#but. for real. im scared.

[critterchitters-closedcaptions]

okay i was gona rant in the tags, but ive too many feelings about this.

i didnt fully. notice? this until i sat and thought about it for a minute, but. yeah. theres a LOT less bugs, and that's horrifying.

a couple years ago we had a lot of wasp nests in our yard, and all the plants were buzzing with life and activity. we had a massive aphid problem on our hollyhocks and corn that invited a load of ants and a bunch of wasps to all hang around them, i even managed to befriend 3 whole colonies of wasps all in my front yard, thats not even touching the colonies that were nestled away in the back

and even before then wed always, ALWAYS have wasps buzzing all over our yard going from flower to flower and taking out the pests that would try to destroy our broccoli or brussel sprouts or anything else in the greenhouse or our little garden beds.

you'd walk through our grass and you'd see thousands of tiny little leafhoppers launching out in all directions.

this year? bees. thats it. literally just bees around the clover. and only the clover.

some ants here and there, but not as many as before. ive not seen a single paper wasp this year and that crushes my soul. i adored when theyd make nests in our yard, but theyre just nowhere to be seen anywhere.

we used to go out at night and scoot things to see the bugs underneath, but now? youre lucky if you see a single spider or centipede, instead of the nearly hundreds of isopods or worms or millipedes youd see in the soil under a box thats not been moved all summer.

we have this old truck body in our front yard as decoration this year, and its the PERFECT spot to be filled with bugs, and i was so, so excited when we put it up. you know how many bugs ive found in and around it?

two spiders. JUST two spiders.

and that's just in my front yard!!

over the summers i work with my local pest control place to count mosquitos to test for west nile virus and send to the CDC.

two years before [we dont count last year. my at-the-time boss ruined all of the traps so i couldn't get any proper counts] wed regularly get traps FULL, packed to the brim with misc bugs - and that barely put a dent on any of their populations, the traps were put in dense and bug filled areas. thered always be at least a couple moths, usually some grasshoppers, and i even found 4 or 5 whole ten lined june beetles in the traps. id regularly find dragonflies and damsel flies, wasps, various species of flies, multiple craneflies, butterflies, and even bees and beeflies and so many spiders. my favorite part about this job has been the diversity of bugs i get to see and the specimens i get to keep and take home (all of them are dead, so im allowed to take anything that isnt a culex mosquito)

this year? ive found one damselfly, one moth that isnt the most populated species here, 3 or 4 craneflies, barely any miscellaneous fly species, and only 3 or 4 spiders. no wasps, no bees, no grasshoppers, no butterflies. nothing at all thats particularly unique or diverse. im not even finding any regular june beetles - those things were EVERYWHERE just a few years ago.

if i go through my notes, i keep note of anything particularly interesting i find, i can make list of those later.

but the part that concerns me the absolute most? the mosquito count is drastically lower than ive ever seen it. people have been praising that theyve been bitten so little this year, but that's because theres barely any mosquitos to bite.

just two years ago wed get traps that counted in the thousands. id regularly have to sift through and count up to 3k mosquitos *per trap.*

now id be lucky if i even found 6k in a whole days worth of traps.

thats scary. we usually pick up 12 or so traps per day to cover the whole town outskirts, so the other year thatd be 36k mosquitos in a totally full day (3k x 12 traps). thats a shitload, and we barely altered the population collecting that many. this years possible 6k (about 500 x 12 traps) in a full day is abysmally low. its terrifying. im worried about what collecting this many is doing to their population.

ive been working here since 2020, so thats not a *long* time, but its long enough to see a sudden and terrifying drop in mosquitos.

this year a full trap is id assume about 500 mosquitos. we havent even gotten a single trap with 1k in there. im gona be honest, we havent even capped 300 mosquitos yet!!! 500 is just a guesstimated high with how few there have been this year! thats a whole 700 fewer mosquitos per full trap! what the fuck!!!

weve not even done any spraying or pest control this year. that 36k number regularly happened during spraying and pest control.

and that 300 per trap? isnt even for every trap this year! theres usually only been about 3 traps that have been regularly really full of bugs. the other traps used to be about a half to a quarter full. but this year theres barely even anything in the less full traps cause theres no bugs to enter them! so the more proper estimate of an average day this year is about 1k mosquitos total.

the other year an average day would be at least 10k total, because while the less-full traps were, well. less full, there were still mosquitos in there, at least 50-100 in there.

theres a nine thousand mosquito average difference within two years.

you used to be able to see them in thick, almost looked suffocating swarms above the more still waters here. now? you can barely see any.

and the fruit flies and gnats!! i used to hate them, there were always so many to sift through to find mosquitos in the traps, but now theres not even enough to be an annoyance.

i used to hate finding moths in traps cuz thered regularly be HUGE moths that, when theyd die, would curl up and grasp mosquitos in their legs and wings and itd be a whole ordeal getting them separated. this year ive not found a single moth big enough to do that. all the moths are tiny.

i have pictures hold on

^ this was an average trap in 2022. look at all those moths. most of that pile was gnats and other small bugs. but there were still a little over 400 mosquitos in there. this was IN JUNE. THIS WAS LATE JUNE. and you can see if you zoom in on my notes there, just three traps before this one i got 2,089 mosquitos in a trap.

^ that one is this year. thats the fullest trap ive gotten all year. there were 259 mosquitos in that trap. that was last week. all the others i get anywhere between 1 and 50 mosquitos.

this time 2022 the traps would look like that first example, if not fuller.

why the hell arent people scared of this. this is terrifying and all i can really do is sit and watch it happen directly in front of me.

also!!! i sometimes work with my mom cleaning up a campground. there used to be a huge issue of gnats all over the bathrooms for the past couple years, but this year theres been so few. and theres been so few bugs just around in general. im just glad the buggy (lol) we drive around the camp ground is still full of spiders like usual though. i love them.

bugs are the whole reason i go to either of these jobs.

sorry for going off, just. this scares me. and seeing the numbers so different, so dramatically lower, is terrifying.

(i know rhis was posted last year. but it applies to this year too. i didnt have the right scale of this last year due my old boss causing. Problems. but. god. its getting so bad.)

(note #2, i know spraying for pest control isnt a good thing. but its what my bosses at my job do, and its what the cdc expects us to do. im not for it, but i need some reliable way to make money over the summers. i and my family avoid spraying around our houses at all. we dont use any personal pesticides or weed killers. the only spraying thats done that im at all involved in is at my work, and i dont do the spraying myself. all i do is count mosquitos at a desk inside)

I think one of the absolute most frustrating things for me personally about the current climate crisis / late stage capitalism hell is that ontop of people just outright denying it and acting like the rising temperatures are normal- there’s been like. A VERY noticeable decline in the amount of insects yearly. As someone who goes out of my way to see bugs, every single year for the past decade there has been a sharp decline in bugs. What used to be fun filled summer months running around, catching grasshoppers and petting caterpillars… there’s nothing. I’ve seen one grasshopper this year. I’ve not seen a single caterpillar! It’s currently the ant nuptial flight season in my area and I’ve seen 0 winged ants. They used to all but infest my home during flight season

I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.

And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!

Anyways. Fellow entomology nerds, have any of you also noticed a drastic decrease in bugs you’re finding yearly or is my area just in a bug deficit.

[hinamie]

there's an art in the dark that took years to refine

[thehorsesthatareslow]

Aftermath.

[gingerswagfreckles]

It's become extremely obvious over the past 15 months that the only reason much of the Western world ever basically agreed that the Holocaust was bad and was willing to teach about it is because for a brief period of time, Jews and gentiles in most of Europe + America had a common enemy in the Nazis. But this acknowledgement of Nazi antisemitism was only ever the same kind of acknowledgement of antisemitism that we get right now, where people are only willing to acknowledge the antisemitism of the people they already had a completely separate reason to dislike or fear. Antisemitism in this worldview is just a tool, a secondary accusation one can lodge at someone who is already for different reasons an enemy. It is never acknowledged as a form of bigotry in and of itself, that exists on its own and not as a follow up to another "more serious" form of oppression or bigotry against gentiles.

Obviously any Holocaust education we do get in Europe and the US has very much been the result efforts by Jews and our allies in a practical sense, but it is undeniable that there was a brief 70 or so year period where the white Western consciousness found it valuable (or at least politically convenient) to recognize antisemitism as wrong and the Holocaust as horrific. As true, original-brand Nazism fades, though, we see opposition to antisemitism and the Holocaust becoming less and less valuable to the white Western identity, as actual threat of Nazi occupation fades to historical memory. Newer, rebranded neo-Nazis and leftist Hamas supporters pose little to no threat to white Western gentiles. And thus, we see now not only a growing acceptance of antisemitism, but also a growing hostility towards the idea that we should study or condemn the Holocaust as anything particularly terrible. The Holocaust no longer represents a way for gentiles to additionally condemn an ideology that also threatened them, that also killed their families, that also resulted in their own countries and communities being occupied or destroyed by foreign fascist governments. It no longer represents to them an ideology that is in any way a threat to their own safety or way of life.

This is why we see such a massive rise in Holocaust denial among Gen Z, and, even more broadly than overt Holocaust denial, the rejection of the idea that the Holocaust should be particularly studied or condemned. More and more, we see people "questioning" the "propaganda" of The Jews Crying Victim All The Time, we see young people wondering why they are so cruelly forced to acknowledge on very rare occasion the suffering that the Jewish people went through in their own homes and towns. Often this is framed not only as intellectual bravery but moral bravery, as if this new generation rejecting Holocaust education is somehow fighting back against the unfair valuing of Jewish tragedy above gentile tragedy. What they don't understand, of course, and what many Jews up until now didn't understand either, is that no one ever valued the Holocaust because it WAS a uniquely horrific event in history, because it WAS the first and only industrialized genocide that gassed millions to death on a scale we can only pray the world will never see again, because it WAS only 70 years ago and is still a living part of the history of many Western countries. No. The Holocaust was only ever given the acknowledgement it was because it represented, at one time, an ideological threat that also included gentiles, though less overtly than it targeted Jews.

That ideological threat against Jews has not gone anywhere, and is in fact is seeing a new glory day dawning with the rise of fascism worldwide and the normalization/glorification of antisemitism on the left. But this new form of antisemitic hatred, be it neo-Nazism or support for Hamas, does not represent a threat to white Western gentiles, their way of life, or the integrity of their governments. And so we as we see the decoupling of the Holocaust from something that also incidentally threatens gentiles, we see standing against the Holocaust and antisemitism as a symbol of white Western identity disappearing as fast as it came.

[carbonationmilk]

WHY IS HE THAT BIG??? GOOD GOD

[snipdoodle]

been thinking about a lot lately

i blame her for anything that may happen

[metalmachination]

push that stupid bot off a cliff. details abt dog beneath the cut

holy shit watch out for the words

"dog" is a later model of the DCA, part of a group that was mass-produced for a short period. he uses the same base code & design, but he's lost the majority of his original characteristics from repeated rebuilds and heavy modding. he's a heel for a bot fighting ring.

once made for much lighter showbiz, dog uses his loud announcer's voice to hype up fights and taunt the audience. his job is to make them hate him, it's all part of the show.

outside of the ring, all that put-on energy and bravado vanishes. sirius avoids talking and direct eye-contact, his pupils always looking up and away in any direction other than the person who's addressing him. it tends to give him a sneering, sarcastic look, even if the rest of his face is entirely immobile. his passive-aggressive remarks and constant deflections don't help.

he's an antagonist(*?) in a fic im working on, but its not in any kind of presentable state yet. i'll be honest. its dca/reader. my bad

as a bonus for reading this far: here's a part of (another) dca design. he's in the same universe

[bunnieswithknives]

RAHHHh ok comics done I can post this now!!! He is having the worst possible time

[lightnersdream]

i've been thinking about exactly why people portraying one of the other crew members successfully killing Jimmy as a "for what you did to Anya" kind of thing rubs me the wrong way a bit and it's because like..... this is just another form of taking agency away from Anya, in a way. it's kind of framing her as some meek, shivery woman-thing who's entirely at the mercy of the men around her, either to hurt her or save her.

(i understand these are mostly for wish fulfillment on the audience's behalf because everyone would like to see Jimmy pay for his crimes. whether or not this is the intention of the person writing it isn't really relevant, characterization happens with or without intent. i feel like it misses the point by portraying it as an 'ideal ending'.)

because... Anya is a capable person. she takes things into her own hands when she can. it was partially(?) her idea to get into the cargo,

(before he interrupts her.. remember when she interrupted Curly in the dead pixel segment?)

it was her idea to get the code scanner from the cockpit,

it was her idea to get the medication from behind the foam.

(the chance to do these things herself is not given to her.)

she'd been keeping Curly alive for months in a critical state somehow, her psych evaluations at the start are only so useless because Jimmy refuses to take it/her seriously and Curly is obviously biased when he puts it into his own hands. he's known him a long time, like he said. "I'll just put good for that one."

there's not a lot of material to work with because of how the game is framed, but it's there. we are working with two very biased perspectives and neither one lends Anya what she deserves

there's significant changes in how she speaks post- and pre- crash, and depending on who she happens to be talking to. i recommend re-reading her dialogue, because the difference is drastic

she acts the way she does around Jimmy because he has tangibly done horrible things to her, is actively hostile, and physically could not escape him by any means. she can't take away Curly's agency herself, in my eyes. you have to remember that Especially in the post-crash segments of the game, it's entirely from Jimmy's POV, and he obviously does not (and has never) thought very highly of her or treated her with a shred of respect

i've seen a general idea that she can't bear to hurt other people for any reason, but that doesn't really track to me. this is the real point of the post by the way

it seems based on the parts where she says she struggles to give Curly medication. "It just hurts him so much, I can't stand the noise." "It makes me nauseous."

it's not really the same thing as, say, hurting someone in self defense

this sounds like she did want the gun itself. this never felt worded like someone who would refuse to, at very least, threaten Jimmy with a gun, with violence. if she had been given the agency to make that decision on her own. she wasn't though

she still tries to reclaim some of it even as she's denied it

by the end she's still trying to keep that gun out of his hands

i think some people overly soften her, for similar reasons the game itself is trying to comment on. she's not a tender victim who couldn't cause pain to another out of the softness of her soul, she's a person who's had every last bit of agency ripped from her repeatedly until she couldn't take it anymore. that's the point. that's why framing her that way, "needing" someone to save her, is odd to me

she didn't need Curly to save her, she needed him to take responsibility

she didn't want to escalate things, but she's not an idiot. self defense was absolutely on her mind

but who knows im just saying shit *smiles serenely*

[chemilico]

imagine me throwing this at you like that one poster of that one animated Adam Sandler Christmas movie

[yaralulu]

[ef-1]

to the holes in my butterfly wings

[guccigarantine]

I’m 100% supportive of people becoming obsessed with a background character in something but when people start saying something is bad because those background characters don’t get any character development we gotta slow down a little

[usernamesarehard1]

[rexlottie]

quick thang

[ph-cutie]

jeaker