~*I Love You*~

I am surprised and depressed to learn it’s 100% true, according to google. A Blockbuster store was required to have a minimum of 7000 titles, but most averaged about 10,000. Netflix has 4000 movies. (And 1800 tv shows if you want to count those, but even included, it’s still less)

Jade Apple jar to lubricate postage stamps.

St. Petersburg, 1899-1904.

if you don't know, there's a very popular 3d printing model out there called "benchy". this is used for benchmarking your 3d printer because it's a difficult print and will help test it out.

this is so widely used that people make their own little versions of it, remixing the 3d model to make benchy look cooler and stuff. however, a new company owns the benchy license. they are sending copyright takedowns to all those who wrongfully uploaded the benchy model.

of course, this is pissing off the 3d printing community greatly. everyone loved benchy and have used it for years. so someone on reddit decided to make a new model that is designed as a 3d printing stress test. one that works a lot like benchy, and people are freely able to edit it as they please. you know what they called it?

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Ovate False Fiddleleaf, Rosy Twisted-Stalk

Cross-Leaf Milkwort, Blue Flowered Coyote Thistle

Gaywings, Michaux's Bluet

Redtwig Doghobble, Brook Saxifrage

Swollen Bladderwort, Two-Leaf Miterwort

Closest match: Mya arenaria isolate MELC-2E11 chromosome 1 Common name: Soft-Shell Clam