┐(￣ヮ￣)┌

One of our fabric sales reps came in for an appointment yesterday and we ended up talking about the long term impacts of the pandemic. The home quilting market is predominantly a conservative customer base, so when COVID precautions were politicized, those ladies followed along and didn't get vaccinated, didn't wear masks, etc. Now many of them are dead. Most of the fabric stores in the conservative regions that our reps call on have lost twenty percent of their customers. The ladies the shop knew by name because they could be counted on for annual trade-in upgrades of $9000 sewing machines? Dead. Viking is laying off half of its staff. It's taken two years for the impact to become obvious, but the home sewing industry in the US is in shambles. A lot of experience, knowledge and artistry was lost and when the independent shops have to close, we'll lose even more.

Aaaaand now JoAnn Fabrics is closing 500 out of 800 stores. Full list here: https://www.fastcompany.com/91277436/joann-fabrics-closing-stores-list-locations-states-bankruptcy-update

Sorry to anyone who had a JoAnn's not on the above list. All stores will now be closed and liquidated.

The CEO of Birch Fabrics just sent out a letter saying that they are running a sale to see if they can generate enough cash to last another month. They are literally a five person business at this point, and production costs have gotten so high that they might not be able to continue. I hope they can hang on, because their organic cotton canvas is so good. I love their Charley Harper collection. :(

I love when you post a species on inat and seconds later someone called "salamandergirl" "solidagoman" or "troutlilly_identifier" swoops in to ID it. Like yeah, you know what youre about. I trust your ID of my Bombus bimaculatus, "bombusboy200"

I posted western tiger lily and it was correctly sent up to research grade within 10 seconds of upload by "Lilyboy"

flow winning animated feature is the kind of story that's going to be taught like the boogeyman to every big animation studio's intake class for decades

i keep thinking of this team and getting really emotional. maybe it's because of the being made in blender and kinda looking like a cutscene thing but they really remind me of when tiny indie game studios win massive and Just Can't Believe It. they came to the oscars with cufflinks of their little cat on it. they had the cat embroidered into the lining of their jackets. they posted photos of them all celebrating with their oscars at in-n-out afterwards. imagine being in an indie studio in a country that's literally never been recognized by nomination at the oscars, picking up TWO nominations for an ANIMATED film, getting flown out, decking yourselves out in easter eggs of your little guy, going "hey we may not win but holy shit latvia's at the goddamn oscars let's gooooo" and then running away with the biggest mainstream animation award there is. i'd lose my fucking mind. peace and love and joy and jubilation on planet earth

i miss everyone