The Mess Hall

Hell yeah.

How can I refuse! Absolutely!!! It sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's actually very sad.

So, let's start off with some numbers. Every year, the moss black market is estimated to garner up to $165 million for trafficking approximately 82 million pounds of moss.

I cannot even wrap my mind around how much moss that is.

You might ask, why does moss poaching exist and why is it so lucrative? Well, the quality that has made mosses the prey of an illegal trade is simply their aesthetic appeal. Soft, velvety, and moist, mosses are extremely pleasant to the touch and calming to look at. Some people are willing to pay large amounts of money to collect them and put them in private gardens. However, most of the mosses that move in this underground black market are actually sold to companies/wholesalers for use in potting/gardening soil, plant nurseries, decor, and as craft materials. The majority of the preserved mosses in your run-of-the-mill chain craft store, planters, floral wreaths, or very-much-dead living wall decorations are gathered illegally, bleached to death, and then dyed green. This goes for a lot of prepackaged peat moss and soil mix blends as well.

Even though it is illegal to gather moss in public places (in the US, at least), people still harvest it. Why? Probably because there's a fair amount of money to be made and the consequences are very rarely enforced, and when they are, they are quite light--usually a $50 fine at worst if you're caught. Most of this black market moss is actually poached from the national park system, with Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest usually being the hardest hit regions.

Mosses play vital roles in many ecosystems, provide homes for threatened species, regulate water distribution in forests, and help with erosion, so their loss is a terrible blow. Additionally, moving such large quantities of mosses from one location to another may spread unwanted, invasive hitchhikers, like insects that lay their eggs in the plants, or even seeds and spores.

I'll end on this thought:

It can take 20 years for a small patch of moss removed from a fallen tree to grow back with the right moisture conditions.

アカウント作り直したので過去絵中心にボチボチ更新していきます。

I have re-created my account.

My creator name is Nishiki Suzumori.

I will update mainly illustrations I have drawn in the past.

I mentioned yesterday that I was compiling a Keep list for me and N so that we'll have a shared inventory of quick and easy dinner options for weeknights.

So many times last year, I would get to the end of a teaching day and have zero brain power left for sifting through my mental rolodex of recipes to figure out what to make for dinner. This will make it easy: if I can't think of a dinner idea, we can both scan this list and pick something out that we already know is easy and we like eating.

Anyway, here's our list:

If something's behind a paywall—as most of the NYT stuff is—just message me & I'll send you the unlocked recipe. :)

Victoria Granof's Pasta con Ceci

things on toasts (sardines, olives, roasted peppers, mushrooms tomatoes, leftovers, etc.)

Zuni's Pasta with Preserved Tuna

Fried Egg Salad with toast

Mozzarella Schnitzel and a salad

Buttery Balsamic Chicken

Marcella Hazan's Braised Celery with Onion, Pancetta, and Tomatoes, especially over some simple grits or polenta

Marcella's Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onion, tossed with pasta

Instant Pot Coconut Shrimp Soup (Tom Kha)

Crispy Eggs Fried in Breadcrumbs

Melty Cheddar with Tomatoes on toast

Instant Pot "Baked" Potatoes topped with whatever (canned/leftover chili, broccoli & cheese sauce, loaded with sour cream & cheese & bacon & scallions, etc.)

Baked Tofu with Coconut Kale and coconut rice

One-Pot Vegan Coconut Water ABC Soup

Extra-Crispy Bar-Style Tortilla Pizza

Kale Sauce Pasta

Vegetable Pajeon (Korean Scallion Pancakes With Vegetables)

Tuna Salad Composée

Instant Pot Japchae

Twice-Cooked Pork Tenderloin

Pasta Puttanesca

Pasta with Tuna and Olives

Creamy Turmeric Pasta

Yakisoba with Pork and Cabbage

Roasted Salmon with Brown Sugar and Mustard Glaze

Tortizzas

Crispy Gnocchi With Burst Tomatoes and Mozzarella

DIY Hand Rolls or Sushi Bowls

Cheesy Rice Porridge with Greens

Vietnamese Canh (Soup with Shrimp and Mustard Greens)

20-Minute Bean and Rice Burritos

Air-Fryer Grilled Cheese (with kimchi, ham, mushrooms, leftovers, etc.)

Instant Pot Spaghetti

Nigella Lawson's Linguine Pasta with Lemon, Garlic & Thyme Mushrooms

Noodle Salad With Chicken and Chile-Scallion Oil

Lohikeitto (Finnish Salmon Soup)

Blistered Cheesy Peppers

Pressure Cooker Chipotle Chicken Pozole

Lemon Spaghetti with Roasted Artichokes

middle school cafeteria tacos from a kit

Instant Ramen Fried Rice

Poached Cod with Tomato and Saffron over rice or couscous or toasted bread

20-Minute Couscous with Tuna & Other Stuff

Chicken and Rice Soup with Celery Leaf Gremolata

Circus Lane, Edinburgh, Scotland

HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO COOL. Making creature rigs to help with acting and motion capture whaaaat

Matchstick grasshopper, Warramaba grandis, Morabidae

Found in Australia

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

haven't posted new textile related stuff in a while but i've been learning how to design my own punch cards for use with a domestic knitting machine. this design is adapted from/inspired by a traditional icelandic weaving pattern to be more suitable for knit structure and representative of xanthoria spp. lichen found across iceland.