Kay Louise @spazcatz83 - Tumblr Blog

The thing society as a whole doesn’t understand about nature is that absolutely nothing is just a worm or just a bug or just a plain little fish that does nothing but swim around and eat until it dies. Every single animal has a complicated life and habits. Minnows make nests out of pebbles. Slugs have courtship rituals. Fruit flies have territorial battles and when they can’t get laid they become alcoholics all in those few days that they even exist on earth. Just the functions of the different body parts of a dust mite can fill a lecture and we still don’t completely understand everything about its life habits or its biochemistry.

onenicebugperday

Little guys contain multitudes

beardedmrbean

Don't think I've seen them all together in one big video like this before

flavinbagel

God I love things doing the things that they do

funnytwittertweets

carnivalseb

well, the C is a harsh mistress

lady-byleth

guooey

Losing my mind

funny-tik-toks

natsueyama-deactivated20240226

TWAS NOT READY OMG

argumate

much like the way the Italians exported pizza and the Americans ruined/perfected it for the Italians to import it back again and then re-export the “authentic” product back to America, so the British took tea from Asia and ruined/perfected it by adding milk and sugar then Asia took that and ruined/perfected it by adding tapioca bubbles and even more sugar and exported it back again.

tafkarfanfic

So what you’re saying is, food is a conversation between cultures.

argumate

“your food sucks ass but I can fix it”

grenade-maid

I think the moment that convinced me the operating logic of our society is truly fucked in a way that cannot merely be reformed was after that eclipse in 2017 when the articles started coming out about how much money had been lost by productivity dropping from people stopping momentarily to watch it happen. To measure the world by the metric of the dollar to such a devotion that any cult leader would be jealous of that you would look at one of the most sublime experiences in nature which we, our ancestors, and even a not insignificant number of non-human species, have been observing in awestruck wonder for millennia, and decide that such a moment of profundity is something to be fought and preferably expunged from the human experience because it briefly impacts quarterly revenue.

It's a feeling that has been coming up repeatedly, but with increasing frequency in the last few years. That being: what is all of this for? Where are we going? Nobody who defends the status quo can seem to answer it. What's the point of an uninterrupted quarterly revenue stream if we can't even look at an eclipse every few years? What's the point of hustling and grinding 50, 60, 70 hour weeks if you never have time to have dinner with your friends, talk to your family on the phone, but on a bigger spectrum, what's the point of all of that if you still don't have any way of retiring in the future? With the way that our lives are being increasingly monetized and squeezed every second, what is there to look forward to?

momolive

Creative way of saving camels from getting run over

dracogotgame

my favourite things about this video:

1) the amount of time that went into considering this approach, which is a resounding 0.00 seconds

2) the baby's screm - yes it's sad bc the poor lil guy is scared but the way his yells for momma hitch with the guy's running have me lmao ngl

3) the guy either had the incredible good fortune or the foresight to put the baby between himself and momma so he could make a break for it. it was too quick. Too deliberate and almost instinctive. He has done this before.

4) the victory skips and turban twirling.

10/10 but please for the love of god there has to be a better way camels kick people to death

unclefather

jaubaius

Snowflake on a crow’s wing.

Photo by Shawn Bergman.

gatheringbones

“Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you are a 22-year-old college student in Kampala, Uganda. You’re sitting in class and discreetly scrolling through Facebook on your phone. You see that there has been another mass shooting in America, this time in a place called San Bernardino. You’ve never heard of it. You’ve never been to America. But you’ve certainly heard a lot about gun violence in the U.S. It seems like a new mass shooting happens every week. You wonder if you could go there and get stricter gun legislation passed. You’d be a hero to the American people, a problem-solver, a lifesaver. How hard could it be? Maybe there’s a fellowship for high-minded people like you to go to America after college and train as social entrepreneurs. You could start the nonprofit organization that ends mass shootings, maybe even win a humanitarian award by the time you are 30. Sound hopelessly naïve? Maybe even a little deluded? It is. And yet, it’s not much different from how too many Americans think about social change in the “Global South.” If you asked a 22-year-old American about gun control in this country, she would probably tell you that it’s a lot more complicated than taking some workshops on social entrepreneurship and starting a non-profit. She might tell her counterpart from Kampala about the intractable nature of our legislative branch, the long history of gun culture in this country and its passionate defenders, the complexity of mental illness and its treatment. She would perhaps mention the added complication of agitating for change as an outsider. But if you ask that same 22-year-old American about some of the most pressing problems in a place like Uganda — rural hunger or girl’s secondary education or homophobia — she might see them as solvable. Maybe even easily solvable. I’ve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other people’s problems. It’s not malicious. In many ways, it’s psychologically defensible; we don’t know what we don’t know. If you’re young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you’d be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable. Of course you’d want to apply for prestigious fellowships that mark you as an ambitious altruist among your peers. Of course you’d want to fly on planes to exotic locations with, importantly, exotic problems. There is a whole “industry” set up to nurture these desires and delusions — most notably, the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S., many of them focused on helping people abroad. In other words, the young American ego doesn’t appear in a vacuum. Its hubris is encouraged through job and internship opportunities, conferences galore, and cultural propaganda — encompassed so fully in the patronizing, dangerously simple phrase “save the world.””

—

“The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems” by Courtney Martin

(via

dietcokebisexual

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Capitalism can’t save the world, but it can simulate the experience and sell it to you.

(via newwavenova)

augustdementhe

WHOOMP, there it is.

everythingfox

Dashing through the snow

(via)

darkadia-klownin

The lack of fucks squirrels give is inspiring.

derinthescarletpescatarian

The more I talk about recycling with people the more I realise just how many people recycle backwards.

a-really-weird-cat

Hey OP what the fuck are you talking about?

derinthescarletpescatarian

What I mean is, when a lot of people plan to recycle, they look at stopping products from ending up in landfill. This is a completely pointless thing to worry about. Some materials do require special handling to dispose of safely (batteries, fragile plastics, etc.), but if your goal is a general ‘how do I repurpose this so it doesn’t end up in landfill?’, that solves absolutely nothing.

We aren’t lacking in landfill space. The shirt in the back of your closet that you never ever wear is exactly as bad for the environment in the back of your closet as it is in landfill; storing it is just delaying the point in time at which it’ll start to break down. If I buy something in a plastic bottle, and then repurpose that plastic bottle into a garden pot or something… that garden pot is still gonna go to landfill eventually. I haven’t saved anything. The plastic was landfill as soon as it was manufactured. That shirt was landfill (unless you choose to burn it, which isn’t environmentally any better) the moment the fabric was produced.

The critical point when it comes to making a difference with recycling isn’t before stuff hits landfill; it’s before the stuff is produced in the first place. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” only works because ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ are strategies to feed into ‘reduce’. Recycling glass bottles or aluminium cans is useful only because it reduces the amount of new glass and aluminium being produced (note: most of the plastic bottles you recycle go straight to landfill in other countries). Recycling fabric is useful only if it prevents the purchase of new fabric, and thus on a large scale, the production of new fabric.

For example, let’s say my pants are threadbare beyond repair, and I cut them up for dusters. Important question: do I use dusters? Do I need this many dusters? Is this, in short, an act that is stopping me from buying dusters made from newly manufactured material? If it’s not, then it’s not doing anything at all to help the environment. That same amount of fabric is still going to landfill. (That’s not a reason not to do it, it just doesn’t help the environment at all.)

Another example: I tend to cut up old clothes and pick up fabric that’s going to be thrown out a lot, to make bags and wall hangings and rugs and things. I recycle a LOT of fabric. Is this helping the environment? For some people doing this, it probably is, because they’re making stuff they’d otherwise buy. But for me, it’s doing nothing whatsoever for the environment. If I wasn’t making cushions and wall hangings, I wouldn’t be buying any. I just wouldn’t own any cushions or wall hangings. They’re fun to make, they brighten the place up, but they don’t affect my consumption (and therefore the incentive for cushions and wall hanging to be produced) at all; I’m buying zero of those things either way. Is this recycling? Yes. Does it have any effect whatsoever on helping the environment? No. It’s just delaying the amount of time before that exact same fabric ends becomes rubbish.

Same is true of the aformentioned plastic bottles into garden pots. That plastic is going into landfill whether you recycle it first or not. The question is, did repurposing it stop you from having to buy plastic garden pots? Will the cumulative effect of people doing this lower the amount of plastic garden pots being produced? Will that lower the amount of plastic being produced?

Stopping things from reaching landfill is largely an irrelevant and pointless practice. Recycling is only environmentally useful when it affects the future production of materials. Repurposing materials is often fun and practical regardless (I love repurposing materials), but it’s not automatically environmentally useful just because you’re reusing something.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#This is one of the reasons I am OBSESSED with green building materials#because so many of them are actually not that green at all#and the concept of recycled building materials is so over used while being under examined#and BOY DO THEY HATE IT WHEN YOU POINT OUT THAT THEIR GREEN PRODUCT IS NOT REALLY THAT GREEN#omg it makes them so mad#them being architects or company reps etc

Still fuming over that “vegan leather made from cacti!” thing that turned out to be almost entirely plastic with like, a bit of cactus in there.

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

This is mostly true except the assertion that “We aren’t lacking in landfill space”, which I must disagree with, because we are. Every landfill means another habitat dug up, more hydrology altered, and unless they’re properly constructed, a LOT of extremely harmful compounds entering the surrounding ecosystems via leachate. And it’s a particular problem if you live somewhere with a smaller landmass (e.g. UK, Iceland, Aotearoa, the Philippines, etc) - we are absolutely running out of landfill space, and anything that slows their filling IS a good thing.

But yes, it’s absolutely true that the behemoth in the room is our consumption patterns, and a lot of the green movement is just capitalism in a new colour. If we don’t stop making all the stuff we’re making, the planet dies. It really is that simple.

derinthescarletpescatarian

That’s a good point. For context I am Australian.

scarlet-rosepetals

Friendly reminder that capitalism mangled “reduce reuse recycle” into just “recycle” for a reason. Corporations don’t want to reduce consumption at all so they’ll gladly sell you the lie that if you recycle hard enough you’ll save the environment. No amount of recycling will save shit if we do not reduce and reuse (and obliterate the capitalist system forcing us all into perpetual overconsumption)

derinthescarletpescatarian

#point that more people really really need to know is that the vast majority of plastic ISNT recycled#and its not because you dont put it in the recycling bin. its that its picked up from your recycling and tossed in the landfill#more often than not#my dad’s a sanitation worker so im getting this info straight from the source#if you wanna reduce plastic waste the solution isnt recycling its avoiding plastic to begin with

Often they take the time to ship it to a more exploited country first (creating unnecessary CO2 emissions) and “recycle” it in THEIR landfill!

soracities

“Fairy tales — the proper kind, those original Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales I recall from my Eastern European childhood, unsanitized by censorship and unsweetened by American retellings — affirm what children intuitively know to be true but are gradually taught to forget, then to dread: that the terrible and the terrific spring from the same source, and that what grants life its beauty and magic is not the absence of terror and tumult but the grace and elegance with which we navigate the gauntlet.”

— Maria Popova, “The Importance of Being Scared: Polish Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska on Fairy Tales and the Necessity of Fear”