Here are a few websites you can visit to sign petitions:
https://www.badinternetbills.com/
https://www.stopkosa.com/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act
Soulmates aren’t real, are they?
Spring is (supposedly) on its way, so we want to send a little love and appreciation to all the bees out there, making our everyday possible. Join us in celebrating these 8 reasons to celebrate our tiny, but mighty friends.
1. Bees make our surroundings beeee-autiful. In addition to pollinating our crops, bees are responsible for pollinating all of the things that make spring sing. And they’re no novices - they’ve been producing honey from flowering trees (fruit trees, nut trees, and bee-yond) for 10-20 million years! From the TED-Ed Lesson The case of the vanishing honeybees - Emma Bryce
2. Bees are social insects. Honey bees live together in large, well-organized family groups and engage in a variety of complex tasks not practiced by solitary insects. Communication, complex nest construction, environmental control, defense, and division of the labor are just some of the behaviors that honey bees have developed to exist successfully in social colonies. And they are not the least bit lazy: one single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. From the TED-Ed Lesson The case of the vanishing honeybees - Emma Bryce
3. Bees are above words. They communicate through ‘dance’ and pheromones. By performing what’s referred to as the ‘waggle dance’, bees can share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations. From the TED-Ed Lesson Why do honeybees love hexagons? - Zack Patterson and Andy Peterson
4. Bees make great wingmen. Bees are very busy little matchmakers. The bees’ side of the whole “birds and the bees” business is to help plants find mates and reproduce. Today, around 170,000 plant species receive pollination services from more than 200,000 pollinator species, a good many of which are bees! In return, flowering plants are an abundant and diverse food source for pollinators. For instance, fossil records suggest that bees may have evolved from wasps that gave up hunting after they acquired a taste for nectar. From the TED-Ed Lesson How bees help plants have sex - Fernanda S. Valdovinos
5.Bees put food on our tables. Bees pollinate our crops on an industrial scale, generating over one-third of U.S. food production. Their work alone has contributed an estimated $15-20 billion of value to the U.S. agricultural business. From the TED-Ed Lesson The case of the vanishing honeybees - Emma Bryce
6. Bees can totally pack up a car better than you. Honeybees are some of nature’s finest mathematicians. Not only can they calculate angles and comprehend the roundness of the earth, these smart insects build and live in one of the most mathematically efficient architectural designs around: the beehive. Charles Darwin himself wrote that the honeycomb is a masterpiece of engineering. It is “absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax.” From the TED-Ed Lesson Why do honeybees love hexagons? - Zack Patterson and Andy Peterson
7. Bees are hooked on coffee, too. When bees pollinate coffee plants, they consume low doses of caffeine from the coffee flower nectar, which means that bees are **BUZZZZZING** from a caffeine high just like us, AND helping us to get our coffee fix on the daily! From the TED-Ed Lesson The case of the vanishing honeybees - Emma Bryce
8. Honeybees are disappearing at astonishing rates. Not to be a **buzzkill**, but here’s a not-so-fun fact. In the past decade, the U.S. honeybee population has been decreasing at an alarming and unprecedented rate. Bee mortality rates in commercial production have more than doubled in the last decade, and in 2015, 40% of bee colonies were reported lost in just a single year. There are a variety of factors causing Colony Collapse Disorder, and scientists everywhere are working to prevent further loss of bees. Keep reading to see how you can help. From the TED-Ed Lesson The case of the vanishing honeybees - Emma Bryce
Love bees as much as we do? Well, let’s give the bees a hand, for real! Plant some bee-friendly flowers this spring and remember, when bees have access to good nutrition, we have access to good nutrition through their pollination services.
goth wooloo……….
Winter is coming quickly. A lot of people see this time of year as bleak, depressing, or just boring. Here are some tips to stay attuned to nature during these months.
❄️ Go outside. Even if it’s cold, the trees are bare, and the only colors are muted and dull. We often think that summer is the only time to enjoy the outdoors—the only time to hike, meditate outside, etc. In winter, there are no lush green trees or balmy days filled with sunshine and the smell of flowers. While summer is intoxicating, winter is a time to contemplate and reflect. Go outside. Feel the cold. Feel the mud and the dead grass and the chilly wind. Listen to how quiet it is. Understand that the dark half of the year is a time of silence, stillness, and death. It’s natural to have an aversion to these things, but take some time to sit down and just listen. Breathe. Feel the reality of silence and death around you. It’s a sobering experience, but also a very insightful one. If you have any fear of death or quiet, now is the time to go sit with those things as they appear in nature and just meditate with them.
❄️ Eat cozy foods. It’s cold outside—warm up with hearty soups, stews, homemade bread, and root veggies. Warm spices and hot drinks will keep you feeling grounded. This is a wonderful time of year to practice kitchen witchcraft—focus on coziness, family, protection, and rest.
❄️ Study magic! The Dark Half of the year is devoted to self-reflection, rest, and contemplation. Snuggle up indoors with a fluffy blanket and devote some time to studying magic and witchcraft with a hot cup of magically-brewed tea.
❄️ Think spirits are sleeping along with all the greenery? Think again! The Dark Half of the year, in many cultures and spiritual traditions, is considered extremely spiritually active. Deities like Odin, Berchta, Hekate, and spirits such as elves and ghosts are very active this time of year. You can choose to honor them if you want, or practice various spirit-working techniques. If you’re into necromancy or divination, this is a wonderful time of year for those things.
❄️ Be kind to local wildlife by installing things like bird feeders outside your home. We modern humans may have an easy time of it in winter, but animals struggle to survive during these months. Any bit of kindness will be much appreciated.
❄️ Nurture your fire energy. During winter, it’s easy to internalize the cold and take on its characteristics—sluggishness, sleepiness, a foggy-headed feeling. Some crystals that are great for winter include golden rutilated quartz (aka Venus hair), citrine, carnelian, obsidian, and garnet. All of these crystals contain a strong fire element as well as offer grounding qualities, mental clarity, and protection.
❄️ Go out and forage for magical ingredients! Melted snow is extremely purifying and can be incorporated into spells for purification and cleansing. Icicles can serve as temporary wands, especially in spells that require a strong water element. The ash from bonfires (or hearth fires) can be used to make black salt. Fallen branches can be crafted into wands. There may be nothing growing this time of year, but you can get creative and still find magical ingredients in unexpected places. Just be respectful and don’t collect from places where it’s illegal!
This is by no means a comprehensive list—these are just some ways I’ve celebrated the colder months. I hope they’re helpful in any way!
Discord’s CEO is on twitter hinting about their apparent future involvement with NFTs/crypto.
In case you aren’t already aware, cryptocurrency is digital currency that sucks because it consumes an absurd amount of energy and computer parts, and NFTs are a way of creating false scarcity for digital items, which are bought and sold with crypto currency, and also suck. Here is an article about why that shit sucks. The article has additional information. Here is a twitter account that also documents NFT thefts & scams (NFTs are often stolen art sold without permission).
HERE IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ASAP:
1. CANCEL NITRO. Don’t wait around for them to reverse course or apologize. Cancel it now, choose “other” when it asks why you’re canceling and write in your answer. They need to see the financial backlash right now. You can always re-sub if they backpedal, but right now they need the impetus to do the backpedaling.
2. GO HERE to their feedback forum. make a thread and tell them you cancelled nitro and don’t want them involved with crypto garbage. contribute to other threads if you see one that piques your interest. EXTRA CREDIT: downvote this thread, boo them, downvote the crypto dingdongs in the comments.
3. If you have twitter, tweet at them. tweet at @discord and reply to Jason’s tweet with whatever dunking and booing you feel like.
4. PASS IT AROUND. Tell your friends with nitro. Tell your favorite group chats and servers. Encourage them to do the same.
This is one of those situations where we need massive and decisive backlash RIGHT NOW to nip it in the bud. Your input really does matter right now. Shouting down shit like this has gotten even companies like Patreon to reverse course on bad decisions. Even the stupidest tech bros do respond to enough screaming. So SCREAM. Remind them where their real money comes from, and scare them away from the planet-destroying fake money.
Billie Joe Armstrong literally wrote a song about coming out as bisexual as a teenager, and then like two years later wrote one that was pretty much all about dressing up in drag and getting fucked by/fucking guys, and y'all STILL say he’s a “straight ally” because he married a woman??
Not to be a DC fan on main but at least they never made the conscious decision to make everything tied to one character like Marvel as to Iron Man. Wonder Woman didn’t get a new uniform or weapons from Batman to be at “top performance”, Aquaman didn’t need his help or “mentorship” to become a hero, Superman had his own story with minimal mention to Wayne at all.
Compare this to Marvel where Spider-Man, perhaps the most iconic superhero to EVER come out of Marvel, and their origin, personality, and story is completely erased. There’s no Uncle Ben, Aunt May is reduced to flirting with every hot guy and for Iron Man to oglie at, and Spider-Man himself? The character known to have created his own suit, his own weapons, his own story? He’s just Iron Man’s little pet project til he can get an actual kid out of Pepper. He’s just Iron Man jr with a spider motif who needs Stark to hold his hand and tell him what a good boy he is. Give me a fucking break. Iron Man was the joke of Marvel comics for decades until the movies made him “charming”. Spider-Man doesn’t and will never need him to be the hero he is, but god forbid RDJ not get another quick 10 million for acting like himself and for the writers to completely miss the point of their own characters for the sake of box office revenue.
already got a blazed marvel post. the adpocalypse is closer than we think so heres your daily PSA
yes even to dunk on them. i don't care if you have the sickest burn of the century lined up, don't even give them the time of day
the eventual and inevitable fall of twitter marks a change in the advertising industry, and tumblr is unclaimed territory. if we want tumblr to remain the social media bastion it has become, it needs to remain as unappealing to corporations as possible. do not engage. in a marketing strategist's eyes, any kind of attention is good attention. don't "silence, brand" them. don't kungpowpenis them. don't send them hate anons. don't hate-follow them. corporate tumblrs are not a single entity and they will not be harassed off this site. we only have a shot at repelling them because of tumblr's lack of an algorithm. so turn off recommended posts on your dashboard, put it chronological order, and install an adblocker. if you don't seek out these blazed posts and actively ignore them when they happen upon you, the corporations will starve. in this case, the best kind of protest is a silent one