ANDY LOVELL Swirls & Eddies, North Devon / North Cornish Coast / Swans, Incoming Tide silkscreen prints
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ANDY LOVELL Swirls & Eddies, North Devon / North Cornish Coast / Swans, Incoming Tide silkscreen prints

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Can't afford art school?
After seeing post like this đ
And this gem đ
As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.
Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.
đşHere is my list:
Proko (Free, mostly teaches anatomy and how to draw people. But does have art talks and teaches the basics.)
Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard and teaches you everything)
Aaron Rutten (free, tips about art, talks about art programs and the best products for digital art)
BoroCG (free, teaches a verity of art mediums from 3D modeling to digital painting. As well as some tips that can be used across styles)
Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)
Jesus Conde (free, teaches digital painting and has classes in Spanish)
Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)
Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price. Mostly teaching character designs and simple backgrounds.)
SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)
Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)
The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney. Mostly nature art)
Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)
Sinix Design (has some tips on drawing people)
Winged canvas (art school for free on a verity of mediums)
Bob Ross (just a good time, learn how to paint, as well as how too relax when doing art. "there are no mistakes only happy accidents", this channel also provides tips from another artist)
Scott Christian Sava (Inspiration and provides tips and advice)
Pikat (art advice and critiques)
Drawbox (a suggested cheap online art school, made of a community of artist)
Skillshare (A cheap learning site that has art classes ranging from traditional to digital. As well as Animation and tutorials on art programs. All under one price, in the USA it's around $34 a month)
Human anatomy for artist (not a video or teacher but the site is full of awesome refs to practice and get better at anatomy)
Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.
đHere is my list:
The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.
"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.
"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.
"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.
"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.
"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.
"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.
"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.
"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.
Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.
đAs for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. If you want to go fancy Michaels is always a good place for traditional supplies. They also get in some good sales and discounts. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are usually more expensive.
For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.
đťAs for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.
Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates. Galaxy, Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, or Chromebook device. )
Procreate ( pay once for $9.99 usd, IPAD & IPHONE ONLY)
Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, animation and more. Free)
PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)
Krita (Free)
mypaint (free)
FireAlpaca (free)
Aseprite ($19.99 usd but has a free trail, for pixel art Windows & macOS)
Drawpile (free and for if you want to draw with others)
IbisPaint (free, phone app ONLY)
Medibang (free, IPAD, Android and PC)
NOTE: Some of these can work on almost any computer like Clip and Sai but others will require a bit stronger computer like Blender. Please check their sites for if your computer is compatible.
So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.
I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.
Hope this was helpful and have a great day.
"also apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I have Dyslexia and it makes my brain go XP when it comes to speech or writing"
Boosting this in case any of the programs and books suggested are useful.
All the photos on this tumblr ad the animal photo reference site I run is another resource available for artists to use!
As long as youâre not using AI to create your art, you can reference / trace / draw / recombine / make any sort of art you want, with any of the photos, for free.
There's also MORPHO, a really good book series on anatomy by Michel Lauricella, with very clear explanations and sketches!
And for pose references, there's @adorkastock who shares a ton of them for free, with different models and props, and her website is amazing <3 you can also buy pose packs from her.
Boosting as these free resources are how i learnt to draw. My GCSE art teacher told me i had no future in art and to stop 'wasting his time' with my imagination, which killed my passion for drawing for close to decade! I have NO art training, only what i have learnt from other artists online.
If i can learn you can too!
The Odyssey but retold as a low-stakes modern adventure of one guy out with his girlfriend leaving the bar with his buddies to do just one (1) simple thing real quick, it'll take like 15 minutes tops, he'll be right back, but then some bullshit happens and the trip keeps getting more complicated as more bullshit keeps happening while he just tries to get back to the bar because he promised his girlfriend that he'd get back and he knows that she's still there because she told him she'd wait there.
And by the time he finally gets back it's almost 3 am and the bar is about to close while she's sitting there stone cold sober, surrounded by 5 drunk guys unsuccessfully trying to convince her to give up on waiting for him and go home with one of them instead. And the guy shows up to proceed to beat the shit out of them before explaining himself to her like hey sorry bullshit kept happening, my phone fell into a storm drain and my wallet got stolen when I was trying to find someone who'd borrow me a phone so I could call and
His girlfriend had been fending off the 5 drunk guys for most of the evening by explaining that even if she was going to ditch her boyfriend, she can't possibly leave without finishing her beer, which she is keeping perpetually full via careful sleight of hand where she's just pouring it back and forth into and out of the pitcher.
However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.
That buys her another hour or so and then, finally, her boyfriend makes it back. He looks like shit, hair down and just a mess, he's wearing an entirely different jacket that he got from an alley, and barely recognizableâespecially to 5 guys who've been drunk for hours now. He lurks for a minute, finds out what's going on, and proceeds to pull off the trick shot first try. Throws the jacket off, fixes his hair with a hair tie his girlfriend lends him, finally looks like himself again, and THEN beats the shit out of them with the pool cue.
yuh i was there, that's how it happened
Iâm kinda surprised that nalbinding isnât as popular as crochet and knitting tbh because it has an even lower barrier of entry tools wise and unlike crochet and knitting it makes fabric that you can cut.
I guess itâs because itâs slower or something.
Nalbinding aka needle binding is when you use yarn and a big sewing needle to make fabric btw
It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.
Some people even make rugs.
I feel like part of it might be casual people are generally aware of the existence of crochet and knitting, even if they donât know very much about either, but have never heard of nalbinding
Yeah I hadnât heard of it until recently and I ordered a big bone needle for myself to try it out and that should be arriving soon.
I was surprised that Iâd never heard of it though. Itâs older than knitting and crocheting and even though itâs been done all over the world itâs super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so Iâm surprised Iâve never heard of it.
It seems like the sort of thing that would be popular even if not as popular as crocheting and knitting, considering the low barrier of entry.
You also donât need a bunch of different sized needles for nalbinding or whatever. The size of the stitch is controlled either completely freehand or by pulling it against one of your fingers. Most people who have a lot of nalbinding needles seem to either have tried out wood, bone, and metal ones to see which kind they liked or they enjoy carving wood or bone and like making their own needles as an extra hobby.
Itâs also a lot easier to freehand and adjust as you go than crochet or knitting and you mostly go by inches instead of rows and number of stitches so a large number of accessories like stitch markers or whatever isnât really necessary.
Maybe the lack of accessories also makes it unpopular idk. People do like collecting things in their nests.
I've been wanting to do so, I cannot find anyone who can teach me, and any books I can find on it are Ass in the Visual Learning department. Otherwise I'd be making the hell outta some nalbinded fabric
I found this channel by a nice man who makes up close tutorials
I create videos on YouTube to learn people how to needlebind using two fingers and your thumb. Needlebinding helps people to relax, relieve
I thought this would be kind of a niche post to make but I was quickly reminded that Iâm on tumblr, the website full of gay people with one billion hobbies.
So my bone needle actually came this evening (yay!) and Iâve started trying this for real. It clicks in my brain way easier than crochet does. Iâve gotta work up the muscle memory but I think I can do this.
The downside as a beginner is that undoing mistakes is more time consuming than with knitting or crochet. Youâve gotta like sew your mistakes out backwards. Disadvantages of making a really sturdy fabric I guess.
I like the feel of this bone needle though and donât think Iâll be trying the wooden or metal ones.
Also I think Iâm gonna have to get good at doing Russian joining if I decide to get good at nalbinding because I donât have wool yarn and the ends wonât felt together if itâs not at least 50% wool. A small price to pay for using big bone needle though.
Anyways curse of new fiber craft be upon ye.
Itâs crazy that countries on the edge of the Sahara desert are reversing desertification by just digging half circles
The ground in these places is too compact for water to soak in during wet season which leads to flooding but digging these holes gives the water a place to stop and soak in. And theyâre pushing back the desert with this. By just digging holes.
The new plants also help even more water soak into the ground which reduces flooding even more.
These places also give people places to grow food and graze animals like people are turning completely dry compact desert into a refuge for wildlife and plants and solving regional food insecurity just by digging holes.
The half-circles are called zaĂŻ! They're a traditional farming practice in the Sahel desert, and their introduction + reintroduction can be largely credited to Yacouba Sawadogo, the man linked above! He reintroduced and innovated on the zaĂŻ on his own farm in the 1980s, and did extensive outreach (along with scientist Mathieu OuĂŠdraogo) to encourage other farmers to adopt them as well.
He also promoted the use of cordons pierreux, which are basically just lines of rocks to reduce erosion, preserve sediments, and increase water absorption.
Immensely cool dude. He's been a personal hero since I learned about him.

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Jeevesâ musings regarding his employer.
A short comic, that came from how often Bertie is used and made a fool of in the books and series; of course this is a big comical pillar of J&W, but I started to think of how much it could weight on Bertie, and, after years of service and the deepening of their bond, on Jeeves. Hopefully the writing is decent enough, and I am sure I am not the first to explore such an idea. I will transcribe the text for easier viewing:
âA great number of words has been written on the subject of my employer, Mr. Wooster, and his various misadventures.
Many a gentleman or lady come knocking at our door, calling for my employer's aid...
Whether that be in the form of a favourâŚ
âŚor, more simply, money.
Mr. Wooster has, for this reason, been described in many accounts (and very often by himself) as foolish, naive, and lacking spine.
On one occasion, I myself must admit to having referred to him as âmentally negligible". This declaration, in truth, revealed much more of my character than that of Mr. Wooster.
For the truth is that Mr. Wooster happens to be kind, instead of brilliantly cutting; good natured, instead of respectably distant; and caring, instead of decorously cold.
No, heâs not a fool at all.
These may not be the traits of the proper gentleman; but they are those of a good man, one I am proud to stand beside.
So I shall strive to follow his example, and be kinder; and be more goodnatured; and (this, in truth, comes easier to me when it comes to him), to show my care, and the regard which I hold for him above all others.â
Vintage Sewing Patterns features vintage sewing patterns from the 1900s to the 1980s that anyone can add to. Vintage dress patterns, vintage bathing suit patterns and more.
This website is enormous. Itâs basically how to make every piece of clothing and a compilation of patterns from magazines from 1900 to 1980.
The Yarra Yarra Lakes Nature Reserve is a system of small salt lakes near the town of Carnamah, Western Australia. Once the site of a great river, this landscape has formed due to changes in land and sea level, a drier climate, and infrequent rains. Lakes here will change color throughout the year, turning blue in the winter as they fill with water and pink in the summer as they evaporate and leave behind salt.
-29.689000°, 115.887000°
Source imagery: Planet
I will always reblog this
still remember how revolutionary this ad felt 10 years ago
excuse me but it still feels revolutionary
Keep reblogging until it feels normal everywhere.
For context: this came out in 2011 in Australia. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized until December 2017.
It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldnât be legalized nation-wide until 2015.
It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldnât hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)
As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. Thatâs only ~19% of countries.
This is still revolutionary.
Jeevesâ musings regarding his employer.
A short comic, that came from how often Bertie is used and made a fool of in the books and series; of course this is a big comical pillar of J&W, but I started to think of how much it could weight on Bertie, and, after years of service and the deepening of their bond, on Jeeves. Hopefully the writing is decent enough, and I am sure I am not the first to explore such an idea. I will transcribe the text for easier viewing:
âA great number of words has been written on the subject of my employer, Mr. Wooster, and his various misadventures.
Many a gentleman or lady come knocking at our door, calling for my employer's aid...
Whether that be in the form of a favourâŚ
âŚor, more simply, money.
Mr. Wooster has, for this reason, been described in many accounts (and very often by himself) as foolish, naive, and lacking spine.
On one occasion, I myself must admit to having referred to him as âmentally negligible". This declaration, in truth, revealed much more of my character than that of Mr. Wooster.
For the truth is that Mr. Wooster happens to be kind, instead of brilliantly cutting; good natured, instead of respectably distant; and caring, instead of decorously cold.
No, heâs not a fool at all.
These may not be the traits of the proper gentleman; but they are those of a good man, one I am proud to stand beside.
So I shall strive to follow his example, and be kinder; and be more goodnatured; and (this, in truth, comes easier to me when it comes to him), to show my care, and the regard which I hold for him above all others.â

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Movement nudge, dest break!
Source
From the OP: "If you sit at a desk or stare at your phone all day, this is for you. Here's how to undo the damage: - Banded Chin Tucks - Strengthen your neck flexors and fight forward head posture - Banded Pull-Aparts - Target your rotator cuff and improve shoulder stability - Banded Abduction - Activate the midline of your scapula for better posture - Lateral Deltoid Raises - Build shoulder stability and control - Banded Up-and-Overs â Boost scapular mobility and range of motion These simple banded drills will help you stand taller, move better, and feel stronger - even after hours at a desk."
Some of these are the same or similar to the exercises my physical therapist taught me.
"Birds in Winter" by the Polish illustrator and artist JĂłzef WilkoĹ (b. 1930).
A brave group of Greek factory workers provide an example for Britain, and all of Europe, in taking back workplace control
At the height of the Greek crash in 2011, staff at Viome clocked in to confront an existential quandary. The owners of their parent company had gone bust and abandoned the site, in the second city of Thessaloniki. From here, the script practically wrote itself: their plant, which manufactured chemicals for the construction industry, would be shut. There would be immediate layoffs, and dozens of families would be plunged into poverty. And seeing as Greece was in the midst of the greatest economic depression ever seen in the EU, the workersâ chances of getting another job were close to nil. So they decided to occupy their own plant. Not only that, they turned it upside down. For a start, no one is boss. There is no hierarchy, and everyone is on the same wage. Factories traditionally work according to a production-line model, where each person does one- or two-minute tasks all day, every day: you fit the screen, I fix the protector, she boxes up the iPhone. Here, everyone gathers at 7am for a mud-black Greek coffee and a chat about what needs to be done. Only then are the dayâs tasks divvied up. And, yes, they each take turns to clean the toilets. When the workers consulted the local community about what they should start to produce, one request was to stop making building chemicals. They now largely manufacture soap and eco-friendly household detergents: cleaner, greener and easier on their neighboursâ noses. Staff use the building as an assembly point for local refugees, and I saw the offices being turned over to medics for a weekly free neighbourhood clinic for workers and locals. The Greek healthcare system has been shredded by spending cuts, its handling of refugees sometimes atrocious; yet in both cases, the workers at Viome are doing their best to offer substitutes. Where the state has collapsed, the market has come up short and the boss class has literally fled, these 26 workers are attempting to fill the gaps. These are people who have been failed by capitalism; now they reject capitalism itself as a failure.
The Viome plant is still going strong, and distributing their products across Europe to this day
Half-read a post the other day (and then got distracted) about what vegetables the poster would plant in a garden tailored to surviving food scarcity--which, to be clear, I think is an important and not at all crazy subject. Food scarcity is a possible outcome of several converging trends in the US and elsewhere--authoritarianism has led to some of the worst famines in recent history, for example, as has a rich and powerful "aristocracy" deciding that profit matters more than feeding people (ask the Irish). And then there's climate disasters, obviously. I'm not trying to be scary. I'm trying to nudge past the kneejerk reaction a lot of leftists understandably have to anything that smacks of "survivalism" and its associated hyper-individualism. The point isn't "oh god we're fucked", the point is that concerns about food scarcity are not unreasonable, and choosing to work on your (and your community's) food independence is a really good goal for those who have the resources.
That post is long gone from my dash, but I do remember it mentioning lettuce and tomatoes and corn, and me thinking that honestly those would NOT be my picks for a survival garden. Like, I want to be clear, I grow those things, and those are good things to grow! But lettuce produces almost no calories and relatively few nutrients. Corn...corn has caveats. First, it has to be planted in large blocks in order to be pollinated, because it's wind pollinated. You can't just plant a row or two. Also, if it's sweet corn, it's very highly perishable, and if it's a dry corn, like a dent corn meant for flour, it requires processing. More on that later. And tomatoes kinda combine the above problems--large, not a ton of calories, and highly perishable, PLUS they take a bit of skill to get good yields (source: me. My tomato plants always suck ass.)
I think everyone's veggie picks are going to vary wildly based on their eating habits and growing conditions. But when I think about survival gardening, I think about calories per area. That is, in a given area, with a realistic yield, how many calories you can expect to get out of a crop. Because in a survival situation, what you need more than anything is calories. Nutrients matter, but I'll be honest, if you're really suddenly eating mostly unprocessed plant foods, along with what weeds you can forage (which is quite a lot where I am), you might be doing better nutritionally than pizza and tacos. And when it comes to calories per acre, potatoes and sweet potatoes (which are not actually related botanically) are basically the undisputed kings in temperate climates.
There are a bunch of other things along those lines that I would choose to grow--beets, turnips, carrots, onions, and things less known now like skirret and salsify are the calorie-dense vegetables that my European ancestors ate before the Columbian Exchange. Everyone once again say thank you to Precolombian agronomists and farmers for potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, squash... Or there's sunchokes, which take a little getting used to in the kitchen, but in most places they absolutely cannot be beaten for plant it and forget about it perennial food.
If you do have more space, the dry corn really is a good idea, but you need some means to grind it or nixtamalize it, and that and getting it off the cob, etc., are going to take time and energy. Another crop that takes a lot of space but has a great yield of calories and easy processing is winter squash, like pumpkins. The big advantage of those is that if you pick the right varieties, these will store for months, in their original form, if you just put them someplace cool but not freezing. You can have a hubbard squash in the garage until March and then cut it up and have food in half an hour. Also, as we all know from all the adorable zoo videos, a whole lot of animals will eat squash, including chickens.
Anyhow. There's a million things you could grow, including more nutrient dense greens like mustard or collards, herbs to make staple foods more palatable, etc. But when I think gardening for food security, I think calories.
Ok- I've read about salsify, but never skirret!? WHAT is?!
this year - I am attempting sweet potato for the first time. send me goodvibes.
Skirret is a delightful multi-rooted perennial member of the carrot family! Harvested fall through winter, and propagated by seed or crown division. I've become a huge fan and proponent.
Good luck with the sweet potatoes!

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"In the 1960s, after his seminal work on barn owls, Roger Payne switched his attention to whales. In 1971, he published two historic papers. (...) The second showed that fin whalesâthe second-largest animals after blue whalesâmake extremely low-pitched calls that can be heard across entire oceans. It nearly destroyed Payneâs career.
That controversial paper was born of the Cold War. To listen for Soviet submarines, the U.S. Navy installed chains of underwater listening posts in the Pacific and Atlantic. This network, known as the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, picked up a deluge of oceanic noises. Some were clearly biological. Others were more mysterious. One especially enigmatic sound was monotonous, repetitive, and low, with a frequency of 20 Hzâan octave below the lowest key on a standard piano. This hum was so loud that people doubted it could be coming from an animal. Did it have a military origin? Was it produced by underwater tectonic activity? Did it come from waves crashing on some distant shoreline? The actual source only became clear when Navy scientists started following the sounds to their sources, and often found a fin whale at the end.
Human hearing typically bottoms out at around 20 Hz. Below those frequencies, sounds are known as infrasound, and theyâre mostly inaudible to us unless theyâre very loud. Infrasounds can travel over incredibly long distances, especially in water. Knowing that fin whales also produce infrasound, Payne calculated, to his shock, that their calls could conceivably travel for 13,000 miles. No ocean is that wide. Together with oceanographer Douglas Webb, Payne published his calculations, speculating that the largest whales âmay be in tenuous acoustic contact throughout a relatively enormous volume of ocean.â The response was brutal. Leading whale researchers told him that his paper was pure fantasy. Colleagues hinted that critics had been questioning his mental health behind his back. âWhen you get to distances like that, people just refuse to believe that itâs true,â Payne tells me.
Payneâs work made a more positive impression on Chris Clark. A young acoustician and former choirboy, Clark was recruited by Roger and Katy Payne to be a sound technician on a 1972 trip to Argentina to study right whales. It was a thrilling and formative time. Camped on a beach beneath the Southern Cross, with penguins bumbling past and albatrosses wheeling overhead, Clark began listening to whales. He placed hydrophones in the water to eavesdrop on their songs and found ways of assigning specific recordings to individual whales. He went on to compile libraries of whale calls, recorded all over the world, from Argentina to the Arctic. And all the while, Payneâs idea of giant whales talking over oceans stuck with him.
In the 1990s, with the Cold War over and the threat of Soviet subs diminished, the Navy offered Clark and others a chance to observe real-time recordings from their SOSUS hydrophones. Amid the spectrogramsâvisual representations of the sounds that SOSUS picked upâClark saw the unmistakable signal of a singing blue whale. On his first day, Clark saw that more blue whale vocalizations had been recorded from a single SOSUS sensor than had been described before in the entire scientific literature. The ocean was awash with their calls, and those calls were coming in from enormous distances. Clark calculated that one individual was 1,500 miles from the sensor that recorded it. He could listen to whales singing in Ireland with a microphone situated off Bermuda. âI just thought: Roger was right,â he says. âIt is physically possible to detect a blue whale singing across an ocean basin.â (...)
Although blue and fin whale songs can traverse oceans, no one knows if the whales actually communicate at such ranges. Itâs possible that theyâre signaling to nearby individuals with very loud calls, which just happen to extend further afield. But Clark points out that they repeat the same notes, over and over again, and at very precise intervals. A singing whale will stop calling when it surfaces for air, and come back on the beat when it submerges. âThatâs not arbitrary,â he says. It reminds him of the redundant and repetitive signals that Martian rovers use to beam data back to Earth. If you wanted to design a signal that could be used to communicate across oceans, youâd come up with something similar to a blue whaleâs song.
Those songs might have other uses, too. Their notes can last for several seconds, with wavelengths as long as a football field. Clark once asked a Navy friend what he could do with such a call. âI could illuminate the ocean,â the friend replied. That is, he could map distant underwater landscapes, from submerged mountains to the seafloor itself, by processing the echoes returning from the far-reaching infrasounds. Geophysicists can certainly use fin whale songs to map the density of the ocean crust. But can the whales do so?
Clark sees evidence in their movements. Through SOSUS, he has seen blue whales emerging in polar waters between Iceland and Greenland and making a beelineâa whaleline?âfor tropical Bermuda, singing all the way. He has seen whales slaloming between underwater mountain ranges, zigging and zagging between landmarks hundreds of miles apart. âWhen you watch these animals move, itâs as if they have an acoustic map of the oceans,â he says. He also suspects that the animals can build up such maps over their long lives, accruing sound-based memories that lurk in their mindâs ear. After all, Clark recalls veteran sonar specialists telling him that different parts of the sea had their own distinctive sounds. âThey said: If you put a pair of headphones on me, I can tell you if Iâm near Labrador or off the Bay of Biscay,â says Clark. âI thought that if a human being could do this in 30 years, what could an animal do with 10 million years?â
The scale of a whaleâs hearing is hard to grapple with. Thereâs the spatial vastness, of course, but also an expanse of time. Underwater, sound waves take just under a minute to cover 50 miles. If a whale hears the song of another whale from a distance of 1,500 miles, itâs really listening back in time by about half an hour, like an astronomer gazing upon the ancient light of a distant star. If a whale is trying to sense a mountain 500 miles away, it has to somehow connect its own call with an echo that arrives 10 minutes later. That might seem preposterous, but consider that a blue whaleâs heart beats around 30 times a minute at the surface, and can slow to just 2 beats a minute on a dive. They surely operate on very different timescales than we do. If a zebra finch hears beauty in the milliseconds within a single note, perhaps a blue whale does the same over seconds and minutes. To imagine their lives, âyou have to stretch your thinking to completely different levels of dimension,â Clark tells me. He compares the experience to looking at the night sky through a toy telescope and then witnessing its full majesty through NASAâs spaceborne Hubble telescope. When he thinks about whales, the world feels bigger, stretching out in space and time.
Whales werenât always big. They evolved from small, hoofed, deer-like animals that took to the water around 50 million years ago. Those ancestral creatures probably had vanilla mammalian hearing. But as they adapted for an aquatic life, one group of themâthe filter-feeding mysticetes, which include blues, fins, and humpbacksâshifted their hearing to low infrasonic frequencies. At the same time, their bodies ballooned into some of the largest Earth has ever seen. These changes are probably connected. The mysticetes achieved their huge size by evolving a unique style of feeding, which allows them to subsist upon tiny crustaceans called krill. Accelerating into a krill swarm, a blue whale expands its mouth to engulf a volume of water as large as its own body, swallowing half a million calories in one gulp. But this strategy comes at a cost. Krill arenât evenly distributed across the oceans, so to sustain their large bodies, blue whales must migrate over long distances. The same giant proportions that force them to undergo these long journeys also equip them with the means to do soâthe ability to make and hear sounds that are lower, louder, and more far-reaching than those of other animals.
Back in 1971, Roger Payne speculated that foraging whales could use these sounds to stay in touch over long distances. If they simply called when fed and stayed silent when hungry, they could collectively comb an ocean basin for food and home in on bountiful areas that lucky individuals have found. A whale pod, Payne suggested, might be a massively dispersed network of acoustically connected individuals, which seem to be swimming alone but are actually together."
- Ed Yong, An Immense World : How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Highly recommend this book, it's one of the few nonfictions I will probably read multiple times
no, listen, when I say I want to integrate more specific solarpunk stuff in my life, i donât mean to ask for yet again new âaestheticâ clothes that now you have to buy or make to show your support of the movement (screw that iâm consuming enough as it is), or more posts about impossible house goals, or whatever, Iâm asking you what my options to build a portable and eco friendly phone charger are, im asking you viable tiny-appartment edible plants growing tricks on a budget, im asking tips to slow down when my mind and society tell me im not fast enough, i donât need more rich art nouveau amateurs aesthetics or pristine but cold venus project, okay, i know i should joins associations where I am tho iâm constantly on the move, thanks for that, just, you know, can we get a bit more practical ??? how do I hack my temporary flat into going off the grid for the time iâm here
Hello! âď¸ Here are a few practical suggestions for stuff you can do:Â
Make a bottle tower garden (a small one could do well on a windowsill)Â
Make eco-friendly household cleaners
Germinate strawberry seeds and care for the plantsÂ
Grow plants from cuttings (you can grow almost anything this way)Â
Make a sun jarÂ
Grow low maintenance houseplantsÂ
Make a string gardenÂ
Make a wall planterÂ
Germinate an avocado seedÂ
Make a shoe pocket gardenÂ
Build a mini solar generatorÂ
Re-grow kitchen scrapsÂ
Find the right solar battery chargerÂ
Recycle old solar cellsÂ
Hope you find something useful in there! I post stuff up from time to time under my diy tag. Feel free to drop me a message if you have any requests!
grow oyster mushrooms on waste coffee grounds (also works with shiitake)
a list of some food plants that can grow indoors with reduced light
windowsill herbs
egg carton seed germination
germinate chayote and keep it as a houseplant (the root, stem, leaves, fruit, and seed are all edible)
choosing a portable solar panel
tips for energy efficient apartment life (but jsyk LED is better than CFL, and a tank bank or expanding water bottle is better than a brick or bottle of gravel)
DIY draft stoppers
DIY solar oven and recipes
evaporative refrigeration
use conkers/horse chestnuts to replace soap and detergents
use baking soda as dry shampoo
cleaning with vinegar doâs & donâts and common myths
DIY dryer balls
apartment-friendly bokashi composting and DIY bokashi bran
DIY moss terrarium for your soul (ainât many souls slower or more patient than moss)
and a list of some easy care indoor plants for your nerves
and for your bathroom and your air quality
recycle t-shirts into yarn for your crafts
About OP wanting an eco friendly portable charger: most portable chargers use LiPo batteries, the ones that look like a capri sun. Theyâre soldered in, so replacing them when the battery goes bad is hard. Iâve been looking for a portable charger that uses 18650s (standard size cylindrical batteries) that just slot in, so you can take them out and put new ones in when they wear out. Some portable chargers use 18650s, mainly the small cylinder ones, but most of them have the batteries welded or soldered in.
If I canât find one by the time I graduate from college, Iâll probably just design one.