weaselle

[weaselle]

actually i want the tags included

#in the long term. but they feel so similar in the short term

#like in the moment they both feel like you don't care about it anymore with some relief and an ability to focus on other things in your life

#but when that thing runs its whole orbit out in the dark and arrives back in the center of your attention later in life

#it arrives with the full force of the decade or two you've been walking with that particular pebble in your shoe

#and you find yourself thinking “i'd rather chew my own foot off than have to take one more step onto that little fucking rock again istfg”

#made all the worse by the fact you've not given yourself any compassion or accommodation about it

#like you haven't said to yourself it's okay you walked less miles than you needed to walk today - after all you have a pebble in your shoe

#and you haven't used a cane or taken foot-resting breaks or anything in fact you've just been doing your best to not even limp

#so instead of not letting the pebble bother me i've just been doing things in a way in the way guaranteed to make the pebble bother me most

#like walking normally on a foot with a pebble in its shoe

#and i think i've got like#several miscellaneous shoe pebbles going on down there at this point smh

There have been several things in my everyday life that i have just, "decided to not let bother me". And that seemed to work really well for me. Like, well if i can't seem to change that then i guess i'll just accept the fact that i'm a person whose life is like that, and be at peace with it.

years later i'm finding out that while i thought i was not letting it bother me, what i was actually doing was ignoring that it was bothering me the whole time. And, wow, are those two things different.

[weaselle]

here's the thing, if i go to bed before my brain is feeling just right for sleeping, i run a high risk of falling into a headspace that makes sleep impossible and causes me to lie awake and stressed for hours.

Right, so if the risk is that i'll lie awake miserable for 5 hours of my night, it actually makes more sense for me to stay up 3 hours past when i can get enough sleep, if those 3 hours maneuver my brain into sleep mode.

It makes MORE sense to sit in bed reading until 2 am, than go to bed at 10pm. That's what my busted brain has learned and the worst part is it's not really wrong.

because if i lay quiet in the dark at 10pm and trigger the Bed Time Angst i'll be awake and miserable until 3:55 am before finally falling asleep only to be woken up two hours later by my alarm

whereas if i stay up reading until 2am when my brain says "fine i can drop off steady and fast without Feeling the Focus on the Terrible Things or getting hung up on Why Am I Not Already Sleeping? then i actually get twice as much sleep ... and 90% less stress and misery.

Like, how am i supposed to argue with my brain when it's math checks out?

[weaselle]

Helloo, I just found your blog and it brings me great joy. Have you done a post on epaulette shark facts yet? They are my favourite 🥺

Hemiscyllium ocellatum // Epaulette Shark

Thank you so much! Epaulette sharks are one of my favorite sharks too, it's been a while since I did a post on them, so here we go!

Probably the most interesting fact about Epaulette sharks is that they can walk on land.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they can move and survive on land for up to an hour!

These sharks have evolved the ability to undulate their pectoral and pelvic fins in a way that allows them to "walk" across surfaces. Their musculature and skeletal system is different from most other sharks, allowing them to lift and move their body even without the help of buoyancy underwater. They can regulate their breathing and heart rate to survive in these low oxygen conditions.

You might be wondering why these sharks do this. When the tide lowers, there are small pockets of water that larger predators cannot access. During these periods, they have less competition when hunting and additionally don't have to worry about their own predators such as other sharks and groupers. Hunting prey also becomes easier when the prey has nowhere to go.

There are nine species of this "walking shark" and they can be found in Indonesia, Australia, and Papa New Guinea. These sharks can grow up to 107 cm (42.1 in) long and eat primarily small fish, crustaceans, and polychaete worms.

[weaselle]

often this feeling can be solved for me by something that sounds gross but it contains all the Secret Things you might be craving:

diced tomato in mayonnaise.

first of all, inb4, mayo is just olive oil and an egg yolk or two in a blender with either some lemon juice or some vinegar. Usually also some salt and maybe a bit of mustard powder or dijon. So it's not like, a terrible gross thing to have on a tomato. Hell, ranch dressing is like 50% mayonnaise with the other 50% being mostly buttermilk, so.

just stir a big spoon of mayo into a small bowl of diced tomato. It has acids, it has sugars, it has vitamins, it has fats, it has salt (you can add a little more salt if you want) It has everything and you only need a few bites of it and then your body will sort of stop stomping on the hunger gas enough for you to figure out where it's trying to drive you

one night in my late teens i was wandering through the kitchen looking on every shelf in every cupboard and checking the fridge over and over and my mom taught this trick to me, as her mother had taught it to her

These days just thinking about eating it will make my brain react to part of it, like "oh yeah, gimme that rich fatty food" or "finally! yes, that feels like it would cure scurvy" or whatever and the reaction is enough to send me after a burger or a fruit salad or an icecream bar or a glass of lemonade etc

i need to eat a food. none of the food in the house is The Right Food. what is the right food? only god knows. and we're not on speaking terms right now.

[weaselle]

White collar crime? Nah, spiked collar crime. As soon as I figure out how to get off this leash I'm gonna start biting people.

[weaselle]

you certainly CAN put a price on that!

for example, i bet you ten dollars your next next project will be something you don't want to do but agree to do anyway, then you'll quit before it's finished and lie about quitting it because you're desperately afraid of disappointing the friends that knew you were (intending on) working on it... but not until you've spent several weeks meaning to respond to a text from them asking about it. Ten dollars. See? putting a price on that is easy

source: takes one to know one

Not only did mama raise a quitter, but she also raised a procrastinator, people-pleaser, doormat, coward, and liar, and you can’t put a price on that

[weaselle]

modern canary in your hot ass coal mine of a car warning you it's dangerous in there

[weaselle]

[weaselle]

please do me a favor and look up "dovekie" on your nearest image searching tool at your earliest convenience. for me. thankyou.

[weaselle]

im not fucking joking i just found a women want me fish fear me hat on the ground

[weaselle]

Osmia avosetta: these solitary bees place their eggs in colorful nesting capsules that they build using flower petals, nectar, and mud

Osmia avosetta is a very rare species of mason bee that was just discovered about 16 years ago. These are solitary bees, meaning that they don't form colonies or live together in hives; each female builds her own nest instead, placing her eggs in a small batch of enclosed brood capsules and then burying the capsules in burrows and other cavities.

Each capsule contains a single egg, along with enough pollen and nectar to sustain the larva until it reaches adulthood.

Above: the photo at the top shows a capsule that was made by Osmia avosetta, and the image at the bottom shows several capsules buried in the ground at a nesting site in Turkey

Osmia avosetta builds its nesting capsules with petals from the flowers Onobrychis vicilifolia or Hedysarum elymaiticum (depending on the region). The bee uses its mandibles to trim the petals and then carries each of the pieces back to its nesting site, where the petals are carefully folded together and then formed into several small, rounded capsules. Nectar and mud are both used to "glue" the petals together.

As this article describes:

Both practical and beautiful, the mother bee first sources the perfect petals and brings them back to her nest site. She then digs a 1.5 cm-deep burrow and lays down multiple layers of overlapping petals and mud. After filling the nest with nutritious pollen and nectar, she then lays her precious egg on top. Finally, she seals the cell by folding the scale-like petals inwards and plugging the hole with mud. While the exterior drys like a hard shell, the interior stays humid, allowing a cozy environment for the larvae to grow and mature as they wait out the winter.

Above: the inside of a nesting capsule, with a tiny egg resting atop a glob of pollen and nectar

The finished capsules are a colorful, delicate patchwork of pink, purple, blue, and yellow flower petals.

This species was first discovered and described in 2009. Two separate research teams in two different countries actually discovered the species on the very same day; one team discovered it at a site in Turkey while the other discovered it in Iran, and the two teams then published their findings together in a single paper.

Above: more capsules from the nesting site in Turkey

Osmia avosetta has scarcely been documented in the 16 years that have passed since its discovery, and the research that has been published on this species primarily focuses on the nesting behavior. There are very few photos of the actual bees themselves.

Above: Osmia bee from Turkey

The photos of the nesting capsules are pretty stunning, though.

There are several other mason bees that use flower petals and/or leaves to line their nests, and bees of the family Megachilidae are also known to engage in a similar behavior, as I explained in my previous post about petalcutter and leafcutter bees.

Sources & More Info:

My Modern Met: Rare Bee Species Makes Colorful Nests from Flower Petals

NPR: Busy Bees Use Flower Petals for Nest Wallpaper

American Museum Novitates: Nests, Petal Usage, Floral Preferences, and Immatures of Osmia avosetta, Including Biological Comparisons with Other Osmiine Bees

Acta Scientific Agriculture: Nature's Architects: Exploring the Biology, Behavior, and Pollination Impact of Mason Bees

[weaselle]

the Dovekie, also known as a Little Auk, could be a snapshot of what penguins might have been like back when they could still fly.

This is the Great Auk - we killed them all in the 1700s and 1800s

which was, clearly, flightless, and which used to also be called a Pinguin (still known as genus: Pinguinis species: Impennis) and the existence of this bird is a big part of why we call Penguins, well, Penguins. They are not closely related to penguins, but are very similar to penguins through convergent evolution - meaning similar lifestyles in similar conditions makes similar creatures even if they are not genetically similar.

as Great Auks became more and more rare in the 1800s, their eggs and skins and feathers became ever more collectible, fetching higher and higher prices.

even while they were being killed off for their monetary value (and i would bet also to destabilize the indigenous populations that relied on a sustainable association with the Greak Auk, similar to why all the buffalo were slaughtered) but even in the early 1800s there were conservation efforts (people really have been trying to get the world to stop killing off all the species for a long time). Conservationists tried start Great Auk breeding programs and everything.

On 3 June 1844, the last two confirmed specimens were killed by poachers, ending the last known breeding attempt.

they are survived by their sister species, the Little Auks pictured in the op, but there are also many other types of auks, which includes the well known Puffin

and behold another auk, the Marbled Murrelet

the Common Murre

and of course the Rhinoceros Auklet

as well as Cassin's Auklet, which wikipedia describes as "a small, chunky seabird"

plus like 20 other species of auk, which are all pursuing penguin-adjacent evolutionary paths and give us a look at what penguins might have gone through to get where they are today

please do me a favor and look up "dovekie" on your nearest image searching tool at your earliest convenience. for me. thankyou.

[weaselle]

We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.

[weaselle]

[weaselle]

[weaselle]

damage type: psychic weakness: rain

[weaselle]