existentialvoidofexistence

[existentialvoidofexistence]

“Normal” test results are not the relief people think they are. When you wake up in pain and continue to be in pain for hours every day and your tests come back normal you don’t stop being in pain.

[existentialvoidofexistence]

"Florida native Neill Holland became a charter captain at age 18. In 2015, after traveling internationally for a decade, he returned to St. Petersburg, Florida, to resume his fishing charter operation with his partner Danielle Dawley. 

Time and again on their charters, Dawley and Holland came across derelict traps, also known as ghost traps. 

Ghost traps are fishing traps that have been swept away in storms and currents or simply abandoned over time. 

Once lost, these rusted traps often pose risks to coral reefs below and passing boats above — all while trapping and killing marine life that die long before they are pulled to the surface. 

Those decaying fish, in turn, attract more sea animals into the trap, starting the cycle anew.

After ghost traps continued cropping up in their day-to-day, Dawley and Holland founded Ocean Aid 360: a conservation organization that works with fishing industry professionals, community volunteers, and government agencies to find, retrieve, and recycle marine debris — including ghost traps.

Their most popular program? Ghost trap rodeos: fishing tournaments that reward entrants for salvaging abandoned fishing gear.

“We started in October of 2018 through a grant from NOAA, which enabled us to hold seven tournament-style marine debris events around Tampa Bay,” Holland told the Port Charlotte Sun in mid-July. 

“In that first year, our target was 15,000 pounds of marine debris. We ended up collecting 27,000 pounds, and had fabulous numbers of community members coming out to participate,” he said. 

“Since then, we’ve worked all over Florida and the Bahamas, with more than 60 event days and about 60,000 pounds of marine debris collected — including more than 8,200 derelict traps.”

The latest ghost trap rodeo — hosted on July 19 — pulled in 4,000 pounds of trash, including 128 ‘ghost traps,’ from the Tampa Bay. 

Two minutes into the event, Holland was already reeling in a ghost trap. 

“This is a textbook example of a derelict crab trap,” Holland told the Tampa Bay Times. “It’s been left out, and as you can see it’s pretty darn crusty and rusted.”

Holland estimates that 10% of all traps placed in the water become ghost traps.

“It’s a recurring problem here, and we really have to stay on top of it,” said Peter Clark, the president and founder of Tampa Bay Watch —  one of many local organizations that helped host the ghost trap rodeo competition.

“We’re helping to protect fish and wildlife, we’re taking marine debris out of the bay, and it’s a great project to get the community involved to help restore and protect Tampa Bay.”

-via GoodGoodGood, July 28, 2025

[existentialvoidofexistence]

dislike how many mental health posts on here are just "you've never done anything wrong in your life ever and they were evil for that"

[existentialvoidofexistence]

“I hate school I’m sorry Malala”- Funny yet poignant. Acknowledges both the difficulty of the task and the fact that doing that task is a privilege. Gives credit to the people who fought for that privilege with a tongue in cheek acknowledgement of the irony of the initial statement

“I’m just a girl I should be home baking bread not doing calculus” - at best historically uninformed at worst leaps decades back in time. Refusal to acknowledge the charged history of education and slights the centuries of women’s labor it took to reach this point

[existentialvoidofexistence]

[existentialvoidofexistence]

Bows vs slingshots vs slings: which is which, and when is one better than the other?

[existentialvoidofexistence]

Yasmin Benoit at Washington DC 50th anniversary pride

[existentialvoidofexistence]

Legitimately can not stop saying "The Muffin Man" like this

[existentialvoidofexistence]

for anyone in the UK, needing to access discord and unable or unwilling to provide an ID:

[existentialvoidofexistence]

I think now that queens dead they should have her stuffed and put on display in Cairo for the next 150 years.

[existentialvoidofexistence]

Do y’all know about Frédéric Thomas? He is a French parasitologist who heard a story about crickets in New Zealand leaping into the water even though they can’t swim, and immediately speculated this suicidal behavior was related to behavior manipulation from an internal parasite. This is before neuro-parasitology was a field at all, and before people really put much stock into parasite’s ability to control animal behavior.

Thomas was certain that studying these crickets would be a huge priority for the scientific world given the implications of a parasite controlling an animal’s actions in such an insidious way. Unfortunately, absolutely nobody would fund Thomas’ expedition to study the crickets, and his grants were all declined. In a wild move that showcases the balls to the wall, near- insanity level passion of a biologist, Thomas declared a hunger strike and wrote a letter to the president of France saying he would not eat until someone took the matter seriously and funded his study on the suicidal crickets. I feel like those of us in research can at least a little bit understand this impulse.

Well the French government actually got Thomas’ message and freaked out a bit at the negative publicity that could arise from a crazy worm scientist starving to death. So they send some government bigwigs to the university to pressure Thomas and his department heads into calling an end to the hunger strike. In the flurry of attention that resulted from this, a Swiss billionaire heard about Thomas’ plight and offered to partially fund the study. The French government was happy to get rid of Thomas and contributed funding as well so that Thomas could head to New Zealand to study his suicidal crickets. He was right about the parasites causing the behavior!

The hunger strike debacle is not even the wildest part of this story. I love biology so much

[existentialvoidofexistence]

song of the summer (via muco_0 on tiktok)

[existentialvoidofexistence]

tbh my hot take is that a lot of people are obnoxiously weird about feet and its usually not the people that have foot fetishes

[existentialvoidofexistence]

I FORGOT I WAS WEARING MY MILF PATROL SHIRT FUCK THATS WHY PEOPLE ARE STARING AT ME TODAY

[existentialvoidofexistence]

I love love love saying "I scavenged a working microwave in the boylands" but nobody ever knows the reference and it breaks my heart

[existentialvoidofexistence]

[existentialvoidofexistence]