It’s true. I started calling “the cloud” offsite storage, and the comprehension that dawns in my customers’ eyes is super gratifying. They understand external hard drives, but many couldn’t wrap their heads around this mystical floating in the air storage–because that’s not how it works at all. You’re just using space on someone else’s hard drive.
[Image is a t-shirt which reads:
There is no cloud It’s just someone else’s computer]
I explain this to eeeevery patron who comes in to ask for tech help etc. I find ways to explain it, because it’s important.
“Oh ‘the cloud’ is just what they decided to call it. What it actually means is that you use the internet to connect to some dedicated computer somewhere where your file is stored, and then you can access that file, which is why it only works with an internet connection. You’re just renting space on a computer the company owns.”
Hey so if your cat has eaten a hole in their food and there’s still stuff around the edges of the dish, pick it up and give it a little shake so the food is back in the middle. Cats have a hard time getting to the bits of kibble that are in the corners of a dish.
I’m looking forward to the Ahsoka series as much as the next person, but as consumers it’s important we show support for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Don’t boycott the show or streaming services. Donate to support members of the strike. Listen to the union.
Thanks for posting this! It’s essential as always to listen to the unions first. And it’s absolutely true there’s no call for a boycott (link here), and in fact watching shows helps prove audience demand for new TV. Since the studio’s content pipeline will dry up due to the work stoppages by the fall, that puts pressure on the studios to come back to the negotiating table to get their shows back into production.
Of course, if the WGA and SAG-AFTRA do call for a boycott down the line, we do want to be prepared to do that. But for now, feel free to watch Ahsoka!
so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone’s blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it’s just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else’s apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch
reblog if i can wander into your apartment (blog) and make myself lunch (like and reblog as if it’s my dash)
thinking about what is and what isn’t allowed in frame with reference ecosystems in prairie restoration
Explanation from OP in the replies
restoration ecology tends to want to restore to a past state of an ecosystem, but magically that past state never involved people! Harvest, reciprocity, etc are all ignored because we pretend there’s such a thing as prairie without people. Turns out, that imagined prairie never existed, there were always people here and there should people involved in restored prairie too!
“but how does the giant monster consume enough calories to eat?’ fuck YOU it’s part of a lush ecosystem that isn’t depicted onscreen. Yeah let’s just pause the adventure to discuss trophic levels and ATP transfer between subterranean bacterial colonies. Fucking clown. Yeah let’s just halt the whole adventure to talk about how the iron-poor planet never developed a magnetosphere, thus the cellular life can harvest energy from cosmic background radiation. That’s appendix shit. Moron.
Okay but please understand I do in fact want a separate movie explaining all this shit. Would gladly just watch a four hour alien nature documentary.
May I suggest The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi?
Just caught up on @seananmcguire’s Wayward Children series by devouring all of them in three days, and I have these Big Feelings, like…
…like when you watch someone play an intricate piece on the piano and it flows and captivates, and you had piano lessons as a kid so you can see the work and skill and art under the music, and you can feel in your fingers just a little of what the pianist is doing, and you can taste a bit of their joy, and you wish more than anything that you could make that kind of beauty, but also it’s okay because you got to have that moment of knowing, and that is a gift in itself.
That’s what reading these is like for me.
Anyway you should read the Wayward Children books if you love portal stories about hope and inevitability and sorrow and friendship. Every Heart a Doorway is the first one, but if you want a stand-alone, start with Across the Green Grass Fields.
Reminder that every time you see “rip up your lawn” or “kill your lawn” you’re listening to hot garbage from people who don’t know anything about plants, and you will walk away from their advice having actually lost knowledge.
I mean, you’ll still be a happier person than someone who cares too much about fan fiction! But you would’ve destroyed biomass and stripped topsoil for no fucking reason, and released carbon, and killed off a whole root system for being unfashionable.
Repeat after Elodie what we do with lawns that we don’t want:
1. We compost them down, with cardboard and green mulch, and build a bed on top of them - especially if we are converting to vegetable gardening/food production/ flower production where we NEED soil quality and nutrients preserved. We NEED every scrap of carbon to go into our damn nutrients, and we won’t get there by ripping back to dead clay. Or,
2. If the turf is terraformed in a different environmental type i.e. an arid setting and you’re planning to xeriscape, it’s less important to keep nutrients but we still want to lock in what can be preserved and ensure that your actions aren’t REMOVING the soil you need or EXPOSING IT TO INSTANT EROSION WHILE YOUR PLANTINGS ARE ESTABLISHED OH MY GOD. We might section and flip the turf over and expose the roots to kill it off, while preserving the structure and any native soil, and giving native microorganisms the chance to build a new life without being shoved into sacks and taken to landfill. Or,
3. We grow them out and see what components are in them, then style them pleasingly; often the much-derided turf grass actually contains an interesting mixture of plants that are maintaining themselves beautifully with absolutely no inputs, and therefore could make a wonderfully dreamy, low-maintenance step towards a “wildlife corner” if left to flower and seed. Or,
4. We plant over and through them; for example, converting a lawn space into an orchard meadow with successional bulbs and wildflowers is such a delightful choice that produces fruit, flowers, picnic opportunities, forage for pollinators, a pleasant multi-use space and requires so few inputs. Just a few fruit trees provide shade, habitat, carbon sinks, and copious food. Leaving long grass to grow under them brings all the benefits of groundcover (nature abhors bare earth, and so should we, the poor bastards trying to save it) and management can nudge it from a charming burst of crocuses at the end of winter through to a very nice wildflower space in summer, which will do nothing but replenish your soil and soul. Or,
5. If you’re actually rewilding , rather than just throwing sunflower seeds around and patting yourself on the back for it, you’re in touch with local knowledge-keepers who are advising you much better on your specific situation, right? Right? So you’re doing what they advised you, right.
I haven’t even touched on soil health or the carbon cycle.
It isn’t as punchy and REBELLIOUS AGAINST YOUR DAD as ripping/killing language! but DO YOU SEE HOW EVEN AS A JOKE YOU WALK AWAY FROM IT KNOWING LESS ABOUT PLANTS?
Seriously, if you guys can do one thing of utility on social media it could be to mock the “ripping/killing grass is so good and eco” thing until it falls apart. It has no value, it’s just Americans scolding their dads at a safe distance. And even if we just make it more fashionable to replace it with “composting” at least that’s a more valuable word to shove between your ears.
ALT
