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Parasite Farm

Today 88% of Germany’s population lives in cities and only 5.8% of the country’s cultivated land is farmed ecologically. While most fruits and vegetables have become available all year round we are loosing touch with how it was grown, harvested and transported. But how could we counter these alienation of our basis of life?

The expensive, highly compacted urban area doesn’t leave much room for agricultural practices and not everybody has access to a balcony or garden. Our poetic answer to that question is the “Parasite Farm”: A system that enables you to compost your biological waste, produce humus soil and to grow your own vegetables and herbs — all within your apartment! 

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Composting waste is good for the planet. Watching waste get shredded is good for the soul.1

Compost Shredder by Thymark ↩

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Worm Nerd Post: Composting with worms

Thanks to WSU and various extensions for these links!

King County: How to Choose a Compost Bin

Composting Yard and Food Waste at Home: Snohomish County, WA

WSU Community Horticulture

Washington State Compost Educator’s Guide

What is Vermicompostiing: A presentation by the Rainier Garden Club

PDF: Composting with Red Wigglers from UHLS.org

PDF by Cedar Wyatt: Worm Composting is Easy and Fun

WSU Whatcom extension Composting with Redworms

WSU Whatcom extension’s Easy Worm Box

WSU Whatcom extension’s  Worm Compost Bin instructions

WSU Whatcom extension Worm Casing Harvester

WSU Fact sheet: How to build a Wooden Worm Composting box

Alabama Wildlife.Org’s Worm Bin Construction: Plastic worm bin inside a wooden house

(Humor) My Worm Bin is Full of Morons by Rachel Kaufman

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Your time is way too valuable to be wasting on people that can’t accept who you are.

Turcois Ominek (via purplebuddhaproject)

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"Many of my movies have strong female leads - brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man." - Hayao Miyazaki

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SAAAYYY whaatt

Stills from the new Live Action film of Kiki’s Delivery Service (source)

Kiki’s Mother’s workshop is a dream! 

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HOLY BUGporn.  SOOOO PRETTY

Katydid Nymph (Olcinia or Sathrophyllia sp., Cymatomerini, Pseudophyllinae, Tettigonidae) by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr. Pu’er, Yunnan, China See more Chinese grasshoppers and crickets on my Flickr site HERE…..

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Skull Suggests Single Human Species Emerged From Africa, Not Several

Well-Preserved Find 1.8 Million Years Old Drastically Simplifies Evolutionary Picture

by Robert Lee Hotz

"A newly discovered 1.8 million-year-old skull offers evidence that humanity’s early ancestors emerged from Africa as a single adventurous species, not several species as believed, drastically simplifying human evolution, an international research team said Thursday.

The skull—the most complete of its kind ever discovered—is “a really extraordinary find,” said paleoanthropologist Marcia Ponce de Leon at the University of Zurich’s Anthropological Institute and Museum, who helped analyze it. “It is in a perfectly preserved state.”

Unearthed at Dmanisi in Georgia—an ancient route in the Caucasus for the first human migrations out of Africa—the skull was found at a spot where partial fossils of four other similar individuals and a scattering of crude stone tools had been found several years ago. They all date from a time when the area was a humid forest where saber-tooth tigers and giant cheetahs prowled. Preserved in siltstone beneath the hilltop ruins of a medieval fortress, the remains are the earliest known human fossils outside Africa, experts said.

David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, who led the team, reported the discovery in Science. The primitive skull was first uncovered on Aug. 5, 2005—his birthday. “It was a very nice present,” he said.

Taken together, the finds at Dmanisi are especially important because experts in evolution could analyze the physical differences between individuals living in the same place at the same time almost 2 million years ago, when humankind first emerged from Africa to people the world, according to Yale University anthropologist Andrew Hill.

"It gives you a chance to look at variation for the first time," said Dr. Hill, who was not involved in the discovery" (read more).

***Hmm. I need to read the study ASAP.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

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Advice from some kick-ass ladies [more here]

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I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table. Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it works. And that’s very appealing too. Woman have cellulite. All of them. It’s dimply and cute. It’s not a defect. It’s not a health problem. It’s the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush. Men have silly buttocks. Well, if most of your clients are women, anyway. You come to male buttocks and you say — what, this is it? They’re kind of scrawny and the tissue is jumpy because it’s unpadded; you have to dial back the pressure, or they’ll yelp. Adults sag. It doesn’t matter how fit they are. Every decade, an adult sags a little more. All of the tissue hangs a little looser. They wrinkle, too. I don’t know who put about the rumor that just old people wrinkle. You start wrinkling when you start sagging, as soon as you’re all grown up, and the process goes its merry way as long as you live. Which is hopefully a long, long time, right? Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow. I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.

What People Really Look Like (via jumbleofnotes)

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and here it is.

my 24 hour comic

took 22 hours. and then a little longer for some edits but. I’ve still got another hour till my 24 is officially up, and I’m definitely gonna be snoozing.

For having no planning except a selkie design and a rough concept of the girl, I think I did alright. I definitely pushed my self to try new things and, I’m happy about that. there are some things I’d like to tweak but… NOPE! IM DONE!

I also learned how much I can get done when I don’t distract myself so much. have to figure out how to rein that in haha.

also, if you’re curious about the title! fun fact time thanks to wikipedia (so it may or may not be true)

Selkies (also known as silkies or selchies) are mythological creatures found in Faroese, Icelandic,[1] Irish,[2] and Scottish folklore. The word derives from earlier Scots selich, (from Old English seolh meaning seal)

okay. sleep time. 

goodnightttt!!

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A new streetlamp powered by … algae?

The glowing, neon green lamp you see above is the invention of French biochemist Pierre Calleja, who had the crazy idea of using algae to power otherworldly, tube-shaped streetlamps that double as homes for this growing gloop. In a talk at TEDxLausanneChange, he explains the process behind the invention.

You may remember photosynthesis from biology class — if not, Wikipedia will remind you: “Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy, normally from the sun, into chemical energy that can be used to fuel the organisms’ activities.” But can photosynthesis help us light our sidewalks and roadways? Calleja thinks so.

He and his team at FermentAlg developed this lamp to double as a habitat for microalgae, which absorb solar energy and consume carbon dioxide. These lamps are designed to store the energy made from this process, so that when placed in unlit places, they can continue to shine.

These beautiful lights are not only practical, but their symbiotic technology could help in the fight against rising carbon emissions and climate change.

For more on Calleja’s work, check out his talk below:

(Photos: Pierre Calleja and Reuters)