fatehbaz:

hello. sorry, i don’t really tag things. but i’ve put together several compilation posts for reading recommendations involving imperial ecology; environmental history of colonization; ruins, haunting, and eerie/uncanny ecology; human-landscape relationships; relationships with other-than-human creatures; decolonizing environments; and my favorite authors; etc.

here’s a compilation post which includes links to original stuff i’ve written about these topics and also a list of my favorite scholars/writers with info about their focus/specialties.

i’ve said this before, but i spend much more time reading essays and articles than i do reading full-length books. that linked compilation post lists some of my favorite “essential” writers:

Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert; Elizabeth DeLoughrey; Anna Tsing; Paulo Tavares; Anna Boswell; Achille Mbembe; Hugo Reinert; Frantz Fanon; Tim Edensor; Robin Wall Kimmerer; Ann Laura Stoler; Kyle Whyte; Audra Simpson; Kathryn Yusoff; Ikyo Day; Pedro Neves Marques

here’s a compilation post which includes links to short excerpts (in the form of tunglr-dot-com posts) from all of these authors.

if those essays and articles aren’t what you’re into, and you’d rather have long-form books, then here are the two posts about my “favorite books” which you might’ve been thinking of: round 1 and round 2.

and here’s a look at the books that i mention:

wordsnstuff:

Keep reading

radicles-art:

HALT! Do you have sensory issues? Overwhelmed by sound in a messy environment? Desperately wanting to write that essay/fanfiction but your ADHD is getting on the way? In need of atmospheric sound for your tabletop game??

Please let me introduce you to MyNoise.net - a lifesaver on all aspects.

Mynoise provides an incredible index of noise machine generators with personalizing sliders to suit your every taste.

Missing the sound of a lively coffee shop during the pandemic? They have that. That specific, calming noise of a public park in a peaceful afternoon? they have that. Rain sounds? City sounds? Want to fuck around and listen to some uninterrupted Gregorian chants? They have that also!

According to the website:

“myNoise generators cover the whole audible frequency range, from 20Hz to 20kHz, over 10 color-coded sliders. Through a simple but accurate calibration process, all myNoise generators can be shaped to your personal hearing thresholds and compensate for your audio equipment and listening environment deficiencies, including the presence and nature of background noise. Calibration is unique to this website, and makes calibrated noise machines stand out from regular white noise machines. During the calibration process, we are able to measure your personal hearing levels, and adapt our noises accordingly. If you are suffering from age-related hearing, you’ll be surprised to hear frequencies you thought were lost.”

And that’s not all. When I say ‘incredible’ I really mean it; I’ve found myself using the website on multiple occasions, for work, creative and stress-related issues, and the variety of machines provided cannot be overstated. You’ve got animal noises, nature soundscapes, street sounds, meditation aids, melody-based lullabies, magical soundscapes, medieval ambiance, situation specific sounds, white noise generators– and a lot more!!! They even have noise to block out IRL sounds you don’t want to hear.

Just take a brief look at what the index page provides:

There’s something for EVERYONE. And it’s all for free! It’s been for free for years, and it is the creator’s wish that it remains accessible to everyone who might need this kind of aid in life. I am using it to write this post right now. Though if you read some of the above index, you may have noticed that the support for the website has been very low lately.

Which brings me to the reason I’m making this post. Mynoise is curated and maintained by a single person:

Please check out the Mynoise Index for yourself, donate if you can, and tell your friends who might be interested ♡

viciousvales:

this site definitely doesn’t allow you to paste the link to any article blocked by a paywall (say, a NYT article) so that you can read it free of charge! that would be illegal and would benefit broke college students too much. it definitely does not do that. promise.

boigameista:

atomicelixir:

boigameista:

boigameista:

i dont think i posted these but here i made a little frog pattern to make tiny frog toys with my grandma

this is the first lil guy I made while still learning how i should sew it

AAA ok so a lot of people have been asking for the pattern to this, tho I’ve been using just these two little papers to do the cut outs lol

i tried my best to translate it into digital so that people get a bit more accurate look at them. Tho bear with me I’ve never done an actual pattern design sheet before!

so basically my hope is that anyone could print these out to any size of their choosing and get the same result, but ive never tried anything larger than approx. 3 inches with these sooo idk if you try it tag me!

the goal is to sew the backs together to the lines at the tip of the head to the middle of the butt. then leaving a space along the belly piece near the butt end and sewing from one side of the butt including all the legs and the “mouth” to the other side with its legs to get back to the butt. if that makes sense

i usually pause sewing up the body once the head is fully sewn together,, usually after ive sewn both arms and ill yank it inside out where ill start sewing on the little poofball eyes so i know theyre in a good place, then resuming the body, and then pulling the whole thing inside out and pushing out the tips of the limbs with a skinny blunt object like a dull pencil until i can see the stitches. if you attempt this piece definitely make sure you stitch up the arm and leg crevices very well!!!!

then just stuff the lad and sew up his back end and its done :)

one suggestion for fabric is always try to use a stretchy soft fleecy fabric with these because its much easier if mistakes are made during sewing and to hold the ROUND shape better

Overall its a very good use of scraps if you’ve accumulated a lot and don’t know what to do with them 👍👍

So I made a frog (huge)

I literally can’t I’m losing my mind over the sheer girth of this frog.

Absolutely incredible.

11/10 and godspeed.

myrealnameisnotthisbyfalloutboy:

curlicuecal:

kayintruth:

curlicuecal:

plucky-passerine:

moonymango:

kuusamaagi:

 Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. They’re not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.

 Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

 Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

 A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

 An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

 Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

 The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.

While I absolutely love your idea, I just want to say that you can easily reduce public bird shitting from Pigeons by offering them comfortable lodgings where they can sleep and feed. Sure, you need to clean THOSE, but the pigeons shit a lot less all over town.

The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.

So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.

In fact, one could potentially turn your idea around IN THE PIDGEONS FAVOR. So your world is like ours and most major cities have a big feral pigeon population. And most of those cities HATE the pigeons and try to fight them and stuff. And they think that pigeon worshipper town is frigging cuckoo. BUT when comparing, then pigeon worshipper town is ridiculously clean and beautiful. No bird shit everywhere, no ruined house facades and statues from erosion through bird poop.
Pigeon haters go “how tf are you so clean, you have birds EVERYWHERE???” and the worshippers shrug and show their little bird temples spread around town that keep their precious birdies AND their town pretty.

I think this is a really good example of how research can greatly improve your worldbuilding! You don’t have to be perfectly accurate - it is fantasy after all - but the real world is so much more clever and beautiful than any of us know

advice that’s stuck with me: you don’t have to work inwards to justify a premise (e.g., ‘how would it ever be plausible to use snakes as currency’) as long as you work outwards in interesting ways from that premise (e.g., ‘how would a society that used snakes as currency look different? what would they use for wallets?’)

Wait, did you choose snakes specifically as a reference to that time when people literally used snakes as currency, or what is a random example?

Sorry, that time what

You know when the English wanted to cull the cobra population in India so they traded goods/food/money for dead cobras. Only, Indians started breeding cobras so they could trade them and then when the English found out, they stopped the program. So the Indians let all the cobras go and in the end the English had more cobras than before

comicgeekscomicgeek:

alwaysbewoke:

There is NOTHING IN AMERICA that hasn’t been touched by racism. NOTHING.

…wow. Never would have thought. Not surprised though.

fatphobiabusters:

I’m so happy to hear you are thinking about this already! You are doing some good ground work, and I’m pleased to say there are already listicales about raising body positive kids. Does my soul good. Some places to start:

https://www.nwpc.com/teach-kids-body-positivity/

https://www.mother.ly/child/how-to-raise-kids-with-a-positive-body-image

https://more-love.org/2019/03/05/how-to-raise-a-body-positive-kid/

A podcast:

https://www.fullbloomproject.com/podcast

And to help teach media literacy:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/news-and-media-literacy/how-do-i-start-teaching-media-literacy-to-my-preschooler

Also it’s important to check in with your kid, throughout the years as they experience things related to body image, often we think as adults that something will be experienced a certain way by children when it can be the opposite. Kids are funny that way. I also want to point out (because I didn’t see it but I could have missed it) that if you watch media with your child make a point of saying a fat character is cool or brave or what have you, older media won’t be good for this (I cringed thinking about The Goonies) but for instance in the Pokémon xy season, Teirno is a fat boy that loves to dance and you could say “I wish I had moves like him”.

Mario is fat and is the hero of his game series, comes to mind as well. Even if she doesn’t realize it you’ll be teaching her to respect bigger bodies that aren’t hers. Because everyone is unique and I’m sure as adults we know some weird cognitive disconnects start young.

Kids might also be accidentally rude or cruel as well, so back to that check in with your daughter thing. I was in college when a 7 or so year old asked me why I was so big/fat. I said “this is the way I am, people are all different, isn’t that cool”. If I was 7 and another kid said that to me it’d have been a toss up between “that’s a weird question” and total mental keysmash. Kids are all so unique.

It is mentioned in the links but to your concern about praising strength, a great way to get around that concern is to mix it up. Non physical traits, especially, are great to praise, children have more control over their actions vs their rapidly changing bodies. For instance you can emphasize kindness and helpfulness. It’s really dependent on the situation, but a rotation of complements can foster a more rounded sense of self. It sounds like she’s your only child but it’s good to encourage kids in a gender neutral way. Our culture praises boys differently from girls. So don’t be afraid to praise bravery, cleverness, adventurous thinking ectra along side emotional responsiveness, generosity, helpfulness ectra.

Something I didn’t see mentioned but want to bring up from personal experience is, your daughter might struggle with wanting to mature and wanting to be a kid at the same time. To some degree all kids do but often bigger kids are shopping in the adult clothing section earlier than their peers, I remember being embarrassed about it, so down the road if you notice her needing the adult clothes, maybe have a talk about how she’s still a kid and she can still be a kid, clothes are just clothes, and now a days with torrid you can find stuff with pop culture characters on it. (Back in my day it was very much a shift from cute fun patterns and colors to muted or jewel tones). The adult nostalgia boom is probably going to be great for kids like me who had to age up in clothing earlier. Off this, one more personal story but my mom was shorter and an apple shape, I was a pear and taller than her since I was maybe 14-16, she didn’t know how to help me dress. So down the line don’t be afraid of googling up how to best dress your daughters shape. I spent most of high school in jeans too tight on my thighs with shirts a size too big. Big oof.

I don’t know how to finish this off just, thank you so much for caring and I hope both of you have many years of self love ahead.

selfish-ghost:

ayo i found 2 pages with head angles of humans and animals, could be useful to anyone reading this

hoomans

animals

noparlpf:

factysatin:

patrickat:

todaysbird:

PSA FOR THOSE IN DC AREA - PLEASE STOP FEEDING BIRDS (JUNE 2021)

An unknown transmittable illness is wiping out many native birds. Bird feeders, particularly uncleaned ones, are a major transmitter of disease. Please take them down for the meantime! Your birds will survive naturally without it - the impact of your ‘help’ could be far worse!

A new mystery disease among animals that people are interacting with isn’t ominously scary at all.

Please enforce bird social distancing by closing bird restaurants

Excerpt from an email chain one of my profs forwarded to the vet school mailing list:

I wrote the letter that was attached to the email string (attaching it again here). Cases have now been seen from KY and TN up through NJ and PA, and as far west as OH and IN. Possible report of related cases in FL, but not confirmed. The epicenter is definitely D.C., with most of the cases coming in from there. It’s only affected nestlings and fledglings, and cases have gone to multiple state labs as well as SCWDS, NWHC, and our lab at UPENN. We’ve found some bacteria in some cases, but not consistently enough to say that is the cause. We’ve also found pesticides in some, but it’s mostly dieldrin, heptachlor, chlordane and trans arachlor, which have essentially been banned since the 1980’s, so we’re probably just picking up environmental background contamination. Tests are still on-going…no single smoking gun yet!

Cases are starting to slack off further south, and just picking up in N. PA and NJ, so it could be “moving” with the age of the birds (birds further south have fledged and are no longer susceptible???). It will be interesting to see if we experience a second wave as the next round of baby birds comes in…

That’s about all I can tell you. We’ve been having weekly calls with USGS NWHC and the state agencies that are involved so far. They are working on another press release that will probably go out on Monday.

This isn’t just the DC area anymore, it’s spreading across the east coast.

I might recommend North Americans preemptively removing bird feeders even if you’re outside the currently described range.