Now The Ash Dances With The Snow....

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

In some parts of the range, basket makers began to observe a decline in the numbers of black ash. They worried that overharvesting might be to blame, a decline caused by too much attention for the baskets in the marketplace and too little for their sources in the woods. My graduate student Tom Touchet and I decided to investigate. We began by analyzing the population structure of black ashes around us in New York State, to understand where in the trees’ life cycle the difficulty might lie. In every swamp we visited, we counted all the black ash we could find and wrapped a tape around them to get their size. Tom cored a few in every site to check their ages. In stand after stand, Tom found that there were old trees and seedlings, but hardly any trees in between. There was a big hole in the demographic census. He found plenty of seeds, plenty of young seedlings, but most of the next age class—the saplings, the future of the forest—were dead or missing.

There were only two places where he found an abundance of adolescent trees. One was in gaps in the forest canopy, where disease or a windstorm had brought down a few old trees, letting light through. Curiously enough, he found that where Dutch elm disease had killed off elms, black ash was replacing them in a balance between loss of one species and gain of another. To make the transition from seedling to tree, the young black ash needed an opening. If they remained in full shade they would die.

The other place where saplings were thriving was near communities of basket makers. Where the tradition of black ash basketry was alive and well, so were the trees. We hypothesized that the apparent decline in ash trees might be due not to overharvesting but to underharvesting. When communities echoed with Doonk, doonk, doonk, there were plenty of basket makers in the woods, creating gaps where the light would reach the seedlings and the young trees could shoot to the canopy and become adults.

In places where the basket makers disappeared, or were few, the forest didn’t get opened up enough for black ash to flourish. Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked.

"Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A reminder that humans are, in fact, an important part of the ecosystems we inhabit. We *can* be a benefit to the ecosystems that support us, and that our absence *can* be detrimental to the other organisms that we evolved with and lived alongside for thousands of years.

This comic makes me so stupid emotional. She might have never known.

via @solar punk 

Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever

If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.

This a a reminder to not fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy into something, does not mean you should indefinitely waste more time and energy on it, if you decide it’s not what you want anymore. This goes for anything, from books, to relationships, to jobs, to hobbies, etc.

If it’s not serving you anymore, move on.

I hate the concept of working and no I am not weird

I have always felt, that the concept of work is strange. You spent the best years of your life away from people you love, from your home and you have only very limited time to do things, that you like. You are stressed, worried, angry. (Yeah sure, there are people who genuinely love what they do and love to process and you know what good for them, I am just not one of them.) I have never been particularly tough. Stress gets me fast. I cry. People stress the fuck out of me. But in every part-time job, that I had I had to work with people and it was just killing me inside. I am now a self-employed language teacher and even though I studied for that and all that I still hate it. No shame. I just hate spending hours every day doing the same fucking thing. Yeah, some of the students are really lovely and I genuinely like our lessons, but some are just energy sucking vampires. But bills need to be paid right.  Last week I had a bit of a mental breakdown over a work email. I just felt if this is going to be like this for the rest of my working life I seriously want to kill myself. I can’t tough it out. I can’t muddle through. I want something different. 

I don’t buy much. I buy food, occasional treat, dinner. Tickets. Bills are paid. If I would be able to grow more food by myself, that’s less money I have to spend on food and more money I would have left for the rest. I could work now and then. Not every day. I could actually enjoy my life. But when you tell this to people they freak the fuck out. Call you crazy. You really want to make as little money as possible? You are so smart you can make a lot of money! Well, I don’t want to. I don’t need to travel, I don’t want 2 weeks of paid leave every year. I don’t need new iPhones, SHein bullshit and ugly overpriced shoes. I just want to be free and do what I love. No I don’t want to work. No I am not weird.