wait hold on i never see people talk about this specific part of aaron’s bonus chapter and it drives me fucking crazy
“Someone like you wouldn’t understand the importance of hiding scars.” can we talk about how significant this line is???? aaron has andrew so on the backfoot in this conversation that andrew is trying to deflect by bringing up his scars. his scars, of all things. he’s seeing discussion of neil as such dangerous territory that he’s willing to risk aaron figuring out he has self harm scars
and aaron KNOWS he’s implying something, he just is so focused on his goal that he tables it for later. “There was something more there; he could feel a warning heat along the back of his thoughts.” he’s not stupid!! he knows andrew is trying to distract him with a secret!!! once he takes the time to focus on it, he’ll put the pieces together with a little effort
and andrew KNOWS this. he is banking on aaron putting it together and hoping it’ll pull the conversation off track. it doesn’t work, but that’s his goal. he doesn’t want to talk about neil with betsy so badly that he decides he’d rather aaron know he has self harm scars than allow the conversation to continue
everyone focuses on aaron’s snarky comments and the fact that he wins but i never see anything about the fact that andrew gives up this secret to try to avoid talking about neil. it’s crazy!!!
and on the next page we get the line “Andrew was picking idly at his jeans: an agitated tic that had mostly disappeared once his medicine was out of his system. Maybe he was a thousand miles from here, pretending this conversation wasn’t happening, or maybe he needed a few more moments to come to terms with their easy acceptance.” the whole scene is just andrew being uncomfortable and on edge when he can’t steer the conversation in the direction he wants. he’s so uncomfortable that he’s indulging in a nervous tic he has more control of now than he had in the past and using his own closely guarded secrets as bait to try to get control back
i’m going insane i’m like that one iasip “can we talk about the mail?” meme but with this scene (meme under the cut)
children heed my warning. one day your body’s check engine light will come on and demand that you start eating so many vegetables and whole grains. do not ignore it.
I want to explain this a bit more since 'health' and 'biology' are loosely speaking, special interests of mine and also what I went to school for.
People SAY that your health 'suddenly' starts to decline in your 30s but that's not really a good way to put it A) bc that's not really accurate and B) bc it frames this decline as something inherent and unavoidable, which does nothing to convince you that you have some agency about this.
So I'm going to explain this in LOOSE NON-SCIENTIFIC language:
When you are an infant or child, you are actively growing. Nature is throwing tons of new cells into you bc your body needs to BUILD BUILD BUILD. What you're able to do, eat and heal from is all largely dictated by this-- for example little kids often LOVE sweet foods or dairy-like foods and are relatively less interested in anything else. This is bc their body is running on HIGH all the time since building body parts is very energetically intensive. They can eat a fistful of sugarcubes and burn them off in an hour. Ask me how I know.
When you are a YOUNG ADULT you are actually still developing to a secondary extent, but your bones and such are fused and now that development goes into solidifying the structure and also finetuning its reproductive capabilities and features-- these, too, are HIGHLY energy consumptive when they first come online. Nature is STILL, thus, throwing tons of energy and new cells your way hoping you'll do something cool with them. You regenerate very quickly, and recover from harm rapidly-- But please note: swift recovery from harm is not absence of harm. This most relates to the consumption of 'junk food' and alcohol-- many people say they could 'eat whatever they wanted and nothing would happen' when they're in their 20s or that they could go out drinking and 'not be affected'. You were affected. You didn't notice.
Once everything has come online you go into maintenance mode. Nature stops throwing excess cells and energy your way bc you don't need that-- your body is yours and you are now responsible for maintaining it...hopefully with what you learned by experience in your 20s. IF YOU WERE NOT PAYING ATTENTION, you did not learn this, and are in for a surprise in your 30s bc your 'free recovery' subscription has ended. Recovery and maintenance- processes that are constant in the human body- now cost MINERALS & ELECTRICITY. You can go into DEBT now, and that debt will come in the form of joints that pop, inability to recover well, lowered immune function, and feeling like shit.
This debt accrues interest RAPIDLY once you hit 36-- the age of around 36 to 46 or so is a kind of reckoning stage where Nature assesses how well you've managed your body and you will be SWIFTLY downgraded if the result is you were just winging it.
So how do you build this account? 2 main things ( LOOSELY SPEAKING this is so not 100% scientific but I have to be general here): MINERALS -- you get these from eating well, mostly. You might want to take supplements based on your unique needs. But you need Minerals & Vitamins (i'm lumping these two together) bc they are the chemical building blocks (currency) your body uses to rebuild and fix up cells. ELECTRICITY is- again loosely speaking- having the proper chemical voltage throughout your body. This 'voltage' drops when you don't move enough, or when you're dehydrated. The building and repairing process your body wants to do may have the materials (minerals and vitamins) but there's not enough power in the factory, or the AC isn't working and the workers are overheating and can't work well. To fix this, drink lots of water and MOVE AND STRETCH your body. The action within your muscles and bones GENERATES ENERGY and it keeps your cells happy.
So the thing is, it's not that you suddenly find yourself taking damage after 30+. You were taking damage the whole time. You're just kept from really feeling it bc you're young and full of extra juice and given time to figure things out.
But at some point Nature expects you to do that, and you will pay if you don't.
Best to start out giving a shit, even if none of your friends think you're cool, even if you get called a 'health nut' bc you will still be able to frolick at 45, 50, probably so on while everyone who said it was dumb to have 'balanced meals' shares memes about how they wake up feeling like shit every day.
Sidenote don't let our shitty fatphobic society obscure the fact that it's okay to care about what you eat. Counting calories or being preoccupied with physical perfection is a sad way to relate to your body BUT that doesn't mean that paying attention to your diet AT ALL is bad. Baby, bath water, etc.
Btw, this also goes for things like ergonomics. You may have never needed good sitting posture, or lumbar support, or proper typing technique, or a monitor riser, or good shoe insoles, or... but the thing is, you did, though. You were taking damage the whole time, you were just healing so fast that you didn't notice. Back problems and repetitive strain injuries aren't inevitable in your 30s – but they're pretty inevitable if you go on treating your body as badly as you could get away with treating it in your 20s.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Correction to the above, Scrivener does not have a Linux version. I know this because my husband is an author and wanted to buy Scrivener but he runs Linux on his writing laptop.
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
@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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
For privacy reasons, I share details online of my real world activities only reluctantly, and not very often. But don't be bamboozled into thinking I have forgotten the Canebrakes. It's exactly the opposite.
I have done a lot of networking and made a lot of contacts. I am not alone. There are other people with a story exactly like mine: first, they heard an offhanded mention of forests of American bamboo, which shattered everything they thought they knew about their environment. Next, they became crazed with fascination, searching for knowledge with insane ferocity. Then, they realized that river cane is not only a plant, it is a keystone species symbiotic with indigenous cultures for thousands of years, and it was almost destroyed due to the subjugation of its habitat and the genocide of its caretakers.
The canebrakes' devotees have been working tirelessly to compile every single scrap of information on canebrakes that exists in writing. Every record, every primary source, every historical mention, every comment and conjecture. I have been given access to some of this priceless treasure trove. The wealth of information is amazing, but even more amazing is how much is still unknown.
The history, properties, and ecological importance of the canebrakes is so much more than I imagined.
For example, the massive amounts of seeds produced by huge canebrakes in flowering events fed the passenger pigeon flocks. Likewise the Carolina parakeet was also dependent on canebrakes, and the extinct Bachman's warbler was a canebrake specialist. The destruction of canebrakes could be responsible for why these birds went extinct.
Canebrakes were absolutely fundamental to the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, providing for their every need. Food, shelter, containers, tools, music and art. The settlers foolishly thought the indigenous peoples were not "advanced" enough for metal tools, but in truth, they already had a material superior to metal. River cane by weight is stronger than steel. You can make knives and blades out of it.
I am excited for the future. It seems like momentum is building to save the river cane and bring back the canebrakes, and I am hoping to join together with all the other like-minded people to accomplish this task.
A new organization has just started in Alabama to bring back the river cane. Here is a blog post to read from a few months ago.
[ID: Three photos of rivercane. It is tall, and dark green striped with brown. This is followedby a photo of the alabama picher plant. It has leaves shaped like jugs, in yellow and orange, with green veins. This is followed by another photo of a rivercane patch, then a pile of ripe seeds, that are still slightly green but brown on the tips, then a germinating seed, a seedling in soil, many seedlings in various improvised plant pots, and an older seedling in the ground surrounded by dried leaves. End ID.]
excuse the block of text ID it's hot outsid.e
Please for the love of all that's sacred tell someone who knows this stuff to get to Savannah Georgia, there are so many patches here that experts online cannot identify and think are an undescribed species.
Here's a petition to protect at least one of the canebrakes here
since it's January now, that means it will soon be February and March, so River Cane including the other species should start flowering soon! Keep an eye out for dark purple spikes, either coming from the stalk itself, or the ground around it!
The entire plant does not need to flower at the same time, so you might need to look. Also size does not matter. The plant can be 8 ft tall or less than a foot, it can still flower.
Start looking in February. Especially keep an eye out in March!
Hi everyone. It's February. Guess what's happening right now?
[image description start. Four photos of native bamboo flower buds, each a dark purple color, emerging from tan stems. Image description end.]
And some of them, are flowering literally three times in a row! One tiny plant we found, less than 4 ft tall, flowered and produced seed in February of 2025, then again in September 2025, and now again in February 2026!
Other taller stocks like the ones shown above, for sure flowered in February 2025, and from the seeds still clinging to the plants, they probably did it again in fall as well, but unfortunately I wasn't able to check on them because a storm knocked a bunch of tree branches into my path to get to them. And now they are flowering again, for at least the second year in a row!
Get out there and look for flowers and flower buds! If you are further south or towards the coast, you will likely find Arundinaria tecta, which is what I have picture of! (You know, unless it turns out to be another species that has not been described yet, which is possible)
Also for my friends in Mexico, there are multiple species of native bamboo that you can find, and you should all definitely show me pictures because it looks delightful!
Whoops I haven't visited this post in a little while but someone just sent an ask about Rivercane and made me think to look for it.
Very fascinating that it flowered again in the fall and then the next year. I have observed it to do that in a couple of canebrakes, I'm not sure if the plant just keeps going until it dies, or what.
When the pollen is produced, maybe you could save some to test and see if they can be hand-pollinated? (and how long the pollen lasts in storage). Im not sure if anyone has tried hand pollination.
The further north you are, the later the flowering will happen- here in Kentucky, you should look in April-May and if there are seeds they will be ready in June
Also, really cool to hear about the possible undescribed species near Savannah, it was just recently that Tallapoosa Cane was identified as its own species
a baddie in bad quality for my first finished bit of digital art !! ideally will get better from here 😭
colours are only coming up properly on my computer not phone >:( but this is my first one and i don’t know how to fix it so. enjoy the WRONG colours if you’re on mobile
When Andrew says "jump" Kevin doesn't say anything, he just jumps, as high as he can, every time, without fail. The problem with that is, that when Andrew says jump what he wants to hear is "fuck you, no."
Pick one of James Baldwin's works and read it!!! The Fire Next Time is an excellent essay, most of us are familiar with the quote on gay white people from The Last Interview but not the rest of it. If Beale Street Could Talk even has a movie!
so many. stupid fucking people. smugly wrong. the term . "all art is political". does not mean. every artist puts political intent into their work. no. the guy drawing dicks on the subway did not intend any deep message by it. HOWEVER. all art. IS political. he chose to draw that dick. for a reason. society shaped what he finds funny. what he finds shocking. the fact he chose to draw a dick at all says something about his society. actually, the fact it is a dick and not a pussy is itself political. we are all. ALL. shaped by our environments. in an alternate universe a woman is drawing a vulva on the wall. and shes saying "TCH! this isnt political. stupid liberals". all art. has political CONTEXT. that is a more specific way to phrase it. because we live in a society. who has access to art? where is the art located? who is the artist? why did they draw that in that specific location. what led to them even having the sharpie they used to draw the dick to begin with. their society shaped their tools! their society shaped their choice of subject! their society shaped the location of their art! but these people are too stupid to understand this. so theyll continue pretending that they are not shaped by their political environment. SAD!
out of all the posts ive made that have blown up this has to be the most fascinating Given how i was too drunk to remember how to form full sentences. but was i wrong? no.
I think the prevalence of bad writing advice in the world helped me grow my critical eye from an early age. the thing you have to understand about advice and criticism is that you shouldn't take them like a soldier takes orders. obedience is not a virtue. soldiers shouldn't do that either, nobody should be a soldier, but that's off topic. you have to evaluate whether they are good. you have to criticize the criticism.
Bad sex scenes are fun to make fun of but I think one of the easy reasons they are frequently awful is that there's no narrative energy to them. I picked up on this by studying combat scenes and I think the problems that show up are really similar; there's this thing writers do where they treat these kinds of sequences differently than the rest of their work, the scenes feel like they exist outside the regular narrative and writers just pause the story while they happen. People are always complaining about fighting and sex in stories being "boring and a waste of time" and that's not an inherent function of these mechanics, that means writers aren't approaching them with the same thoughtfulness as the narrative, and the audience can feel it.
The sex is an interaction, and interactions should illuminate things! It's still beholden to the plot/characterization/worldbuilding rule, we should always be communicating some kind of new information or reinforcing what is already understood. You are having 2+ personalities strip down and communicate with their bodies what are they SAYING. It doesn't have to be anything profound, even just communicating to the audience "i think this person doing this thing is hot" counts; wanting the reader to get off to something is a perfectly respectable goal that can keep us on track if you're aware of it. But the writer so frequently has NO IDEA what they're actually trying to say, what the goal of the scene is beyond fucking or fighting, so we end up with bland interfacing between characters who could be replaced by any other characters doing the same thing anywhere else. It isn't hot or interesting to be directionless, pick an intention and go.
