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Brief Book Review - Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

April 22 2024

Excellent read but hard to get through. Worth it.

This book is a lot of things. Beautifully written, endless stories and research and interviews with interesting people, there's some hope and many people working hard for good things, but damn is it also extremely upsetting for those of us with soft hearts. Radicalizing.

You're going to read/hear a lot about animal death in this book, about all the different ways that beautiful animals all across the planet are dying due to roads. From vehicles killing them outright, to animals refusing to cross the roads due to the perceived danger and then starving to death or dying out b/c of lack of access to mates, to pollution from cars/road salt, to poorly designed culverts preventing fish migrations, to how human health and lifespans are negatively impacted and how redlining in US cities hurt black communities.

This is a hard read and I wept, but I'm glad I managed to get through it. There's a lot of solid history/info in here about roads and how people first reacted to cars in the US, how cars brought travel to the middle classes and not just the rich, how much the US forest service was in bed with the logging industry and why the national forests are waayyyyy more fucked and damaged than one might think, how animal rehabbers in Tazmania work so hard to save animals, the dramatic road expansions going on in Brasil, from Alaska to Oakland CA to Minnesota to Florida to the UK a lot of terrain and a lot of animals are covered here.

And basically the issue is that different kinds of animals have different needs, so the best ways to help them survive being near roads vary and tend to be expensive, in an area of gov't that doesn't have much public attention or a big budget and generally has been deferring basic maintenance due to that (and therefore isn't really open to things like wildlife crossings - but well designed they save TONS of animal lives).

The mere existence of a road decreases the chances of individual and species survival. Roads decrease biodiversity and can lead species to extinction. The best thing we can do is actually to stop building them, but since that isn't realistic, the second best thing we can do is to pay attention to road ecologists and indigenous peoples to help design infrastructure that will better help the animals survive the onslaught of death that roads bring.

(this is as brief as I can make it! this book covers a LOT of territory)

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Miss Piggy On Beauty

What are your top beauty tips?

Start out perfect and don’t change a thing. Always accentuate your best features by pointing at them. And conceal your flaws by sucker punching anyone who has the audacity to mention them.

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You know what, since I'm thinking about it anyways, let's talk formalwear accessories. Most of these are traditionally menswear but a bit of gender fuckery is good for the soul, and frankly most of these are about making your mass-produced clothing fit and lay properly without having to go to the tailor.

Shirt stays: these go around your thighs to hold your shirt down, so that it stays smooth and tucked in. They're usually elastic, with 1-3 clips, and if you wear skirts frequently this is a GREAT way to make sure your top doesn't ride up. The clips will be visible if you're wearing something tight, so loose pants or skirts are where these do best. There's also an insane version that clips to your socks, but that is for lunatics. If you wanted, you could also use one of these clips to hold up thigh-highs.

These do a great job of smoothing and narrowing the waist area by keeping your shirt from bunching there.

Sleeve garters: usually metal, leather, elastic, or silk. These are usually worn with button-down shirts to adjust where your cuff falls on the wrist or hand. They're properly worn on the upper arm, and you pull the fabric of the sleeve above the garter until you cuff is where you want it. Because this creates a puff of sleeve at the bicep, it also broadens the appearance of the shoulders. It's great if you're working with your hands or if your sleeves are often too long for your preference.

Waistband clip or belt adjustment clip/buttons

Three different ways of tightening the waistband of a pair of pants or a skirt. You're not going to get more than an inch or so tighter without weird bunching, and for most of these you'd want them to be hidden under a shirt or jacket, but they do the job if that's something you're having issues with.

Collar pins: There are so many fun ones out there, both with and without chains. They're not terribly practical, though the slight weight may help keep your collar where you want it. Also consider collar tips, which pin (surprise) to the very tips of your collar points.

Sweater clips/guards: meant to hold your sweater or cardigan mostly closed. Great if your cardigan doesn't button, or if you don't like it to be buttoned all the way.

There's tons of other stuff out there like this--etsy is a great place to find this stuff. A lot of these are old solutions to the very modern problem of mass-maufactured clothes not being as one-size-fits-all as advertised, but they're also a fun way to put a bit of personality into businesswear.

#clothing #fashion #accessories

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cuddle buddies

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A sign every artist and crafter should have on their site and window.

When I get my site up and running I’m putting this on the Commission/Payment page.

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I'm trying to write a post about tick safety and avoiding tick bites, but a lot of the info on websites is like "Avoid going in the woods, in plants, and where there are wild animals" and "Activities like hiking and gardening can put you at risk" and I'm like thanks! This is worthless!

As ticks and tick borne illnesses are expanding their range, I think it's important for people to be educated about these things, and I think it's especially important to give people actual advice on how to protect themselves instead of telling them to just...avoid the natural world

Rough draft version of Tick Advice:

Ticks don't jump down on you from trees, they get on you when you brush against grass, brush, bushes etc.

Ticks get brought to an area when they get done feeding from an animal and fall off them. In the USA, the main tick-bringing animal is deer, but I've seen plenty ticks on feral cats and songbirds.

Ticks get killed when they dry out so drier areas with more sunlight are less favorable to ticks.

The above is useful for figuring out whether an area is likely to have lots of ticks, and how vigilant you have to be in that area.

Wear light-colored, long pants outside. Tuck your pants into your socks, and tuck your shirt into the waist of your pants. Invest in light, breathable fabrics idc

IMMEDIATELY change out of your outside clothes when you come back from a tick-prone area, wash them, and dry them on high heat to kill any ticks that might be stuck on.

Shower and check yourself for ticks after coming inside. Hair, armpits, and nether regions in particular. You can use a handheld mirror or rely on touch; an attached tick will feel like a bump kinda like a scab

While you're outside, you can just periodically check for ticks by running your hands down your legs and checking visually to see if anything is crawling on your clothes. Light colors make them easy to spot, and they don't move fast.

Combing through each others' hair to check for creepy crawly critters is a time-honored primate ritual and is not weird. When hiking, bring a friend who will have your back when you feel something on your neck and need to know if it's sweat or a tick

If you're careful, you can usually catch ticks before they bite you, but if one does bite you, it's not the end of the world. Since tickborne diseases are different regionally i suspect this advice will differ based on where you are, but the important thing is remove the tick with tweezers (DON'T use butter, a lit match, or anything that kills the tick while it's still attached, please) and contact a doctor to see what to watch for. Most illnesses you can catch from ticks are easily treatable if you recognize them when symptoms first appear

#ticks

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spot on!!!!!

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I’ve watched this 6 times

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I appreciate the sound effects they added in.

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I made a little wooly bear caterpillar. I was inspired by The Closet Historian's moth brooch video to learn turkey stitch, and I tried brushing it with a wire brush, which really fluffed it up a lot more. I had to trim it a little bit more after the brushing.

All the materials were from my stash, and I didn't time it but it took quite a few hours. I wish I'd used a thinner fabric because this felted coat wool was a bit tough to sew through, and didn't want to bend into a rounded caterpillar shape.

I'm quite happy with it, it turned out so cute! It's a bit bigger than a real one.

#insects

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LGBT also excludes the aces, the aros, the agenders, the demis, the enbies, the genderfluids, the people whose identities fluctuate or change with age and experience, the people who are still questioning and still trying to figure out which fridge magnets they want to use, and anyone and everyone else who doesn't fit neatly into one of those LGBT boxes.

Queer encompasses everyone who doesn't fit the heteronormative mould.

We're here, we're queer.

Get fucking used to it.

Everything is like “QUEER history” and “List of QUEER young adult books” or “Top 10 QUEER movies” and queer this and queer that and for the love of god please just say LGBT.

#queer #queer community

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#big mood

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i love being ace and blasting all my favorite characters with the ace beam. they're all on the ace spectrum now. ace greyace demi all of it. ace blast

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reblog to put a weighted blanket on the person u reblog this from

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The Outbursts of Everett True was a comic strip that ran in papers from 1905 to 1927, wherein the aforementioned Everett True regularly beat the everliving shit out of rude people as a warning to anyone else who might consider being rude. Men have not only been taking up too much room on public transport for about as long as public transport has existed, but the people around them have been irritated about it for at least a hundred years. The next time someone tries to claim that manspreading is a false phenomenon, please direct them to this strip so that Everett True can correct their misconceptions with an umbrella upside the head.