palmerpink

I decided I want to dig in and take this blog, and more broadly the "Palmerpink Brand" as it were, more seriously. Ok, maybe not that  seriously, but yeah. I wrote up a larger exploration on my other blog of initial questions to lay out some basic considerations regarding a revamp, asking things like the What, Who, and Why of this blog. Some of these things I'd explored previously , but I wanted to dig into deeper this time around. In short, I want to use this blog to share things I find meaningful and hope others will be interested in, as well as reflections and updates about my life; I want to write for myself, but also people who care about me and/or the sorts of things I share about (eg, reviews about culture and such); and I want to commit to my voice mattering, to deciding my blog matters to whatever little degree it can. (I also floated the possibility of culling posts that are no longer representative of what I want in this blog, as well as any stupid lab...

I recently got to spend a few days at the lake house my family used to visit through most of my childhood; we no longer own it, and it turns out I missed it more deeply than I realized. Anthony and I both got the week before NYC Pride off this year, so I contrived to get us a little time there. The cousins who own Greenshore gave Anthony and me permission to relax there for several days rather than just the 1 or 2 I had expected. Good god, I'm grateful for that. I missed this place. Standing on the balcony, the porch, or the dock and looking out over the lake, I was reminded of the beauty and tranquility this lake represents for me. The meaning and memories, too. This was always a place of solace and stability for me. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, but we always came back to this place. It had been in our family for generations before I was even born—if we'd been able to keep it, it would have been a solid 4 generations including mine. This was where I figured ...

So I've been playing a lot of Dead Cells, and while it's been crazy fun, it's also been crazy frustrating. Dead Cells  is a roguelike or rogue-lite metroidvania from Motion Twin... Basically, you explore and battle through this ever-changing, randomly generated castle, and when you die you start over. But it's never the same twice, and you improve as you go—new weapons, new tricks, and so on. I know part of the problem is I lack or am at least weak in some of the basic skills necessary, such as timing and strategy and such. I keep forgetting to dodge or get hit by stupid attacks and all that, and it gets really frustrating. Re my thread on #DeadCells : I do love it, but I am also struggling. I suspect weak eye-hand coordination and forgetfulness make most action games difficult for me; I tend to rush in swinging blindly, and I'm having to unlearn that here. But maybe this game can help? 🤔 — Tophie Palmer (@palmerpink) June 25, 2019 Frustration asid...

So I posted the other day about my rekindled carnivorous plant obsession—I mean, hobby . I mentioned, in passing, that I had "discovered" a possible cultivar, so here's the lowdown on what that means and what I meant. The term "cultivar" is short for "cultivated variety," and signifies that a particular plant is so desirable and interesting that people want exact copies of it rather than simply seed from it. Some famous American pitcher plant (Sarracenia) cultivars include the legendary Adrian Slack , the massive Leah Wilkerson , and the classic  Judith Hindle . Part of how these come about is that, unlike horses x donkeys = mules and certain other hybrids, Sarracenia hybrids aren't sterile and can be crossed and recrossed without limit. Further, random chance can create crazy combinations of genes such that even hybrids between the same species—heck, even the same parents —can demonstrate quite the variety. More on that elsewhere . Dependin...

I recently got back into horticulture after a bad moment of burnout, and wouldn't ya know it, I'm back at it with carnivorous plants! Despite tweeting about it endlessly, I haven't actually explained how or why this started. Back in middle school, I helped my science teacher set up a carnivorous plant display. Nothing elaborate, mind you; a terrarium with a bunch of sphagnum moss and some pitcher plants, a sundew or two, maybe a Venus flytrap? Didn't leave much of an impression, except maybe that they died and that sucked.  shrug . A couple years later, I was in a bog near my grandmother's lake house, when things changed forever. I was in the back end of the canoe, and as my dad pulled the front end out of the water, I glanced to my right and spied, on a stump with some moss, sundews ( Drosera rotundifolia , to be precise). Drosera rotundifolia. Of course I recognized therm instantly—they're hard to mistake, with those the sparkling tentacles an...