the real worst thing about figs is that i Know and yet i still eat fig rolls bc theyre delicious
im glad u asked but also not bc now i have to relive the Knowledge
first off: if u like figs and want to continue eating figs without thinking back to this post: stop here. i didnt get this choice. my lecturer just said ‘hey dyou wanna know the awful truth of figs’ and flipped to the next slide before anyone could voice their concerns. take your time. decide if you really want this.
SO MOVING ON: figs aren’t like most fruit, in that figs are actually more or less inverse flowers - like, the flower parts (ie. sexual reproduction parts) are on the inside of the fig.
which, as you can imagine, makes them pretty hard to pollinate.
enter: the fig wasp. every species of fig has its own fig wasp, but afaik the steps are the same: a pregnant female wasp enters the unripe fig through a specific hole in the base (the ostiole), often losing her wings and antennae in the process. she then lays her eggs in the flowers inside the fig, and while she’s doing so happens to pollinate many with the pollen she’s carrying from the fig she was born in. she then dies in the fig.
meanwhile: the flowers with wasps in become these gall structures and the pollinated ones produce seeds.
male wasps are wingless: as the fig ripens, they emerge and wander around the fig looking for females to fertilise, which they do while the females have yet to even emerge themselves. they then dig tunnels to the outside of the fig for the females to escape through, and then they die, never really having left the fig.
the mated female wasps then leave through the tunnels, picking up pollen from the fig’s newly-matured male flowers, and head off to find another fig and the cycle starts anew.
NOW this may seem horrifying, and it is, but humans quite like figs and we also like selective breeding so of the 850-odd fig species in the world, we mostly just eat the common fig (Ficus carica) - one type of which has all-female flowers and doesn’t need pollinating to produce fruit, and another which has both the hermaphrodite figs and all-female figs and we only eat the all-female figs.
(ALTHOUGH the female wasps can’t like. tell one from the other. so they’ll still crawl into these useless all-female-flowers figs and then unless they were lucky and kept their wings they’ll just. die there. and be broken down by fig enzymes. and then be eaten by a human. so when you eat figs you’re quite possibly still eating wasps, but not as many wasps as you could’ve been!! so hooray!! fewer wasps!!)
and now you know the Terrible Truth of Fig, the end.
hey mother nature what the fuck
This is so cool though???
The fact that this system works so well, and has co-evolved so tightly (every species of fig has its own species of fig wasp!), is absolutely fascinating. Figs and fig wasps are a great model system to study plant-animal coevolution, and fig anatomy is super interesting in and of itself. An entirely inverted flowering receptacle?? Wack!
in every empirical study that compares lesbians and bisexual women on a variety of issues, you’ll see that all of them showcase statistical similarity between the rates at which they experience [x] form of oppression. in some cases there will be some statistically significant difference between the degree to which they experience a given issue, or how much they utilize [y] form of resource or community support. some of these empirical studies will showcase how bisexual women have higher rates of experiencing [x] issue than lesbians, while others will show how lesbians have higher rates of experiencing [y] issue than lesbians. all of these studies will show that straight women are more privileged on a given issue than both bisexual women and lesbians.
it will often be the case that the rates at which bisexual women versus lesbians experience/are affected by a given issue are overwhelmingly similar, which is why there is no statistically significant difference. it’s still important to evaluate them as separate groups sometimes because they do have distinct identities, but bisexual women and lesbians both report overwhelmingly similar experiences and thus have overlapping rates on alcoholism/addiction, being diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections or reproductive infections, abuse/sexual violence/rape, interpersonal homophobia within families or college dorms, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and body dysmorphia, mental illness and cognitive disorders, suicidality and self-harm behaviors, and low health-care related quality of life measures.
so in the empirical literature, at least, the statement that bisexual women are materially privileged over lesbians, or that they gain benefits from bisexuality at the expense of lesbians, is completely incorrect and not supported at all.
the sad thing is, everyone thinks they’re so forgettable, or they don’t mean anything to anyone. but you don’t see your high school friend, smiling to themselves, when they think about your quirks or how dramatic you used to be whenever you got a crush. you don’t see the person who saw you around a lot but was always too shy to talk to you. you don’t remember the person you helped, and maybe you didn’t do much for them, but you didn’t know that they were having a shitty month and you sparked their first real smile in weeks. you don’t see the person that secretly loved you too, who never forgot the soft words that you said, or the way you smiled whenever you saw them, or how you reminded them of sunshine and flowers; and how the thought of you pops into their mind more than you will ever know and in the randomest of places. you will never know that a soft song or strawberries or a sunset will remind someone of you. they will go to the beach and think of you for some reason, until they remember that the last time they saw a color as beautiful and as profound as the ocean was when they looked in your eyes. no one knows their impact on people, or their worth. no one thinks they will be missed when they leave, but they don’t know that once you go into someone’s life, even for a fleeting moment, you stay forever, and you take up a soft place that no one else could ever replace.
1. @staff made a post pretty much saying “Your stuff isn’t getting deleted, just hidden from everyone but you” and “Yeah we know you hate the term “female presenting nipples” but we ain’t gonna stop saying it”
2. If a blog has a pixelated icon that means they got hit by the ban, you cannot view that blog outside the sidebar. You cannot even view their archive. Allegedly if you follow the advice in this post it’ll be fixed but only if it was an accidental flag (aka a real sfw blog)
3. The post Staff made including examples of what was ok to post. It got flagged.
4. Yes, the bots are still here. Yes they are still stealing posts and putting porn links on them. Yes there are still ads with stuff more sexual than they allow in posts. Yes innocent things are still getting flagged.
5. So yes, the site is still here and staff are still morons.
hot take: ‘chivalry’ is fine as long as it’s adapted to 21st century values. if you are a male, you SHOULD be aware that your female friends face certain issues that you as a male dont. acting on that awareness in a way that keeps your female friends safe, isn’t a bad thing.
like… opening doors isn’t rly chivalrous when it’s just a thing you ought to do for everyone. but real 21st century chivalry might be, like, standing between your female friend and the guy that’s trying to get her drunk, or offering to walk her home when it’s late.
if the ‘chivalry’ inconveniences everyone involved and you’re just doing it for your over-inflated male ego — ie, “no you’re the girl here, you HAVE to let me hold this door for you and do all these things for you even when you can do it yourself and im just slowing you down” — then it’s just outdated misogyny.
Chivalry was literally designed to make nobles aware of their power and influence so they don’t unintentionally harm people when trying to do their job of leading and protecting people. Modern chivalry should carry on that sentiment of men and white people becoming aware of their own power of privilege and influence to help and protect the lives of their peers.
*Not to inflate their egos, but because it’s the good thing to do and makes the world a better place to be.
Chivalry, at its core, involves being helpful to people who don’t have your advantages.
It involved generosity and protecting those weaker than oneself: including opening doors when doors were made of badly fit heavy wood and often got stuck,and women, especially undernourished exhausted-from-childcare women, had a harder time opening them. It involved not lying, and following through on your promises. (A guy who is consistently late with the accounting reports, which delays the whole team, is not dedicated to chivalry, no matter how polite he is on a date.)
Chivalry is a code of ethics that involves dedicating one’s strength and skills in service to others; it’s not based on gender roles.
Chivalry is a code of ethics that involves dedicating one’s strength and skills in service to others; it’s not based on gender roles.
the reason why people are so hard to read is because they are composed of the letters a, t, c, and g in random sequences and as im sure you know, that doesn’t spell anything
