#Delta smelt

[circadiancrunch]

Shameless plug as we get closer to the end~ Link here These are 2 of my previously produced designs. They were both guest designs I was invited to make, so I wanted them to mirror each other. Extinct birds and extremely endangered fish. I dunno if I mentioned it last time, but the orange fish, the Golden Skiffia was extinct in the wild until last year. 1200 were reintroduced and they're supposed to be monitored for 5 years. Hopefully they make it! Reintroductions aren't often successful, but I'd love it if these little guys beat the odds.

[satireinfo]

French Farmers Protest

Paris: The City of Love, Lights, and… Tractors French Farmers Turn Paris into a Green Overalls Runway in Protest Against the EU-Mercosur Deal Paris, the city that gave us romance, baguettes, and berets, has found itself the stage for another uniquely French cultural phenomenon—protests. But this time, it’s not students or unions shutting things down; it’s tractors, cows, and very frustrated…

[irreplaceable-spark]

Farmer Explains Why California Flushes 95% Rainwater to Ocean | Mark Nakata

"And it is really disheartening to see what's going on. I mean, my own kids are wondering whether they should even try it. Because they're saying dad, doesn't look like there's a future. And I can't tell them they're wrong." 

Siyamak sits down with Mark Nakata, a multi-generational farmer and CEO of California United Water Coalition.  Mark is here to give us an insider preceptive on what farmers are facing in California and his efforts to save his family farm and tradition.

[weevil-mastermind]

When Sarcasmitron posts a new video:

[moocfitab]

You guys ever think abt the fact that while he was a wolf- Fenris had nobody.

No human could understand him.. Vikesh was dead, and No other wolfs wanted him in their pack, recognizing the bastardized version of Delta's power.. He was alone, after being surrounded by people for so long.. He was a lone wolf.

Until, he met a human that was nice, one with firery red hair that treated him with kindness, took care of him.. The two were friends for a while, until he was alone again..

Do you ever think abt the fact that He must have gotten so used to being alone?

He had met a bear for a little while, the creature treating him with kindness he hadn't had for so long.. He had hoped this one would stay.. But they didn't...

Then he was alone again, do you ever think about how the gods didn't even know how long he wandered, slowly forgetting who he was, who his loved ones were.. He forgot he was ever human in the first place..

You ever think about the fact that the only instinct he had was to from the rain inside a shallow cave..

You ever think about the fact that he stayed in there for *gods know how long* before another Human, one with hair darker than the midnight sky and a bright lantern ventured into the cave.. This human was kind, giving him steak and bringing him to the warm place..

You ever think about the fact that- For the first time in a long time, he had a name again.

Void

It wasn't his real name, something deep in his chest told him that, but it was his name..

You ever think about the fact that this human treated him with kindness? A wolf who had been shunned by all the other wolfs.

You ever think about the fact that Void probably felt like they had finally found a pack member? After being alone for so long?

Star took care of void, playing in the snow, feeding him meat that tasted better than he had ever tasted before..

Star would lock himself away.. Void wanted to follow, to lay on the starmans chest and show him the appreciation he felt, but every night, the iron door would stay locked..

Void probably thought that this routine was simple, it was nice.. He took care of Star, just as much as Star took care of him.. Like a real pack member would.

Then, a library, one that smelt of old books and parchment paper..

Star read a book, a book that seemed so familiar to the wolf but he couldn't place his paw on it.. Until Star read that name..

"Vikesh"

Void felt himself grow, the normal wolf form he had been used to now changed, back into his old body- one he didn't remember, his own skin felt foreign to him.. He was no longer Void, to Star- To *Rae* he was Wolf..

You ever think about the fact that for the first time in what felt like eons, he was a person to someone again..?

...Yeah no, me neither. :]

[interstellar-elf]

The fact that Trump doesn't understand that diverting the Klamath River to California will not relieve it's water problem and will cause a huge ecological collaspe doesn't necessarily surprise me but I'm utterly confused as to why there's people who agree with him.

Ocean bound rivers aren't "wasting water", they actually benefit the ecosystem by sustaining sediment and nutrients that are needed by ocean life, nevermind keep the delta waters free of salt so it's drinkable and harbors life needed to sustain a healthy environment.

The Klamath River is vital for the life cycle and ecology of the salmon of the PNW. Without the smelt, there wouldn't be salmon, and the bear populations would either dwindle or force them into human areas for food. It would be an utter ecological collapse.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

L.A.fires Mary Elaine LeBey

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 09, 2025

At least four wildfires tearing across Los Angeles have killed at least five people and forced the evacuation of at least 130,000 more, and have flattened about 42 square miles (109 square kilometers). The fires are being driven by unusually high winds with gusts of up to 98 miles per hour (158 km per hour). Although January is typically part of California’s wet season, conditions are terribly dry. Downtown Los Angeles has received just 0.16 inches (0.4 cm) of rain since May 6, 2024, and the summer was unusually hot.

President Joe Biden is supporting state and local responses to the fire with federal resources. Today, he approved a major disaster declaration, which enables people and towns to access funds immediately in order to jump-start their recovery. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will reimburse California for some of the costs of fighting the fires. Five U.S. Forest Service large air tankers and ten federal firefighting helicopters have been deployed to support the local firefighters; ten Navy helicopters with water delivery buckets are joining them. California governor Gavin Newsom has deployed the California National Guard, and the Nevada National Guard is standing by.

Canada, too, has sent water-dropping helicopters and a pair of planes, which are part of a firefighting contract with California that’s been in place for 14 years.

At a fire station in Santa Monica, Biden stood beside Newsom and said: “We’re prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires.”

In contrast to federal support for California under Biden, in the midst of the ongoing crisis President-elect Donald Trump blamed California governor Gavin “Newscum and his Los Angeles crew” for the fires, suggesting he had put the needs of fish over the people of California. He posted: “Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” "Let this stand as a symbol of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newsom duo,” Trump posted. “January 20th cannot come fast enough!"

Newsom’s office responded: “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration—that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

Trump is apparently claiming that water that could be used to fight the fires has been diverted to protect the endangered Delta smelt. But the water systems in California are complicated, and importing water from northern California would make no difference for the wildfires.

Los Angeles water doesn’t come from northern California. It comes from an aqueduct east of the Sierra Nevada, from groundwater, and from the Colorado River. Right now, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has more water stored than it has ever had before, according to Mark Gold, a board member. “It’s not a matter of having enough water coming from Northern California to put out a fire,” he told Alastair Bland of CalMatters. “It’s about the continued devastating impacts of a changing climate.”

Hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick told Taryn Luna, Liam Dillon, and Alex Wigglesworth of the Los Angeles Times that Trump’s linking of water policy to the raging fires was “blatantly false, irresponsible and politically self-serving.”

The two different responses of the current president and the incoming one reveal dramatically different approaches to the presidency.

Yesterday the Biden administration announced the finalization of a new rule that will remove medical debt from all credit reports. Until now, medical debt has meant that consumers could be denied mortgages, car loans, or small business loans. In addition, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that funds from the American Rescue Plan, passed by Democrats shortly after Biden took office in 2021, have enabled the elimination of more than $1 billion in medical debt for 700,000 Americans. Jurisdictions are on track to eliminate about $15 billion in medical debt for nearly 6 million Americans, the White House said.

“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Harris said.

While Biden and Harris are working to solve problems for regular Americans, Trump has simply gone on the offensive, attacking Democrats for what he claims is their mismanagement without offering any ideas of his own. “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA,” he posted. “THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!”

By now, we know that Trump goes on offense to hide his own shortcomings. As Judd Legum of Public Notice pointed out, “The largest wildfire in California history—the August Complex Fire, which burned more than 1 million acres—occurred during the Trump administration.”

That pattern of going on offense to hide his own behavior was also on display today when CNN’s Hadas Gold reported that someone inside the Fox News Channel (FNC) gave the Trump team the questions that Trump would be asked at an Iowa town hall last January just before the Iowa caucus. A forthcoming book by Alex Isenstadt of Politico details the close relationship between Trump and people within FNC. It says that after Trump refused to prepare for that town hall, someone inside Fox texted the questions to a senior Trump aide, enabling them to prep him with answers.

After Trump fell apart during his debate with Vice President Harris, he accused her of knowing the questions ahead of time and said the debate was “rigged.”

Trump apparently went on the offensive yesterday when he called Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just hours before Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency request with the court asking it to stop Manhattan judge Juan Merchan from sentencing Trump Friday in the election interference case in which a jury found him guilty of 34 felonies. Alito told reporters that they talked only about a job opportunity for one of Alito’s law clerks and did not discuss the case, but it is highly unusual for a president or president-elect to talk with a Supreme Court justice when that official has business before the court. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said such a thing was “almost unheard of.”

As legal analyst Quinta Jurecic observed, though, someone leaked news of this inappropriate contact astonishingly quickly. Such news usually “has taken a while to dribble out,” Jurecic noted, but “this happened THIS MORNING. [S]omebody was smug or pissed off enough to go to the press right away.”

Trump’s accusations that Biden committed a crime more likely to be chalked up to Trump himself—taking bribes from a foreign company—was also in the news today. Alexander Smirnov, the key witness for the House Republicans’ investigation into Biden, was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about the alleged bribery and to tax evasion.

Julia Ainsley and Carol E. Lee of NBC News today reported another way in which Trump is threatening to go on offense: by conducting a very visible raid targeting undocumented immigrants in the Washington, D.C., area as soon as he takes office. While Presidents Barack Obama and Biden have targeted employers who violate labor laws, Trump wants to demonstrate “shock and awe” by raiding workplaces and sweeping up migrants who are in the U.S. without documentation, regardless of their criminal status. His transition team has been talking with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials about the logistics of such raids.

And then, of course, there are Trump’s frequent references to taking over other countries. Don Jr. traveled to Greenland this week with right-wing activist and media personality Charlie Kirk, ostensibly to record a podcast, but Trump Sr. followed the trip with posts saying “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” That idea is getting traction among MAGA leaders, even though—or perhaps because—it is a direct affront to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to which both the U.S. and Denmark belong.

Over the New York Post’s map of the “Donroe Doctrine” in which Canada is labeled “51st state,” Greenland is labeled “our land,” the Gulf of Mexico is labeled “Gulf of America,” and the Panama Canal is labeled “Pana-Maga Canal,” the Republican majority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted today: “Our country was built by warriors and explorers. We tamed the West, won two World Wars, and were the first to plant our flag on the moon. President Trump has the biggest dreams for America and it’s un-American to be afraid of big dreams.” Journalist Jamie Dupree screenshotted the tweet before the committee deleted it.

Behind all the offense, though, things that matter deeply to the American people are going largely unnoticed.

MAGA representatives have been introducing a slew of measures to the new Congress, many of which incorporate the plans of Project 2025 into legislation. They call for turning over immigration to the states, privatizing veterans’ healthcare, and repealing the 1993 National Voting Rights Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Bills call for withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization; increasing oil and gas production on federal lands; abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); allowing states to spend federal education money on private school vouchers; and removing the protection of transgender rights from schools.

Other measures would revoke security clearances for “certain former members of the intelligence community,” introduce a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, and cut off federal funding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (the office that successfully charged Trump with election interference) and the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney’s Office (the office that has charged Trump with criminal conspiracy).

And MAGA Republicans have proposed a bill to impose a national abortion ban, along with a bill urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness,” and “health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[lizardsaredinosaurs]

I'm not sure I'm comfortable being compared to a popsicle stick...

Longfin Smelt (Spirinchus thaleichthys)

Pacific coast of North America from Alaska to California

Status: San Francisco Bay-Delta population is Endangered

---

The subpopulation of this fish was given protection in July of this year. I saw an article describing it as "the length of a popsicle stick".

[misfitwashere]

January 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 9

At least four wildfires tearing across Los Angeles have killed at least five people and forced the evacuation of at least 130,000 more, and have flattened about 42 square miles (109 square kilometers). The fires are being driven by unusually high winds with gusts of up to 98 miles per hour (158 km per hour). Although January is typically part of California’s wet season, conditions are terribly dry. Downtown Los Angeles has received just 0.16 inches (0.4 cm) of rain since May 6, 2024, and the summer was unusually hot.

President Joe Biden is supporting state and local responses to the fire with federal resources. Today, he approved a major disaster declaration, which enables people and towns to access funds immediately in order to jump-start their recovery. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will reimburse California for some of the costs of fighting the fires. Five U.S. Forest Service large air tankers and ten federal firefighting helicopters have been deployed to support the local firefighters; ten Navy helicopters with water delivery buckets are joining them. California governor Gavin Newsom has deployed the California National Guard, and the Nevada National Guard is standing by.

Canada, too, has sent water-dropping helicopters and a pair of planes, which are part of a firefighting contract with California that’s been in place for 14 years.

At a fire station in Santa Monica, Biden stood beside Newsom and said: “We’re prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires.”

In contrast to federal support for California under Biden, in the midst of the ongoing crisis President-elect Donald Trump blamed California governor Gavin “Newscum and his Los Angeles crew” for the fires, suggesting he had put the needs of fish over the people of California. He posted: “Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” "Let this stand as a symbol of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newsom duo,” Trump posted. “January 20th cannot come fast enough!"

Newsom’s office responded: “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration—that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

Trump is apparently claiming that water that could be used to fight the fires has been diverted to protect the endangered Delta smelt. But the water systems in California are complicated, and importing water from northern California would make no difference for the wildfires.

Los Angeles water doesn’t come from northern California. It comes from an aqueduct east of the Sierra Nevada, from groundwater, and from the Colorado River. Right now, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has more water stored than it has ever had before, according to Mark Gold, a board member. “It’s not a matter of having enough water coming from Northern California to put out a fire,” he told Alastair Bland of CalMatters. “It’s about the continued devastating impacts of a changing climate.”

Hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick told Taryn Luna, Liam Dillon, and Alex Wigglesworth of the Los Angeles Times that Trump’s linking of water policy to the raging fires was “blatantly false, irresponsible and politically self-serving.”

The two different responses of the current president and the incoming one reveal dramatically different approaches to the presidency.

Yesterday the Biden administration announced the finalization of a new rule that will remove medical debt from all credit reports. Until now, medical debt has meant that consumers could be denied mortgages, car loans, or small business loans. In addition, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that funds from the American Rescue Plan, passed by Democrats shortly after Biden took office in 2021, have enabled the elimination of more than $1 billion in medical debt for 700,000 Americans. Jurisdictions are on track to eliminate about $15 billion in medical debt for nearly 6 million Americans, the White House said.

“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Harris said.

While Biden and Harris are working to solve problems for regular Americans, Trump has simply gone on the offensive, attacking Democrats for what he claims is their mismanagement without offering any ideas of his own. “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA,” he posted. “THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!”

By now, we know that Trump goes on offense to hide his own shortcomings. As Judd Legum of Public Notice pointed out, “The largest wildfire in California history—the August Complex Fire, which burned more than 1 million acres—occurred during the Trump administration.”

That pattern of going on offense to hide his own behavior was also on display today when CNN’s Hadas Gold reported that someone inside the Fox News Channel (FNC) gave the Trump team the questions that Trump would be asked at an Iowa town hall last January just before the Iowa caucus. A forthcoming book by Alex Isenstadt of Politico details the close relationship between Trump and people within FNC. It says that after Trump refused to prepare for that town hall, someone inside Fox texted the questions to a senior Trump aide, enabling them to prep him with answers.

After Trump fell apart during his debate with Vice President Harris, he accused her of knowing the questions ahead of time and said the debate was “rigged.”

Trump apparently went on the offensive yesterday when he called Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just hours before Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency request with the court asking it to stop Manhattan judge Juan Merchan from sentencing Trump Friday in the election interference case in which a jury found him guilty of 34 felonies. Alito told reporters that they talked only about a job opportunity for one of Alito’s law clerks and did not discuss the case, but it is highly unusual for a president or president-elect to talk with a Supreme Court justice when that official has business before the court. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said such a thing was “almost unheard of.”

As legal analyst Quinta Jurecic observed, though, someone leaked news of this inappropriate contact astonishingly quickly. Such news usually “has taken a while to dribble out,” Jurecic noted, but “this happened THIS MORNING. [S]omebody was smug or pissed off enough to go to the press right away.”

Trump’s accusations that Biden committed a crime more likely to be chalked up to Trump himself—taking bribes from a foreign company—was also in the news today. Alexander Smirnov, the key witness for the House Republicans’ investigation into Biden, was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about the alleged bribery and to tax evasion.

Julia Ainsley and Carol E. Lee of NBC News today reported another way in which Trump is threatening to go on offense: by conducting a very visible raid targeting undocumented immigrants in the Washington, D.C., area as soon as he takes office. While Presidents Barack Obama and Biden have targeted employers who violate labor laws, Trump wants to demonstrate “shock and awe” by raiding workplaces and sweeping up migrants who are in the U.S. without documentation, regardless of their criminal status. His transition team has been talking with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials about the logistics of such raids.

And then, of course, there are Trump’s frequent references to taking over other countries. Don Jr. traveled to Greenland this week with right-wing activist and media personality Charlie Kirk, ostensibly to record a podcast, but Trump Sr. followed the trip with posts saying “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” That idea is getting traction among MAGA leaders, even though—or perhaps because—it is a direct affront to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to which both the U.S. and Denmark belong.

Over the New York Post’s map of the “Donroe Doctrine” in which Canada is labeled “51st state,” Greenland is labeled “our land,” the Gulf of Mexico is labeled “Gulf of America,” and the Panama Canal is labeled “Pana-Maga Canal,” the Republican majority on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted today: “Our country was built by warriors and explorers. We tamed the West, won two World Wars, and were the first to plant our flag on the moon. President Trump has the biggest dreams for America and it’s un-American to be afraid of big dreams.” Journalist Jamie Dupree screenshotted the tweet before the committee deleted it.

Behind all the offense, though, things that matter deeply to the American people are going largely unnoticed.

MAGA representatives have been introducing a slew of measures to the new Congress, many of which incorporate the plans of Project 2025 into legislation. They call for turning over immigration to the states, privatizing veterans’ healthcare, and repealing the 1993 National Voting Rights Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Bills call for withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization; increasing oil and gas production on federal lands; abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); allowing states to spend federal education money on private school vouchers; and removing the protection of transgender rights from schools.

Other measures would revoke security clearances for “certain former members of the intelligence community,” introduce a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, and cut off federal funding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (the office that successfully charged Trump with election interference) and the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney’s Office (the office that has charged Trump with criminal conspiracy).

And MAGA Republicans have proposed a bill to impose a national abortion ban, along with a bill urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness,” and “health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.”

—

[jellogram]

Breaking news: Trump is blaming the wildfires on the delta smelt

[circadiancrunch]

Long story, but because A PLACE, was unscrupulous, we have massive vet bills all of a sudden. PLACE, won't be named... yet. I've filed a formal complaint and will file one with the IRS too if they don't do right. It's a bad time. But here's some GOOD NEWS. Devil's Hole Pupfish counts are the highest in a quarter of a century. 191 individuals. It may not seem like a lot, but in 2013, there were only 35. These fish are always going to be rare and strange, even the high counts in the in the 90's only counted 200 some fish. They live in a limestone cave in Death valley, on the Nevada side bordering California. It's weird. And if you're so inclined, I have a pin I designed and made as a guest artist for my friend. It depicts extremely endangered freshwater fish. The Devil's Hole Pupfish in the lower right, the controversial Delta Smelt on top, and in the lead, the extinct in the wild (until very recently) Golden Skiffia. NGL, this is expensive to produce and expensive in general. 100% transparent inks with an epoxy dome and tons of micro details.

[satireinfo]

Who and What is Behind Wrecking Our Food Supply?

Who’s Wrecking Our Food Supply? Cows, Chickens, and Prime Farmland Are Under Siege—Or Maybe Just Misunderstood The New Criminals on the Block: Cows and Chickens Move over bank robbers and hackers; the real threat to humanity is cows. Yes, cows. According to Bill Gates, cows are responsible for 5% of global emissions, which makes your cheeseburger as dangerous as a coal plant. Gates proposed…

[thatonetwig]

Random Void Headcanon (+ a bit of Void x Hood)

Void smells very faintly of raspberries. He doesn't know why. He just does. You have to get really REALLY close to him in order to smell it though. Hood loves the smell and likes to bury his face into Void's hair and neck in order to smell it whenever they hug, and Void allows him to do it.

Small Ficlet (CW: Slightly Suggestive):

"Haha! Come here, Void! Lemme cuddle you real quick!", Hood said, happily picking up his boyfriend and pulling him into a tight hug.

"Woah- woah. T-take it easy, Hoodie. I don't wanna mess up my-"

Before he could finish, Hood buried his face into Void's neck while kissing it and gently running his fingers through his hair.

"W-wait, aha-! S-stop! Ahaha! O-okay! Okay!", Void laughed, squirming slightly as he hugged Hood back.

A few hours later, Hood went to Delta's house to hang out.

"Shady!! What’s up?", Delta exclaimed as she opened the door for him.

"Yo. Delta. What's good? Dab me up!", Hood said as he retracted his arm.

Delta held her arm out too and delivered the gesture.

Delta then moved her right hand up to her face to scratch it, but stopped due to smelling something on it.

"Wait...is that...", she muttered before smelling her hand more thoroughly.

"...raspberries?"

Hood then smelt his hand, and then his hoodie.

("Oh fuck..."), he thought, feeling his face heat up in embarrassment at the realization that Void's scent was still lingering on him.

"You got new cologne? I like it!", Delta said.

"U-uhh...yeah, cologne...yeah that's totally it...", Hood said, his face burning a dark shade of violet.

"Who'd you come back from, Shady?", Delta said in a teasing tone.

"Uhh...uhh...n-no one! J-just hung out with Void for a little-"

("Shit!"), he muttered under his breath, cutting himself off having immediately regretted what he had just said.

"Oh, is that so? You sure you and him aren't-"

"OKAY I THINK WE SHOULD STOP THIS CONVERSATION NOW THANK YOU! ", Hood sputtered out as he speed-walked past Delta into her home.

...

("Stay with him, he's a keeper."), Delta muttered to herself while smiling.

...

Here's where I got the headcanon from btw.

[littleghoulghost]

Thought I'd do something different with Cirrus' POV of a time Mountain freezes up watching Delta. Obviously this a biased and traumatized point of view, so it's not accurate to their actual relationship. The reason she's seeing it negatively is due her own trauma.

Obsession

Cirrus watched as Mountain once again withdrew into himself in the presence of the new water ghoulette; he stood frozen, just out of the way and his mouth slightly parted, fangs grazing his lower lip. He seemed enchanted by her, it made Cirrus' skin crawl. She remembered her husband looking at her like that in their early days, at least she thought she did. She remembered his wide eyes and brilliant smile on their wedding day. It sickened her. Reminded her all the more of the wild eyes and sinister snarl on his face as he choked the life out of her.

She knew Mountain was better than that, but it still made her wary. She watched as his tail lashed side to side, his breathing make his chest heave as he drew in lungfuls of the ghoulette's scent. Cirrus felt sorry for the new girl, she was the obsession of the quietest of the pack now. The musky scent of Mountain's lust was sour in her nose.

Her own breathing accelerated, she had to leave, had to escape. Safe space, she needed her safe space. Cirrus nearly dashed from the living room as she made her way to her den, her nest where it smelt of a fresh breeze and lemon candy. Her safe space.

This better not end like she did.

[beardedmrbean]

Environmental rules designed to protect imperiled fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have ignited anger among a group of bipartisan lawmakers, who say too much of California's stormwater is being washed out to sea instead of being pumped to reservoirs and aqueducts.

In a series of strongly worded letters, nearly a dozen legislators — many from drought-starved agriculture regions of the Central Valley —have implored state and federal officials to relax environmental pumping restrictions that are limiting the amount of water captured from the delta.

"When Mother Nature blesses us with rain, we need to save the water, instead of dumping it into the ocean," Assemblymember Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Since the beginning of January, a series of atmospheric rivers has disgorged trillions of gallons of much-needed moisture across drought-stricken California, but only a small fraction of that water has so far made it into storage. In the delta — the heart of the state's vast water system — nearly 95% of incoming water has flowed into the Pacific Ocean, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The calls by lawmakers have reignited a long-simmering debate over where — and to whom — the state's precious water supplies should go.

"With so much excess water in the system, there is no reason that exports south of the Delta cannot be increased," read another letter that State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) and Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains (D-Bakersfield) addressed to Newsom.

But experts say it's not that simple.

While the delta provides drinking water for about 27 million Californians and supports the state's massive agricultural industry, it is also a delicate ecosystem that is home to threatened and endangered species — many of which have been suffering amid warming waters, increasing salinity, dangerously low flows and other ecological stressors. The tiny delta smelt are dangerously close to extinction.

State and federal water managers said they have been complying with environmental regulations designed to protect those species, including a so-called "first flush" protocol that mandates two weeks of reduced pumping at the onset of the first big winter storms.

The flush provides the fish with enough time and water to move away from the powerful pumps, which have been known to chew them up.

"There are reasons that there are restrictions on pumping, and each of them is founded in some way, shape or form on trying to conserve habitat for listed species," said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Mount said it would be a mistake to ignore the environmental benefits of the water. The smelt are akin to a "canary in the coal mine" for the entire health of the delta, he said, and the first flush is biologically very important for the dynamics of the estuary.

"If we take actions which are helpful to smelt, we’ll help an array of other native fishes and the native ecosystem," he said.

The first flush protocol stems from biological opinions issued by the Trump administration in 2019 and from incidental take permits issued by the Newsom administration in 2020. Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, are calling for the rules to be revised.

From Jan. 3-16, pumping rates in the delta were reduced to nearly half of their capacity in accordance with the protocol, resulting in a loss of about 84,000 acre-feet of exports from the area, according to estimates from the Public Policy Institute. That's enough water to irrigate 25,000 acres of farmland for a year or supply 150,000 homes.

[pocket-infinity]

im gonna give a wild take here real quick: minecraft is actually semi-hard

okay let me back up and contextualize: i don’t mean in terms of like. combat. minecraft’s pve stuff is a non-difficulty thing here, obviously. but minecraft isn’t an action game or a soulslike or roguelike or anything, it’s a sandbox adventure game. That means that its difficulty shouldn’t be gauged in terms of how hard the combat is because it isn’t a combat-centric game. The difficulty scale of minecraft is in resource gathering and usage.

Now think about like... a ton of blocks in the game — froglights, for an easy example. They’re crazy hard to get. Like you’ve gotta get a frog of the exact type you want so that you can get the right kind of froglight, then you have to set it up near a nether portal, then you have to make sure that portal goes to either the middle of a specific type of bastion or a basalt deltas, and then you have to lure specifically a small magma cube through to get one (1) froglight.

Or how about getting something like copper to use as a building block? That’s obviously the intent of the thing, given that it (a) looks really good and (b) spawns more often compared to other ores. But getting enough it to build even like... the roof of a house can take a while, even with proper enchantments, and even completely ignoring smelting costs

And there’s a lot of blocks like this where they’re either hard to get on a scale to use in building or they’re just hard to get outright. And like think about the decent bit of progression you go through to get any block that requires silk touch

anyways thats my little ramble