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Fonthill Castle

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Ancient Order of Druids, the first significant fraternal order of druids, formed in London in 1781

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Everything I’ve Ever Let Go Of Has Claw Marks On It

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Rhizocarpon superficiale

Superficial map lichen

OK before you get excited and start telling me that you see this lichen all the time, just keep in mind that there are multiple neon-green and yellow Rhizocarpon lichens out there, and they are super tricky to distinguish from one another. In the case of R. superficiale, chemical tests and microscopy of the apothecia are necessary to differentiate it from myriad look-alikes. It's a nightmare, but a beautiful nightmare, at least. This particular dude grows on siliceous rocks in Arctic-Alpine regions of Europe and North America. It has a crustose, areolate thallus of neon yellow-green interspersed with black, angular apothecia, all surrounded by a black prothallus. It has 1-septate, pigmented spores, and contains rhizocarpic and norstictic acid.

images: source

info: source | source

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red sox tape pedro to the dugout pole. '99

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Young girl, dressed in yếm and wearing nón Ba tầm, chewing betel, Hanoi, today's Vietnam, photographed by Léon Busy, 1921

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Edgar Maxence (1871–1954), A Bacchante. Pastel, watercolor and ink over pencil on paper.

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Billie Holiday photographed by Roy DeCarava, 1952

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Tuira Kayapó brandished her machete in the face of a government official who was trying to convince indigenous leaders to accept a mega-dam project in the Amazon, 1989

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I reread the 1995 interview of Leonard by Anjelica Huston this morning. There is so much wisdom in this conversation between friends. At one point in the interview Anjelica asks Leonard “Do you think love can last?” More than a hundred months have passed since he died and yet I continue to be guided by Leonard’s “voice”.

HUSTON: Do you think love can last?

COHEN: I think love lasts. I think it’s the nature of love to last. I think it’s eternal, but I think we don’t know what to do with it much of the time. Because of its eternal and powerful and mysterious qualities, our panicked responses to it are inappropriate and often tragic. But the thing itself, when it can be appropriately assimilated into the landscape of panic, is the only redeeming possibility for human beings.

HUSTON: Why do you think it is that when we fall in love, our mouths become dry and we shake and our hearts beat too loud and we’re fools?

COHEN: Because we are awakening from the dream of isolation, from the dream of loneliness, and it’s a terrible shock, you know? It’s a delicious, terrible shock that none of us knows what to do with. Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn’t seem to prepare people. With all the songs about love and all the movies and all the books, there doesn’t seem to be any way that we can prepare the human heart for this experience. Maybe we, the cultural workers like you and I, could apply ourselves. We’re not going to resolve it in this moment or even in this generation, but perhaps as some kind of agenda we could invite our writers and cultural workers to address the problem a little more responsibly, because people are suffering tremendously from a want of data. The psychologists are valiantly trying to provide us with answers, the religious people are trying to provide us with answers. I think it properly falls on the cultural workers to investigate this predicament with a little less concern for the marketplace and a little more concern for their higher calling.

[Interview Magazine]

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📷 Jarkko Pallaspuro

Marine Iguana

@ Floreana Island, Galapagos Island, Ecuador 19.9.2024

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Female scorpion devouring her male partner

French vintage postcard

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“The Abduction” (c. 15th century) by Unknown Artist ☀ The moment between earth and elsewhere, caught forever

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"No one is illegal"

Pasteup spotted in Fort Wayne, Indiana

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John Waters, 1980

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I should clarify the Aquarium holds a Voyages show regularly and partners local Baltimore artists with scientist(s) that seem a good fit - recent performances included an evening focusing on feedback loops with a team of local experimental musicians led by Dan Deacon, and a focus on adaptation and environmentalism led by drag queen Evon Dior Michelle. So not always with Submersive Productions, but this year was our turn! We partnered with the Johnsen Laboratory for Sensory Biology at Duke led by Dr. Sönke Johnsen, author of Into the Great Wide Ocean.

Good morning Baltimore

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Is there beef with the Holstein cows and you or what was that joke lol

It's kind of wild It's just never come up on this blog before, but I HATE holsteins. Bottom 10 cow breeds for me. I hate how they're so common they account for the majority of milk produced. I hate that they're the "default" cow to the point where some don't even know cattle HAVE other colors. I hate their tiny horns (IF THEY EVEN HAVE THAT. LOSER ASS HORNLESS COW) and their painfully massive udders.

Legit I'm trying so hard to not launch into a No Mouth Must Scream style AM speech-- shoot my hand slipped.

(AM speech about why i dont like holsteins below the cut)

For starters, I have to give a brief lesson on what these terms mean; the "Holstein" is the American strain of the "Frisian" breed. Frisians are an ancient breed from Frisia, in the north of what we now consider the Netherlands. Crosses between the breeds are "Holstein-Frisians."

(There’s even more to this but im keeping it as simple as possible. Also one of my friends is Frisian and she is probably going to kill me for describing it like that.)

Historically, livestock was adapted to the environment they lived in. Frisians were bred by the Frisii people for hundreds of years in extremely grass-rich, lush, flat environments. The "polders" of the northern parts of the Netherlands. They're huge and eat a LOT of food.

Traditional Frisians were developed to produce as much meat and milk from a single individual as possible, without compromising the health of the cattle with constant inbreeding to get quick gains. We are talking about a breed that is over 2000 years old. They had the perfect environment to make The Ultimate Food Cow and by god they did it. I can respect that.

So, take that, drag it across an ocean to a place that does NOT have polders, and add the rapid enshittification of capitalism to it. BAM you've got a fucking holstein.

There is ONE goal for "improving" the holstein. Make More Milk. As long as the black and white milkbag leaks enough, nothing else matters. Health? Fertility? Feed ratio? Ability to not die of infection? WHO CARES. MILK LINE GO UP.

Over 90% of holsteins are inbred to start with, because Milk Line Go Up. To the tune of having an average COI of 8%-- where extreme negative effects (think Hapsburgs) start to crop up around 10%

Holstein bulls are aggressive bastards (many dairy bulls are), so no one wants to keep intact males in their herds, meaning most cows are artificially inseminated

Not being limited by the natural lifespan of a living bull means that the same stud can keep having direct offspring for decades after his death

Toystory the bull had 500,000 calves before he died, and hit over 1 million offspring in 2015. That's ONE animal and to put this in perspective, there are 9 million holsteins in the US.

DON'T WORRY IT GETS WORSE

Not only can 99% of holsteins be traced back to just two bulls-- 99% of male holsteins share one of two exact Y chromosomes with those two bulls.

The gene pool is so small that it's equivalent to about 60 individuals. Warrior Cat allegiances are larger than that. That's barely bigger than modern ThunderClan.

"Massive lack of genetic diversity" does not begin to capture the existential dread of this situation. Mark my words, WATCH, when the Bird Flu finally mutates a strain that rips through a mammalian population, it's gonna be in the USA and it's going to be through our dairy cattle.

This is not prophecy or me laying a curse on the land, this is the natural consequence of basing the stability of US milk production on the equivalent of 9 million clones of two classrooms worth of individuals, and then packing them in close quarters

And we don't have to wait for doomsday for the impacts to be apparent on the cattle themelves

Holstein fertility has also dropped by half since the 1960s when the intensive inbreeding really kicked into high gear

Because their whole body is dedicating all of their resources to milk production, they have a notoriously "bony" frame.

Show judges, however, like this because they think that's a very "feminine" look for a 1600 pound ruminant. Very normal thing to think.

Like. I don't know if i can communicate this to people who don't look at cows a lot (it's not quite as obviously dramatic as a pug skull) but here is a comparison of an "ideal" show holstein and an "unselected" holstein from a herd that's been established as a sort of "control group" for what they looked like back in the 1960s;

The way that the artery on the "modern" cow's belly runs to the udder like a big pink worm freaks me out the most ngl

The udder also bulges out from between the back legs

The show cow is so thin

And then compare these both to a Holstein-Frisian cross who leans more on the Frisian side;

Proper weight, developed legs. Its biggest "problem" is actually just the udder shape-- deep udders, which "hang" low like that, aren't optimal for milk-focused breeds because the higher away from the ground the less chance there is of infection. In that department, the "unselected" holstein clearly outclasses the holstein-frisian.

But it probably won't be surprising to hear that the "show holstein," with its massive, swollen udder, is SUPER prone to infections such as mastitis.

But it is also just more prone to getting sick generally

And, to keep up with these insane demands, holsteins need a TON of food. You aren't going to just turn these things out into a pasture and be done with it. Even its ancestor the Frisian needed premium Dutch polder grass to be such a good cow-- crank that up to 11 with these Monuments to Humanity's Hubrice

The Texas Longhorn developed in semi-feral conditions and can eat a bush to become the best thing in a 10 mile radius. The Scottish Highland was iron-forged in upland moors with a steady diet of turf and rain.

Meanwhile if a Holstein has less than 5 homemade meals a day without poland spring bottled water it will die to death.

And the WORST part? You have to use these if you want to make money in dairy farming. It's WAAY too expensive to just run a suboptimal farm. Their milk isn't great, but they sure do make a lot of it.

...so Holsteins and Holstein-Frisians (and other "super efficient" breeds) have absolutely decimated heritage cattle. The American Milking Devon is a deep reddish brown with gorgeous horns and low maintenance; rare. Randall Linebacks are painted with lines of white speckles down the back and can be used for any purpose; critically endangered. The Niata was a pug-faced cow who could fight jaguars; extinct.

And THAT'S what makes me hate them most of all. I LOVE cows, but whenever I see a reference to one, it's a holstein. It's always boring black and white splotches with big pink udders. They're practically synonymous with "cow" when their homogeniety is actually hiding much cooler breeds from you.

Did you know cows can be tiger-striped?

And that England has its own type of longhorn?

Or that cow horns can twist upwards like an antelope?

And that they can have REALLY LONG ears?

And that they can be blue?

And that's not even getting into some of the cows that have gotten a small crumb of attention lately, such as Highlands, Ankole-Watusi, and Texas Longhorns. There's so many cool cows out there! And they're all really different from holsteins! MOST of them are also a lot healthier and produce tastier milk and meat!

TL;DR yeah i don't like holsteins and I like sniping at them. For reasons both legit and petty.