introverted rock

1888 former double shotgun home in New Orleans, LA completely renovated and converted to a single family. 4bds, 3ba, 3,040sqft, $1.6m (Zillow's est.: $1,513,800)

Agami Heron (Agamia agami), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Costa Rica

Scaled Quail (Callipepla squamata), family Odontophoridae, order Galliformes, Southwestern U.S.

OP: How hard we astrophotographers work to capture starry skies (cr yyy，define)(They stay up all night hauling 20kg gear, hiking for four hours straight, or driving 800 kilometers in a single day, pulling two all-nighters in a row, and catching sleep anywhere they can.)

Photos by them

"A Scottish field once home to mono-crop barley has become a pollinator’s paradise after intervention from a local trust saw bumblebee numbers increase 100-fold.

Entitled Rewilding Denmarkfield, and run by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the project has also seen a sharp increase in the number of species passing through the rolling meadows after they were reclaimed by dozens of wildflower species.

The area north of Perth is about 90 acres in size, and surveys of bumblebees before the project began rarely recorded more than 50. But by 2023, just two years of letting “nature take the lead” that number has topped 4,000, with the number of different bee species doubling.

“This superb variety of plants attracts thousands of pollinators. Many of these plants, such as spear thistle and smooth hawk’s beard, are sometimes branded as ‘weeds’. But they are all native species that are benefiting native wildlife in different ways,” Ecologist Ellie Corsie, who has been managing the project since it began in 2021, said.

“Due to intensive arable farming, with decades of plowing, herbicide, and pesticide use, biodiversity was incredibly low when we started. Wildlife had largely been sanitized from the fields. Rewilding the site has had a remarkable benefit.”

Similar increases have been recorded in the populations of butterflies, with a tripling in the number of these insects seen on average during a ramble through the field.

The numbers of both insects are now so high that Rewilding Denmarkfield offers bee and butterfly safaris to visitors.

Local residents told the Scotsman that on spring and summer days, the field is awash with color, and hums with the sounds of bees and birds. Even as multiple housing developments expand around the Denmarkfield area, the field is a haven for wildlife."

Drought reveals hidden formal gardens at Chatsworth House

Known as ‘The Great Parterre’, the elaborate ornamental garden was created around 1699 for the 1st Duke of Devonshire to complement the newly completed South Front of Chatsworth House. Measuring approximately 473 feet by 227 feet, the formal arrangement of flower beds, gravel paths and intricate swirling patterns reflected the grand garden style that dominated late 17th-century Europe. The historic layout was removed around 1730 during a redesign commissioned by the 3rd Duke of Devonshire, when the parterre was covered over and replaced with a new landscape design. This summer’s exceptionally hot and dry conditions have temporarily brought the lost garden back into view. The contrast has appeared because the grass covering the former flower beds and pathways has shallower root systems than the surrounding areas, causing it to dry out and brown more rapidly during periods of intense heat and drought. The resulting crop marks have revealed the intricate geometry of the original garden beneath the lawn.

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:

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters.