not archival quality

citizen-zero:

I think the funniest possible modern textual adaptation of Dracula would be Jonathan as a part time recipe blogger and you have to scroll through 10 paragraphs of the most harrowing thing you’ve ever read in your life just to get the recipe for paprika hendl

(via c3rvida3)

mycelium-entwined asked:

I’m looking forward to the results of your gourd experiment! My mother accidentally did something similar with her garden, resulting in what we’ve been calling the ‘zumpkin’

It’s hard enough that we haven’t managed to cut it open to look at the insides, and although it has been almost a year since it was picked it shows no signs of leaving this world.

botanyshitposts:

ooohhhh!
1. obsessed with the little artistic speckles and the fact this is just a long eternal pumpkin. it’s so pretty. my only question would be what it tastes like and how on earth it lasted this long

2. this reminds me of something that I never considered until I started this project, which is that one reason people also love gourds and squashes is because they come pre-contained in a hard rind (if it’s a winter squash) and therefore you can store and eat them over the winter (thus the name ‘winter squash’) so long as you cure them in the sun right and store them in a well-ventilated cool (but not cold) cellar space. the book ive been reading on this notes taste, color, what the squash is used for, and notes if people grow them because of how long they can be stored. i read on one website that if you cure pumpkins correctly they can store up to 3-6 months in a cellar. some varieties can store longer than others, and some soft-rinded summer squashes can mature into hard winter squashes if you leave them for long enough on the vine.

i knew about the history of native americans using bottle gourds as containers for food and water thousands of years ago, and i knew about the three sisters and native mexican tribes and how to this day squashes are considered an essential crop if youre going to live off the land, but somehow i had never put two and two together about this, but I don’t know what I expected, honestly? like how to use squashes long-term for food was probably just common knowledge from when they were domesticated right up to industrialization when grocery stores became The Place Where Food Comes From and storage of produce several months in advance straight from the vine was no longer the ‘normal’ thing to do in urban and suburban areas (in america). like, apparently some of these bad boys are so devoted to the long-term cellar cause that putting them in the refrigerator can SHORTEN their shelf life, and somehow this delights me? like to this day, thousands of years later, the ideal gourd storage unit requires only the right information about how to cure it in the sun and a cellar constructed in the ground for insulation. that’s how long people have been doing this for.

i want to know everything about this now. i have so many questions and nearly all of them are based on my understanding of How Food Works as a suburban white guy coming from a background where Food Comes From The Store And Is Instantly There In Any Amount When I Want It As Long As I Have Money. how many squashes do people grow to feed a family? what happens if a harvest fails, or something happens in storage and you lose some squashes? what is/was the optimal squash size portion-wise, like what if you’re cooking and you have a squash that’s way more than you need? does the 'bigger is better’ rule of american agribusiness/capitalist plant breeding still apply, or do you want a range of sizes or even smaller gourds? how many kinds of squashes do you grow? etc. it seems like so much planning ahead and logistics, and that’s not even the only food that gets stored for winter… i would panic constantly starting in like, july. i can see why harvest time gets so many festivals in so many cultures looking at it from that perspective. holy shit. (book recommendations about these sorts of things would be appreciated!)

im becoming increasingly convinced that squashes and gourds are the pinnacle of human plant domestication tbh, like that’s just like…. a perfect crop. sure beans and grains and corn are important and whatever but food in a colorful biologically produced hard orb you can put in your Orb Cellar for eating over the long winter….. definitely an apex vegetable on so many levels. absolutely at the top of the ladder in terms of things humans have domesticated. you cannot beat that.

OH OH OH have you read Buffalo-Bird Woman’s Garden? I hope you have!!! https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html

elodieunderglass:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes

climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”

yet so many people have jumped already to “it’s over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about it” and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it

you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you don’t know what to do because you thought you’d be dead by 25

That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale

A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that “be depressed and do nothing” isn’t necessarily the only response to climate change.

this, this, this, this, this, this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature

BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???

I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”

People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????

If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?

I don’t know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse

I keep recommending “The Great Derangement” by Amitav Ghosh because it is a very unflinching look at how culpable we are - not for having families, or forgetting to use the right spoons - but for consistently choosing the luxurious delusions of apocalypses. People can lovingly envision a thousand apocalypses, lavishly decorated by the pop culture we’ve gobbled down; but the reverse is not true, and we lack the imagination that is quite literally needed for the future. To the point where planning for the future is actively undermined by people at all levels, stating that it’s unrealistic. We are at a turning point of human history where people are watching each other knock holes in a shared lifeboat, because “everyone knows that lifeboats are predestined to sink.”

It’s considered unrealistic to imagine the prosperous and equitable future of the next generation, because it doesn’t match pop culture. We have actively given up our responsibilities of stewardship - literally the purpose of human existence - because Hollywood made it look hard. We are forgoing our natural bonds and our collective power because we agreed that our neighbours will probably turn on us, and when we look at the self-fulfilling prophecies and natural consequences of our behavior (pandemic, natural disasters) we claim it’s evidence that we can’t improve, instead of addressing the poor behavior.

Ghosh argues that one of the most radical and revolutionary things that we can do (and in the West, the foremost ETHICAL thing to do) is to task ourselves with reprogramming our imaginations to something functional. In this scenario, everyone can participate in the work; writers can literally take readers by the hand and heal them, people can lead and teach each other on social media, unions can include it in discussions, parents can teach their children, children can teach their parents, and everyone can correct each other. Oh, and people who like boycotts and clout can start a movement demanding more imagination in media. I agree with this, and it has underpinned my work and activism ever since.

vympr:

vympr:

vympr:

omg i’m stealing this from tiktok but what is the pettiest reason you stopped talking to a man 🎤

to reiterate i did say PETTIEST as in inconsequential on an almost humorous level

some highlights

(via cakesandfail)

prokopetz:

Something that’s always stuck with me in The Hobbit – the original book, not the movie – is that when Bilbo needs to create a distraction to rescue the dwarves in Mirkwood, he just happens to know a slur for “giant spider”.

And like, it works. It pisses them off terribly when he calls them that.

Why does Bilbo just happen to know a slur for giant spider? Exactly what prior circumstances obliged him to be familiar with it?

Might just be a general insult for spiders? Not that I find myself needing to insult very many spiders, either, admittedly.

thesurprisinglyqueertoast:

thesurprisinglyqueertoast:

thesurprisinglyqueertoast:

thesurprisinglyqueertoast:

thesurprisinglyqueertoast:

Hey! Go gender my cat for my own research purposes! You get to see 6 pictures of the same cat! I ask for your identity and pronouns, then ask you to pick a gender and pronouns for the cat. There is also three questions at the end: giving the cat a name, a space for compliments towards the cat if you want, and a space for if you also have a theory.

My cat gets gendered differently by different people from picture to picture, and I want to see if the identity of the person or the pose of the cat has anything to do with it.

I’m putting it in the first reblog and pinning it to my blog because apparently links don’t work in the search?

This is a pro MOGAI zone and feel free to give the cat any genders you like.

here it is!

Gender my cat please

Different people have gendered my cat differently, and I am curious if there's a correlation. Transphobia of any type will not be accepted.

Google Docs

edit: I DO want cisgender people taking this too! While I am enjoying the trans and nonbinary people’s responses, I want responses from everyone!

This survey was the best decision I have ever made in my life. I dearly love all seven of you so far. We are at 5 trans, 1 nonbinary but not trans, and 1 cis person, and I cannot make a correlation yet because of the sample size. I can say that the cis person generally gage more basic genders and pronouns, but this is not a bad thing as I have not explored my cat’s gender or pronouns until recently and I am nonbinary. I will continue to update this post with any actual findings. I will however go over some notable answers.

One of you has called my cat “God Almighty” as a gender, called them skater boy, given pss/pssts pronouns, and given stre/tchy pronouns. I appreciate you. Another one of you has called them an idiot, gave them foolself pronouns and then named them coward baby. You are correct but at what cost. I am a particular fan of the person that got excited and gave them a name for every single picture. You have absolutely delighted me with this.

I have read every single compliment to them using the name you gave me for them and your pronouns when appropriate, and I have given the requested little forehead kiss and slow blink.

YOU!!! YOU UNDERSTOOD MY THOUGHT PROCESS EXACTLY!!! (responder uses he/they/it) This is response 17, and a few the first 16 fell in line with some of my predictions. Including one of you that fell solely into the social norms and was aware that you did.

I have 12 more responses after this, but I don’t have the spoons to read them so I can’t make any tentative thoughts just yet. Once I get through this batch I’ll add on to this post and mention a few of the notable responses. I just had to post this one because it’s exactly what I’m trying to determine I’ll wait until the amount of responses die down to make an ending conclusion.

Also, you’re free to send this survey to anyone you want. The survey is for fun, and so the only wrong answer is a transphobic one.

I have still only been able to looking at 17 of these. I promise that I will get to all of them as soon as I can, but mental illness has been happening very intensely. I wanna thank you all for doing this, and I have seen everyone’s tags and I’m glad so many of you have enjoyed this so much. You’re free to send me your own pets if you so choose. I look forward to reading all of the responses. 

I can give you the statistics from the first set of questions though!

So far there are 48 trans people, 18 nonbinary but not trans, 15 cis people, and 4 that did not disclose. 34 of you marked that you were nonbinary, 23 are transmasc, 22 genderqueer, 16 binary women, 15 agender, 13 genderfluid, 10 binary men, 5 transfem, 5 bigender, 3 xenogender, and several self identified things. 54 of you use they/them, 40 he/him, 37 she/her, 14 it/its, 8 xe/xem, 7 ze/zir, and several other self identified pronouns.

(via omelton)

coffeeinacoldhell:

cakesandfail:

hand-in-unloveable-hand:

you-are-another-me:

[ID: Black and white art of a potato plant. There’s black text that reads, “They tried to bury me they didn’t know I was a potato.” /end ID]

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”

- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

@jonlybonlyfromboldlygo

(via bittylildragon)

thetragicallynerdy:

ytphobia-deactivated20210908:

Opinion | Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect

There is no point at which we can no longer strive to make the future better than it otherwise would be.

YES! Magazine

[ID: four screenshots of select parts of the linked article, Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect, by Morgan Florsheim. The screenshots read as follows, with some sections highlighted for emphasis:

One - Recently I read an essay that kept me up at night. The piece, Under the Weather by climate journalist Ash Sanders, left me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach that I found myself struggling to shake, even weeks later.The personal essay tells the story of Sanders and a mentor of hers, Chris Foster. Sanders recounts how both she and Foster have struggled for much of their adult lives with a gripping sense of impending doom, a depression deeply tied to their grief for a world lost. She writes about the newly coined terms for environmentally related mental health problems—eco-anxiety, climate grief, pre-traumatic stress disorder—and suggests that these conditions should not necessarily be viewed as disorders, but rather as the only reasonable response to a world experiencing catastrophe.

Two - But equally, I know what it is to watch someone you love feel crushed by the weight of the world, and to feel helpless in lifting that burden. I’m 22, barely out of college, and already I have seen more friends than I could have ever imagined fall into deep depression, magnified by their care for the world and the way they felt helpless to stop the suffering within it. I know the way depression closes a person off to the good and spotlights the bad, how it sows seeds of shame and self-doubt and sits back to watch them grow. I wish that I didn’t. Highlighted for emphasis: Depression tells us that we are at once powerless and culpable, and therefore the only logical response is to disengage, turn inward, eschew connection—a response which only serves to reinforce the oppressive systems like racial injustice and capitalism that are truly responsible for our suffering.

Three - In one of my final college classes over Zoom in spring 2020, my professor, environmental anthropologist Myles Lennon, led us through a discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass, the awe-inspiring book by Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer writes of the endurance of Indigenous people (highlighted for emphasis): “despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not surrender.” The climate crisis is not the first time a people has faced the end of the world. As we navigate this latest existential threat, we would do well to listen to Kimmerer and other Indigenous leaders. As my professor put it that day, (highlighted for emphasis) existence can cohabitate with collapse. It is not one or the other.

Four - I have a lot of decisions ahead of me. As I consider how I want to live my life, where to dedicate my energy, I refuse to accept the idea that I must sacrifice all joy to attend to the world’s problems. I know myself to be more helpful when I have addressed my own needs: needs for good food and good company, for hope, for long afternoons in the sunshine. I am grateful for the teachers that I have had in this movement, such as professor Lennon, and the people who have reminded me of all the reasons to imagine a brighter future. I know that hope is not a happy accident. (Highlighted for emphasis) Hope is a right we must protect. Hope is a discipline, according to Mariame Kaba, an organizer and educator building the movement for transformative justice.

(Entire paragraph highlighted for emphasis) The climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.

End ID.]

(via elodieunderglass)