“I very proudly entered the forestry school as an 18-year-old and telling them that the reason that I wanted to study botany was because I wanted to know why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. And the two plants so often intermingle rather than living apart from one another, and I wanted to know why that was. I thought that surely in the order and the harmony of the universe, there would be an explanation for why they looked so beautiful together. And I was told that that was not science, that if I was interested in beauty, I should go to art school. Which was really demoralizing as a freshman, but I came to understand that question wasn’t going to be answered by science, that science, as a way of knowing, explicitly sets aside our emotions, our aesthetic reactions to things. We have to analyze them as if they were just pure material, and not matter and spirit together. And, yes, as it turns out, there’s a very good biophysical explanation for why those plants grow together, so it’s a matter of aesthetics and it’s a matter of ecology. Those complimentary colors of purple and gold together, being opposites on the color wheel, they’re so vivid, they actually attract far more pollinators than if those two grew apart from one another. So each of those plants benefits by combining its beauty with the beauty of the other. And that’s a question that science can address, certainly, as well as artists. And I just think that “Why is the world so beautiful?” is a question that we all ought to be embracing.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Intelligence of Plants”, from the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett
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In 1999, on the 30th anniversary of the first moonwalk, the members of rec.crafts.textiles.needlework shared their memories of the historic event. Transcripts in alt text.
Soccer players are the horses of sports. They run around in fields for hours on end. They stub their toe and they die. They fall and they die. They run into each other and
This would make hockey players the cats of sports. Random zoomies, chasing the little dot, knocking things over, and not admitting sickness or injury until nearly dead.
latest round of #myshapes in honor of the fleet for a friend! dont worry about whether i’ve finished any of the last three quilts i’ve posted that’s not important
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@hamletthedane’s tags:
#Vincent Van Gogh is crying somewhere in the after and I’m crying just thinking about that#you knew!! you saw the patterns!! there is a whole planet painted in the oils from your brush!!#TIL that the craft Juno went as close as 4000km from Jupiter’s weather surface#for context: the craft was closer to Jupiter than NYC is to LA#which is space terms is like. basically being on the planet#holy shit
urban greenery and urban forests are important af.
they prevent flooding, as pictured in the image above, by allowing stormwater to soak into the ground instead of pooling and flooding.
they significantly lower temperatures and reduce the heat island effect, something we will need more and more as the climate gets hotter, by providing shade and releasing water vapour (tree sweat.) this also helps reduces the energy use from air conditioning, saves lives, and improves quality of life.
a lot of wealthier neighbourhoods have more greenery than underserved poorer neighbourhoods and those in poorer neighbourhoods are less likely to have air conditioning which causes more deaths, and reduces human health in general. it is also an inequality issue.
vegetation absorbs pollutants and improves air quality. forests are carbon sinks that pull planet heating chemicals out of the atmosphere and store them in the soil. forests are vital in the fight against climate change.
native tree species provide shelter and food for wildlife and planting native gardens and allowing native wild greenspaces is vital for pollinators which are vital for everything else alive.
spending time outdoors boosts mental health. urban farms produce nutritious food. outdoor greenspaces give people places to be active and shade produced by trees make it easier (and more fun) to walk places. its better for human health in nearly every way.
more greenery has even been shown to reduce crime.
and for all the spreadsheet-money-brained people out there: its good for the economy too. according to a recent study, for every dollar put into parks and recreation and greenspaces, cities reap $3 in local economic benefits as they attract locals and tourists into surrounding neighbourhoods to shop or eat.
basically, there is no good fucking reason not to plant more trees, grow more gardens, and allow more natural green spaces.
What if water didn't have surface tension and whenever you spilled some, the whole floor of your entire apartment was covered in a 2 micrometer deep puddle
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It's been years since I started seeing nutrient flows constantly in my daily life, and the more I study agriculture, the more I see them.
See, every time you harvest something, you take the nutrients in that item away from the soil, and they go somewhere else. When I put a banana peel in my compost bin, I think (a little gleefully) about how I've just added an exotic, different profile of nutrients to my own property--but I also think about that distant banana plantation that lost tons of nutrients per year to US grocery stores, and I wonder what they replaced those nutrients with.
The farmer across my field grows corn, which gets harvested for feed. Corn is a nitrogen-hungry crop. Every year, that corn sucks up nutrients, which get harvested and shipped away. The farmer, being a conventional farmer, mostly replaces those with a conventional fertilizer. Nitrogen is often applied to fields in the form of ammonia fertilizer, which is made via a process that binds nitrogen in the air with hydrogen from natural gas. This feels like a vast resource, but of course we know it's not inexhaustible and not without cost.
Ideally, said farmer does soil tests and applies a carefully considered amount of ammonia. It is taken up by the growing plants and relatively little is lost. Possibly (often), though, some of the ammonia is leached out via rain and ends up in waterways, where it causes plant overgrowth and algal blooms, which harm the waterways in several ways, and turn those nutrients from a resource into a contaminant.
Meanwhile, the corn is also uptaking a variety of other nutrients from the soil which the commercial fertilizer is NOT replacing. Year by year, those nutrients get shipped off to distant feedlots and depleted in the soil. Eventually, those nutrients are gone from my neighbor's field and, quite possibly, languishing in a manure lagoon somewhere in, say, Indiana, where one can only hope it's properly treated and made into compost. But, you know. Not necessarily.
When I buy compost at the store, it's usually based in either cow manure or "forest products". Hopefully, depending on brand, those forest products MIGHT be collected municipal yard waste. Which is pretty good. Those suburbanites don't want their leaves, I do, win/win.
Except that because those suburbanites raked their yard waste, they now need at some point to fertilize their trees, shrubs, and turf grass. Meanwhile, they've eliminated habitat for the many insects that use leaf litter to either overwinter or reproduce. They may not be counting the costs, but the costs don't stop existing.
The ebb and flow of nutrients is something that, in the current system, goes utterly unregarded by most of the people taking part in the process. Even gardeners bring nutrients onto their soils mostly without thinking about the places those nutrients came from. I think in a sustainable world, that needs to change.
Also probably we need to do a hell of a lot more cover-cropping.
I considered just reblogging the OG post (check it out if you haven't seen it - the Masterpost of House Rabbit Society Bullshit) and adding this to the reblogs, but then it got long enough to be its own post. So! Without further ado...
Thank you to @/threefeline for mentioning this in the tags of the original post! Man, has it really been a whole entire 5 years?!
Well, I got curious and decided to check it out so that you, dear readers, don't have to! (or like. you could go do it yourself anyways. but why give them the clicks?)
Man. On the surface, has a lot changed. In fact, it changed so much that I almost fell into the trap of believing that maybe the organization itself has changed. But let's talk about what I found...
Time for one of my famous rambles! Oh boy! (there will be a TL;DR at the very end lmao)
The organization hasn't changed in any way that really matters. They are still essentially PETA for rabbits specifically, but the website has changed an awful lot (I barely recognized it). And, I have to admit, they made a teeny tiny bit of progress on at least one of their stances.
That tiny bit of progress pertains to diet. On their diet section, they are no longer strictly advocating for a diet of 80% hay, 10% veggies, 5% pellets, and 5% fruit/treats. Thank goodness!!!!! What they have isn't too much better but.... it's progress. Here's the update:
This is the first graphic on the diet page. There's. A lot to unpack here.
First is unlimited hay. That's standard of HRS, we've come to expect that from them. Offering unlimited hay to your rabbits won't kill them (though it might screw up their teeth in the long run, according to some studies), but if you're giving your rabbits a complete feed pellet, you'll probably just end up wasting hay because they won't end up eating a ton of it.
Next is "minimum 2 cups chopped vegetables." UM. THAT'S. DANGEROUSLY VAGUE MY GUYS. At least before they specified it should be leafy greens?????? If I was just the standard civilian looking to adopt a rabbit and I saw this, I might think this includes things like cucumbers, carrots, peppers, etc. Feeding a rabbit 2 cups of vegetables like those per 6 lbs of body weight per day would KILL a rabbit. Holy shit.
After that is 1/4 cup pellets. First of all - 1/4 cup is much more than what they used to advocate for, so I guess that's progress. But uh. Fun fact. The average serving size of a good quality complete feed pellet for a 6 lb rabbit when on a maintenance diet is... get this... just a bit over 1/4 cup (roughly 1/3 cup, but it also depends on breed/activity level/management style/etc.).
Mind you - that's for a good quality complete feed pellet. Meaning technically the rabbit doesn't need to eat literally anything else. But HRS in this graphic is saying that a rabbit should be getting almost a full serving of pellets on top of 2 cups of unspecified vegetables on top of unlimited hay per day??????? Again, what a fantastic way to kill a rabbit. If the GI issues don't kill it, the obesity certainly will.
But hey, at least they are now specifying that treats should be given sparingly rather than making up a whole 5% of a rabbit's diet.
What an absolutely insane graphic to start this page with. It gets better, though.
After this graphic, they go into a bit more detail. Of course, they still believe hay helps to file down a rabbit's teeth better than pellets or chew blocks. Lol.
But then we get to the thing about the vegetables and here's where things get really interesting (and also extremely contradictory).
Quote: "Rabbits should get a minimum of three different types of leafy green vegetables daily to help them obtain the vitamins and nutrients they need." Ok, glad to see we're specifying leafy green vegetables now at least. That's cool I guess.
Quote immediately after that: "Eliminate any vegetables that cause your rabbit to have soft stool or diarrhea. Every rabbit is different, and you’ll need to find what foods work best for your rabbit, based on their health and sensitivity to certain foods." Sooooo what you're saying is that fresh vegetables can be risky to feed, considering diarrhea can be a death sentence for a rabbit. Interesting. But I'm supposed to be feeding 2 whole entire cups of this stuff per day, right????
Quote immediately after that: "Take this list along with you the next time you’re out shopping for vegetables to try feeding your rabbit" (list of safe vegetables for rabbits was after this.) Oh! Try feeding vegetables! So it's not a requirement! Thank goodness.
Next sentence: "Leafy vegetables should make up about 75% of the fresh portion of your rabbit’s diet. Non-leafy vegetables should make up no more than about 15% of your rabbit’s diet, or about 1 tablespoon per 2 pounds of body weight per day." 75% of the fresh portion of my rabbit's diet should be leafy greens... ok... so I'm guessing the fresh portion they're talking about is those 2 whole entire cups they mentioned before... which supposedly aren't super required I guess??? I have no idea. But now they're saying that 15% of my rabbit's diet - not 15% of the fresh portion, but 15% of my rabbit's entire diet - should be non-leafy vegetables. That's a lot. And also another really great way to kill your rabbits via GI problems.
The next sentence after that: "Due to the emergence of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus Type-2 (RHDV2), House Rabbit Society recommends washing all vegetables for at least two minutes, in a bowl, changing the water several times." MY RABBIT CAN GET RVHD2 FROM EATING VEGETABLES?!?!!?!?!?!??!?!?!? WHY TF WOULD I FEED IT VEGETABLES THEN?!!?!?!??!?!?!?!?
Wow. That was a whole lot of contradictions. I'm all worn out. But let's see what they have to say about pellets. This should be good.
HRS' official current stance on pellets is (*drumroll*): "A good quality pellet should be relatively high in fiber (18% minimum fiber). While nursing mothers and young rabbits need to eat a lot of pellets, it should make up less of their diet as they grow older. Alfalfa-based pellets are fine for young rabbits, but timothy-based ones are preferred for adults."
YIPPEE WAHOOOOOO THEY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT PELLETS ARE GOOD ACTUALLY!!!!!!!!! (*the crowd goes wild*) There's that progress I was talking about!!!! I mean, 18% is low for a pellet feed but I guess if you're feeding mostly hay and giving less in terms of pellets that's fine for maintenance. But like. Why not just take the guesswork out and feed a higher fiber complete feed pellet to begin with. Anyways, nitpicking aside, I actually really like that they aren't vilifying pellets anymore, are acknowledging the importance of pellets for young rabbits and nursing does, and aren't saying that alfalfa-based pellets are going to kill your adult rabbits like they used to. Timothy-based pellets can absolutely be preferred for adult maintenance, that's totally fine, but preferred doesn't mean required. That's a huge win imho.
The next section goes on about treats and fresh fruits. They for some reason still say that fruit can be up to 10% of your rabbit's diet (yikes?????? that's actually even more than what they used to say??? at least they're not requiring it now I guess) but they do specify that it shouldn't be much more than a teaspoon per day, and they acknowledge that hay-based treats are healthier.
OK. Diet section aside, not much else has changed. They still say rabbits should have a ton of room and that wire is "dangerous for rabbits' feet" (lol), they still advocate for spaying and neutering, etc. etc. I will say I'm not seeing anything about needing to have rabbits in bonded pairs anymore, so that's a bit of progress too, I guess.
Initially, I was really impressed that it seemed like they weren't continuing to spout anti-breeder and anti-meat rabbit rhetoric anymore........ until I scrolled down on their "about" section. I'll say, they're hiding it better than they used to, because when you look at the about page at face value, it doesn't look like there's much else to see other than their "how we got here" statement. Then we get to their mission/value statements:
Mission statement, save and improve domesticated rabbit lives, eh. If I was an average person I'd be like yeah ok, typical rescue behavior. Then we get to the vision statement: Improving their legal status certainly raises alarm bells for me. As soon as we get legal status involved, that's when we start venturing out of animal welfare and moving more towards animal rights. But again, average citizen would still be like yeah ok. Cool I guess.
But further down, we get their actual list of values... waaaay past their whole board of directors that no one will want to read and will probably click away from the page immediately after seeing rather than reading further.
Again, all of this is hidden AFTER their board of directors list. Which is interesting.
Their policies, their beliefs, and what they are striving for has not changed whatsoever. A quick glance at their website might have you believing that it has, but no. This proves it has not.
Further down, we finally get to their position statements, which you can only find by clicking a hyperlink at the very bottom of this page - there is no easy way to get to it.
Their statement on meat rabbits is... exactly what you would expect: They are against raising rabbits for consumption by anyone for any reason.
Their statement on fur remains that they are 100% against fur, though they have amended their statement on angora wool to specify that, if someone is spinning wool gained from grooming their pet angora, that is perfectly ok to use in their opinion. That seems like it should be a no-brainer, but I saw someone keeping an angora 100% to HRS standards who posted something they made with the rabbit's wool get absolutely torn to shreds in the comments by HRS supporters for using the wool at all, saying that the wool should have been thrown out because the angora owner was "exploiting" their rabbit. So. Having this be specified hopefully at the very least prevents that from happening again. They are still against angora wool from literally any other circumstance, though. Because of course they are.
Then comes their statement on breeding. They specify multiple times on multiple occasions that they believe all rabbits should be spayed and neutered (again, if that happens, no rabbits would be able to breed, and we would no longer have domestic rabbits), but in their statement on breeding they simply say that they believe breeding rabbits should not happen whatsoever until the "overpopulation crisis" has been solved. I shouldn't have to say what a flawed stance on breeding that is. If there aren't rabbits being bred, if all rabbits are spayed and neutered, then there will be no rabbits left to breed once the "overpopulation crisis" is solved the way they want it to be solved (i.e. by all unhoused rabbits being adopted as pets).
They can say all they want that their real goal is to make sure no more rabbits end up in shelters, abandoned outside, or (in their words) as "snake food" (poor snakes), but unless the ultimate end goal is to eliminate all domestic rabbits, the way they are advocating for solving this problem will always hurt more than it helps.
WHOOF. What a journey. Thanks for taking this journey with me, folks. Remember: a reputable breeder who gets their information from experience, from other reputable breeders, and from well-conducted scientific studies will always be one of the best places to learn about rabbits from, NOT a group that can't even create an agenda that won't ultimately harm, kill, or even eliminate domestic rabbits entirely.
TL;DR:
No, House Rabbit Society really hasn't changed. They have updated some of their statements for the better, such as changing their stance on pellets from "pellets are trash" to pellets are actually a good feed option, but their positions on rabbits, rabbit meat, and rabbit breeding remain the same albeit even more hidden than they were before.
steam repeatedly notifying you that a friend is booting up a game thats clearly not cooperating feels like ur sitting inside and someone outside keeps trying to rev up a lawnmower
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Also, yes, this fish has weird eyes that are set real low and look downwards.
It does not have two eyes on the same side; it just has a mark there that looks sorta like one.
Another pic;
They mostly eat plants, but sometimes will get snagged when line fishing. But, they also do THIS;
Midwesterners being who we are, we immediately knew what to do; BOWFISH THEM SHITS
And INVENT THE SPORT KNOWN AS ‘SCARPING’, which is just netting them out of the air/smacking them with baseball bats/spearing them with pitchforks/ect while waterskiing;
See…I’m good with a bow…but not that good.
I AM however much better with a net and having the prey come to me.
…Does anyone want to take me to go Scarping?
The DNR actively encourages all inventive ways of killing them off that people can come up with. There’s no limit on them, so you can fill up the boat.
And they’re DANGED tasty. Nice mild firm white flesh.
These things are a menace and they desperately need to be exterminated! They are a non native species that have devastated the ecosystem of the Mississippi River and are proceeding to invade all connected tributaries. They literally eat everything and reproduce leaving entire rivers lifeless wastelands. If they enter the Great Lakes it will be an ecological nightmare. For the love of all that is good and holy start murdering them with prejudice before it is too late!!!!
