Y'know someone's probably waxed poetic about this already but it's on my mind so I'm gonna do it again.
When it comes to encouraging people to learn about native plants and habitat and involving themselves and their yards in the wider ecosystem, you gotta meet them where they're at.
And maybe that means they won't go as far into it as you are or would like them to in your wildest dreams. But even small steps count towards the bigger picture and I think we need to appreciate that more.
An example from my own life is my mom and the current gardening project we're working on. We're planning out the garden beds in the front of the yard by the mailbox--my mom's previous plantings for the most part haven't worked out, so I'm taking a crack at it.
I'm a pollinator gardening enthusiast who cares more about attracting as many butterflies bees and hummingbirds as possible than keeping things 'neat' and 'tidy'. However, not only do we live in an HOA neighborhood (though not as intense as some other stories I've heard), but I know my mother--an interior designer who has a deeply vested care for making sure the exterior of the house looks as Nice as possible.
We're still getting a pollinator garden in the front though. How? I'm meeting her where she's at, I'm making some concessions, she's making some concessions, but ultimately we're making something that works for the both of us. She doesn't want the plants too tall and messy? We'll trim them back in fall and winter--the insects can use the backyard garden to nest in. She doesn't want things too wild and bushy and weedy? We'll add a nice mulch to the beds, keep things a bit spaced out until they grow in to their larger sizes. She doesn't know the latin names for the plants I'm asking for, let alone how to pronounce them to ask for them at a garden center? That's fine, I don't know the Latin names for most things anyways, let's just use common names.
Does she care that the garden will attract butterflies and hummingbirds? Not intrinsically--she sees it as more of a bonus, if anything. She just cares about what color everything will be and if it'll be easy to maintain. The fact that they're native plants barely registers as a plus side to her. And honestly? That is fine.
If I approached this problem with a hardheaded attitude on how I wanted it to be just as wild and free as my backyard garden? There wouldn't be any native plants in the front beds. It's not like I didn't teach my mom things, but I didn't lecture her like she was lesser just for not knowing or caring as much about native gardening as I do. And that, ultimately, made her more open to the idea than she would've been if I looked down on her like I've seen too many people do to others.
Not everyone is going to develop a deeply seated care about native plants and Latin names and I don't think it's reasonable to expect that. Meet people where they're at and you just might get a lot more done. Meet people where they're at and you just might find they'll get excited enough to learn more--but if they don't want to learn more, that is fine.
We can't expect everyone on the globe to suddenly become plant experts rattling off Latin names left and right and professionally ID'ing native and invasive plants. In the same way we wouldn't expect everyone to suddenly learn the ins and outs of learning code, or how to synthesize medicines, or how to properly build a house. And that is fine. Because we can lean on those who do know when these things come up.
I lost track of where this was going but. Y'know????
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Ok, guys. A lot of people have their fan casts for a Rat Grinders spinoff series, but hear me out.
What if season whatever of Dimension 20 was with the intrepid heroes, but Brennan didn’t tell them what their characters were. They get into the dome, The background is the normal Fantasy High background. The DM screen is the normal Fantasy High DM screen. They all sit as if they would for their Fantasy High characters. Brennan does the introduction, everybody’s smiling everybody’s happy, then he starts with the first scene.
But Nobody has a character sheet nobody knows who they are. “Strange, how do you play if you don’t know who you are playing?” A sentiment throughout the six heroes. The scene moves on, and he does it through one of the players perspectives, and it becomes clearer and clearer, slowly, that that person is playing their Fancy High characters antithesis from the Rat Grinders. Brennan hands them a character sheet.
The scenes go on, each hero getting their own. The character sheets are handed out. Horror: screams are heard throughout the dome, yells and shouts for Brendan to do unspeakable things. All the players are befuddled. All the players are filled with wishes for revenge.
The Intrepid Heroes, beloved of the characters they play called The Bad Kids, now play what they hate the most.
They are the rat grinders.
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who wants to sob with me about how El in the lab is basically living in a Harlow monkey experiment?
[info below the cut if you're unfamiliar. tl;dr very sad and unethical contact comfort and maternal deprivation experiments on baby monkeys]
El being torn from her mother and raised in a sterile environment full of cold hard surfaces with probably no loving contact ever -> El clinging to her stuffed animal in the lab because it's literally the only soft object available to her -> El spending her lab recovery phase (s1-2) swaddling herself in big warm clothes and blankets and soft textures ->
El reacting emotionally to Brenner's touch because it's the closest thing she's ever known to the contact comfort and parental love she craves innately even though she hates and fears him ->
El with irreparable social deficits due to isolation -> El not being very good at interacting with her peers and tending to stay apart from the group -> El getting bullied ->
El being in the fetal position in so many lab scenes -> El continuing to curl up in a ball when stressed even outside the lab because she's never had anywhere to turn for safety or comfort ->
El craving touch and clinging to her friends and parental figures for the love and comfort and reassurance she never got as a child -> me sobbing forever
Using methods of isolation and maternal deprivation, Harlow showed the impact of contact comfort on primate development with his ethically controversial experiments in the 1960s.
Infant monkeys were taken from their mothers and raised in a laboratory setting, with some infants placed in separate cages away from peers. In isolation, the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact, and did not stand up for themselves when bullied.
Even without complete isolation, the monkeys raised without mothers developed social deficits, showing reclusive tendencies and clinging to their cloth diapers. Harlow was interested in the infants’ attachment to the cloth, speculating that the soft material may simulate the comfort provided by a mother’s touch.
Harlow took infant monkeys from their biological mothers and gave them two inanimate surrogate mothers: one made of wire, and the other covered in soft terry cloth. Harlow found that the infants spent significantly more time with the terry cloth mother than they did with the wire mother, even if the wire mother provided food and the cloth one did not.
Infants also turned to inanimate surrogate mothers for comfort when they were faced with new and scary situations. If an alarming noise-making toy was placed in the cage, infants with surrogate mothers would retreat and cling to them for comfort before exploring; infants without surrogate mothers were paralyzed with fear, huddled in a ball sucking their thumbs, rocking, or screaming.
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Thinking about current continuity Vanessa and just getting pissed off again
Like one, LET HER REST oh my god dc you ruin her FUCKING life like an asshole only to bring her back as a villain after she finally got out oh my god-
But also like its just so bad. This is a whole other woman with her name like why are we doing this. Like first you kill her mom (JULIA NOOO) and erase her YEARS of history growing up around diana (the thing that actually made her villain turn [if you can call it that w the level of manipulation involved] interesting and fucking heartbreaking) for some shitty "oh I saved you we were friends" run of the mill whatever. Then to use that and say Nessie had a crush on her OWN SISTER (Diana, so like informally adopted, but still 😡) now????
And then they took away her curls and made her a redhead but not even the realistic kind. DC SHE DOESNT LOOK LIKE THAT
It just makes me so mad. Freaking guys. They could have used another name like oh my god. She's not even the first silver swan why the fuck would they do that if they're not going to explore her history w diana (which she no longer has!!!!) or how intensely fucked up everything got for her. What is even the fucking point of this then other to drag a main character of the ww supporting cast through the mud again for genuinely no reason. They could have easily had her be Valerie Beaudry (sorry Val) instead or just MADE UP ANOTHER NAME because it's obvious that no one actually cared about her as a character they just wanted the wondy villain back so like !!!!!!!!!! Why even bother
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