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[sewerfight-deactivated20250114]

Imagine a bee rn in a hive muttering "the beekeeper is not real because he is not intervening or helping me at all with this disastrous relationship I have with another bee". now imagine that's you talking about the good lord. now imagine a dog with a propeller hat on

[xenobotanist]

[61below]

Filing this in my memory right next to this thread:

[that-house]

Being a little too cold: brrrr i’m a little too cold !!!

Being a little too warm: i am going to kill the next person who makes eye contact with me.

[dailymanners]

If you're a smoker, including someone who vapes, ask permission before smoking around others. Don't assume everyone around you is okay with it.

More people than you'd expect have severe asthma or allergies that cause strong adverse reactions to being around smoke. Assuming everyone around you is okay with it can cause someone's asthma or allergies to act up and harm them. Also, if someone doesn't want second hand smoke, because even second hand smoke can cause health problems, that's their right to not want to be exposed to second hand smoke.

But it's always more polite to smoke away from others and down wind rather than smoking close to others, especially if you don't know how they feel about someone smoking by them.

[fatehbaz]

Despite its green image, Ireland has surprisingly little forest. [...] [M]ore than 80% of the island of Ireland was [once] covered in trees. [...] [O]f that 11% of the Republic of Ireland that is [now] forested, the vast majority (9% of the country) is planted with [non-native] spruces like the Sitka spruce [in commercial plantations], a fast growing conifer originally from Alaska which can be harvested after just 15 years. Just 2% of Ireland is covered with native broadleaf trees.

Text by: Martha O’Hagan Luff. “Ireland has lost almost all of its native forests - here’s how to bring them back.” The Conversation. 24 February 2023. [Emphasis added.]

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[I]ndustrial [...] oil palm plantations [...] have proliferated in tropical regions in many parts of the world, often built at the expense of mangrove and humid forest lands, with the aim to transform them from 'worthless swamp' to agro-industrial complexes [...]. Another clear case [...] comes from the southernmost area in the Colombian Pacific [...]. Here, since the early 1980s, the forest has been destroyed and communities displaced to give way to oil palm plantations. Inexistent in the 1970s, by the mid-1990s they had expanded to over 30,000 hectares. The monotony of the plantation - row after row of palm as far as you can see, a green desert of sorts - replaced the diverse, heterogenous and entangled world of forest and communities.

Text by: Arturo Escobar. "Thinking-Feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South." Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana Volume 11 Issue 1. 2016. [Emphasis added.]

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But efforts to increase global tree cover to limit climate change have skewed towards erecting plantations of fast-growing trees [...] [because] planting trees can demonstrate results a lot quicker than natural forest restoration. [...] [But] ill-advised tree planting can unleash invasive species [...]. [In India] [t]o maximize how much timber these forests yielded, British foresters planted pines from Europe and North America in extensive plantations in the Himalayan region [...] and introduced acacia trees from Australia [...]. One of these species, wattle (Acacia mearnsii) [...] was planted in [...] the Western Ghats. This area is what scientists all a biodiversity hotspot – a globally rare ecosystem replete with species. Wattle has since become invasive and taken over much of the region’s mountainous grasslands. Similarly, pine has spread over much of the Himalayas and displaced native oak trees while teak has replaced sal, a native hardwood, in central India. Both oak and sal are valued for [...] fertiliser, medicine and oil. Their loss [...] impoverished many [local and Indigenous people]. [...]

India’s national forest policy [...] aims for trees on 33% of the country’s area. Schemes under this policy include plantations consisting of a single species such as eucalyptus or bamboo which grow fast and can increase tree cover quickly, demonstrating success according to this dubious measure. Sometimes these trees are planted in grasslands and other ecosystems where tree cover is naturally low. [...] The success of forest restoration efforts cannot be measured by tree cover alone. The Indian government’s definition of “forest” still encompasses plantations of a single tree species, orchards and even bamboo, which actually belongs to the grass family. This means that biennial forest surveys cannot quantify how much natural forest has been restored, or convey the consequences of displacing native trees with competitive plantation species or identify if these exotic trees have invaded natural grasslands which have then been falsely recorded as restored forests. [...] Planting trees does not necessarily mean a forest is being restored. And reviving ecosystems in which trees are scarce is important too.

Text by: Dhanapal Govindarajulu. "India was a tree planting laboratory for 200 years - here are the results." The Conversation. 10 August 2023. [Emphasis added.]

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Nations and companies are competing to appropriate the last piece of available “untapped” forest that can provide the most amount of “environmental services.” [...] When British Empire forestry was first established as a disciplinary practice in India, [...] it proscribed private interests and initiated a new system of forest management based on a logic of utilitarian [extraction] [...]. Rather than the actual survival of plants or animals, the goal of this forestry was focused on preventing the exhaustion of resource extraction. [...]

Text by: Daniel Fernandez and Alon Schwabe. "The Offsetted." e-flux Architecture (Positions). November 2013. [Emphasis added.]

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At first glance, the statistics tell a hopeful story: Chile’s forests are expanding. […] On the ground, however, a different scene plays out: monocultures have replaced diverse natural forests [...]. At the crux of these [...] narratives is the definition of a single word: “forest.” [...] Pinochet’s wave of [...] [laws] included Forest Ordinance 701, passed in 1974, which subsidized the expansion of tree plantations [...] and gave the National Forestry Corporation control of Mapuche lands. This law set in motion an enormous expansion in fiber-farms, which are vast expanses of monoculture plantations Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus species grown for paper manufacturing and timber. [T]hese new plantations replaced native forests […]. According to a recent study in Landscape and Urban Planning, timber plantations expanded by a factor of ten from 1975 to 2007, and now occupy 43 percent of the South-central Chilean landscape. [...] While the confusion surrounding the definition of “forest” may appear to be an issue of semantics, Dr. Francis Putz [...] warns otherwise in a recent review published in Biotropica. […] Monoculture plantations are optimized for a single product, whereas native forests offer [...] water regulation, hosting biodiversity, and building soil fertility. [...][A]ccording to Putz, the distinction between plantations and native forests needs to be made clear. “[...] [A]nd the point that plantations are NOT forests needs to be made repeatedly [...]."

Text by: Julian Moll-Rocek. “When forests aren’t really forests: the high cost of Chile’s tree plantations.” Mongabay. 18 August 2014. [Emphasis added.]

[bloglikeanegyptian]

the palestinian red crescent released an audio recording of their emergency worker rana, who was on the phone with hind for over three hours, trying to keep her calm. she makes her recite the fatiha (one of the opening verses of the quran that all children know) and the sound of rana holding back tears as she tries to stay calm for hind, and hind's baby voice repeating after her dutifully is really breaking something in me. i am living, as we all are, but there is a part of me that will remember this and so many other things until the day i die.

[notbecauseofvictories]

A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

[cameoappearance]

Reblog if you are daunted by the complexities and unknowns

[wakeningwoods]

mynorthernheart

[radicalgraff]

"Airbnb's destroy communities"

Sticker seen in Asheville, North Carolina

[radicalgraff]

"The rich have unbreakable class solidarity, it's a shame the rest of us don't"

Poster spotted in Starkville, Mississippi

[cindy-lou]

SPIRITED AWAY 千と千尋の神隠し 2001, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[transarsonist]

i think a LOT of you with chronic conditions should learn this one magical phrase to get your hospital doctor to shit his entire pants, which is leaving the room and saying "im going to go discuss your behavior with the ethics committee, i think you might need a reminder of what your job is"

[transarsonist]

examples of when this would get a doctor to shit himself: if he mentions that you need to loose weight, go straight to the ethics committee and ask if its ethical to withold treatment until weight is lost, the answer is no and they know this. if a nurse etc, wont wear a mask and you NEED them to, the ethics committee, upon review of the case, will not be happy many such cases, remember that doctors and nurses at hospitals have an Oversight Board

[saintjosie]

while this is well intentioned, also please remember that this is only really an option for white people.

bipoc people have been loudly stating tor a long time that doctors are to bipoc women what cops are to bipoc men.

not saying don’t try this but also consider bringing someone with you, being on the phone during an appointment, or recording your appointment. solidarity is an effective tactic when appealing to the system is not.

[fravery]

Jef Bourgeau. American, b.1950. The Narrows. 2023

[mollymurakami-archive]

you go on | a comic

support me on ko-fi!

[bowsersex-deactivated20220424]

I love abortion. And vaccines. Autism too.

[llleighsmith]

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another―why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

– Mary Oliver, from “Black Oaks”

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

We Had the Experience but Missed the Meaning (Laida Lertxundi, 2014)

[oaluz]

Kai advises a reader on how to deepen bonds with acquaintances and build their own “Scooby gang”. By Kai Cheng Thom.

“Close friendship, like any meaningful relationship, doesn’t blossom automatically based on our biological age, as we are often encouraged to think it does. Emotional intimacy grows out of opportunity, time, ritual and shared experience. As with all other kinds of closeness, friendship also requires clear communication and vulnerability.

There’s nothing wrong, Looking, with flat-out asking someone, as you say, “Hey, want to be closer than we are now?” (I’d suggest waiting for the right moment to do this, like when you’re out on one of those intermittent dinner or drink hangouts and it feels like you’re both having a good time.) Other similar prompts include: “I’d love to get to know you better! Would you be into hanging out more often?” or “What do you look for in a friendship?” or “What are your thoughts on being closer friends?”

This kind of conversation can feel awkward, especially when you’re still finding your stride. Most of us are not accustomed to actually discussing the boundaries of friendship in a clear and direct way. Yet the same is true of discussing romantic relationships with potential partners, and any couple’s therapist will tell you that explicit discussion of the relationship is key. When I moved to Toronto in my mid-to-late 20s, I made a habit of point-blank asking co-workers and acquaintances that I thought were cool if they wanted to hang out and become closer friends—and I’ve made some of my closest friends that way.”

“Building deep adult friendships requires a kind of courting—because we can’t always rely on spontaneous six-hour hangouts and all-night drinking (though sometimes we can! It depends on what kind of adult you are) to develop closeness, we have to get creative and thoughtful about the kinds of hangouts we propose. Novelty, beauty, excitement and curiosity are experiences that become rarer for most adults due the rigid demands of life under capitalism. When we use friendship time as a way to bring those feelings back, we invite deeper layers of our friends to emerge.

Coffee, dinner and drinks can be wonderful, but they are predictable and follow well-worn social scripts, often within a very limited amount of time. What happens when, instead, we invite friends to join us on adventures that take us out of our comfort zone, like long walks in nature, cycling day trips, cultural and culinary festivals or volunteer and activist events?

Looking, I encourage you to be bold and creative in your invitations. For most adults, new friendship is an opportunity to rediscover the parts of ourselves that exist beyond work and family. Make the most of that magic; show your potential Scoobies a whole new world, and invite them to show you theirs.

The quest for deep adult friendship can be trying, Looking, and it is often loaded with false starts and potential disappointment. But so too is the road to any kind of emotional intimacy. To travel that road takes both self-compassion and courage: the self-compassion to remind ourselves that we are worthy, even when our attempts at connection falter or fall flat; the courage to take leaps of faith and expose our vulnerable selves, because this empowers others to show their vulnerability in turn. Keep trying, Looking. I suspect you’ll find that your Scoobies are somewhere out there, looking for you, too.”