Palestinian and Black ppl asking white people to be careful about not centering whiteness at Free Palestine/BLM rallies and marches is a sign of respect in my eyes.
I myself can be accused of being infantilizing or even dehumanizing because I trust white folks to not center themselves amongst the “other” as much as I trust a dog with my lunch.
The bending to appeal to the white heart - hair hotcombed and Sunday’s best starched and ironed to attend the Civil Rights marches of the 60’s, kids pleading in English with hopeful eyes and smiles for TikTok today- hasn’t whiteness been accommodated enough yet? Still can’t see the struggle unless it’s Lawrence of Arabia, the last of the Mohicans, or some shit?
White people show photos of themselves at rallies 20-30 years later and it gives them clout in their political careers while every other subject of an iconic photo of a non-white person at these events end up dead under mysterious circumstance, openly assassinated, or spirited away to Guantanamo.
Wool-Carder Bees: these solitary bees harvest the soft, downy hairs that grow on certain plants, rolling them into bundles and then using the material to line their nests
Wool-carder bees build their nests in existing cavities, usually finding a hole/crevice in a tree, a plant stem, a piece of rotting wood, or a man-made structure, and then lining the cavity with woolly plant fibers, which are used to form a series of brood cells.
The fibers (known as trichomes) are collected from the leaves and stems of various plants, including lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina), mulleins, globe thistle, rose campion, and other fuzzy plants.
From the University of Florida's Department of Entomology & Nematology:
The female uses her toothed mandibles to scrape trichomes off fuzzy plants and collects a ball of the material under her abdomen. She transports these soft plant fibers to her selected nest site and uses them to line a brood cell. Next, she collects and deposits a provision of pollen and nectar into the cell, enough pollen to feed a larva until it is ready to pupate. Lastly, she lays a single egg on top of the pollen and nectar supply before sealing the cell. ... She will repeat this process with adjoining cells until the cavity is full.
These are solitary bees, meaning that they do not form colonies or live together in hives. Each female builds her own nest, and the males do not have nests at all.
Female wool-carder bees will sometimes sting if their nest is threatened, but they are generally docile. The males are notoriously aggressive, however; they will often chase, head-butt, and/or wrestle any other insect that invades their territory, and they may defend their territory from intruders up to 70 times per hour. The males do not have stingers, but there are five tiny spikes located on the last segment of their abdomen, and they often use those spikes when fighting. They also have strong, sharp mandibles that can crush other bees.
There are many different types of wool-carder bee, but the most prolific is the European wool-carder (Anthidium manicatum), which is native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa, but has also become established as an invasive species throughout much of North America, most of South America, and New Zealand. It is the most widely distributed unmanaged bee in the world.
A few different species of wool-carder bee: the top row depicts the European wool-carder, A. manicatum (left) and the spotted wool-carder, Anthidium maculosum (right), while the bottom row depicts the reticulated small-woolcarder, Pseudoanthidium reticulatum, and Porter's wool-carder, Anthidium porterae
Sources & More Info:
University of Florida: The Woolcarder Bee
Oregon State University: European Woolcarder Bees
Bohart Museum of Entomology: Facts about the Wool Carder Bee (PDF)
Bumblebee Conservation Trust: A. manicatum
World's Best Gardening Blog: European Wool Carder Bees - Likeable Bullies
Biological Invasions: Global Invasion by Anthidium manicatum
If you're on Windows 11 like I am for my "main" computer (in my case for school purposes and because I can't get Baldur's Gate 3 to play on Linux), then you might've seen this annoying piece of AI shit show up on your taskbar:
This is Windows Copilot, and it's fulled by the same shit ChatGPT is fuelled by. There is currently no way to uninstall it, but there is a way to deactivate it completely, which I've linked below. It's very easy, and it took me like, 2 minutes to do.
Hello world, I am Muhammad Munir from Gaza, I am 30 years old and I live my whole life under the Israeli occupation. The last 6 months of genocide have been very difficult, more than words can say. I have decided that I need to leave Gaza in order to treat my wife and evacuate my children to safety. My children need their mother to take care of them. Please help me raise the money I need for the evacuation, food and basic supplies before the evacuation. I am close to my goal. If you say Palestine is free, then I ask you to work for Palestine as well. Please help me reach safety and begin the journey of treating my wife and evacuating my family to safety. I thank you with all my heart.