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matterofawesome:

yulinisworking:

I Didn’t Write This | Ep. 8: Dark Sonnet by Neil Gaiman

I Didn’t Write This is a new literary adaptation series in which I adapt and direct excerpts of poetry and literature written by other people. New episodes once a month, usually. Subscribe, maybe? 

Directed by Yulin Kuang

Starring Whitney Milam

Voiceover by Mary Kate Wiles

Shot by Alyssa Brocato

“I really don’t know what I love you means
I think it means don’t leave me here alone”

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“

It was hard for early naturalists to imagine that the passenger pigeon could ever become extinct. But they didn’t realize that a technological revolution was about to hit.

“The telegraph allowed word to go out: ‘The pigeons are here,’” says David Blockstein, a senior scientist at the National Council for Science and the Environment and a founder of Project Passenger Pigeon. Thousands of hunters would then jump on newly built trains to ride out to wherever the pigeons had settled and start slaughtering them.

The hunters weren’t just killing the birds to feed their families, however. Pigeons would be stuffed into barrels and loaded back onto the trains, which would deliver them to distant cities, where they’d be sold everywhere from open air markets to fine restaurants. “Technology enabled the market,” says Blockstein.

Soon this technology-driven slaughter was decimating the passenger pigeon. Its decline was so worrisome that Congress passed the Lacey Act, one of the first laws to protect wildlife in the United States. The Lacey Act would eventually help protect many species, but for the passenger pigeon it came too late.

In 1900, the year in which the act was made into law, naturalists spotted a single wild passenger pigeon in Ohio. They never saw another one in the wild again.

For the next 14 years, the species clung to existence in a few zoos. But the birds proved to be poor breeders in captivity. Martha, the last of her kind, was barren.

”

– Century After Extinction, Passenger Pigeons Remain Iconic—And Scientists Hope to Bring Them Back (via dendroica)

Oh what a surprise it was greed and unregulated capitalism that drove the passenger pigeon extinct. (via urbpan)

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heythereuniverse:

Geometrical Geology | Mario Gutiérrez Photographer

A flysch is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that is deposited in a deep marine facies in the foreland basin of a developing orogen. Flysch is typically deposited during an early stage of the orogenesis. When the orogen evolves the foreland basin becomes shallower and molasse is deposited on top of the flysch. It is therefore called a syn-orogenic sediment (deposited contemporaneously with mountain building).

[Wikipedia]

In the town of Zumaia along the Basque coast, northern Spain, are two beaches that contain a geologic treasure that contains millions of years of the Earth’s history.

The Itzurun and Santiago beaches are hotspots for geologists because it houses one of the longest continuous rock strata in the world called a ‘flysch.” This flysch in Zumaia was found to have formed over a period of over 100 million years by the crashing of the waves against the cliffs. The result is an abrasion platform with alternate hard layers (limestone and sandstone) and soft layers (clay and loam). The flysch extends eastward and westward from Zumaia, stretching a total of 8 kilometers to the towns of Deba and Getaria.

Apart from the impressive rock formations, Zumaia also harbors important fossil evidences. The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, a rock layer that marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, is found in Itzurun beach. Fossils of ammonites, ancient molluscs resemblant of the nautilus, are also found in the rock layer.

[Read more]

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harriettstella:

sleepy self portrait I took for a uni assignment

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sosuperawesome:

Catherina Türk on Etsy

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buggirl:

Owl Butterfly.  Mindo, Ecuador

Pledge a dollar to science!

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itskylewalters:

itskylewalters:

LAST DAY to donate to this heartwarming #PeterPan #webseries exploring growing up! Help us #SaveNeverland! http://thndr.it/1vf9WH3

Well, it looks like at the last minute, Indiegogo came up to us because they really like our project and want it to succeed and offered to extend the campaign another week.

(the original tumble was from a thunderclap campaign that had already been sent out).

The truth is we have until Monday September 8th to fully fund Season Two!  Woohoo!

I’m uploading a video later today/tonight to announce the extension. :)

(thanks again to everyone who has watched, supported, been awesome, y’know been a part of THE PANDOM!)

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bobak:

Our Curiosity.

1) This video makes way more emotional about my job than it should.

2) A lot of love to Felicia Day for doing this.

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pergus:

so i watched scott pilgrim vs the world again last night and the fact that im still picking up on things that i never saw before astounds me, like in this bus scene after the fight with matthew patel there’s a fucking bokeh filter on the front of the camera so when ramona is on screen all the out of focus bits are rendered as little “x”s and scott’s bits are little love hearts but when scott asks ramona if they’re dating now there’s a little ding from the bus as ramona’s turn to hearts like omg

the amount of attention to detail edgar wright puts into his films is absolutely baffling to me

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scienceisbeauty:

Composite image (X-ray & optical) of the Rosette nebula, located about 5,000 light years from Earth. More shocking that the one I posted here two years ago.

Source: Rosette Nebula: The Heart of a Rose (Chandra X-ray Center)

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urbpan:

Lucy, Franklin Park Zoo, 08/27/14

Cool capybara is keeping cool.

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sink—florida—sink:

WHY IS THERE AN ADVERT FOR A HORROR MOVIE ON MY DASH TUMBLR I FUCKING HATE HORROR MOVIES I DO NOT WATCH HORROR MOVIES I EITHER END UP TERRIFIED AND HAVING NIGHTMARES FOR WEEKS OR I GET TRIGGERED INTO SELF HARMING MYSELF OR BOTH!! WHY IS THIS BULLSHIT ON MY DASH STOPPIT

is there a way to block sponsored posts?

Check out XKit and Tumblr Savior. Both are browser extensions that will let you block posts that match certain criteria. Lately all the horror movie sponsored posts I’ve seen have been tagged with #horror, so you should be able to block based on that, assuming that:

• It really is something Tumblr is requiring horror movie advertisers to do consistently, and 
• you aren’t browsing from a phone or tablet.

But really, the business decision by Tumblr to run ads for horror movies as part of the sponsored posts program is all kinds of fucked up. I’m sorry you had to experience the consequences of it.

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buggirl:

Can’t get enough of this Palm Tree Frog.  So charismatic.

Mindo, Ecuador

Pledge a dollar to rainforest research

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It’s my day for bug posts, apparently.

This guy (or gal) was on our living room wall this morning. What isn’t immediately obvious is that it’s huge; nearly 2 inches long.

The first thing I thought was that it was a dobsonfly, because in my flyfishing gear I have a giant wet fly that’s called a dobsonfly, and I’ve seen photos of them before and this was kind of similar-looking. But dobsonflies have big scary jaws (and can give a painful bite, apparently), and this one looked as mild as a big-eyed lamb, at least in the scary-mandibles department.

I guessed it was maybe some kind of megaloptera (a fishfly, maybe?), but Eric Eaton, author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America, was kind enough to ID my photos on bugguide as giant lacewing, Polystoechotes punctata.

For such a big, adorable bug you’d think we’d know more about it, but apparently its lifecycle is still something of a mystery. I read this in an article from the University of Idaho’s web site:

The giant lacewing is an enigma, even to professional entomologists who have spent careers studying the order Neuroptera, which includes some 5000 species of lacewings. Rare now, the giant lacewing once clouded around the bright lights of a factory at night so thickly that passersby reported smoke was pouring from the building…

[William F. Barr Entomological Museum collection manager Frank] Merickel may rank as the scientist most familiar with the giant lacewing, which can measure nearly two inches long compared to its more common relative the 1/2-inch long green lacewing. Although Merickel may collect 30 to 40 of the insects a year as part of his 18-year fascination with the species, neither he, nor Johnson or anyone else knows how they live.”They were first described over 200 years ago,” Johnson said, “and we still don’t know where the larvae live or what they live on.”

The mystery probably means the giant lacewing, known to science as Polystoechotes punctatus, lives in the soil, because soil is so hard to sample for immature insects there.

Also weird, Merickel said, is that such an uncommon insect can suddenly, under the right conditions, appear by the hundreds in one spot. He believes adults may converge in pursuit of smoke, looking for burned areas to lay their eggs. The aggregating flights, the massive swarms so thick they look like billowing smoke, do not appear to be mating flights, however.

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buggirl:

Thank you, Lintouse for your generous donation towards my research!  Here is a Saturniid Moth since they are your favorite.  Also, I LOVE that backpack you made!  So awesome! 

Rothschild Silk Moth, Mindo, Ecuador

Pledge a dollar to women in science here!

Guess who’s going back to the Amazon?

That’s right! buggirl‘s going back to the Amazon. Yay!

In tangentially related news, I spent some quality time with this little lady in the garage yesterday:

She was perfectly amiable. I didn’t touch her, but I sat next to her for a while and at one point gave her a nudge with the corner of my phone to see how she’d react. She just shifted over a little.

At no point did I crush, squash, dismember, or mutilate her. When I checked back later she’d moved off into some dark recess.

It’s a little weird to navigate this boundary. Until recently I was a squash-all-black-widows-on-sight person, and this behavior of mine would have seemed thoroughly irrational. It still feels odd, and subject to an undercurrent of lingering arachnophobia.

Anyway. Baby steps.

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sexpigeon:

What do you see in the garbage this morning? It is yourself, rimmed in gold.

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urbpan:

eusoniptera:

Glass katydid (nymph)

Source: The Amazing Glass Katydid

Welcome to Planet Earth, the best one.

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