probably-a-real-lichen

[probably-a-real-lichen]

1 year ago today (July 19th)

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Landlord wants the grass cut in the middle of a heat wave ohh my god THE GRASS KEEPS THINGS COOL

our yard has more fireflies out of the entire neighborhood, it attracts flycatchers and several insectivorous species I fucking hate lawn culture so much

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The three kinds of bird species name

1. God’s Specialist Little Boy

2. Hot Breasted Milf

3. Grey Bird With Brown Head

4. Walter’s Fingernail

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Don’t forget your brother

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some garden pics

one of my purple tree collards (naked due to torment by bugs)

Purple passionflower heads may have spotted the cameo in the tree collard pic -- one of several that i got climbing up the fence with the hope that they take over

my lazy egyptian walking onion bed

lonely slender stinging nettles due to low germination rates

illinois bundleflower! their little leaves have closed up for the evening

hatch chile and habanero factory

more purple passionflowers i haven't deployed yet, as well as the remaining tomato seedlings from last years cherokee purple seed

NOT PICTURED: 10000 grocery store cherry tomato volunteers due to a composting mishap, 5 beautiful cherokee purples, 2 big blueberry bushes, and the horseradish corner

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Rolled-leaf orbweaver, Poltys cf. idae, Araneidae

Photographed in Malaysia by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

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every year I post this meme and every year people get more mad at me than they did the previous year

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well, when in loam 🪱

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Speef is real to me. I'm sorry for that.

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thanks for the comments and asks saying i'm being mean for very mildly saying i don't like when people make social decisions based on horoscopes.

your behavior has made me realize i should be "meaner": horoscopes are fake.

the position of planets and balls of gas did not in any way impact your personality or destiny. it has nothing to do with what kind of people you are compatible with, despite what an app or magazine told you.

i think sincere belief in horoscopes shows a concerning propensity to trust pseudoscience and a susceptibility to confirmation bias.

i'm pretty tired of having to tiptoe around this kind of thing and include disclaimers. if you genuinely think you shouldn't be friends with someone because of the date they came out of a uterus, you're being a clown.

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"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

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whos the most wretched no good scoundrel wizard of each century and which one would win in a fight

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY BRACKET: A lot of ancient sources are poorly dated, so I tried to pick the most conclusive numbers I could. Like half of these guys might not have existed at all.

1st century - Atomus, Cypriot magician mentioned in Antiquities of The Jews. According to Josephus, he was the magician that Antonius Felix hired to cast some sort of love spell.

2nd century - Apsethus the Lybian. Mentioned in Refutation of All Heresies. Told people he was god. Trained parrots to say "Apsethus is God." Died when the Lybians burned him alive.

3rd century - Zosimos of Panopolis. Notably had an arch-rival, another alchemist named Nilos.

4th century - St. Cyprian the Magician. Probably didn't exist. Supposedly sent demons to torture people.

5th century - Hypatia. Not a wizard per se but was lynched by Christians for being a pagan philosopher and I think that should count for something.

MEDIEVAL BRACKET: Very little concrete information survives from this era. A lot of the people on this list are only here because they are the only person from their century who could reasonably be called an occultist.

6th century - We are hitting the dark ages its hard to name people from this period. I can't name an occultist who was conclusively alive in this period, its a bit of a gap.

7th century - Maybe Khalid ibn Yazid but its very possible that the alchemical works attributed to him are done falsely.

8th century - Jabir ibn Hayyan, but he was multiple people writing alchemical doxography under one name.

9th century - Abu Bakr al-Razi. But lets be real he was barely an occultist he was more like a science teacher who happened to be alive in the 9th century. His work is pretty anti-esoteric.

10th century - Ibn Umayl. One of the only people alive in the 10th century who could be called an occultist.

11th century - Al Tughrai. Same difference. Also translated Zoismos.

12th century - Sir Michael Scott. The Scottish mathematician and alchemist.

13th century - Roger Bacon. Only gets the spot because I think he could beat up Albertus Magnus and Pietro D'abano who were both weak as fuck monks.

14th century - Nicholas Flamel. Weak as fuck scribe but most of the other occultists in this century were burned at the stake.

RENAISSANCE BRACKET - Lots more to choose from here, but we are still in weak as fuck monk territory.

15th century - Paracelsus. Infamously feisty, and could definitely kick Johannes Trithemius's ass.

16th century - Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Was literally a mercenary who fought in wars. Uncontested winner of his century.

ENLIGHTENMENT BRACKET - Way way way way more to choose from here. Newton is a wildcard for this era but I decided to chose more solid picks.

17th century - Jacob Bruce. Was a general for Peter the Great. Could definitely beat Fludd and Ashmole in a fight.

18th century - Count of St. Germain. Very little real information about him, but I suspect he is scrappy enough to beat Swedenborg.

19th century - Grigori Rasputin. Legendarily difficult to kill.

MODERNITY BRACKET

20th century - Rudolph Hess. Nazi occultist who worked out and took a lot of amphetamines.

21st century - Genesis P-Orridge. I have no doubt they could take Jodorowsky.

FINAL VERDICT

In my mind its a toss up between Agrippa, Hess, and Rasputin. Hess was trained in combat, but he's nervous and flighty. Rasputin was infamously difficult to kill, but I don't know how good his offense would be. Agrippa was also trained in combat, and was famously scrappy and clever, but is the weakest physical specimen of the three.

I think ultimately, given his sheer record of indestructibility, Rasputin takes the whole cake.

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Playable race who, in complete defiance of fantasy races being long-lived entities living for centuries, has a lifespan of 2 hours, during which they are born, rapidly grow up, bear children asexually and then die of old age.

­This is how elves think humans work

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Why do robins lay blue eggs? It seems kinda counterintuitive to have brightly visible eggs that are easily seen by predators.

it's so they can recognize their own eggs!

a predator really won't be able to see the eggs in the first place unless it's already found the nest, meaning it's going to find those eggs anyway at that point, so robins made their eggs a brilliant sky blue as an adaptation against brood parasitism.

brood parasitism can be a major concern for songbirds, because it means that parent birds will raise an unrelated species instead of their own offspring, and this may be the only breeding season they get if they're unlucky.

(note that cowbirds and cuckoos are NOT EVIL, this is just nature!)

BUT BACK TO ROBINS:

one of these is a cowbird egg, can you tell which?

SO CAN THE ROBINS. that little sucker is getting yeetus the fetus'd as soon as mom or dad returns from foraging and finds a weird little not-blue egg in the nest.

which is just another reason why robins are so successful! we're knee deep in these suckers every spring and summer because they are in fact, VERY good at being birds.

bop bop.