baguettiandcheeseballs:

baguettiandcheeseballs:

lyridmeteorshower:

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

• Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.
• Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

• Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It’s hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.
• Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

• Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

• Reblogs drive the entire site. If you’d upvote something on Reddit, you’d reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you’re not required to.
• The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top
• You can send an ask to someone, and it’ll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don’t want.
• Tags aren’t actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can’t use quotation marks (“) or commas in them without fucking it up
• You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you’ll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

• You can make polls in posts. Here’s one now.

holy shit it’s a poll

cool!

ooh clicky clicky button!! i wanna press it!! lemme press it!

you can add up to 10 options btw

See Results

• Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don’t:

• Very old posts (I’m talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There’s no such thing as a post being "too old” to reblog
• Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.
• If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.
• You can screenshot someone’s tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called “peer review”
• Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not “creepy” like it is seen as on other sites.
• Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a “yes, and?” attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.
• We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.
• Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say “I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd” and nobody gives a shit.

General Etiquette:

• Don’t try to do epic clapbacks here, you’ll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.
• Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.
• Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it
• You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask “hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?” and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It’s generally polite to oblige, but “no” is still reasonable.
• Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don’t get involved in it. Ever.
• Don’t put fandom tags or jokes on someone’s posts about serious matters or personal shit
• You’re responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don’t like, that’s probably on you. Don’t be afraid to unfollow.
• Follower count doesn’t matter much here and you don’t have to make yours known if you don’t want to.
• Reblog, don’t repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn’t “steal” engagement like Twitter retweets.
• If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal
• Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There’s a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

• Get XKit Rewritten if you’re on desktop, it’s a really helpful extension
• In the little drop-down menu next to the ‘Post now’ button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It’s good for spreading stuff out over time.
• You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!
• Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs
• Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

additionally, I will add that, like reddit, the site is always better than the app. but most things you can do on the site you can do here too! a little tip for tags, if you click “add tags” and you want to create a new tag, hit the enter button. took me too long to figure it out. let me show you how that works!

see, there is a suggested tag! this is a tag that people use often. if you want to use that tag, just tap it! if not, keep reading

when you’re finished typing the new tag, just hit that enter button! we can also delete a tag by backspacing or tapping it and tapping the little x:

now you know how to tag your posts on the mobile app

use tags however you want. i personally use it like margin notes in a book

I’ll probably reblog this in the future with more additions, but another one I want to add is use emojis sparingly, and don’t put them in between words.

this 👏 is 👏 a 👏 nightmare 👏 for 👏 screen readers 👏

because they will read out “clapping hands emoji” each time. if you want to emphasize something, make it bold or italics!

this is much nicer 👏 👏

this is even better

again, if you’re on mobile, it’s a bit trickier. to make something bold or italic, just highlight the text

and that little Aa button changes what the text looks like. keep tapping for different sizes and fonts

here on tumblr, we often use different fonts/sizes/formatting options to make jokes. like tone indicators (which are also used a lot here! i highly encourage use of them)

for example

this is a PSA

this is me quoting a poem or something

this is me being dramatic

it can take a bit to get used to the culture here, but im sure you’ll get the hang of it soon. feel free to send me an ask (which you can do by visiting my blog and tapping that button that says something like “ask a question”, the text can be customized!)

couple extra notes:

• check marks don’t mean shit
• you really don’t have to worry about censorship here. don’t say unalive. for the love of fucking god. just say kill.

the important blue check marks aren’t verification, it’s a meme to dunk on elon musk. you can buy them for $7 and all it does is add two checkmarks to your name. you can get a fuck ton and make them all different colours too

anyway, have fun and welcome to the hellsite! (affectionate)

Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.

this is something i hated about reddit - who the fuck only blocks 1000 people? i have no idea how long my blocklist is on here but it’s huge.

who/what i have blocked:

• any and all bigotry
• excessive fandom discourse
• minors
• callouts
• people who are pretty nasty in the notes, eg dismissive, cruel, mocking, generally mean
• art reposting (reposting memes is 100% ok, reposting original works (no matter the art medium) isn’t. if they’re on tumblr, try find the OP; tagging them is an acceptable substitute. source your art posts!)
• brands and celebrities (99% of them, anyway)
• accounts that exclusively and prolifically self-post (merely cuz i like variety on my feed and i get sick to death of one user’s opinion lol)
• roleplayers
• giving off Bad Vibes™
• i was in a bad mood and they were a little too critical of something i care about
• cannot care less about the things they reblog and don’t want to see them in my feed anymore

block early, block often. worst comes to worse, you unblock them; if you don’t, they may expose you to something you don’t want to deal with. don’t let someone else ruin your tumblr experience! be open-minded but not TOO open.

basically: don’t be offended if someone blocks you. unless you’re a bigot or like generally a shitty person, there’s no way to know why they did so. no one owes you attention; you owe it to no one. there’s no point being here if you don’t enjoy it.

scribefindegil:

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

(via theinfernaldesiremachine)

phaeton-flier:

dishwasherfish:

I think we should bring back that thing everyone did in 2014 where you badly photoshop two characters from entirely different media together to look like they’re in love. This is my proposal for doc ock x glados please consider

It’s a horse girl movie but they both think the other is the horse

(via theinfernaldesiremachine)

dancinbutterfly:

why-ask-why:

Today I learned about a couple that decided to rebuild their deserted piece of land of 600 hectares in Aimorés, Brazil. They planted more than 2 million tree saplings. As a result, the site has 293 plant species, 172 bird species and 33 animal species, some of which were on the verge of extinction. It only took 18 years!

In the early 1990s, Brazilian photo-journalist Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado was stationed in Rwanda to cover the horrific accounts of Rwanda genocide. The on-ground experience left him traumatised. In 1994, he was returning to his home in Minas Gerais, Brazil, with a heavy heart, hoping to find solace in the lap of a lush green forest, where he had grown up.

But, instead, he found dusty, barren land for miles and miles, in place of the forest. In only a few years, his beautiful hometown underwent rampant deforestation, leaving it fallow and devoid of all the wildlife. For him, everything was destroyed. “The land was as sick as I was. Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees,’ he shared in an interview with The Guardian. Salgado was shattered.

Saldago’s Wife Wanted to Recreate The Forest

It was at this time that Salgado’s wife Lélia made a near-impossible proposal. She expressed her wish to replant the entire forest. Salgado supported her idea, and together the couple set out on a heroic mission.

Brazil Photographer Forest

Salgado bought an abandoned cattle ranch from his parents and started building a network of enthusiastic volunteers and partners who would fund and sustain their mammoth project. In 1998, the couple founded Instituto Terra – the organisation which tirelessly worked to bring a forest back to life.

PNHR Bulcão Farm | by Weverson Rocio – 2012

Salgado sowed the first seed in December 1999. The couple hired around 24 workers in the beginning and was later joined by numerous volunteers over the years. They worked day and night – from uprooting the invasive weeds to planting new seedlings. Soon, their hard work bore fruit as tropical trees native to the region started flourishing in the area. They received a donation of over one lakh saplings which gave rise to a dense forest. The handcrafted forest comprises mostly of local arboreal and shrub varieties. Latest satellite imagery revealed how a soothing green forest cover has enveloped the area which once was a devastating arid eyesore.Since 1998, they have planted more than 2 million saplings of 293 species of trees and rejuvenated 1,502 acres of tropical forest. The biodiversity-rich zone has recently been declared as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve (PNHR).

The Impact of Salgado’s Forest

The afforestation project, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest environmental initiatives in the world, has also helped to control soil erosion and revived the natural springs in the area. Eight water springs which once dried up, flow at around 20 litres per minute at present, relieving the drought-prone region of its woes. Salgado’s forest also happens to solve the much-debated notion about climate change, proving that the trend can be reversed if tried. His forest has resulted in causing more rainfall to the area and cooler weather, bringing a drastic and desirable change in the climate.

Instituto Terra’s Fauna | by Leonardo Merçon – 2012

The most important positive aspect of the forest till now has to be the return of the lost fauna. More than 172 species of birds, 33 species of mammals, 15 species of amphibians and reptiles have been spotted in the forest interiors, something which was beyond imagination two decades ago. Many of the plant and animal species in his forest actually feature on the endangered list.

Efforts For Good

Climate change is a harsh reality. Mankind is bearing the brunt of the relentless destruction they inflicted on the planet. Yet, people like Salgado and Lélia fill us with hope, proving that patience and persistence can be our keys to heal the wounds of nature. If two people can create a 1502-acre forest in just 20 years, then imagine how much can be done if everyone comes together to protect the environment. It must be reminded that for every tree we plant, we are adding 118 kgs of oxygen to the air every year, and reducing the carbon footprint by 22 kgs.

Efforts For Good urges all the readers to actively engage in planting trees and gradually turn this into a fixed habit.

Sources: http://www.scienceinsanity.com/2019/03/brazilian-couple-created-1502-acre.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/bg0ebn/a_couple_decided_to_rebuild_their_deserted_piece/

It can be fixed

(via ilsa-fireswan)

stele3:

saintcircus:

gayshitanddadjokes:

despite staff’s recent changes, we’re… winning??????

yo thats steven bradbury, winner of the short track 1000 metres at the 2002 winter olympics! yooo!! he’s the first man from THE ENTIRE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE to win a gold medal in the winter olympics!!!

hold on, lemme tell you about steven bradbury because the man’s olympic career is WILD. not to be an annoying australian but the whole “purely out of the luck of everyone else crashing, i unexpectedly won!” thing is like 50% myth. lemme explain

so the man actually won gold in the world championships as part of the australian relay team in 1991, but when the team went to the winter olympics the next year, they dropped from third to fourth in the semi-finals and failed to make the finals. get this: the reason is, his teammate lost his footing and crashed. (bradbury was a reserve at the time)

so in the 1994 winter olympics, the australian relay team (with bradbury as an active racer) decided to take a safe and conservative approach. they prioritised staying safe on their feet and hoping other teams would crash. sure enough, the canadian team had a crash, and while they got back up again it lost them significant time and allowed australia to eke out a bronze–this bronze was also the first medal australia EVER won at the winter. in fact, australia could have gone for the silver, but richard nizielski (the same teammate who crashed at 1992) decided to cede the silver to the american he was racing against in order to avoid risking another crash. safe, steady, conservative.

bradbury didn’t just compete in the relay team at the ‘94 winter, though. he was also in the 500m and 1000m short track, and he was INCREDIBLE, but also had insanely bad luck. for the 500m, he came second in his heat and then WON his qtrfinal. he ultimately came fourth in the semi, losing his shot at the finals, after he was suffered a crash from being knocked down by another competitor, and ended up limping over the finish line. for the 1000m, he was ILLEGALLY SHOVED OVER by another competitor, dropped his position, and was elimated.

but his worst luck came at the montreal world cup of the same year when, during a collision, another competitors blade sliced through his thigh. he was in the middle of competing, his heart rate was high because of the adrenaline, blood was pumping like crazy through his body–right out his wound as a result. he lost four litres of blood. all four quadriceps had been sliced through by the blade. he almost died. he later recounted that he was fighting to stay conscious because he thought if he lost consciousness  he would definitely die (he probably would have). he ended up with ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN STITCHES in his leg, which he could not move afterward for three months. he ended up needing 18 months to get his leg back to full strength.

not only did the man almost DIE short tracking, he almost got a death sentence on his career at the time. his leg was almost disabled, and even though it healed, he was out of training for over a year because of the injury.

but he didnt die, and his career didnt end. bradbury kept training, and remained on the australian team. the man almost died and he still went, yeah nah, i’ve got a few good years left in me.

so bradbury comes back in the ‘98 winter olympics, both on the relay team and in the 500m and 1000m. the relay team unfortunately fails to qualify. devo. for the solos, bradbury was actually considered a real contender, he was still top of his game, but in the end he didn’t qualify for the quarterfinals. the reason for this was that his time had dropped due to collissions with other competitors. so he went home with nothing but a relay bronze. but bradbury was determined to see a short track win.

too bad fate fucking hates him apparently.

now, if you think almost dying because a skate blade sliced through your thigh and you almost bled out was bad, bradbury’s career was really threatened in 2000. during an exercise one of the other skaters fell in front of him. bradbury tried to jump, instead not only did he clip the other skater, but it caused him to lose his balance and he stacked it straight into the barrier, fracturing his vertebrae.

not only did the man spend months in a halo brace, not only did the man need to get pins skull and plates and screws bolted to his back and chest, but he was told explicitly by doctors he would never, ever be able to get back onto the ice again. that was it. he survives almost dying in the 94 world cup only to have his world crash and burn in a training exercise six years later.

anyway, fuck that, bradbury got back onto the ice. clearly. because goddamnit, he wanted that winter gold on a solo win.

look, not only did the man have a near death experience and metal bolted to his bones, but he was also aging up past the prime of an olympic athlete. he was, what some may say, not in his prime. it was a longshot. he admitted this. but he also wanted that fucking medal, and i guess everyone really liked him or felt incredibly bad for all the bad luck he’d had, so come the 2002 winter olympics, he’s on the team.

bradbury won his 1000m heat.

too bad in the qtrfinals he was racing against the gold medal pick of the host nation (ohno), and also the defending world champion (gagnon). only top two finishers could proceed to the semis.

bradbury came third. that was it. he was out. his olympic career was ov-

BUT WAIT, WHAT’S THAT! ON THE HORIZON! IS IT… A DISQUALIFICATION??? YES FOLKS, GAGNON WAS DISQUALIFIED FOR OBSTRUCTING ANOTHER RACER!! BRADBURY WAS IN!

he was in, but he still had the semis and the finals to get through. bradbury had, it was fair to say, an indomitable will, but his body was not in the same shape as his competitors. it had been through some shit. he knew he was slower than his rivals. so he took the same strategy as the australian relay team did all the way back in ‘94: conservative, steady, safe.

so here’s the thing. bradbury had a whole career, and body, full of proof that falls happen in short track. may as well call it short stack. it was a question of when, not if. people fall down, people collide, people trip, and medal chances are missed due to lost time. isn’t that what happened to him over and over again? so this is where i say that the whole “oh golly gosh who’da thunk everyone would fall down and i would just win!” thing is 50% a myth.

because that was his whole strategy.

you can’t be 100% certain the favourites are gonna fall, so of course there’s an element of chance, which is why i say only 50%, but bradbury’s plan for the semis and the finals was always to cruise along behind the other competitors, concentrate on skating safe and staying on his feet, avoiding collissions and trips, and just hoping (expecting) the other competitors to eat ice. he just wasn’t faster than his competitors, he was older, he had injuries, and he had to do (if things went well) four races in one night. it was a good strategy.

during the semis, bradbury’s “cruise behind the other races” strategy put him firmly in last place for most of the race. but then the other competitors all crashed, including a defending champion. bradbury cruised right into first place and went on to the finals. which is not the events of the picture above.

yep, that’s right. come the finals, bradbury repeats the exact same strategy. crusing behind the four other competitors, he kept a firm hold of last place and just concentrated on safety and steadiness. and then it happened. it wasn’t just a crash. it was the crash. a four-skater pile up. li (china) took the fall on the last turn of the race, just short of the finish, and triggered a chain crash that took all three other favourites down. bradbury was trailing 15m behind, putting him well clear of the collission.

bradbury hoped to get a bronze. he skated away with the first gold ever taken by an australian, by any man in the southern hemisphere, at the winter olympics.

he had over a decade of crashes and bashes. he almost died, twice. he almost had his career permanently destroyed, twice. he almost grabbed medals countless times, only to lose them to trips and shoves. he was the second oldest competitor, and the oldest of the finals. he was slower than everyone else. he was past his best. but let’s allow bradbury to say it best himself:

“Obviously I wasn’t the fastest skater. I don’t think I’ll take the medal as the minute-and-a-half of the race I actually won. I’ll take it as the last decade of the hard slog I put in.”

and what a goddamn slog. i want to say, firmly and proudly as an australian, the man didn’t win the gold at the 2002 winter olympics because he got lucky when seven competitors all tripped and fell. he won the gold at the 2002 winter olympics because he survived a ten year olympic career despite all the odds, never gave up despite the long shot, and used what he knew.

if there is a lesson in this as it relates to the original picture, it’s that while other social media platforms like twitter and reddit are jostling and shoving each other in competition to take first, tumblr has been slowly and steadily trailing behind, just focusing on keeping itself afloat, because it knows the simple truth that taking a fall is a matter of when, not if. and now everyone else is caught in a pile up and all it needs to do is keep cruising.

also, raise a glass to steven bradbury. man earned his medal.

In March 2022, Steven Bradbury rescued four teenage girls from drowning in a riptide.

diversehighfantasy:

sunsis:

ALT

Fandoms will ship two het men who simply breathe next to each other but god forbid a Black woman has a relationship with or even just chemistry with the popular male lead. And this happens in EVERY fandom (see tags for examples) with a prominent Black female character. They were even vehemently against Miles Morales and the Black spider girl (Margo).

It’s just very telling that certain people are suddenly “platonic love/besties/sibling energy only otherwise the show is ruined!!” when the fem character is Black.

It’s ok to not ship characters, but the overwhelming backlash to these specific ones has been so ridiculous and very obviously racially motivated. There are articles now discussing whether harmless shipping of two fictional adult characters is acceptable, and on the cover of them is typically an interracial pairing involving a Black woman…

TIME magazine wrote a story on whether fans should ship Syd and Carmy and it didn’t mention race, or the history of racism when fans ship a Black character with a “fan favorite.” Not just the fem character either — with the Star Wars sequel trilogy the extreme reaction to the very idea of Finn and Rey as a romantic couple literally, not being histrionic, destroyed the trilogy.

How someone can write about the state of The Bear S2 fandom and not mention Michonne and Rick from The Walking Dead is beyond me. Fans spent years calling their shippers delusional (even though the buildup was *right there* all along) and they were right, it went canon. How could they not mention ANY of the history of fandom hatred of ships with Black people, especially if a fan fave white character is involved?

They’re dancing around it as if all of this is fresh commentary that hasn’t been said a million times before as an excuse to delegitimize the very idea that these ships are valid. The Reddit sub is probably a step away from forbidding it because every Syd/Carmy comment leads to long irate rant posts about how they have no chemistry, are like brother and sister, and other greatest hits of fandom racism.

(via nerdsagainstfandomracism)

eye-lantern:

alexaloraetheris:

Did you bury a god of harvest in that pot before you planted the strawberries? Asking for a friend.

Sadly that’s AI generated shit. No strain of strawberry has this growing pattern (leaves growing at the base of flowers), the branches would snap under the weight of half of those, there is no way those deep, hidden from the sun strawberries got so red (or that all of those got ripe at the exact same time), and the AI just did not bother to add a pot anywhere (no way such a big thing grows without an equivalent amount of roots and a huuuge amount of soil).

statelibraryqueensland:

Meet Iona Asai, a pearl diver from Saibai Island in the Torres Strait. In 1937 Iona was diving for pearls off the boat Sau when he was attacked by a shark. According to Iona’s own account, the shark wrapped its jaws around his head and neck and bit down, but Iona dug his fingers into its eyes until it let him go. He managed to swim back to the boat, where he was dragged from the water by the captain and passed out.  

With Iona unconscious and heavily bleeding, and the nearest doctor over 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, the Sau made its way to the nearest populated island, where a school teacher provided them with medication. Iona’s injuries required over 150 stitches, which he received while conscious and without anesthetic.

If that wasn’t enough, they were later able to identify the species of shark, despite Iona never getting a chance to look at it properly. How? 

They found a chunk of one of its teeth still embedded in the back of his neck almost a week later.  

And do you want to know the really incredible thing? This wasn’t even the first time Iona Asai was attacked by a shark and lived to tell the tale, having survived an attack off the coast of Cairns previously. 

Iona made a full recovery from his ordeal.  

These images, printed on photographic postcards at the time, were donated to State Library of Queensland. You can view the full record here. 

dragon-saint:

i-just-like-commenting:

cricketcat9:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

mediocrity-uwu:

kuttithevangu:

Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato

For all evolutionary history, life has struggled against calorie deficit… So much energy goes into finding food that there is no time for anything else. Our ancestors selectively bred root vegetables to create the potato, so that we might be the first species whose daily existence doesn’t consist of trying to find the nutrients necessary for survival. One potato can rival the calorie count of many hours of foraging… Eat a potato, and you free up so much time to create and build and connect with your fellow man. Without potato where would you be?? Do not stand on the shoulders of giants and think thyself tall!!

I nearly teared up reading “Andean agricultural technicians” bc fuck yes! these were members of Pre-Inca cultures who lived 7 to 10 thousand years ago, and they were scientists! food scientists and researchers and farmers whose names and language we can never know, who lived an inconceivably long time ago (pre-dating ancient civilizations in Egypt, China, India, Greece, and even some parts of Mesopotamia) and we are separated by millennia of time and history, but still for thousands of years the fruits vegetables of their labor and research have continued to nourish countless human lives, how is that not the most earthly form of a true miracle??? anyway yes potatoes are beautiful, salute their creators.

There are approximately 4000 varieties of potato in Peru. I’ve seen an incredible variety of corn and tomatoes, and root vegetables I’ve never seen before, on the local farmer markets. Yet some expats insist on buying only imported, expensive American brands of canned veggies… 🤷🏼‍♀️ Peruvian potatoes 👇🏼

It is long since time for us to start viewing plant domestication as the bioscience that it is. Because while the Andeans were creating potatoes, the ancient Mesoamericans were turning teosinte into corn:

And then there’s bananas, from Papua New Guinea:

These were not small, random changes, this was real concerted effort over years to turn inedible things into highly edible ones. And I’m convinced the main reason we’re reluctant to call them scientific achievements is, well, a racist one.

The thing that gets me about these sorts of engineered/selected crops is the amount of time and effot that must have gone into them. Like even with the best modern methodologies, pre-direct gene editing it could take anywhere from dozens to hundreds of generations of selection to advance and lock in a specific trait, and these folks were working with way less advantages than that!!

Like they mostly couldn’t use selective pollinization, enclosed breeding environments, rapid growth stimulation, almost all the things we use today to shape our crops were unavailable or unsuitable for them. They had to rely on careful planting locations, unreliable splicing of plants, and seed/tuber selection, and they at most only had one or two growth cycles a year for most of these!! These plants aren’t what we think of as scientific schievements today, the work of a small group of people across years or a few decades, these plants are the end product of centuries of constant, consistent agricultural engineering by who knows how many generations of farmers.

It just never fails to humble and inspire me how much time and effort is reflected in a single potato.

todaysdocument:

krisrisk:

ltwilliammowett:

habemuscarnificem:

todaysdocument:

Is reading cursive writing your superpower?

Join a special transcription challenge featuring Revolutionary War Pension Files!

Revolutionary War Pension Files Transcription Mission

The stories of over 80,000 men and women who lived through the American Revolution are waiting to be told. Will you help us tell them? Help

National Archives

Image description: One half of image is a form from a Revolutionary War pension file, filled out in cursive writing. The other side says “can you read this? Help us transcribe pension files of the first veterans of the US military.” There’s the same link as in this post, and the National Archives logo.

@ltwilliammowett @focsle you may be interested

I am, thank you very much for sending <3

I am honestly curious: is this a problem? Can so little people read cursive?

When the Common Core educational standards were introduced in 2010, cursive handwriting wasn’t included. Some states added it to their standards later, but there are a fair amount of people who were never taught cursive.

The documents in this project can also be tougher to read than some other cursive documents, due to quirks like use of the “long s” (those s’s that look like f’s), the quality of the image (these documents were microfilmed and the scans come from the microfilm), and plain old sloppy handwriting.

Transcription is also helpful for:

• Making our catalog search work better
• Making it easier to read the documents
• People who have low or no vision, and use a screenreader or other assistive technology
• People who want to cut and paste document text into translation software, research notes, or something else

So if you can read 19th Century handwriting, you can help out a lot of people by taking on some transcription!

If Revolutionary War records aren’t your jam, we have other tagging and transcription missions on our Citizen Archivist page, or you can tag and transcribe any record in our catalog, even the ones that are typed.

(Source: archives.gov, via accessibleaesthetics)

bambi-lesbian-posts:

digi-moe:

ALT

Happy Eid ul-Adha(or Bakrid, or Eid Mubarak) to any people of the Muslim faith this year! This is for 6/29/2023

(via becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys)