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“Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam”, hand-knit tapestry

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love scifi stuff assuming madness follows disconcerting or lacking embodiment when looking down and not seeing your body is the most normal thing ever. Consider maneuvering a laundry basket down the stairs. What feelings does this engender in you? Urgency and focus, attention to orientation, a receptivity to the immediate relevance of any new stimuli, maybe. Not catastrophe. Looking down and not seeing your body is totally fine! Close your damn eyes and try it! It’s such a funny meme to me when it crops up in scifi, after playing in VR. Please trust me that if you astrally project somehow and freak out about it it will be because you are a nervous person, and not because sensory dislocation is intrinsically incompatible with human sanity.

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Swiss Chard Pasta Salad (Vegan-Adaptable)

10 oz. ditalini or other small pasta

1½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or ¾ Morton kosher salt, plus more

2 bunches Swiss chard

⅔ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided

½ cup coarsely chopped raw pistachios

2 Tbsp. thinly sliced sage

2 garlic cloves, finely grated

⅓ cup sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar

2 Tbsp. coarsely chopped capers

½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

Freshly ground pepper

5 oz. feta (plant-based), crumbled

Step 1: Cook 10 oz. ditalini or other small pasta in a medium pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente, then drain.

Step 2: Meanwhile, remove ribs and stems from 2 bunches Swiss chard; slice very thinly. Coarsely chop leaves; set aside. Heat ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Cook chard ribs and stems, stirring occasionally, until lightly crisped, about 4 minutes. Add ½ cup coarsely chopped raw pistachios and remaining ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil and cook, stirring often, until nuts are golden brown, about 1 minute. Add 2 Tbsp. thinly sliced sage; cook, stirring, until crisp, about 30 seconds. Remove pan from heat, add reserved chard leaves, and stir until wilted and combined.

Step 3: Pour chard mixture into a large bowl and stir in 2 garlic cloves, finely grated, ⅓ cup sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar, 2 Tbsp. coarsely chopped capers, ½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes, and 1½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or ¾ tsp. Morton kosher salt; season with freshly ground black pepper. Add pasta and toss to combine, then mix in 5 oz. feta, crumbled.

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Llangollen, Wales

daniel_casson

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I love your art, and I will be printing it out and eating it

don’t eat the lichens one it tastes weird

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I actually remember why I followed you: it was because of a picture of chickens summoning the spirit of a tyrannosaurus. Anyway, your blog is a source of serenity.

good old seance piece. I’m always so glad to hear that somebody came for the art and stayed for the Posts

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Dutchess the Hoary Bat, via

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I can't remember why I followed you and we've never interacted, but your writing and art and posts have given me hope and peace in a way few other things ever have. 💖 love and hope from an endling

a fellow endling is always welcome here.

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(ask game) I genuinely can’t remember what i followed you for

hahaha well, thanks for sticking around!

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tell me on anon what you'd never tell me off anon

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room (2008) ph. carrie yury

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Oh, uh. I guess I should mention that I’ve made this thing. Three months after release sounds like a perfect time. Untitled Tile Painter is a quirky little drawing tool that lets you lay down funky geometric Bauhaus-inspired patterns. It’s 50% a useful thing for actual people and 50% me wanting to stretch my UMG muscles on something. It’s also a little bit like a control panel of an alien spaceship, as far as UX goes. Give it a go, if it looks like your kind of thing! It’s entirely free and all generated images are yours to keep and use as you see fit.

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ohhh my god I have got to stop mourning the past or whatever

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Giant Emerald Pill-Millipede: when these enormous millipedes are all rolled up, their bodies can be as big as a baseball, a tennis ball, or a small orange

This species (Zoosphaerium neptunus) is commonly known as a giant emerald pill-millipede. The females can measure up to 90mm long (roughly 3.5 inches), making this the largest species of pill-millipede in the world.

There is a significant degree of sexual dimorphism in this species, with the males measuring only about 45mm (1.8 inches) long -- roughly half the size of the females.

Giant emerald pill-millipedes are found only in Madagascar, which is home to several endemic species of giant pill-millipedes (order Sphaerotheriida). The Malagasy name for giant pill-millipedes is "Tainkintana," which means "shooting-star."

Pill-millipedes use conglobation as a defense mechanism, which means that they can curl their bodies up into a spherical shape so that their dorsal plates form a protective shield around the softer, more vulnerable parts of their bodies, just like an actual pill-bug or a "roly-poly."

When they roll themselves up completely, they look almost like gently polished chunks of malachite, emerald, or jade.

Giant emerald pill-millipedes will sometimes form large swarms that travel together as a group. This is the only species of giant pill-millipede that engages in any sort of swarming behavior, and the purpose of that behavior is still unclear. The swarms often contain thousands of individuals, with almost all of them moving in the same direction, even when there is no physical contact that might allow the millipedes to "herd" one another along.

Their swarming behavior also has some very peculiar features, as this article explains:

During swarming, Zoosphaerium neptunus individuals pay little attention to their surroundings; many specimens were observed walking straight into and drowning in small puddles. Some swarms even display ‘cliché lemming behaviour:' in Marojejy, a large part of a swarm walked into and drowned in a small river.

No single specimen was observed walking ‘against the current,' all specimens were moving in the same direction (southeast), even when not in contact with one another.

Of 273 randomly collected individuals, 105 were males, while 168 were females. The males were 8.3 - 14.1 mm wide (average width 10.4 mm). According to the inner horns of the posterior telopods, all males were sexually mature. The females were 9.95 - 15.4 mm wide (average width 11.4 mm). All females displayed non sclerotized vulvae and were sexually immature.

Some researchers argue that the swarming serves as a defense mechanism, providing a layer of protection (or at least some cryptic cover) against local predators, but the swarming behavior is still poorly understood.

Important Note: I just want to remind everyone that these animals belong in their own natural habitat -- they should not be trapped, bought/sold, traded, shipped, collected, or kept as pets. This particular species does not survive well in captivity, either, and the demand for these "exotic" invertebrates is putting the wild populations in jeopardy. The previous article discusses those issues, too:

Another possible threat for Z. neptunus swarms are collections for the pet trade. There exists a large demand in Japan, Europe and North America for 'green -eyed monsters’ as pets. Giant pill -millipedes from Madagascar unfortunately have a very short survival time in terraria. The species is specialized on low-energy food (dead leaves), and adapted to the cool climates (<20°C) of the highlands. Specimens in terraria often starve to death quickly.

So I know that they're adorable and really, really fascinating...but let's just let them be their chunky, adorable little selves out in the wild where they belong.

Sources & More Info:

European Journal of Taxonomy: Seven New Giant Pill-Millipede Species and New Records of the Genus Zoosphaerium from Madagascar

Madagascar Conservation & Development: Swarming Behavior in the World's Largest Giant Pill-Millipede, Z. neptunus, and its Implication for Conservation Efforts

Bonn Zoological Bulletin Supplementum: The Giant Millipedes, Order Sphaerotheriida (an Annotated Species Catalogue) (PDF)

African Invertebrates: Madagascar's Living Giants: Discovery of Five New Species of Endemic Giant Pill-Millipedes from Madagascar (PDF)

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