this month's bugs. the outrageous one at the top right is real, Austrospirachtha carrijoi, a rove beetle that parasitizes termite nests
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The Knight of the Flowers (1894)
— by Georges Rochegrosse
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You spend such a long time chasing each other in and out of villages and spitting and dodging fireballs, you get to be pretty good friends.
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bitter aloe adorned with the webs of a dome spider (Cyrtophora moluccensis)
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Self-taught sculptor Romain Langlais turned to bronze, a metal he now incorporates into works that are inspired by nature rather than man. His pieces visually pull apart the natural objects that surround us—building works that appear as bisected rocks, boulders, and tree trunks. These sculptures showcase glistening bronze protruding from their insides, unleashing the perceived inner energy of each object.
See more work by Romain on his website.
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Gouache painting of long-tailed tits for the upcoming book about my local nature reserve.
Long-tailed tits make stretchy nests from a base of moss and spider silk. On the outside they’re covered in lichen for camouflage and inside are lined with feathers for cosiness!
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Gossamer wings
Transparent strings
Tomorrow greets yesterday
Like all the words on replay
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I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…
EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.
When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”
I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”
So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”
The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.
So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:
Turn it off.
Walk away.
Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.
And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.
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Garden of Hope - James Gurney (detail)
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