Sea star wasting syndrome killed billions of stars, including sunflower stars. Thanks to a cohort of scientists, a cause of the syndrome is now identified. Each day, new science is emerging that will help us in our efforts to restore the population!

Learn more about the syndrome and why these creatures are essential for the ocean we love. 

Discover the curiosities of sunflower stars on our website:

#SunflowerStars #MontereyBayAquarium #KelpHelp101

every 14-16 year old is the bravest person on the planet to me

talking to a 15 year old like wow okay you are like if scrambled eggs was a person. I don't know how to save you. the way you move through the world is reminiscent of a stray cat whose soul got punted into a human body. said human body is currently undergoing changes and floods of hormones that would result in cities being levelled if you were perhaps a big dragon and not a medium sized primate. been there. good luck I love you

you don't have to excuse the behaviours of shitty teenagers, but you DO have to remember that they've been on this earth only as long as your cat. you have to ensure that the way you respond to said behaviour reflects this. yes they're an entire person. they're also going through a period of the most insane rapid transformation (physically, mentally, emotionally and socially) a person can experience in life. are they an irredeemable monster or are they just a very impressionable young person floundering through their first Strong Opinions based on what they've seen online, with ridiculous amounts of Hormone That Makes You Hate Everything in their bloodstream?

YOUNG TEENAGERS. are YOU an irredeemable monster or are YOU just a very impressionable young person floundering through your first Strong Opinions based on what you've seen online, with ridiculous amounts of Hormone That Makes You Hate Everything in your bloodstream? I'll give you a hint. it's the second option. cut yourself some slack too! try your very best to be kind, try your very best to consider people with differing experiences to you, and maybe take a step back from discourse that does nothing besides make you upset. you've only been an animal alive on this planet for a decade and a bit. there are artisanal cheddars at your local supermarket older than you. take it easy. eat more fruit. save up for a second hand bicycle. join a local club. it's impossibly difficult to be a teenager but you have it in you, whether you're aware of it or not. I hope you can be kind to yourself, because you DO deserve that kindness. kia kaha [:

if you want butterflies, you need to live with caterpillars.

i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf

you will not get butterflies if you kill all the things that turn into butterflies! what are you doing!

self-awareness check, list five things you like that aren't media pieces in the tags now ‼️

There should totally be a movement called “Sleep in Public” where people defend their right to sleep on public property. Sleep in your cars. Sleep on benches. Sleep at the park. Just make it a mundane and regular part of life to see someone napping in the library. It would make it much harder to single out the homeless for harassment if everyone else is doing the same thing and much harder to argue that it’s a “threat to public safety” when it’s so clearly harmless.

“But homeless people commit crimes!” I have a very hard time believing they commit crimes while asleep.

You know who do commit crimes in their sleep? Billionaires

It burns my biscuits whenever I hear someone say that a person or group "doesn't contribute to society." Society is comprised of people. Those people are society. Society exists for and because of the people in it. It's like when I'm bicycling in the city and some schmuck leans out the window of his lifted pickup and yells at me for "blocking traffic." Bitch, I am traffic.

A jewelry company that is just reproductions of historical jewelry found at archeological sites would be so cool.

Gaukler Medieval Wares carries reproductions and artifacts, though his in-stock inventory is small.

Armor and Castings is a Ukrainian company producing a wide range of gorgeous medieval reproductions.

Heart of Oak is a friend and highly skilled artisan selling reproduction glass beads.

Thorthor's Hammer is a very chill dude who makes excellent reproduction jewelry, belt hardware, and clasps from a variety of eras at a really good price.

Elegantly Eccentric makes reproduction jewelry from classical Rome and other cultures of early antiquity.

Also me, if I could ever get my act together.

PERA PERIS!!!

They have some really cool reproduction and slightly changed but heavily inspired by historical finds jewelry/accessories/knives/findings but my favourite is the profane badges!!

An example of many from their site:

"Profane medieval badge with a horse riding Vulva.

Here you can buy a profane medieval badge replica as verbalization of a pilgrimage sign that shows a vulva riding on a horse.

This unique medieval badge was made after a historical model from the late Middle Ages that was found in the Netherlands and dates from 1375 to 1425 AD.

So-called obscene-erotic badges were very common during the late Middle Ages in Northern Europe, especially in Belgium and the Netherlands, and served for general amusement in the course of the carnival season.

The pilgrim's sign shows a crowned vulva riding a horse, as a verbalization of the Virgin Mary, carrying a flagellum in one hand and a crossbow in the other.

The obscene-erotic pilgrim sign is made of high-quality bronze or in genuine silver-plated and has a pin on the back to wear around the neck or to attach it to the clothing. The vulva can also be attached very well to the robe at the various openings.

The "Vulva on Horseback" measures 3.1 x 2.1 cm and thus corresponds to the size of the historical original.

The obscene-erotic pilgrimage signs of the late Middle Ages represent a subgroup of the profane medieval badges, which include, in addition to derb-erotic depictions of female sexual characteristics, especially personified genitalia such as the vulva riding on a horse, or a vulva depicted as a pilgrim or with wings, as well as numerous forms in interaction with phalli.

As an interpretation for the frequent depiction of vulva and phallus on pilgrim badges of the late Middle Ages, it seems most likely that attempts were made to defuse sexuality through comedy and that these are to be interpreted as joking gifts of love or as a means of promoting communication in the course of initiating sex, especially during the debauched carnival season."

Friends, if you're wary about online shops and want something you can pick up and touch before buying, you can find vendors of reproduction jewelry at medium sized (baronial) SCA events. I don't mean cheap sweatshop produced items that you find in a renfaire popup. I mean actual attempts at reproductions that you can inspect before purchase, and they come with an autistic infodump whether you buy them or not, just ask about the item. If in Ansteorra, I recommemend Honorable Lady Czina Angielczyka for sourcing reproductions. Her and her hubby run a leather booth but have a nice selection of jewelry and hardware to compliment that isn't listed online. If you're curious about that Armor and Castings piece, there's a fair chance she has it on hand.

Get her fired up with a question and you'll get an entire history lesson - it's fantastic.

As long as some are available outside the usa!

As a society we have benefited so much from successful public health measures that we now have the privilege of declaring that we must not need them anymore

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

You might say “oh well today we all have access to vitamins and toothpastes and dentists so we don’t need those things in our food supplies” and boy do white people on social media loooove to fucking say that. But here’s the thing: no, people don’t all have easy access to those things. That’s privilege talking yet again

I literally CANNOT read the words "supine" or "prone" in anything without thinking about that post that's like "supine is when you lay on your s(u)pine and prone is when you lay on your pronis"

"i feel besquintled", said no one ever. because that's not a word.

okay nevermind it IS a word now and this is exactly what it means.

Elephants eat 300+ pounds of foliage a day so they’re almost always moving and grazing in their waking hours but they will stop if another elephant cannot walk. They’re known to try to pick up the fallen elephant and stand and wait for them to remain enough strength to rise and walk if the elephant is injured or ill. Some Asian elephants reportedly guide injured wild elephants back to humans for help. I can’t help but think about adage attributed to Margaret Mead, first sign of civilization is a healed human femur. We know Neanderthals cared for the individuals in their community because there are archeological finds of Neanderthals with disabilities and healed major injuries that would have required the group assisting the individual to eat and drink during their recovery, instead of seeing the injured or disabled Neanderthal as a waste of resources, they valued them as an individual and were willing to put work into their recovery and survival. Elephants seem to view members of their species in the same way but due to their anatomy and cognition, they have a harder time rendering medical aid themselves, though they want to help.

It’s never too late to learn the right way to do things: button sewing technique via imgur → more…

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE

I feel like I just reblog this every time it is on my dash, with hope that one day I will stop being such a goof about sewing buttons.

You mean someone don’t do it like this?

Yeah I was taught to just sew them flush against the fabric. It didn’t work as well as I thought it should…

Yeah, I’m so downloading a copy of this post because buttons and I do not like each other.

I worked as a costume designer and assistant in a costume shop for 2 years and honest 2 god this will save your life.

I am a professional tailor and I approve this message.

I was taught to put a matchstick between the button and fabric as you’re sewing it then remove it and do the wrapping.

@ people who carry bags everywhere what do you put in them what is there to bring other than chapstick, keys, phone and maybe a tampon why are you packing a suitcase to be outside for 5 hours

Painkillers, two mini notebooks, kobo e-reader, wallet, perfume, mini first aid kit, mini sewing kit, compact mirror, disinfectant, and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head without riffling through my purse. I like to be prepared. Shit comes in handy regularly.

thought of this immediately and was delighted to discover it’s the same op

i wonder what they're gossiping about

had to draw them

I often refer to my bottle-raised lamb as my adopted daughter, because it’s mostly true, it temporarily keeps nosy strangers from knowing I’m an eeeevil childfree woman, and it’s hilarious when people find out. And by that time they’re usually too disturbed by the “her-daughter-is-a-sheep” thing to get on my case about the “woman-with-no-husband-or-kids-oh-the-horror” thing.

Most of my friends are aware that I do this, and will back me up in conversations without batting an eye when I reference my daughter. And the best part is that they literally never drop the story. They just 100% all the time accept that I have a two-year-old adopted daughter. The fact that she happens to be a sheep is an unimportant detail, not worth mentioning until an anecdote gets too weird to plausibly be about a human toddler.

Which actually takes much longer than you’d think, since human toddlers apparently have absolutely zero sense. “She bites if you stop paying attention to her” is believable, “she tries to eat rocks out of the landscaping” is believable, “she stuck her head through a fence and couldn’t get out” is believable. “She jumped a five foot fence and came screaming back into the house through the dog door when I left her outside in the pasture” does get some strange looks, though usually not for the right reason.

Occasionally the joke gets turned around on me, though. I posted a picture on my not-tumblr blog of her wearing my glasses, and every comment was “Oh my gosh she looks just like you!!!” “I would never have known she was adopted If you hadn’t told me!!” “Are you sure that’s not an old picture of you?!”

So apparently this is what I look like:

At least she does look cute in glasses.

[ID: a close-up photo of a brown sheep, stylishly sporting a pair of glasses. End ID]