The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.

Emma Restall Orr (via peonyandbee)
Source: wildcompassmagic

shiraglassman:

soloontherocks:

pipistrellus:

pipistrellus:

The thing that went down today in Gainesville probs won’t get as much press bc (thank god) nothing bad happened!!! But I think that’s also why it would be good to look at what happened bc I think… ppl at UF handled Spencer’s shit really well and smartly. Beforehand everyone kept acting like either you thought he should get punched offstage or you thought he should just ~be ignored~, but actually… what people did was neither of those things and what people did WORKED REALLY WELL

Ppl just used the entire Q&A to ask him why he was here. “Why are you here” “I’m trying to give a speech” “K but like… why are u even here tho” “ugh next question. yes, you over there, what’s your question?” “My question is… … … why are u here”

It was a really smart combo of tactics (the local merchants doing a swap-tickets-for-free-beer etc thing beforehand, which really cut down on attendees) (about 450 of the 700 available tickets were used) and just… shutting him down firmly and CONDESCENDINGLY. it was the “annoyed and condescending” part that was so great. Everyone just treated him like a giant misbehaving toddler and refused to engage him in the fight he wanted to have but also refused to let him have his ugly platform 

The crowd outside responded to both men with swastika shirts and ppl trying to egg them on to punch said men by just. Yelling at them and then, in the case of the swastika t-shirt guy, sort of forcibly moving him out of the area. 

The whole thing had such a strong like “politely but firmly escorting an unwanted vacuum cleaner salesman from your home” vibe that was fucking PERFECT

I dont say this like that vibe or these tactics are universal AT ALL, I don’t think that is the case, I think that u have to think about all of these events individually bc the contexts are never the same, but like just… 

having a ton of irate college students & faculty members alternately going “fuck you spencer” “black lives matter” & then the… fucking… UF football team chant... was incredible. it was like “you aren’t welcome here, here’s the things we believe in, and also, we would really rather be at a sports game right now, you horrid, slimy little man”

this also worked I think bc of the high volume of (a lot of older) white ppl utilizing their ~Respectability~ to make him look ridiculous. A super underrated way of fucking these guys up at their Events, imo. like just a ton of 50+ white dudes who were kind of sternly and firmly (and often condescendingly!!!!! WHICH WAS GREAT) rejecting his shit while wearing button-up shirts tucked into their khakis yk. really effective.

@pipistrellus and it fucking bothered him and his other speakers. Can we just appreciate that he was so offended he started bitching about how real leftists wouldn’t care about football? Maybe the wrong argument to make at UF, of all schools.

Also shoutout to “did it hurt to get punched in the face? Like, did you fuck up your jaw?” and “why do you think white people are the superior race when you’re so ugly?”

It was just…not so much a straight refusal to engage, and definitely not a violent confrontation, but just…refusal to take seriously. And that’s so much more dismissive.

Just the irl version of “lmao ok Janet”

I am so happy this post exists because BASICALLY YES, THIS. I love how the Gator cheers were part of the mockery.

studying-bugs:

stewarti1:

currentsinbiology:

 Warning of ‘ecological Armageddon’ after dramatic plunge in insect numbers 

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.

Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.

The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.

“The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research.

“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”

The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.

The 6th mass extinction event is now.

^^

Source: theguardian.com

rosemary-the-skunk:

clientsfromhell:

This isn’t a story about a client from hell, but I know for a fact that it is advice that comes from dealing with them.

When
I was studying 3D animation and visualization, we did customer projects as a
part of our education. For each project we had a tutor, someone who worked in
the industry and knew the ropes. This is legitimately one of the lessons one of
our tutors gave us:

Tutor:
In our company, we have what we call an “Ugly
Red Blob” method. When a design has been finalized, and it’s time to send it to
the client for final review, the last thing we do is we add a big, red blob
somewhere in the design. The client will look at the mock-up and say: “Okay,
that’s good, but take out that red blob, it doesn’t work with the rest.” The
client gets a feeling that they’ve contributed to the design in a significant
way, and we can get on with our work, without the client trying to micro-manage
every font and color.

chaotic good

Idk where that place is but my grandma had an armadillo running around her yard once and i was like??? Where did it come from???

Were you in Texas or nearby? They’re shy, skittish, and live underground, so a lot of people don’t realize they have native armadillos until they see one. 

(yep, that’s Texas. Everybody thinks the entire state is cowboys, and part of it is, but the rest is things like pine forest and hills and open fields depending on where you look.)

Hello! I’m curious to hear more about the vegan animal sanctuary, Big Ears, and your thoughts on how they handle carnivores’ diets (since from your last post it sounds like they feed a vegan diet). Their site doesn’t mention much, and since you are regularly such a strong opponent of vegan diets for carnivores, I’m curious what “doing it right” might look like. [Question tax: what is your favorite animal behavior and why?]

drferox:

It’s very, very simple.

They feed the cats cat food and they feed the dogs dog food. All the other species get a species-specific diet which is heavily supplemented by vegetable scraps and leaves from local supermarket green waste. They are feeding species appropriate diets, and not feeding vegan diets to carnivores.

Most of their food is donated via collection bins at supermarkets where people can purchase food or goods (like cat litter) for the animals and donate the product directly. I recall one of the dogs being on a prescription diet for a while though, and that was purchased.

The dogs, cats and pigs also get fed the poultry eggs. Big Ears is home to many, many chickens, roosters, ducks and turkeys, and you can’t stop them laying eggs. Since they have a philosophy of not breeding animals, they are a sanctuary after all, they collect and feed those eggs to the animals that will eat them.

Big Ears Animal Sanctuary, for as long as I’ve known them, have had a philosophy of putting the animal’s needs first above human desired. The intent is to do no harm and to do as much good as possible, and part of that is feeding meat to the cats and dogs.

They also will provide their animals with needed veterinary care first and then solicit donations, instead of some ‘rescues’ which I’ve seen delay treatment for an animal until enough donations were acquired.

Their Facebook page is more up to date than their Website.

My favorite animal behavior is the little ear twitch cats do when they swallow, whether it’s suckling as kittens or drinking as adults. It’s just the cutest detail.