In The Future, Children Will Think Our Ways Are Strange. "Why Do Old People Always Grow So Much Milkweed

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

You know what they say- all's fair in Lovecraft and Warcraft

HP warcraft

What is the purpose of the human species?

Think about it: what are the two things that have defined our entire genus for two million years?

Learn everything and care for each other.

It's been twelve thousand years since the beginning of civilization on Earth. In that time, humankind has invented dogs, the wheel, economics, the steam engine, capitalism, and the nuclear bomb. We're as much of a mess as we've always been; probably even more so. It can be kind of hard to see us for what we really are these days. But whenever someone mentions Sputnik, or Vostok 1, or the Apollo program, or the ISS, you know what they say?

"We did that."

That's why space exploration is important. That's why it's important to me. Not just because it instills hope, but… because it's the root of us, all over again.

Cooperation and curiosity are the bedrock of space exploration. You just can't go out there without the intersection of both. And lucky for us, they're the same two traits that got us from flint to fission over the past two million years. Another sophont species of different ancestry would balk at the unbelievable array of challenges inherent in spaceflight and probably decide it's not worthwhile. We do it anyways, because two million years of wanderlust sing in the bones of every one of us from the day we're born to the day we die.

We have to KNOW, you see? We have to KNOW, we have to EXPERIENCE, and we have to do it TOGETHER! When we go, we are becoming ourselves again. We are wandering together. That's what we were made to do.

"Drink this water of the spring, and rest here a while. We have a long way yet to go, and I can't go without you."

I see these fellows in my garden all the time during summer, in addition to the few resident hummingbirds! I can tell you with confidence that actual hummingbirds are significantly larger than the largest hummingbird moth you'll ever see (at least twice to three times as big).

Oddly enough, while there are hummingbird moths in Europe and North America, hummingbirds themselves are strictly New World animals. Any reports of hummingbirds outside of the Americas is either an escaped captive bird or, more likely, a hummingbird moth.

Bonus fun fact: here in NorAm we also have a different genus of moths with the same adaptations: the clearwing moths!

Have any of you ever heard of the hummingbird moths we get in Britain?

So, I thought I saw a hummingbird last year. It was much bigger than a bug could be, I thought, and it hovered around flowers and looked like it had feathers.

I got pretty close but it was never still enough to see clearly. Then, when I told my parents they said "oh! it was probably a moth!" and I was baffled for a long time. Like, how could a moth look like and act so much like a hummingbird?

Until I googled "hummingbirds in the UK" and this fucker comes up:

Everyone, meet the hummingbird hawk-moth; one of the weirdest and coolest cases of convergent evolution on this planet.

This is the kinda thing I'd see in fiction and go "oooh cool, bug hummingbird! Wish we had those on earth!" But we do. We really do have them on earth!! Isn't that nuts?!?!?

Les Misératbles

art by The Baby Goat

You are trapped in an elevator with the person on your lockscreen. Who is it?

Reblog with who you get stuck with~