v3launchunit

i like snakes and a free palestine

aside from the aforementioned affection towards snakes, i also hold a great deal of fondness in my heart for hollow knight (i am extremely normal™ about collector), rain world (miros birds are the best creature i will not be accepting criticism on this), command and conquer red alert 2 (kirov reporting), in stars and time (one must imagine sisyphus stuck in a time loop), and about a million other things.
i played through slay the princess and spent the whole game pretty much completely ignoring her in favor of dicking around with the narrator (there is no good ending because the narrator always dies) and the voices (contrarian is the best one), which probably says a lot about me (i am aromantic asexual (this will not stop me from rebugging horny™ shit that i am tangentially interested in)).
fuck it i'm a girl now (still he/they tho)
i also like to draw and make games & shit.


my goblin.band
goblin.band/@v

spiders
@spiders

as someone who cares a lot about plants, and has seen the wonderfully weird world of plant intelligence research reduced to simplistic memes, i was very worried going into The Light Eaters that it would be an extension of that; very New-Agey or I Fucking Love Science-y or a series of uninsightful regurgitations of research in overly simplified and undercited forms, because that's what i'm used to.

instead i got one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring things i've read this year. it is interested in the facts, but also, the people themselves doing the research, and the lives of the plants being studied. it's interested in the work required to get these results, the politics surrounding them, it's interested in the emotional as an integral part of science. the sociology and philosophy of how science changes its mind on things

zoe, and all the scientists featured here, are genuinely empathetic towards plants and the unique way of experiencing the world they have, and she does not just reduce them to just being a tiny human or some kind of newage fetishized monolith. she trusts that you as the reader are smart enough to understand the nuance and uncertainty at play here. she trusts you to get that "plant intelligence" or "plant consciousness" does not mean they are even remotely like humans, but rather their own unique thing. to be a plant would at once be deeply alien, something no mammal can even comprehend, and yet probably also a deeply familiar too

this book taught me about things i did not even know of. this book took me down a peg and helped remind me that i don't know anything about anything, and i say that as an animist who already viewed plants as being creatures and relatives experiencing the world too. you might think you vaguely know what's in this book just based on a handful of headlines from the past few years, but trust me you probably don't. you don't even know how deep the rabbit hole goes. the author has been following this field for eight years and knows her stuff.

go read it for free at one of these great websites:
libgen - z-lib - anna's archive
or check it out at your local library. or buy it from a corporation or something i dont rly care just please please read the book please i'm BEGGING you.


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