(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

Rosemary Yue Acrylic on canvas painted with palette knife, 40cm x 50cm

All of my manatees so far. Doot doot.

not beating the fussy little bunbun allegations

Ham radio

my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini

i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with

Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.

My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones.  He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.

There was a long pause between them.

My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK.  You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”

Henry sighed in relief.

“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”

There was another long silence.  “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry.  “But I accept.  I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”

My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”

a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:

the melon was a special bonus.

MY DREAM

A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.

At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”

Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify.  I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”

I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”

I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.

I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them

“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”

It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever

This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.

When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.

The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.

Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.

At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)

We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.

Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.

Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.

We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But man those were the days for thems of us what loved squash.

So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.

Oh wow.

:O

One thing I really love about seedy anime websites and YouTube mp3 converters is like. They actually do what they say they’re doing. But they WILL try to trick you into downloading a virus. Like it’s almost just a greeting at this point. I try to extract a song from a YouTube video and it says free VPN installer tonight perhaps? Free VPN installer tonight queen? And I say YouTube-mp3 converter you sly dog, you know what I’m here for. Show me the goods. And YouTube-mp3 converter says ahhh you got me, no getting one over on you. Thought it was worth a try tho. Here you go king x

going thru mood swings makes me feel like a sim its so embarrassing

(weeping on the floor for ten minutes immediately followed by cleaning the kitchen with a placid smile) sul sul

made this for the #XIVRomanceCoverChallenge over on twitter (text by muja_bunny)

I wanted it to be as cheesy as possible while also staying true to the originals lol. but really, Estinien is a perfect copy of these cover hunks with flowy hair and a sweaty chest

Michelle.cpy

by Paru Itagaki

BREAKING UPDATE ON THE PLUMOCALYPSE!!!

When I got home the neighbor kids were hanging around the parking lot as they usually do. I saw an adult making the rounds and popped out of my car hoping to snag her and ask if she’d like plums. I didn’t see her when I got out. But I saw a little girl and I said, “Is that your mom walking around?”

No, I was informed.

“Well can you ask your mom if she wants plums?”

She ran off. I looked over and saw two slightly older girls lounging. “Do you want plums?” I called.

Yes.

I grabbed my enormous box of plums and brought it outside. All three girls were waiting and the first kid said, “She’ll take them.”

I told them I had been given 106 plums. They were suitably impressed. I held out the box to let them pick out plums but the first girl confidently took the box. “You don’t have to take them all if you don’t want…” I offered dubiously.

“We want them.”

So I handed her the whole damn box, at this point somewhere close to 87 plums. And just like that, I was free. Her mom might be upset at receiving 87 plums or maybe her daughter gauged correctly that they could actually use them but either way. I am blissfully free.

THIS IS A FAIR ASSESSMENT OF MY BEHAVIOR

Beyond their importance as predators, wolves are also capable of aggressive cuddling 🐺🐺🐺

disability rights involves the right to do fuck all. the right to be a useless member of society and STILL be loved and cared for and have a fair standard of living. human beings are not defined by the capital we produce.

human beings are not defined by the capital we produce!!!!!

I was today years old. That is disgusting.

No Child Left Behind is one of the worst things to ever be incentivized in schools. It was signed into law when I was 14. Reading Rainbow was my show as a kid. LeVar Burton played a big part in why I became an avid reader to date. The joy of it. It's an adventure around the globe and through different time periods without stepping on a plane or time machine.

Children parrot behavior. In grade school, I always wanted to read the same amount of books as my teachers (50 books) and managed to double that each year. Before No Child Left Behind, book fairs and Scholastic catalogs were a serious matter like your grandma's Fingerhut catalogs. Libraries were (and still are) a wonderland.

Reading comprehension and proficiency in schools has been declining for decades. A crisis. The joy of books isn't pushed anymore and I'm always saddened by it. It's one of the reasons why I post my book reviews and recommendations on here, as well as posts from others to encourage reading and (novel) writing. Kids will parrot your behavior while the education system sadly fails to return as that example.

For those of us who aren't from the states, what - apart from apparently a shitty law - is that?

A law passed by Bush that cut funding to public schools whose students didn't improve every year on a set of standardized tests- meaning not that each student was supposed to improve during their time in school, but that this year's first graders had to do better on the tests than last year's first graders, and next year's had to do better still. Obviously this was really difficult over the short term and completely impossible over the long term.

This concentrated schools and other education programs entirely on those tests, especially schools with students who were already struggling, at the cost of art and music programs, home economics and shop type programs, and any in depth exploration of pretty much anything that wasn't on the test, which were pretty narrowly focused. Reading Rainbow was a relaxed encouragement to be imaginative and curious. It didn't teach kids the answers to questions on the test. So it didn't make the cut.

The program also incentivized schools to cut their losses on struggling students, expelling or encouraging them to drop out to bring the test averages up instead of being able to spend the effort to actually help them.

No Child Left Behind was an absolute disaster for education, poorly hidden behind an insidious name. The real goal of it was not just to defund education (in order to reallocate those funds to appease Republican lobbyists), but to stop teaching critical thinking. Not only did struggling students get left behind, but by prioritizing students who did well on standardized tests, the focus shifted entirely to teaching students memorization without understanding context, and how to guess their best on a test in order to pass. The focus became passing tests, not actual learning. In the process, students were taught that they don't need to understand the material, they just need to know how to follow directions and give the answers deemed correct by the school boards. They were deprived of agency in their own educations.

This widened the gap between public and private school educations significantly, because students in public schools learned mostly how to regurgitate information, while students in private schools learned how to understand it, analyze it, think critically about it, and apply it - in short, if you could afford to go to private school, you still got to have agency over your education. And sure, many public school teachers were dedicated and still taught their students more than the curriculum demanded, but they were under a lot of pressure and scrutiny and their hands were often tied. Many of them couldn't sustain the effort it took (and how little they got paid) and changed careers. Meanwhile basic necessarily skills disappeared when arts and non-academic budgets were slashed into oblivion - you used to be able to learn how to sew, mend, cook, budget, do woodworking, fix a car (hell, build one), paint, draw, do pottery, and so much more in elective classes. What's mostly remained is performing arts programs, which struggle to continue existing, but since you can charge admission to performances they've had a better chance than shop class and home ec.

You have no idea what it's like to have watched all that happen under the Bush administration and now see the second emerging generation of young people who were deprived of the education they deserve and don't understand critical thought or media analysis. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Bush era are frustrated, but not at all surprised to see how reductive and binary fandom discourse is, or that critical media analysis has diminished significantly and turned into fandom discourse instead (ie. that being a child during the "what you feel is more valid than facts" Bush administration has led to the second emerging generation of people who struggle to separate their personal feelings about a piece of media from the idea that fiction is social commentary, who struggle to understand nuance and are more concerned about judging others for their even slightly divergent political views than about what makes for effective activism, or that fandom has become a way for people to judge and condemn others).

You have no idea how terrifying it is to have watched No Child Left Behind unfold in your early 20s and have thought "this is going to lead to generations of kids who will be ripe for manipulation by propaganda" and to now watch how hard it is to get Gen Z and Alpha to understand the ways they're being manipulated by fascists. Believe me when I say the very real purpose of forcing education to focus on tests instead of knowledge was to create generations of people whose brains are trained at an early age to accept information unquestioningly. That's what I see when people reblog screenshots without sources and base their political opinions on tumblr funnymen.

No Child Left Behind was devastating. We knew it then and we see it now.