Squirrel's Happy Acorn World

Stone in the Sea - Peter Witt , 2025.

German , b. 1966 -

Wave in Backlight - Peter Witt

German , b. 1966 -

the deceptively named Cradle Kelp is actually a type of mermaid that make their home in kelp forests. little is known about them due to being on more of the eldritch ocean spirit side of the mermaid spectrum, but they seem to be harmless unless threatened (then they become VERY harmful) and intelligent enough to have an extensive sign language.

Fun Facts:

when resting they use their alarmingly strong grip to anchor themselves to the sea floor or nearby kelp stalks and let the rest of their body float free.

they love to go in shipwrecks and fiddle with buttons and levers and things that have interesting textures.

they have retractable claws.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Last Swim - Ruth Stage , 2024.

British , b. 1969 -

Another design is using 2 20x25x1 filters, taping them to the sides of the box fan and then to each other so they sort of make a triangle, then cutting cardboard to make a top and bottom to the triangle.

This was discovered as a more effective design during the 2020 US west coast fires.

https://tombuildsstuff.blogspot.com/2013/06/better-box-fan-air-purifier.html

Not as the goal, because adopting fitness habits does not always result in weight loss.

And it's the habits, like building muscle, improving flexibility & mobility, increasing nutrient intake & hydration, and getting quality rest & sleep that actually matter.

If you're successfully doing those things your health is quantitatively improving, no matter what your weight is doing. But if the metric your most concerned with is just loosing weight, you may actually be getting less healthy not more.