Solarpunk & Stardew

-instills a deep sense of fomo

-seasonally-cycled releases

-becomes increasingly financially prohibitive the more you want to expand your list and/or document your encounters

One of my service learning classes involved work at a local homeless community center, helping people write resumes and cleaning bathrooms.

Our instructor told us to expect to see the bathrooms trashed a lot–like you will clean the bathroom and immediately someone will wreck it.

And it’s not because they disrespect your work or don’t value having access to clean bathrooms or whatever, but because of control.

When you feel like you have no control over your life or your environment, your brain is going to want to assert control however it can.

Which results in trashed bathrooms.  It’s control exercised over the one small part of your environment that you still have the power to affect.

I see kids on tumblr using the language of social justice as cudgels on people who actually do care about and listen to them

or holding the creators within their communities to an impossibly high standard that they never apply to mainstream media properties.

I just see trashed bathrooms. ‘These are the people my voice will reach,’ they rationalize, ‘so these are the people I’ll hurt.’

Except! Inexplicably, someone brought it to JAPAN! Where they grow it still! So what the fuck! The wikipedia page lists all the reasons it's too hard to farm, then immediately says "oh but they farm it in Japan and it's called America-hodoimo." Why! How does this make sense!

So then a Louisiana professor started trying to breed it and improve the tubers, but he retired and abandoned the project.

Why am I crazy for this plant? Oh yeah, it fixes its own nitrogen and it's allegedly shade tolerant, so I wonder if it could grow under solar panels.

I am boggled by the natural heritage of eastern North america that is totally unknown and ignored.

I've heard of this and seen it, but I've never had any success propagating it. I brought some tubers to my meadow and buried them last fall but I don't see anything sprouting. They might just be hidden from my sight though.

I don't know if I've heard of it being cultivated in Japan!

Yes, it was domesticated, and there were lots of efforts to re-domesticate it a while back. I didn't know what had happened to the project though, it's sad that it was abandoned.

My foraging mentor said that some people can randomly develop a severe sensitivity to it and get really sick when they eat it...but I reckon that's the case with a lot of foods.

Even though the original LSU project is no more, there are several small farmers who are still working on improving it. I have tried to grow some of these plants but thus far have failed due to animals digging up the tubers and I believe because one spot I tried was too dry

SOMETIMES

Going to the library can activate A Little Treat pleasure centers

Coming home with music and books and some movies, and paying zero dollars for it all

Except! Inexplicably, someone brought it to JAPAN! Where they grow it still! So what the fuck! The wikipedia page lists all the reasons it's too hard to farm, then immediately says "oh but they farm it in Japan and it's called America-hodoimo." Why! How does this make sense!

So then a Louisiana professor started trying to breed it and improve the tubers, but he retired and abandoned the project.

Why am I crazy for this plant? Oh yeah, it fixes its own nitrogen and it's allegedly shade tolerant, so I wonder if it could grow under solar panels.

I am boggled by the natural heritage of eastern North america that is totally unknown and ignored.

I've heard of this and seen it, but I've never had any success propagating it. I brought some tubers to my meadow and buried them last fall but I don't see anything sprouting. They might just be hidden from my sight though.

I don't know if I've heard of it being cultivated in Japan!

Yes, it was domesticated, and there were lots of efforts to re-domesticate it a while back. I didn't know what had happened to the project though, it's sad that it was abandoned.

My foraging mentor said that some people can randomly develop a severe sensitivity to it and get really sick when they eat it...but I reckon that's the case with a lot of foods.

Even though the original LSU project is no more, there are several small farmers who are still working on improving it. I have tried to grow some of these plants but thus far have failed due to animals digging up the tubers and I believe because one spot I tried was too dry

Royal Society reveals best nature pictures of the year

Trigger warning for graphic descriptions of injured and dead wildlife.

When a fireworks display occurs near a wild bird roost, the birds simultaneously explode into the night skies in utter panic, which can lead to huge numbers of deaths, usually because these birds either smash their skulls or break their necks as the result of flying into trees, fences, billboards, houses and other solid objects that they cannot see in the gloom and ensuing chaos.

Many of the startled birds who take flight fly at much higher altitudes and for much longer durations than they’re used to to escape the noise, which is energetically costly and physiologically stressful.

Small birds and bats can be knocked from the air and killed by the sonic shock. In 2010, 40 dead sparrows were discovered dead under a roost in a nature reserve after a local fireworks display. The manager of the reserve witnessed a tawny owl fluttering and convulsing on the ground after a particularly loud explosion. It died shortly after.

In Arkansas in 2010, some 5,000 red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, common grackles and brown-headed cowbirds suffered blunt-force trauma after colliding with cars, trees and buildings, an ornithologist from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission would tell National Geographic.

In 2008, federal officials showed that seabirds in the northern California town of Gualala abandoned their nests after a fireworks show, leaving their eggs vulnerable to predators.

Each year in Austin, Texas, the Congress Bridge bats can be seen fleeing the fireworks display en masse on weather radar, and emergences from their roost diminish noticeably in the days following the Fourth.

In 2018, the Galapagos banned the sale and use of pyrotechnics. According to the BBC, conservationists said that fireworks caused elevated heart rates, trembling and anxiety in many animals. 

The threat to wildlife doesn’t stop at startling lights and sounds; fireworks also have the potential of starting wildfires, directly affecting wildlife and destroying essential habitat. Litter from firecrackers, bottle rockets and other explosives can be choking hazards for wildlife and may be toxic if ingested.

So what do you do if you want to watch fireworks responsibly? Experts say municipalities are more likely to be aware of these dangers than private consumers. Their best advice is to stick to the shows put on by professionals and local governments, which tend to follow guidelines put forth by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among others, about animal safety.

The National Audubon Society offers similar guidelines: “Commercial fireworks are concentrated in one location, rather than in several locations at once, which is what often happens in neighborhoods. This allows birds to take off and land again in a ‘safer’ location rather than continuing to flee noises coming at them from all directions.”

You see this?

That's not a river. That's the South Canal in Mesa, Arizona (Phoenix metro area).

This is a view of the East and South canals. At least half of all the Phoenix metro canals were originally built by the Hohokam (from roughly 200-1400 CE), and are still in use (restored) today.

Phoenix, Arizona actually has more miles (kilometers) of Canals total than both Venice and Amsterdam. No, really. Phoenix has about 180 miles of canals, many of which are built on ancient canal foundations.

below is an aerial view photo taken in the late 1930's of one branch of Phoenix's canal systems:

Also have the "Montezuma Castle," if you need a castle:

it was settled for the first time around the 11th century by the acoma pueblo people and has since survived a thousand years of natural disasters, invasions, wars, famines, you name it because it is strategically nearly impenetrable:

You have not spoken to a Brazilian punk in over 23 years.

Your only exposure to an anti-corporate movement focused around sustainable energy generation and ecological living... has been from a dairy corporation...?

So what you're trying to tell me is that you view corporations as more valid than communities from 'the global south'?

That a singular ad is enough to delegitimize and erase any and all work done by people with brown skin?

it’s okay that i don’t have a sewing machine

i love backstitching by hand for hours

this has got to be great for my back

millions of my ancestors did this and they lived almost as long as i want to