PHROGTAX
Some of my favorite showcases of insects arranged by color from the Montreal Insectarium
Saeed Jones, How We Fight For Our Lives
They Rolls up into a Ball…
obituaries in the south are so funny, they’ll be talking about a man who spent his 72 years on this earth torturing his family and terrorizing the small town he was born into and saying shit like “he ascended to his eternal reward” “he rose to glory” like no baby he did not. “was called home” is my favorite euphemism because it fails to mention if it was God or Satan who wanted him back
the careful implied insult in that sentence is so crazy. that obituary writer was playing chess with words.
Okay I used to review Texas obituaries for a living and these are some of my favorite lines describing people who were apparently awful during their lifetimes:
- “A man of a distinct and unmatched personality” (divorced four times, hated by the entire town of Caldwell, Texas)
- “Many remember him most fondly as a child” (died in a meth lab explosion)
- “Her family hopes that Christ may finally guide her, and she may at last find peace” (For an 80yo woman. I never got the full story on this one, but it’s incredible)
- “He has gone now to see the fruits of his life” (man in question had assaulted and murdered two people, and was given the death penalty)
- Very common - “A man whom everybody in town knew and few forgot”
- “A man who read the scriptures and taught his children how to be strong” (a Christian fundamentalist arrested three times for violent family battery)
- “He was familiar with God”
- “In eternity, she will receive at last what she deserves”
- And my favorite - “She was a strong-willed woman who knew the value of manipulating a good deal. Her family believes she is now arguing with St. Peter to slip her the keys to the gate while Archangel Michael isn’t looking.” (Woman in question was vehemently hated by her entire family bc she had sued them multiple times)
love that fighting is considered a pokemon type. like Yea I got magical elemental skills it’s called kicking your ass
just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees
They existed *before beetles*
Why is this sad? Why am I sad?
This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.
(my own photos)
Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.
Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.
You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

First quote from the linked article. Found it poetic.
Oh, oh dear I think I may go mourn the loss of ancient species now
The world has lost 5% to 10% of all insect species in the last 150 years — or between 250,000 and 500,000 species.
Often when I go to research an interesting native flower, to see who that flower was meant to attract...I find that the plant now only propagates vegetatively, through clones. Likely, the original pollinator or pollinators are all gone. But this cloning
We’re surrounded by orphaned plants, and many weren’t orphaned long ago. They were orphaned recently, because of us. That’s just reason why gardening with native plants is so critical. We have a responsibility to the plants and animals we share the land with, to plant things that insects can eat. To give them nesting habitat. To avoid poisons.
