thethingything

[thethingything]

Alright he's getting worse, I just need help please. He needs help.

[thethingything]

My left-hand-drawing practice again 🐍 (I swear I don't draw only snakes)

[thethingything]

Yeah I can’t come in today. Yeah it was a cryptic instagram post. Yes it will take all day.

[thethingything]

Something else abt cockroaches is that they can also hold ur hand

[thethingything]

we got our flu jab and I guess we'll see how we feel later but the rest of the appoinment went well, and then when we got home we looked around the garden a bit for stuff to get iNat observations of and found a fuckload of really tiny snails all chilling in one area

[thethingything]

today's invertebrate........ancyra

do you see a weevil??? do you?????? because if you do, then you've been TRICKED by cheeky ancrya, who loves pretending to be a weevil with his suspiciously weevil shaped wings

everyone thinks they found a lucky weevil when ancyra is around but whoops! it's just good ol ancyra walking backwards as usual

great animal! (photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rainforests/)

[thethingything]

pigeon loaf

[thethingything]

(Hermosa galianoae, via iNaturalist)

Ant-mimics H. galianoae may be, but this particularly rotund individual is halfway to a bee cosplay.

[thethingything]

When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger

1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix

1 TBs ketchup

1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,

1 Tbs bbq sauce

1 Tbs steak sauce

1 egg

mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)

You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf

[thethingything]

I do appreciate that the two times this year where we've actually managed to add a load of posts to the affirmationsfromants queue all at once the way we kee meaning to have both been because our psychosis flared up and we started getting lots of very chaotic thoughts and then 🍬 went "okay time to queue some ants posts"

[thethingything]

its terrible for any number of reasons, but i think if we invent immortality there should be an extreme sport called civilizational speedrunning where teams of 20 go into the wilderness somewhere and try and be the fastest build the first internal combustion engine. i bet you could get it down to like 3 years tops

[thethingything]

okay yeah our brain has been going fast and we've been very rambly and aso paranoid in a way that feels a lot like the way the start of our psychotic episodes usually do so that probably is what our brain's doing which is whatever, we're used to it, but the paranoia fucking sucks. at least we recognised it early this time

[thethingything]

Hey. You know what they taught me in my environmental studies classes, about how to work in this field and be able to keep doing it without burning out and crashing? And also about how to get the general public to care about what we do?

Ragebait isn't actually a very good strategy. Hope is. Showing people it's possible to make a difference is. Imagining a better future is. I think other movements need to learn this.

For years the strategy was to show people horrible things so they'd be angry and want to do something, but it turns out it's really easy to cross the line into them thinking 'oh god it's all horrible and we're doomed' at which point they get paralyzed with hopelessness. So that's not the recommended strategy anymore and instead we try to connect climate issues with things people care about and show them how they can help in concrete, achievable ways. Anyways, I'm still in this field three years later and I don't feel crushing despair about it so I guess it's working. Y'all should join me. Put down the images of sad polar bears and other assorted horrors; pick up something hopeful and useful instead.

[thethingything]

I've been trying to think of the best way to articulate this for a long time, but I think something that maybe influences many outdoor cat owners to be adamantly against the idea of the idea of their pet being an invasive species, is the way we talk and think about invasive species.

If you see any post on social media talking about an invasive species, people in the comments tend to talk about "destroying" them with a sort of gleeful malice. Essentially, invasives are acceptable targets for cruelty. They are considered "evil", making it okay to hate them and inflict violence upon them, and to revel in that violence.

So, if a person has this viewpoint, consciously or not, and sees someone claim their beloved pet is invasive, they will probably balk at the idea and reject it. Their cat isn't evil! That's absurd! How could you say that?

And that is completely true. The domestic cat isn't evil. Neither is the spotted lanternfly, common buckthorn, or any other invasive species. They are harmful to the environments they are introduced into, but they don't cause that harm because they are malevolent. They're doing the exact same things they would be in their original environment. Those things are just bad for their non-native one. In some situations, removing invasive species may involve killing the organism, but we shouldn't relish in the suffering this will cause them.

Obviously, there are lot of factors influencing why people refuse to keep their cats inside. But I can't help but wonder if this kind of attitude might exacerbate it - and if changing the way we talk about invasive species might help a little. Even if not, we should do it anyway - all living things deserve respect.

[thethingything]

FEED ME MOTHER, I REQUIRE FOOD, MOTHER I NEED FOOD, MOTHER FEED ME

[thethingything]

"I think our brain wants me to process stuff and I don't wanna process stuff, I wanna go be unhinged in the woods" - 🦋

[thethingything]

look into this Villa's innocent eyes and be at peace. these bee flies are very common around here but practically every individual i find is different, which makes me wonder if i'm seeing multiple species or if it's just flies being flies

(July 10th, 2024)