SOMEONE INFORM ME EXACTLY HOW I MISSED THAT THE BADASS KEW PLANT GOD PUBLISHED A BOOK ABOUT HIS BADASS PLANT ADVENTURES???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
i ordered it bc i have no self control
update: this shipped out today but it’ll take 8-12 days to get here and im dying. carlos magdalena why must u do this to me
okay so i got this book today and spent like 6 hours reading it and im almost done but i really wanna talk about this plant nerd and his many endangered plonts that he loves and protects with all his heart and soul
carlos magdalena, kew botanical horticulturalist, is honestly an unproblematic fave
also btw heres some pics of carlos with the smallest water lily in the world, which he saved from extinction. he talks in the book about how he learned later on that at the time he finally figured out how to propagate this species in cultivation, rats had broken in and killed the only other specimens in the world at the german conservatory they were being kept at, and the habitat where the 1 or 2 wild plants had been living had been destroyed for a concrete company. he had been working with the last seeds in literal existence without knowing it (he had assumed they were still alive) and the other scientists and botanical horticulturalists in germany had been living in grief over having lost this plant to apparent extinction. he originally had 200 seeds recruited for trying to cultivate the species, and by the time he realized how to cultivate it, he had been working with the last 5 seeds in the world. he didn’t know at the time. (x)
reblogging this because I just mentioned this book again! it’s available for purchase everywhere now (as opposed to when I first made this post, when it wasn’t released in the US yet).
Oh cool. The party that controls my provincial government just announced that they reject gender identity as “fake”. Can’t wait to see which of my rights they strip away first!
One of the reasons Twilight was so hated initially was because preteen and teenage girls liked it. It was incredibly racist and depicted extremely unhealthy and abusive relationships. But that’s not why grown men made fun of young girls for liking it. They never looked or cared enough to read into why it was so harmful, they just excused it as something dumb because of the target demographic. Twilight’s message was actual terrible and misogyny paints girls’ interests as something to be made fun of are both true statements. Things are allowed to exist as a duality.
The older I get, the more I find heterosexual couples so…weird. It’s not that men and women are inherently different in irreconcilable ways, is that they’re socialized to believe they are, and it shows in how male/female couples interact. There is this awkward, unnecessary communication barrier between them based on their perceived gender differences. This obviously doesn’t apply to all heterosexual couples; I’m sure there are plenty with great communication and so on. But the large majority of the ones I’ve encountered in the past few years just don’t. It’s uncomfortable to watch.
They have all these weird notions about each other’s genders, and it’s so out of place for me. Like, women will let their husbands get away with not doing housework because “men are helpless” and men will talk about how their wives are “just hormonal” when they come to them with a legitimate grievance that needs to be talked about, and so on and so forth. Just a lot of back and forth that seems perfectly normal to them, but to an outsider who doesn’t experience this kind of heteronormative behavior often it’s like…
i’d like to share my hypothesis that this exact phenomenon is why straight writers struggle to write gay relationships (or project heteronormative constructs onto those relationships). they literally just don’t understand a relationship where one person doesn’t treat the other like they’re part of an alien species.
I always say ‘get a hobby’ on here but I’m not joking get a hobby it’s literally so good for you! Like you learn something new, get to reclaim passion and interest that you thought you lost forever to mental illness, it feels nice being decent at something, and it gives you something to talk about if you’re like me and have a hard time conversing with others. And basically anything can be a hobby? You daydream a lot well now your hobby’s worldbuilding! You like going for walks now your hobby’s local sightseeing. This is a pro-hobby blog 100%
John Rhys Davies said getting a hobby saved him from becoming an alcoholic
HELL YES. If you’re in the academia hell – get a hobby. I PROMISE you’ll have time for it. Even if it’s something practical like cooking. It will do so much good for your mental health and your quality of life and your imposter syndrome.
ruby-dear archive 