@flamingears / flamingears.tumblr.com
me explaining to my grandma that the turkey tail and golden oyster mushrooms and birds nest fungi growing on her huge backyard tree stump are simply eating the dead wood to return it to the soil and they're cute and colorful and add to the whimsy of her landscaping and are not causing the weeds in other places of the yard or harming her little white dog
but why no photo of lovely decomposers?????
they put stumps like this in storybooks man
Y'ALL this is exciting
as hell! Idk how many of you are familiar with chytrid fungi, but they cause a nasty disease in amphibians called chytridiomycosis, where the fungus infected and spreads across the skin. Amphibians both breathe and absorb water through their skin, so once the infection spreads enough it makes it difficult for them to breathe and drink. It's often deadly and has been introduced all over the world, likely from people releasing captive amphibians into the wild. Research has linked chytridiomycosis to the extinction of over 90 species, and is considered one of the primary causes of the global amphibian population crisis we're fighting.
Worst of all, there is no cure viable enough to use on wild populations.
This 'hothouse' method, if it continues to prove effective, would be a cheap and easily-implemented tool to help wild frogs cure themselves!! This could help save dozens -- if not hundreds -- of species from extinction!
Be excited about this! (Otherwise I will find you)
Medicinal frog spa!
Article via Science, June 26, 2024
Botanical [ 8 colors ]
Nature doesn't hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
[ID: Animated pixel art of a river running through a lush forest. Full green foliage and trees line the river's path before it drops off as a waterfall out of frame; rays of light shift side to side, reflecting across the water's surface. The piece is signed "@ anasabdin" in the lower right. End ID]
mei changsu + fave quotes
These are mostly chinese tang shi and song ci poetry quotes, with a great biased amount from Su Shi because OP doesn't know better. Crude, 5-minute english translations below. There are lines I semi-made up or adapted from fandom/cpop songs (that is, most of Xiao Jingyan's lines), ngl OP is rather embarrassed of them because they aren't good at all looking back now but we'll just leave them here or else XJY would end up with zero quotes.
Two (three) things to note:
I was assembling/making these lines up for something back then and so just listed whatever came to mind (for reasons I know not I kept on listing stuff for MCS, but maybe XJY was the typical good emperor kind of person so wasn't as inspiring coming up with quotes for him).
If there are lines of poetry you find really befitting the two characters, we're more than interested starting a thread here just for that purpose.
I saw an astronaut walking on the side of the road today, which is the kind of thing my brain will placidly accept at first, only to go "Wait, an astronaut" a minute later once I'm done with my previous train of thought. By then I felt like it might be too late to stop my car, but I ended up stopping anyway because I didn't want to spend the rest of the afternoon wondering.
I waited for the astronaut to catch up with me since they were going in my direction, but they didn't. Eventually I got out of the car and retraced my steps, and after a bend in the road when I saw no one walking towards me I decided the visitor must have gone back to their spacecraft and I would never get an explanation for thisโand then in the distance I caught a glimpse of the white space suit disappearing into the forest.
I managed to catch up with them and they turned out to be a distant neighbour of mine (let's call her M.), and what looked like a space suit when I was driving by was a beekeeper's outfit! (Sorry for the pointless suspense but I was taking you on the same little journey my brain went through.) M. was tickled when she learnt that I mistook her for an astronautโshe told me she'd borrowed her husband's too-big shoes which made her drag her feet, hence why she looked like she was having trouble readjusting to Earth's gravity.
Then she said that one of her hives had swarmed, and she was pretty sure she knew where the swarm was. I had no idea how swarming worked so as we walked in the woods she explained that when a hive becomes too crowded, the queen will get replaced by a new one, and the old queen will leave along with half of the bees. After this split, the swarm will cluster somewhere nearby and wait while scout bees fly away in search of a new hive location. "That's when you have to catch themโif you can find the swarm. But here it is!"
I wasn't expecting quite so many bees!! I'm pretty scared of all flying creatures so allow me to pat myself on the back for what came nextโI thought I was about to learn how to catch a swarm from a prudent distance, but M. asked if I could give her a hand, seeing as her husband was supposed to be here to help but clearly wasn't.
The first step of catching a swarm was spraying the bees with sugar water, and I was glad not to be asked to help with that, as it seemed like something that could make bees angry. ("On the contrary, it makes them less agitated!" I was told, but that remained to be seen.) Step 2 was pulling on a rope tied to the tree branch in order to lower the swarm into the new hive, and that was the job I was recruited for. The rope was long enough that I could stand several metres away to pull on it, but my role in this swarm-catching business was still all too clear to any angry bee looking for someone to blame.
I remembered reading that bees can sense the electric field of flowers, so I thought there was no way they wouldn't sense the staticky nervousness coming from the rope-puller, but thankfully they completely ignored me.
M. was offering one fun fact about bees after the other, in a very relaxed voice, which was very interesting and very soothing for both me and the bees. She said this particular colony was very sweet ("some bee colonies are meaner than others?" "yes of course"), and that swarming usually happens a bit earlier in the year "but it's been raining so much lately, the bees had to postpone all their activities, just like us" and also "swarming involves quite a bit of planning ahead of time; for example worker bees have to put the queen on a diet so she won't be too fat to fly. Did you know that?" I did not!
Unfortunately our first attempt to catch the swarm failed. The bees entered the hive, had a quick look around their new home, then left in disgust and formed a thick, angry, buzzing cloud over our heads, while I tried to think nothing but bee-loving thoughts to make my electric field harmless and friendly.
Then one after the other all the bees returned to the exact same spot on the branch where we'd first found them. ("Because it smells like the queen" said M.) We examined the near-empty hive and found that a mouse had made a nest in there! She was no longer here but the traces of her passage were evident (some of the comb was very nibbled.)
As we were removing the supplies brought in by the mouse (sticks, hay), M.'s husband joined us and he had brought a spray bottle containing some sort of bee-attracting liquid (pheromones?) (I didn't have a close look at the bottle because I made sure to stay far away from the bee-attracting liquid, while he sprayed it inside the hive.)
He had also brought a white sheet which he spread under the tree, explaining that the bees will want to get away from the bright surface and look for darkness, thus hopefully getting inside the box. Another thing I learnt is that once the queen enters the hive, the nearest worker bees will spread the message by turning round and fluttering their wings to send a chemical signal in specific directions, which will be picked up by other bees farther away; at strategic intervals some bees will light the beacons of Gondor turn round and fan their wings to relay this scent-message until the entire colony is informed of the queen's new location.
We were more successful the second time around! This time the bees who went in didn't immediately get out again to return to their branch. Well I say "we" but I didn't volunteer to pull on the rope again, so I can't claim any role in this victory. But my personal victory was that I stood quite a bit nearer this time so I could watch everything closely, and I felt more intrigued than nervous. Bees were constantly zipping past me but it had become clear that my electric field was pure and they bore me no ill will. I was always fond of bees from afar and happy to see them do their thing in flowers in the spring, but today's adventure got me interested in their daily life as well, so I think I'll read some books about bees this summer!
I was reading last month about the morality of termite colonies (Maeterlinck's La vie des termites) and I had a feeling this man must have written some poetic stuff about bees as wellโand he did. Here's a translated excerpt from his book "La vie des abeilles" :)
fake dating trope but they don't become a real couple at the end. character is just like "wow thanks so much buddy that was a really nice and helpful thing of you to do for me and i really feel like our friendship has grown through this experience" and thats the end of it. godbless
just remembered the time i briefly defined types of relationships (platonic romantic familial and queerplatonic iirc) like offhandedly in a post and someone sent me an anon like โmaybe since ur aro u should let people who know more about it exppain romantic relationships โฆ ur description wasnโt emotional enough it felt like a definitionโ ????????? HUH
is this what they wanted
โVerdant Passageโ by Ardhana Utama โ Green-tinted glass forms a crystalline corridor
saying goodbye before the shuttle
Jacek Yerka,ย Eruptionย
i like tumblr because occasionally iโll be recommended a 12 year old post that depicts something so absolutely my shit that it makes me believe in art again
Why are agriculture classes the first time I've learned extremely basic info about nutrition and how digestion works. Why isn't this stuff in health textbooks or any easily accessible resource about healthy eating.
I dont want to talk in excessive depth about it because i'm not an expert, but it's like...the agriculture textbooks go into detail about what the nutrients do for the body and how they are broken down, in the animal agriculture class talking primarily about how to feed your animals, the plant agriculture class talking about why certain crops are grown and how the agriculture system has to meet human needs.
The animal agriculture class was the first time I experienced each macronutrient (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) being discussed in depth from the point of view of being needs that MUST be met, rather than things it's "okay" to eat "in moderation."
My college health class actually used the word "macronutrient," but it still mostly described fats and carbohydrates in terms of their calorie content and didn't go into the same amount of depth about them.
My animal agriculture class on the other hand, was the first time I'd been taught in a class that the amount of nutrition absorbed from eating food varies depending on genetics, environmental factors, what the digestive system is accustomed to processing and what it was conditioned to process during development, and mechanical aspects of the digestion process like how much it is broken down by chewing (!!). Of course it was discussing these things from the point of view of like, cows, but it was really striking to me that I'd never been taught about human digestion from this point of view, where digestion is a complex process that can be affected by various biological and environmental factors.
At the beginning of the class we did a lab where we went over feedstuff analysis, and this was the first time I'd learned about where the numbers in nutrition labels come from, the kind of tests that are done to break food down to its components.
The class discussed how the digestibility of food was analyzed by testing the food, feeding animals the food, collecting the feces, and doing the same tests on the fecal matter to determine how much of the starting nutritional content was literally just going out the other end.
This raised a lot of questions for me: I don't think Pop-Tarts are analyzed by confining a human volunteer to a small room and feeding them only Pop-Tarts, then doing lab tests on their poop. Does that mean we know even less about feeding humans than we do animals? At any rate, nutrition labels would have to be rough estimates to begin with, and then accounting for the variability in the way bodies process food, it's even less descriptive.
Now i'm in plant agriculture, and I'm learning about the different types of proteins and fats and what plants and/or animals they come from. There are different types of protein with different sources. There are...nine? I think? different amino acids that have to be consumed in the diet, and different foods contain different ones?? The reason combinations of grains and legumes are so common as staple diets throughout the world, is that this is closest to being nutritionally complete for humans???
And also protein supplements are mostly useless unless you're an Olympian or something, because the body doesn't have a way to store protein for later. If you eat protein and your body doesn't have an immediate use for it, it just gets taken apart in your liver and you pee it out. Sports greatly increase your need for energy far more than they increase your need for protein, but everyone thinks you should eat a ton of protein as an athlete and that carbohydrates are unhealthy.
I learned from the same chapter WHY fiber is important to help digestion (having texture to the stuff in your gut stimulates peristalsis which is the muscular movements that push things along).
I feel really weird and resentful about health textbooks and classes now, because it feels like they didn't want us to have the facts on how our bodies work, and instead just taught us to see certain foods as "good" or "bad," as though it was more important to be afraid of "unhealthy" food than to understand why food is needed. Health classes barely teach why food is needed.
Like, vegetables are seen as the quintessential "healthy" food, but what is traditionally seen as "vegetables" are mainly important because they provide micronutrients, fiber, and water (the water content in food is actually a big deal). There's a reason they aren't staple foods. You need carbohydrates and fats to live. Period.
I say "what is traditionally seen as vegetables" because it's an incoherent category nutritionally. Beans, sweet potatoes, and spinach are doing very different things for your body. Are beans even a vegetable? Clearly "comes from a plant" isn't the main criteria since grains, nuts, and fruits aren't considered vegetables.
So like, the "myplate" graphic (and the "food pyramid" that came before it)? Total bullshit basically.
It's really frustrating how writings on healthy eating assume you are probably already eating too much or are at risk of overeating. I learned very young about the harms of being "overweight" and eating too much of a certain nutrient. But I just realized from my reading in the plant agriculture class that I had never read a resource that teaches in the same detail about the harms of undernutrition.
It's so easy to fail to get the nutrients you need, holy shit. Particularly protein, because it isn't one thing, it's a bunch of different types of molecule pieces that are found in varying amounts in different foods. People who eat animal products or soy don't have to worry about it very much, since they are essentially complete in terms of protein, but if you are a vegan who doesn't/can't eat soy as a staple, you HAVE to be careful to eat a variety of foods that complement each other in terms of what they're lacking. There's something called the PDCAAS that rates each food by the amino acids they contain, but generally the best idea is to eat a bunch of grains and legumes.
I'm not saying that people can be "scared straight" out of developing eating disorders. But I am saying that young people can benefit from being exposed to scary information when they have the power to possibly encounter situations where that information is applicable. And the horrifying realization of what starvation is and does is such an information.
My plant agriculture text explained that carbohydrates and fats are the basic sources of energy under normal circumstances, and that it takes around 1,600 kcal per day to run your internal organs. Protein is only used for energy in unusual circumstances. When fat reserves are exhausted and there isn't any food, the body starts breaking down proteins for caloriesโand the first ones to go are the ones that are already all throughout the bloodstream, found in YOUR ANTIBODIES. That's right, when you run out of fat to burn off, your body starts EATING ITS OWN IMMUNE SYSTEM.
The plant agriculture book also says that digestion and energy needs vary from person to person, like literally when different people eat the same meal their blood sugar rises different amounts, and that how the body decides to store energy or use energy stores is determined by complicated feedback loops controlled by hormones. Meanwhile the average person thinks that it's a matter of "eat too much = get fat and unhealthy, eat less = lose weight and be healthier" and even the college health class I took used more or less this model.
Like people are walking around with this completely wrong idea of how their bodies work and making AWFUL decisions based upon it because the resources they have to educate them think it's more important to...make people afraid of food? I don't think it's even common knowledge that the body burns most of the calories you consume just from existing. I want to chew concrete.
Why don't we teach everyone in school why staple foods are staple foods?! Not even getting into people who are so deep into eating disorders they think carrots have too much sugar, it's so normal to do things like "cut out bread" or "cut out carbs" (????!??!) and to perceive hunger as an innately untrustworthy thing, when genuine success at dieting like this is a great way to Corn On The Kill Yourself.
I'm just kind of reeling right now at how much research and monitoring it would take to safely diet in the ways people constantly attempt to diet with NO research NO supervision NO medical testing, 100% believing that they are doing something good for their health.
If people aren't taught what a macronutrient is and why you will die without it, they will think celery sticks are a "healthy" substitute for a chocolate chip cookie, and then not understand why they feel like shit.
Also... this is slightly different, but it's connected to the problem of "people not understanding what food does to the body". In the animal agriculture class, it was surprising to me how in livestock animals, things like muscle and fat composition are strongly genetically determined. All the modern breeds of cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. used in corporate farming have been bred to be very lean and have very little fat while having huge amounts of muscle tissue, because that's what the modern consumer wants in meat.
With pigs, a lot of older heritage pig breeds were bred to store most of what they ate as fat, because pigs were used to change food waste into lard that could be added to cooking for flavor and calories. And most of these breeds either went extinct or dwindled severely to be replaced by "meat" breed pigs that don't put on very much fat at all.
With humans, "everyone knows" that the amount of fat and muscle in your body comes from what you eat and how much you exercise. But a feedlot-finished beef cow that spends the last several months of its life doing nothing but gorging itself on carbohydrates will stay lean and put on muscle because it's genetically predisposed to.
It violates common sense and yet a multi-billion-dollar industry revolves around cramming animals into a small area without much room to do anything, feeding the animals whatever crap has the most calories in it, and ending up with a lean, muscular carcass.
Hello, hope you're doing well.
(1) Does the concept of zhiji necessarily imply reciprocity? i.e. can i be someone's zhiji/know them but they are not mine?
(2) does the dynamic of a zhiji relationship imply that of the two people, one of them is always in more of a giving/patron role while the other is the one being understood/benefited?
(3) is being someone's zhiji an instantaneous thing (like an instant understanding or spark) or is it ok to think of becoming zhiji as a process/journey as your relationship progresses?
You probably get bothered with a lot of questions on this topic but I don't know who else to ask :) even if you can just answer 1 of the 3 questions, I'll be grateful. These questions have been swirling in my head and i can't find any info online in English.
Thank you.
hi there! folks seem to be really interested in ็ฅๅทฑ zhijiย as a term, so Iโll try my best to answer these, but know that this is by no means an objective or comprehensive overview of the incredible versatility inherent in all things linguistic
1) firstly, ็ฅๅทฑ is more like a title conferred upon someone who happens to like, reallyย get you, rather than an inherent quality of a person. One of the most common sentences about ็ฅๅทฑ that I see is ๆๆไฝ ๅฝไฝๆ็็ฅๅทฑ / I had taken you to be someone who knows me, which is less about any sort of reciprocity of knowing and more about emphasizing someoneโs importance to you. Itโs a little like saying I thought you knew meย or I thought we understood each other or I trusted you, because I thought you knew me as well as I know myself. The point is, you can call just about anyone you like ็ฅๅทฑ zhiji; whether the two of you areย is something that should probably be mutually agreed upon.
Itโs also possibly worthwhile to look into other terms for close friends and confidantes beyond just this one, because there are many; a trusted aide/subordinate could be your ๅฟ่ น xinfu, which is literally composed of the charactersย โheartโ andย โbellyโ to illustrate how vitalย and trustworthy a person is to you. You could say ไฝๅทฑไบบย tiji renย or ๅฏๅ miyou or ่ดดๅฟไบบ tiexin renย to talk about close friends and confidantes; you could have ่ณไบค zhijiao or ่ณๅ zhiyouย or ็ฅไบค zhijiao, who are your best friends, your most intimate relationships, your most trusted people.
Basically, there are options here; itโs not like there are hard and fast rules for being ็ฅๅทฑ zhijiย with someone else, any more than there are hard and fast rules for basic friendship and trust.
2) not at all! Just because historically, you can trace the term ็ฅๅทฑ zhijiย back to patron-minister relationships in the Warring States period and the Han Dynasty doesnโt mean that it hasnโt evolved since. I mostly think itโs worthwhile to go down this road of armchair etymology to offer context for the term outside fandom reception of CQL, which tends to code it in the most romantic way possible.
People seem shocked when ็ฅๅทฑ zhiji is a term dropped in casual conversation or daily dialogue, and they really shouldnโt be; it is as weighty or as casual as someone makes it in the moment. It is a living, breathing word that is actively employed in vernacular vocabularies, not some ancient artifact only pulled out and dusted off for the most significant/dramatic of occasions.
3) I mean, it can be both, right? Like how there isnโt a single standardized journey to best friend status with someone, you can call someone ็ฅๅทฑ zhijiย for as something as little as just being on the same wavelength for them in a conversation. You can also make it huge and dramatic like youโre the only one who truly understands what Iโm trying to do, without you I would have nothing, etc etc.ย
In the ใๅคฉๆถฏๅฎขใ audiodrama, Zhou Zishu calls Wen Kexing a zhijiย just for noticing that heโs sunning himself on the street (because Wen Kexing is the onlyย one who sees through Zhou Zishuโs disguise at that moment, and doesnโt take him for a beggar). At that point, they havenโt even exchanged a single word, and Zhou Zishu remarks to himself that he hadnโt thought to meet a ็ฅๅทฑ zhiji. He makes no more of it than that--just the acknowledgementย oh, someone understood me,ย before moving on with his day.
tl;dr ็ฅๅทฑ zhijiย is a term that is as dramatic or casual as you make it
Nirvana in Fire || Episode 40
"This dire political situation truly makes one cold and bitter." "You're wrong. The more dire the political situation becomes, the more we cannot become discouraged."
Here's an excerpt from Haiyan's afterword from the published novel:
ๆๅ ่ฏ็็ไบบๆฏ่งๆฏ็ฆน๏ผ้ฃไฝไปๆฅๆฒกๆๆญฃ้ขๅบๅบ่ฟ็็้ฟๅญใไปๆฏๆๆๅๆฌข็้ฃไธ็ฑปไบบ๏ผ้ฃๅ็ผ็ผ๏ผๅ ๆปกไบ่ดฃไปปๆ๏ผๆ็่ฌๅ็้ๆฅๅ็ญ็็็ๆณ๏ผ่ฝ็ถๆปๆฏๅ ไธบ่ฟไบไน่งๅๅคฉ็่ๅคฑ่ดฅ๏ผไฝไธไบบๅดๆฐธ่ฟไธไผๅ ไธบไปไปฌ็ๅคฑ่ดฅ่้ไฝๅฏนไปไปฌ็ๅฐๆฌใๅไธๅนดๅ็้ฃ็พคไบบๆฏๅด็ป็่งๆฏ็ฆน่่ฎพๅฎๅบๆฅ็๏ผๅฟ ่ฏใไฟกๅฟตๅๆ ไนๆฏๆไธบไปไปฌ็ฒ่ดด็ๆ ็ญพใไน่ฎธ่ฟๆ ท็่ฎพๅฎๅพ็้ขๅไธ๏ผไธๅคไธฐๆปก๏ผไฝๅดไฝฟๆดๆฌไนฆ่กๆ็ๅบ่ฐไธ้ฃไนๆฆๆ๏ผไฟ็ไบๆไบฎ๏ผไฟ็ไบๆธฉๆใๅ ไธบๅจๆฌ่ดจไธ๏ผๆๅนถไธๆณๅไธไธชๆ้ป็ใๅ ๆปกไบไบบๆงๅคๆ้ข็ๆ ไบ๏ผๆ่ฟๆฒกๆ้ฃๆ ท็้ ๅๅๆทฑๅบฆใ
The earliest character to be born was Xiao Jingyu, that eldest son of the emperor who had never appeared in person. He is of the type of person that I most admire, brilliant, burning bright and filled with a strong sense of responsibility, overflowing with the vitality of youth and intense passion for their ideals. Despite a tendency toward failure due to their over-optimism and naivete, the world will never lose an ounce of respect for them because of such a failure. That group of people from thirteen years ago were designed with him at the center of it all. Their loyalty and devotion, their faith and their love were the tags with which I had labelled them. Perhaps such character traits are quite one dimensional, making for characters who are insufficiently well-developed, but it's because of these that the theme of this novel is not so dark and grim. Light is preserved, warmth is preserved, because fundamentally, I did not want to write a dark story filled with the complexities of human nature. I do not yet have the requisite life experience and depth.
i feel like a reason lotsa people identify as aromantic is the sheer amatonormativity present in our society today. we are being told that romantic attraction is supposed to look like This. those who don't feel romantic attraction like This thus feel no connection to romance as it is understood in our society. if i had a word i could use to identify the attraction i feel, i would use it. but society has deemed that romantic attraction is This and This only, so now i have no choice but to feel aromantic. does this make sense
i was talking with a friend a bit ago about how ultimately the line between aspec and non-aspec is more of a political decision made by the person using the label (or not) than it is a reflection of true reality. my experiences with attraction are in many ways similar to my friend's, but only i consider it to be an aspec experience. inherently, aspec identities are defined against a norm that doesn't exist. the spectrum of aspec to not is undefinable because there is no real upper limit; there is no Attractions Georg who is The Most Allo and definable against. as a result, there is a level of needing to decide what you're trying to Say with your label when you take it. are you describing yourself against normative romance (arospec)? or are you describing romance in non-normative ways (not arospec)? i feel like talk about how sexuality isn't a choice isn't 100% accurate when discussing allo/aspec differences--while you can't choose your experiences, you in many cases do have to choose the lens through which you filter them.
VIETNAM HAS MOSS FROGS.
THEY LIVE IN MOSS.
THEY ARE CUTE AS FUCK!
Thank you for coming to my ted talk. Now lets go live the way of the moss frog.
