#Alabama Life

[fishenjoyer1]

Fish of the Day

Today's fish of the day is the Alabama Cavefish!

The Alabama Cavefish, scientific name Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni, is known for being one of the rarest troglobitic fish species in North America. Discovered in 1967, by the time the alabama cavefish was scientifically described in 1974, there were only about 100 fish left. On any visit to the cave, only about 10 fish have ever been seen, but they are consistently different fish, so the estimated number is a little under 100, making them critically endangered. This also makes them a possibility for the rarest cavefish in North America!

Despite the large waterways connecting caves in Key Cave National park to several other cave systems, the Alabama cavefish has restricted itself to only one cave for reasons we don't understand. A search of over 120 caves in the surrounding area revealed no populations or signs of populations. With a range consisting only of Key cave in Lauderdale county, Alabama; these fish are constantly faced by the threat of extinction, and most of their worries are based on the limited home range, and waters entering the cave. Any water with chemicals, especially fertilizers and other agricultural runoff are a large concern. That along with competition from more aggressive cavefish, and predation from nearby crawfish. Due to their living situation and delicate population, much is unknown about these fish. But, let us go over what we do know!

The diet of the Alabama cavefish consists mostly of invertebrates found in the caves: copepods, isopods, smaller cavefish, spiders, beetles, and anything else it can find that will fit in its mouth. They grow up to a size of 2-3 inches in length. They have no eyes or pigment, and hunt solely based off of sensory protrusions that dot the head and sides, a trait evolved to handle the almost complete darkness. These fish have no breeding season, and instead breed based off of the environmental signal: when the caves flood in the winter and spring. Insufficient flooding can lead to years where no breeding or spawning occurs, and when it does females carry few eggs, and even fewer eggs hatch. Their lifespans, based off of the lifespan of Northern cavefish, are an estimated 5-10 years.

[unholy-fabray]

hey. if you are a queer/trans person who is feeling hopeless and overwhelmed by the election results, i just want to tell you this:

we have existed as long as humanity itself has existed. through every monarchy, every presidency, every dark age and revolution, queer people have existed. we have survived and lived and thrived and loved. in the face of an unwelcoming society, we have always carved out our own niches where we can find community, strength, and peace.

we survived 2004. we survived 2016 and 2020. we will survive this, too. i promise you.

please stay safe, take care of each other, and if you ever feel like it's over - i suggest reading about our queer elders and ancestors who lived through time periods that were even more dangerous and hostile. i always find strength and solidarity in their stories.

but most importantly: hold onto one another, build each other up, and love one another. we will get through this.

[btbonescanon]

at this point it’s honestly so laughable how even in a storyline that revolves around eddie emotionally cheating on her, marisol is not significant at all. like she’s not even so much as an afterthought. she could very well not be there and the story would still just work.

the last scene? all the emotional weight is put on christopher seeing kim. buck and eddie’s conversation? is all about how eddie is not doing well mentally and then how this is not fair on kim. eddie opening up to kim? all about how unfair he was to her and how it all comes from his lack of closure from shannon.

not once is there even a mention of “i/you have a girlfriend. what does this mean for her/me/us?”

[politijohn]

Source

6th highest infant mortality rate in the country.

4th highest maternal mortality rate in the country.

Gov. Kay Ivy truly has no idea what she’s talking about

[sweethomesokovia]

Though it's in the afterlife, now these two are together forever.

[rural-punk-realness]

What is Rural Punk?

i have decided to coin a new phrase for a subculture and movement that i have seen people take place in but not give a name.

I do not just mean punks who live in rural areas, although they very much as included.

Rural Punk is a term I use for the lifestyle of minorities who are isolated from others, as well as resources they need to live. This can mean people living in literally rural areas but also people who are kept separated from their necessary support structures and resources. People like this often stick out like a sour thumb and their existence alone is seen as being alternative and going against polite society, making them "punk" even if they don't dress punk or listen to the music. This is a separate subculture from the music scene, though i am sure it will overlap. This movement is designed to include and center the voices of People of Color, as they are often ingnored when discussing rural and southern environments.

How do i be rural punk? heres some rules and examples

be anti-authoritarian

think of that guy in your town who knows where all the speed traps and cop hiding spots are

dont report people for drug usage. That person going to prison wont fix anything

protest when injustice happens in your community

don't report shop lifters

2. honor and respect nature

dont litter

reduce, reuse, recycle. DIY is an essential part of punk

document nature around you via drawing, painting or photography

be kind to animals

3. serve your fellow man

volunteer

advocate for others

listen to people talking about their experiences

speak up for, not over

vote in local elections

4. try to make your community better by spreading inclusivity and acceptance in hostile places

lgbtq+ clubs

organizing Black history events, especially if it's illegal to cover in school in your state

book clubs with diverse authors

[decayingstranger]

pistol wielding bf who makes you breakfast

[shinobicyrus]

Obviously, the Alabama Supreme Court actually putting fetal personhood into law is another victory for creeping Christian Authoritarianism and yet another attack on health care, womens' rights, and bodily autonomy....but watching the Republicans flip their shit now that IVF clinics are in danger of closing is hilarious in a "the clown car is on fire" kind of way.

Because of course this was going to happen. Fetal personhood and anti-surrogacy (especially in the context of same-sex parents) has been bouncing around in conservative religious and legal circles (but what's the difference?) for decades, with those pesky liberals warning about it for just as long. Anyone with an inkling of awareness of the issue could have seen it coming.

So the fact that they were caught so off guard is myopic enough. And they're panicking for a very good reason, because yanno who generally goes to IVF clinics?

The people who can afford it.

Certainly the abortion bans in various states were bad, but if you had a lot of disposable income you could just...go to another state. Extremely inconvenient, yes, but not insurmountable. But this?

Oh my god, now the far-right pro-life politics that you've been cultivating for going on fifty years is now in a position to affect people with money? People that matter? Now you have to try and contend with the very extremist judges you installed that don't have to worry about getting elected and whose decisions are now putting you on the political chopping block?

Join us the in misery you're created for everyone else, assholes.

[floridagirlboy]

go check out @nevgovhater's marching band headcanons. done with that? ok. good. time for orchestra headcanons.

gov is the conductor. i need not say anything else.

1. ALABAMA — second violin. just strikes me as the type. he doesn't like to sit in the front or back, he prefers middle of the section.

2. ALASKA — double bass. specifically 2nd chair. he has the skill to be principal bassist but he has zero interest in being a section leader.

3. ARIZONA — cello. not sure why. i think they started out as a violinist, decided it wasn't for them, and then switched over to cello. they sit in the second row. 3rd or 4th chair.

4. ARKANSAS — first violin. in the back. got put into this class on accident and just hasn't switched out. used to be a second violin but switched sections later on. his old sectionmates haven't forgiven him.

5. CALIFORNIA — started out playing the viola. could not get along with them (they play around too much for his taste). accidentally broke his shoulder rest and that was the crucible for him switching to cello. he's a cellist.

6. COLORADO — viola, middle of the section. half-asleep at most rehearsals. people outside of the viola section forget he's there. always has an unreasonable amount of pencils on his person, all his section borrows them. only time he is not stoned is at a concert.

7. CONNECTICUT — concertmaster/principal first violinist/first chair. the kind of guy who slowly turns and stares at you after a song during rehearsal if you fucked up a chord really bad. will get onto his sectionmates for not bringing their stuff and say something like "next time i'm just not letting you borrow it" but he always does. he's a provider to his section. he cares about them a lot. same with the rest of the orchestra. just wants everyone to do their best. also he has tiny erasers on him to chuck at florida when he won't pay attention.

8. DELAWARE — second violinist, second chair. not sure why. just is.

9. FLORIDA — ...principal violist. he is the bane of gov's existence. main guy who drove california out of the viola section by being too silly but keeps begging him to come back. he has referred to this incident as the "viola section divorce", much to california's irritation, but he's started playing into the joke as well. he's a really good player but cannot focus to save his life. takes the most incomprehensible sheet music notes you've ever seen. you can't read half the notes on his sheet music because he wrote over them in the process of marking it. really good teacher to his section outside of the joking around way too much.

10. GEORGIA — second viola, has been florida's stand partner throughout all of orchestra. one of three people who can decipher florida's music (the other two being florida and louisiana; louisiana isn't even in their section, but florida taught him viola for funsies). dozes off immediately after rehearsal ends, but not during it.

11. HAWAI'I — first violin, second chair. chats with delaware sometimes since they sit next to each other. the only person she trusts to borrow her tuner, rosin, or cloth is alaska (and, lately, rhode island).

12. IDAHO — second violin.

13. ILLINOIS — first violin. i think he plays cello at home though.

14. INDIANA — cello.

15. IOWA — ..cello. maybe.

16. KANSAS — second violin or cello.

17. KENTUCKY — second violin or viola.

18. LOUISIANA — viola, second chair. florida's stand partner. he holds onto everything except the sheet music (which is surprisingly the only thing florida does not lose). actually joined orchestra because florida kept pestering him to. he got really good really quick because he has prior music experience.

19. MAINE — back of the bass section.

20. MARYLAND — clarinet

21. MASSACHUSETTS — first violin.

22. MICHIGAN — second violin.

23. MINNESOTA — first violin.

24. MISSISSIPPI — viola or second violin.

25. MISSOURI — viola.

26. MONTANA — second violin.

27. NEBRASKA — cello.

28. NEVADA — cello or first violin.

29. NEW HAMPSHIRE — cello.

30. NEW JERSEY — second violin.

31. NEW MEXICO — viola.

32. NEW YORK — cellist. wishes he was a violinist or violist sometimes but you'd have to waterboard that information out of him because he makes fun of the upper strings all the time.

33. NORTH CAROLINA — second violin. used to be a viola but switched over because his brother kept pissing him off.

34. NORTH DAKOTA — first violin. also switched sections to escape his sibling (former second violinist).

35. OHIO — viola.

36. OKLAHOMA — viola.

37. OREGON — first violin.

38. PENNSYLVANIA — first violin.

39. RHODE ISLAND — principal bassist. first chair because alaska doesn't wanna be there. he is so much fucking smaller than his bass that it's outright comedic. he sits on the stool to play and his feet don't even come close to the ground. perfectly capable of carrying his bass strength-wise but the size of it makes it a bitch, so alaska helps him. sometimes hawai'i if alaska is busy.

40. SOUTH CAROLINA — viola.

41. SOUTH DAKOTA — second violin.

42. TENNESSEE — first violin.

43. TEXAS — second violin. picked up the violin and he is not a fan but he's been with it so long he just doesn't know how to switch instruments. wishes he was a cellist. stares longingly at the cello section. he is allergic to shifting.

44. UTAH — first violin.

45. VERMONT — second violin.

46. VIRGINIA — first violin.

47. WASHINGTON — first violin.

48. WEST VIRGINIA — viola.

49. WISCONSIN — first violin.

50. WYOMING — bass.

[steelestoned]

lil ol waterfall

[fishenjoyer1]

Fish of the Day

Hello and happy day, everybody! Today's fish of the day is the Alabama sturgeon!

The Alabama sturgeon, known by scientific name Scaphirhynchus suttkusi is an incredibly endangered sturgeon found in the American South. Found, as the name implies, in the great state of Alabama, this species once had a wide historic range, stretching the entirety of the Mobile basin and bay, from the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Cahaba Rivers, but now has such limited numbers they are listed as wherever found. The Alabama sturgeon is now found only in the lower 130 miles of the Alabama river, living in fast currents of water 6-14 meters of depth nearby rock or mussel beds.

With only 3 confirmed sightings of them since 2009 confirming the species is still extant. With little hope of proving that the Alabama sturgeon continues to live other than the rare sightings, in 2016 researchers turned to another way. Using eDNA, which is usually sheddings, excrement, or other materials left behind in the environment around an animal, they got a positive result determining that the Alabama sturgeon population is still alive, leading to hopes of a captive breeding program. Despite this, there have been no female Alabama sturgeons caught, forcing plans for a breeding program to be entirely paused until they can secure eggs for it.

Regardless of current conservation efforts of the sturgeon, let's discuss other things known about this fish. This sturgeon's diet is made up of plant materials, aquatic bugs, mollusks, and other small bottom dwelling organic matter. Like other sturgeon, the Alabama sturgeon is a bottom feeder with a protrusible mouth, acting as a vacuum. They can get up to a size of 30 inches, relatively small for sturgeons, and are mostly known within the family for their striking orange-yellow color. Their life cycle is nearly identical to that of other sturgeon: sexual maturity occurs at 5-7 years of age, at which point they swim upstream to lay eggs, repeating this every 2-3 years until their lifespan comes to an end around 12-20 years!

That's the Alabama sturgeon, everybody! Have a wonderful day!

[antiqueanimals]

Florida Wildlife, May 1958. Illustration by Wallace Hughes.

Internet Archive

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:

KRISTA HARDING’S DAUGHTER was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, but I’m coming in! Don’t panic. Harding’s registration tag was expired. She figured the officer would write her a ticket and she’d be on her way, but when he came back after running her driver’s license, he had handcuffs out. There was a felony warrant out for her arrest, he said: “Chemical endangerment of a child.” Harding used her most patient customer-service tone to ask the officer if he’d please check again. But there was no mistake, the cop confirmed: He was taking her to the Etowah County Detention Center, almost an hour’s drive away. “I’m in the back of the cop car just bawling my eyes out, like, ugly-face-snot-bubbles crying,” Harding remembers. She was worried about being away from her newborn, and she was confused: Chemical endangerment of a child? “I think of somebody cooking meth with a baby on their hip,” she says. 

She’s right to think that: The Alabama law, passed in 2006, was intended to target those who expose children to toxic chemicals, or worse, explosions, while manufacturing methamphetamine in ad-hoc home labs.  Harding says it took at least eight hours to be booked into a cell that night, and it was more than a week before she was finally allowed to see a judge. She was still leaking breast milk, and desperately missing her two daughters. Her family wasn’t allowed to bring her clean underwear, so every day she washed her one pair, saturated with menstrual blood, in the cell sink, then hung them to dry.

Harding says she eventually learned the warrant for her arrest had been issued because of a urine test taken at a doctor’s visit early in her pregnancy. Sitting alone in her cell, she conjured a vague memory of her OB-GYN warning her local authorities had begun to crack down on weed. The comment had struck her as odd at the time: Nine years earlier, when she was pregnant with her first child, the same doctor at the same hospital had told Harding, who’d smoked both pot and cigarettes before she was pregnant, that she’d rather Harding kick the nicotine than the weed. (Studies are unequivocal about the fact that cigarettes contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes, but the research on weed is less conclusive, with some doctors arguing it at least has therapeutic benefits, like helping with morning sickness.)

But in the years between her first child and her second, something had changed in certain parts of Alabama. In Etowah County, in 2013, the sheriff, the district attorney, and the head of the local child-welfare agency held a press conference to announce they intended to aggressively enforce that 2006 law. Instead of going after the manufacturers of meth, though, they planned to target pregnant women who used virtually any substance they deemed harmful to a developing fetus.

“If a baby is born with a controlled-substance dependency, the mother is going to jail,” then-Sheriff Todd Entrekin said at the time. Police weren’t required to establish that a child was born with a chemical dependency, though — or even that a fetus experienced any harm — a drug test, a confession, or just an accusation of substance use during pregnancy was enough to arrest women for a first offense that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. One public defender would later call these “unwinnable cases.” Over the following decade, Etowah County imprisoned hundreds of mothers — some of whom were detained, before trial, for the rest of their pregnancies, inside one of the most brutal and inhumane prisons in the country, denied access to prenatal care and adequate nutrition, they say — in the name of protecting their children from harm. 

[...]

In the past two decades, Alabama has become the undisputed champion of arresting pregnant women for actions that wouldn’t be considered crimes if they weren’t pregnant: 649 arrests between 2006 and 2022, almost as many arrests as documented in all other states combined, according to advocacy group Pregnancy Justice, which collected the statistics. Across the U.S., the vast majority of women arrested on these charges were too poor to afford a lawyer, and a quarter of cases were based on the use of a legal substance, like prescription medication.

Today, Marshall is the attorney general of Alabama, and just a few months ago, the state’s Supreme Court used the same logic — that life begins at conception, therefore an embryo is legally indistinguishable from a living child — in a decision that was responsible for shutting down IVF clinics across the state. The ruling was a triumph for the fetal-personhood movement, a nationwide crusade to endow fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses with constitutional rights. Personhood has been the Holy Grail for the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, but outlawing abortion — at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason — is just the start of what legal recognition of embryos’ rights could mean for anyone who can get pregnant. Experts have long warned that elevating an embryo’s legal status effectively strips the person whose body that embryo occupies of her own rights the moment she becomes pregnant.

Across the country, this theory has led to situations like in Texas, where a hospital kept a brain-dead woman alive for almost two months — against her own advanced directive and the wishes of her family — in deference to a state law that prevents doctors from removing a pregnant person from life support. (The hospital only relented after the woman’s husband sued for “cruel and obscene mutilation of a corpse.”) Or in New Hampshire, where a court allowed a woman who was hit by a car while seven months pregnant to be sued by her future child for negligence because she failed to use “a designated crosswalk.” Or in Washington, D.C., where a terminally ill cancer patient, 26 weeks pregnant, requested palliative care, but was instead subjected to court-ordered cesarean section. Her baby survived for just two hours; she died two days later.

Or in Alabama, where, in 2019, Marshae Jones walked into the Pleasant Grove Police Department with her six-year-old daughter expecting to be interviewed for a police investigation. Months earlier, Jones, four and a half months pregnant at the time, had been shot by her co-worker during a dispute. In the hospital after the shooting, Jones underwent an emergency C-section; her baby, whom she’d named Malaysia, did not survive. Rather than indicting the shooter, though, a grand jury indicted Jones, who they decided “intentionally” caused the death of her “unborn baby” because she allegedly picked a fight “knowing she was five months pregnant.” The charges were ultimately dismissed, but Jones’ lawyer says her record still shows the arrest, and Jones, who lost her job after the incident, struggled to find work after her case attracted national attention.

The threat this ideology poses to American women is not contained to Alabama: Recognition of fetal personhood is an explicit policy goal of the national Republican Party, and it has been since the 1980s. The GOP platform calls for amending the U.S. Constitution to recognize the rights of embryos, and representatives in Congress have introduced legislation that would recognize life begins at conception hundreds of times — as recently as this current session, when the Life at Conception Act attracted the co-sponsorship of 127 sitting Republican members of Congress.

[...]

Taking inspiration from Black Americans’ fight for equal rights, the anti-abortion movement began thinking of its own crusade as a fight for equality. “The argument that the unborn was the ultimate victim of discrimination in America was really resonant with a lot of white Americans, a lot of socially conservative Americans — and it was vague enough that people who disagreed about stuff like feminism, the welfare state, children born outside of marriage, the Civil Rights Movement” could find common ground, Ziegler says.  By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, the idea that a fetus was entitled to constitutional protections was mainstream enough to be a central piece of Texas’ argument that “Jane Roe” did not have a right to get an abortion.  

The justices rejected that idea. “The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. But he gave the movement a cause to rally behind for the next half-century by adding: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”  Making that happen became the anti-abortion movement’s primary focus from that moment on. One week after Roe was decided, a U.S. congressman first proposed amending the Constitution to guarantee “the right to life to the unborn, the ill, the aged, or the incapacitated.” It was called the Human Life Amendment, and though it failed to make it to a floor vote that session, it would be reproposed more than 300 times in the following decades.  By 1980, the idea had been fully embraced by the Republican Party: Ronald Reagan’s GOP adopted it into the party platform — where it remains to this day — and in 1983, the Republican-majority Congress voted, for the first and only time, on the idea of adding a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That vote failed. 

After their 1983 defeat, activists turned their attention away from the U.S. Capitol and toward the states, where they sought to insert the idea of fetal personhood into as many state laws as possible: everything from legislation creating tax deductions for fetuses or declaring them people for census-taking purposes, to expanding child-endangerment and -neglect laws.  Activists pursued this agenda everywhere, but they were most successful at advancing it in states that share certain qualities. “You could draw a Venn diagram of American slavery and see that what’s happening today is in common in those states,” says Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor and author of the book Policing the Womb. “Some would say, ‘Well, OK, how is that relevant?’ Slavery itself was explicitly about denying personal autonomy, denying the humanity of Black people. Now, clearly, these laws affect women of all ethnicities. But the point is: If you’re in a constitutional democracy and you found a way to avoid recognizing the constitutional humanity of a particular group of people, it’s something that’s not lost in the muscle memory of those who legislate and of the courts in that state.”

Rolling Stone has a solid in-depth report on the war on women and reproductive health in Alabama, going into detail the fetal personhood movement.

[littledreamsnothingmore]

mine

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

if your conclusion after reading Hillbilly Elegy (and I don't think most people who say this did read it) is "J.D. Vance is from Ohio, he's not a real hillbilly and knows nothing about Appalachia," you missed the entire point of the book.

[decayingstranger]