I Wish I Would, Don't You?

What was "sewer socialism"?

In a new story, Livia Gershon writes about Milwaukee mayor Daniel Hoan, who believed the strongest case for socialism was a city government that worked. For Hoan, this meant fighting corruption, improving public services, supporting clean drinking water, and using local government to make daily life better for Milwaukee residents. The story traces how he and other Midwest socialists turned big political ideas into practical city work, including utility reform, fairer taxes, public health measures, and programs meant to serve everyone in the city.

Read the full story from JSTOR Daily.

I have a friend who is a bi woman monogamously married to a man who grew absolutely OBSESSED with Heated Rivalry, and when I talked to her about it, her response was that among other things, it's very hard to find stories, especially on TV (she is not really a big fandom-y type so I don't think she's a fanfic person, though who knows) where a relationship starts as mutually purely physical and remains as such for a while and feelings come later; that's actually what happened with her and her husband but it's so often a "hookup to love at first sight" or "mutual pining leads to hookup leads to slowburn" situation. She mentioned she found it especially hard to find this for female characters, because it's so rare to find women who are interested in casual sex on its own while also being open to a longer-term relationship in fiction - either they immediately catch feelings from a hookup, or they're The Samantha.

The reason for THAT is misogyny (though, while we're at it, gay men's stereotypes are not dissimilar from women's stereotypes here except that the 'default' depiction for gay/bi men is The Samantha and the minority position is catching feelings from a hookup whereas the opposite balance is true for women). Heated Rivalry happens to be a story that does not fall prey to these tropes or stereotypes in quite the same way and so it depicts a very real experience this woman had! But she is specifically saying "I find meaning, as a woman, in this m/m work because it is written to defy certain dynamics present in many heterosexual or lesbian works because of how women in fiction are depicted, even though I personally am in a heterosexual relationship that did not have those dynamics." She is not saying "This can't happen in m/f or f/f stories", just that it's hard to find in any stories and the one in which she found it was m/m.

oil paint isnt cheap, but john singer sargent wanted to paint his homie claude havin a nice day. thats sweet.

Like, having drive and ambition is great. But it gets drilled in kids’ heads that there is some pressure to constantly be looking for the next move up, to be bigger than life. It wears you down to never be satisfied.

Not everyone is destined for greatness. It just doesn’t suit some people.

Boquila feels more like a cuttlefish or an octopus; it can morph into at least eight basic shapes. When it glides up a bush or tree that it’s never encountered before, it can still mimic what’s near. And that’s the wildest part: It doesn’t have to touch what it copies. It only has to be nearby. Most mimicry in the animal kingdom involves physical contact. But this plant can hang—literally hang—alongside a host tree, with empty space between it and its model, and, with no eyes, nose, mouth, or brain, it can “see” its neighbor and copy what it has “seen.”

(Photo cred: Assafn, Wikipedia)

These ocelli don’t form sharp images, but instead probably detect light and shadow for sleep patterns, directionality, flight stability, etc.

Some reptiles and amphibians also have a light-sensitive third eye called a parietal or pineal eye! It’s similarly right on top of their heads. Again, they’re not forming complex images, but instead use general light information to regulate other things. It’s also why even tame reptiles may bolt if you reach at them from directly overhead, out of range of their normal eyes—that third eye sees an incoming shadow and goes HAWK, RUN.

So with that in mind, plant ocelli…Basically they think the upper epidermal cells have evolved to have a particular convex dome shape that focuses light. I don’t know what proportion of cells are ocelli, if it’s just some or all, but basically the leaf itself IS the “eye”.

Plant ocelli were first proposed over a century ago but they haven’t been well studied since then. Cyanobacteria (a photosynthetic bacteria) focus light. Arabidopsis thaliana has been documented to recognize other Arabidopsis plants…basically when competing for resources, if the Arabidopsis recognizes it’s competing with other Arabidopsis plants, they’ll cooperate and move leaves so that they don’t shade each other, ensuring each plant has access to nutrients. But if the competing plant isn’t Arabidopsis, screw ‘em, they’ll shade it. Crepy & Casal narrowed this down to a light-based response, not just chemical identification, so it’s possible Arabidopsis is visually identifying friend from foe. At any rate, that’s about the extent of plant ocelli research that I was able to find. So this Boquila thing is cool and weird.

What we don’t yet know is how precisely Boquila is seeing the world. Boquila is clearly getting some level of resolution in order to be able to copy shape, size, AND color. Unlike an insect’s 2-3 ocelli, it has tons, so even crude data over a lot of inputs might lead to a pretty good picture. The paper also says the mimicry gets more accurate over time, so there appears to be some learning involved. I would also love to know if it has some equivalent of depth perception! If the target plant is near vs. far, does Boquila produce the same appropriately sized mimic leaf? Does it adjust? They’re going to keep studying it so hopefully we have some answers in a few years!

Anyway here’s a picture of the variation of Boquila mimic leaves.

(Photo cred: Gianoli figure)