19 posts
Nomad-of-the-valley - Untitled - Tumblr Blog
Always sick of this nonsense of how everything sucks from Stephanie Meyers because she's lds. Like wow! We get it you hate woman or religion or both. Interesting take that I was thrilled of up until the end. Why must people hate people? (Be it because of religion or gender)
Stephenie Meyer's sci-fi novel The Host is like. it's almost so much. the alien bodysnatchers at the center of the plot are like Animorph's yeerks if they got really into cottagecore. no, they don't want intergalactic war and domination! they want intergalactic peace and domination! they make every planet they visit a peaceful socialist utopia and like, okay, yes, they have to violently take over the bodies of a planet's native inhabitants to do it. yes, they have to suppress the unwilling minds of their host bodies. yes they are for all intents and purposes committing a genocide of their chosen planets' initial inhabitants and then puppeting their husks around playing at homogeneous, sanitized versions of the cultures they destroyed. the alien main character mentions that even episodes of the Brady Bunch were scrubbed because they were deemed too violent. and they call themselves souls, which is so loaded on so many levels. impossible not to read into the spiritual connotations, especially when written by an author coming from the mormon church which so highly values mission trips. just by sympathizing with humans who don't want to be possessed, by helping them hide out and stay free, our protagonist becomes a pariah, an outlaw from her own society. peace is valued above all else but not peace for the colonized, who are meat to be processed. it's better this way. they had so much potential but squandered it with foolish violence so now we have the right to overtake them and make them live correctly. isn't it beautiful now? isn't everything perfect? there's like almost so much happening in this story except Stephenie's a fucking mormon so she never draws any meaningful connections to anything and the happy ending is that the alien brain parasite protag is gifted the body of a beautiful coma patient that she can "ethically" puppet around, easy peasy problem solved. also there's a fucking love triangle.
I'm despearte enough!
This is the magic lucky word count. Reblog for creativity juice. It might even work, who knows.
Do NOT release pets into the wilderness even if, like axolotl's, they will be dead soon due to not being good at enviromental changes!!
Toxic yaoi, not necessarily a ship but toxic af
I spend too much time doing this lol
Based on the pages of journal 3
Ocean
go to this random coordinates generator and say in the tags how you would fare if you were dropped where it generates without warning. i’ll go first i’d be dropped in the middle of the fucking south atlantic ocean and perish
Love this
Love this
loooveeee thissssss
ladies
Love this
Love this
Love this
<3
🌟 pixel rpg marcille on her way to battle more undines! ✨
Killer whales do not regularly eat moose. It's a rare phenomenon.
Source: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Proceedings_of_the_Third_Glacier_Bay_Sci/98wsAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=moose
You know how orcas will regularly eat moose? I wonder if they ever used to eat mammoth or giant sloth or other megafauna before they went extinct. I would love to hear one day of a killer whale found frozen in some glacier with mammoth remains in its stomach
Stupid take.
And it's got that condescending tone of 'oh, how dare you!!! Jail for you as I'm a internet warrior!!! I know what I'm talking about!!!'. (I am aware I didn't put this in quotation marks. That's because it doesn't deserve quotation marks.)
A major can be so many things. What do you do with a film major? Sometimes you make films. Sometimes you make animated films, be a screen editor, sound producer, go onto to get a history PhD in cinematic, be a video editor, make documentaries, or even go straight back into academics as a film teacher.
Ask people about themselves! College is tough and people will love it if you ask the most basic follow up question of "What are you going to do with that?".
I'm a bio-chem major. I could go be a doctor, lawyer, or (what most people at my college think until we ask this one incredibly simple question!) drug discovery. I am doing none of those. I'm going to go work for NASA and study human genetic engineering.
(Just read the tags. Guys a poli-sci. No wonder they hate it. They have no plans and a useless* major, lol.)
*Technically not useless as it can be cool. Technically. Down there with business majors.
I really wish people understood that unless you are someone's parent, you don't need to be questioning the practicality of their life decisions. When someone tells you their major, you should say "oh, that sounds cool!" Do NOT ask them what they're "planning on doing with that." It may be an innocent question, but it comes across as super patronizing and just makes them anxious. Maybe they don't know yet. Maybe they've already planned it out extensively and don't want to go over it with you, their dentist. Maybe they don't plan their entire life around getting rich!
It's especially bad when the major in question is extremely self-explanatory. My sister majored in film and so many people asked her what she was going to "do with it." Oh, I'm going to be a doctor! OBVIOUSLY MAKE FILMS, BECKY. They didn't ask because they were curious about her plans, they asked because they wanted to know how she would make money. It was like they thought it hadn't occurred to her that it would be difficult. It's condescending as hell. I'm just so sick of random people thinking it's their right to question and judge other peoples' lives. It's not that hard to mind your own business.
When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.
The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.
Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.
So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.
This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.
(Source 1)
(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)
(Source 3)
Absolutely stunning! I have to go watch some star lore now.
Memento Vivere
Some additional notes:
It is the sad fact of life that resturaunts upcharge and sometimes you must overpay for the sweetness of cake at a resteratunt. Yes, one and half bags of potatoes is a lot to pay. No, I will not stop doing it occasionally.
Going to include that one next gamer story I write!
"i'm bad at x" -> take out a library book -> read it -> skill exp
Word of the day is: Sclerotisation!
Sclerotisation is the process of making the rigid shell of sclerotin in an insect's shell.
Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sclerotization
Some fun facts about it's Wikipedia history is that the page was originally a redirect page until 26 Febeurary 2022 and only mentioned sclerotin in 11 July 2022. To clarify the page was created 31 May 2006.
The majority of edits are by user Smokefoot who seems really cool! Check out their stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smokefoot
Scientific Paper Review: Insects may or may not be sentient??
Reading this (https://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/epdf/10.3920/JIFF2022.0041?role=tab) paper about welfare when farming black soldier flies (published 2023) with the main author being Meghan Barret, who is a super duper cool female scientist that believes strongly in insect welfare (e-portfolio link here: http://meghan-barrett.com/about-me/), and I'm astonished!
Introduction starts off with a quick overview of what the paper is getting into and then dives into background history. I love reading scientific papers simply because there is so much cool stuff to learn. Animal welfare is dependent upon how the animal views how it's doing. A pampered lap dog with depression still has depression. A sad bug living in a super duper cool vivarium (which are way hard to set up) is still sad.
Insects in science may or may not be sentient. How do you define sentient? Where do you draw the line of responding to making decisions? Wild! If insects are sentient we should, of course, treat them like we are. If they aren't how do we determine welfare for something that's not sentient. This isn't about philosophy though so we're continuing on.
There is a model called the five freedoms model. The paper said it best so I'm quoting them here, "According to that influential model of animals’ interests (Brambell, 1965), animals ought to kept in ways that keep them free: (1) from hunger and thirst; (2) from discomfort; (3) from pain, injury, and disease; (4) to express normal behaviour; and (5) from fear and distress.".
From here the introduction continues to go on to explain that it's hard to tell when an insect is doing or has this stuff. If a pet cat decides to be a picky eater, is the owner a bad owner for not keeping them free from hunger and thirst or is the cat being picky? Again though! Not hear for philosophy or ethics that's been discussed a hundred times before.
What can be determined though is if something kills an insect it is bad. If it increases mortality, like a parasite would, it is bad. Good thing is that factors between farmed invertabra (aka bugs) is pretty universal. Another good news is we know a lot about the biology of the black soldier fly! They have six larva stages.
That concludes this part of the post! More coming soon.
Look at this thing! Isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection is started?
I made this. Well, not the outline. I got that off of a different flower and then filled it in. I'm officially one drawing into however many I do until I die. Congrats me! I spent like two hours figuring out how colors work. I'm still not sure about all of it but it's done now!
Choice Paralysis and New Year New Me
Feeling the urge to make a big list and do next year perfectly despite the fact that it's the (possible) OCD that makes me want to start at a nice reasonable starting thing and knowing at the same time that if I want something then I need to get started in staggered intervals like exercise, academics, sleeping, actually having a social calendar, and my fish tanks. Also knowing that it's going to be so so annoying to start.
But why, Nomad of the Valley?
Because I need to decide what I want. What about my water colors? My writing? My enter xyz and zyx and the other dimensions after that??? It sucks but life is full of not having a plan and desperately wanting blue prints when at most you get to make a garden map and if you work real hard get to do some espalier to shape whatever plants you've planted.
On the other hand though, if you want something it's worth doing. I do what I want is a motto that I will not be explaining today.
Evening at the Museum
Just spent the last hour recovering from four hours volunteering to teach kids math at the biggest children's museum that I know of. I did stop to look at the dino exhibit but I'm also tired. I feel frustrated that I tapped out at the last half hour but also know that I did the most outside of the couple running it and their kid who was playing the whole time.
One time, I was in a group discussing personalities and I tried to explain how I didn't think I was an extrovert (not that I really believe in such things) to which everyone shut me down. It's things like this that help me figure out that everyone is wrong. I just like people and consider socializing an important use of my time.
Museums are great though. I love them dearly.
Howdy world!
So, this is my first post of a blog that is also my first blog.
I've always wanted to do journaling and the like but privacy was a rarity growing up that I, especially, didn't get. I'm looking forward to doing this blogging online. Expect many infrequent posts.
For me, a lot of this will sound super whiny. I know I'm blessed/fortunate/lucky/etc to have the life and opportunities that I do. So, why do I struggle so much? That's another posts day.
I've recently talked to a therapist who helped me figure out that my thoughts matter to. Often times by the time I'm done rolling information around in my brain like the world's most developed rock tumblr (Haha, did you see what I did there?), I've also polished the thought to be refined enough that it's simple.
There's a sort of beauty in simple things. They deserve to be expressed. They deserve to be thought. And I shouldn't cut away (metaphorically) from myself because it took me three weeks to simplify thirteen different sources that made me feel into a phrase that I could write for hours about.
I choose to title this "Howdy world!" because I like saying howdy and because it's the first thing you do when you learn computer coding. I'm not skilled at computer coding but I am skilled at trying new things and keeping parts of them forever. Computer coding is one such thing.
Expect a lot of references to things that I've only ever dabbled in. I'm not going to apologize.