Ah yes, now I get it! Thanks :)

I feel like something similar has been going on a few years ago as well (or maybe it’s an old post?)

It is a valid term used by trans people to describe their own feelings (see the gender dysphoria bible for example). The other person must have gotten something mixed up…

Wow, I loved this! Thanks for sharing <3

Just use its Latin name, Solidago. How am I supposed to know what it is called in English when each other language also has its own name.

And yes, in Germany I do see it as an invasive pest. But at least it attracts a lot of pollinators. The invasive species of Erigeron are worse.

What’s genetic monoculture then? Wouldn’t that be identical to just monoculture? Or is it having the same crop, but different genetic variants on the same field for multiple years?

I’ve taken many pictures of copulating insects and I always feel weird doing that. But for identification purposes it’s great…

Interestingly, it is still very different. Men fantasizing about sex bots is objectifying female bodies and taking control over them. That’s why it is so creepy. Women searching for a romantic partner in chat bots is actually subjectifying an inanimate thing.

I’ve never understood why people buy clothing from expensive brands (except for when there is a real expectation of quality/durability)

Like, I understand it if the choice were only between original and poor-quality rip-off. But usually you can just go with something else that isn’t by an expensive brand and isn’t a rip-off…

Nice article! As an outsider I still don’t get why people wouldn’t sell/buy unpainted minis for cheap (e.g. on etsy)

On my phone I watch via the Grayjay app (I used newpipe before, but it wasn’t as reliable). If it asks me to login, I either use a VPN or watch YouTube in a Firefox-based browser with ublock. I haven’t seen ads since years…

On my PC I also just use Firefox and ublock to watch without ads.

I nowadays only identify plants on iNaturalist, so I only use morphological and taxonomic data. And I hardly ID any plants that are cultivated. So I cannot really help you with physiological or cultivation information.

For identification purposes I mostly use POWO (plants of the world online), where there is more information for the plant group I work with. It seems like the information on POWO is more sparse for Cactaceae (here is the entry for the same species you linked to, notably Morawetzia sericata is a synonyme of this species). It’s also very dependent on what plant family you work with. There are more popular ones that have dedicated sites for them, while less popular ones have hardly any information available. Sometimes I’m happy to even find information what distribution a species may have or to find even one herbarium voucher of it. Also, there are some local herbarium databases where they have digitalized entries. But this is of course very localized information :/

Yes please!! Even the aggregated information online is spread through various sites by different institutions (like Tropicos, POWO, etc). Each site has a bit of information and you have to do a lot of digging to find any information. There are so many local institutions like botanical gardens but also research stations or herbariums where it is often hard to find and access any information. I guess the problem might be related to competition though, as many of these institutions have to showcase themselves and how their funding is related to their publicity.

At least it follows the normal text flow and you can read from top to bottom (if you ignore the user names). Not like on xitter, where you have to jump from the middle to top to bottom…

I agree with the second part of that sentence, but who would think that they discover universal truths or any truths at all? The whole premise of science is that we cannot verify anything or find any real truth. We can just show that anything else is much more unlikely to be true.

Lol, have you not seen the OP or have ever looked at plant taxonomy before? There are many different groups where it is dubious if we can apply some sort of species concept.

And you talk about the species concept as if there was only just one?

Hm, it’s good I’d say. There isn’t everything on Tidal and so I have to have some albums on my phone or bandcamp (that is true for Spotify as well). And Tidal isn’t great at distinguishing artists with the same name. But I don’t listen to any popular music and I’m fine. Now that Tidal knows my taste it also gives me some great recommendations. I’ve actually started listening to the “my daily discovery” playlists nearly every day. It updates daily and quite often there is something new and interesting in there. I’ve got an IDM playlist of 539 tracks. And through Tidal I’ve discovered jazz, a ton of vintage african music, luk thung/mor lam, and other genres I hadn’t even known :)

Hm, I have the opposite feeling as well. In a heavily fragmented area without any primary forests left (Germany) I still find sooo many species that were invisible to me before I dared to look. I cannot imagine how it must have been before when humans hadn’t had such an impact on the ecosystem.

But then I also notice how all of these species exist despite our influence. How they try to keep on living in our cities. And that’s indeed very sad.

All of these were really cool to see!! Especially devious were those parasitic ants :O

Great text!!! Thanks :)