Been here about 10 years, mostly come here to chill. Random fandom stuffs, Queer stuffs. Spiders are interesting and calming to observe. Trees.
They/she
“Isn’t it weird that [thing humans commonly eat] is poisonous to literally every domesticated animal” I mean, there’s a pretty good chance that [thing humans commonly eat] is at least mildly poisonous to humans, too. One of our quirks as a species is that we think our food is bland if it doesn’t have enough poison in it.
Humans have a really weird mix of mundane superpowers.
We’re not fast and don’t have a lot of natural weaponry but we’re bizarrely tolerant to a broad range of toxins to the point that one toxin is considered a morning necessity for some to perform at work. Gotta love us.
“In Russian, Baba Yaga’s name is not capitalized. Indeed, it is not a name
at all, but a description—“old lady yaga” or perhaps “scary old woman.” There
is often more than one Baba Yaga in a story, and thus we should really say
“a Baba Yaga,” “the Baba Yaga.” We do so in these tales when a story would
otherwise be confusing. We have continued the western tradition of capitalizing Baba Yaga, since the words cannot be translated and have no other
meaning in English (aside perhaps from the pleasant associations of a rum
baba). There is no graceful way to put the name in the plural in English, and
in Russian tales multiple iterations of Baba Yaga never appear at the same
time, only in sequence: Baba Yaga sisters or cousins talk about one another,
or send travelers along to one another, but they do not live together. The
first-person pronoun “I” in Russian, ‘ia,’ is also uncapitalized. In some tales
our witch is called only “Yaga.” A few tales refer to her as “Yagishna,” a patronymic form suggesting that she is Yaga’s daughter rather than Yaga herself. (That in turn suggests that Baba Yaga reproduces parthenogenetically, and
some scholars agree that she does.) The lack of capitalization in every published Russian folktale also hints at Baba Yaga’s status as a type rather than
an individual, a paradigmatic mean or frightening old woman. This description in place of a name, too, could suggest that it was once a euphemism for
another name or term, too holy or frightening to be spoken, and therefore
now long forgotten.”
— Sibelan Forrester, from her introduction to Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales
I feel like this suggests that - with much dedication and study - you, too, could go out into the woods and be a baba yaga.
my long term retirement plans kinda hinge on it, yeah
Okay, yeah. This is a very, very, very bad idea. I understand that there is a certain flavor of techbro who has ABSOLUTELY zero problem with this because “AI is the future, bro”, and we’re supposed to be reading their articles on how to use AI for side hustles and all that.
I get that ID apps have played into people’s tendency to want quick and easy answers to everything (I’m not totally opposed to apps, but please read about how an app does not a Master Naturalist make.) But nature identification is serious stuff, ESPECIALLY when you are trying to identify whether something is safe to eat, handle, etc. You have to be absolutely, completely, 100000% sure of your ID, and then you ALSO have to absolutely verify that it is safely handled and consumed by humans.
As a foraging instructor, I cannot emphasize this enough. My classes, which are intended for a general audience, are very heavy on identification skills for this very reason. I have had (a small subsection of) students complain that I wasn’t just spending 2-3 hours listing off bunches of edible plants and fungi, and honestly? They can complain all they want. I am doing MY due diligence to make very sure that the people who take my classes are prepared to go out and start identifying species and then figure out their edibility or lack thereof.
Because it isn’t enough to be able to say “Oh, that’s a dandelion, and I think this might be an oyster mushroom.” It’s also not enough to say “Well, such-and-such app says this is Queen Anne’s lace and not poison hemlock.” You HAVE to have incredibly keen observational skills. You HAVE to be patient enough to take thorough observations and run them through multiple forms of verification (field guides, websites, apps, other foragers/naturalists) to make sure you have a rock-solid identification. And then you ALSO have to be willing to read through multiple sources (NOT just Wikipedia) to determine whether that species is safely consumed by humans, and if so if it needs to be prepared in a particular way or if there are inedible/toxic parts that need to be removed.
AND–this phenomenon of AI-generated crapola emphasizes the fact that in addition to all of the above, you HAVE to have critical thinking skills when it comes to assessing your sources. Just because something is printed on a page doesn’t mean it’s true. You need to look at the quality of the information being presented. You need to look at the author’s sources. You need to compare what this person is saying to other books and resources out there, and make sure there’s a consensus.
You also need to look at the author themselves and make absolutely sure they are a real person. Find their website. Find their bio. Find their social media. Find any other manners in which they interact with the world, ESPECIALLY outside of the internet. Contact them. Ask questions. Don’t be a jerk about it, because we’re just people, but do at least make sure that a book you’re interested in buying is by a real person. I guarantee you those of us who are serious about teaching this stuff and who are internet-savvy are going to make it very easy to find who we are (within reason), what we’re doing, and why.
Because the OP in that Tweet is absolutely right–people are going to get seriously ill or dead if they try using AI-generated field guides. We have such a wealth of information, both on paper/pixels and in the brains of active, experienced foragers, that we can easily learn from the mistakes of people in the past who got poisoned, and avoid their fate. But it does mean that you MUST have the will and ability to be impeccably thorough in your research–and when in doubt, throw it out.
My inbox is always open. I’m easier caught via email than here, but I will answer. You can always ask me stuff about foraging, about nature identification, etc. And if there’s a foraging instructor/author/etc. with a website, chances are they’re also going to be more than willing to answer questions. I am happy to direct you to online groups on Facebook and elsewhere where you have a whole slew of people to compare notes with. I want people’s foraging to be SAFE and FUN. And AI-generated books aren’t the way to make that happen.
Reblogging to save a life.
So this is as simple as using Google image search or iNat Seek. These are fine for *guessing* what a species is, but do NOT use them for verifying that a plant/fungi is safe to eat.
I’m a lesbian and i see myself in media about bi women, also in media about gay/bi men. even if it’s not Entirely made for me, it’s still for me. and I know and hope that other gay/bi people are able to see parts of themselves in lesbian media. sorry to be cheesy but we are more similar than we are different and it’s those experiences we share that draw us to these stories in the first place, and the reason we’re even telling them <3
this was about empathy relatability and solidarity, not objectification. bye
Scientifically the most pure thing on our wretched mess of a planet.
Bambi and Thumper!!!
What’s great about this is that rabbit is totally ‘binkying’, which is that really high jump they make when they are super happy and excited! He loves his deer friend! <3
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