized by Native Americans for its edible young shoots. And if you don't dig the flora, then you can admire the endless vistas east and west . . .
I got a 4 min long video of Kimchi dreaming today, so here's a clip
You get the whole walk cycle and the little sprint at the end.
Sometimes her sprints last for like 4 or 5 seconds and she can shoot herself off the couch or into a wall if she gets a grip with her back claws. If she does it next to a wall, her head smacking into it sounds like someone is trying to break into the house. She doesn't wake up.
Later in the dream she injured her paw and was limping, and earlier she caught something and ate it.
Pride prints are back in stock but leaving soon! 🐹🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Tomatoes, ubiquitous in everything from fast-food burgers to haute cuisine, are taking on a new role beyond the plate: A nagging reminder of
Gravel garden May 30th
Personal - nearer and nearer
June 1 2026 - also the tumblr app sucks
It's 2026 and I finally downloaded the tumblr app since I'm going to be away from this desktop computer for a bit aaaand the app is unusable garbage filled with ads. I considered just going without... and then paid the anti-ad ransom for the month. Cruising through and creating posts on tumblr is so much superior on the desktop, especially when you can run ublock origin on Firefox! I swear kicking my legs up and having a big monitor that can easily have 200+ tabs open just makes researching and thinking so much easier.
It's the psychological difference between writing at a big, clean desk with a big pad of paper vs a tiny little notebook that fits in your hand, one is for essays the other for jotting down notes. Anyway if I manage to post at all while traveling, I doubt it will be my usual and preferred long form. I kind of hate cell phones but they beat having nothing at all. When I last traveled like this it was 2007, and didn't even bother with the cell phone, but that was a study abroad program alongside @kudzumon where someone else arranged everything.
We got some rains, not enough to do anything about the drought but move us from "Extreme" to "Severe". All the lettuce and spinach in the deck beds bolted at once. I'm mowing down the lettuce like a rabid bunny and will harvest and freeze the spinach, and then plant the handful of peppers I picked up from work. We're going to miss the gorgeous poppies, I really thought they would've done their thing by now.
Things sadly fell apart with J so he's not going to be housesitting (hell he's not even a friend at this point.. it's sad but a tale for another day) but instead we have Farmer M and Other J who will keep the cats fed and watered maybe the deck beds a little watered. Other J is doing this as a barter thing for us, for the little solar system V and Farmer M installed in her art studio.
I mildly cleaned out the fridge so we can see what we need to eat up before we leave. You'll never guess what's on the menu - it's yet more spinach! It's excellent for my aging eyes and I've been super slack on this point.
Sooo it was a little windy yesterday.
We were just outside, showing my brother the garden and grabbing a few peas for dinner before the imminent thunderstorm, when suddenly there was a gust of wind and a loud noise and the plastic went flying.
Luckily it doesn't seem to have torn, just pulled free of the ropes holding it, and it's warm enough that it's not a problem.
It was just a little annoying that I had just watered everything, and then it all got watered by the rain...
Oh well. I guess that answers the question of when I will open the side vents all the way.
Lotus Dance - Joke Frima , 2025.
Dutch , b . 1952 -
Oil on panel, 92.5 x 55 cm,
Wolong Tunjiang lies in Lichuan, Enshi, Hubei, China. Here the river flows into a giant cave and becomes a grand underground river. It’s a stunning karst landscape where the Qingjiang River plunges 30 meters into a huge cave, turning into a 16.8-kilometer-long underground river—one of the largest in China.
Happy Pride Month!
Full Moon by Tao Lengyue
Kaoru Sugino
"The Fancy Cat Parade"
すぎのかおる
「おめかしネコちゃんのパレード」
At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.
The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.
It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.
The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.
This map required:
North and South Vietnam in it
All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated
Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)
Has Laos and Cambodia in it
Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it
So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'
I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.
Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.
The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.
The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc
At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"
My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond
good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map
My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.
We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.
2026 Energy Crisis Policy Response Tracker - Data tools. A data tool by the International Energy Agency.
May 30 2026 - International Fuel Crisis Chart
Are you curious and/or dealing with idiots going on about how nothing ever happens? Here's a really interesting chart about how different countries around the world are dealing with the completely absurd but also completely real fuel crisis.
Some countries are encouraging working from home, using mass transit, others are already having vehicles fuel up on certain days. This chart doesn't include all the awesome expansion in solar panel projects exploding, or increased EV or hybrid vehicle sales.
As far as I can tell, the reason why things are still flowing as well as they are is that rich countries with oil reserves agreed in March to start releasing tons of fuel from those reserves, and the US is included in that group. No one honestly knows how much is in the reserves, there could be secret reserves for all we know, and also the Chinese have a very large amount of reserves. There are limits to the reserves though, and at some point, presumably, they'll have to be refilled.
Inflation is still coming for us all. The owners of oil companies started to really speak out this past week, worried. They're having record profits right now but there's this thing called "demand destruction" where if prices are too high, people will refuse to use / not be able to afford to use fossil fuels. They'll also try to pivot to alternatives, hence people buying more EVs and hybrids. The LAST thing they want is for people to permanently wean themselves off fossil fuels.
The Economist is talking about how Chinese solar producers have overproduced and are going under. This means that their stuff is cheaper than ever (and it would be even cheaper without the tariffs).
Consider picking something solar power generating up, if you can. Specialty oil for vehicles is already getting scarce. I talked my coworker out of buying so many balloons for an event at work because the price of helium is rising. Oil is in everything from pharmaceuticals to clothing to packaging to fuels. The poorest are already taking major hits from this, like the Philippines and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Interestingly I did hear an interview a few weeks? months? back with a cotton farmer who was pleased that now his cotton was looking like a better product for clothing compared to all the plastics. Not sure if he was taking his increased diesel costs into account or not though.
Walmart is also rapidly expanding their EV charging stations across the US.