Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

Mexican honey wasps- and yes they do make honey!- look like you gave a hornet a week to become a honey bee and this is the best it could do.

#Wasps #Hymenoptera #Photography #Insects

*arrives home, finds partner in bed with stranger*

Partner: “wait, I can explain everything.”

Me: “oh good, because I’m really struggling with the concept of quantum gravity. General relativity and quantum mechanics overlap but without an understanding of quantum gravity physics loses it’s logical consistency…”

I feel like Mastodon is a better fit for me than those Other Places.

It is chaotic. It is a raucous barrel of anarchists and furries and commies and queers and furry trans queer ancoms and then this layer of blissed-out academics wiggling their eyebrows and then journos vainly trying to find other journos and then someone who invented TCP/IP as a jape and then her friend who invented stereo and then Jeff Minter.

Why isn't the rest of the net like this?

#MastodonLove

These are male Afghani university students walking out of exams b/c the Taliban banned women.

This is the "woke" that so many in the US seem to fear: people who see injustice in the world and decide that standing against that injustice is worth some personal sacrifice.

RT @RefugeesAtHome
“If strangers started bombing London, we’d want someone to do the same thing and give us refuge.” Lovely article @standardnews about hosted #Ukrainians preparing to celebrate. Happy to have helped: https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/londoners-hosting-ukrainian-refugees-christmas-b1048240.html

So you know those old Glamour Shot places in malls in the 90s?

I want one of those but for armor and swords and cloaks and stuff. All the fantasy props. Bows! Belts with pouches and potions and tiny accessories!

I want a photoshoot with hair & makeup & prop artists who will make me look like a badass who just stepped out of an epic fantasy novel.

Where do I go to make that happen??

Money is the worst idol humanity has ever worshipped.

Reminder: the economy as we know it is an entirely MADE UP entity. GDP, as a concept, didn't really even exist until the 30s. Credit scores not until 1989.
We continue to live and die and steer our countries' wellbeing towards this dumpster fire of inequality, why?

Universal healthcare and childcare are climate policies that allow the economy to shift faster and more nimbly.

A lot of people need to shift sectors, learn new things, go back to school, etc for the scale and pace of change we need.

Healthcare that's not tied to a job and reliable affordable childcare are change accelerators (among many other things).

Rhianna Gunn Wright said this so clearly in her many #GreenNewDeal articles and talks.

I learnt a few years ago that in Iran, the winter solstice is celebrated with a festival called Shab-e Chelleh"Shab-e Chelleh ("night of forty") or Shab-e Yaldā ("Yalda night). It's marked by staying up late, reading poems and stories, eating red fruit and dancing.

I'm not Iranian and I'm useless at staying up late. I will share this track from a compilation of Iranian psychedelic funk, which happily is called Pomegranates. It's close enough.
https://youtu.be/RMRV4aLuz_M

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish he'll be buried in student loan debt and can't get a job with his fishing degree

I don't know why I am incredulous that the website to apply for #VoterID will not be ready in time to support the publicity campaign! #GTTO https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/21/fears-voter-id-card-delay-could-disfranchise-many-in-england?fbclid=IwAR268NLVUetKTIkhQK5IyATbEqtjB0zui4XX6gnjm1uXL26Kovk98Am-YSQ

This year, scientists at RBG Kew described a new species of flower, Victoria boliviana, or the giant Bolivian water lily. Its leaves can grow to a staggering length of 3.3 meters across (over 10 feet). Kew researchers observed it in the wild & confirmed its status with DNA. But a dried specimen turned up in Kew's collection, where it had been sitting over 170 years. More here: https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/top-10-species-2022

Photo: RBG KEW

Eine Postkarte für #Mosstodon.

Can we also take a moment to note that "woke", as used here, was originally a Black American term for being aware of systemic racism, and in just a few years, the US right turned it into a totally content-free sneer? And the entire English-speaking media basically just ran with it, to the extent that you now hear it used in _Finnish_?

Because that's white supremacy for you. Criticism, even awareness, of the racist power structure will not be tolerated.

I can get as excited as the next person at cutting edge clean technologies. But I also love the simple solutions, the folk wisdom, the public domain knowledge that we can apply to live well and equitably within planetary limits. Here are a few of my favorites - what are yours?

- the bicycle
- the cover crop
- the compost pile
- the hand-me-down chain
- the mending circle
- the live music evening
- the repair cafe
- the library
- the shade tree
- the rain garden
- the sidewalk

Thesis: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a Hellraiser film.

Willy Wonka is a cenobite. The factory itself is a strange dimension of supersaturated sensation, accessed by way of a rare gilded artifact. Most of those who enter: consumed by ironic amplifications of their own desires and obsessions. Charlie: a potential acolyte, his own obsession with the possibilities of experience carrying him through until he is offered induction into the higher offices of the realm.

We need to understand the stakes of social media not just for the Internet but Planet Earth.

Meta already tried to sell Internet Basics to developing countries. This was a naked attempt to lock underprivileged people into their walled gardens.

"But so what?" apologists might say, "They got free Internet."

Except Internet Basics wasn't so free -- it ended up hurting people instead of helping them. https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/25/22900924/facebooks-free-internet-less-developed-costing-users-wsj

Let's get #SciArt flowing into Mastodon!
What are some of your #SciArt (science-themed art) works you want to highlight? I will boost.

After trying many different media over the years (including drawing, embroidery etc) I found love in pottery. Now I make pottery pieces that highlight underappreciated organisms. Here are some examples of #worms, #jellyfish, #insects, #spiders etc. These are all boxes with lids!
#pottery #ceramics #HandBuiltPottery

This feels appropriate for the second thing I've ever posted to mastodon.