Did You Know Cows Have Best Friends

I saw so many beautiful ghostpipes today! They're my favorite flower.

The ghostpipe is a plant without chlorophyll. They are mycoheterotrophic, meaning they get their energy from underground fungal networks that in turn source their energy from nearby tree roots. Ghostpipes are a sign of rich soil and forest biodiversity. They can grow in darkness, but due to their interconnected nature they are seldom successfully propagated by humans.

I think a lot about what it means to be a living thing lacking one of the critical features required to be a member of their kingdom, yet still wholly belonging to it. A being that grows in darkness and yet thrives, all because of its membership within an intricate, highly-developed community of other diverse beings.

Ghostpipes cannot grow alone. You cannot keep one in a pot. The light from one person cannot sustain it.

Some things cannot be explained by what they lack.

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

 Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

 Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.

So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.

So are

colostomy bags

Diapers

insulin pumps

Oxygen systems

anyway I did cry while we drove home from the wedding just because no one was like... mad at me. at my friend's wedding. which is deranged, because why would anyone be mad at you for being at your friend's wedding when they invited you to attend their wedding. like lol what. anyway

I have had this exact same experience my entire life, right up to the same feeling of complete shock and... I don't know how to phrase it. Difficulty comprehending? When I find myself in the company of one of those rare people who don't treat me like a termite in an ant nest and instead just, like, gets to know me, and likes me.

It's impossible to get anyone who hasn't lived it to understand just how absolutely and completely BIZARRO WORLD it feels to make a joke... and have someone laugh. To have someone willingly pick the seat next to you. To be invited into a conversation. To be liked, at all- not even in an over the top "this is my best friend she's the coolest" way but just in a "I am happy to have this person around and I'm not going to willfully go out of my way to misinterpret everything she says and every subtle mannerism of hers in the worst possible way" sort of way.

Because when you've got this superpower, that's what it's like. From most people, most of the time. You walk into the room and you're already tagged as an enemy. Some people are nice on day one but by the end of day three they don't want to engage with you and start muttering behind your back. You get alienated from every group interaction, up to and including official business ones. It doesn't matter what you say or choose not to say, it's never right, and SOMEONE will be upset about it. If you keep to yourself you're haughty, if you make small talk you're nosy, and they NEVER like you, and you're NEVER right, and you grow up just KNOWING that it's you. You're the problem. A rare friend or parent might say there's nothing wrong with you but you know in your heart that the only consistent factor in your problems is YOU. Everything you say and everything you think is poison, you're just loathesome like that, nobody wants you around, no one has ever wanted you around...

... and then you meet the right person, and, like. The superpower just doesn't affect them. You say things, and they hear the actual thing you said. You can talk to them. You can answer questions or offer suggestions and they'll listen to you. You can make jokes or be sarcastic and they'll be amused. You can be REALLY daring and be a little rude and they'll just laugh or shrug it off or just tell you that was rude and everyone moves on without treating you like a monster for it. And it's just as easy as the interactions that everyone around you have always had, and you didn't have to change a damned thing about yourself to get there. Because it turns out the problem wasn't you in the first place.

i think the hardest part of when you interact with people who just respond to you like you're a person is that it makes it so immediately clear how like... it DOESN'T take some sort of superhuman effort to interpret you that way. the people who take you in good faith AREN'T working twenty million times as hard as everyone else somehow. they're just ... treating you like a person. everyone who made you feel like your expectation or desire to be treated like a regular person was somehow Asking Too Much of them was lying. it is not asking too much. the people who do it do it easily.

its really, really hard to maintain the kind of prosocial optimism about human society that I work really hard to maintain when I'm reminded that people are often making choices NOT because the alternative is just too hard. but because they simply don't think it's important to look beyond instant kneejerk emotional reactions to people. they simply don't think it's important to not Punish People who have done nothing actually wrong except sort of give them the creeps. they're lazy.

And like... you do get that that is kinda insane, right?

Because this is something that so often leads to suffering. And I am saying this as someone disabled, who had so many issues due to this in his childhood.

Just three examples: when I was 7, I was supposed to get checked for autism. My mother did not want an autistic child. Since she just could have a "neurotypical" child by refusing diagnosis, she did just that.

When I was 12, my mother had decided I needed a certain plastic surgery (one that had a minor health benefit, but still was largely a beauty thing). I did not want it. I really, really did not want it. We still went through almost the entire process until thankfully there was a doctor who went: "Wait, this is elective. I am refusing to do this on a child that does not want it."

And when I was 14 my mother refused to get me to the hospital when I had severe food poisoning. She refused me hospital treatment for almost two weeks. By the time I got actually taken to the hospital I was almost dead.

And here is the thing: all of this should just not happen. The doctor when I was 12 was cool, but... he refused to do the surgery because he had the right to make a conscience call. Legally my mother was in the right to force me into that elective surgery. And that just should not be the case.

A lot of children die and suffer due to their legal inability to consent - or refuse consent - to medical treatments. And I wish y'all would understand that.