vital functions
May. 10th, 2020 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. Still plodding along with The Story of my Life. I'm sort of ruefully amused at myself; I'm feeling embarrassed and defensive about "yep still working on the book I've been picking away at for over a month now", and also recognising that This Happens And Is Okay, and also observing what an excellent demonstration it is of why I'm doing vital functions posts rather than What Are You Reading? Wednesday. So that's a thing.
I'm charmed by the letters themselves -- now being well into correspondence -- but continue extremely raised-hackles about the framing language used by the compiler, which is part of why I'm taking so long over it, I think.
I've also been slowly making progress with Sound and Fury: when opposition to facilitated communication functions as hate speech (Stubblefield, 2011). I was mostly here for the literature review; I'm not sure I'm going to keep going into the exploration of the "functions as hate speech" chunk.
Watching. Planet Earth: shallow seas.
Listening. Slowly slowly TMA: this week's episode, and we're coming up on episode 30 on the relisten. (I remain irritated at my apparent ongoing mental block about needing to write a Proper Post. Goal for this week: just make some words even if they're incoherent bullet points. That goes for the PhD as well, actually.)
Cooking. Two batches of sea-spicy aubergine, the second less successful than the first.
Ruby Violet's pear sorbet recipe. It is so good.
Sourdough with 10% rye and a good addition of caraway: did exactly what I wanted it to, to my delight. This Will Be Happening Again. (I've also been admiring My Mother's First Sourdough, and various other bread made by various other people!)
Making & mending. ... I've logged into my Dreamhack for the first time in, literally, a year (apparently my previous login was 11th May 2019!). I haven't done anything yet beyond getting it vaguely up-to-date and trying to troubleshoot issues actually getting things started, but hey. Dreamhack.
Growing. So many plants. So many.
Sown: three luffa and three butternut squash, in a module tray in the greenhouse. Two rows of calabrese (broccoli) and one row each of two types of lettuce, around the peas and beans. So many onion sets (courtesy of my mother).
Hatched: eleven cucumbers! (Chengelkoy.) (I think the Longfellow cucumbers and the leeks are a lost cause, but that's honestly expected given how old the seeds are.)
In the ground: my broad beans are flowering; to my cautious (and extremely surprised) delight, the slugs don't seem to have got all (any?!) of the peas, which are tentatively making contact with their climbing frame; most of the Greek 'Gigantes' beans have been slugged but one seems to be trying to hang on (and I'll see if any of the others actually germinate); the Pattison Blanc squash continue under their ersatz cloche. Garlic and shallots are alliuming along enthusiastically; there's lots of fruit forming on all the Ribes.
In the greenhouse: four (beefsteak) tomato plants in a ground-level bed; the rest still on the side. Probably I jumped the gun in planting out those four but I really did want some more wee pots, so so it goes. None of them are flowering yet, which I'm a bit :( about, but. Fingers crossed for their continued growth. The chillis are flowering, most of them (I have seven purple chilli plants this is too many and I still want to buy six varieties of seed for next year); the peppers are all continuing to stolidly grow but aren't showing any inclination to flower yet.
(Whisper it very quietly: we also moved the lemon to the greenhouse, on Saturday. To my very great frustration I managed to knock its last full-grown leaf off while moving it within the greenhouse to its final position... but I think there's some? potential evidence? of buds? along the branches?)
Infrastructure: The fruit cage is in its essentials complete; I'm working on weeding around the base enough to finish pegging down the wire mesh, and also I've decided I put the door in a suboptimal place so am ordering one more part and then redoing some of the mesh panels so that, well, it's in a less silly place. A came over to the plot on Wednesday evening and helped me put 30m of stockings on the cherry, so he might actually get fruit this year.
At home: a second! Comedy onion! Sprouted! I'd given it up for dead! But no I now have TWO comedy onions. TWO of them. If I manage to keep them alive, fingers crossed. The tiny oak is resolutely hanging in there, and possibly considering producing some more leaves; the walnut definitely bravely is. The lovage is putting forth enthusiastic growth, with poppies sprouting around it (and I've come to a conclusion about where I want to sow the rest of them at the plot, as and when I get as far as weeding that bit of the bank). The purple sprouting broccoli and the celeriac (still in modules) are beginning to develop true leaves. The potted-up supermarket basil seems to be getting itself sturdily established; the holy basil is finally likewise Getting There. The fig has about fifteen fruit on, successfully overwintered, which are starting to swell up. I've let the mint outcompete the parsley rather and need to cull it; the thyme and chives and lavender are all putting out new sprouts and the rosemary is flowering.
I've sorted out another handful of seed packets for sowing this week. I need to finish moving the earth thathalojedha organised.
I've very definitely started hitting my limits in terms of how often I can leave the house, which is tedious. Gonna hafta rejig this to pace myself better, and also actually click buy on the irrigation system.
Observing. The fox and parakeets, at the allotment! The yellow rose, in the hedge at home. THE BAT.
Playing. Okay okay okay. Most exciting PoGo news: 96% Mewtwo from the Kanto research, by far and away my best; two half-decent shiny Snubbull during the event along with two 98% IV Snubbull and one 100% (having already wild-caught one previously); a Scraggy from actually playing in the Battle League; yet another shiny Magikarp, ditto a high-level high-IV Machop; and a SHINY SHADOW MAWILE with 82% IVs pre-purification! I am also very much enjoying the increased interaction range for Pokéstops.
Horn: staccato is haaaaaaaard. Progress is, nevertheless, being made.
I'm charmed by the letters themselves -- now being well into correspondence -- but continue extremely raised-hackles about the framing language used by the compiler, which is part of why I'm taking so long over it, I think.
I've also been slowly making progress with Sound and Fury: when opposition to facilitated communication functions as hate speech (Stubblefield, 2011). I was mostly here for the literature review; I'm not sure I'm going to keep going into the exploration of the "functions as hate speech" chunk.
Watching. Planet Earth: shallow seas.
Continental shelves: typically <200m deep. 8% of the world's oceans.
Humpback Whale Male does a Sexy Grunting.
BABY WHALE BABY WHALE BABY WHALE. Three metres long, weighs nearly a tonne, IS A BAB. so smol!!! parental whale boops up to the surface with a nose. 500 litres of milk a day, good grief. And mysteriously Nothing For The Mother To Eat even though we've just been told that most marine life lives in these shallow seas -- this particular region doesn't have appropriate/necessary nutrients??? So parents don't eat for five months.
Coral reefs: 1/4 of all marine life on planet. "Most tropical shallows are barren" but not reefs???
Hello The Great Barrier Reef (made up of ~2000 separate reefs) -- but greatest marine biodiversity actually around Indonesia.
TIME LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY OF CORALS DOING AN IMPORTANT WIGGLE.
Indonesian reefs: where the Indian Ocean and the PAcific meet.
- OH NO PYGMY SEAHORSES THAT PRETEND TO BE A POLYP AND ARE LESS THAN 2CM TALL OH NO THEY ARE SO GOOD "They are males, settling a territorial dispute by head-butting." OH NO THEY ARE SO SMALL AND SHIT AND DONKY I LOVE YOU.
- hello file flam! no-one knows why you Do That
- banded sea krait!!!! lay eggs on land, hunt in water, DO A SWIM, hello SNEK. blue! stripy! snek!
- yellow goatfish are also pretty excellent, good grief, and so are the trevally
- ... maybe... the fish are Big and the blue stripey sneks??? are Smol?????? scale is WEIRD (as are the snakes' weird flat tales)
- ... hello sound effect human
Alright, now we're onto camouflage in sand shoals
- HELLO THE IMPORTANT OPTOPUS
- OP. TOPUS.
- gurnard!!!! with RIDICULOUSLY large pectoral fins
- jawfish hides underground, looks around grumpily
- ... wonderpus octopus, what the FUCK
- turtle turtle turtle turtle turtle (green turtle)
HELLO SHARK BAY AUSTRALIA
- ARE YOU GONNA TELL US ABOUT THE FRIENDS
- "vast aquatic grasslands" important underwater meadows etc etc etc (seagrass, which have sad little ribbony leaves but lots of undersand rhizomes that are fleshy and Narm)
- okay first we get the dugongs which... might be the True Sea Roombas
-- ... the True Roombas (narmnarmnarmnarmnarm)
-- "aren't you snoofly" says Adam
(... no stromatolites? no... stromatolites. huh.)
... surprise dolphin
- bottlenose dolphins surf into shallow waters hunting baitfish
- okay sound effect human this isn't William Tell but you were clearly having a moment nevertheless and I will grant that's some good horns
- ... dolphin tail-slapping (to stun prey) doesn't work in Very Shallow Waters along WA
- ... so they work up some speed and then hydroplane into the shallowest water
- "so far only eight individuals here have mastered this daring technique"
- ... SOUND. EFFECTS. HUMAN.
spectacular exceptions to concentrations of life around coral reefs and seagrass meadows in tropical shallows.
- deserts of Bahrain: 100,000 Socotra cormorants gather to breed.
- ... they have to do Lots Of Hecking Panting
- OH NO SHITTY BABS
- ... no land-based preadators
- so a huge fucking expanse of nests spaced out juuuuust far enough that they can't peck each other
- "but what! about food! there's only bare sand and the warm shallow sea beyond!"
- sand blows into the Arabian gulf, containing... nutrients, acting as fertiliser, meaning Food O'clock fair enough
back to the whale calf at five months old! "he's almost doubled in size" but he's still T I N Y compared to mum
- alrighty now we get to the humpback migration to northern & southern hemispheres in colder rougher waters ("temperate seas")
- okay the rolling around and hitting the surface of the ocean unergonomically with fins is... communication we think?
- that. is a lighthouse. that's a lighthouse. it is not a whale.
- ah. right. higher turbulence = more agitation of sea floor = more nutrient accessibility, so nutrients + sunlight = algae. blooms in the spring innit.
hello plankton soup
- "salps": "individuals link together to form hains which can stretch for 15 metres"
-- I'm... not sure how I feel about these
- hello comb jellies
- "seasonal soup" THANK U DAVID
- yes we know about krill
- hello sea lions and your shitty feeps
- and then we get dusky dolphin ("often in pods 200 strong") with more Sound Effects Human Has A Good Day while the dolphins go HONK
- only a few places sustain these life levels throughout the summer -- e.g. coast of California, where ocean currents provide constant supply of nutrients that are *not* reliant on winter/early spring storm
- oh hi more footage of the Californian Giant Kelp
- .. hello purple spiky sea urchins
- ... OH NO TIMELAPSE WITH SOUND EFFECTS
- they're eating the kelps' holdfasts, the anchors to rocks
- I am not sure how I feel about these sea-urchin eating orifices
- WHY do sea urchins act as The Lumberjacks Of The Sea
- "urchin barrens" where that's happened, except... invertebrates
- this is a LOT of wiggly little starfish timelapse photography with Sound Effects Human
- "sunflower starfis" a metre across; eats brittle stars
-- A does not feel good about this fucker
-- IMPORTANT TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE BRITTLE STARS NOPING OFF
- hello sand dollars
-- maybe these flat sea urchins are The True Sea Roombas
- ... oh no the sunflower starfish extrudes its stomach to Eat Things
Southern Africa: upwellings "so rich they support colonies of over a million seals"
- Benguela current, meeting Agulhas coming from the East, at the tip of South Africa, hence... you know... the THAT maritime etc
- more squid than fish???
- chokka. squid. what the fuck. what the fuck are their orange eggs. (containing ONE HUNDRED tiny squid) what the FUCK what the FUCK oh no they develop pigment spots are we getting timelapse? I think we're getting timelapse
- what. the fuck.
- and then! come! the stingray! to eat. the egg capsules. oh dear.
-- short-tail stingray, up to 2m across
-- The Largest Of All The Stingrays
-- .. that was a very dramatic Mouth Noise
- hello ragged-tooth shark (no Alex I know but stop typoing it as "sharp" that's not useful)
- ... and also the great white
-- NOPE NOPE NOPE say the Cape fur seals, attempting to go fishing in the morning, passing through a narrow strip of water patrolled by great whites
-- good grief I didn't know seals were so aerodynamic they are spending A LOT of time out of the water
-- great whites only thrive in cold, temperate seas because nowhere else supports enough damn food (they're so fast because METABOLISM)
Helo The Isolated Island Of Marion
- ah. roaring forties --> big waves --> LOTS OF NUTRIENTS
--> LOTS of King Penguins
- returning from 3-day fishing trip to feed chicks
- ... which involves crossing a beach full of elephant seals holy shit
- oh NO the CHICKS
- oh no they are so inelegant at getting out of the water
- ... and they're also being chased by fur seals using their shit feeps to do a walk
-- "fur seals normally live on krill, but these have now acquired an unexpected taste for blubber-rich penguins" oh my goodness go back to eating krill
and baaaaaaaaaack to the whales
- nearly back to the polar seas
- alright we're doing The Arctic Melting
- saying hi to the shearwaters (on their way up to the Aleutians from Australia)
- yep they still dive to hunt the krill
- I mean I can see WHY the camera humans are so fond of the "falling fish scales" shots but... also
- "a large humpback eats three tonnes of krill a day"
- ah here is the environmentalism message
- mother & calf separate upon reaching the feeding grounds
- 70yo wels yes
DIARIES: ugh, ultra-slow motion on the great whites eating seals
They were specifically after capturing a breach, which lasts (real-time) about a second.
Simon's Town, south Africa. Ultra slow-motion camera unit, plus the rim of a bicycle wheel to keep the cameraman on board. Off they go to Seal Island, with 60k fur seals. Arrive at dawn for the first wave ofsharpshark attacks.
Great Whites only show up for 2 months, coinciding with the seal pupping season, with unpredictable behaviour. They actually for once managed to hit a very busy time, but then they had to deal with working out where to point the camera.
Gear: 40x slowdown, AND it's recording information constantly, so if you press the doorbell attached to it in the middle of a breach... you store the second of footage beforehand and the second of footage after.
And then on day 5 everything went quiet... until day 10.
"Once the high-speed camera has fired, it's out of action for 15 minutes while the image downloads onto the computer." ... so he switches back to a normal camera.
Oh oh dear an injured seal now using the boat for cover. Whereupon they cut the engines and Stay Very Still, and everyone is very tense and unhappy because none of this is fun.
Listening. Slowly slowly TMA: this week's episode, and we're coming up on episode 30 on the relisten. (I remain irritated at my apparent ongoing mental block about needing to write a Proper Post. Goal for this week: just make some words even if they're incoherent bullet points. That goes for the PhD as well, actually.)
Cooking. Two batches of sea-spicy aubergine, the second less successful than the first.
Ruby Violet's pear sorbet recipe. It is so good.
Sourdough with 10% rye and a good addition of caraway: did exactly what I wanted it to, to my delight. This Will Be Happening Again. (I've also been admiring My Mother's First Sourdough, and various other bread made by various other people!)
Making & mending. ... I've logged into my Dreamhack for the first time in, literally, a year (apparently my previous login was 11th May 2019!). I haven't done anything yet beyond getting it vaguely up-to-date and trying to troubleshoot issues actually getting things started, but hey. Dreamhack.
Growing. So many plants. So many.
Sown: three luffa and three butternut squash, in a module tray in the greenhouse. Two rows of calabrese (broccoli) and one row each of two types of lettuce, around the peas and beans. So many onion sets (courtesy of my mother).
Hatched: eleven cucumbers! (Chengelkoy.) (I think the Longfellow cucumbers and the leeks are a lost cause, but that's honestly expected given how old the seeds are.)
In the ground: my broad beans are flowering; to my cautious (and extremely surprised) delight, the slugs don't seem to have got all (any?!) of the peas, which are tentatively making contact with their climbing frame; most of the Greek 'Gigantes' beans have been slugged but one seems to be trying to hang on (and I'll see if any of the others actually germinate); the Pattison Blanc squash continue under their ersatz cloche. Garlic and shallots are alliuming along enthusiastically; there's lots of fruit forming on all the Ribes.
In the greenhouse: four (beefsteak) tomato plants in a ground-level bed; the rest still on the side. Probably I jumped the gun in planting out those four but I really did want some more wee pots, so so it goes. None of them are flowering yet, which I'm a bit :( about, but. Fingers crossed for their continued growth. The chillis are flowering, most of them (I have seven purple chilli plants this is too many and I still want to buy six varieties of seed for next year); the peppers are all continuing to stolidly grow but aren't showing any inclination to flower yet.
(Whisper it very quietly: we also moved the lemon to the greenhouse, on Saturday. To my very great frustration I managed to knock its last full-grown leaf off while moving it within the greenhouse to its final position... but I think there's some? potential evidence? of buds? along the branches?)
Infrastructure: The fruit cage is in its essentials complete; I'm working on weeding around the base enough to finish pegging down the wire mesh, and also I've decided I put the door in a suboptimal place so am ordering one more part and then redoing some of the mesh panels so that, well, it's in a less silly place. A came over to the plot on Wednesday evening and helped me put 30m of stockings on the cherry, so he might actually get fruit this year.
At home: a second! Comedy onion! Sprouted! I'd given it up for dead! But no I now have TWO comedy onions. TWO of them. If I manage to keep them alive, fingers crossed. The tiny oak is resolutely hanging in there, and possibly considering producing some more leaves; the walnut definitely bravely is. The lovage is putting forth enthusiastic growth, with poppies sprouting around it (and I've come to a conclusion about where I want to sow the rest of them at the plot, as and when I get as far as weeding that bit of the bank). The purple sprouting broccoli and the celeriac (still in modules) are beginning to develop true leaves. The potted-up supermarket basil seems to be getting itself sturdily established; the holy basil is finally likewise Getting There. The fig has about fifteen fruit on, successfully overwintered, which are starting to swell up. I've let the mint outcompete the parsley rather and need to cull it; the thyme and chives and lavender are all putting out new sprouts and the rosemary is flowering.
I've sorted out another handful of seed packets for sowing this week. I need to finish moving the earth that
halojedha organised.I've very definitely started hitting my limits in terms of how often I can leave the house, which is tedious. Gonna hafta rejig this to pace myself better, and also actually click buy on the irrigation system.
Observing. The fox and parakeets, at the allotment! The yellow rose, in the hedge at home. THE BAT.
Playing. Okay okay okay. Most exciting PoGo news: 96% Mewtwo from the Kanto research, by far and away my best; two half-decent shiny Snubbull during the event along with two 98% IV Snubbull and one 100% (having already wild-caught one previously); a Scraggy from actually playing in the Battle League; yet another shiny Magikarp, ditto a high-level high-IV Machop; and a SHINY SHADOW MAWILE with 82% IVs pre-purification! I am also very much enjoying the increased interaction range for Pokéstops.
Horn: staccato is haaaaaaaard. Progress is, nevertheless, being made.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-10 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-11 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-13 12:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-11 12:15 am (UTC)oh brains. it's a weird time; it's important to be kind to ourselves and to pace persisting through hard stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-11 09:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-11 09:25 pm (UTC)Which is to say, ♥, for whatever reason you find yourself defensive.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-22 09:08 pm (UTC)