Growing Wild

if you use your voice to defend people from harm by their own peers, thank you.

if you use your voice to remind people they are worthy and loved, thank you.

if you use your voice to share a hopeful story when people need it most, thank you.

if you use your voice to admire others' strengths, and accept their weaknesses, thank you.

if you use your voice to add kindness and goodness to this world, thank you; thank you for being you in a world that is too often confusing, stressful, or cruel.

the world will always need people like you. anyone who tells you something different is only projecting their weaknesses onto you. if someone devalues your heart, that is not your fault.

Let me make one thing clear. I didn't choose to be a target.

I didn't choose to be 14 and have FAG written in sharpie across my entire new jacket. I didn't choose to be mocked (and sometimes attacked) every single day for having too much hair in too many places, for being more at home wading in mud pulling cattails than wearing a dress that felt like barbed wire, for being too much of a gross dyke. I didn't choose the constant threats of rape or "a good time that will show me how wrong I am" from men in their 40s while I was a 16 year old cashier, or out at a park. I didn't choose for the mother of my first girlfriend to tell me I was going to hell, that I was a monster, that she would charge me with statutory rape on my 18th birthday if I ever had sex with my partner a year younger than me. I didn't choose to lose friends because their parents were worried I might Turn Them Gay, or because it was just "too stressful" to go against the flow with their new army wife friends. I didn't choose the friends of my partners who've tried to convince them that I could never love them, because I'm bisexual and greedy, or really Too gay, or really not gay ENOUGH. I certainly didn't fucking choose to have my rights to marriage, healthcare, and the ability to ever go home and feel even a little bit safe again taken day. After day. After day.

Most of those things happened to me before I ever cut my hair short, or dyed it loud, or came out as trans, or for a lot of them before even I knew I was gay. They always knew. They always know their targets no matter how well you try to hide.

What I DID choose for myself, was how I was going to respond to all of that. Was if I was going to run back into a closet full of venomous snakes and false promises of safety, or look at the risks versus the reality of living in a cage and walk out regardless. I chose to make a home for myself in my own body, one that I could feel comfortable and happy in, even knowing it would make the target on my back more visible. I didn't choose to have it placed there, but I sure as hell chose to be queer and out and an example to other kids buried in their ink-covered jackets that they can survive and become who THEY want to be. I chose to embrace all the things about myself that conservatives want us to cut off to be acceptable - the disability that was otherwise KILLING me to try and push through, the gender fuckery, the inclination for non-monogamy, all the rough edges that the middle class WASPS of the Proper LGBT Movement have been begging us to sand down because please pretty please they want to be RESPECTABLE goddamnit! They don't want to be FREAKS they just want the right to a happy marriage, and if we are the cost, well - what's the lives of those who were bleeding out worth anyways, better to leave them to the wolves and hope they'll be sated enough never to arrive at OUR door.

For some people being gay was never a choice. For me, I have to choose every single day. To keep being queer and myself and stubborn and BRAVE enough not to retreat and hide, just because the worst of the worst around me will it. I choose to make and fight for the world that I want, one where everyone has a place and no one has to force themselves into a certain broken shape just to fit, and I can only do that by living queer and loud and finding and working WITH my community, not against it at every beat. By accepting that every one of us has a place at the table, and making sure that table is big enough to handle the weight. Not by cutting away anything unseemly or difficult, and certainly not by blaming the very people under attack for the ire of those who aim to erase them from being.

A new large scale battery project in California is now the first in the country that can discharge stored, clean energy for up to eight hours at a time. The longer discharge time is a crucial next step in meeting 24 hour energy needs with clean power.

Desalination is the process of generating freshwater from brackish or saltwater, usually through the process of reverse osmosis. While this can be a very useful tool in water shortages, it also has some pretty huge drawbacks--reverse osmosis requires a lot of energy, requires chemical treatment of the water, and produces concentrated brine as a waste product which can be harmful to aquatic ecosystems.

Protests and lawsuits from Native American tribes and other local groups stopped a graphite mining operation in South Dakota that was going forward without appropriate environment review.

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1. Despite stiff political headwinds, tribe in Colorado brings utility scale solar project online

“Over the next year and half, solar panels capable of generating 270 megawatts worth of electricity, and 180 megawatts of battery storage will be built on tribal land in neighboring New Mexico[….] They started small with residential rooftop solar. Then came a one-megawatt array that helped power the tribal casino out on the highway. […] The demolition of a nearby coal fired power plant left behind a network of transmission lines and electricity customers [so is now the site of the new project].”

2. ‘Get the Flock Out’: Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech

“There is growing action [link added by me]—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country. According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone. Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.”

3. On the brink of extinction, the Javan green magpie gets a conservation lifeline

“With the new action plan, developed and agreed upon by 48 songbird experts, conservation groups are aiming to protect the bird’s montane habitat, engage with local communities to address trapping, and crack down on illegal trade over the next 10 years. Conservation translocations are planned to bolster the few remaining wild populations. For around a decade, [… facilities] have bred more than 130 birds in captivity as an “insurance policy,” Owen says.”

4. The Spectacular Regrowth of New England’s Forests

“”To give you an example, Massachusetts […] is 60 percent forested today. Now, it was probably 90 percent-plus forested when the Europeans arrived, but it went through a period in which 80 percent to 90 percent of the forest was removed[…. T]he Northeast temperature rise with global warming is significantly less because we are so heavily forested […] and it all happened because of what I call benign neglect [after farmers moved to Ohio in the 1850’s].””

5. The women leading a quiet conservation revolution in a Nigerian gorilla sanctuary

“Now, the collective meets twice a month to brainstorm strategies to combat threats to Afi’s biodiversity and review existing wildlife regulations. [They conduct] patrols, targeted at uncovering early signs of hunting, logging or wildfires[… and] the women’s group investigates allegations of wildlife crimes. […] In their homes, the women are also influencing what their families eat to eliminate threatened species from the local diet.”

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

Autistic mom of two autistic kiddos here. I do something with my kids called playing the good friend game. I have them ask me a question like “what did you do this weekend” and then I respond with something they don’t like ie: “I ate some sushi for dinner on Saturday! It was delicious!” Their job is to not make a gross face and not to yuck my yum. They have to ask me a follow up question! Minimum one about what I liked about the sushi or who I went with or what I ordered etc. and they have to be kind. I change up what I answer with for the initial question and for all follow ups. It’s incredible!

You can learn how to chit chat about things because you care about the people around you. Small talk is banal and boring but the people in your life are real and lovely and nuanced. Get to know them. You can do it. You’ll build relationships that last. Don’t do it for the sake of small talk. Do it because you’re deeply invested in learning how to see the people around you as whole pictures.

It is typically measures about 3um in thickness, depending heavily on the cultivar. It is peppered by stomata over the lenticels in the skin underneath which serve as gas exchange pathways but also can provide entry points for microorganisms and moisture loss. The crystalline waxes protrude outwards from the cutin layer.

Some apples and pears are russeted. This can be natural from the cultivar or induced by orchard conditions and is due to damage to the epidermal cells early after petal fall. As the apple grows micro cracks develop over the affected cells in the cuticle. The apple responds by growing a brownish, corky layer of wound-healing tissue (called a periderm or phellogen) to seal the cracks, resulting in a rough, canvas-like tan patch on the skin.

Microscopic analysis of the apple cuticle reveals complex microbial communities (microbiota) of yeasts bacteria and moulds. The cuticle (and its ecosystem changes) as the seasons and weather change and the apple matures and ripens. The organised wax crystals disappear and are replaced by liquid esters which leads to skin greasiness. #cuticle #apples #pears

As you can see, I'm still fighting grass, but my corn is looking quite happy! And I'm very behind on the other two sisters, having planted only 2/3 of the plot with beans, and no squash yet, but the beans that are planted are all up and happy.

They're Mbombo Green, which I bought because I can't resist the color.

Let me check in the back...

Spiny Weevil (Heilus freyreissi), family Curculionidae, Choco region of Ecuador

photograph by Javier Aznar González de Rueda

Filbert Weevil (Curculio occidentis), family Curculionidae, CA, USA

photograph by Ryan Kaldari

Nut Weevil (Curculio nucum), family Curculionidae, Lithuania

photograph by Lukas Jonaitis

Weevil (Cholus cinctus), family Curculionidae, Anton Valley, Panama

photograph by Charles J. Sharp

Banded Pine Weevil (Pissodes pini), family Curculionidae, found across western Europe