food coloring from mashed up mealy bugs. Finally a good use for those little suckers.
I remember reading about this dye and thinking that these were some strange exotic bugs somewhere deep within the rainforest that I would never see.
Then I moved to Texas and started doing nature stuff. Guys. Guys. Guys. You would NEVER guess.
OKAY first off let me back up a little.
Texas.
Okay, you’re here with me now, right? Texas. I’ve accidentally sat on prickly pears so many times (pro-tip: don’t do this) I have a method for dealing with it.
The Carmine dye is from Cochineal insects. They are a type of scale insects, which is a weird plant-parasitic insect that essentially becomes immobile in adulthood and fuses itself with the plant (???). They’re like aphids, except more stealth and harder to deal with. Because of their Lifestyle Choices, they tend to be very host-specific, so they can only live on one type of plant. And there is a cochineal insect who is quite fond of… guess?
Oh right, yeah they also look like a bad case of the dandruffs. These bugs are also known as “waxy scales” (or something? I don’t know, it’s late and I don’t feel like doing a google), because that white stuff is a waxy substance they secrete for protection, similar to planthoppers they are related to.
Remember how I said they’re like aphids? They are very much like aphids, and yes, there are specific types of lady beetles who will eat cochineal bugs. They tend to be a bit smaller.
This is where that red dye becomes noteworthy. Whenever you see another insect eating one of these guys, it’s like the sequel to There Will Be Blood or something.
Above: Brown Lacewing Enjoys a Refreshing Beverage with No Artificial Colors
What will you see with this two-minute video: Description from the Center for Biological Diversity:
Laiken Jordahl, the Center’s borderlands campaigner, recently visited the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in South Texas. Environmental laws that normally protect this land have been waived to rush construction of Trump’s border wall. Watch this video from Laiken’s visit to learn what the wall will do to the refuge — some of the region’s last habitat left.
When you vote a straight democrat party it changes Beto to Cruz on some machines. If you’re in Texas and voting please RECHECK your answers. If your machine does this, notify someone working at the polling site.
The issue is with specific machines that let you push one button to vote straight-ticket, which is a “feature” that is configured by the people running the machines.
Essentially they build a small script that tells the machine which checkboxes to check when somebody selects “straight ticket”. When used correctly it’s a nice time-saving feature.
However.
An unethical person might “incorrectly” program the feature to select whomever they want, thus hijacking votes. Of course, when caught, it’s just “a programming error” and nobody goes to jail for tampering.
The workaround is NEVER use the “straight ticket” feature if offered.
Instead, hand-select each vote then verify the results before you submit. It’s seriously not very tedious and has a much higher chance of not being messed with.
Ninety Nashville Warblers (Oreothlypis ruficapilla), like the one pictured here, were killed after flying into a glass-sided building in Galveston, Texas on a May morning last year. A total of almost 400 spring-migratory birds were killed when they collided with
the 23-story American National Insurance
building overnight. Additional casualties included
29 Yellow Warblers, 26 Black-and-white Warblers, 24 Magnolia Warblers,
21 American Redstarts, 15 Indigo Buntings, 14 Bay Breasted warblers,
8 Black-throated Green
Warblers, 5 Kentucky Warblers, 4 Eastern Wood-Peewees, 3 Golden-winged
Warblers, 2 Painted Buntings, 2 Orchard Orioles, plus a Hooded Warbler,
Gray Catbird, Blue Grosbeak, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Orange-crowned
Warbler, Summer Tanager, Worm-eating Warbler, Red-eyed Vireo, and
Cerulean Warbler. Three birds were rescued and survived their collision with the building.
The Texan Revolution formed from the anger of these white settlers in Texas, which was still part of Mexico at this time. They had moved from slave-owning southern part of the US and they became upset because the president of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, abolished slavery. Mexico actually attempted to restrict American immigration into Mexico-owned Texas! The leaders of the Mexican centralist forces that defeated the Texan revolutionary forces at the Alamo were against slavery. If you ever hear a Texan say “Remember the Alamo!” just remember that the Texan settlers that died there had a vested interest in maintaining control of Texas territory so they could continue to use slave labor.
forget the alamo.
Fuck the alamo
Not only does the alamo suck as a historical monument, but fuck the people who fought there
Remember The Alamo, NOT as a brave battle, but as an important step in maintaining slavery. That may also help understand why the 14th Amendment, did NOT end slavery, it only transferred ownership from private hands to Government ownership.
For the first half of my life I lived in San Antonio. We were taught (from Kindergarten) that the people who fought in the Alamo were the heroes. Mexico the bad guy. It was a WOAH moment when I learned that wasn’t the case.
Also it’s super boring going to the Alamo every school year for field trips.
Also important to note that the old 300 (the first three hundred white American families to settle in Texas) went with the intention of inciting hostilities (they hadn’t decided how yet) and forcing the Mexican army to make the first move so that they could have American sympathy when they inevitably rebelled. With the full support of the us government at the time. There’s a reason the Texas independent republic was as short lived as it was. And that reason was they always intended to join the union as a slave holding state from day one. Texas was a land grab and a very transparent one at that.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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