lobster @Lobster@social.cleverlibre.org

Winter has arrived! #PureMichigan

When I was seven or eight, I was given a copy of the “Ladybird Book of Butterflies & Moths”. The idea was to record seeing each one of the several dozen varieties of butterfly and moths illustrated in the book and when you had ticked off all the varieties in the book, you could send off for a badge or a certificate, or something like that.
The area where I lived was particularly blessed with species variety in the butterfly world as it encompassed chalk down land, salt marsh, ancient woodland on clay soil and a variety of other habitats. This meant that I had little difficulty finding most of the butterflies in the book, but one particular species evaded me: the European swallowtail, “Papilio machaon”. This was not surprising as it is found, to this day, in the UK only around the Norfolk Broads and even there it is rather rare.
I pestered my mother for months to take me to somewhere where we would see a swallow tail and no matter how often she explained that the only place we would be likely to see one was, back in those days, 3/4 of a day's journey on the train. I was distraught; inconsolable, even! I cried, I sobbed, I begged, but all to no avail; in the end, I just had to accept that my ladybird book of butterflies would never be complete!
I had almost completely forgotten about the ladybird book of butterflies until a few months back when a swallowedtail butterfly appeared in my garden. I have never seen one before, nor since. It took me right back to my childhood and the gamut of emotions that I endured due to that damned book of butterflies.
The only problem I have now is “what the hell did I do with that sodding book?”

#alttext
A yellow swallowtail butterfly feeding on the purple Buddleia blossom in my garden in Luxembourg. A rare species even over here!

People on the mstdn.social instance probably don't know who their instance admin is...

So, everyone on mstdn.social...

I'd like to introduce you to your instance admin (the person making sure your instance works as it should)...

@stux - Stux. 👍🏻

Follow them.

It’s cold outside. Stay inside and bake bread instead

Here’s a sneak peek from my next book, authored by Barbara Herkert & illustrated by me about Pacific madrone trees & the species that rely on them.

This illustration (sans the text) shows the root system & zooms in to show the fungal network. Madrones have a complex relationship with fungi in the soil. They form complex networks called mycorrhizae, which bring additional nutrients and water to the tree and help them grow in inhospitable places. Pretty cool!
#sciart #kidlitart #nonfiction

On Twitter, some people are warning that Mastodon server/instance admins can read your DMs. As if this would somehow be worse than Musk and Zuckerberg reading your messages.

More importantly: if Twitter & Facebook have taught us anything, it's that you shouldn't use a *public* social media platform for exchanging *private* messages.

That's what Signal is for.

@baldengineer
Not more weird than usual. You just got used to abnormal normalcy.

Hello! I am a water quality scientist & engineer who does research, teaching, and outreach on water infrastructure, resource recovery, and equitable access to quality water services. I am learning how to navigate this platform, and happy to connect with others.

I hope that when you are alone, you don't feel lonely, you feel at home ✨

#Love #MentalHealth

A quick reminder that in my spare time I'm a Level 3 LCARS Systems Administrator responsible for @starfleetjobs, the premier source for, er, jobs in Starfleet.

#startrek #starfleet #joinstarfleet

Overnight snow to be followed by a lot more in the next 48 hours. Pictures from my backdoor. #Snow #Småland #SimpleLiving

#bird #hummingbird #photography

How we spread #Disinformation — When a piece of information confirms our beliefs, we don't really look to know whether it's truthful or not and are then more likely to share it, thus spreading potentially fake news.

Top notch science #cartoon by the late Martin Perscheid.

But if your position is "The war on drugs is fine! But let me and my friends do coke and microdose! Only Black drug users are bad!"

Or "Bail reform sucks! And lock up more homeless people! But free Liz Holmes!"

Then perhaps sit this one out.

what she will do today

acrostic poem by risa bear (shonin) in What To Do About Trees (2016)

#poem #poetry #acrostic #aging #homesteading #gardening #SeasonalFoods

Xanthoria X. parietina or X. polycarpa? #lichen

@Lobster the followup questions of what do you make is hard too for me as I have lots of different art I make.

Twitter cannot exist without a team of developers and engineers to keep it running 24/7 and I have a feeling Elon will soon realise this if he hasn't already

If I see how much work (love it though) it brings to only support ~100K people on a platform I don't wanna know the resources Twitter needs..

But the beauty of the #Fediverse is that I'm not doing it alone, not even by a long shot. It's more like every Fedi server admin out there is working for the fedi for free❤️ Haha, even paying for it

We don't 'work' for money but do it as a passion for you! A way of contributing a little to a better use of the internet 💪

Yesterday 3 words stuck in my head that still are a little weird in my view: "social media company". It's what Twitter, FB and many others call themselfs but somehow the word "company" does not fit there somehow.

Social media shouldn't be a business but more like a public service. I mean even our government uses Twitter for giving out information, dafaq.