Drowningworms - Drowning Worms

None of this stuff is serious or complete and it all comes with a huge helping of "perhaps" and a grain of salt.

Nothing here should be taken as the final word on anything. No matter how sure of myself and arrogant I may sound. I know most of this stuff I write is silly or off-kilter or flawed in major ways.

So don't look for the flaws. You will no doubt find them. Look for what is new, different, insightful, creative, revolutionary, outrageous, or true. Try to understand the ideas and test those. Maybe each blog entry, as a whole, is a wreck for you. But there will parts that are treasures for you.

It ain't all that earth-shattering or revelatory to the world either, just to me at the time.

We are all becoming and we all figure things out or learn things at different times in our lives and often independently of others. Sometimes we really are the first person to think of an idea. Usually not. There are over 5000 years of recorded human thought and at this very moment there are around 8 billion other people. There is going to be a lot of convergent thinking going on. And a whole lot more of me hearing things sometime somewhere but forgetting where I heard it from (because I am a very curious and highly educated person who's been around and thinking for a longish time and it's hard to keep track of where all the shit in my head came from and which I created) from others or getting bits and pieces others worked on first and I had heard/read and then put a few things together in my head thinking it was all me.

So I don't promise they will all be new ideas. But they will all be new ways of looking at them. And I do think you'll find a few real originals in there as I transfer stuff from my gmail drafts over to this.

If I have a weird-ass idea or loving take on things that changes the world for the better, God bless it. But mostly I'm just here to share what my brain spit out for our mutual shits and giggles.

Even if I think there might be some really good stuff buried in there for anyone to find if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to understand.

NASA's Webb Rings in the Holidays with the Ringed Planet Uranus by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

All the beetles I vivisected for calcium imaging are waiting for me. Mostly and they are pissed off it was for nothing because we couldn't get the Ca imaging to work on them.

I know my hell will be filled with the bugs I accidentally killed so that I can pay back for my sins and once I have finally be crushed by all, Satan will carry me out on piece of paper underneath a cup.

a mite (Daemaeidae sp.) feeding on Stemonitopsis typhina by Barry Webb

Rabbits manage their predators

We've all seen the graph of lynx and snowshoe hares where the rabbit populations increase and lynx increase with larger litters and increased survival to adulthood in response to the abundance of food. Eventually the lynx outpace the rabbits and eat all the available rabbits and starve themselves to death back down to numbers that can survive on the number of available rabbits at which point the hares, being R strategists can reproduce faster than K strategist lynx and the whole cycle starts over again.

It's used as a classic example in ecology courses of predators preventing prey populations from overwhelming a landscape. And we see it as a cautionary tale about the need for good stewardship of resources and need for population control to prevent the suffering of boom and bust cycles.

That story is not quite accurate. The people who came up with that interpretation where all children of privilege and identified with the predators. It wasn't until more scientists from indigenous and lower-class groups began to make up the ranks that we questioned that story.

The hares are actively starving out their predators through solidarity.

When stress levels build up in hares from constantly being hunted and close escapes, this changes their reproductive system to have much smaller litters. Even when stressed individuals mate with outside hares, they have small litters and males somehow induce their unstressed mate to produce smaller litters even if she would otherwise have produced a large litter.

The entire population of hares effectively withholds their bodies from the predators by not reproducing beyond just enough to keep the species alive while laying low for long enough to starve the majority of their predators to death and force them to have smaller litters in response.

It seems to me there is a lesson in there for us in the midst of Capitalism. Stop having kids and starve the system of labor.

Then let the invisible hand of supply and demand do its magic to raise wages and reduce housing prices.

You can't afford to strike. They might fire you if you slow down too much (I still think a national slowdown is a safe bet). But they can't do jack to you for not breeding (yet).

So focus on your career and having fun and living a life of service to make a better future.

‘We Beat Them Before, We Will Beat Them Again!’ 

Some Rebel Alliance propo pictures to go with the Imperial one!!! 😃 

The last chapters of ‘only as strong as the warrior next to you’ feature quite a few rebel themes and visual elements, so it felt like a good time to share!

“Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy” is the source of many of these. It’s an incredible and highly enjoyable reference book, and it that comes with 10 free posters. :3 The rest of the images are taken from the excellent and inspiring works of Russell Walks Illustration, who I’m given to understand also has a tumblr. @russellwalks 👀🙏

Porn and Instagram

The true damage of instagram girls (and guys) is comparison of normal people to "perfection." When you spend all your time looking at the most "perfectly" proportioned and "beautiful" women, you will constantly be aware of the difference between women (including your own beloved wife) and the ideal woman. So that awareness can lead to dissatisfaction, actively wishing your wife to be more ideal, possibly more tempted by "better" models. In any case it leads to less intimacy and satisfaction in bed.

And it blinds you to the beautiful people all around you till you will only accept someone who looks like a "model" to feel attraction for or even just to give them a chance.

They did it to us and they will do it to you too.

We thought we were better than our parents because we could see one another's beauty a little bit. It took less then 10 years for the powers of this world to do it to basically all of us too using swimsuit issues and Internet porn.

Making men detest women who aren't "beautiful". Driving women, girls, boys, and men insane. So so harmful to our sisters in this world. You see how we are now? You think we wanted to be like this? But now we aren't even aware of it and think there are objective beauty standards we can judge others and ourselves on.

Even our men are deeply insecure about our appearance and only believe we're good-looking if others tell us. See what it does to everyone as they get older and less and less akin to a beauty standard based on being a 20yo.

Even if you know it's propaganda, you are not immune. They will do it to you if they can.

why does my caladium act like she is starving for light. hang on