Carpe Crux

How can one not be fascinated?

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@WolfofX You've gotta be joking?!?

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@SketchesbyBoze Although I greatly enjoy the arts, I have to admit I have never had the stomach for Jane Austin or P&P, assuming it was high brow stuffiness. After seeing this scene I might have to jettison my own pride and prejudice.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@chefsevenn Anchovies or maybe Vegemite

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@WolfofX This what the 4th should be all about

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@Rainmaker1973 Mine would have to be a tent flap.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@60sPsychJukebox Perfect city to record that song. Lemme ask you. Did you ever have to make up your mind?

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@Joseph_Fasano_ Now that's good!

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

Listen Up

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Swiss farmers planted flowers between their crops and watched pest damage drop by over half. The UK is now running the same trial across 15 farms. The reason this works is embarrassingly simple.

A Swiss study on winter wheat found that fields with wildflower strips had 40 to 53% fewer leaf beetle pests than fields without. Crop damage dropped 61%.

The mechanism is simple. Wildflowers feed hoverflies, lacewings, parasitic wasps, ladybugs, and ground beetles. Those insects eat the aphids, beetle larvae, and caterpillars that farmers would otherwise spray for. A few meters of wildflowers hosts an unpaid pest control crew that would jump at the chance to whoop some aphid ass.

In apple orchards where no insecticides had been used for five years, plots with wildflower alleyways had 9.2% damaged fruit. Control plots without flowers had 32.5%.

The UK is now running a five-year trial across 15 farms placing 6-meter flower strips through the middle of fields, not just at the edges, because the beneficial insects can't reach the center of a large field otherwise.

This works the same way in a backyard vegetable garden as it does on a commercial farm. Plant native flowering species near your tomatoes, beans, and squash. The pests still show up, but the predators show up too.

Study doi: 20151369

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@fasc1nate My father took me to this when it opened on the big screen when I was 12. We both absolutely loved it. One of the best movies and to me one of the greatest cinematic scenes ever shot. I'll never forget this.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@MrPitbull07 Amen. Love this man.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@mrmikeMTL I try to do it everyday. Who in the hell couldn't do that!?!

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@MrPitbull07 Known as a clutch player. The kinda person who aren't shook very easily. Gotta be under the gun to come to life. We all know one.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@60sPsychJukebox Hello I love is still better than most anything on the air these days. Not To Touch The Earth is from another world.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@TheStingisBack Black Rain

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@jonimitchell Is that Elektra on the lower right?

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

Yet Again

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A poisoned rat doesn't die fast. It goes slowly and painfully.

It clumsily wanders out in the open for a day or two, which makes it the easiest meal around for the owl, the hawk, the fox, or the snake that was already hunting your rodents for free.

They eat the dying rat and swallow the poison with it. Then it builds up in them.

The numbers are grim. At one Massachusetts wildlife clinic, 100% of the red-tailed hawks tested carried anticoagulant rat poison in their bodies.

In California, testing found it in 69% of endangered San Joaquin kit foxes. These second-generation poisons linger in tissue and pass from one animal to the next, killing by slow internal bleeding.

So you poison the rats, and you poison the exact predators that keep rats in check. The yard ends up with more rodents, not fewer.

Skip the bait. Seal the gaps where they get in, cut off their food, and use snap traps if you need them, indoors and away from kids and pets.

Then let the hawks and foxes handle the rest.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

Pay Attention

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

That bread you're tossing to the ducks malnourishes the adults and can leave the babies unable to fly for the rest of their lives.

Bread is junk food for a duck. It fills them up so they quit foraging for the bugs, plants, and seeds that actually feed them.

In a growing duckling, a diet that heavy in empty carbs makes the wing grow too fast and twist at the joint. The feathers jut out sideways, the wing never works right, and the bird is grounded for good. It's called angel wing, and in an adult it can't be undone.

It doesn't stop at the birds. A pond where people dump bread gets crowded and aggressive, ducklings never learn to find their own food, and the soggy leftovers rot into algae blooms and draw rats.

If you want to feed them, give them food, not filler: cracked corn, oats, halved grapes, chopped lettuce, a handful of thawed peas.

Better yet, just watch them. A healthy pond already feeds its ducks. They were doing fine before the bread showed up.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@Soaringeagle45 shithead

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@realcountry1953 I always felt the real damage was caused by the commission banning Pete. Baseball was his everything. They destroyed him.

[Carpe Crux @stobbins]

@JoyceCarolOates Moreover, it exemplifies not the dangers of alcohol consumption but the power of human dignity, compassion and connection.