Not As Important As Native Bees, But Still Important.

Not as important as native bees, but still important.

I'm going to indulge in a little PSA

It's bee swarming season! So this is my friendly reminder to, if you find yourself with a swarm, please do not call an exterminator. Bees are not pests. There's bound to be some sort of beekeeping association in your area, and there will almost certainly be a beekeeper with room for more bees who will come and scoop up your swarm for free and give them a little bee house. Where I live the fire station keeps a list of beekeepers for this exact situation so people call them.

Also a general background on swarming: swarming is a normal part of bee reproduction. In spring the population of a healthy colony will expand rapidly, and they soon run out of space in their nest. So they will raise new queens and the colony will split, with half of them accompanying the old queen to a new location some distance away. Scouts will spend a day or two looking for a good place to nest while the swarm balls up somewhere waiting for a decision. Swarming bees are surprisingly unaggressive and can basically be scooped into a box.

(Beekeepers do generally try to have some control over this reproductive process. Loose swarms don't have great survival rates, and also that's half your colony gone with the wind. If they want the colony to split, they tend to pre-empt them and just move the half of the colony with the old queen into a new hive while they're still raising the new ones. They can also sell half a colony to another beekeeper. If they'd rather they did not split, they'll keep giving them more space in the hive to expand into. A beekeeper can lose control of the situation though- imagine you had weeks of late rain/cold, preventing you from opening the hive to do any of that, and then the weather breaks and your bees, who have been going stir-crazy that whole time, are gone before you got your boots on. It can happen. There are some beekeepers who do clip the queen's wings so she can't swarm, which sounds very tricky to do tbh and not common practice for amateurs.)

Anyway: if you see a swarm, don't call an exterminator, find a beekeeper!

What happened at UCLA 4/30

@FilmthepoliceLA recorded the entire attack on Pro-Palestine Protesers by Zionist attackers

Link to video

The police allowed Zionists to attack the Pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA and even watched them do it. The attacks were solely initiated by the Zionist side. They hurled fireworks at the Pro-Palestine side, yelling anti-Black racial slurs, and using pepper spray.

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hatesquash

1 year ago

REMINDER THAT APRIL 15TH IS A GLOBAL STRIKE DAY FOR GAZA

Don't stimulate the economy and participate on local action, the site below contains more info about the strike.

Strike4Gaza

Home - Strike4Gaza

Organized by: Call to Action No Business as Usual No spending, no work, no school, no banking. Pressure on Economy Don’t participation in an

The strike is mostly in the US, but you can help regardless of country, you can also share info, boost posts in social media and put posters in your city about Gaza.

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hatesquash

1 year ago

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hatesquash

1 year ago

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hatesquash

11 months ago

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hatesquash

1 year ago

To reiterate: Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon and other such books, blocked me on Twitter for calling him out about his AI-generated cover.

Tor has admitted he approved this cover and they have been consulting him every step of the way. He is complicit.

It’s honestly so fucking frustrating that this is going to go forward. That the cover to Fractal Noise is gonna be published with AI art that has ripped off other artists. And neither the author nor the publisher give one flying fuck about it.

I don’t think a lot of people really understand what this means. Book cover art is already nearly universally shitty. You go look at fantasy art covers, and they’re all photomanipulations, generally a single girl on the cover doing magic or looking into the distance. There’s no variety. But at least people get paid for them.

With AI art, artists don’t get paid. You know who does? The people who made the dataset. The people who sold the “cover.” Even though it took less than 20 minutes to make.

If this isn’t infuriating you, I don’t know what the hell else to say. Machine learning is coming for everyone’s jobs, and corporate wallets don’t care if it’s safe or not. Certain areas are already experimenting with AI Amazon deliveries, and it’s been hinted that long-haul trucking is next.

This is unacceptable. PLEASE. I’m not going to guilt you into sharing this, but it is CRITICAL that we take a stand now and STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING. If you follow me, I am asking you as a friend to share this, and to find it in your heart to put pressure on people who publish AI art without paying artists.

Tor could change the cover. They’re not, because they’re using Fractal Noise as a test run to see if they can get away with it. Don’t let them. I don’t care how much you like Paolini’s work (although I think Eragon was a boring slog, so I had no qualms about calling him out), you HAVE to do your best to make this stop.

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hatesquash

1 year ago

This is why the fundraisers you see are between $10,000 - 150,000. Palestinians have no choice but to raise that money which is why you all need to share those posts at the very least. Reblog those posts. Post them to your other social media accounts if you have them. Donate! Please, these people are in need

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