loving a character so much will unlock such vulnerable and cringe parts of you that you try to suppress so bad but you can't like it's so humbling

oakoak, 'Free Rothko', 2024 Source

Only four months after dams blocking migration were removed, the first Chinook salmon traveled 230 miles to return to the Klamath River Basin. This was the first fish to come home to their ancestral migration routes since 1912.

Over 100 years shut out and it only took them four months to return home once they had the chance.

From the article:

“The return of our relatives the c’iyaal’s is overwhelming for our tribe. This is what our members worked for and believed in for so many decades,” said Roberta Frost, Klamath Tribes Secretary. “I want to honor that work and thank them for their persistence in the face of what felt like an unmovable obstacle. The salmon are just like our tribal people, and they know where home is and returned as soon as they were able[.]"

eat an entire can of sweetened condensed milk. you deserve it.

(sigh) okay... (CRUUEEENNNCH....) (SCREEEEEENCH...) owie.. (CRUUEEENCH)

this is one of the most rewarding things about posting self care tips on this site. witnessing people's lives getting better in real time. this is why I post

so what if I sucked his dick. his knuckles were split and bloody from defending my safety and my honour what else was I supposed to do

if you are stinky and wretched please remember to wash your you. then you may still be wretched but at least you won't be stinky.

Steve From “Blue’s Clues” Just Checked In On “The Kids He Raised” And Gave Them A Safe Space To Offload After Donald Trump’s Election Victory.

Interestingly, Steve doesn’t even speak in the 59-second video, but appears to give viewers a comforting presence as he enters the outdoors shot and “offers them” a hot drink.

And many of the comments thanked Steve for offering them this safe space, with one person writing: “As a trans man, I felt this to my core. I took the breath with you then started bawling. Thank you.”

“The man who is a staple of my childhood didn’t say a single word and it brought me to tears. Steve, thank you. I don’t know where we go from here,” somebody else wrote.

Another popular comment reads: “He didn’t say A WORD and said everything at the same time. This man should be guarded at all costs.”

“Neither of my dads checked in on me today. But you did Steve. Thank you,” one more acknowledged.

“So much responsibility on Steve’s hands to make sure we are okay. We need to make sure he’s doing okay too. I mean I’m not doing great, but he’s still looking after the kids he raised,” somebody else added.

While another concluded: “I bet you didn’t think you’d still be raising us all these years later, Steve, but thank you for still being here.”

The Crocodile Mom

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy

Always reblog flash debate

on it boss

reminder that the presenter says "oh, shut up" not "can it"

Native French speaker here. "Ta gueule" is actually more like "shut the fuck up" in terms of level of disrespect

also worth noting is that the "are you happy" is the correct gender

@petitfarron @terresdebrume

It actually bums me out that astrology has persisted through the years as the standard BS divinatory practice that people really buy into, when it so easily could have been ornithomancy instead.

We could’ve had hipster girls trying to predict the minutiae of your life using an intricate chart that details how many herons or crows you’ve seen in the past year. Instead of asking what’s your sign on dating apps people would be like how many birds did you see on your way to work today. I cannot stop thinking about what could have been.

we could have a world where drunk girls in bars with decorative binoculars get you to sign petitions to rewild the local canals because the heron populations are catastrophically low and this is what's causing the housing crisis

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.

Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

In person

Also:

Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

But yeah, go do citizen science, please!!!

I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

Regardless of your gender or sexuality, reblog this and tag your most hetero male trait. Mine is either obsessing over my Altima or sitting around watching TV shows about air disasters.