#COMING TO A COUNTRY NEAR US !

[one-sexy-fucking-toucan]

I was thinking about it today and there is enough similarity between The King and Siffrin for something. I don't know what but there is something.

[liu-yu-xin]

Omg I think neocatharsis finally blocked me its been an honour 🫡 and i always thought i would be blocked for the wayv separatism and nct dream hate but i think it might have been the winwin akgae block list that did it lmaoo

[kingtankgirl]

i mean like. lrb, they literally Are ceding the election to trump. that was the whole point of running biden again. and its crazy that ppl r like Get Out There And Vote! as if trump wasnt always going to win 2024. as if project 2025 wasnt Always going to be enacted (regardless of the talking head we call president). like this is very much the goal of the united states government at large, not any particular administration. once you can accept that its reality you can start working on your anxiety and actually start having a game plan. fascism can, will, and is coming for the imperial core of the world. It Can Happen Here. please get fucking real

[0ystercatcher]

degrowth feels almost like the guilty consciouness of americans and europeans who have truly had it too good too long and you know it ehe but im sorry dude you cannot be fr telling the rest of the world to cut emissions or industrial activity when it barely fucking exists here while you reap the benefits of it all. when development has been cut short and actively prevented in so many places like my home so you mfs can have it easy and not have to compete w us for our own resources. degrowth is suicide for us and mass murder for you. you want degrowth so bad? kill yourself! just kill yourself. do your part or whatever and hopefully well do our part here attempting to make this shithole country better even if it costs us carbon emissions or whatever. as if we werent held back from it at every turn and as if every time weve tried america or canada or europe hasnt swept in to take everything weve produced for themselves.

[keeps-ache]

it's actually very mean that i can't have emojis of my ocs just on my computer. i just think it would be much more convenient for when i have to say the Guys are in my brain but i also have no words..

[justbeingnamaste]

This warning video was originally uploaded in the mid-2010's but then banned on all platforms. As you watch the news you can see that everything predicted is coming into fruition. We were unable to locate the original copy we posted on Twitter back then so we had to piece together some of the clips and change the audio/music a bit to reassemble (and updated it also). Special thanks to the team at Politically Incorrect Studios.

[crescentmp3]

went outside today! was quite fun ^^

[beemovieerotica]

struggling with how to word this, but putting it out there anyway:

i can fully understand the posts on here from a lot of americans being tired of "vote blue no matter who" posts when the #1 thing that people are constantly (and sometimes only?) addressing is how the republican party is going treat trans/queer people if elected.

it's part of an unfortunate pattern of prioritizing the effects on a demographic that includes white + upper class people, when people of color and those in the global south are actively and currently being killed or relegated to circumstances in which their survival is very unlikely

it is genuinely exhausting to witness this, and i was also on the fence about even participating in voting because i a) felt like it didn't matter and b) every time i voiced being frustrated with the current state of the country, white queer people would immediately step in with "but what about trans people!" -> (i am mixed race trans man)

and i say this with unending patience toward people who do this, because i know that it's not something they actively think about. but everyone already knows how the republican party is going to treat queer people. you are probably talking to another queer person when you bring up project 2025. the issue is that, for those of us who aren't white, or for those of us who are but who are conscious of ongoing struggles for people of color worldwide, the safety of people around the world feels more urgent than our own. that is the calculation that's being made.

you're not going to win votes for the democratic party by dismissing or minimizing these realities and by continually centering (white) queer people.

very few people on here and twitter are actually talking about issues beyond queer rights that concern people of color, or how the two administrations differ on these issues instead of constantly circling back to single-issue politics. this isn't an exhaustive list. but these are the issues that have actually altered my perspective and motivated me to the point of committing to casting a vote

the biden administration has been engaged in a years-long fight to allow new applicants to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that allows undocumented individuals who arrived as children to remain in the country) after the Trump administration attempted to terminate it. the program is in limbo currently because of the actions of Trump-backed judges, with those who applied before the ruling being allowed to stay, but no new applications are being processed. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of just deporting the 1.8 million people, but he continues to change his mind depending on whatever the fuck goes on in his head. he cannot be relied on to be sympathetic toward people of hispanic descent or to guarantee that DREAMers will be allowed stay in the country. biden + a democratic controlled congress will allow legal challenges to the DACA moratorium to gain ground.

the biden administration is open to returning and protecting portions of culturally important indigenous land in a way that the trump administration absolutely does not give a fuck. as of may 2024, they have established seven national monuments with plans to expand the San Gabriel Monument where the Gabrielino, Kizh / Tongva, the Chumash, Kitanemuk, Serrano, and Tataviam reside. the Berryessa Snow Mountain is also on the list, as a sacred region to the Patwin.

i'm recognizing that the US's plans for clean energy have often come into conflict with tribal sovereignty, and the biden administration could absolutely do better in navigating this. but the unfortunate dichotomy is that there would be zero commitment or investment in clean energy under a trump-led government, which poses an astounding existential threat and destabilizing force to the global south beyond any human-to-human conflict. climate change has caused and will continue to cause resource shortages, greater natural disasters, and near-lethal living conditions for those in the tropics - and the actions of the highest energy consumers (US) are to blame. biden has funneled billions of dollars into climate change mitigation and clean energy generation - trump does not believe that any of it matters.

i may circle back to this and add more as it comes up, but i'm hoping that those who are skeptical / discouraged / tired of the white queer-centric discourse on tumblr and twitter can at least process some of this. please feel free to add more articles + points but i'm asking for the sake of this post to please focus on issues that affect people of color.

[codaynamics]

i really dont get this idea that there's a difference between the two fuckheads, they keep lauding about this change that happened but in my experience nothing has changed in any way in the past two fucking decades, except the weather's getting worse and the economy more so.

and they keep saying things will get better with the one, but she's in office right fucking now, and nothing's changing, so?????? where is it?????

or did they forget that lesser evil is still fucking evil?

where is this support for the country's marginalized when a black muslim man was executed for a crime he didnt commit?

where is the support for your LGBTQ+ siblings when, more than ever, discrimination against us has escalated dangerously?

most importantly, where is this action on Harris's behalf to solve any of these problems when the govt is more focused on killing its neighbors and stealing their land?

can someone show me ANYTHING that something good is being done about these issues on the govt behalf that doesnt boil down to an excuse?

[reasonsforhope]

"Once thought to be extinct, black-footed ferrets are the only ferret native to North America, and are making a comeback, thanks to the tireless efforts of conservationists.

Captive breeding, habitat restoration, and wildlife reintegration have all played a major role in bringing populations into the hundreds after near total extinction.

But one other key development has been genetic cloning.

In April [2024], the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced the cloning of two black-footed ferrets from preserved tissue samples, the second and third ferret clones in history, following the birth of the first clone in December 2020. 

Cloning is a tactic to preserve the health of species, as all living black-footed ferrets come from just seven wild-caught descendants.  This means their genetic diversity is extremely limited and opens them up to greater risks of disease and genetic abnormalities. 

Now, a new breakthrough has been made.

Antonia, a black-footed ferret cloned from the DNA of a ferret that lived in the 1980s has successfully birthed two healthy kits of her own: Sibert and Red Cloud.

These babies mark the first successful live births from a cloned endangered species — and is a milestone for the country’s ferret recovery program.

The kits are now three months old, and mother Antonia is helping to raise them — and expand their gene pool.

In fact, Antonia’s offspring have three times the genetic diversity of any other living ferrets that have come from the original seven ancestors.

Researchers believe that expanded genetic diversity could help grow the ferrets’ population and help prime them to recover from ongoing diseases that have been massively detrimental to the species, including sylvatic plague and canine distemper. 

“The successful breeding and subsequent birth of Antonia's kits marks a major milestone in endangered species conservation,” said Paul Marinari, senior curator at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. 

“The many partners in the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program continue their innovative and inspirational efforts to save this species and be a model for other conservation programs across the globe.”

Antonia actually gave birth to three kits, after mating with Urchin, a 3-year-old male ferret. One of the three kits passed away shortly after birth, but one male and one female are in good health and meeting developmental milestones, according to the Smithsonian.

Mom and babies will remain at the facility for further research, with no plans to release them into the wild.

According to the Colorado Sun, another cloned ferret, Noreen, is also a potential mom in the cloning-breeding program. The original cloned ferret, Elizabeth Ann, is doing well at the recovery program in Colorado, but does not have the capabilities to breed. 

Antonia, who was cloned using the DNA of a black-footed ferret named Willa, has now solidified Willa’s place as the eighth founding ancestor of all current living ferrets.

“By doing this, we’ve actually added an eighth founder,” said Tina Jackson, black-footed ferret recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an interview with the Colorado Sun. 

“And in some ways that may not sound like a lot, but in this genetic world, that is huge.”

Along with the USFWS and Smithsonian, conservation organization Revive & Restore has also enabled the use of biotechnologies in conservation practice. Co-founder and executive director Ryan Phelan is thrilled to welcome these two new kits to the black-footed ferret family.

“For the first time, we can definitively say that cloning contributed meaningful genetic variation back into a breeding population,” he said in a statement.

“As these kits move forward in the breeding program, the impact of this work will multiply, building a more robust and resilient population over time.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, November 4, 2024

[deathisamotherofbeauty]

Wish the laufey book club would partner with more places other than the ones shes visiting on tour. This could be a great way for her to grow more of a following in the countries where maybe there arent many fans

Also i just want to get her merch without having to pau customs lol, and meet more of her fans :-)

[thehmn]

Not too long ago I made a post about the Sanded Church of Skagen that was abandoned due to being buried in sand, but the “sand problem” is much larger than the church.

If you look at Denmark on a map you might notice a white dot near the very top of the country.

That my friend is a huge sand dune that arose out of the sea 300 years ago and is slowly eating its way through the landscape at 18 meters a year.

And if you look closer you might notice that it’s heading straight for the towns Rannerød and Hulsig and when that happens no one will come to save them because the dune is protected. At least they’ll see it coming.

That means that in a few hundred years we won’t just have a sanded church, we’ll have sanded towns with more roofs and towers sticking out of the dune than any tourist bureau could wish for.

Because the dune is a very popular tourist spot. I myself have been to it a few times and it’s quite the experience for a child to suddenly be in a “desert” in Denmark.

If you feel sad for the people in the towns just remember that’s nature. The reason why the dune is protected is because the area used to have many more but people made an effort to destroy them and it fucked up the ecosystem in the area. The dunes leave moist wetland behind that loads of rare creatures thrive in.

So today the inevitable end of the towns are viewed as sort of romantic poetry about nature, the march of time and appreciating the now.

And isn’t it kinda beautiful? To know that something like this exists in the world that will destroy our towns, roads and railways that we could easily eradicate with our modern technology but we choose not to simply because we know it would be wrong.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[butchlifeguard]

interacting with my mom when shes drunk is like being stabbed to death with a paperclip

[catdotjpeg]

Incredible. Palestinians gathered today in Nelson Mandela Square, Ramallah, in the West Bank, playing the South African anthem to pay tribute to South Africa for taking apartheid Israel to the ICJ over its violations of the Genocide Convention. It is us, as Africans, who say thank you to Palestine for being an inspiration for a just and humane world, and for being our constant ally in the struggle for liberation. This heartfelt and beautiful gesture from Palestinians comes at great personal risk, with the Israeli Occupation Forces committing constant atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank. We salute Palestinians and stand by their side to demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism and occupation. The bond between Africa and Palestine is unbreakable. It is our shared humanity — our heartfelt solidarity — that will bring an end to hateful violence. Palestine will be free!

-- African Artists Against Apartheid, photos by Alaa Daraghme, 10 Jan 2024

As the International Court of Justice prepares to consider whether Israel is committing genocidal acts in its war on Gaza, Palestinians in Ramallah have gathered for a rally celebrating South Africa, the country that first submitted the case against Israel and a nation with longstanding ties to the Palestinian cause. “This rally is actually under the banner of ‘Thank you South Africa'” Al Jazeera correspondent Hoda Abdel-Hamid reported near a crowd gathered around a statue of Nelson Mandela in Ramallah. South African flags could be seen waving in the background. “This rally started with words from the mayor of Ramallah, who said South Africa represented a ‘beacon of hope’ for the Palestinians, reminding them that deep-rooted relations between South Africa and the Palestinians go back to the days of Nelson Mandela.”

-- "Palestinians celebrate South Africa in Ramallah rally" by Linah Alsaafin and Brian Osgood, 10 Jan 2024 16:30 GMT

[fleshwizard]

Dragons & Folklore de France

Translation below

The Tarasque dwells in the waters of the Rhone river near the town of Tarascon, where it devours travelers and destroys dikes and dams to flood the Camargue. Saint Martha chained it, and the people of Tarascon killed it.

The ruins of the amphitheaters of Metz were infested by hundreds of snakes. The largest of them, the Graoully, had a venomous breath, a mouth bigger than its body and devoured men. Saint Clement chased it away into the Seille River.

King of serpents, the Basilisk takes many forms throughout history and appears in many tales. One of them takes place at the Gate of Saint-Eloi in Bordeaux, known today for its Big Bell, where a well was occupied by a Basilisk. It petrified with its gaze anyone who went there to fetch water. It was defeated by a man returning from the Egyptian crusade, who petrified the beast with its own gaze using a mirail (mirror).

The Cocatrix is born from a rooster's egg incubated by a toad. The egg has magical properties but must not be broken. People who cross its gaze die immediatly.

Made of wicker and covered in flowers, the Grand Bailla wanders the streets of Reims three days a year and feeds on gold and sweets. It was banished by Archbishop Charles Maurice le Tellier.

The Grand'Goule haunts the marshes of Poitou, the waters of the Clain and the flooded cellars of the abbey of Sainte Croix. It feeds on nuns and casse-museaux (snout-breakers, cakes). Saint Radegonde chased it away with holy water.

In the rivers of the Jura and the Alps there is a group of diverse dragons, the Vouivres. They are generally flying serpents covered in fire and guardians of treasures. Many have for a single eye a gigantic carbuncle with extraordinary powers, desired by those in search of wealth and power.

Hidden in the caves and cliffs of la Pointe du Roux near La Rochelle, the Rô Beast traps and devours travelers in the coastal marshes. It was impaled by seven heroic pagans from the seas.

Mythical dragon of the Basque Country, Herensuge gave birth to the Sun and the Moon, swallowed all of Creation in ten days then regurgitated it in flames. Now asleep in the mountains, it sucks up flocks and shepherds in his sleep. When it wakes up, it will destroy the world in flames and blood. (illustration)

Durandal is the mythical sword that Charlemagne gave to the knight Roland. Some claim that it was inherited from Hector, the warrior of the Trojan War. At war with the Saracens in the Pyrenées, Roland wanted to break the sword so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy but Durandal split the mountain. So he threw the sword, which went to stick miles away, in the rock of the town of Rocamadour.

The belief in the Tooth Fairy is widespread in several countries in Europe, and is sometimes amalgamated with La Petite Souris (little mouse). It exchanges baby teeth for money. No one knows what it does with all these teeth.

The Camecruse is a bogeyman that haunts the moors and marshes of Gascony. It is agile, can jump and hide in the night to better devour lost children. No one knows exactly how it feeds.

The caves under the hill of the town of Hastingues are home to Lou Carcolh, a monstrous snail, long, slimy and hairy. Its shell is as big as a house. With the help of its tentacles, it grips people to devour them.

The Questing Beast is hunted by kings and heroes in Arthurian legends. It symbolizes evil, incest, violence and chaos, and takes it name from the loud noises that come out of its stomach, similar to the barking of dozens of dogs.

The fairy Mélusine, cursed princess of Albania, was condemned to change into a snake below the waist every Saturday. She married Raymondin de Lusignan with whom they had 10 prodigious children. But Raymondin broke his promise never to see Mélusine on Saturday : he surprised her in her monstrous form, and she left her family forever.