mossworm.bsky.social

4 Aug

Let us examine the set of circumstances that led to this Eulimnadia clam shrimp living out its entire live cycle in a styrofoam cup on the ground.

Well, I did not WANT to separate all the plants into Districts based on species and shape, but all of the specialty scrub natives are getting bodied by regular monarda, so now I have to be mean and do this. Thanks plants.

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40 dollars

Not blaming the nurseries btw, I can 100% believe that these expensive freaks growing 1 cm per decade are significantly harder to keep alive and make profit off of.

Everybody gangsta until I drove four hours round trip to get that whiteflower pawpaw

making a a backyard butterfly meadow is a lot harder and more expensive than you would think. my hands hurt

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flawildflowers.orgTall elephantsfoot - Florida Wildflower FoundationTall elephantsfoot (Elephantopus elatus) occurs naturally in flatwoods, sandhills, upland mixed woodlands, ruderal areas and wet prairies.

tall elephantsfoot plant "does well in a naturalized meadow" my ass. just had to move four of these www.flawildflowers.org/flower-frida...

apex predators: partridge pea, spotted bee balm, beggarticks solid B minus: false rosemary, bluecurls, rosinweed, tropical sage <50% survival: coneflower, coreopsis, rudbeckia, mistflower, skullcap, twinflower, elephantsfoot, butterflyweed completely dead: golden alexander, false nettle

making a a backyard butterfly meadow is a lot harder and more expensive than you would think. my hands hurt

I thought I could just dump meadowy natives in vague clumps, let them seed wherever, and then cut paths through it, but some of the plants are too powerful and shade out the others. I ended up with like 90% one species, and everything else getting smothered, including important stuff like milkweed.

I collected all the seeds last winter and scattered them, but only the tall stuff made it to seed a second time. Now I have to interfere to save the medium stuff.

I think vibecoding is just as bad and hobbyless as generating art or text, actually. Even if we ignore the environmental / land use / security impacts, it's still directly devaluing a human craft. Just hire someone.

(Or use / buy a tutorial, another human craft.)

I think using genAI to make images, even little insignificant ones, is hobbyless loser behavior. It completely sours my opinion on people forever, even if they have done good stuff in the past. If you think that is an overreaction or "crashing out", you can take your cringe comp screenshot and go.

Seen a non-zero number of posts in just the past few minutes acting like fans being disappointed by an artist using genAI is ridiculous, terminally-online behavior. Uhh, no? People don't just like to see pretty things, we like seeing pretty things and knowing people made them.

I also don't like the idea of older people getting a free pass for some reason, as if the idea of art having value is new? My dad is 91 and he understands this stuff just fine.

There is certainly a power tool of some kind I could rent to chop up bahiagrass rhizomes faster than yanking them with my hands, but then I might hurt some of the two billion thingies trying to hibernate in there, including five entire glubbies just today

Bahiagrass is technically naturalized and retains a lot of moisture and OM, but it smothers seedlings and trends toward dominance, so unfortunately I have to fight it sometimes

Does any of this matter? Who knows. Someone could buy this place and tear it all up and pave it. But, I like to think if I do a good enough job, I could perhaps attract a moderately wealthy hippie.

Matthew Forsythe's 2025 book Aggie and the Ghost is VERY cute and has lovely illustrations. The ghost reminds me of 0² from Kirby (positive)

For the alphabet book, I started making big colorful letters for each page (ex: "B" is for Benggwigwishingasuchus) that matched the color palette of the illustration, and then I started using those letters for other headings, but they're hard to read zoomed-out, so I started making more letters -

- with darker overall palettes so they would be more readable, but I don't like it when two of the same letter image are next to one another, so then I needed more of each letter for variety, and now I've spent like five entire days painting letters, and what do you mean it's almost Halloween

skeetos stop biting me, I am trying to make you a nice world. bite the neighbors' dogs

neighbor dogs stop barking when I stand up, it's the same me you have seen in this place for two years. skeetos upon you

Is it self-aggrandizing to put "studios" next to my dopey little self-publishing logo? I can't just put "mossworm" as both pen name and publisher, that's confusing

There was a challenge on Project Runway probably like 15 years ago where they had to make their own logo with one of those art screen tablets, and everyone was trying to come up with cool nike swoosh type stuff, but I remember this one woman was like "whatever" and just wrote her name in all caps

I'm not very good at this capitalism thing

something that really bothers me about my soil science courses is how casually the professors continue to operate as if things are normal while the entire course is reliant on existing EPA and USDA website infrastructure, which we have already seen that trumpy can take down or alter at any time.

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what if I'm trying to do my assignment, but then fascism decides hydric soils are woke and takes the page down? dumber things have already happened

sure, *I* already have relevant soil series maps printed out for shrimping without wifi purposes, but most people are not Soils Georg

like, I have to make a slideshow on some EPA survey/delineation material for next week, so the EPA still existing and having a website at this particular point in time is doing, uh, a lot of heavy lifting

one of the current rich people food trends is "sea moss" (Chondrus algae) and fresh market had some that was raspberry flavored in a jar for 28 dollars. I would really like to taste that, but for perhaps a little less than 28 dollars

If I try to open this image in full size, mspaint crashes.

@sarahmackattack.bsky.social

I have unlocked a horrible power

mossworm.bsky.social reposted

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D.

Evening of doodling

plants are slowing down and it's getting cold outside, so I'm back inside listening to booktok drama. there sure is a lot of that

I don't even have time to read novels, I just buy picture books to support illustrators, but this stuff is so fascinating for some reason

Oh! Florida Lichen Mantis. hello

I like to spread the word about this mail order nursery called Joyful Butterfly, which I order from about once a year. I'm not affiliated or sponsored, I just really like their business. I ordered six Boehmeria cylindrica five days ago for 42 dollars plus 12 shipping, and they look great.

I have literally never seen this plant for sale anywhere else, but it's a host plant for a bunch of guys.

oh no, I forgot alt text for the first one. Those are the Boehmeria flowers, they are just really small

splebs

eventually I'll probably put some little flying guys in there, but zzzzz

MS paint as always

UF took the advertisement for their genAI hackathon (not a serious programmer, but that seems like a bad idea) off of the online course portal, even though it's apparently still happening. I wonder if their password was also "4"

I'm going to assume you are in there voluntarily, but please get my attention if you need help getting out

living in a place that has lizards is vital to my mental health becuase at almost all times of year I can look at a little animal going "😒"

me, in a teasing lilt: "lizzyyy" 5 grams of pure attitude: 😒🙄💪💪

people who believe deeply in genAI or LLMs should all wear a specific hat of some kind. for me. thanks