Victoria Chang, Obit

Plot twist for all the "I'd kill myself if I was as disabled as you" crowd:

If you were in my position, you wouldn't BE spending all day in bed. You'd be abusing your body by forcing yourself to work a job and just "tough it out" when you make yourself sicker. If you had to put up with the level of medical abuse that I do, you'd just swear off the medical field entirely and claim "big pharma" is good for nothing and only wants your money and to keep people sick.

No one actually tells you to stay in bed and rest when you're disabled. Overcoming internalized ableism comes in many phases, one of which is making the radical decision to stay in bed and rest if you're disabled.

You wouldn't kill yourself if you were me, because with your attitude, you could never BE me, and that's really fucking pathetic.

Nikita Gill, from Your Heart is the Sea: Poems; "The Difference Between Alone and Lonely,"

"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????

gentle reminder that it's not too late to get into the habit of wearing masks again 😷

Reblog if you understand that disability is not a monolith and two people with the same disability do not have identical experiences ✨

the Guardian

‘Even a freeway is redeemable’: world’s largest wildlife crossing takes shape in Los Angeles

A wildlife crossing across the 101 freeway will connect two parts of the Santa Monica mountains for animals

From the article:

Above the whirring of 300,000 cars each day on Los Angeles’s 101 freeway, an ambitious project is taking shape. The Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing is the largest wildlife bridge in the world at 210ft long and 174ft wide, and this week it’s had help taking shape: soil. “This is the soul of the project,” says Beth Pratt, the regional executive director, California, at the National Wildlife Federation, who has worked on making the crossing become a reality over the last 13 years. She says she’s seen many milestones, like the 26m pounds of concrete poured to create the structure, but this one is special. “To be able to put my hand in that soil and toss it on and know that we’ll be putting milkweed plants that will flourish for monarch butterflies, or picturing the first mountain lion paw print on that soil,” she says, fills her with hope. “It is wonderful to watch this habitat take shape.” The plot is a native wildlife habitat that connects two parts of the Santa Monica mountain range, with the hopes of saving creatures – from the famous local mountain lions, down to frogs and insects – from being crushed by cars on one of the nation’s busiest roadways. With nearly an acre of local plants on either side and thick vegetated sound walls 12ft high to dampen light and noise for nocturnal animals as they slip across, it’s an unprecedented feat of engineering. Imagination, too. The project began in 2022 through a public-private partnership that brought together many organizations to cover the $92m in costs, according to Caltrans, the state transportation department. Research shows that wildlife crossings save money because it limits animal interactions with vehicles.

Came across this in a report at work

Beatrix Potter

Writer, illustrator, conservationist, natural scientist

For the inaugural Arcade Feature, I'm excited to tell you about Beatrix Potter. Most people (including me) know her best for her picture books-

-which have sold over 250 million copies since they were published in the early 1900s.

Fun fact: In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

But what really caught my attention is the work she was doing before Peter Rabbit came along.

Beatrix Potter had a scientific eye for detail, and was able to faithfully depict the world around her. In particular, she was interested in mycology.

In 1897, she put forward a paper to the Linnean Society in London... but as a woman was not allowed to be a member of the society nor attend the meeting when her paper was read. When the society's members did not pay much attention to her work, and fearing her samples to be contaminated, Potter withdrew her paper, which became lost. Only after Potter left hundreds of mycological artworks to a museum in the Lake District, UK, on her death in 1943, were her scientific talents recognized... Potter's precise and beautiful paintings and drawings of fungi are now helping modern mycologists in their efforts to identify species.*

Potter eventually moved away from books in favor of land management and farming. She was a prize-winning sheep breeder and a prosperous farmer, and bought several farms surrounding her own to preserve the unique hill country landscape. Much of that land now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

Keep an eye out for more Beatrix Potter throughout the month of February.

All Arcade Feature Posts

* Fry, C., & Wayland, E. (2024). Introduction. In The Botanists’ Library, The Most Important Botanical Books in History (1st ed., pp. 9–10). introduction, Ivy Press.