#we love a good monoculture

[headspace-hotel]

I hate a lot of trends in climate-change-aware nature writing, but this is one I particularly detest: works insisting that we live in a "post-natural" world.

The lostness, bewilderment, aching, and searching in this piece is understood by the author to be an all-consuming and universal dysphoria, when it is actually a highly specific predicament that the author put himself into: He tried to understand the universe exclusively through the point of view of white people.

I mean that Purdy takes the colonizer point of view without realizing that it is a colonizer point of view. He thinks the colonizer point of view is a universal document of the authentic, naive encounter of "humanity" with "nature," instead of burning wreckage left over from the apocalyptic destruction of a rainbow of ideas and cultures.

It feels weird to be talking about this as a white person, but it shouldn't, any more than it should feel weird to say (as a white person) that aliens didn't build the pyramids.

Very little of what he's writing about would exist or make sense without European colonization of the world. Purdy constantly says "we" and "our" in reference to things that are very restricted to a particular cultural point of view, as if totally oblivious to the idea that other cultures and other perspectives even exist. When he searches for historical references to chart "human" relationship with nature, history goes like this: Pre-Christian religion in the British Isles->British monarchy-> George Washington-> Industrial Revolution->Thoreau.

He manages to repeatedly stumble over giant hunks of colonialism embedded in every concept he's thinking about, like boulders obstructing a pathway, and pretends so hard that they don't exist that his points are janky and meandering. For example, his discussion of Helen Macdonald's book H for Hawk, touching upon human identification with the landscape and with non-human "nature," blunders into this:

Those who love (certain parts of) nature are often making a point of preferring it to (certain kinds of) human beings. The problem is not only literary. Macdonald describes an encounter with a retired couple who join her in admiring a valley full of deer, then remark how good it is to see “a real bit of Old England still left, despite all these immigrants coming in.” She does not reply, but is miserable afterward. The meaning of landscapes is always someone’s meaning in particular. Confronted with all of this, Macdonald tries to shake off the complicities of her own identification with the terrain: “I wish that we would not fight for landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight, instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its variousness.” The alternative that Macdonald wishes for is, of course, not an escape from political-cultural projection onto landscape, but another approach to that same practice — really, the only one a 21st-century cosmopolitan is likely to feel comfortable embracing. 

AND THEN HE JUST SEGUES INTO THE NEXT POINT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. Like don't worry about it :) We will simply project onto landscapes in a non-racist way :) because we aren't racist anymore in the 21st century :)

The next book he discusses is Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, which is basically about how the vocabulary of landscape in English is sterilized and monoculturized, and contrasts that with Scots Gaelic. This is how Purdy explains the thesis of the book:

 Our sense of what lies outside ourselves has been blunted by “capital, apathy, and urbanization” — enemies likely to draw a range of friends, from cultural Marxists to Little Englanders to those who would like to see a bit more effort, please. But behind this scholarly sketch, Macfarlane’s work is testament to a pretheoretical obsession with unfamiliar ways of encountering places. We disenchanted and distracted (post)moderns describe terrain, he complains, in terms of “large, generic units” such as “field,” “hill,” “valley,” and “wood." (...) Many people who have lived intimately with landscapes have had words for nuances of form, texture, and use. Macfarlane’s purpose in Landmarksis to gather these words as proof of how precisely it is possible to name a place, and so, perforce, to know it.

Why is Gaelic endangered? Because of an effort to extinguish its speakers' culture. This article I found on it talks about the history of the language's decline, and it's strikingly similar to what happened to indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, with children being put in schools where they were beaten with sticks for speaking their native language.

This whole essay is about Purdy's general disappointment with nature writing, his craving for an ineffable Something, some sort of magical, primitive identification with the natural world. In the very first paragraph he claims that the pictures of animals on nursery walls are "totemic" and quotes a guy saying that zoos are an "epitaph" to the relationship between people and animals. It's never very clear what he means, but he uses the term "animism" repeatedly, such as when he says this about MacFarlane's goal in writing Landmarks:

His quarry is an animistic sense that Barry Lopez once identified in “the moment when the thing — the hill, the tarn . . . ceases to be a thing, and becomes something that knows we are there."

Given that ambition, Landmarks, which Macfarlane calls a “counter-desecration phrasebook,” can be disappointingly thin as a lexicon. Too many of the terms are simply dialect or Gaelic for some generic form, such as “slope,” “hilltop,” “stream,” or “tuft of grass.” The effect is less pointing out how many things there are to see than cataloguing how many names there are for the same thing.

This is Purdy missing the point, perfectly crystallized as though frozen in amber. He is oblivious to the clear subtext of a language showing a culture's connection to its home, and of the violence against that culture. The Gaelic language doesn't make him feel primal and mystical the way he wants it to, therefore it doesn't mean anything to him. MacFarlane doesn't make him feel a magic animistic connection to nature, therefore his book must have failed at its task.

Who gives a shit? Gaelic isn't FOR you.

He discusses another book about a guy that hikes a bunch of Cherokee trails, but I don't know what to say about that one, observing it through the sludge of the reviewer's unwillingness to recognize that historical context exists. He summarizes his disappointment in a confusing way, using the Gaelic language as a symbol for an obscure and inaccessible place where the answer to your personal emotional cravings lives (???) Then he talks about a kind of epistemicide, or extinction of knowing, of nature, but again, totally oblivious to any relationship to colonization.

Every inhabited continent has been denuded of ecosystems and species. Most North American places have shed wolves, elk, moose, brown bears, panthers, bison, and a variety of fish and wild plants, which were all abundant four hundred years ago. 

Wow, I wonder what happened four hundred years ago?

This writing acts like the dominant Eurocentric attitude towards the world is universal, but the author is haunted by this nameless specter of the possibility of a different way of thinking, which he treats as some kind of mystical, primordial state hidden in the past instead of just a different cultural perspective.

Not only does he not recognize that his own cultural perspective of Nature is dysfunctional and unsatisfying because it was created by exploitation and genocide of other cultures and their symbiotic relationships, he acts like other perspectives don't exist. Take his perspective on forests and the mycorrhizal network:

Wohlleben’s emphasis on interdependence and mutual aid is part of a recent tendency to recast nature in an egalitarian fashion — as cooperative, nonindividualist, and, often enough, hybrid and queer, in contrast to the oaks of generals and kings. Nature does answer faithfully to the imaginative imperatives and limitations of its observers, so it was inevitable that after centuries of viewing forests as kingdoms, then as factories (and, along the way, as cathedrals for Romantic sentiment), the 21st century would discover a networked information system under the leaves and humus, what Wohlleben calls, with an impressive lack of embarrassment, a “wood wide web.”

Listen, I don't think this is accurate to how Europeans thought of forests throughout time, let alone "humanity" in general. The emphasis of power and competition in ecosystems emerged after Darwin, in collusion with capitalism and "race science." Trees have been symbols of life, wisdom and selflessness, and regarded as sacred or even sentient, for centuries before that. But on top of that, this is just blatantly pretending that only white people's ideas count as ideas.

It's the same dreck as all the other "literary" writing about climate change: self-pityingly and unproductively mourning "Nature" and a fantasized "wild" state of the Earth, ignoring colonialism, treating human influence of any kind on other life forms as something that either destroys them or makes them soft and "tame."

I'm tired of reading nature writing from people that obviously do not go outside, or if they do, they do it in such a suffocatingly regimented, goal-oriented way that they can't just sit outside and relax.

Maybe I shouldn't be such a hater if I want to do nature writing. But my love of nature is WHY I am a hater.

[mishapeep]

Uh, I saw your post and you mentioned that you teach the kids... how do I put it... that are given to you at social functions due your park ranger aura for safekeeping how to tell the difference between predatory lightning bugs and normal lightning bugs.

And then you didn't tell us that secret! May I ask you to share the difference between predatory lightning bugs and normal ones?

Thank you very much :)

By popular demand and because this was the most polite ask: how to tell the predatory lightning bugs from the non-predatory lightning bugs.

First, there are over 2000 species in Lampyridea. I am not qualified to distinguish between all that. I grew up in Northern Ohio (71 species) and every year summer wasn’t official until the lightning bugs came out in the evenings (usually the first or second week of June).

This is our first clue. The first lightning bugs out each evening are a species of non-predatory chaps. Their glow goes in a special pattern. Flash, pause, “J” shaped flight about 2 -3’ off the ground. Repeat. Their glow is more yellow and lingers. These are the males of Photinus pyralis or the common eastern firefly. They look like this:

(Photo from iNaturalist: a lightning bug beetle, mostly black with gold lines around the wing casing. Head shield is yellow with a red “eye” with black iris in the center. Rounded front and back, long down the center.)

Their females hide in tall grasses waiting for the right suitor. If you’re lucky and clever you can see her dimmer flash in the grass beaconing the males closer.

As the dark of night progresses you’ll start to see a quicker, brighter, greener flash. Blip, blip, blip, blip, long pause. They are FAST! They’ll also mimic the flashes of Photinus females. These are usually higher up off the ground. Even in the trees! These lightning bugs aren’t looking for love.

Photuris (not gonna get to specific epitaph on this one without a sample and a key) are looking for dinner!

(Photo from blog.greatparks.org another lightning bug beetle. This one is slightly larger than the non-predatory bug. It has “shoulders” and extra gold lines running through the back. Its legs are longer and its shield is more “sharp”. The shield marking is less like an eye and more like a yellow D where the inside is a red triangle with a black line running through.)

Another way to tell is to go out at night and catch a bunch of lightning bugs (if you can; I hear they’re getting scarce). Offer them a slice of apple. If you wake up in the morning to only a few and the rest are dead, good chance you found some predators. (This is how I found out about them! Wooops!!)

Lightning bugs are freaking magical. I’m so sad to hear that they are yet another wonder that we are losing at an alarming rate. If this bugs you as much as it bugs me there are a few things you can do to help them:

1) do not spray for mosquitoes! That spray is not-species specific. It’s bad for lightning bugs. It’s bad for monarch butterflies. It’s bad for birds. It’s bad for bats. It’s bad.

2) kill your lawn. But Misha! You said they breed in the grasses! True! However native plants are going to provide so much more habitat for these guys than a gross monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass ever will. The Midwest has some of the best native plant nurseries in the country! Use that resource!

3) Advocate for them and donate to conservation if you’re able. Bugs don’t have voices and they fight an uphill battle just for being a bug.

Thanks for joining my ranger talk! Support your parks.

[tkingfisher]

I have a question I just thought of. I remember reading that the potato is something that you can discuss at length. I'm curious about the Irish potato famine (as it's called by many people) of 1845 - 52. The potato blight killed a whole load of potatoes, and blight warnings are still a thing today. But... honestly, why? Was just one variety of potato grown? If not, wouldn't different varieties have resisted? The only thing I'm even remotely familiar with is Panama Disease, which is killing off Cavendish bananas because they're all genetically identical - was that the case for the potatoes being grown at the time?

Oh boy. Okay, this is a huge complicated topic and I can only do the Cliff Notes version and even that is absurdly long, but here we go.

The cause of the Irish Potato Famine were, in order:

A) the British

B) the British but moreso

C) still the British but also capitalism

and

D) monoculture

I am not nearly so equipped to talk about A-C as many, many other people, so let’s talk about D.

Now, the humble potato is frankly one of the most glorious products of agricultural science ever created, for which we must thank the indigenous people of Peru, who produced some goddamn geniuses at potato breeding (and also figured out how to freeze-dry potatoes centuries before Idahoan.) The Incas had literally thousands of potato varieties, every size, shape, color, growing condition, right down to sacred potatoes only for consumption by the royal family. They did seriously epic shit with a weird little tuber, a feat perhaps only surpassed by the geniuses who made corn out of teosinte.

Quite a long time later—by which I mean about ten thousand years after the potato was domesticated—the Irish were growing a potato variety called the Lumper. It was a big, coarse, ugly-ass potato which apparently didn’t even taste that great. Irish farmers had other potatoes that they liked a lot better! But the Lumper had three things going for it—it gave huge yields, tolerated nutrient-poor soil, and it didn’t mind wet feet.

(Wet feet is the gardening term for plants with their roots in waterlogged soil. Most potatoes do not actually like wet feet and will rot. But the Lumper was fine with it, which meant that basically you could grow the things in poor soggy soil, which large swaths of Ireland had in generous supply.)

Because of a whole lot of really abusive shit by various landowners, a lot of Irish people ended up dependent on the Lumper for their diet, and I mean dependent. You can live for a really long time on cow’s milk and potatoes if you have to, and a potato that would produce massive yields in crappy wet soil was a godsend. So you had vast areas that were planted with just the Lumper. (There are some reports that other, better-tasting potato varieties were grown for the landlords, but while the workers dug them, they were not allowed to eat them. I can’t speak to the truth of this or not, but it’s definitely worth looking up a full history of the socioeconomics of the famine, if you ever happen to be feeling too good about the world and want to be crushed.)

Unfortunately, the Lumper has one other significant trait—it is extremely vulnerable to potato blight, a disease caused by Phytophtora infestans, which is a weird little thing called an oomycete. It’s more like a fungus than it is anything else, but it’s actually in a separate kingdom called Chromista. (Currently, anyway. Taxonomy is where idealistic young scientists go to become old before their time.) Nevertheless, for our purposes, let’s just call it a fungus. (Also, Chromista is a great name for an alicorn in My Little Pony.)

P. infestans loooooves members of the Solanum clan, which include tomatoes and potatoes. This love is not returned. In a tomato, it’s usually called late blight, in a potato, it’s potato blight, no matter what you call it, it’s bad news. It likes damp, cool conditions, and of course Ireland is basically one big damp cool condition, so once the blight got established, it was in heaven.

Blight on a potato takes about five days from start to finish. This sucker is FAST. One day there’s a blotch on a leaf, next day there’s some whitish stuff under a leaf, then the tubers are suddenly turning black and mushy and stink to high heaven. You may even think you got a good tuber and put it in storage and then you open the door to the root cellar and the whole bin has rotted practically overnight.

The spores can spread by wind, and once it landed on a potato plant, all it needed was like two days above fifty degrees with high humidity, and it was off and running. And it gets in the soil. But worst of all, it lives in the tubers themselves.

Potato cultivars, for those who don’t know, are almost always a clone of the parent. All Yukon Golds are basically the same Yukon Gold. You pop a tuber off a plant, you pop it in the ground, it grows another plant just like the first one, asexual reproduction at its finest.*

Now, potatoes can and do set seed, but there’s some variation even in a seed with two parents of the same variety. Two Yukon Golds might give you Yukon Goldish. Mix up multiple varieties and you don’t always know what you’re gonna get.** (I have grown potatoes from mixed seed and thus made my own cultivars, it’s fun, but the results are wildly variable. Some don’t set tubers at all, some contain high levels of solanine.***)

If you want specific, uniform varieties that all perform the same way, you probably use the tubers. More importantly, tubers start growing right away once you wake them up, whereas potato seedlings can be finicky and often won’t do anything impressive the first year.

To make matters more confusing, the little tuber clones are referred to as seed potatoes.

Anyway, back to the blight. Everybody was growing from little tuber clones, which could be infected with the blight. This means that if your seed potatoes are infected with blight, even if they look fine, if you plant them, your whole crop is infected. The minute you get a cool wet day, the oomcyte wakes up and goes to town. And if you leave an infected potato in the ground, it infects everybody else—and if you’ve ever dug potatoes, you know that you always, always miss one.

Well. The blight came, it hit the Lumper, and it spread like wildfire. The Lumper grew in the wet conditions the blight loved, and was also really susceptible to it, so it was a match made in hell. There were potato varieties even then that were more resistant to the blight, but they were tiny islands and a sea of blight was washing over them daily, so they eventually succumbed. Even if you planted a different potato, if it was in soil that had previously held the Lumper, it was likely doomed.

This is the problem with monocultures. You plant all one variety and it’s susceptible to some particular bug, when that bug hits, you have no fall back position. And potatoes, being more or less clones, are even more vulnerable than most seed-grown crops, and this bug is particularly nasty and the spring of ‘45 was exactly the right weather and the British government was being particularly evil and ultimately a million people starved to death because of a perfect storm.

The Lumper still exists. Somebody turned up some heirloom seeds back in 2008 and grew them out, and what they got is probably pretty close to the original. Being seed grown, it doesn’t carry the blight. It’s an ugly, watery, kinda waxy potato that even its champions think tastes sorta okay, I guess. Cultivariable, one of the few sources I can find, says that in addition to not being resistant to blight, it’s not resistant to anything else either, and there’s not much point in trying to grow it unless you have long dry summers and no local blight.

And that is the saga of the Lumper, the blight, and why I personally always plant at least four varieties of potato.

* There’s some subtleties here, but for layman’s purposes, we’ll go with this.

** It’s actually way complicated, but this is already hella long.

*** Same stuff that makes green potatoes toxic. Super bitter, so you know right away it’s inedible and spit it out. We still refer to taste-tasting the new crop from seed as “the Potato Suicide Pact” but it’s not actually dangerous.

[lindszeppelin]

I used to live in LA and I back up your friend saying paparazzi aren’t waiting for people, even in Malibu. I’ve literally never seen paparazzi but I’ve seen famous people. Like, REALLY famous people- who have been famous for decades and even in one instance was in the middle of a HUGE legal scandal. No paparazzi (and the legal scandal one was in 2019 so still very recent therefore regarding the same climate as how this stuff works now).

I don’t want to dislike Kaia (it doesn’t really feel good to dislike people, or at least it isn’t productive) but the more I realized the UK Daily Mail has been covering her or at least her family from birth, the more I realized she really isn’t anything special and just had PR this whole time. So many people still don’t know who or what a Kaia Gerber even is because not everyone loves fashion, we don’t live in a monoculture anymore where everyone is consuming the same content, and she’s hasn’t even done a lot in Hollywood besides being an obvious nepo baby by being so bad at acting and yet…she gets “caught” by the paps getting her damn green drinks and going to the gym? Make it make sense. That’s totally orchestrated. I can’t trust anything out of Kaia Gerber’s mouth once I put that all together. I know a lot of stars do this, but most actually have talent and we all know that she lol…doesn’t exactly have talent!

It’s all also a play from the Kris Jenner bible ( her and Cindy are friends…) by creating publicity and forcing relevance. Nothing is real or organic ( not even her social media…8 or 9 million last time I checked and yet most ppl I know in real life have never heard of her… #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmm). Side note: has anyone ever investigated her social media stats on social blade (blaze?) or does nobody care enough about her to look into it?

When people wonder why Austin and Kaia are hiding…it’s because they can easily hide. Maybe Deux Moi spotting or fans on cell phones sometimes, but again, we’re not in a monoculture so not everyone knows who they are enough to care if they saw them (and I say this as an Austin fan who’s glad he’s getting his flowers; however he only recently made it in a major mainstream way and not everyone saw Elvis/are now learning more about him via MOTA and Dune. All due respect to him but he’s still being cemented into culture in real time and isn’t say, Matt Damon yet…but hey probably one day!). Also regarding both LA and New York, as your friend said, celebrities are around so we largely don’t care and do not take pics when we see them. It’s soooo easy to hide as a celebrity. It’s ridiculous when people act like the paps invade a celebrity’s privacy or that Austin (or anyone else for that matter) must be “hiding” and can’t be living a normal life. HA.

Final thought: even though I said Austin is just getting warmed up, let’s be real and admit he’s more respected than Kaia and likely more liked/known regarding household name recognition. And yet KAIA is papped more than her bf who was nominated for an Oscar?!? And people think that’s just an organic occurrence? 😂😂😂😂😂😂 People need to do some critical thinking and realize what’s happening here!

holy shit i love coming back home from dinner and seeing this beauty in my inbox

you said everything so flawlessly that we have been thinking and saying for a long time, and it's great that you put it in these terms. nothing is ever real or organic about kaia, and kaia with austin together. there are a lot of people her age with talent that i can respect, but she has zero talent and only gets what she does through her parents and by dating austin. it's simple as that. her dating austin was just another PR maneuver to keep her relevant.

[queenofalpaca]

I doubt anyone even reads my posts but just in case someone stumbles across this one, here it goes.

I watched Strange World today. I saw a trailer for it at some point and thought it looked cool, but I completely forgot about it because my brain doesn’t latch onto things before they’ve been slapped in my face three times in a row and Strange World has criminally little promo, which every person on this website who’s seen the movie will also tell you, so I’ll refrain from reiterating a point smarter people have made far more eloquently than me.

What I wanna write about is the fact that I love this movie (and no, it’s not just because my current favorite actor is in it and that’s why I was reminded of the movie’s existence today lol). It’s so colourful and just absolutely beautiful, visually. I could look at this movie for hours. The world design and creature design is also just amazing and I loved the extras that go a little more in depth on them. The whole comic introduction section immediately stole my heart, cause I am a slut for that stuff.

Storywise, it may be predictable in hindsight (but I didn’t actually see it coming the first time around until right before the reveal) and it doesn’t really do anything you haven’t seen before, but as a complete movie, it’s absolutely better than the sum of its parts. In regards to themes, it touches on the same environmental stuff a lot of contemporary movies do, but I personally have never seen it presented quite this way. In addition to that they also managed to fit generational trauma and the journey of discovering who you are in there which are two topics near and dear to my heart, especially in the way it’s presented here (Searcher trying not to be like his father and being so much like him sure is. uh oh. *eyes my own pile of daddy issues*) And just as an extra sprinkle on top a little something on monocultures and agricultural practices.

And all in all you end up with, probably, my favourite Disney movie ever. Not that I’m terribly in love with most of them, but this one’s just perfect for me specifically. Which is why I made my mum watch it too as soon as she was home, heh. And if whoever stuck around this long to read my post feels like watching a movie sometime, I definitely recommend this one. I really enjoyed it, it definitely deserves way more attention than it got and if it’ll convince you, yes, it has a gay protagonist and the representation is perfect (he’s just gay. It’s a fact of life, it comes up a few times, and it’s handled exactly the way I hope we can treat all queer people in the future. A little optimism never hurts)

So yeah :) I had a good day

[kermit-p-hob-brainrot]

Ok y'all I have promised my beloved mutual @pop-squeak that I would write a post on my most beloved invasive marsh plant, Phragmites australis also known as the common reed. This thing is so invasive that it is considered a model for invasive plants as a whole.

Some things before we start

Most of this is focused on Virginia since that's where a lot of the research on this bad boy is being done but it does exist elsewhere

I will have citations at the end if you want some more reading

This is based on research I did for a paper like a year ago so there might be new research I am unaware of due to having other classes to do

Please brush off your shoes when you enter/ leave a park so you don't bring stuff places it shouldn't be

Please read I promise it is really really interesting and important to the resilience of out coasts in North America especially in the mid Atlantic to the south :)

If you have questions don't be scared to drop them in the replies/ reblogs

I am an undergrad!!!!! I am generally new at this but I am fairly familiar with this specific subject and trust that everything in this post is accurate, but in general with invasive species it is a heavily nuanced topic that can be very complex. This is my best attempt to simplify this species for general consumption since I think its just really cool and important to coastal botany rn.

This thing lives in the marsh which is the area often between forest and the ocean/ body of water of varying salinity. This thing loves moderate salinity marshes since it can somewhat resist salt water intrusion. This is a part of what makes it so invasive especially in this era of severe sea level rise. Many coastal forests are dying as sea level is rising pushing the marsh farther inland. Part of the problem is that many native species can not move as colonize the new land as fast as the common reed can.

Phragmites as is incredibly good at reproducing and growing so close together that nothing else can live even close to it. It makes clonal offshoots of itself (THEY CREATE CLONES OF THEMSELVES?!?!?!?!?) and creates networks for communication. this dense packing leads to a monoculture where for miles in the strip of marsh 95% of what you see is phragmites. It is a magnificent and horrifying sight as you see the dead trees in the middle of these fields of phragmites knowing it was only 5-10 years ago that that was where the forest line was. It is the beautiful horror about being slowly consumed by the ocean. This monoculture does not only apply to flora but also fauna.

Farmers often actually welcome phragmites to their land and are resistant to get rid of it. This is because as native species have died off, phragmites has been able to colonize these areas fast enough to help resist further salt inundation and prevent flooding. This unfortunately is only a band-aid solution, especially in southern Virginia near the Chesapeake bay which has some of the highest rate of sea level rise in the country, since native plants and diverse marshes make them more resistant to flooding. It is better than nothing though, so we must keep in mind transition plans for farmland when trying to manage phragmites. We practice science to help every day people, not in spite of every day people. They should be included in all management decision making. We work for them not the other way around.

Competition is the name of the game for Phragmites. It beats is competition not only with its cloning abilities (there's a lot more to this but i had to read like 7 different papers to figures out wtf anybody was talking about so I'm not going into it) and sheer density, but it can also just poison the other plants around it. It can release a toxin that inhibits growth and seed sprouting in other species. It is also resistant to flooding and drought and it has been found that ground disturbance can make it spread faster. This makes it highly resistant to most disturbances that occur in marsh and wetland habitats.

Because it is resistant to like everything it is so hard to kill. To the point where some of the people who management have told me that eradicating it for an area is near impossible and an unreasonable expectation. Reduction has become the best case scenario. This makes early identification important. You can try to kill it by herbicides, mowing, fire, smothering with a plastic tarp, throwing a bunch of salt on top of it, and flooding with fresh or salt water.

The common reed is an interesting mix of being both a native and invasive plant. Phragmites australis has a subspecies native to North America, but this subspecies has been largely replaced by a more aggressive non-native European subspecies. Phragmites can grow from three to thirteen feet with broad sheath like leaves. Its considered one of the most invasive plants in the worlds having a broad geographic range. It exists on every continent except Antarctica.

As someone who has been in a field of them you can not pull these out of the ground. The tops break off but you have to dig them out of the ground if you wan them out. Also just a pain to walk through.

Here's a pic: (Yes that a person, yes they can be that tall)

Works Cited

Langston, A. K., D. J. Coleman, N. W. Jung, J. L. Shawler, A. J. Smith, B. L. Williams, S. S. Wittyngham, R. M. Chambers, J. E. Perry, and M. L. Kirwan. 2022. The effect of marsh age on ecosystem function in a rapidly transgressing marsh. Ecosystems 25: 252-264.

Humpherys, A., A. L. Gorsky, D. M. Bilkovic, and R.M. Chambers. 2021. Changes in plant communities of low-salinity tidal marshes in response to sea-level rise. Ecosphere 12.

Accessed 9 December 2022. Invasive alien plant species of Virgina: common reed (Phragmites australis). Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virgina Native Plant Society. https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/document/fsphau.pdf

Accessed 9 December 2022. Common reed (Phragmites australis). Virgina Institute of Marine Science. https://www.vims.edu/ccrm/outreach/teaching_marsh/native_plants/salt_marsh/phragmites_facts.pdf

Theuerkauf, S. J., B. J. Puckett, K. W. Theuerkauf, E. J. Theuerkauf, and D. B. Eggleston. 2017. Density-dependent role of an invasive marsh grass, Phragmites australis, on ecosystem service provision. PLoS ONE 12.

Accessed 9 December 2020. Phragmites: considerations for management in the critical area. Critical Area Commission for the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coastal Bays. https://dnr.maryland.gov/criticalarea/Documents/Phragmites-Fact-Sheet-Final.pdf

Uddin, M. N., and R. W. Robinson. 2017. Allelopathy and resource competition: the effects of phragmites australis invasion in plant communities. Botanical Studies 58: 29.

Meyerson, L. A., J. T. Cronin, and P. Pysek. 2016. Phragmites australis as a model organism for studying plant invasions. Biological Invasions 18: 2421-2431.

[aisling-saoirse]

Princess Tree - Paulownia tomentosa

Today's Plant Profile is a little different, I wanted to cover an 'invasive' that fascinated me.

Before I begin I wanted to dissect my terminology on invasive, the term is often thrown at plants without considering a racialized and often problematic methodology on how we relate to these species. Invasive species are typically advantageous in the face of disturbance and quick to colonize altered areas, the monumental spread of invasives is a direct result of euro-centric land commodification, international trade and colonization. These species would not be as 'destructive' as they are without dramatic change to wildspaces/once-thoroughly-managed landscapes. You don't have to love these plants but understand that they often occupy spaces we disturbed, and that doesnt mean i want monocultures of introduced species but we should analyze what makes them thrive the way they do. I usually cover natives species to a document a dramatic loss I noticed in my lifetime however every plant has a good story behind.

To start let's identify the Princess Tree! Best known for their showy pink-lavender foxglove like flowers, perfect structural form, and massive leaves. This tree can grow up 90 feet, it's extremely fast growing, full trees can form between bricks (see 2 images below). The massive leaves are heart-shaped cataylpa-like often exceeding a foot in size (I see people use them as umbrellas in a pinch). The bark is pretty light in color, younger bark is speckled then becomes furrowed with age. The flowers are rather large, about the size of my palm (image 2), typically growing in large triangular clusters. In fall and winter, flowers typically form this large rough shell (see branch cuttings below) that splits overtime, more about that later.

The Princess Tree has a very rich folklore and introduced history behind it. According to my Chinese classmates the Princess Tree gets it's name from an old story about a beloved betrothed Princess who was transformed into this tree by a trickster, her husband-to-be was transformed into a Phoenix and it's said that when a ruler as great as she returns the Phoenix will land on its branches. I see (mostly western anecdotes) claim that this tree is planted when girls are born and the wood is used as a dowry, my classmates did not agree with this (take note these are landscape students). The wood is very sought-after in east Asia as it is sturdy and light, occasionally some american cities will sell the wood from invasive groves back to China, how fascinating!

The introduced history comes in two parts. The first the tree was initially sold as an ornamental originating from the Dutch east India company, the tree reached America by the 1830s. Due to the structure of the tree itself up into the mid century, modernist designers LOVED this tree, I've seen so many architectural drawings lovingly depicting it's big leaves. The second interesting facet about this tree's spread is that certain Chinese porcelain companies used to use the seed pods as a form of packing peanuts. Since the porcelain was primarily shipped by train in continent the tree quickly took hold around rail lines, if you look in philadelphia the oldest trees are around the railroads. The tree was able to survive in the desolate railway soils because it (like most invasive species) is able to derive nitrogen directly from the atmosphere into its roots. That's why you see these babies growing directly in a brick wall like below, crazy right?

The Princess Tree's native range is central to Western China, not much is know about it's natural habitat because literal millenia of civilization scale landscape changes. What is known is that the tree was typically found in dry-ravines and open valleys. Due to the movement of interesting botanical species the tree found found itself everywhere, even in Catherine the Great's royal garden and eventually into colonial-core markets. In America its currently invasive from Pennsylvania to Florida but can be found in almost every major city.

As said before it typically only invades disturbed locations, it's a pioneer species therefore it's advantageous in areas of full sun, poor soil, and generally super dry. The tree can honestly grow anywhere but typically only thrives in that disturbance niche, it has trouble invading older growth forests. The tree itself usually doesn't live more than 70ish years and after that a new ecology typically sprouts from the area it formerly inhabited, this tree is very good at building a fertile soil network from its nitrogen rich leaves. It must be said that this tree does rootsprout vigorously, and these sprouts can grow a shocking 15 feet in one growing season!!! Trees derived from seed usually take 3 years to reach that size (see my alleyway below)...for basically any oak it would take like 10 years to maybe reach that.

As for ethnobotanical usage, this is invasive so I'm going to recommend you just use this tree to death honestly. The massive leaves are very rich in nitrogen and make great compost. Leaves also make an umbrella in a pinch. The tree is super vigorous and a rapid grower so you can imagine it makes great coppice (and for my silvoculturists: leaves makes good animal fodder). The flowers have a lovely scent and look like foxglove without the poison (and they last a while). The wood is quite light lovely and workable, it reminds me of a lighter colored black locust. Apparently this tree also utlizes C⁴ photosynthesis which utilizing a different compound of carbon to derive energy, that's kind of interesting. It has a lot of great qualities honestly, as far as invasives go I really like this tree.

If you want to plant this tree...don't <3...there's enough, go to any city to experience it. In Eastern America some good alternatives are northern catalypa or black locust. If any of my Chinese followers know the full Princess story I would love to hear about it! As always happy hunting!

[scienceandstorytelling]

I would love to hear about your experience as a park ranger! I'm trying to shift my work into park stuff (and nature stuff in general) and I don't know much about park rangers

Aaa hello!

So I was an interpreter at a state park, it was a small park with nothing too dramatic happening (@wild-west-wind is a ranger at a National Park and has more experience than me and talks about it in their park ranger tag). The best part about my park was that it was in a fairly suburban area, about an hour away from a major city, so I feel like it was really valuable for people to find this area of nature that was preserved right here near their homes. One of my goals was to show them that some of the nature there could be found at their own homes as well.

Idk what kind of things you want to know and whether I have the experience to answer it, but I want to say that my main goal was to connect people both to nature in general and, as I said, the nature around them at home. The suburbs can both feel like and actually be somewhat of a wasteland sometimes (this is a main theme in the book of short stories I’m working on). But nature cannot be erased entirely. People’s lawns are made of manicured monoculture grass, but that grass is still a plant. There may be a small group of trees on the corner, but they’re still trees. Butterflies, bees, and other pollinating bugs still come to the exotic and ornamental flowers they plant in their yards. Coyotes, raccoons, and foxes sniff around their trash cans at night. Birds, squirrels, moss, lichen, and countless bugs live in those few trees on the corner. Hawks sit on the backyard fences, and ospreys and herons fly overhead, commuting from fish pond to reservoir. And that’s only the life we’re capable of seeing. The local ecosystem may not be healthy, but it’s always there.

I want to connect people to that kind of thing. I want them to pay attention to the plants and animals that share their neighborhood. They don’t even have to learn species names, it’s enough just to notice that there’s moss on that tree or that there are multiple types of weeds in the crack on the sidewalk or that that one bush is always full of birds in the morning. And the start of that journey might be having me point out wildlife in a slightly more wild setting, teaching them to notice and think about and wonder about various different things. If I point out how the male dragonflies are guarding prime egg-laying spots if you only stop to watch, maybe they’ll wonder what else they can notice if they stop and pay attention to the bugs in their yard. If I show them the little spring flowers under their feet that they didn’t even notice, maybe they’ll look for them as they walk to their mailbox at home. If I teach them to listen to the alarm calls that birds make, maybe it will unlock a whole new soundscape in their backyard.

Connecting to nature is important both for conservation and for our own physical and mental health. The more we care about something, or at least understand it, the more we protect it. People don’t need to come away from my hikes loving vultures, but if they come away understanding that every living thing is connected in our ecosystem, that’s what’s important. They don’t have to like vultures to see the importance of that interconnectedness and consider their own role in it (although liking vultures is always encouraged). And not only is our health linked to the health of the planet, we are also a species that evolved in nature like every other and it is genuinely good for our health to engage with it. Exercise is one thing, but then also just being in the sun improves the quality of sleep you get and increases the production of dopamine and serotonin in your brain. Exposure to nature makes you more relaxed. Being aware of the living things around you is mentally stimulating and makes you feel less alone, and more engaged with the passage of time and the things going on around you. This is why nature accessibility is so important, both in terms of having natural spaces available to people of all income levels and in a way that works with our capitalist work and life schedules and in terms of making it accessible to disabled people, especially those who can’t leave the house. (Side note, I really admire how @geopsych gets people that nature exposure and connection through their photography)

So idk, that’s my mission as a nature educator. Yes, I love infodumping and getting to show people coyote pelts and baby bugs and all the little nature secrets. But that’s the larger goal I carry beyond the self-satisfaction of talking about nature facts. It’s a very big goal but like everything in an ecosystem, little impacts add up, and I hope I’ll be able to make lots of those little impacts throughout my life.

[zedecksiew]

SPY IN THE HOUSE OF ETH

So this week I was hit with a pang of sentimentality for an older work:

"Spy In The House Of Eth".

"Spy" was published by Soulmuppet Publishing for their Best Left Buried horror-fantasy TTRPG, back in 2020; it was part of a slate of adventures, commissioned and funded as part of Zinequest 2.

A mangrove- and plantation-themed hexcrawl. A landscape changed (and changing) because of colonial-capitalist agro-industry. Displaced locals fomenting rebellion. A tycoon recycling the souls of his labour-force. Said tycoon engineering a hostile takeover of hell, so hell is made worse, and merges with the waking world.

+

When I flip through it now I mainly see its faults. The text feels underwritten. It is cramped, and rushed. It is sorely in need of a better intro, to orientate players:

A summary of factions; and outline of events and possible outcomes; overarching design elements like the everspreading-hell-haze mechanic needs to go at the front of the book, not the back; etc.

Ultimately---even though for quite a while "Spy" was the longest TTRPG text I'd ever written---I tried to do too much in too small a space. This is a full adventure campaign. I should've have shoved it into 60 pages. I should've saved it for a 200-page book, let it breathe. That's an editorial decision, entirely my fault.

+

Nova was kind enough to take a look at it, recently. Her review was very good, very insightful.

I think she correctly diagnoses the fact that I buried the lede in terms of What This Book Is About:

"this is set in a colonised land, features hellish pollutions destroying the environment caused by the invaders, features slaves in an uprising against their owners, and that the players are asked to pick sides ... [but] that isn’t well stated outside the text itself ... probably needs to be summarised for the sake of selling to the table and for ease of play."

I have no defense for this, except a vague notion that it feels a little gauche to bang on the: "THIS IS AN ADVENTURE ABOUT THE EVULZ OF COLONIALISM AND CAPITALISM ERRYBODY!" drum.

The work should speak for itself!

But, then again, people can't hear the work properly if not enough context was built around it.

Again: this is on me.

+

Still:

I think the reason why I put so much into "Spy"; why I resisted explaining it so much; why it is still one of the favourite things I've made, despite its faults---

Is that it was kind of my first TTRPG thing. It predates Lorn Song, even though that came out first.

The mansion in "Spy" was the first TTRPG dungeon I ever drafted. A sheets-on-the-furniture, closed-up ancestral pile; with the current owners absconded to some big city with most of the money; adventurers picking over faded wealth.

It was inspired by the huge mansions of Malacca and Penang, and context mirrors the kind of thing those tycoon family did---suck a land dry, then leave for London or New York or wherever.

More generally, a lot in "Spy" is basically a fantastic version of my day-to-day reality.

The beacon is the refinery gas flare I see from my house:

The bougainvillea monsters is because I have this monstrous bougainvillea in my yard:

The monkeys and the kingfishers. The oil-palm monoculture, the oil-palm refinery we drive past every time we head north to Kuala Lumpur. The fact we travel southeast from the city to where we live, mirrored in the orientation and order of the hexcrawl.

The mangroves:

+

All this to say: I feel warmly about "Spy In The House Of Eth", and I feel like talking about it. If you've read it or you've played it: I would love to hear from you.

(It's available via the Soulmuppet store and Itch and Drivethru, among other places. Thank you, Zach, for publishing this.

It was published as a batch with four other adventures, all good---though my personal favourite of them is Luke Gearing's "Behind Closed Doors". I believe he is rewriting it???)

[russilton]

can I ask what it was that Niamh said or did that made you like slagclaren? Very curious because I don’t find them that interesting!

Okay well let me say it is MOSTLY this fics fault, I can’t for the life of you tell you why I decided to read it when I’m usually so routinely gewis or bust-

But I did, and man, it’s just- I really do love a “it’s not gay if it’s a threesome but I keep staring at you bro-“ trope. I just do, it’s the REPRESSION and the flagrant bisexuality, and the way Niamh wrote it is RIGHT up my alley. Everything about it is good, Jenson’s sort of longing distracted focus on Lewis, Lewis being incredibly good at eating out (because come on, he would be), and the sort of ‘I’ll never act on this but I can let myself pine for it’ vibe layered over.

Niamh writes a fantastic Lewis, she really does, because she focuses so intently on his internal repression/homophobia, catholic guilt (Niamh is Irish she KNOWS proper catholic guilt) and layered trauma in everything he did prior to Valtteri.

Because I write about George I don’t usually get to read or write pre 2017 Lewis, but he was a very different person, and MCLAREN Lewis was an entire other breed- he was closed off, standoffish — and thanks to being the lone poc driver plus Fernando being GIANT cunt — he has trust issues a mile long and cloaking everything around him ESPECIALLY his teammates. I can eat that with a spoon and I even like writing hints of it when I can, because trust issues are brutal and long lasting and it’s WHY Lewis is so close with Val and George, but it was so HARD for him to do so.

Niamh’s Slagclaren embodies THAT Lewis. Untrusting, wary of love and affection, dealing in absolutes Lewis. Lewis who is young and would recoil if you told him something is gay bc that’s the environment he grew up in. The Lewis who I vaguely remember jenson saying he tried to befriend but he just couldn’t do it because Lewis was so focused and distant. Lewis who was all about the car, only the car, and didn’t need anything else (oh god he needs to friends). Her Slagclaren is also usually fuck buddies and not romantically requited, (which I wouldn’t enjoy if it was), BUT Jenson clearly pines for something more but will never mention it because he’s fairly sure if he told Lewis he loved him Lewis would headbutt him and be out the door before he could blink, and I LOVE that. I like reading ‘we are the right people at the wrong time and it doesn’t work’ sometimes - it’s good! Maybe with a later Lewis they would try and maybe it would work but that’s not who he is then- he’s a bit broken inside.

I wasn’t sure if it was a one off but then niamh sent me THIS fic and man, I am drinking that right up. Lewis not being able to grasp jenson wanting to blow him because he WANTS to and not as a trade off? Amazing.

So yes that’s why @milflewis ‘s Slagclaren is the sole exception to my Lewis ship monoculture

[necro-man-sir]

I know y'all like metaphors

So it's been on my mind for a short bit but it's a really fun way to think on things so I'm sharing it here.

The thought is gender is a lot like flowers. Like, listen

There are tons of different flowers, some bold and beautiful, some stinky and repulsive to most things, some with small blooms, some with large lush petals, every one of them has a meaning behind them, some only grow in certain places in the world, others are all over, some are stubborn and will grow in any condition available and others need specific care.

Even in the same species, each flower is different from each other.

There's the common ones most ppl think about, like roses and sunflowers, then there's the rare flowers most don't but they're still out there.

Some flowers only bloom once every few years, others stay blooming year round! They all serve their purposes, and even the most repulsive (to us) are adored by many. A corpse flower is just as important as a rose.

And that's not even talking about display. You can have a private garden or a public garden, or even both! You might not even have or like flowers. Maybe you only display some roses in your window from time to time, or you wear them in your hair every day!

And like, you can have your preferences within the common. For example, we'll use a rose as a metaphor for male.

There are so many varieties of roses! They're all roses, of course, but some are red, white, pink, some are even dyed into other colours like black or blue or green! All of them are still roses. And like, even though they're a common one to grow and love, not everyone likes roses, some people ONLY like roses! That's okay, it doesn't mean roses are good or bad, or that wearing them in your hair every day or keeping a private garden is good or bad. It also doesn't mean that if you grew up growing sunflowers, you can't go hey, I would actually like my garden to be a rose garden, now, even if I decide to dig them all up later and replace them with sunflowers again.

And like, there's no wrong way to have a garden. You can have a monoculture garden with only one flower, or you can have a huuuuuge garden full of every flower imaginable without caring if a few weeds start growing.

And like, people shouldn't feel forced to grow a certain kind of flower, or have to cultivate one that needs a lot more care and attention than they have the energy or want to grow. Not everyone wants to have an orchid, not everyone can have one. Some people just want to have some dandelions they don't have to think about, they just are.

And like, sure some people like to act as an HOA and it sucks when you're told no, you can't have a plot of sunflowers or peonies in your garden for the neighbours to see! Don't let some HOA wannabe tell you what flowers to grow in your own damn garden, it's your house!

This is a lot of words to say that we are all so individual, beautiful, varied, and important. And there's a lot more that can be said about this metaphor considering the role genders play in our lives as well as what role flowers play for plants.

Not to mention, plants don't start life with a flower already blooming. They grow, mature, and then the flowers bloom. A lot of kids don't really have much concept of gender outside of the roles imposed upon them by adults around them, or their parents. Just like someone can be like yeah! this is my rose bush I'm growing, the package says that they are meant to be red roses, but then they finally bloom and oh! they're white roses! That's a pleasant surprise, still beautiful.

Anyway I'm taking this metaphor and running with it, I find it a really fun way to think about myself and what I like to grow, who I am, and what I display. There not a wrong answer, you can walk in with a dead cactus in a tomato can and say 'I did my best' and still be good here. (thanks allie for this visual I love him)

So yeah, don't let the HOA wannabe's tell you what flowers you're allowed to grow and where.

[chubbylittlebumblebee]

Okay, I’m posting this here because it keeps getting taken down on insta and I’m done. This is supposed to be a fandom page where I post things I love and don’t stress about other things but I have to say this somewhere.

We have to stop wasting our social and emotional energy on trying to get companies to stop greenhouse emissions. It isn’t going to do enough, I want to be hopeful but we have to be realistic. We can still keep those kinds of things in mind, ride public transportation, e-bikes, compost etc… Our focus needs to shift to coping with climate change now. We have to start putting in place measures that will give us a safety net as things get worse.

We have to start thinking about coastal cities now, how to get people out when it starts to flood. NYC, DC, Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Cape Town, Rio de Jenaro, Mumbai, Venice, all of them will become unlivable and climate refugees need to go somewhere.

Places that will be safe need to prepare for large swaths of refugees, that means lots of housing complexes, and less single family homes. Strong communities will be essential, pick a place and stay there as long as you can. The goal has be to build up individual communities as much as you can, that is where you can do the most good. Do what you can to reduce poverty and homelessness. Tear down hostile architecture, make sure people know they are loved and wanted.

We need to localize as the global systems collapse, that means large local farms, people getting back into trades, small maintainable power grids, and making our cities walkable and transitioning to electric bikes instead of cars. We may be able to power large cities with nuclear, but we have to work on making it safer, preferably with thorium than uranium.

We need to find ways to create medicines without large mechanical systems, as well as creating disability aids. We can not rely on massed produced items. We need to start learning practical skills and get back into traditional trades.

We have to go back to paper instead of digital. All of the digital archives will be lost when we can no longer support global internet. All records of births, deaths, family trees, literature, cultural histories, all of it needs to be protected so it isn’t destroyed.

Indigenous people come first and foremost as they will be our guiding lights. They shouldn’t have to be, but they have the knowledge of survival and reciprocity on the local lands.

We have to get rid of the damns and restore those areas. They cause far too many floods as they deteriorate and the space that will gained makes for more livable land. Areas like Las Vegas can’t exist anymore; it takes too much water to keep them running and it isn’t sustainable in the long run.

We have to change our food system, meat animals currently take up too much space and resources as well as monoculture. Animals need to be raised locally, at the bear minimum, while keeping cultural foods around is important, nutrition has to come first. We need a three sisters type of approach to local farming, cultivating things that grow intertwined and benefit from each other and we need to do it regionally.

Food waste en mass is unacceptable - not finishing a meal because you are full is fine - supermarkets will eventually become obsolete but in the mean time we have to use things until the very end, until it it fully expired. No tossing out day old bread, fresh produce, anything that can be eaten.

I know this isn’t everything, policing, government, water treatment, the way we build, money, education, protecting cultural practices and artifacts, population centers, there are so many things I could go into but I’m not going to write a full essay on tumblr. The point of this is even though we can’t stop global warming, we have so much else to do. I am still alive today because this is my mission. I have lived my life with respect and compassion in everything I do, my goal of reducing suffering is how I make my personal and political decisions. I am doing all can to make the world a little better every day, and taking care of myself.

We either transition slowly now, or all at once later, and the latter involves a lot of suffering and death. In the meantime, speak out against genocide, turn your anger into action, find joy, and know your power.

(It’s really hard for me to cite my sources on this one because how do I cite my whole last semester of university, I’ll ask my prof and see if she has any ideas)

[polyamorouspunk]

The allegations thing is something I'm really interested in in general as well. Personally I feel like who made the art literally doesn't matter for art, because art stands on its own and it's a decision to try to incorporate the views of the artist into your interpretation of it. And it's a valid decision and one that can help you understand art better from some angles, but that doesn't mean it's the ONLY way to look at it or vibe with it. Sometimes I stop listening to a certain song if I find out the writer wrote it about a specific thing I don't agree with, but other times *my* interpretation of the song is better and I just don't see a reason to stop listening to it because the writer was a bitch ass who wrote it about something that sucked. To me, that's the same as anyone else listening to the song interpreting it as about something that sucks. Like the writer doesn't get to just reach into your head and say "the song is about this forever and you CAN'T THINK OTHERWISE" just because they wrote it. They released it to the public so it belongs to the public now and we can interpret it however we want. And I think that can be empowering in some ways, like taking a song and making it about gay rights when the writer wanted it to be interpreted as about Christians. That's fun and empowering and we get to say FUCK YOU to the writer for being selfish and egotistical and assuming their interpretation is the only one that matters. I hope this was an interesting read for your psych data, I like sharing my thoughts a lot and I like being studied like a lab rat O__O xD

HAIDHSKAJA fuckin’ same honestly. I love surveys. Since the option that’s winning right now is the obligatory “it depends on what the issue is” option I had to put, I’m kind of curious to do another actual like survey after this. Like “it depends on the issue” is so true but to what degree. What are you okay with and what are you not. Where do you draw the line. Yk? I’m glad at least someone is enjoying this because I feel like a lot of times when I’m like “hey guys I wanna talk about this really controversial thing” people are going to be like “why is this even a debate why would you even talk about this” which I don’t really think has ever happened but I’m just so paranoid someone’s gonna be like “SO YOU THINK LISTENING TO A BAND WITH ~ALLEGATIONS~ IS OKAY THEN?” When a lot of the times it’s a case of like “oh I’m surprised more people aren’t taking issue with [thing]” or “is this really as big of a deal to most people as some people make it or are they a loud minority?”

Outside of music, there are podcasts I listen to whose opinions I don’t always agree with. One true crime podcast I listen to is a “back the blue” kind of podcast, and like I get it even though I don’t agree with it. There’s another true crime podcast I listen to that hammers in “don’t talk to cops, cops are not your friends” but also makes fun of “blue-haired liberals”. It’s not enough to make me stop listening to their show because the cases they cover are important and I try to have the mindset of “not everyone has to agree with my opinions”. Like it’s actually good to listen to people who don’t hold the same opinions as you on everything. It’s good to not be a monoculture and step outside areas where no one is going to challenge your opinions, etc. Even true crime itself is really controversial and I know a lot of people on here take issue with the genre but I personally believe it can be covered respectfully and in the past I was donating to a fund that tried to help identify potentially trans/nonbinary/etc. John and Jane Does through an organization I found through a true crime podcast.

[penguicorns-are-cool]

Major Strange World Spoilers!!!!!! like spoils the plot twists stuff

I just wanna talk about how Strange World handles environmentalism really quick

TLDR: pando is decent allegory for fossil feuls/ unsustainable energy and monoculture in agriculture

I love how the Strange World has the message that the earth is a living thing we need to take care of and will defend itself when we harm it, and also that the way to "win" is to have a society that works with the environment and trying to fight or exploit it makes you the villain

Also how the movie has an allegory for both monoculture farms and fossil fuels cause pando is toxic both for being farmed as a monoculture and for being a toxic source of energy that is actively killing the earth.

monocultures are extremely toxic cause biodiversity is good because ecosystems have evolved to work with biodiversity for a reason and monoculture is the exact opposite of that and is often done with non-native plants that would be bad for the ecosystem with or without biodiversity. That's exactly what happens with pando where we see Clade farms is just a field as far as you can see of just pando, and clade farms isn't even the only farm. And we can assume that the pando has been strengthened by all this pando because we know that the resources of all those farms is definitely being used to fight the immune system back at the heart. And we can also assume that the pando being spread like this is what made it strong enough to affect the big turtle thing in the first place. Searcher essentially found a pathological bacteria on the turtle's shell, then goes and grows a ton of it in the weakest part of the shell and cultivates it so it's roots can grow deep into the turtle allowing it to infect the turtle at a rate too fast for the immune system to properly attack it. it's like if someone took a petri dish full of whatever flu we have this year and rubbed it on your arm.

secondly, pando is an allegory for fossil fuels, although I don't think this is as direct as monoculture though it is a much more well-known issue. And I don't think there is much to explain here honestly, pando is an energy source that Avolonia DEPENDS on and it is actively dying out, fast. Pando though is obviously dying faster which makes people care more because the plot needs to be accelerated, but there are signs even before we learn that that the pando is getting noticeably weaker that are dismissed by searcher. Pando is an unsustainable energy source that is quite literally killing the big turtle and to use it more would literally kill it.

And by the end, there is no more pando as a power source or monoculture farming and clade farms has a lot of different foods now, still not necessarily the most sustainable thing or anything but much much much better.

Also the whole living on a turtle thing is a native American creation story mythology reference specifically from lenape and iroquis mythology and I think that's pretty cool and also definitely hints at what environmental practices they think are best

Moral of the story is Strange World has a pretty great environmental message along with all the generational trauma stuff and accidentally taking your parent's abusive traits too

[lilithsaintcrow]

“They want more assurance they have a hit. I’m constantly asking people what they’re reading, what’s unusual — the kinds of books just harder to publish today. We also benefit from a variety of voices once ignored by the industry, writers from around the world. It’s important a writer offers more than a popular Instagram account.”

I found this interesting. Flynn’s right—trad publishing is looking for the sure, sellable thing instead of good books. Bean-counters have their place, absolutely—but it’s not at the wheel.

And with only five big trad publishers instead of a healthy ecosystem of players, you get a bland monoculture very quickly.

In the short term, a bland monoculture of pablum does sell, because people are hungry to join what the crowd’s talking about. In the mid- to long-term, it robs your entire publishing house of anything approaching legitimacy or real art.

Unfortunately, the mid- to long-term isn’t where the focus is. It’s all about those short-term profits, and when they stop happening a vicious spiral of squeezing authors’ already marginal payments begins.

The industry’s ripe for a major realignment. But when that happens, a lot of new, marginalized, emerging, and midlist writers are going to be tossed out because they can’t absorb the financial hit of still writing while the Big Five are crashing or splitting.

We’re going to lose so much when that happens. And it’ll probably happen while Amazon is tanking at the same time.

Because Amazon will tank. Its metastasis isn’t sustainable, and after it’s consumed everything it can it’ll ravage itself right out of business.

The only question is how bad the damage to everyone and everything around it—including publishing—will be.

This won’t happen overnight, and may not even happen soon. But it will happen, most likely when economic forces shatter the Gilded Age bullshit going on in every industry right now, not just publishing. The coal-mine canaries are dead in their cages, and it’s only a matter of when the right spark will hit the creeping gas.

And when it happens we’re going to lose so much. So many voices, so many books, so many stories will never see light of day because writers—the people PRODUCING THE DAMN WORK—are already paid a below-poverty-level pittance and treated as less than serfs.

It’s not going to be pretty. And self-publishing’s perceived “ease” (which has the same privilege requirements getting on the internet in the first place does) will not pick up the slack.

The internet is NOT ubiquitous. It just feels that way if you have the hardware, time, and and money to access it. Self-publishing is not easy or ubiquitous either, for the same reason.

Anyway, I hope I’m wrong. I’d love to be wrong. Please let me be wrong...

[notsocheezy]

Brain Curd #127

Brain Curds are lightly edited flash fiction - practically first drafts - posted daily (haven't missed one yet!) and sometimes written with the express intention of being terrible… but, you know, in an endearing way. Please like and reblog if you enjoy - the notes keep me going!

He's gonna be Frank with you. Read the rest of The Frank Program here on Tumblr!

“Welcome back to The Frank Program. I’m Big Mike, your host for the day, since Frankie-boy couldn’t make it. But you won’t want to miss this episode, because our guest is rising pop-star icon, Rhonda Pope! Welcome to the program.”

“Thank you for having me, Mike.”

“On this show, we usually jump right into the questions, but I know you’re nervous, so let’s loosen up a little, shall we?” Mike pulled a bottle of whiskey from under the desk and set a couple shot glasses next to it on the table. He poured both of them and slid one over to Rhonda.

“Oh… uh… I don’t drink, actually.”

Mike had already downed his shot. “Oh well, more for me.” He took hers and threw it back. “Anyway, I’m relaxed now. The great thing about podcasting is no one can tell me what to do. It’s great. It’s like a vacation. Anyway… Let’s try an ice breaker: If you had to choose between Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, who would you fuck, marry, and kill?”

“I do not feel comfortable answering that question.”

“Yeah, ha ha ha,” Big Mike giggled. “I don’t blame you. Actually I wrote that question down a few weeks ago, it’s got nothing to do with recent events.” He held up his hands. “Okay? It’s a perfectly normal edgy kind of question.”

Rhonda sat in quiet discomfort.

“The internet is gonna have a field day with this. They hate me. They all hate me because I’m not afraid to tell it like it is.” Mike remembered what he was supposed to be doing. “Sorry about that, let’s get back to you. What’s it like finally catching your big break, years after the release of your first single?”

“It’s amazing, actually. I’ve always just, mostly tried to make sure I was making something I like, something I want to listen to, because I think as an artist you need to start from a personal place. So yeah, I stand by all of my previous releases even if they didn’t get the same attention as Bi-Bye Bitch. And I think my new fans are diving into my singles from last year, and even earlier, and they’re finding more of what they love about that song, but still unique. It’s a beautiful thing.”

“I can tell you that for me, personally, I’ve had Cigarette Burn stuck in my head every minute since I heard it. It’s exceptionally catchy.”

“Thank you. I -”

“Like, no, no, no, listen. It’s too catchy. I can’t get it out of my head, it’s driving me off the edge.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“You’re good.”

“Thanks. Uh…”

“Is it true that your record label dropped you last year?”

“It is, yeah. I had to get a job as a waitress to make ends meet.”

“Their loss, huh?”

“Yeah, I think indie pop really is the way of the future. My label never knew what to do with my music, you know? They couldn’t decide if it was for the gays or the girlies, but it was always for the gay girlies, you know what I mean? It’s that intersection.”

“Is there still a place in the pop world for megahits and superstars?”

“I guess so? But it’s never going to be like it was when I was a kid. Everyone knew the top forty because it was on the radio, and people were listening. Every year had its signature biggest song, but now? Monoculture is dead. Pop culture is dead. Nothing gets that big anymore. Everything is regional and demographical and, like, calculated to appeal to the most people and they still can’t do it. I’m lucky, you know? Because I’m getting popular enough to be self-sustaining, but I don’t have all the overhead the labels do. They spend more than anything else on marketing.”

“That’s old media for you. Do you see them sticking around?”

“I don’t think anyone really knows what’ll happen.”

Just then, the door to the studio slammed open, and Frank walked in with his arm over Daryl’s shoulder. “We… are… BACK!”

Mike furrowed his brow. “We. Are. Recording!”

“Get outta my seat, Michael. Shoo.”

Mike groaned and moved to the next seat over. Frank adjusted his microphone as Daryl returned to the dusty chair in the corner.

“It’s getting really crowded…” Rhonda shrank in her seat.

“Well too bad, darlin’. If you don’t like it, head on out.”

“Hey!” Mike punched Frank’s shoulder. “Do you know how hard it was to get her to come on the show?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about this girl, Mikey. Can’t imagine I care. Nothing you can say to me can ruin my mood. I got my boy back!”

“Wow,” Rhonda said half-heartedly. “Congrats! I think I’m gonna head home, actually… yeah.” She got up, grabbed her purse, and walked out before anyone could stop her.

Mike’s jaw hung open. “Why? Why, Frank? Why couldn’t you just stay home today?”

“Because it’s my show.”

“But you have no idea what you’re even doing!”

“I don’t need to. All that matters is family and making something I’m proud of.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, man? Ugh, forget it.” Mike threw down his headphones and stormed out of the studio.

“Well’n, I guess that’s all for today’s episode of The Frank Program. Thank you all for letting me be Frank with you. See you next time.”