Sebastian @habmala@skrivel.se

😆

The idea of plant vision isn't quite as ridiculous as it may first seem.

Some cyanobacteria can "see" by using their entire single-celled bodies to focus light. A little like tiny swimming eyeballs. The idea that higher plants could contain similar structures (called "ocelli") has been hypothesised by botanists for some time. Among others, Francis Darwin (the son of Charles Darwin).

Here's an article from Scientific American with more info:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-vision-do-plants-see-the-world-around-them/

Boquila trifoliolata is a vine which lives in temperate rainforests in Chile and Argentina. It looks pretty unexciting, but that's just what the plant wants you to think!

This plant will mimic the leaves of any tree it grows on, or even mimic leaves which happen to be nearby. No one knows how it does this.

The vine doesn't need any physical contact to do this. Some botanists think it can "smell" and recognise nearby plants. More outlandishly, others wonder if it might have rudimentary vision.

A possibly related phenomenon is called crown shyness – certain species of trees will very politely avoid overshadowing each other in a forest canopy, leaving gaps between each others' branches.

Mostly trees of the same species will do this, but different species of tree have been observed doing this too.

Again, no one's entirely sure how the trees do this, and some botanists are probably arguing about it somewhere right now.

oh and, in case that's not clear, I am NOT saying abusers have a place among us. they never have and never will. cheers.

saying that a mass of people can't call itself an effective political group until they attain perfection in their own eyes and all agree on everything IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD SAY IF YOU WERE TRYING TO SABOTAGE THAT GROUP

the catastrophising way some self-criticism is phrased really stinks of "we have to be perfect because we're the critics of everything that exists" which, no. we'll never be perfect. the process of identifying the things we're doing wrong and navigating disagreements among our own ranks is what we should be doing all the time. for as long as you can identify things that are going wrong, you're on the right path.

i think leftist communities might underestimate just how much of the self-flagellating we're constantly doing might be the result of internalising the repressive efforts of those who want to silence us

hey guys. it's my birthday. i don't want boosts. just watch this.

The idea that people who worked didn't know how to read or write is another harmful misconception. The plays written in England in the 14th and 15th centuries, for example, constitute an incredible literary achievement, and were written exclusively by workers. William Langland, who wrote one of the greatest poems in Middle English, was somewhere between a peasant and extremely poor cleric.