russianarthistory:

Alexei Savrasov

Evening. Migration of birds, 1874

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carlsagan:

ah yes, kinesin propagating towards the plus end of a microtubule

i give this fresh cool meme a 10/10

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I love XKit guy.

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kurts-cigarettes:

Details of paintings of flower vases I saw at the Louvre. (click on each to enlarge and see the wonderful details)

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windandwater:

Before I moved to New York I loved thunderstorms, with the kind of torrential rain that comes when the sky shakes and the trees toss and you get drenched if you step outside.

I hate them here. They’re too dirty, stressful, and they sneak up on you when you don’t have an umbrella and you have things that can’t get wet.

A year ago today I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, camping, and it was pouring rain but I didn’t mind at all. The world was wet and clean and green.

Last week I dreamed about a stressful day when it was pouring rain, but the rain didn’t make the anxiety worse as it normally does.

Two days ago I got caught in the rain coming home, but instead of racing inside I took my time and got wet and smiled at the sky. For once in my life I didn’t feel tossed about by the winds trying to blow me away. For once, for once, I was the eye in the middle.

Next week I’ll be taking a trip I’ve wanted to take for as long as I can remember. I’m stressed and excited and I hope it doesn’t rain, but it won’t matter if it does. All I want for myself is to feel peace, in the rain or out of it, wherever my road takes me next. Peace isn’t an easy thing for me to find; but maybe, even when it rains hard all around me, I’ll be able to do it anyway.

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detailsofpaintings:

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portait de la Princesse Albert de Broglie (detail)

1853

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Laura Spencer’s acting in “Snickerdoodles” was one of the major highlights of LBD for me.

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lvndcity:

Jorge Cardoso (2008)

Azores, Portugal

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Closing the gap between stars & fans:

genedmyers:

My son and I were standing in front of an empty stage. “Come on over here,” I said. I was trying to coax him onto the stage. There was no one around and it wasn’t a stage as much as it was a raised platform in an old, empty barn. But I thought he’d have fun pretending he was…

This reminds me a lot of things I’ve been thinking lately about my own preference for Internet-based media, where it’s easier to relate to creators as real people, and where the creative process becomes more of a real-time conversation, and sometimes even a collaboration, between creators and fans.

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fromthemindofpan:

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy

Episode 18 – Torn

I had a… bug in my pants. I was attempting to extricate it. It appears to be gone now, so I will resume normal movement. – John Darling 

Impressive high kick by John Darling is impressive.

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expressions-of-nature:

Happy by: Kerstin P

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plant-strong:

Scooby Doo has great life lessons to teach:

If something evil is happening, it’s probably an old white man trying to make money.

Also: at least one dog understands and speaks mostly-intelligible human language, but in a world with a profusion of occultish supernatural-presenting phenomena, there is always a rational explanation (typically involving, yeah, a greedy old white dude).

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“Full iPad support is coming very soon. Actual product does not come in a box nor is box shaped.”

– http://xkitm.com — so, no iPad version yet. But soon. _So_ looking forward to that. The days of the painfully long text post that is eaten by the Tumblr app at the point of posting will hopefully soon be over.

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lies:

metaraymek:

mephistodrinkingbitches:

vingspann:

xkit-extension:

Introducing XKit for iPhone

Well it took a few months, but it’s here: XKit for iOS is now available on the App Store. It comes with Blacklist, PostBlock, Mute, One-Click Reply, Disable GIFs, No Recommended Posts and much more.

I also wrote a transparency letter about it, if you are interested. (highly recommended as it discusses some missing features and the future of the app.)

Learn more at xkitm.com

REJOICE, MY MOBILE FRIENDS. YOU, TOO, CAN AVOID ALL THE STUPID SPONSORED SHIT AND BLACKLIST THINGS.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOD

HELL YES.

I will be checking this out approximately… now.

I’ve only been using it a few minutes, but I already love it. I would have happily given $1.99 to XKit guy on general principles, but being able to have an XKit-mediated experience on my iPhone (and I assume on the iPad; checking that out next) is awesome.

Goodbye Tumblr app, hello XKit app.

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metaraymek:

mephistodrinkingbitches:

vingspann:

xkit-extension:

Introducing XKit for iPhone

Well it took a few months, but it’s here: XKit for iOS is now available on the App Store. It comes with Blacklist, PostBlock, Mute, One-Click Reply, Disable GIFs, No Recommended Posts and much more.

I also wrote a transparency letter about it, if you are interested. (highly recommended as it discusses some missing features and the future of the app.)

Learn more at xkitm.com

REJOICE, MY MOBILE FRIENDS. YOU, TOO, CAN AVOID ALL THE STUPID SPONSORED SHIT AND BLACKLIST THINGS.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOD

HELL YES.

I will be checking this out approximately… now.

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wnderlst:

Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Germany | Rolf Nachbar

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anonsally replied to your post: Unauthorized fan tattoo of the Calvin …

Oh! I didn’t realise that was what you were referencing! :)

It is! I probably wouldn’t post “Closer…” so much if it didn’t make me smile every time, remembering that strip.

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“

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

”

–

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montereybayaquarium:

Hacking for Healthy Oceans

For 36 hours over Father’s Day Weekend, the Aquarium hosted an unusual sleepover. Few of the participants got much rest.

We were one of five sites for a first-ever State Department-sponsored Fishackathon. The goal was to find technological solutions so fishermen in the developing world can make their catch more sustainable.

Teams of coders, designers and project managers created website solutions and apps for smartphones and cell phones – tools that small-scale fishermen can use in places like West Africa and the Philippines to document their catch and report illegal fishing.

Nearly 40 participants gathered on a Friday night in Monterey with laptops, sleeping bags – and novel ideas for creating tools that will be effective in parts of the world where internet access and high-tech equipment is limited. By Sunday morning, they had solutions to offer.

In addition to tackling two State Department problem statements, we also asked our hackers to help with a Seafood Watch challenge: How can information about how fish were caught travel through the supply chain from the boat where it’s landed to the market or restaurant where it’s finally sold?

The outcome? Incredible.

The results were beyond our wildest expectations.

A four-person team we welcomed from the UC-Berkeley School of Information won the top national prize for “Fish DB”, a multi-layered solution to one of the State Department challenges. And a three-person team that formed during the Fishackathon won the Seafood Watch challenge with its “Go Fish!” app: a simple labeling system using colors and numbers to show sustainability and freshness of seafood items. The app incorporates gaming principles, rewards and social sharing features to encourage consumers to buy ocean-friendly seafood.

“I can’t believe what great results these teams produced over the weekend!” said Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, director of Seafood Watch. “We will definitely tap into the talents of hackers in the future.”

An appealing location

It might not be too hard to lure them back to Monterey, if comments from the Berkeley team are any indication. They used words like “epic” and “thrilled” to describe sleeping in front of the Kelp Forest and Open Sea, and having access to the knowledge of Aquarium staff and State Department experts.

“We had a blast!” team member Isha Dandavate told the UC-Berkeley news service. “I can’t even express how cool it was. Having the hackathon in an aquarium has sort of ruined us for all other hackathons.”

The State Department was equally thrilled, and is now making plans for a 2015 Fishackathon around World Oceans Day.

Learn how your everyday choices can support healthy oceans

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Ash Forests After Emerald Ash Borers Destroy Them – NYTimes.com:

The first thing you should know: The adult emerald ash borer is beautiful. Isolated in an artfully composed macro photo, its shimmering exoskeleton is breathtaking.

The second thing you should know: Unwittingly airlifted by humans into an environment from which it had been evolutionarily isolated, the emerald ash borer is simply following its God/Darwin-given imperative when it destroys the Northeastern ash forest.

The third thing you should know: The novel ecosystem that emerges from that destruction will not be a sterile lunar landscape. It will include many living things forming a deeply wonderful “nature.” Our descendants will walk through that landscape appreciating its non-human wonders even as some of them are aware of the role humans played in defining it.

The fourth thing you should know: Even so, something will have been lost.

This topic comes up every time I do a docent tour at the marsh. Much of the effort of restoring habitat is weeding out nonnative invasive plants. Remove the nonnative plants and you give the native plants a chance to survive. Help the native plants and you help the insects that co-evolved with them, and the insectivorous birds that co-evolved with the insects, and the parasites that live on all of them, and so on up and down and out through the multitude of layers that build up when life has a chance to operate in relatively stable conditions across evolutionary timescales.

A metaphor I’ve used to try to describe it is a piece of music. The organisms that co-evolve to form a natural community have built up over millions of years, gradually adding notes to a complex symphony that is rich and harmonious. Introducing a nonnative species in that setting is like bringing in a Jimi Hendrix solo in the middle of a Brahms concerto. It’s not that the Hendrix solo is bad. But it’s out of place, discordant. The other instruments can’t compete. The Hendrix solo gets louder, its amplification drowning out the gentle notes that had been providing its counterpoint. One by one, other instruments go quiet. Eventually the Hendrix solo may exhaust itself, continuing with the volume turned down. Things stabilize, and a new equilibrium is reached. But the overall musical landscape is poorer, less diverse, than it was before.

Over time it can build up again. The process of extinction and speciation continues. The emerald ash borer’s destruction of the ash forest is just one part of a much larger piece of music. There have been five great extinctions in the history of earth, and the fact that we’re currently engineering a sixth isn’t some huge tragedy, at least from a sufficiently detached perspective. It’s just the end of one movement, which will lead to the start of another, in which the music gradually swells as it plays toward its inevitable, much more distant, conclusion.

But on the much briefer timescale on which humans live their lives, it’s a loss.

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