👁

a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.

i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.

the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)

and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.

an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:

The JSTOR community is full of people finding new ways to support learning and engage with scholarship.

We're looking for educators, librarians, and researchers who would like to share their expertise with the JSTOR community. Topics we're especially interested in include:

Teaching ideas, lesson plans, and classroom activities that use JSTOR content and tools

Stories about discovering, using, or teaching scholarship through JSTOR

Reflections on open access and expanding access to learning resources

Perspectives on the value of the humanities, arts, and social sciences in education and research

Insights into archives, primary sources, Artstor on JSTOR, Reveal Digital, and shared institutional collections

Examples of preservation and community access to cultural and scholarly collections

Collaborations that support teaching, learning, and research

We welcome proposals from contributors around the world on a rolling basis. Compensation is currently available to U.S. residents.

If you have an idea, we'd love to hear from you!

Here it is, the poster for World Eel Day 2026! It's time again to celebrate eels of all sorts in any way you can!

Oh? "How do I part-eel-cipate?" you ask? Well, from the eel man himself:

"There are lots of ways to get involved with World Eel Day. Your eel inspired activities, photos, resources, art, outcomes, thoughts or messages can be shared online on all social media platforms with the hashtags #WorldEelDay2026 #WorldEelDay

For example, you could organise an eel event , draw or make an eel or write a story or a poem. Remember to tag or collaborate with @eelsuitcase on instagram"

someone brought up owls, but…

now THERE’S and interesting contender

bowheads are at least on-par

We know vaccines painful, and by comparing horses at rest with horses getting vaccinated, we've been able to determine how they express pain visually. By looking at horses with disorders like colic, broken bones, wounds, and so on, we can determine their facial expressions during more severe pain.

At zookeeper school we were drilled through the pain faces of the most common lab animals and livestock. Nowadays I believe this has become a routine lesson in all animal related fields, but the general public still doesn't know that this is a thing that exists.

Here are all the pain face/grimace scales I've been able to find. Please study them if you interact with any of these animals on a regular basis:

Not seeing constant acts of resistance doesn’t mean it isn’t happening all around you all the time. Some very effective methods require silence and secrecy.

You do not understand

Most modern Ag operations don’t even have a proper A-Horizon. They’re too busy turning the earth every time they replant. The A-horizon is the Black Gold that makes Soil Soil. It’s a structurally complex soil horizon that must be built in place by the interactions of Plants and Fungi and Insects. It is The Thing that soaks up rain and holds onto it for plants. The A-Horizon is The Thing that builds up when you let a field sit fallow. The act of tilling creates fecundity by breaking up the A-horizon. On a really good Organic no-till farm you might find an A-horizon between 3-6 inches.

His A-horizon was 4 feet deep. 50 inches.

I-

I have no context. His farm was covered in a living skin thick enough for a child to stand in.

Gives me hope for what we could accomplish if we got our collective heads on straight, you know? Like. This was one guy. A brilliant man, who knew what he was up to, but. The thing about brilliant ideas is they can be shared.

Humus, or Humic Compounds, are a cryptic and poorly understood set of organic substances. As the final metabolic result of once-living things being digested first by macroscopic organisms, and then by microorganisms, they resist most forms of analysis, and have cryptic structures. A few that we have managed to isolate and study are the Humic & Fulvic Acids.

Humus has a number of remarkable tendencies. It is capable of retaining water far better than any raw mineral clay; it also retains electrically charged clay granules, which themselves retain mineral ions, all of which is essential to make a soil a high-quality resource for Plants to grow in.

A composter is a box that contains an environment that is conducive to the production of Humus, but the best way to produce it is in-place, by laying layers of organic material down over an unbroken earth and growing things out of that. The interaction of the plants rooting, the fungus weaving itself through everything, the bacteria and archaea metabolizing as they do, and inorganic weathering forces all combine to gradually build up the microscopic equivalent of a complex megastructure capable of retaining far more water, and containing far more nutrients, than any inorganic substrate.

This stuff is black gold. This is the stuff that determines whether or not a plot of land is going to be “productive.” The knowledge of how to make it, how to care for it, is an essential piece of wisdom that our civilization needs to remember.

Fortunately, folks seem to have the right response:

Farmers are more important to the continuity of civilization than administrators, no matter what the elitists say. This knowledge is important.

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

The White Plains is the name given to the central lowland region of Skyrim, primarily located within Whiterun Hold. These fertile, treeless plains are also known as the breadbasket of Skyrim, given the abundance of rich soil and relatively flat land found here. The crops of the region’s numerous and bounteous farms feed much of the province, and their excess is exported and traded throughout the Empire. Due to its central location, traders and travelers crossing Skyrim (as well as armies on the march) nearly always pass through the hold when crossing the country, preferring the gentle slopes of Whiterun to the more treacherous passes found in the northern holds or the bandit-laiden routes further south. To echo a common saying in the region, all roads lead to Whiterun.

A variety of crops are grown throughout the White Plains. Rye is the staple grain of Skyrim, planted in the autumn and harvested the following summer. The use of rye flour gives bread from Skyrim their its flavor and dark color. Barley, grown in large quantities, is used almost entirely for the production of beer and liquor. Buckwheat is frequently used as a cover crop to prevent weed growth during the off-season. Unique varieties of buckwheat, which are currently only cultivated in Skyrim, bloom red or pink in the spring, adding to the palette of colorful wildflowers found on the plains.

Flax is grown in the northern and western regions of Whiterun Hold. Rorikstead and its surrounding villages, particularly those along the River Hjaal, owe much of their prosperity to the cultivation of flax and the production of linen fiber. Interestingly, while tundra cotton and the thread made from it are a valuable resource for people on the White Plains, no attempt has been made to domesticate this native plant. Instead, workers (particularly children) forage the delicate white blossoms as they bloom throughout the spring and summer. 

Vegetable crops make up a significant portion of Whiterun Hold’s exports. The loamy soil supports a range of plants, including potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, leeks, onions, garlic, and a wide variety of herbs, elves ear and frost mirriam being among the most popular. Livestock are also raised here - primarily cattle, as the open plains are one of the only places in Skyrim that can support herds of cattle in large numbers. Large numbers of deer are found on the plains, though hunters will also encounter wolves and the occasional sabre cat.

The White Plains is known for its horses (as suggested by their presence on the banners of Whiterun). Unlike the sleek and elegant mounts bred further south in Hammerfell, Whiterun’s horses are bred for boldness and endurance rather than speed, making them among the best war mounts in the Empire. They are also among the largest, standing between 16 and 18 hands high (only one other herd is known to this author that regularly surpasses the stature of Skyrim’s warhorses - the Orcs of Dushnikh Yal breed carthorses for moving ore that regularly exceed 19 hands. Sadly, they only trade the beasts to those they consider blood kin).