CBS Saturday Morning

Millions of bees have died this year. It's "the worst bee loss in recorded history," one beekeeper says.

The U.S. beekeeping industry is in crisis over the shocking and unexplained deaths of hundreds of millions of bees over the last eight months. 

It's an unfolding disaster for the industry. Blake Shook, one of the nation's top beekeepers, has found tens of thousands of dead insects at his businesses. He said that he's never seen losses like this. 

"The data is showing us this is the worst bee loss in recorded history," Shook told "CBS Saturday Morning." 

Researchers are struggling to understand what's causing the deaths. 

Juliana Rangel, an entomologist at Texas A&M University, has been studying bee hives in her lab. There are a few potential explanations, she said, including changing habitats and weather patterns. But there's no certain answer, she said. 

Bees play a critical role in U.S. food production. In addition to making honey, they pollinate 75% of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S. That's $15 billion worth of crops. Shook said the current losses are unsustainable. 

"If this is a multi-year thing, it'll change the way we consume food in the United States," Shook said. "If we lose 80% of our bees every year, the industry cannot survive, which means we cannot pollinate at the scale that we need to produce food in the United States." 

One example is almonds. With honeybees pollinating them, almond trees produce two to three thousand pounds of almonds per acre, Shook said. Without that pollination, almond trees produce only 200 pounds of nuts per acre. 

"There is no almond crop without honeybees," Shook said. 

One of Shook's businesses focuses on rebuilding dead hives. He's receiving an alarming number of those hives, he said, from commercial operations across the country. Beekeeping groups say 25% of those commercial operations may be put out of business by year's end because of the losses. 

"I got a call from a friend who had 20,000 beehives at the start of the winter, and he's at less than 1,000. He said 'This is it, I'm done.' I've had far too many of those calls in the last few weeks," Shook said. "It's not just a beekeeper issue. This is a national food security issue." 

Usual reminder that the amazingly detailed "Arthurian name dictionary" book is free online from this website that can still be accessed by the wayback machine

On November 7, 2024, Denmark used a racist, culturally biased "parenting competency" test to remove a 2 hour old baby, Zammi, from her loving indigenous Greenlandic Inuit mother, Keira, because her native language, which uses minute facial expressions to communicate, will not be able to "[prepare] the child for the social expectations and codes that are necessary to navigate in Danish society." This test had been recommended not to be used at the federal level before this happened but certain municipalities, including the one this happened in, chose to continue to use it regardless. Not only is this blatantly racist but also violates multiple declarations and conventions that Denmark has signed that protect the rights of indigenous people.

Please sign this petition to help Keira to get her baby back.

Hey, it's really important for Keira to get 50,000 signatures on this petition before her court date in early April 2025. Please sign if you haven't already to help a mother and a people stand up to colonialism and for indigenous rights.

Modern vampire who has spent the last 70-ish years of their immortality primarily being slutty in nightclubs and non-lethal snacking on hookups shocked and uncomfortable that most vampires older than the lightbulb are really into torture and cruelty and eating babies alive. Super excited to finally meet his own kind and then oh no. oh fuck. time out wtf are they doing. this is profoundly unsexy they bit that guy’s arm off and are letting him crawl around screaming and crying. there’s not even any kissing or grinding or club music. is this normal?? i am Going to throw up i’ve gotta get these poor ppl out of here. askjeeves how to smuggle 30 naked prisoners (assorted genders) out of vampire mansion time sensitive.

Bc i am god’s least shut-uppable angel i do gotta clarify, our modern vampire protag is not like, an undead gas station attendant, he’s like 100 years old, he’s well known in his city’s club scene as a hot n solid hookup if you can keep your mouth shut, he’s not at all hesitant to kill douchebags and has Seen Some Shit over the years. The thing i’m trying to highlight is he’s unfamiliar with what other vampires are up to outside the 1 or 2 he’s met who are also focused on being perpetual goth icons like him. So when he finally meets some truly ancient and cruel bloodsuckers who have been around since 200CE and do Hannibal shit to their captives on the regular, it completely blindsides him. Imagine being some poor tortured bastard getting cranked up on a meat hook to get ripped apart by a ballroom full of ghouls, and there’s one dude who absolutely should be at the club who looks like he’s about to start crying at the sight of your suffering. That shit would be delicious through the 4th wall.

give me a sexy vampire slayer show where the modern vampire goths and leather daddies creating a circle of trust and safety around their club and bdsm scene by way of 80s pulp fiction style murdering the ancient vamps who try to move in on their "prey" (by which I mean the local humans who've ended up like hand fed deer that do not know to fear the hunter)

get it?

The wonderful Lord of the Rings Portfolio by Frank Frazetta (1975)

Just today I got to see a chess book that I remember reading as a little kid. While it didn't give me a lifelong passion for chess, it did give me a lifelong passion for fantasy for its artwork.

The book is "Chess for Young Beginners" from 1975, and here's some of the artwork:

Like, this artwork goes hard. I especially appreciate the colour scheme for the black pieces, with its browns, bronzes, reds and oranges.

This artwork is amazing, evocative, exciting and dramatic. I recommend giving it a look if you have a chance - you can probably scrounge up a PDF of this thing with a bit of searching.

Adventuring Knight

Time-lapse:

Wisconsin

I don't see people talking about this so today is the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in where the factory owners locked working women and girls inside to "eliminate the risk of theft" (in reality it was too keep them from taking breaks), which resulted in the gruesome deaths of 123 mostly immigrant women and girls and 23 men, many of whom jumped to their deaths from the ninth floor either in a panicked attempt to escape or in order to die quickly. There were reports that some of the workers were on fire already as they jumped.

The eighth floor of the building was able to telephone the tenth floor to warn them about the fire, but the factory on the ninth floor where these women and girls labored had no such communication and such warning.

The factory owners were criminally charged with manslaughter for actions that contributed to the mass deaths but acquitted. However, this tragedy led to mass sympathy to the labor movement, and unions spurred on safety regulations that passed in New York state and eventually the entire country, and activists were able to reduce child labor in the process.

This tragedy is a reminder that has been forgotten in the 110 years since: every safety regulation-- every scrap of paperwork contributing to the hundreds of pages of red tape people like to complain about--every word of it was written in the blood of a laborer.

111th anniversary

They were discouraged from breaks because they were actively trying to unionize, and bosses felt that keeping them from unsupervised contact would prevent them from joining the garment workers' union.

This is why unions are important. This is why today, right now, the biggest companies in America are trying to squash unionization of their laborers and why those workers are fighting so hard to unionize.

@tikkunolamorgtfo did a great write-up a few years ago about the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and I highly recommend reading it (and anything else you can about the fire). It is painfully relevant still and it's incredibly important women's, Jewish, immigrants', and workers' history.

#most of the girls working there were either jewish immmigrants or southern italian immigrants #two of the more exploited immigrant groups at the turn of the century particularly in nyc but elsewhere too #the labor history element of it can't be overemphasized tbh (x)

Okay I know I posted the first one already but it's a collection now. Anyway don't you ever get so tired of this

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

If the text says the curtains are blue you can argue about what that means; but if you’re going to claim they’re actually yellow you’d better have a really good argument.

via @b.sharise

the unicorn, freed

the original "unicorn in captivity" tapestry actually represents a happy confinement in marriage, with the pomegranate tree and various flowers symbolizing marriage and fertility. so you could say that I have drawn. horse divorce