snailsthatdocrafts

[snailsthatdocrafts]

bugs is art

hercules beetle, 2025.

[snailsthatdocrafts]

every ad is a personal insult to everyone who sees it and i’m not kidding

[snailsthatdocrafts]

NASA released the clearest pictures yet of our neighbours in the solar system

Oh and of course us

Honourable mention

[snailsthatdocrafts]

“I’m almost 50, and here is the best thing I have learned so far: every strange thing you’ve ever been into, every failed hobby or forgotten instrument, everything you have ever learned will come back to you, will serve you when you need it. No love, however brief, is wasted.” @louisethebaker on Twitter

[snailsthatdocrafts]

the beauty of this is we all work together. you need beeswax for candles and lotions. some bread recipes use honey. the chef and bakers will need eggs from the chickens. and we make the knitters’ yarn from wool from the sheep! garden tools and many utensils are crafted from metal and wood. the gardener provides produce and herbs for the chef, and their garden is helped by the bees and chickens.

[snailsthatdocrafts]

The wintery urge to fill a den (a comfy space) with blankets, moss, trinkets and food, and to stay there until spring

[snailsthatdocrafts]

Stardew Valley

[snailsthatdocrafts]

[snailsthatdocrafts]

[snailsthatdocrafts]

Enesco Home Grown Figurine PNGs

[snailsthatdocrafts]

🚨 GARDENING PSA: Mulch Alternative 🚨

ok, so it's that time of year where everyone on all the medias of socialing are saying leave the leaves, use leaves as mulch, and they are all ABSOLUTELY RIGHT DO NOT IGNORE THEM!!

but for those who either live in apartments or cookie-cutter homes where they tore down all the trees and then planted crape myrtles along the main road and nowhere else (iykyk), then there is a solution for y'all, too.

get yo'self a paper shredder! or find someone that has one and steal their remnants. altho highly recommend at least you feeding the shredder yourself, be it yours or someone elses. just because a shredder can destroy it, doesn't mean it can be composted. CDs, for example. but also glossy or magazine paper CANNOT be used. either cardboard devoided of any tape or matte or office paper.

i used some leaves for the strawberries i'm keeping outside in pots when i planted them about a week ago, but for the ones in the greenhouse i was too tired today to walk down the hill to the shed and grab the mower and mulch leaves so i just went into my craft room and shredded some things that are in my gigantic pile to be shredded and called it a day. i bought a shredder specifically for compost (soon to be chicken coop bedding) and i love it. i mean, the pile to shred is bigger than the shredder, but that's a me problem not a you problem. you need a mulch alternative. therefore i present to you, my friend, the shredder.

happy shredding!

[snailsthatdocrafts]

[snailsthatdocrafts]

Pictured: Luis Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat. He's photographed at his house, which has a green roof.

Article

"Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat without overloading electrical grids or spending money on fans and air conditioners. He came across the concept over a decade ago while researching how to make his own home bearable during a particularly scorching summer in Rio.

A method that's been around for thousands of years and that was perfected in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, green roofs weren't uncommon in more affluent neighborhoods when Cassiano first heard about them. But in Rio's more than 1,000 low-income favelas, their high cost and heavy weight meant they weren't even considered a possibility.

That is, until Cassiano decided to team up with a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis to figure out a way to make them both safe and affordable for favela residents. Over the next 10 years, his nonprofit was born and green roofs started popping up around the Parque Arará community, on everything from homes and day care centers, to bus stops and food trucks.

When Gomes da Silva heard the story of Teto Verde Favela, he decided then and there that he wanted his home to be the group's next project, not just to cool his own home, but to spread the word to his neighbors about how green roofs could benefit their community and others like it.

Pictured: Jessica Tapre repairs a green roof in a bus stop in Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Relief for a heat island

Like many low-income urban communities, Parque Arará is considered a heat island, an area without greenery that is more likely to suffer from extreme heat. A 2015 study from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro showed a 36-degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city's warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas. It also found that land surface temperatures in Rio's heat islands had increased by 3 degrees over the previous decade.

That kind of extreme heat can weigh heavily on human health, causing increased rates of dehydration and heat stroke; exacerbating chronic health conditions, like respiratory disorders; impacting brain function; and, ultimately, leading to death.

But with green roofs, less heat is absorbed than with other low-cost roofing materials common in favelas, such as asbestos tiles and corrugated steel sheets, which conduct extreme heat. The sustainable infrastructure also allows for evapotranspiration, a process in which plant roots absorb water and release it as vapor through their leaves, cooling the air in a similar way as sweating does for humans.

The plant-covered roofs can also dampen noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, prevent flooding by reducing storm water runoff and ease anxiety.

"Just being able to see the greenery is good for mental health," says Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. "Green roofs have so many positive effects on overall well-being and can be built to so many different specifications. There really are endless possibilities.""

Pictured: Summer heat has been known to melt water tanks during the summer in Rio, which runs from December to March. Pictured is the water tank at Luis Cassiano's house. He covered the tank with bidim, a lightweight material conducive for plantings that will keep things cool.

A lightweight solution

But the several layers required for traditional green roofs — each with its own purpose, like insulation or drainage — can make them quite heavy.

For favelas like Parque Arará, that can be a problem.

"When the elite build, they plan," says Cassiano. "They already consider putting green roofs on new buildings, and old buildings are built to code. But not in the favela. Everything here is low-cost and goes up any way it can."

Without the oversight of engineers or architects, and made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks and cinder blocks, construction in favelas can't necessarily bear the weight of all the layers of a conventional green roof.

That's where the bidim comes in. Lightweight and conducive to plant growth — the roofs are hydroponic, so no soil is needed — it was the perfect material to make green roofs possible in Parque Arará. (Cassiano reiterates that safety comes first with any green roof he helps build. An engineer or architect is always consulted before Teto Verde Favela starts a project.)

And it was cheap. Because of the bidim and the vinyl sheets used as waterproof screening (as opposed to the traditional asphalt blanket), Cassiano's green roofs cost just 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot. A conventional green roof can cost as much as 53 Brazilian reais, or $11, for the same amount of space.

"It's about making something that has such important health and social benefits possible for everyone," says Ananda Stroke, an environmental engineering student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who volunteers with Teto Verde Favela. "Everyone deserves to have access to green roofs, especially people who live in heat islands. They're the ones who need them the most." ...

It hasn't been long since Cassiano and the volunteers helped put the green roof on his house, but he can already feel the difference. It's similar, says Gomes da Silva, to the green roof-covered moto-taxi stand where he sometimes waits for a ride.

"It used to be unbearable when it was really hot out," he says. "But now it's cool enough that I can relax. Now I can breathe again."

-via NPR, January 25, 2025

[snailsthatdocrafts]

[snailsthatdocrafts]

Quick clarification that I love homemaking not in a "because that's my role as a woman" way, but in a "I grew up in a home that didn't feel safe and this helps me take back that power" way.

[snailsthatdocrafts]

"What radicalized you?"

Nothing.

I've just always held that fascism is bad and that all people deserve basic respect and human rights, along with food, healthcare, housing, and civil liberties.

And somewhere along the line, that became a radical opinion.

[snailsthatdocrafts]