You can read up on them, and see some nice photos here on mander… they’re really interesting creatures!

…and a beautiful sea slug too

Impressive aren’t they? I assume he has millions of glossy magazines available for when he gets creative

a certain ‘labor of love’ needs to be involved

You are not wrong! I think I must be mental sometimes, but it can be good fun discovering new things and then sharing them…

I really like her work, I posted last week some of her cityscapes of Manchester, which is interesting to see the ordinary and mundane of somewhere you know immortalized in art. I’ve got some others of hers which I’ll probably share next week

Also thanks for the tip regarding the code to expand images, it would be nice if the developers added a nice easy button to click to do it for me, but it’s something I can remember to do, like all the other minor things that help when making a post (it’s a learning process)

Cheers! 😀

edit, I’ve just tried it out on one of my posts on mander, it works really well!

I’m glad there are artists capturing the normal sights of places instead of focusing on the most impressive and amazing parts of the world, you know?

I agree, it’s always nice to see your local places immortalized in art, I think it helps that she’s from Bolton, although I haven’t seen any paintings of that downtrodden place yet…

All that’s missing from the paintings is a couple of spice-heads, and the guy who’s always playing the ‘Harry Potter Theme’ on a recorder near Selfridges

Love back at you, from up the road 🐝 ❤️

She’s won a few awards for her work which doesn’t surprise me!

I’ll be posting some of her other work at some point which is just as good, if not better…even though I do love the fact that she makes Blackpool look pretty fucking amazing 🤣

Guilty as charged

I rather like this one…

wearily she waves

the white flag of surrender

cobwebbed butterfly

—Tracy Davidson from here

Pawprints fade, empty

Silence fills the empty space

Love lives on, always

From here

I sometimes feel that the classic haiku are let down by some translations, and the fact there are Japanese words that don’t translate across very well or at all.

I have a soft spot for this one

The old pond,

A frog jumps in:

Plop!

Translated by Alan Watts from here

It’s interesting to see how each translation differs, and tries to put into English something that is probably untranslatable…also…

pond

frog

plop!

Translated by James Kirkup

‘The sound of water’ ‘kerplunk’ ‘splashing the water’ ‘leap, splash’ ‘water note’ …just don’t capture it for me

Do you know any that are decent?

I discovered The CryptoNaturalist over at the other place, and ending up buying ‘Field Guide to the Haunted Forest’ and ‘Love Notes from the Hollow Tree’ by Jarod K. Anderson…

Which is unusual for me as I detest poetry. I think it’s a pile of long-winded, navel gazing wank…Except for haiku, (because they’re short and sweet, and condense things down to their essence, which I like).

I like The CryptoNaturalist though, probably because they write about nature in a weird, beautiful and wonderous way. I want to use the word ‘magical’ to describe it, but am reluctant, for reasons

Also, thanks to this post I just found out there’s a couple of other books available which I’m going to buy tonight 😀

I had to look this up, I had no idea what mentats are.

I only wish that my autism presented like this, I’d love a super memory. I can remember that I’ve read something once long ago, but it’s vague, and also my maths is appalling…I do love that autism is a spectrum and that we’re all unique in our presentation

This is a really fascinating comment, I’m aware of sickle cell being a problem, but it’s surprising that there may be an advantage to having it. I’ve opened up the link in a new tab (one of the many) to read later

diversity makes communities stronger.

This is so important, not just from an autism perspective, I think I read once, long ago on the internet, that having a gay sibling would be a benefit for the non gay siblings offspring, in the same way that the grandmothers being around to help find extra food, provide care would mean a greater chance of survival

There has to be an evolutionary reason/explanation that gay people exist, and the fact that other animal and bird species will have same sex partnerships (and rear an abandoned egg to fledged juvenile in the case of the gay zoo penguins)

I also love the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ analogy, I think that the more people discover they are neurodiverse the better.

I only found out as an adult, and if I hadn’t seen the Chris Packham documentary and met another autistic woman I’d still be none the wiser (and struggling massively)

I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments, I’ll check out the link and post later on when I come back from work!

This is the mad thing, autism and ADHD must have an advantage otherwise it wouldn’t be showing up in people today, and also if humans have selectively bred herding dogs for hyper focus, being less socially inclined etc these are useful/desirable qualities (and hereditary too, fuck Andrew Wakefield for the MMR nonsense)

Whenever I go out into the countryside or even just a park, if there’s an interesting bug/beetle hidden in the grass I’ll find it. I can scan for visual differences very quickly (colour, texture, shiny surface, movement, a faint noise out of place) these things would have been useful from a hunter gatherer point of view…it’s just a massive shame that the modern world is not made for autistic/ADHD people

Sorry for any word salad, but this is a topic (special interest, no less) that really interests me, and thanks for the information!

Your studies are more important right now, and I’ll look forward to when you start to post again 👍

That was an amazing read! Thanks for writing and sharing it. Two things that struck me are

PTSD has been documented in canines who served in the military. [1] Additionally, it is believed that dogs are capable of suffering from autism

I’m on the spectrum so the fact that dogs can be autistic is really interesting, and it’s unsurprising about the PTSD, given the fact that they can have really bad anxiety and trauma if they experience their owner dying

You have a fascinating blog which I’m going to bookmark and explore, cheers for the share!

Thank you! 👍

Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I learnt a lot myself when reading up on it, and as there are lots of different species of insects that are infected by cordyceps there’s the potential for future posts

Thanks for the feedback! There are some really weird things out there, I happened upon a photo of a tropical frog with a little mushroom growing out of its side…I’ll post it this week if I can find it again

Also this link has a time lapse video from the BBC for those who want to see the fungus in action!

You’re welcome, and cheers 👍

Some ‘scales’ or marks will be the plants version of a scab, where it’s been damaged and has ‘scabbed’ over, the insect scales do look a bit more ‘stuck on’ and ‘foreign’ as in not created by the plant, if that makes sense? They can also be picked off, and the appearance is different to the plant surface.

I’m currently fighting scale insects on one of my houseplants (I think I’m winning), the adult females form the scale, and the nymphs/larvae are ‘crawlers’ (little white, woolly lines about 1-2 mm long), both can be physically removed by scratching them off, but the scale is tougher and water runs off it

This has some pictures of scale insect pests, and they look very different to plant tissue (and don’t forget, they proliferate very quickly, so tend to show up in large, noticeable groups). Another thing is that the surrounding plant tissue will look yellowy/stressed when under attack instead of it’s usual healthy, normal green