The Sun Deity @solariscrescentart - Tumblr Blog

Intro

Welcome to my pixel art blog, run by Solaris! My pronouns are ae/he/they, I’m a transmasc genderqueer guy, and I’m of Cantonese descent! I love Star Wars, Warriors, Legend of Zelda, history, music, writing, and filmmaking!

Reblogs allowed and appreciated, but no reposting onto other sites.

#pixel art

statesofmatterscomic

As an Ontario town mourns the loss of its star junior hockey player, one superhero uncovers its hidden secrets.

Read it on Comic Fury

timetravellingkitty

are you excited for monday

yes

ambivalent

Voting ended onJul 14, 2025

please donate to @save-mohamed-family he has to provide for his wife and kids during a genocide

[donate here]

timetravellingkitty

Mohammed has not received a single donation in a day.

chase-solidago

thinking about what is and what isn't allowed in frame with reference ecosystems in prairie restoration

ariel-s-awesome

Explanation from OP in the replies

restoration ecology tends to want to restore to a past state of an ecosystem, but magically that past state never involved people! Harvest, reciprocity, etc are all ignored because we pretend there's such a thing as prairie without people. Turns out, that imagined prairie never existed, there were always people here and there should people involved in restored prairie too!

headspace-hotel

Imagine if baking bread was a skill any person living independently in their own house needed to have at least a passing familiarity with, so there were endless books, blogs and websites about how to bake bread, but none of them seemed to contain the most basic facts about how bread actually works.

You would go online and find questions like "Help, I put my bread in the oven, and it GOT BIGGER!" and instead of saying anything about bread naturally rises when you put yeast in it, the results would be advertising some kind of $970 device that punches the bread while it's baking so it doesn't rise.

Even the most reliable, factually grounded sources available would have only the barest scraps of information on the particularities of ingredients, such as how different types of flour differ and produce different results, or how yeast affects the flavor profile of bread. Rice flour, barley flour, potato flour and amaranth flour would be just as common as wheat flour, but finding sources that didn't treat them as functionally identical would be near impossible. At the same time, websites and books would list specific brands of flour in bread recipes, often without specifying anything else.

An unreasonable amount of people would be hellbent on doing something like baking a full-sized loaf of bread in under 3 minutes, and would regularly bake bread to charred cinders at 700 degrees in an attempt to accomplish this, but instead of gently telling people that their goal is not realistic, books claiming to be general resources would be framed entirely around the goal of baking bread as fast as possible, with entire chapters devoted to making the charred bread taste like it isn't charred.

Anyway, this is what landscaping is like.

headspace-hotel

Disclaimer: I am about to drag the entire field of landscaping like Hector's corpse through the mud at Troy. If this is not the kind of thing you're into, read no further.

So, the entire United States (where I live) is covered in these:

Landscaping shrubs give me major uncanny valley ick. They grow so indifferently to hostile surroundings and caretaking alike, totally ignored by insects, that it seems they must never have been quite alive in the first place.

If it's possible to be cruel to a plant, what we've done to landscaping shrubs is cruelty; they're bred to be planted in packed clay and gravel beside barren concrete and poison-soaked lawn and cling to life for a few years at best before being replaced— all the while forming no relationships with other plants or animals and showing no outward signs of distress.

So the trouble is. Everyone Knows that the way you make a flower bed is

till up a section of ground,

put the plants you want in it, spaced apart according to how big they're expected to grow,

spread mulch over the empty space between them,

and pull up all the weeds that pop up for eternity.

This doesn't work. It's amazing just how much it doesn't work and just how devoted the entire fucking world is to believing that it does.

Fact is, ecosystems are a ceaseless and absolutely unstoppable flow of change. New plants emerge. Present plants grow and interact with other organisms. Old plants die. Organic material decays and is changed. Erosion and weathering remove and introduce new soil material. CHANGE. This is what it is to be alive, to have life, to live. CHANGE.

Life wants to proliferate, to grow, to take in and use energy, and we live on an alive planet of alive things. Life has adapted to every possible niche, from the deepest mine shafts to the drains of hospital sinks; the harshness of extreme environments is nothing but "I double dog dare you."

Extreme environments have life forms that specialize in them. They're sometimes called extremophiles. A heavily disturbed and denuded environment, like a bare, tilled-up flower bed, is extreme for most plants; plants are a community-oriented lot that essentially collectively terraform their own environments.

Direct, unfiltered exposure to sunlight, rain, and wind is absolutely brutal for many organisms that don't live in a desert or other similar biome. Plants take damage from the very radiation they feed upon. Raindrops striking the bare soil, without leaves or decaying plant matter to cushion them, pack the surface soil layer into a hard crust. Wind blowing against plant leaves makes them lose water faster (succulents have a workaround though). Soil without a thick mat of roots and fungi penetrating it washes or blows away at the slightest disturbance. Water in direct sunlight evaporates quickly. And bare rock, asphalt, or concrete in sun quickly becomes unsurvivably hot.

These conditions are features, not bugs, of desert biomes, but they are also temporarily created by disturbance in any biome. So there's a special category of short-lived plants adapted specifically for disturbance. They're called pioneer species or disaster species, but their other name is more familiar: weeds.

The typical landscaping bed, with big spaces in between the intentionally planted plants waiting for them to grow bigger, is exactly the habitat weeds are adapted for.

Weeds produce a bajillion tiny seeds that make their way into every crumb of soil everywhere, and weed seeds don't sprout immediately when they are buried in soil—they wait. Weed seeds go dormant, like sleeper agents waiting for activation, sometimes for decades, until they detect a disruption in their surroundings that tells them their environment has been disturbed. Then they sprout.

Keeping weeds out of a flower bed that looks like this is so much labor that no one can do it. And pulling up or killing the weeds is disturbing the soil and activating more weeds. It's like a task you would be assigned in Hell.

And everyone KNOWS no one can do it, so landscapers lay down landscape fabric or just straight plastic under the mulch so everything in the soil is trapped when it tries to emerge. The trouble with this is that soil eventually forms or is brought in on top of it, and new weeds grow in THAT, or the weeds just sprout right through not giving a singular shit, as weeds are wont to do.

And landscape fabric, like plastic, NEVER DECOMPOSES. Either way you're just putting plastic in your soil.

Even worse, these ill conceived weed barriers might eventually kill your plants. Roots need water, they also need to exchange oxygen with the air. Enough mulch and plastic to stop weeds, will also likely suffocate your plants to death, on top of stopping water and nutrients from reaching down into the soil where roots can absorb them.

Once your plants are dead, you have to dig through plastic to plant new ones, and probably put down new plastic. With most suburban homes this cycle has repeated god knows how many times and you can't break ground without digging up more scraps of non-biodegradable trash.

Another alternative is to use straight-up rocks instead of mulch, just pile rocks around your plants. This doesn't actually stop weeds, but it does mean every time you try to plant something, you get to spend hours picking rocks out of the soil one by one.

Or you can use poison. Yay!

I get so angry about this, because the average American thinks gardening is this kind of torture labyrinth where you just pull crabgrass out of a pile of splinters forever, and any advice they receive will consist of instructions on how to kill their plants slowly.

It's at the point where the mulch with a few small plants in it IS the aesthetic ideal, where the black mulch is a visual backdrop to set off the plants, because NO ONE EVER SEES THESE GARDENS REACH MATURITY because THEY NEVER LAST THAT LONG. At some point the idea was that the flower bed would eventually "fill out," but now "dyed mulch with plants scattered in it" is just what a garden bed is expected to look like.

Landscaping websites typically list the lifespan of small trees or shrubs as around 10 years, which is...incredibly sad. Not every plant will live to its maximum lifespan, but many common species can live to 50-70 years.

And what this leads to, is landscapers expecting plants to only last a few years, so they plant trees 2 FEET FROM A BUILDING where they CANNOT SURVIVE LONG TERM. They plant lil baby ornamental shrubs where they cannot grow AT ALL without obstructing a path or a window. But it's what people expect to see, they expect to see tiny baby shrubs no more than knee high.

No one knows what a bush is anymore. "What are some bushes that are about a foot tall" I don't know, go to the Arctic fucking tundra and tell me!!! But the actual answer is: any of them, if you kill them often enough.

Many places with "nice landscaping" are literally just digging up their plants and replacing them every few months. That's what my college campus did.

And here's the thing that REALLY grinds my gears, okay? Not everybody wants or values Soulless Corporate Boxwood Hedge type gardens, but there is NO INFORMATION on any other way to do things.

The assumption that gardening is a planting your desired plants a certain distance apart in a single event and after that, no change except the plants getting bigger, is so fundamental, you can't even find a method of gardening that incorporates basic ecological succession. Which is going to happen whether you like it or not.

Weeds are specially adapted for heavily disturbed and destroyed environments, but that doesn't mean that every disaster species is a "bad" plant that is ugly or harmful.

So here's what we'd want to do: Group species roughly by their lifecycle (longer lived vs. shorter lived, annual vs. perennial) and the plasticity of their growth form (relatively fixed growth forms vs. colony forming, creeping, stoloniferous or rhizomatous plants, vines). Plant seeds in the wild don't fall to the ground perfectly spaced apart. The amount of room there is in total is what's important. Plants adapt their shape relative to the plants around them.

Plants are three-dimensional, meaning they take up the space they need by a mix of vertical AND horizontal growth, and they're not solid, impermeable masses that exclude other objects, they have spaces between their stems and leaves.

Plants grow overlapping and mixed together with each other. This is actually good for all of them because it cushions them against getting knocked flat by storms. Some wild species can't even hold themselves up planted alone without other plants surrounding them.

You'd plan out fixed locations for the relatively long-lived plants with relatively non-adaptable shapes. Then you'd put in the plants that can shift their growth forms a little more, plants that form colonies or that grow in the direction they favor etc. Then you'd overload the rest of the space with annual plants, low creeping plants, vines, etc—plants that can essentially move around wherever they like.

Gardeners keep assuming that plants don't move but they do. Any colony-forming plant or plant with rhizomes, vines, runners, etc. can move to where it wants to be by growing that direction and making new stems and roots there. Annuals likewise will produce a bajillion seeds that end up everywhere and the seeds in the best place will grow up and be successful.

You need a mix of plants that grow tall, plants with a more creeping habit, plants that are more ethereal and delicate and mix in with more robust plants, etc.

The dense, compact, extremely fixed and predictable form of selectively bred garden plants is actually way worse for excluding unwanted weeds. A mix of three or four plants planted in the same space, growing opportunistically to take advantage of gaps between their companions' leaves, will do a way better job of filling space.

Also, everyone thinks a vine is only good for climbing a trellis or something. Bullshit. A vine is just a plant that does whatever the hell it wants. An herbaceous vine will be perfectly happy climbing your other plants or creeping along the ground, filling in spaces the other plants missed.

You should expect your garden to change over time! That's the biggest thing I wish people knew. You're not going to get the "end result" within a year. There is no end result. Shorter-lived plants take over the role of dominating the place while the longer lived ones are still growing up. Every plant eventually dies and another plant grows. Change is eternal, so embrace it!

Think of it like this, either you pick out the adaptable short-lived disaster species, or Nature picks them for you. There's gonna be weeds. Weeds are as unstoppable as time. So, might as well pick native, ecologically beneficial weeds you like.

A healthy selection of ferocious native weeds will critically weaken the invasive little shits. The long-lived perennials will take longer to grow to maximum size and flourishing with heavy competition, but later-successional species are used to that; they spend the time networking, biding their time and building a super deep root system that will prepare them for explosive and vigorous growth when they're ready.

Eventually, the "weedier" plants will get outcompeted and begin diminishing...which is when it starts looking like a great time for a new garden!!!!

funkandwastelands

This was interesting but I know vines kill trees so I wouldn’t be able to be inclined to let them loose on my plants :/ also I grew up watching my mom and neighbors rip up the weeds for fun every day, and it does get easier if you keep up with it, like there will only be a couple here and there. Just put on some gloves, have some empty brain time, and then drink some lemonade ^_^ the vine thing is interesting I bet it works it just gives me the heebyjeebies and also the shivers

headspace-hotel

Ah yes, so, the key is to know the difference between a woody vine and a herbaceous vine. Woody vines grow and get bigger, developing a trunk like a tree, over time. Some of them, such as wisteria, trumpet vine (Campsis), and grape vine, will weigh down trees and they will fight your house and win.

Herbaceous vines die back to the ground every year in the winter. Where I live, purple passion flower is an example of an herbaceous vine.

that-queer-crocheter

Learned something new this morning!

#chopsticks are so real

official-nature-posts

Hey guys so with the new communities feature here I don’t think we have a permaculture one yet so should I make one. I think I will. anyways

reblog if you want to be added

this will be a space to discuss permaculture design and philosophy, show permaculture in action and what we produce ect..

official-nature-posts

@ewspconsultancy @solarpunks @probablyasocialecologist @headspace-hotel @aneides-vagrans @records-of-dirt @permaculturing-blog @permacultureandhomesteading @permaculture @soilthesimpletruth @reportsofagrandfuture @gardenofsustenance @retrogradepermaculture @simplefoodsmallfarmz @greenpvnk @fuckyeahpermaculture

martenpounce

"I will hunt. Then I will leave. Or maybe I'll just stay awhile…"

headspace-hotel

y'all ever reach the end of google

headspace-hotel

I'm starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.

I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.

This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests

headspace-hotel

@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.

Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches

And THEN.

I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.

HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.

I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."

Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.

I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.

It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research

There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA

Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."

The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.

It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.

I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.

Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.

The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.

Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren't living long enough to reach mature size or aren't healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.

headspace-hotel

@motherfucking-dragons

it's called the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant and there are, in total, 11 known sites where it still grows.

in general i'm feral over the carnivorous plant variety of the Southeastern USA. we have SO many super-rare carnivorous plants!!!

Protect the wetlands. Protect the canebrakes because the canebrakes protect the wetlands.

glimpsesofgardens

Many years ago I did some (non-academic) research on native canes in the USA because I thought I remembered seeing a bamboo-like something in the wild that I'd been told was native, and I thought it might make a nice landscaping accent. But the sources I found said something like "unlike Asian bamboos, the American equivilant barely reaches the height of a man", and I went "nah, that is exactly the wrong height for anything." But if it gets 10 feet and up, I think there are a lot of people who would be VERY happy to use it as a sight barrier in public and private landscaping, and if it means putting in a bit of a wetland/rain garden, all the better. The lack of a good native equivelant to bamboo is something I have heard numerous people bemoan. Obviously it's very important to protect wild sites and expand those, but if it'd be helpful, I bet it wouldn't be hard to convince landscapers to start new patches too.

For instance, a lot of housing developments, malls, etc. seem to set aside a percentage of their land for semi-wild artificial wetlands (drainage maybe?) planted with natives, and then block the messy view with walls of arbovitae or clump bamboo from asia - perhaps it would be a better option there?

headspace-hotel

Good Lord. Arundinaria isn't just a better option, it's perfect.

I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.

The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.

It grows slowly compared to Asian bamboos, and seems to need some shade to establish, so it would take time to become a good barrier, but no worse than those stupid arborvitae.

sahonithereadwolf

plants like this were often intentionally cultivated in planter boxes as a form of water filtration and civil engineering by a bunch of indigenous nations.

headspace-hotel

There's a reason why Native Americans cultivated canebrakes.

Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.

The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.

This stuff is, no joke, a viable alternative to plastic for a lot of things. The seeds and shoots are also edible.

thatmadscientistbitch

Uh I know this is out of left field but I work in plant cloning - it's a lot easier than you'd think to do for plants and it's honestly a really important conservation tool, and good for making a TON of seedlings in a short amount of time. I can look into this genus for like, cloning viability?

headspace-hotel

I know about reproducing plants from cuttings, rhizome cuttings have proven doable with this species.

headspace-hotel

Hi y'all, reblogging the Canebrake Post again. It's been over a year since I fell in love with the coolest plant ever. I'm trying to bring it back but I am very small so if any of y'all have a Canebrake nearby you might wanna talk to the owners and contact some local parks and nature preserves yeah?

headspace-hotel

A lot of people are asking how to distinguish Rivercane from invasive bamboo species. This link should help you!

Here's some distinguishing traits I've observed myself:

River cane has a really full, bushy, leafy look that makes it really hard to recognize as bamboo from a distance, because the stems are harder to see. The shape of the individual cane with its branches and leaves is narrow, because the branches spread out very little, but the foliage is DENSE. It's like a plume.

River cane is stronger, denser and heavier than invasive bamboos I've seen.

River cane stems are always green all the way around, no yellow (unless the plant's been dead for a good long time)

River cane stems feel smooth like plastic to the touch. The common invasive bamboo I've seen here, when you run your hand upwards along it, the stem feels awful like sandpaper.

The biggest way to distinguish them: River cane grows 6-4 feet tall when it's in little patches, and up to 10-12 feet when it's in a large size patch (like, the size of a backyard) It is known to reach up to 15 feet tall nowadays and historical records claim heights of 30 feet or more in fertile river valleys. I really want to stress that it's RARE for it to get big. A canebrake will almost always be many times wider than it is tall (sometimes they grow in very long strips along fence rows)

The best time to look for it is in winter before things leaf out, because it's evergreen and grows in dense masses, making it easy to spot.

Some more cool stuff i've found out—River cane was a common food of bison! Earliest European settlers reported canebrakes so big that "100 bison could graze on a single canebrake." Apparently it used to make extremely high quality forage for livestock, before it was mostly destroyed.

European settlers apparently set their pigs loose in the canebrakes purposefully to destroy them, because the pigs would root up the nutritious rhizomes and kill the plant. Thinking of the relationship between Bison and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Eastern Native Americans and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Plains Native Americans and Bison...it seems like a pattern, huh?

In the case of both bison and canebrakes, they were a fundamental part of their ecosystem, and fundamental part of the indigenous cultures that used them for every material, their musical instruments, their homes, their most advanced arts, and even food (Rivercane shoots are edible just like other bamboo, and supposedly the seeds are edible too!) but European settlers purposefully destroyed the species almost completely. I can't help but wonder if there was a similar motivation.

Books that talk about Rivercane:

Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry by Sarah H. Hill talks about rivercane a LOT and gives tons of details of its uses and history.

Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction by Georgann Eubanks has a whole chapter about Rivercane.

Venerable Trees: History, Biology and Conservation in the Bluegrass is a book about Kentucky, but it talks about rivercane's importance including its relationship with bison. It's only a couple pages out of the whole book but it's still great information.

By the way, though, if you read any very early European account of Kentucky, the word "cane" is everywhere. It's just such a nondescript word it's hard to realize its significance.

On a more personal note...god, I love this plant. Here's another photo I took. When you're in the canebrake, it feels so cut off from the rest of the world; it's shaded, quiet, cool, and someone 10 yards away couldn't even see you.

i actually talked to my neighbor that I learned owns the canebrake. She had no idea what it was but she was excited to learn about it! It was a lovely conversation.

Apparently, she knew I had been down there a bunch of times and thought nothing of it. She said "Yeah I told my husband, If you see her down there, just leave her alone she's doing her thing." In the most sincere way possible, God bless this woman

She said I could transplant all I wanted, too. This was great! ...but I quickly learned how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to transplant from a canebrake of this size. The rhizomes are so big and tough, a shovel can hardly get through them, and unless you're at the edge of the canebrake, there's a thick mat of them going every which way. I was driving my whole weight down on this shovel and it kept just denting the rhizome and glancing off.

I did get some transplants but each one took like half an hour because I was fighting for my life!

Also, with a canebrake this size, it doesn't grow little canes that will later become bigger—it shoots up tall canes in a single season. The youngest canes, more accessible and toward the edge of the canebrake, were significantly taller than I was. I cut the top off of one transplant for ease of handling—I had a pair of hand pruners with me that were usually perfectly useful for small limbs, but I could barely get these things through the cane, it's just so strong and dense.

Someone research the material properties of this stuff ASAP. It's insanely strong.

headspace-hotel

Hi everyone, it's the river cane post again!

Here is some YouTube videos that talk about river cane!

Roger Cain of Keetoowah/Western Band Cherokee shows and talks about Rivercane. This video has a BIG canebrake, the mature canes look as if they could be 15ft tall, but he says it's only a fragment of what they used to be!

Stan the River Man visits a Canebrake in Northern Kentucky. This channel only has 22 subscribers, I feel like I've discovered a rare and priceless treasure

River Cane Renaissance, Episode 1. This guy has devoted a large part of his life to studying Rivercane and now works with the eastern band Cherokee to try and bring it back.

Chattooga river conservancy video on Rivercane, haven't watched the whole thing myself but it looks really good and detailed

These videos barely have any views or comments, but y'all can help! We can spread the knowledge.

headspace-hotel

Hi everyone.

This is exactly what you think it is.

that-disabled-princess

Happy birthday, Runaan! I hope being turned into a cupcake is at least slightly better than being trapped in a coin.

[ID: Three photos from different angles of a crochet chocolate cupcake. The frosting is made to resemble the top half of Runaan's head. He has black safety eyes, tan skin, white hair in three ponytails, dark purple horns, and light purple horizontal markings across his nose and cheeks. His right horn has a silver horn cuff. His left horn is much smaller than the right and doesn't have a horn cuff. In the first photo, there is a lit candle on top of the cupcake. /end ID]

that-disabled-princess

@a-very-sparkly-nerd asked for the pattern, so here it is! The only reason it ends up being so small is because I didn't have enough white yarn to make a bigger one haha.

Apologies for the lack of photos here, I don't have the spoons to add any.

If anyone crochets this, I'd love to see it!

**This is my own pattern, do not redistribute, take credit for, or sell it**

Materials

3.5mm hook

Yarn: white, tan, dark purple, light purple, grey, brown

Safety eyes

Stuffing

Darning needle

Scissors

Stitches (in US terminology)

sc - single crochet dc - double crochet hdc - half double crochet slst - slip stitch surface slip stitch FLO - front loop only BLO - back loop only inc - increase dec - decrease

victoriaorolfoart

It's that time of the year again where I look back on everything I crocheted over the past year. Looks like this was the year of the hanging plants! There were a handful of crochet things that I didn't have time to photograph bc they had sold immediately during the many markets I participated in this year, including some donut coasters, strawberry charms (final photo taken by @its.greychen !), and a variety of other plants. Thank you to everyone who bought one of these from me!! You've truly helped me embrace my love for botany, despite me having a black thumb lol. My high school self (half of my lifetime ago!?) would be so proud to hear that I'm still crocheting into adulthood. Here's to more projects in the new year!

cognitivejustice

Re-using waste diapers in building construction

Japanese researchers at the University of Kitakyushu have unveiled a unique solution to non-recyclable waste and cement production’s environmental impact: concrete blended with shredded nappies.

Nature writes about this innovation.

By replacing 9-40% of sand in concrete without compromising strength, this innovative method diverts waste from landfills and provides affordable housing in low- and middle-income communities.

A prototype house in Indonesia demonstrates the concept’s viability, using up to 40% of nappy-infused concrete for architectural elements like walls, while structural components like columns and beams require a lower proportion.

From diapers to concrete: the process

The researchers began by sourcing nappies locally, washing, drying, and shredding them before combining the waste material with cement, sand, gravel, and water. They tested various mixes, replacing up to 40% of sand in the concrete with shredded nappies. After a month of curing, the samples’ compressive strength was assessed to determine the breaking point of the composite material. The team discovered that the more nappy waste present in the concrete, the lower the compressive strength, leading to different proportions of shredded nappies being required for various building components.

Building the prototype house

Using their findings, the researchers constructed a small, single-storey prototype house in Indonesia, with a floor plan of just 36 square metres. For this particular structure, 27% of the sand was replaced with nappy waste, but if the house were three storeys tall, the proportion would need to drop to 10%. In architectural components, up to 40% of the sand could be replaced by nappy waste, with the highest proportion found in concrete wall panels. However, for flooring and garden paving, which require greater strength to meet building standards, only 9% of the sand could be substituted with nappies.

Japanese researchers find a win-win solution: addressing housing shortages while reducing nappies in landfills.

bloglikeanegyptian

sometimes catch myself thinking "of course this would happen, of course israel would open fire at starving people trying to get aid, of course the airdropped aid would fall in a place it's not supposed to fall, of course more and more children are dying of starvation and malnutrition" and then i have to remind myself to stay angry at everything that is happening because even if all of it follows the despicable and clear path of genocide, it should be resisted every step of the way until we can get it to stop

even though israel is simply following the plans it has already declared to raze gaza to the ground and ethnically cleanse its people, even though we are watching nothing but an accelerated version of the kind of strategy that has been employed against palestinians for 75 years, even though the leaders of the world are complicit while the people of the world continue to protest, even though it has been five months, i refuse to normalize with this. none of this is normal. this is monstrous, depraved and sick. its nothing new but we'll keep saying it, and i won't forget any of it.

convexcave

ok so instead of going on my usual the earth is doomed spiral I started looking into solar punk solutions and stumbled across the practice of permaculture & found a free 50 video series from the university of oregon on it if anyone else would like to learn abt ways we can actually start restoring earths whole deal