#soil nutrient mapping

[farmerstrend]

Why Most Kenyan Farmers Are Still Farming Blind: The Untold Problem of Soil Ignorance

Kenya’s agriculture is under pressure due to poor soil data and outdated fertiliser practices. Learn why digital soil testing and mapping could be the key to sustainable farming. There is a hidden crisis beneath our feet. Kenya’s agricultural potential is widely celebrated, yet beneath this promise lies a hidden crisis. Our soils are under pressure, and we don’t know them well enough to nurture…

[bonefall]

Ok, im back with more names. The bog was hard to find, so I’m basing it off of the area of Carrington Moss, which is in the area I think BB takes place if I’m reading the maps right

Also bc we’re talking about Shadowclan

Ok, so the names

First of all: Fen, Bog, Mire, and Peat, all names for this biome. There’s also marls, a rock found in the area

Again, I’ll only be using names I don’t remember being in the series (the obvious one being moss. It’s all moss)

Asphodel (bog asphodel), rosemary (bog rosemary), cranberry, cotton (cotton sedge), blackberry, bluebell, foxglove, iris, a plant called Mad-dog weed, also known as a water-plantain, admiral (red admiral), pipit (meadow pipit), partridge (gray partridge, but very rare) bullfinch, and bunting (reed bunting)

Close but you're a bit off-- Carrington Moss is, confusingly, an example of a moorland!

Specifically it is a lowland peat bog. Upland peat, lowland peat, blanket bog, dune heath, upland heath, lowland heath, maritime heath... all of these biomes are completely different, but all of them are referred to as moorlands.

Also, those names for the biome are not interchangeable. Those all have more specific meanings;

Fen: An alkaline wetland. Fed by fresh groundwater or runoff, these biomes are a lot richer in nutrients and the water is higher in oxygen. Because of this, they often have a much larger diversity of plant and animal species. Fens can sometimes become bogs over time.

Bog: An acidic wetland Thick moss, lots of dead matter, mostly a result of still water building up over many many years. Since the water is low in oxygen, you won't find many fish in these, and generally bogs are home to specialists who can handle the conditions.

Mire: Wet, muddy land that's hard to walk on Only synonymous with "bog" if you're using it in the informal sense of "being bogged down," not in the ecological sense-- a bog is a mire, but not all mires are bogs. You could have a mire made out of glue, tar, or caramel, if you were writing a really cool fantasy series.

Peat: A dark brown material formed from partially decayed plant matter. Essentially what happens when the top layer of moss or grass dies in a really wet place, is quickly grown-over by living plants, and then rots slowly underneath. A VERY important component of a bog, extremely useful as fuel.

For ShadowClan I'm actually modelling wetlands in and around Delamere Forest, specifically, because I ran into the issue you did of the British-English dialect having a lot of "overlap" in region names and scientific terms. If you want to go scouring for cool prefixes to suggest, you can check out Blakemere Moss, Black Lake, Mouldsworth Gap, and Abbots Moss.

Most of the plants you mentioned still grow here, though! Some other fun prefixes I've been thinking of though;

Lime (type of tree, no relation to citrus!)

Linden (another name for lime, which there are two types of)

Sphagnum (Important type of moss)

Snipe (type of bird that picks up its babies and flies away with them)

Coot (funny name bird)

Chaser (type of dragonfly)

Podzol (ashy soil found in places where plant decomposition is inhibited)

Quiver or Quake (Describing the movement of thick moss that has formed over the surface of stillwater, Q is a really rare letter in WC names)

Vetch (Common type of plant with a name I think is really cool)

Nymph (Baby dragonfly)

Skater, Skimmer, or Strider (Bug that hunts by gliding across the surface of water)

[olowan-waphiya]

The ancient Amazon housed thousands of garden cities. Using laser scanners mounted on aircraft to create detailed terrain maps, scientists have discovered evidence of tens of thousands of pre-colonial urban centres in the Amazon rainforest. Multiple studies have shown that ancestral Amazonians created sustainable urban systems with composted gardens and managed forests.

By systematically composting scraps of food and organic waste, they created vast swaths of fertile 'dark earth', or terra preta, covering a 154,000 km2 stretch of the nutrient-poor soils of the Amazon basin nearly twice the size of Ireland – a circular economy before the phrase existed.

Also - "We've found an ancient Amazonian civilization that had a million inhabitants."

via fixthenews.com

[1920sladydectective]

Value - 2K Angst Drabble

This one is for @uselessbard1031 who I rambled to endlessly last night. Thank you for entertaining me haha <3

Used third person and gave reader/oc a name to trial if I liked writing like this

Ambessa Medarda has known true love with her wife, and yet she underestimated the value of trust - losing what little light she had.

Warnings: This is an Angsty, Hurt No Comfort One with a Death at the End so please don’t read if that’ll upset you. Some swearing and suggestiveness but it’s not the focus.

She’d been gone for nearly three months and Ariadne was dreadfully bored.

She was not dependent on Ambessa for entertainment, nothing so ridiculous, but she did make everything more colourful. More red.

Having endless money and power meant that sneaking about was a thing of the past. The Medarda crest, solid gold, sat shining on her chest as she floated about rocky cobbled streets. There was nothing new, there never was, but she was not permitted to travel beyond Noxus Proper without her. Normally, this meant nothing as she was her constant shadow, the gentle, hypnotic pairing to her razor edge. But this time, with nothing more than brawling limbs and smashed skulls, her dangerous dance was not required. So here Ariadne was, eating the same old woman’s sweetbread four streets from the dock whilst yet another report was piled on her desk at home.

Ambessa’s firm hands ripped the leg from the charred chicken, dark eyes fixed on a tattered battle map. The uselessness of her scouts was astounding and would not go unchecked. They were essentially blind, running out of resources and fatigued from months of mindless, tactless brawling. The fact that it was in Ionia did not help, with plush swirls of magic and deception twinkling all around. She missed her wife, her etherealness echoed here like an aftershock determined to drag her back home. A few more weeks my love, her tired mind called. If she focused she could see the curl of her hair, the smirk of her lip, hear the lightness of her gasps. Ambessa had mutilated the chicken with her teeth, Ariadne the thing in her grip in her mind’s eye.

Books and scrolls were scattered across a weathered, creaking table. Most of the surroundings had been turned to ash and cinder anyway, with no viable way to hide or reposition. The only true way was left, which heralded their salvation. A way to hide, to act from the shadows, lined with the very resources they needed. It had been a debate for mere seconds, but her smog covered, silent tent reaffirmed that left was the only way to go.

It took two weeks of blood, sweat and fury, but the ground yielded to them. Emerald greens and pretty blues were tinged with a corrosive brown, the very core of the soil’s nutrients being harvested till the land began to wheeze and sigh. The trees here had a particularly hard, spiraling texture that made for a perfect building resource. Each thing they took strengthened them, Noxians rising from the ashes of their struggle with hardened, determined looks. The small, serene pools would cleanse themselves eventually, Ambessa reassured her officers as they tinted it crimson from dried Ionian blood. They were cleansed, restored and Ambessa once again thought of her wife, grateful she had been blessed with knowledge of such a place and sure of her understanding.

Ariadne was struggling to master where the sun would fall. She was a proficient painter, all mediums yielding to her and yet without her reference she was stuck. Her painting knife clattered against marble, aching back crackling backwards as she surveyed the scene. Her scribbles could wait, news had reached them that the battle was finally won. Ambessa would be home within the week and celebrations didn’t plan themselves.

It took her years to adjust to the boastful nature of Noxian victories, but now she relished in it with a ferocity rivalling Ambessa herself. Food, wine, glittering decoration. All of it to honour her Warrior.

Nights were restless, her own duties weighty when she governed alone. Each choice felt sticky, lingering as she honoured the fickle balance of the Noxian and Ionian within her. It felt easier now, nearly two decades after their wedding, to see how she merged with her beloved wolf. She was more giving, more aware of the dusting of people that coated their every path. Ambessa tempered her kindness with the lens of reality, dust was an endless, ever renewing resource and she could not aid and cleanse it all. Though she made these choices she was glad for her wife’s return. The boat docked early afternoon, a well rested legion ready to prepare for their welcome party.

Ambessa only appeared moments before the hosting would begin, which was predictable and infuriating. Ariadne’s body sang a siren song, pushing her into strong, certain arms.

“Hello, Little Moonbeam,” Ambessa said, eyes glowing as she pawed at her silk clad hips.

“Lupus,” She responded, planting a charged kiss to her cheek, “How lovely to see you after so long,”

Ambessa snorted, “I’d like to see you continue pleasantries when I bend you over and use you in front of all of our men,”

“Empty threats don’t suit you, you wouldn’t ruin my little soiree,”

“I might,”

“There is stuffed lobster and enough left over butter that you can lick it from my skin later,”

“I suppose I can schmooze for a few hours,” She conceded with a grin, hand squeezing her ass before wandering off to greet people.

Ariadne rolled her eyes. Her precious, silly woman. Commanding and brutal, with the tenderest voice in all of Runeterra. Champagne bubbles tickled her nose as music and movement enthralled her senses. This was a success, perhaps her best yet.

Hours dashed past, stomachs and hearts heavy with rich, decadent food and an overindulgence of spirits. Ambessa was practically tugging her back to their chambers, filthy words and wandering hands.

Sprawled half naked across their bed with pretty beaded clips carving into her head, she watched her look around.

“Where’s the butter then, hmm?” Ambessa bit at Ariadne’s raised ankle, looming above her.

A light, shining laugh pierced through the warlord’s heart as she shook her head, “Not yet, you always tell me of the battle first,”

“We fought, I smashed things, we won,” Her lips were frantic, impatient, nose nuzzling her ankle.

“Lupus,” She whined, “Please tell me properly,”

“Gods,” A grunt as she flopped next to her, mattress bouncing, “Fine,”

Ambessa’s storytelling was astounding, the fight a harsh mashing of colour and feeling hanging over Ariadne’s eyes as she curled closer. Gasps left her, pride burning low in her stomach as she envisioned her victorious, otherworldly wife conquering yet another patch of their little world.

One thing stood out, a confusing detail, “Where did you end up? The letters didn’t say, but clearly something changed the tides,”

Ambessa tensed, rationality returning slowly. Fuck. Yes.

Ariadne frowned, sitting up, “Ambessa? Nowhere bad I hope, you said there was lots of ash and destruction,”

A click of an unsure tongue, “Western Ionia, just to the right of the Grove,”

Her face dropped, eyes wide, “Was it safe? Please tell me you checked,”

“I preserved it as best as I could, Moonbeam,” Ambessa’s voice was so gentle, “I’m sorry,”

Rage curdled her very blood, “Those bastards,” She spat, “That was such a sanctuary and they ruined it? For a petty patch of land?” That was the Noxian talking, conquest, a necessary and easily accepted part of life.

“I know,” The warlord continued, “It was needless, if they had surrendered we wouldn’t have needed to utilise it,”

No, a hopeful part of Ariadne cried, She misspoke.

“Utilise it?” Her voice was even, eyes understanding.

“Yes,” Ambessa nodded, spurred on by her calm reaction, “It was the only way to ensure victory, the resources there were far more valuable than I’d realised,”

Valuable, the darkness sang, valuable indeed. “And this was clearly the only way,”

“Exactly, I told Rictus you would understand, we couldn’t retreat when we were so close,”

It settled on her, warm and weighted like a bath as it dragged her under. Retreat was an option, just not one acceptable to her warlord’s pride. Seventeen years of her life was draining away now, crimson as it leaked from her soul.

“I understand exactly, General Medarda,” Her eyes were dull, “Victory was secured,”

“I-Yes,” Ambessa said, face still and sharp at her wife’s shift.

“Such a small cost this time too,” She continued, venom sharp and tart, “A true relief, you have only lost your wife,”

Powerful shoulders twitched, any attempt at words flattened by the sudden onslaught of vicious, slicing words Ariadne unleashed.

“Your only boundary, your only concession was my Grove,” Spit and iron tainted her tongue, “I conceded all else, gave myself to you without restraint. I allowed you to kill my people, steal their land and destroy their traditions and in return you promised me that it would remain preserved,”

“Allowed me?” Ambessa scoffed, despite herself, bitterness merging with panic, “I do not need your permission, you forget yourself,”

“Clearly,” The shadows were turned on the warrior now, sharp nails carving through the skin on her thigh, “I never should have submitted to your obsessions, becoming another battered trophy,”

She growled, grip crushing a dainty wrist, “Obsession? I love you wholeheartedly and this is the thanks I get?”

“You wouldn’t know love if it choked your very soul from you, Lupus,”

She retreated now, too late, warm platitudes on those plush, devouring lips.

What a battlefield their bedroom would make, the landscape a No Man’s land of affection and betrayal.

Violent hands flung the Medarda crest across the room, a window shattering to beckon in icy winds. Perfect, true, poetic. The artistic side of Ariadne relished in the physical markers of her turmoil, each part of her breaking as their space devolved into ruins.

Ambessa dodged each projectile, with increasing concern. This was not the anger she had anticipated, there was no balance of wills here. Her darling wife’s eyes were wrong, black as molten tar as she obliterated their life together. No calling, no sweet words, no reprimands brought her back from the cliff’s edge. The rocky waves summoned Ariadne and she fell, willingly, into the vengeful murky depths.

Fury licked at her, hungry and strong, “You won’t even give me a proper fight, you destroy our marriage and then coddle me like a fool,”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Ambessa said, shoulders passive, “I want to listen, my darling, to help you recover,”

“I don’t give a fuck what you want,” Adriadne screamed, lungs full of lava, as she threw the ornate pollarm on the wall to her, gripping one herself “Fight me you Coward,”

Ambessa caught it instinctively, brow furrowed, “That is enough, Ariadne,” She stepped forward, “You do not know how to use that, you could hurt yourself,”

The precision of a painter, swift and true, sliced Ambessa’s face from nose to crown. Soft, curling locks drifted on the cold wind, blood seeping into her mouth. There was no transition, no gradual decline.

Ariadne lay face down on the silk sheets, with her arms painfully pulled behind her, a firm knee on her lower back to keep her pinned, “Are you quite done?”

She was no wolf, the woman towering over her ensured she would never wish to be and her adrenaline bled out. The result was more than she could have feared, glassy eyes observing the bombed out craters in her surroundings, her thoughts jumbled.

“Moonbeam?” It was so sweet, a hypnotic hum to soothe her and she let it, just for a moment, just to gather her thoughts.

Ambessa relaxed as her wife’s body went limp, crawling over her form and pulling it into her embrace. Her nose, now cold from the night air, bumped against her collarbone as she rocked and shushed her.

“Everything’s going to be okay, little one,” She sounded so sure, so certain, “You’re not going anywhere, I have you, we’re going to be just fine,”

Ambessa was right, she realised, she wasn’t going anywhere with a wife such as hers.

Ariadne couldn’t have that, Ambessa deserved to lose as she had.

Serene, with considered movements, she took the dagger from her wife’s belt and slashed her own throat.

The gargle was wrong, the pain immaterial as she felt searing pleasure at the warlord’s watery, desperate eyes.

Let your ‘love’ choke you, Ambessa Medarda.

Ariadne was finally free of her invisible cage, soul dancing off to a thriving forest where the sun settled just as she had imagined it would.

[firephoenix2020]

NOTE! I DON'T HAVE ANY KNOWLEGE ABOUT FISH OR SEA LIFE [or maps] AND ALL THIS IS PULLED OUT OF MY BRAIN LIKE ALL MY STUPID ASS AUS ARE! You have been warned!

I just really wanted to make a DCA mermaid au, ok? I also put way to much effort into this au lmao- so get ready to read a very long post! XD

Mers and Death au! pt1.

pt2. here

Sun[He/Him]:

Moon[He/Him]:

Lucifer:

World Map:

Bay Realm - Controlled and protected by The Most Powerful Demon Lord, who is also known as The Demon King, It's domain spreads across the entirely of The Outer Island and some land in The Inner Island. The Outer Island is inhabited by Humans, while The Inner Island is inhabited by Demons. It is surrounded by ocean controlled and claimed by the Mer people.

Bay Realm [Outer Island] - The Outer Island is spilt into four regions, all controlled by their respective capital; North Bay is a more mountainous area with colder tempts [the tempts are similar to Modern Day Russia] and is run by the capital city: The Unholy City Of Blood. This area mainly produces Wool products and Hides, it also imports most of it's food. East Bay is a more temper area with long harvest seasons and run by the capital city: Golden City. This area produces most of the food that is imported into North Bay and smaller islands dotted farther in the ocean. South Bay is a more floral region with lots of pretty forest, This area is run by the capital city: The City Of Peonies*. [*Is misspelled on the map] This area is a lead producer in wood workings and lumber, as well as Floral Exports. West Bay[the area that our au mostly takes place in] is an area full of lakes and beaches, it's mainly run by the capital city: Rose City. This area is a hot spot for tourist and produces the most live stock for the Outer Island. This area is also a main trader with The Mer People! War isn't common in the Outer Island as the regions must get permission from their Demon Lord if they wish to start a war. Most of the time their Demon Lord fixes things and gets them under control so they don't have to go to war with each other. But on the rare occasions that their Demon lord gives them permission to start a war. It usually ends up getting resolved quickly.

Bay Realm [Inner Island] - The inner Island territory that the Bay realm controls is mostly a save heaven for Demons. NOBODY DARES invade the Bay Realm, in order to avoid angering The Demon King. So the region is relatively peaceful. This area mostly produces clothing and cultural items. It also happens to be the culturally richest area in the Demon Lands for the diverse cultures that reside there. It's also rumored to be the birth place of The Demon King.

Mother Mary - Controlled by the 2nd most powerful Demon Lord, It is a lead producer of copper for the Demon Lands. It is also a Lead producer for crops of any kind. It contains lots of Fresh and Nutrient filled soil, perfect for growing crops.

Silver Land - Controlled by the 3rd most powerful Demon Lord, it is a leading producer of Silver and Lead. It also produces lots of high quality paints for the Demon Lands. It is the most populated area in the Demon Lands for the colorful towns and cities. Makes a great vacation spot!

Solar Kingdom - Controlled by the 4th most powerful Demon Lord, it produces most of the books and gold for the Demon Lands. It's also filled with lost of historical Buildings and towns. Making it one of the most popular places with demonic historians!

Black Death - Controlled by the 5th most powerful Demon Lord, Black Death makes the most medicinal goods out of the 6 kingdoms. This lovely area is constantly being invaded by it's twin kingdom, White Death. The reason for the constant invasions is unknown but has gotten the attention of the Top Demon Lord and will most likely be put to an end of in the following months.

Lunar Kingdom - Controlled by the 6th most powerful Demon Lord, The Lunar Kingdom is the sole Ally of The Solar Kingdom. This humble little kingdom in the middle of the Demon Lands produces the most live stock of the Demon Lands. It is also a lead discoverer of constellations and planets. Living up to it's Lunar name, the kingdom tends to be more active in the night time hours in comparison to the rest of the inner island.

White Death - Controlled by the 7th strongest Demon Lord, this aggressive kingdom is a lead producer of weapons and wood working for the Demon Lands. While constantly attacking it's Twin Kingdom, Black Death, it's relatively peaceful inside the kingdom and full of roses.

Demon Lands - The land where all Demons & Demon Lords [But the #1 Demon lord] live. Humans and Mermaids aren't permitted into the Demon Lands after the The #1 Demon took control of the region. Demons also aren't permitted to leave this small inner island. There is no escape.

Death Pool - A pool of Ichor that will kill everything that enters it. There is no way around, above, or under it. It Kills Everything and Everyone.

The Mer People - Little is known about The Mer People. All that is known is that they produce a lot of shell items and drift wood works that they trade with The Bay Realm, more specifically the West Bay Realm as they deeply trust the Demon Lord that lives near the Sea Side of West Bay.

[bestanimal]

Round 1 - Phylum Nematoda

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Nematoda is a diverse phylum of animals commonly called roundworms or eelworms. Most are free-living and feed on microorganisms, but some are parasitic.

Nematodes are very diverse, but usually appear as small, slender worms. The smallest are microscopic, while the largest free-living species can be up to 5 cm (2 in) long. Some parasitic species can be even longer, reaching up to 8.4 m (27.5 ft) in length! Nematode heads are radially symmetrical and, in many cases, have head-shields radiating outwards around the mouth. The mouth has either three or six lips, which often bear a series of teeth on their inner edges. They have a dense, circular nerve ring which serves as their brain. They are covered in sensory bristles that provide a sense of touch. There are two small pits on the head that likely serve as chemoreceptors. Some aquatic nematodes have eye-spots, but it is unknown if they are actually sensory. They have seperate male and female individuals, with females usually being larger than males, though some species are hermaphroditic. They reproduce sexually, and females have a glandular uterus. They lay eggs, though some species are ovoviviparous. Larvae of free-living nematodes look like smaller adults, though parasitic nematodes usually have more complex life cycles.

Nematodes are perhaps the most successful phylum on Earth. They have adapted to nearly every ecosystem: from marine to freshwater, from soils to trees, from tundra to rainforest, at the tops of mountains, in deserts, in oceanic trenches, and up to 3.6 km (12,000 ft) below the surface of the Earth. They represent 90% of all animals on the ocean floor, and 80% of all individual animals on Earth. They often exceed a million individuals per square meter. This ubiquitous nature means they play a role in every ecosystem, most crucially in polar ecosystems where life is otherwise scarce. Of the parasitic forms, about a third of genera occur as parasites of vertebrates, and about 35 nematode species occur in humans.

Propaganda under the cut:

Nematodes play an important role in the decomposition process, aiding in recycling nutrients.

There are approximately 60 billion nematodes per human inhabiting the Earth’s topsoil. Those are your government assigned topsoil nematodes. Do with them as you wish.

One soil-living nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (see first image), has had its entire genome sequenced, the developmental fate of every cell determined, and every neuron mapped. They are considered a model organism: a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena.

While some species of nematode are detrimental to agriculture, other species are considered beneficial as they prey on agricultural pests. These species are bred commercially as biological pest control agents which can be used as a much safer, environmentally-friendly alternative to pesticides.

The largest known nematode, Placentonema gigantissima, can reach sizes of up to 8.4 m (27.5 ft) long and 2.5 cm wide. It has been found living as a parasite in the reproductive tract of a sperm whale.

As stated by nematologist Nathan Cobb:

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

[aheathen-conceivably]

Hello darlings! 🏜️

Now that we are well and truly into the 1930s I wanted to give y’all some context about the Darlingtons’ new location. Ultimately, Strangerville is a figment of my imagination, a sims world superimposed into the real world. I did this because I wanted the freedom to draw from different elements of this region’s history and landscape without having to worry about the visual transformation of the actual in-game world.

However, it is very much intended to in a real region of the United States. Specifically, the north west corner of New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Gallup along the newly built Route 66. We’ll see key elements of this in the story time and time again, so if anyone would like more information I’ll leave some maps and context for y’all below the cut:

Previous / Next

Commissioned in 1926, Route 66 was actually not the first cross country highway system in the U.S.; however it was designed to traverse the flattest and mildest climates so that it could be the most easily traveled. It also followed popular tourist routes from the railroad days and was marketed as an “All American” experience, drawing travelers and families from across the country and leading to its iconic status even today. The first map shows its path as it would have been in 1930, from its start in Chicago to its end in L.A. and the second map is a cutaway of the specific section of the road between Albuquerque and Gallup where Strangerville is meant to be located.

While the cultural significance of Route 66 now perhaps outweighs its era of utility, the Darlingtons are living along the route as it rises to prominence throughout the 1930s into the 1950s. While it was used for utility and leisure travel from its opening, Route 66, particularly between the Dust Bowl states and California, is iconic for its role as “the Mother Route. Perhaps best typified in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, this road became one of if not the primary route for people fleeing the plains states during the Dust Bowl. Through their passage it became an American symbol of desperation, poverty, and for some, the hope of a better life.

Strangerville is meant to be located at the edge of the Dust Bowl (specifically at the meeting of the brown and yellow zones in the first map toward the leftmost mid-top area of the state of New Mexico). This region would not have suffered the worst conditions (and would have been spared intense dust storms) but it is still close enough to be heavily effected. This is especially true in the early part of the decade, as fear of dust tornados and mass unemployment spreads like wildfire, and explains the intense volatility amongst Strangerville residents who have no way to know just how bad their own situation could get.

For larger context, the Dust Bowl was caused by extenuating weather conditions and poor farming practices. It was an agricultural catastrophe throughout the 1930s that displaced millions of people, and coupled with larger economic factors such as the plummet of crop prices, led to mass homelessness, unemployment, and starvation.

Beginning in 1930 but reaching its zenith in the years 1934 and 1936, vast swaths of the United States experienced record drought and heat. In the second map we can see how widespread drought conditions were. They are of course at their worst in the central Dust Bowl area; however we also see that Strangerville is located in a moderate drought, and in 1936 twelve states recorded their highest temperatures to date.

However, these weather conditions only highlighted underlying farming negligence. After decades of manifest destiny and an influx of settlers with little to no farming knowledge (of which Giorgio falls in line), the land had been woefully over plowed and deprived of nutrients. After the rising farm prices of the 1910s and 1920s met with the crash of 1929, settlers pushed this to an extreme, removing vast swathes of native grasslands and leaving the soil vulnerable to record breaking weather conditions. Without rain or prairie grass, winds ravaged the region, creating dust storms that ravaged the region and ultimately led to hundreds of thousands of abandoned farmland. This collection of photographs shows the scale of dust and desolation better than words can express.

Scholars estimate that somewhere between 2.5 to 3 million people left their homes in the Dust Bowl states. Their stories are notorious, and live in the consciousness of what we now conceptualize as 1930s America. These maps superimpose the path of Route 66 with the Dust Bowl states, highlighting how the two formed a symbiotic relationship and became linked in the American consciousness. Of the millions who fled their homes, approximately 300,000-400,000 eventually settled in California. The number who traversed the mother route looking for work with the hope of a better life is perhaps incalculable.

However, they did not initially receive a warm welcome. As much of the country was also gripped in fear and poverty, migrants, or Okies as they were derogatorily called, were viewed as pariahs, threats, and even harbingers of worse times to come. This, as we now know, is far from the truth. The economy of many small towns along Route 66 fared better than other areas of the Dust Bowl. They became hubs for migrants and businesses alike as gas stations, roadside accommodations, food stalls, and other amenities opened. It provided an alternate means of business for areas that has previously been very rural, and who’s own farms had been gouged by the plummeting crop prices of 1929 as well as the gradual disappearance of herding economies.

As the decade went on and much of the nation began to heal in the New Deal Era, the migrants who passed this stretch of road only made it more legendary. Where they eventually settled they brought stories of Route 66, of a symbolic idea of the American West, of an ocean at the end of the line, of different people and travelers they had met on the way. This coupled with a growing fascination of the “Okie” figure at the end of the decade, perhaps best seen in the celebrated 1940 Hollywood remake of The Grapes of Wrath, as an emblem of American hardship and drive.

Together they fused an iconic idea of an authentic “Americanness” that existed along Route 66, one that was infused with even older ideas of manifest destiny and the “American” cowboy. This is the landscape that the Darlingtons now inhabit, one that they are watching unfold along with us all at the very start of the 1930s.

[ill-logic-al]

Every other animal communicates better than us...

birds,

bees,

ants,

mycelium...

A bird will sing a song and every other bird of its kind knows exactly what it's saying. Hide your kids, hide your wife, the hawk is here! There's a threat! Or...I'm a bid dick blue jay here to fertilize your eggs, I'll fuck you, I'll fuck your mom, I'll fuck your sister - I'm the fella you want ladies come and look at my lil dance, my lovely feathers, my lil nest I built for you.

Bees dance the GPS coordinates out to their sisters so they can find the nectar in the woods. They do the fucking hokey pokey and turn themselves around and the other bees all know what their sister is saying immediately - there's a juicy ass field of flowers down in the meadow sis, take two lefts and a three rights and bam you'll be right there. All by wiggling their lil fuzzy butts.

Ants mark and map the world around them with pheromones. All the other ants can smell their way to the tasty treat someone dropped on the sidewalk once the other ants find and mark the path there. They can smell an intruder ant before it invades their nest. They can even smell when one of their own (or several) have been murdered and smooshed - and they find them and bring back their dead to their lil ant graveyards. All ants are Beyonce fans - they are all always in formation.

Mycellium have gone beyond just communication with themselves to fucking talking to trees. Mushrooms have a fucking bartering system with trees and other plants. They have their own fucking wallstreet, their own banking and trade systems and routes. They can figure out what sugars and nutrients a tree needs and trade with them for other items.

Nature has PERFECTED the art of communication in all forms over millions and millions and millions of years.

We, however, just fucking got here. We are the rampaging toddlers of the natural world. And we need to get over ourselves with a quickness.

We are, without a solitary doubt, the WORST communicators nature has ever created. We have this sense that because we have "complex" human language, that because our language is spoken and written on the dead trees the mushrooms were once talking to - that we are somehow superior to our brothers and sisters in the natural world. That because of our "oversized prefrontal cortex" we have capabilities that surpass all other living creatures around us.

But we can't even agree that all people are people. We can't agree on anything. We can't even tell the people we love how we really feel, when we're in love, when we're scared, when we're hurting, when we're lost, when we miss them, when they hurt us. 

The tower of babel might as well have actually happened and yesterday for how "great" at communication we seem to be. We talk past each other, wrapped up in our own lil ape brains, we close off, we avoid, we talk past one another, we talk our way around the issues that need to be addressed. And even when we finally DO say what needs to be said, it often comes out all wrong anyway or the other party is unable or unwilling to absorb it. We can't talk right and we can't listen either.

We've been "communicating" as modern humans with "modern language" for such a short period of time when compared to the birds, the ants, the bees, fucking mushrooms.

We literally just got here compared to the millions of years head start other creatures have on us. 

We think we're at the top - apex predators, homo sapiens sapiens - the wisest of the apes and the most intelligent of all animals. But we still shit where we eat. We still don't get along. We still don't understand. We might as well be deaf, blind, mute - we're already dumb, prefrontal cortex be damned.

I'm not saying we have to revert back to living in caves. We can still have our wonderful modern world, but there's a balance we need to strike and strike soon. We need to get rid of our avarice, our hubris, and our talking past one another...or nature will do what she has always done for millions and millions of years.

Nature always always self-corrects. You abide by her rules, or she recycles you. The end.

And we will either figure our shit out, or get recycled - into something the mycellium can trade with the trees for sugars. Poetic justice for turning their friends into books we don't even read.

So maybe we should learn a new language - one all of our brothers and sisters in nature seem to have gotten down pat..balance, give and not just take...before it's too late.

[alwayslosingtheplot-blog]

Make a world with me (Part 3)

Part one

Part two

@saqvobase suggested having the islands be on megafauna! Which opens up a whole load of possibilities. You have the classic giant turtle situation, which is cool but I think I want to go a different route.

Maybe a different kind of shell, like a sea snails mollusks. Barnacle-like entities which stay still and don't move but can create very turbulent seas during mating season. (This might be too gross)

Or maybe it is unknown that a creature was even involves. Part of a mystery. An island which vanished in the middle of the night and no one knows why or where it went - only for it to turn out that the creature it was on woke up and ventured out to the sea. Maybe it didn't go out to sea but down into it, or left broken buildings and pieces in its wake so that the other nations think that it sank and allows for an myth like Atlantis. Maybe another island lies on the skeletal remains of a long-dead Levithan, it's body bringing a bounty of fish and nutrients like a whale fall. If they dig deep enough under the thin layer of top soil they will hit the layer of bone. Maybe the body is finally only now finished providing for the area, with even the marrow stripped clean and many of the species that the locals rely on are starting to leave the area.

Or maybe an island is an dormant or abandoned hive structure, and these human-sized eggs are about to hatch. Maybe the islands are a series of giant eggs, and the entire populace lives unaware that when they hatch, these creatures are going to be very, very hungry.

Maybe all of the above along with natural geographical features like as @thecrazyworldbuilder suggested like volcanic activity or river deltas which make the maps weird and funky and a little unexplainable. I'm thinking that their might be a mountain range as well, which has valleys dipping under sea level or rock slides with huge chucks falling off and being washed down to form rocky isles.

I said in the last post about the idea of some of the Greek myths being brought along by a classical student, so for a naming system I'm thinking of naming the inhabited and known islands after Greek nymphs and rivers after Potamoi.

Thinking about the geography of each island isn't a bad idea either to help better inform how I build up the cultures living there. I want to keep the islands small and the resources tight to encourage tension and a strange combination of conflict and co-dependance between the islands. I'll probably do a bit of research into the myths and try and tie the islands loosely into them, but I'm not going to be too stringent about that.

The Islands

Alseid - Lots of groves, small lakes and one large river. Several towns, a city and one of the largest populations in the Islands.

Anthousai - Isle of flowers. Fields of flowers used all across the islands for perfume, food (think rosemary), and medicine. These flowers look like hyacinths.

Auloniad - The mountainous island. Lots of snakes. (Eurydice was an auloniad, so maybe do something to do with the 'underworld' here.)

Aurea - Also mountainous, but less so than Auloniad, this island is known for high cliffs and beautiful vistas.

Crinaeae - Lots of small springs or hidden sources of water instead of one large river results in many, many small settlements rather than a large city.

Daphnaie - The seat of the Laurel Crown and home of the largest city, and largest navy of all of the islands. Tries to exert its power and rules on the other islands.

Dryad -'The Crown's shame'. Covered in an oak forest. Many have tried to settle there but none have succeeded for unknown reasons, which is galling to the government on Daphnaie as it is quite close to them. Currently there is a small settlement in a harbour.

Eleionomae - Very wet, mostly fresh-water bog. People here mostly live on floating homes even inland because of the constant risk of flooding.

Epimeliad - Home of apple orchard and shepards. Epimeliad has a small city and something akin to a royal family of their own, although they have much less influence that Daphnaie. Epimeliad has many allies through trade and patron many groups looking for new islands and 'safe places to land' on the mainland. This is why Daphnaie has never invaded.

Hamadryad - Thousands of butterflies migrate here once a year from the mainland to mate. The island also has several monkey colonies who steal from and torment the villages that have been set up here in the last ten years. There was an older settlement here, but a sickness swept through and killed almost all of them forty years ago. The small few survivors moved to other islands, and their children made up the main contingent of new settlers.

Hesperides - The most easterly of all the islands, the sunset isle; When the sun sets on Hesperides, it sets on all people. The mainland, and the monstrous megafauna that roam it, can be seen from its beaches. There is a pilgrimage many people take to do just this. The main religion of the islands started here and the main monastery is located here. The singing priestesses often mentor for singers from all over the islands who wish to master their craft.

Hyades - The rainy island. Amazing farmland, surrounding by thriving sea life. This could be on the skeletal remains discussed above (fish and nutrients from the bones making the farming so good).

Lampas - Known as 'the funeral isle', and sometimes more optimistically as 'the exploring isle'. This small island is where most travelers go before heading off towards the open seas or towards the mainland to try and find new places for people to settle. Home of witches, which can give protective charms and read the future of those venturing out for a cost.

Leimakid - The island of meadows and pleasure. Legend says that the three warring nations came to fight on the shores of Leimakid and the island was the so beautiful that all the warriors dropped their weapons and refused to stain it with blood. It now houses the 'seat of peace', where nation leaders meet for negotiation under the watchful eye of a the 'peace-keepers' sent by the religion.

Leuce - The 15th island. It is an island with many white/silver popular trees. The duel nature of the leaves of this tree (dark on one side, light on the other) make it the source of many myths and rituals. The trees are planted along beaches to strengthen sand dunes and prevent erosion. This is a contest nation, where individual strength is more highly valued than anything else. It is where the Games take place once every three years to determine the fastest, the strongest, the best that the islands have to offer. It is also where the Funeral Games take place for recently deceased royalty.

Limnad- The lake isle. One of the largest islands has three large lakes for which is is famous. Farmers here are trying to develop new farming methods and trying to cross breed and encourage crops to grow more calorie-rich versions. Think of it as doing to the turnip-like crops what people have done to potatoes.

Meliae - Known for its honey and development of medicine. No nation dare attack this small nation, for every other nation would turn on them and destroy them.

Melinoe - The nightmare isle. This tiny island was once the home of a small monastery. There was a raid from unknown raiders. No one knows exactly what happened but everyone of the raiders and all the priestesses were killed. Any crew who lands there feels ill and are plagued by night terrors until they leave. Rumor says that one priestess survived and that it was her that killed all of the men in fury, and that she still roams the island, killing any man who dares step foot off the beach.

Minthe - A mostly barren isle, rocky and mostly soilless, living here is extremely difficult. The island is good for growing some herbs (such as mint) but it hard to live in, which is why Minthe only has a small population despite it's size. The people here mostly take their living from the sea. A place nobles of high rank are often banished to.

Naiad - Known for its waterfalls and the migration of fish that swim up them once a year to mate. There is a large number of deer, wolves and bears on this island.

Nephele - the peninsula. This is the only place where it snows. This stretch of land has mountains to the North which block it off from the rest of the mainland. Living here is difficult, because the dangers that invest the skies, but not impossible - at least that is the mantra of the three new settlements trying to take root on the coast.

That's it for now. I'll continue this next post and then jump onto something else once I have a bit more to play with.

I'll probably have to do a post on each individual island and the culture that lives there but I am quite happy with what I have so far. I may run out of nymphs before I do islands but that is a problem for another day.

[bambithevideogame]

#TheeForestKingdom #TreePeople

{Terrestrial Kind}

Creating a Tree Citizenship Identification and Serial Number System (#TheeForestKingdom) is an ambitious and environmentally-conscious initiative. Here’s a structured proposal for its development:

Project Overview

The Tree Citizenship Identification system aims to assign every tree in California a unique identifier, track its health, and integrate it into a registry, recognizing trees as part of a terrestrial citizenry. This system will emphasize environmental stewardship, ecological research, and forest management.

Phases of Implementation

Preparation Phase

Objective: Lay the groundwork for tree registration and tracking.

Actions:

Partner with environmental organizations, tech companies, and forestry departments.

Secure access to satellite imaging and LiDAR mapping systems.

Design a digital database capable of handling millions of records.

Tree Identification System Development

Components:

Label and Identity Creation: Assign a unique ID to each tree based on location and attributes. Example: CA-Tree-XXXXXX (state-code, tree-type, unique number).

Attributes to Record:

Health: Regular updates using AI for disease detection.

Age: Approximate based on species and growth patterns.

Type: Species and subspecies classification.

Class: Size, ecological importance, and biodiversity contribution.

Rank: Priority based on cultural, historical, or environmental significance.

Data Collection

Technologies to Use:

Satellite Imaging: To locate and identify tree clusters.

LiDAR Scanning: For precise 3D modeling of forests.

On-the-Ground Surveys: To supplement remote sensing data.

AI Analysis: For rapid categorization and health diagnostics.

Registration and Citizenship Assignment

Tree Dossier: Each tree receives a profile in the database with all its recorded attributes.

Citizen Designation: Trees are acknowledged as citizens of Thee Forest Kingdom, emphasizing ecological respect.

Legal Framework: Advocate for laws to grant trees specific rights under environmental protection acts.

Maintenance and Monitoring

Health Monitoring: Use drones, satellite updates, and IoT sensors for ongoing health assessments.

Database Updates: Incorporate real-time data about environmental changes and tree growth.

Public Involvement

Encourage people to "adopt" trees and participate in their preservation.

Create educational programs to promote awareness of tree citizenship.

Key Benefits

Environmental Conservation: Improved forest management through real-time data and protection of ecosystems.

Cultural Recognition: Trees are recognized as a vital part of the Earth’s community, honoring their importance.

Ecological Advocacy: Strengthened legal protections for forests and individual trees.

Next Steps

Assemble a task force of environmental scientists, satellite imaging experts, and software developers.

Secure funding through governmental grants, non-profits, and eco-conscious corporations.

Pilot the program in a smaller region before scaling to all of California.

Would you like me to draft a more detailed technical or legal framework for this system?

The implementation of the Tree Citizenship Identification Network and System (#TheeForestKingdom) requires a robust technological and operational framework to ensure efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability. Below is an implementation plan divided into major components.

System Architecture

a. Centralized Tree Database

Purpose: To store and manage tree data including ID, attributes, location, and health.

Components:

Cloud-based storage for scalability.

Data categorization based on regions, species, and priority.

Integration with satellite and IoT data streams.

b. Satellite & Imaging Integration

Use satellite systems (e.g., NASA, ESA) for large-scale tree mapping.

Incorporate LiDAR and aerial drone data for detailed imaging.

AI/ML algorithms to process images and distinguish tree types.

c. IoT Sensor Network

Deploy sensors in forests to monitor:

Soil moisture and nutrient levels.

Air quality and temperature.

Tree health metrics like growth rate and disease markers.

d. Public Access Portal

Create a user-friendly website and mobile application for:

Viewing registered trees.

Citizen participation in tree adoption and reporting.

Data visualization (e.g., tree density, health status by region).

Core Technologies

a. Software and Tools

Geographic Information System (GIS): Software like ArcGIS for mapping and spatial analysis.

Database Management System (DBMS): SQL-based systems for structured data; NoSQL for unstructured data.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Tools for image recognition, species classification, and health prediction.

Blockchain (Optional): To ensure transparency and immutability of tree citizen data.

b. Hardware

Servers: Cloud-based (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) for scalability.

Sensors: Low-power IoT devices for on-ground monitoring.

Drones: Equipped with cameras and sensors for aerial surveys.

Network Design

a. Data Flow

Input Sources:

Satellite and aerial imagery.

IoT sensors deployed in forests.

Citizen-reported data via mobile app.

Data Processing:

Use AI to analyze images and sensor inputs.

Automate ID assignment and attribute categorization.

Data Output:

Visualized maps and health reports on the public portal.

Alerts for areas with declining tree health.

b. Communication Network

Fiber-optic backbone: For high-speed data transmission between regions.

Cellular Networks: To connect IoT sensors in remote areas.

Satellite Communication: For remote regions without cellular coverage.

Implementation Plan

a. Phase 1: Pilot Program

Choose a smaller, biodiverse region in California (e.g., Redwood National Park).

Test satellite and drone mapping combined with IoT sensors.

Develop the prototype of the centralized database and public portal.

b. Phase 2: Statewide Rollout

Expand mapping and registration to all California regions.

Deploy IoT sensors in vulnerable or high-priority areas.

Scale up database capacity and integrate additional satellite providers.

c. Phase 3: Maintenance & Updates

Establish a monitoring team to oversee system health and data quality.

Update the network with new technologies (e.g., advanced AI models).

Periodically review and revise data collection protocols.

Partnerships

Government Agencies: U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Tech Companies: Collaborate with Google Earth, Amazon AWS, or Microsoft for cloud and AI capabilities.

Environmental Organizations: Partner with WWF, Sierra Club, or TreePeople for funding and advocacy.

Budget Estimation

Initial Investment:

Satellite data and licenses: $10M

IoT sensors and deployment: $5M

Database and app development: $3M

Operational Costs:

Cloud services and data storage: $2M/year

Maintenance and monitoring: $1M/year

Research and development: $1M/year

Long-term Vision

Expand the system to other states or globally.

Use the database for reforestation efforts and combating deforestation.

Develop educational programs to teach communities about the importance of trees as citizens.

Would you like me to assist in designing the user interface for the public portal or drafting partnership proposals for funding?

To begin building the program for the Tree Citizenship Identification System, we’ll start with a scalable framework that allows us to process, store, and analyze data while preparing for future expansions. Here's an actionable development plan with an initial focus on foundational code and infrastructure:

Step-by-Step Development

Phase 1: Setting Up the Backend Infrastructure

Objective: Create the core database and develop the data pipeline for processing tree data.

Technologies:

Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript (Node.js), SQL.

Frameworks: Flask or FastAPI for APIs, Django for web application backend.

Database: PostgreSQL for structured data, MongoDB for unstructured data.

Code Snippet 1: Database Schema Design (PostgreSQL)

-- Table for Tree Registry CREATE TABLE trees ( tree_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY, -- Unique Identifier location GEOGRAPHY(POINT, 4326), -- Geolocation of the tree species VARCHAR(100), -- Species name age INTEGER, -- Approximate age in years health_status VARCHAR(50), -- e.g., Healthy, Diseased height FLOAT, -- Tree height in meters canopy_width FLOAT, -- Canopy width in meters citizen_rank VARCHAR(50), -- Class or rank of the tree last_updated TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW() -- Timestamp for last update );

-- Table for Sensor Data (IoT Integration) CREATE TABLE tree_sensors ( sensor_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY, -- Unique Identifier for sensor tree_id INT REFERENCES trees(tree_id), -- Linked to tree soil_moisture FLOAT, -- Soil moisture level air_quality FLOAT, -- Air quality index temperature FLOAT, -- Surrounding temperature last_updated TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW() -- Timestamp for last reading );

Code Snippet 2: Backend API for Tree Registration (Python with Flask)

from flask import Flask, request, jsonify from sqlalchemy import create_engine from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker

app = Flask(name)

Database Configuration

DATABASE_URL = "postgresql://username:password@localhost/tree_registry" engine = create_engine(DATABASE_URL) Session = sessionmaker(bind=engine) session = Session()

@app.route('/register_tree', methods=['POST']) def register_tree(): data = request.json new_tree = { "species": data['species'], "location": f"POINT({data['longitude']} {data['latitude']})", "age": data['age'], "health_status": data['health_status'], "height": data['height'], "canopy_width": data['canopy_width'], "citizen_rank": data['citizen_rank'] } session.execute(""" INSERT INTO trees (species, location, age, health_status, height, canopy_width, citizen_rank) VALUES (:species, ST_GeomFromText(:location, 4326), :age, :health_status, :height, :canopy_width, :citizen_rank) """, new_tree) session.commit() return jsonify({"message": "Tree registered successfully!"}), 201

if name == 'main': app.run(debug=True)

Phase 2: Satellite Data Integration

Objective: Use satellite and LiDAR data to identify and register trees automatically.

Tools:

Google Earth Engine for large-scale mapping.

Sentinel-2 or Landsat satellite data for high-resolution imagery.

Example Workflow:

Process satellite data using Google Earth Engine.

Identify tree clusters using image segmentation.

Generate geolocations and pass data into the backend.

Phase 3: IoT Sensor Integration

Deploy IoT devices to monitor health metrics of specific high-priority trees.

Use MQTT protocol for real-time data transmission.

Code Snippet: Sensor Data Processing (Node.js)

const mqtt = require('mqtt'); const client = mqtt.connect('mqtt://broker.hivemq.com');

client.on('connect', () => { console.log('Connected to MQTT Broker'); client.subscribe('tree/sensor_data'); });

client.on('message', (topic, message) => { const sensorData = JSON.parse(message.toString()); console.log(Received data: ${JSON.stringify(sensorData)}); // Save data to database (Example for PostgreSQL) saveToDatabase(sensorData); });

function saveToDatabase(data) { const query = INSERT INTO tree_sensors (tree_id, soil_moisture, air_quality, temperature) VALUES ($1, $2, $3, $4) ; const values = [data.tree_id, data.soil_moisture, data.air_quality, data.temperature]; dbClient.query(query, values, (err) => { if (err) console.error('Error saving to database', err); else console.log('Sensor data saved successfully!'); }); }

Phase 4: Public Portal Development

Frontend Technologies:

React.js or Vue.js for interactive user interfaces.

Mapbox or Leaflet.js for tree visualization on maps.

Features:

Interactive tree maps with search functionality.

User registration for tree adoption programs.

Deployment Plan

Use Docker to containerize the application.

Deploy on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud for scalability.

Monitor system health using Prometheus and Grafana.

Next Steps

Develop a testing environment for pilot deployment.

Add AI-based disease detection and prediction using TensorFlow or PyTorch.

Create an adoption feature where citizens can adopt trees and track their health.

Would you like me to set up a GitHub repository with this initial framework or assist further with deployment?

I'll prepare the project framework and outline the repository structure for the Tree Citizenship Identification System. Below is the proposed structure for the repository, followed by details of the files and components.

Proposed Repository Structure

tree-citizenship-id-system/ ├── backend/ │ ├── app.py # Flask application for backend API │ ├── database/ │ │ ├── schema.sql # Database schema for PostgreSQL │ │ ├── db_config.py # Database connection configuration │ │ └── seed_data.sql # Initial sample data for testing │ ├── services/ │ │ ├── tree_registration.py # Functions for tree registration │ │ └── sensor_data.py # Functions for processing IoT sensor data │ └── requirements.txt # Python dependencies ├── frontend/ │ ├── public/ │ │ ├── index.html # Main HTML file │ │ └── favicon.ico # Favicon for the app │ ├── src/ │ │ ├── App.js # Main React/Vue app file │ │ ├── components/ │ │ │ ├── TreeMap.js # Map component for visualizing trees │ │ │ └── TreeDetails.js # Component for detailed tree view │ │ └── styles.css # Styling for the frontend │ └── package.json # Frontend dependencies ├── scripts/ │ ├── satellite_data_processor.py # Script for processing satellite data │ └── sensor_data_simulator.py # Mock data generator for IoT sensors ├── deployment/ │ ├── Dockerfile # Docker configuration │ ├── docker-compose.yml # Docker Compose for multi-service setup │ └── cloud_setup_instructions.md # Deployment guide for cloud platforms ├── tests/ │ ├── test_backend.py # Unit tests for backend API │ └── test_frontend.js # Unit tests for frontend ├── README.md # Overview of the project └── LICENSE # Project license

Repository Details

Backend:

app.py: Main Flask app for handling API requests like tree registration and sensor data.

database/schema.sql: SQL script for creating necessary tables.

services/: Directory for modular backend logic.

Frontend:

App.js: Main entry point for the frontend application.

TreeMap.js: Integrates Mapbox/Leaflet.js for displaying tree locations.

TreeDetails.js: Displays detailed information about a selected tree.

Scripts:

satellite_data_processor.py: Automates the extraction and classification of tree data from satellite imagery.

sensor_data_simulator.py: Generates fake sensor readings for development and testing.

Deployment:

Docker configuration ensures that the app runs consistently across environments.

Cloud setup instructions provide guidelines for deploying on platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Tests:

Unit tests ensure the reliability of both the backend and frontend.

Next Steps

I will initialize the repository structure locally.

Package the files and components needed for the first version.

Provide a link to the repository for access.

I’ll get started. Please hold on for a moment.

[eccentric-nucleus]

anyway wrt 'other projects i am thinking of working on' here is a kind of enormous worldbuilding document about Setting Stuff

sorry for some of the formatting; the tumblr editor seems to be literally incapable of handling paragraphs inside of lists, whether that be in markdown or in actual html; you have to go to rich-text and then manually fiddle with stuff. this is also the only way to add a readmore now, i think?? god why is the tumblr editor so bad. i should just post this on my dreamwidth tbh

so it's a desert planet overall, inspired in some mix of... dark sun's athas, kenshi, morrowind, trigun, gears of war, westerns generally, etc. there's a big crater at one pole (at least one pole) that's a water ocean; it's called the sea of fog b/c the actual ocean is hidden beneath hundreds of meters of local cloud cover. there's an equatorial acid sea & the overall landmass is more-or-less divided into northern and southern halves. there's probably an isthmus somewhere that connects the two but it's kind of out of the scope of my current worldbuilding.

mostly my current worldbuilding has focused on one specific region that i'll say is 'roughly the size of russia'. the 'great desert' (tho as you can tell from the planet description, it's mostly desert all over). loosely: bounded at the north when the desert turns into steppe and corn fiefdoms start to dominate around the polar ocean; bounded at the south by the acid sea; bounded at the west by a huge mountain range; bounded at the east by... less discrete geographical features, but eventually there's perpetual sandstorms and huge unstable fissures that are difficult to pass.

(yopa, in the new hive, is in some variant of this setting. as you might recall, they're down south a few days travel from the acid sea. that's the southern border of the world map! arguably i should have had 'acid rain' as a weather type instead of 'sandstorms', but w/e there's plenty of other things i'd tweak now if i could. weird how i say going north leads to a lowland instead of a highland. that would be below sea level!!)

also there's likely gonna be some level of procgen integration for any game i make with this setting, & so i'm not really 100% on whether this is gonna be a template to build off of, in terms of 'these are the kinds of organizations and cultures you'll see emerge' vs. a specific idea in a specific world. it depends on how good i get at world history simulation, really.

a few notes on the various peoples that inhabit the great desert:

the corn kingdoms of the north. on rolling prairie/steppe with occasional rocky obstructions erupting through. very scattered trees, w/ more cultivated around villages. corn (or a corn-like grain, you know how it is with fantasy worldbuilding) is their staple crop, and pretty much every little village has their own heirloom variety. corn patterning is a highly political subject. every time some new attempted-ruler tries to unify the disparate fiefs and villages the big visible symbol of that is them growing their preferred kind of corn. food tithes only desiring the proper kind of grain or demanding more if it's 'unsuitable varieties', that kind of thing. one of the major strains is a bitter, rich cyan color that needs heavy nixtamalization to be particularly edible & only grows well in the regions immediately ringing the sea of fog; outside it grows pale and reedy from nutrient deficiency. meanwhile another one is a sweeter, mealier red variety that grows well in southern desert soils. i have a whole document on corn varieties and the political implications of growing each one. this is very much inspired by like... japan pre-unification, warring clans kinda situation. they probably have a higher % urbanization than most of the other peoples on this list b/c they actually do food importing i wrote a bunch of stuff on them and only later realized that even if the planet overall is hotter & so they're only just approaching temperate regions at the poles, they're still at the poles so presumably they have like 18 hour nights at winter or w/e. i don't know how that's gonna work out as a farming society. i might have to do some math about axial inclination and revise this section some. occupation-wise: lots of farmers. lots of lawless roving bandits from released conscripts after one clan or another had a military offensive collapse. that kind of thing.

the nomadic tribes of the great desert. there are a bunch of them (12? 13?) but i only came up with names of some of them major tribes. each tribe has a specific variety of weird mask that they wear as face coverings b/c of cultural beliefs about not showing yr face to those outside yr immediate family. the ash tribe wear masks of pitted volcanic rock that are just like, weird rocks. the masks are like a 'public face' in the same style as having a public name vs. a private name, & they consider everybody else to be weird uncivilized faceless demons each clan is made up of several smaller tribes, & they loosely confederate with each other as needed. the clan names get translated into other languages as things like "ash" or "vulture" or "fire-eater", but in their own language there's a chunk more nuance that's not really translated well. each one is associated with a loose constellation of concepts & there's probably some kinda inflectional state that refers to ones own subtribe or family lineage within the larger clan that tends to get removed in translation. anyway they travel along routes in the desert between various oases & are generally considered to be bandits or evil spirits by many of the other peoples who try to inhabit the great desert. there's a lot of king of dragon pass style "it's just friendly social behavior to sometimes raid a nearby camp and steal their goats" activities going on. sure, you don't want to murder the people you're raiding but sometimes they get a cracked head and that's just the cost of having sociable relations. this is how they figure out their relative ordering of power among themselves, but this behavior is not well regarded by the settled villages that get raided. they're just evil bandits who steal their stuff. occupation-wise, i have these put down as producing an awful lot of witches. witches, poets, warriors/raiders, artists. presumably also animal caretakers and scouts/foragers/rangers, too

very far south, along the edges of the acid sea, there are stilt-villages of fisherfolk who catch the weird things that live in the acid shoals. they build from some kinda tree-like acid vegetation and they have to cover everything they build in thick layers of resin pitch to make it acidproof. lots of waxed leather raincapes. pretty much everybody has pitted acid scars all over regardless. there are probably some villages out on islands in the acid sea that are totally disconnected from everywhere else save for like, shingle-bottomed resin boat travel over the acid sea. these are the only peoples who might plausibly have traveled to the other continent. if we're assuming the world used to be more watery & then the oceans sublimated away leaving behind mostly acid, these people would be living on what was formerly the abyssal plain. but maybe that's not what happened!

there's some striped canyons somewhere with big cities carved into the walls & bridges made between them. not a lot of notes on these people aside from lots of artists and bards

there are also the big mesa-temples. big mesa. hollow it out! temple complex at the top. big warren cave-city. they worship families of great beasts they consider to be divine messengers. brulvundojn is from here! it's not great. they're very eugenics-y in their attempts to breed humans into a great beast lineage. generally it doesn't take. when i was rereading the ancient nanowrimo novel that brulvundojn is actually from, i was like "oh noktigo is great" so i guess in this continuity he would be one of the rare true chimeras to come out of the breeding program, & his response was to immediately get the fuck out of there. i'm not sure if brulvundojn is 'from there' in the sense of being some offshoot of a royal lineage, or if he's from there more broadly as in he was once a peer to one of the lineages that got fixated on breeding themselves out into the world & he got out before anybody started worshipping him. the thing with the great beasts is that they are less, like, physical animals that are big and weird, and more like a physical embedding of a physical rule or structure. well, 'the new hive' is an extremely low-fantasy take on things so nobody in that really has magical powers. but in general. brulvundojn embodies the principle that those who trespass boundaries are doomed to death for their violation of the natural order & he doesn't really like being that very much. usually when a great beast breeds w/ a human you just get like, a human with some claws. whatever. sometimes you get another great beast, who is less a separate individual and more a different facet of the great beast's concept. a true chimera who has some of the conceptual nature is very rare. they're also very dangerous b/c great beasts are kind of circumscribed in their capacity for free action by the strictures of their concept, & chimera don't have that. they just have spooky powers and the capacity to do whatever they want with them. anyway some of the older lineages of great beasts are no longer living in a mesa-temple with their families so much as they are unweaving the conceptual boundaries of reality and reweaving it into something more aligned with their conceptual judgment. you can think of it as a pocket dimension if you like. or like the oblivion dimensions in the elder scrolls.

the walled oasis cities! they're also in the middle of the great desert, maybe a little on the northwestern-ish expanse. these are the most dark sun aspect of the setting really. ancient mages, maybe responsible for the ruin of the world, decide to set up a civilization to serve them. the big capital city-states all have the mage's domain (big tower, w/e) at the center, & the entire industry exists essentially to serve them. over time they've allowed lesser mage families to spring up (they need somebody to do the weak magic, after all) and those sometimes establish smaller cities with their own mage towers at the center. most of the original mages have retired from public position as official dictatorial mage-emperor for life, b/c they're perfectly capable of keeping the society tuned to their needs without also having to do any of the actual work of running it. meanwhile, all the citizens in the cities are like "wow we sure are lucky to be born in the only true, free society!!" while they are busy having their labor exploited and having their unions crushed by mage-knights and dying young of poverty and sickness. i feel like it's a little too on-the-nose tbh. architecturally they're very persian-influenced oh yeah so a few centuries ago a mage constructed some helper workers in the form of chesspiece/chaturaji golems. pawns to do simple menial labors, and then rooks/boats for building, knights for scouting, elephants/bishops for simple magic and the management of other golems, and then finally royals to create new golem pieces. then the royal pieces killed him because he was the last remaining inefficiency in the perfect automated world he had built for himself. that's how the cautionary fable goes, at least; maybe their true motives were different. anyway now there's a whole subspecies of chesspiece golems & i have a big gay romance outlined between a black knight & his childhood friend. they lived in some outlying mage-compound that ended up collapsing & most of the servants escaped and became outlaws. theyre gay fantasy cowboys.

there was at one point an empire of the frozen phoenix, though its lands have receded extensively & its former lands are mostly a few handful of former-peasant tribes picking out a rough existence in the ruins of former cities. only a handful of their cities remain, with more splintering off into rebellion each day. in the remixed version of 'the new hive' the defecting soldiers will probably come from here, which is maybe a problem b/c in my docs i only really have about one line about them, like: 'phoenix empire: former empire, decayed/decaying.'

one of the eastern borders is a land of unstable ground where fissures that ooze blood and rotting meat break open. sometimes acid springs seep fumes down into raw meat and send up charred fumes. there are small, scattered villages of rot-fishers, who live on the edge of the more stable fissures and fish up chunks of meat. they're pale and red-eyed and frequently have bizarre bloated deformities. a lot of people consider them to be harbingers of plague and pestilence. sometimes instead of growing old they metamorph into sinewy flesh monsters with intense psychic powers. i'm sure it's fine.

another one of the eastern borders is a land of perpetual sandstorm, kept going by spells from an order of witches, to hide away their lands from outsiders. how mysterious. wonder what they're up to.

there are moon-rabbits who say they came from the black moon. they live in warrens in the hulls of ancient machines that are strewn across the wasteland, and almost never leave. they're very nervous and conflict-averse. they have a prophecy about the end of the world they've read in the movements of the planets. there's a splinter race of jackalopes who are bigger and much more likely to travel outside. also, they have horns. occupations: engineers, glassblowers, astronomers, artificers.

the northern foothills of the western mountains are sparsely covered with vegetation and sometimes broken up into karst mesas, and clinging to the tops of some of them are the remnants of old forests. they're inhabited by remnants of some druidic order, mostly goatmen and humans, and they mostly stay to themselves and aggressively attack any outsiders

the western mountains proper are the eastern edge of some vast and sprawling orc / ogre empire. there are small outposts on the mountains themselves, and vast machine-cities on the far foothills over the main mountain ridge. the springs on the western side of the range seep black oil instead of water, & there's a sea of ichorous oil even further west, beyond the mountains

there's some cenote-cities along the mountains too, probably in the southwest expanse as it peters out for the descent down to the plains of the acid sea. natural cenotes of lightly brackish, highly mineral water have been expanded and cultivated into tiered cenote-cities, mostly inhabited by reptile-people. maybe a bridge to the underground. like the underground with the gheist in it?? we'll see how things shake out

these get shorter and shorter as i go further b/c i want to be closer to the end of this post. i haven't even touched on whatever astau is. anyway.

broadly speaking this is a world where the vast majority of it is rocky, dusty inhospitable wasteland, with scarce outposts of habitable land. travel between the regions is uncommon, though it does happen, and large-scale travel, like with an army, is pretty much unheard of due to the lack of supplies. it all comes back to logistics.

anyway this is the setting/project that a lot of the things i've been talking about over the past few, uh, years have been about? or at least circling around. guess why i was trying to work out medieval crop yields in the first place. i want some numbers here for population and arable land!!

[path-with-no-path]

Grow Back Your Horns

The Devil Card Is Dionysus

You close your eyes, seeing black: the black of a black bear against the night, apparent only briefly, when moonlight strikes flintlike against the oiled fur along the bear’s spine. You hear the darkness of sound: the loon’s song tunneling through lake water, the velveteen thump of a hummingbird moth against the window. Petrichor: rain waking up the warm, deep scent of the soil. A lover’s fingers pinching out the candle. The heft of overripe plums. Honey almost peppery with wildflower pollen. Walking inside the barn at night, animals shuffling against each other, cooing and mooing like blind electrons, dream-dancing around an atom.

Welcome to the Devil card.

Or, as he should be known, the Dionysus card.

For here is our favorite god of revolution, lovemaking, vegetation, soil, dance, and fermentation, thinly cloaked with Christian prejudice. Elaine Pagels maps the history of the Christian Devil in her book The Origin of Satan, demonstrating that pre-Christian Jewish ideas of devils were neutral or even positive.1 And very often Devil imagery leads directly back to the worship of theriomorphic vegetal gods.

Originally, as Pagels tells us, the idea of “devil” had no theological baggage; it meant simply “stumbling block.” The genderless figure of a devil was seen as a course correction. Something that blocks the wrong way forward. You are forced to stop and reassess. You step closer to your true desires and purpose as a result. This devil, then, is closer to the modern idea of the guardian angel. It shepherds you away from danger, sometimes loudly, sometimes gently. Pagels shows that as Christianity developed, it found a “scapegoat” in the goat-horned god Dionysus. Racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism were poured into the now-singular Devil, who didn’t represent evil so much as the bowl where the dominant culture could ferment its most violent prejudices.

We see traces of this history in the card itself. The horns, bat wings, and bird feet recall older pagan practices that venerated nature and animal gods. In the earliest depictions of the card, the Devil is most like the blended Dionysus: half animal, with both breasts and a phallus. The darkness of the Devil card is not the black of absence but the inky, living dirt with germinating seeds, sucking up moisture and nutrients to feed an entire forest. Simplistic interpretations of the Devil card warn of excess, overinflated egotism, and abuse of power. But the Devil as Dionysus is actually the antidote to these vices. These interpretations are misdirections from the true symbols of patriarchal capitalism: the Emperor, the Chariot, and the Hierophant. Let us entertain a new interpretation of this card. The Devil has been a dumping ground for hate and prejudice. But it has also been the place where older, more fertile practices have survived as stowaways.

Look at the Devil card and you will see the doubling of the Lovers card. Chained to a black block with the Devil crouching above them, two lovers incline their horned heads toward each other. They look at their shared chains. Some interpretations warn that the lovers have given into their animal instinct and fallen into “hedonism.” If so, good for them. We could all use more animal instinct. We need to put our horns back on and start thinking less as individuals and more as patchy, contaminated relationships to other peoples, ecologies, and modes of consciousness.

In the Lovers card the man looks at the woman, while the woman stares away from him, up at a disembodied angel—a monotheistic sky deity. The lovers are not truly connected. They lack reciprocity. Abstraction dominates. The woman looks at the sky and not at herfeet or at her earthly partner. The lovers of the Devil card, by contrast, heal the Cartesian abstraction of the Lovers card. Both gaze at the chain that connects them. They incline their heads downward toward the earth and inward toward each other.

We are not mindless symbols, the card seems to say—not flat cards flying out of a deck. We are sticky, unruly relationships, intimately tied to the earth, to each other, and to those theriomorphic Dionysian deities that slip in and out of the imaginal realm when we need a “stumbling block” course correction. What if we reinterpreted the chains of the Devil card as mycelial rootlets? This is mushroom intelligence, linking and dispersing information. Probing and splitting. Slipping backward on itself. Involuting.

The lovers of the Devil card are rooted to the earth and to each other. They remind us that we haven’t always been outside the garden. The garden is just below our feet. We don’t need a grand spiritual awakening in order to come back into this Edenic consciousness. We just need to pay close, special attention to the connections that already constitute us. The lush, environmental contexts that shape our desires, our appetites, and our stories. Let us give thanks to the Devil card for holding hatred without dissolving underneath it. Let us thank this Dionysian goat-god for protecting the lovers below his bat wings, for helping them grow horns again, and teaching them how to send down roots.

I don’t just want to reclaim the Devil for the masculine. I want to place him firmly between people, between plants, between lovers. He teaches us to grow connective tissue in soil through Indigenous land practices, soil regeneration, and the cultivation of native mycorrhizal communities. But he also, simply, heals our ability to love, not with our meatless language or our minds, but with our whole, messy, indeterminate, gender-flickering, bat-winged bodies.

[selamat-linting]

anyway another game update. because the last one isnt done

1. hardrock version

so, last few entries, i talked about getting silkworm and backpacks. turns out these things arent on my version of tfc. its on the hardrock version that requires you to boil your water, added a temperature system, and i think it also has tornados and piranhas? its much harder than the one i played. pro tip: if your installing the mod, dont just install tfc. i had a hard time with a lot of recipes because the tfc field guide on its own isnt very detailed. i got a lot better once i installed the essential beginner modpack that include map and coord help and JEI support to look up crafting recipes. even the harder version like hardrock was actually a modpack i believe.

tfc actually had a lot of version like tfc tng that only covers 1.18+ update, 1.20 current version, tfc plus, tfc hardcore, even the old original versions like 1.7.10 that came out ten years ago. the rule is, when in doubt, check field guide on github, install JEI mod, or ask their discord.

2. welding

anyway, back to the game. since my thatch bed is done and all i have to do is wait for the alpaca to be ready to shear again, i decided to make an anvil.

welding is an evil mechanic. the charcoal forge is evil too. i swear watching the copper ingot heats up is like watching water boil. but then if i look away and do something else the copper gets too hot and disappears. i lost quite a bit of ingots during the trial and error process. it is quite satisfying to see my first double ingots though. and crafting some bellows helped lot in making the forge heats up faster, and once you got it handled down, you slowly gets used to it and it becomes easy.

and then, you got your first copper anvil.

smithing is more fun and less tedious, because its a mini-game. but if there's one thing i want to automate, its that. more motivation for me to start making windmills. but then i realized the gear box needed to harness mechanical powers are made of brass, a metall alloy so i might have to do a lot of smithing manual anyway. fml

but seriously, smithing isnt as bad as welding things in a stone anvil. the waiting game isnt as horrible. i think, all the trouble i got just for my new copper boots and copper shields are worth it. im actually planning to do a helmet, but i dont have enough copper right now.

you know, i've been thinking of making a beginner's welding/smithing guide because there is a lot of ppl complaining abt it. i think once you got it handled its fun, but the documentation are hard to get through if youre very much a beginner gamer. i might not help ppl do a perfectly forged item (yet) but i can make crafting a copper anvil less of a pain in the ass.

3. farming / food

i might have made a mistake in moving after my base burned down. my place is cold. it has some very bright summers and spring, but its snowing more times in the year than it is sunny. its good for a steady supply of deer meat, but not good for farming.

but i still have quite a bit of a harvest. its so much that i need to make an extra food container and some of the crops rot because i just cant eat everything in time even when i mix everything up in soups and sandwiches. i can preserve and pickle things up more but i need vinegar and it requires sugar which grow from sugar canes and it doesnt grow in my area and maybe i also need to make jams so i have to make a jar but then that requires glassworking and turns out i need to craft a blowpipe and that requires. iron. and smithing on the anvil. astagfirullah.

back to farming, i can at least mitigate the short planting and growing season by using fertilizers to make things grow faster. which is where the crop rotation part came in. fertilizers have different ratio of phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen, while plants require just one of said nutrients. if i keep planting the same type of seed in the same farm soil, the nutrients that affect its growth will slowly deplete along with the crop yield over time while the other nutrients that could be used to double the yield and make faster growing time are left unused in the soil. there is also the matter of some plants being more resistant to cold weather like cabbages and barleys. i might need to make a excel sheet arranging the most efficient crop rotation and the best way to get as much out of the short planting season of my base's cold climate.

(to be continued because this has gotten too long already!)

[quotesfrommyreading]

Waste recycling is a crucial attribute of the earth's most diverse ecosystems. We value tropical rain forests because they squander so little of the energy supplied by the sun, thanks to their vast, interlocked system of organisms exploiting every tiny niche of the nutrient cycle. The cherished diversity of the rain-forest ecosystem is not just a quaint case of biological multiculturalism. The diversity of the system is precisely why rain forests do such a brilliant job of capturing the energy that flows through them: one organism captures a certain amount of energy, but in processing that energy, it generates waste. In an efficient system, that waste becomes a new source of energy for another creature in the chain. (That efficiency is one of the reasons why clearing the rain forests is such a shortsighted move: the nutrient cycles in their ecosystems are so tigh that the soil is usually very poor for farming: all the available energy has been captured on its way down to the forest floor.)

Coral reefs display a comparable knack for waste management. Corals live in a symbiotic alliance with a tiny algae called zooxanthellae. Thanks to photosynthesis, the algae capture sunlight and use it to turn carbon dioxide into organic carbon, with oxygen as a waste product of the process. The coral then uses the oxygen in its own metabolic cycle. Because we're aerobic creatures ourselves, we tend not to think of oxygen as a waste product, but from the point of view of the algae, that's precisely what it is: a useless substance discharged as part of its metabolic cycle. The coral itself produces waste in the form of carbon dioxide, nitrates, and phosphates, all of which help the algae to grow. That tight waste-recycling chain is one of the primary reasons coral reefs are able to support such a dense and diverse population of creatures, despite residing in tropical waters, which are generally nutrient-poor. They are the cities of the sea.

 —  The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World (Steven Johnson)

[revlyncox]

Earth My Body (2024)

In celebration of May Day and Beltane, we remember that embodiment is a gift, and we honor the interdependent web of which we are a part. Our cosmology, our whole understanding about how the spiritual and physical universe works, is based on connections, and on cause and effect rippling out in all directions through those connections. This sermon was delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on May 5, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of which we are a part. We remember that the concept of the interdependent web is not limited to caring for the planet. Our cosmology, our whole understanding about how the spiritual and physical universe works, is based on connections, and on cause and effect rippling out in all directions through those connections. We don’t believe in a great chain of being that places some people as closer to the Divine than others, but instead we appreciate our mutual interdependence with all matter. 

In cosmologies that are based in hierarchy, some kinds of lives are valued over others, some genders over others, some races over others. In concepts of existence that can be mapped out in a great, linear chain of being, the earth is an object, there to be dominated and manipulated for the benefit of those at the top. And so are the human beings who are considered to be closer to the earth, those of us who are considered more base, meaning closer to the bottom of the chain. There is a direct connection between the dehumanization of people whose worth and dignity are denied, and disrespect for the ecosystem in which we live and move and have our being. As Unitarian Universalists, when we disrupt the false map of the universe that lifts the value of some genders or races over others, when we disrupt the concept that the purpose of the earth is exploitation, this is all part of the same project of affirming the interdependent web of existence. 

I believe it is our duty to find joy in earthiness, and to lift up the beauty of humans and ecosystems that have been devalued by systems of oppression. The connections between our bodies and the earth are complex, real, and sacred. Nutrients in the soil--literal dirt--turned into garden plants turned into food, becomes part of our own bodies. When there is no human life left in my body, I pray that it will be returned to the earth. The earth is in us. We are in the earth. 

We have much to celebrate about the living planet and our physical bodies. Putting our hands and feet in the dirt where we live, being fully present to the limits and possibilities of our bodies, the experience of the tangible world within us and around us can be good in many ways. The physical world can teach us to be at peace within. It can anchor our feelings of love in the here and now. The concrete reality we share can help us understand our diversity and our commonalities. In other words, the physical world of soil and water and bodies teaches us peace, love and understanding.

Peace

Experiencing the physical world as it is helps us to feel grounded. Being mindful of embodiment helps cut down on should-have's, might-have-been's, and ought-to's. The poet Wendell Berry speaks to this feeling:

"When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief," says Berry. Wild animals feel pain, certainly. All things in nature know birth, suffering, and death. But they "do not tax their lives with forethought of grief."  The poet doesn't just contemplate the wood drake, he goes to lay down by the water. He gets close to the earth. He remembers himself as part of the environment. His physical experience in the presence of still water brings him peace.

I believe that being present to any environment, right where we are, can help us to find relief from the taxation of the forethought of grief. Some environments may be more peaceful than others, but just paying attention to the here and now helps me slow down my mind from running away with imagined future calamities. "Don't borrow trouble," as my grandmother used to say.

The soil and water around us and our own corporeal bodies connect us to the present moment, but sometimes that link brings awareness of injury as well as wild beauty.  There might be thorns next to the still water. On the other hand, even in the presence of suffering, there is also resilience. I find that trying to hide from pain also means hiding from beauty. The physical world is a complex package.

The same has been true for embodied awareness. The joy of walking, or resting, or playing connects us with the present moment, and brings some risks as well as pleasures. Regular practice helps us to remember the joys as well as the risks. As I am finding as I commit to staying active after half a century of life, I have to practice mindfulness to notice what my body can do, rather than let myself get distracted by what I think I should be able to do. Healthy activity is different for every person. When I think too much about comparing myself with others, I take less joy in experiencing the world for myself. When I am in practice with being active and mindful, I am at peace with my body. I feel grounded.

The physical world gives a gift of experience that cannot be matched by the realm of ideas. When I am able to be present to my own body and to my own physical environment, I feel at peace. I am not always able to anchor myself in soil or embodiment. I need more practice with noticing sensory reality instead of concentrating on my fears and worries. Sometimes, though, I find myself in the presence of still water. To experience body and earth on their own terms is to find freedom in the grace of the world.

Love

Living things are part of living systems. The physical world calls us to be in relationship. That's what I mean when I say that the natural world and our own bodies teach us about love. I mean all kinds of love: the love of friends, the love of communities, the love of dogs and cats, the love of a baby who stares at you from over its father's shoulder as you walk down the street. Love, in a broad sense, is the force of compassion and interconnection at work in our relationships.

I believe that the earth is intrinsically good. I believe that our bodies are intrinsically good. We matter. I continue to believe that matter is good, even with the knowledge that pain and suffering are part of the deal. Let's relieve pain where we can. Where we can't relieve pain, let's care for one another, strengthening our connections.  

For Unitarian Universalists, affirming that bodies and physical existence are good is a life-saving part of our theology, our practice, and our public witness. This congregation has, in the past, offered Our Whole Lives classes to middle schoolers. Our Whole Lives, otherwise known as OWL, is a reality-based curriculum about sexuality, health, gender, and human relationships. Students not only learn the biological facts, but they get tools for ethical discernment and wise decision-making, affirmation for the identities they are growing into, and information that will help them to stay healthy. OWL curricula are available for Kindergarten through first grade, fourth and fifth grade, middle school, high school, young adult, adult, and senior adult. If this congregation were to offer it again, you would need a cohort of at least six students in the same age group and at least two teachers who had been through the training module. Cooperation with neighboring UU and United Church of Christ congregations might be a possibility, added to the possibility of opening the class up to unaffiliated families who commit to completing the course. Meanwhile, we can be proud of what the Unitarian Universalist Association makes possible, of the peer education that OWL graduates are leading, and of the philosophy of trust, bodily autonomy, consent, compassion, science, and love that support it all. 

Knowing that our bodies are good is helpful, and we also know that embodied beings are interdependent. People need each other. This congregation already does a good job of caring for one another. I have heard about members visiting one another in hospitals and nursing homes. I've heard about phone calls and greeting cards and casseroles. Yesterday, members showed up by the dozens to support and comfort and collaborate. There was and is a lot of love in this room. I don't need to say a whole lot more about love here, except to point out that our physical bodies remind us of interdependence. Without awareness of our corporeal selves, our embodiment, we might be tempted to think we can get through this life alone and isolated. We need each other. As UU’s, we respect the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. There is spiritual meaning in caring activities: compassion is faith in the interdependent web made manifest.

When we pay attention to our bodies and our lived relationships, the fact of interdependence is obvious. Connections open passageways for compassion. The physical world teaches us love, and it is good.

Understanding 

The Pagan holiday of Beltane reminds us that every single body is amazing. Our bodies make the experience of awe and wonder possible. Listening to the voice of physicists, we all are made up of stuff that once burned in the hearts of stars. Our presence here together is amazing. Each one of us is a miracle.

Yet there seems to be social pressure to regard some bodies as perfect and the rest of us as broken. Some bodies are too large, too small, too brown, too disabled, too ambiguous, or too different to be acceptable. Our bodies determine whether we have equal access to public spaces, whether we can travel without harassment, and whether we can see ourselves reflected in the media as people of worth.

In this system of perfect versus broken, any deviation from the idealized form becomes a character flaw. Imperfection or diversity is assumed to be the result of a lack of control or a bad choice. This leads to a chilling of compassion for those who don’t fit the mold. In other words: people who fall outside the norm are ignored or shunned or shamed as if this could make everyone conform. Many of us frantically try to control our lives to the point of eliminating the appearance of illness or difference, because we fear that perceived imperfection will threaten our relationships with others. We might have good reason to believe that perceived illness or disability or identity will threaten our employment or economic status. 

As UU’s, we know that humans are blessed and imperfect and dazzling in our diversity, and that we don’t need to be idealized or homogenized in order to be embraced by the Source of Life. We advocate for access to healthcare, we advocate for disability justice, we advocate for racial justice, we advocate for gender justice and reproductive justice and gender affirming care because all bodies are blessed. You are worthy, just as you are. It matters when we speak up for inclusion. What affects one person's body affects us all. Let us seek the Divine in every person.

Being present with our corporeal bodies helps us to overcome our differences and disagreements. We find common ground in the mystery and miracle of being alive.

Conclusion

A direct relationship with our bodies and with the earth that sustains us brings many gifts. Awareness of the physical world can anchor us in the present moment, bringing a sense of peace. When we care for each other in body and spirit, and when we care for our local ecosystem, we experience interdependence as a form of love. Fierce, unflinching amazement at the miracle of our bodies in this tangible world leads us to overcome our differences, letting justice arise from greater understanding.

May we share the peace of wild things. May we love honestly, aware of our interdependence. May we find understanding through our diverse experiences of the physical world.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen. 

[rabbivole]

mujtama commune, 5506, current population: 44

i... guess things are stabilizing?

this has happened like 5 times now. an animal crashes in a drop pod, we tend it, it decides it doesn't want to join the colony, and then it's just trapped in the hospital forever shitting on the floor and eating nutrient paste right out of the dispenser until i mercykill it.

sherlock the pig only lived in here a few days. pigs produce so, so much shit. can't have that on the sterile floors

this also keeps happening: i have hospitality running, so we have more people visiting the colony than normal. and our biome has a lot of natural predators. so,

every time somebody shows up there's like a 25% chance i get a notification saying i've lost favor due to a death, because a nearby bear or wolf or something ate a passing kid. this colony is a child deathtrap. i managed to bury a couple of them but there's just so many

they still love their stay and leave gifts though. sorry. (i'm honestly not sure how the hospitality mechanics work. i've been unable to convince a guest to join me yet)

our big fuckfest of this year was a quest i took to get raided.

resurrector mech serums are pretty rare and they're one of my two options for getting rid of nattore's dementia, though they're the worse of the two. it was worth trying to make this work, even if the raid looked a little spicy.

it was spicier than i thought. i didn't look closely enough at the numbers and i also didn't realize they'd be showing up back to back.

each group had 130 raiders in it. so ~260 total

i didn't have any drone strikes or empire military assistance to cash in. however, the first group broke a wall in a monument i was supposed to protect, triggering a mechanoid cluster. so i uh. just dropped a mortar on that cluster at the right time. and that cleaned up a lot of the second wave

the framerate during all this was about as good as you think it was

we lost a new recruit. acceptable losses. we scraped through it after a couple tries (i forgot getting enemies to unstack is a huge pain in the ass) and half the colony almost bleeding out. vugaiv is an absolute fucking champion of a doctor tbh. he's got 18 medical skill and has delivered 6 colony babies

i'm trying to wean us off human meat in the nutrient paste, because visitors take a -20 mood hit for eating it. unfortunately after this raid we're kind of. you know. well:

we finally got nuclear power operational. rimatomics is kind of elaborate.

but i've managed not to blow anything up yet. i need to make more fuel rods but there's no fucking uranium on this map. in the meantime, we finally had the power to build some hydroponics, at which point the permanent eclipse finally ended after a solid year of darkness. it wasn't wasted effort, honestly; it's so cold we only get 20 days of growing time per year, so some hydroponics will be nice to have. long-term we're going to need a very large heated growing cave with soil on the ground so we can grow devilstrand, which takes ages to grow

also we've technically been at the medieval tech level this entire time. i have a mod that advances us to the next tech level if we research 50% of the techs at that level. we finally made it to the industrial age. great job everybody