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On Friday, I got a notification that I had a package. My apartment has package lockers that FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL/etc. deliver int and when they register a package to me, I get a code emailed/texted to me that I can use to pop the locker open.

I didn’t remember getting a package, but that happens sometimes. I preorder a lot of things and Bookshop doesn’t always let you know when they’ve finally shipped something, or a friend surprises me, or whatever. So I put some clothes and shoes on and went over to the leasing office building to get the package.

It was not for me. FedEx is gonna FedEx.

So I picked it up out of the locker and went to the leasing office staff to hand it to them. They were kind of closed for lunch, so I was contemplating what to do if they weren’t in. It had the address. I could walk over there and deliver it maybe?

‘Cause see. A lot of people apparently just shut the locker and are done with it. But if I did that...how would this person know they had a package or where it was? How would anyone get the package back out of the locker, now that the system registered it as retrieved? They don’t have the code, and the code is expired anyway.

I could just leave it in the locker. Or take it out of the locker and dump it to the side where it could be pilfered; the exact function the package lockers exist to prevent. It’s not my package. Not my problem.

But it costs me a tiny bit of inconvenience and time to place it in the hands of and appropriate custodian and save a bunch of other people a lot of inconvenience and time. I live in a society. Society is designed to save everyone across the society as much time and effort as possible cumulatively.

Sure, it’s easier and faster to just shove your shopping cart out of the way and pull out. Not your problem. You don’t need the cart anymore. Except now the cart is blocking other people’s cars and other parking spots and can ram into cars and people and some poor worker is going to have to go track it down. You have saved yourself a tiny amount of time and inconvenience and in doing so wasted everyone around you’s time and convenience.

Sure, you could put your neighbor’s mail from a government agency with an URGENT stamp in your mailbox and mark it “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS.” Or you could. Just. Pop it in their mailbox or slip it under their door (I’ve been having mail problems recently okay. Give the USPS more money).

You don’t have to wait an extra 5 seconds to hold the door for someone just behind you. But. Like. Come on, man, really? (Unless you're entering a secured area with restricted access, because that causes a separate cache of problems)

Weighing how much time and effort something is going to cost you compared to how much time and effort it will save everyone else around you cumulatively is...well...pro-social way to think. There are obviously always going to be exceptions and a balance to things, especially if the cost to you is much, much higher proportionally.

We live in a society. We live in many societies.

You can leave your dishes all around your house. But whoever has to do the dishes later (even if it’s you!) is then going to have to remember or know this happened, figure out where they all are, pick them up, deal with any spills/etc. that incurred, and return them to the kitchen and then was them. Was that really worth just putting them in the kitchen earlier? Maybe. But probably not.

“But what do I get out of that?” Firstly, you’re a tarpit. Secondly, you get all of the time and energy everyone around you has saved you by also being a functioning member of a society.

Societies work because we’re all contributing so the burned is distributed, just the way people can walk over a bed of nails but not an individual nail. We all take up a small part of people’s burdens that aren’t necessarily ours so we all have better lives.

Consider: how pro-social is your behavior? Sometimes pro-social behavior is a huge undertaking for massive gains elsewhere. But so much of the time it takes an extra 30 seconds, an extra minute.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

“As a biologist, I have been asked by many, many people; “why do we need mosquitos?” and “Why can’t we just kill all the ticks?”. People may argue that they serve no purpose in the ecosystem, and nothing would really be affected if we got rid of them. After all, these animals are just nuisances, right? Everything would be better off if there were no parasites to bother them.

This is, of course, an untrue claim. Parasites play many roles in the ecosystem and their presence is absolutely necessary. For instance, let’s look at mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes are remarkable animals. There are many thousands of species, and only a few drink blood. Mosquitoes of all species subsist primarily on nectar, just like bees. This makes them critical pollinators. Of the few species that drink blood, only the females are interested in doing so, and they only do so to secure vital proteins for incubating their eggs. The males will continue to only feed on nectar for their whole lives.

But, besides being pollinators, what makes mosquitoes really incredible is their larvae. These larvae are aquatic and capable of surviving in extremely hostile conditions and in very small volumes of water. A mosquito will happily lay her eggs in an otherwise barren muddy puddle, and thousands of babies will thrive there, filter-feeding on microscopic organisms. This, in turn, provides food for other animals. Other aquatic insects as well as larval amphibians subsist largely on mosquitoes. Some insects will seek to lay their eggs in areas that mosquito eggs or larvae already exist, because it is a guaranteed food source.

This sudden abundance of life will attract predators of those animals, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, an entire thriving ecosystem has sprung up around this muddy puddle that otherwise would have supported little to no life, all thanks to these hardy larvae. In this way, mosquitoes are the foundation of many food-webs and allow life to colonize new, formerly inhospitable places.

However, defending the ecological importance of any animal is ultimately an exhausting task for biologists. The idea that animals must serve a purpose, must benefit humans in some way, is a fundamentally flawed way to view the natural world.

Every living organism that exists is a result of billions of years of evolution, all interwoven in a delicate balance with each other. If any of these pieces are removed, things will begin to collapse around it. We cannot sort animals into the categories of “useful” or “not useful”, because animals do not exist to be useful to us. They all have a place in the world, and we don’t get to pick and choose which species deserve to live without sending catastrophic ripple effects throughout the surrounding web of the ecosystem.

Whether we like it or not, parasites are part of the world and we have to coexist with them. Our focus should be on prevention of diseases associated with these parasites, by deterring them from biting, vaccinations against the bacteria they may carry, and affordable treatment if infections do occur, rather than figuring out a way to remove them from the planet entirely. Nothing in an ecosystem exists in isolation. Everything is deeply interwoven, and every species is necessary. The moment we allow ourselves to debate which species could be driven to extinction without consequence is the moment we will begin unravel the world around us, and, ultimately, humans will feel those ripples too.”

Watermelon piece is a good offering towards any adult wasp, but being a mud dauber she is a great wasp to observe, since they are not very aggressive and their sting is not too bad. I waited until she was a little more hydrated and started grooming herself to remove her from the house, since she was visibly quite dusty i knew it would be the next thing she would want to do.

Tuesday, Wednesday tread through muck

Thursday maybe eat a duck

It’s Friday, Flat as Fuck

Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?

Human 2: Cow.

Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?

Human 2: … little cow.

Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?