just saw a billboard where all you could see was "yippee here's"
I think one of the absolute most frustrating things for me personally about the current climate crisis / late stage capitalism hell is that ontop of people just outright denying it and acting like the rising temperatures are normal- there’s been like. A VERY noticeable decline in the amount of insects yearly. As someone who goes out of my way to see bugs, every single year for the past decade there has been a sharp decline in bugs. What used to be fun filled summer months running around, catching grasshoppers and petting caterpillars… there’s nothing. I’ve seen one grasshopper this year. I’ve not seen a single caterpillar! It’s currently the ant nuptial flight season in my area and I’ve seen 0 winged ants. They used to all but infest my home during flight season
I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.
And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!
Anyways. Fellow entomology nerds, have any of you also noticed a drastic decrease in bugs you’re finding yearly or is my area just in a bug deficit.
I believe you. I also believe that this is a terrible fate that can be changed.
The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.
No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.
It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.
The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere... This is so ingrained in us that "grass" might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children's books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.
This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.
For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)
And I've started to see bugs I've never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.
I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.
Outside isn't supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.
And remember that "Weeds" are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.
Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.
So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that's because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.
It's actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!
We make Weeds...and Weeds make Us.
Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants' heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.
Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.
When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.
We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.
(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA's most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it's literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)
(since industrial agriculture is probs the biggest cause of insect decline...I think there is very real reason to feel encouraged.)
“I’ve been trying to go home my whole life - ” - Chelsea Dingman, from ‘Psychogeography’, published in The Los Angeles Review
“Somewhere in the darkness of the night, I was suddenly swimming to wakefulness, not knowing what was waking me but feeling that Mrs. Klevity was awake too.
‘Anna.’ Her voice was small and light and silver. ‘Anna—’
‘Hummm?’ I murmured, my voice still drowsy.
‘Anna, have you ever been away from home?’ I turned toward her, trying in the dark to make sure it was Mrs. Klevity. She sounded so different.
‘Yes,’ I said. 'Once I visited Aunt Katie at Rocky Butte for a week.’
'Anna.’ I don’t know whether she was even hearing my answers; her voice was almost a chant, 'Anna, have you ever been in prison?’
'No! Of course not!’ I recoiled indignantly. 'You have to be awful bad to be in prison.’
'Oh, no. Oh, no!’ she sighed. 'Not jail, Anna. Prison, prison. The weight of the flesh—bound about—’
'Oh,’ I said, smoothing my hands across my eyes. She was talking to a something deep in me that never got talked to, that hardly even had words. 'Like when the wind blows the clouds across the moon and the grass whispers along the road and all the trees pull like balloons at their trunks and one star comes out and says 'Come’ and the ground says 'Stay’ and part of you tries to go and it hurts—’ I could feel the slender roundness of my ribs under my pressing hands. 'And it hurts—’
'Oh, Anna, Anna!’ The soft, light voice broke. 'You feel that way and you belong Here. You won’t ever—’
The voice stopped and Mrs. Klevity rolled over. Her next words came thickly, as though a gray film were over them as over her eyes. 'Are you awake, Anna? Go to sleep, child. Morning isn’t yet.’ ”
–Zenna Henderson, “Something Bright,” 1958
message to cis allies: buying your trans friend lunch will do much more good for the trans community than debating transphobes who will not change their minds publicaly on social media and making all your trans followers see how much people hate them over and over again
if you base your trans allyship more on fighting with idiots than supporting and loving the trans community you may want to rethink things a little. bc i tend to get sick of when my cis friends want to talk more about how many people hate me than anything else about my transness.
