#birds of taiwan

[photosapphicmegs]

A white-rumped shama learning about the plants at the Taipei Botanical Gardens.

[emilylorange]

actually i rather like how this batch of three turned out :V

[heretherebedork]

I wanted to flip them the bird but I held back. You should have done it, both hands.

[stamp-it-to-me]

a 2014 Taiwanese stamp depicting a Swinhoe's pheasant

[ID: a postage stamp with an illustration of a blue and red pheasant. end ID]

[birdstudies]

September 29, 2024 - Taiwan Shortwing (Brachypteryx goodfellowi) These shortwings are found in mountain forests in Taiwan, particularly around streams. They probably eat invertebrates, foraging near and on the ground, often in leaf litter. Their breeding behavior is unknown but is thought to be similar to their close relative, the Himalayan Shortwing, which builds domed nests in small bushes or trees.

[saezurumurmurs]

A BL Platform For Everyone

NB: Please reblog this for visibility!

A little over two years ago, me and my BL crew were in our little chat sharing recommendations. 

Cat had an impressive spread sheet, Marcie and I had iCloud Notes, and it was pretty much chaos.

I looked at it and said out loud, "There has to be a better way for us to keep track of our reads and share recommendations. There has to be right?"

Cat said she wished someone would build a BL app with everything already there. Me, a developer of almost thirty years, paused while a floodlight (not a light bulb) went off in my head.

“Well I could maybe build one… cause like, I build stuff. How would that be?”

By the end of the conversation Cat had invited me to build an app for BL. 

Four weeks later, in late February of 2022, digitaljuicy.com was online. 

In the last couple of years, I’ve been listening to the fandom, paying attention to feedback, poured over analytics, read your responses to the Reader’s Survey and continued to craft a platform with all this in mind.

What I have been building is 100% for us... there is nothing but BL and it is an attempt to encompass ALL of BL. Not just the bits and pieces.

But for two years I've been struggling. Struggling in many ways, but specifically to get what I wanted out of the platform. I tried and failed so many times.

In September of 2022 I tried to raise venture capital to build the platform I wanted for us. I pitched it to accelerators and true blue venture capital.

Juicy is what is called 'pre-seed'. Which means were still so new and evolving, under-resourced and while there was interest, there was no joy. No funding was raised.

In December 2023, I realised it was time to rethink Juicy. i have been on the deepest dive for months rebuilding Juicy from the ground up and preparing the framework for the mobile app.

I’ve built something I want to use… and wild, I’m building it and using it as a fan at the same time. I'm at the point where it's impossible not to want to share.

And what kind of platform do I mean? At its most basic level:

You can track your reads, watches and plays

You can review and recommend the titles to the community, your friends, strangers on Twitter, your friend you're trying to corrupt outside the fandom. Your poison.

Timelines for you, for titles, for episodes, chapters… just about everything. I mean everything: The creators, the publishers, the studios, the actors... you can leave reviews and status posts on EVERYTHING. No algorithms, no force feeding... just discovery, recommendations and honest reviews by this community about our community and the industry we feed.

Collections! Lists of stuff you're reading, dropped, want to read, want to buy, love or hate, all pretty and organised and shareable..

A growing database resource of titles, tagged up to its eyeballs with a minutiae of data.. with reading an streaming links and anything else we find that we think is relevant.

But it is also a lot more than this.

I wanted it to be more than what it was. I want to turn Juicy into a mobile app, add some more functionality and more specifically, platform all of BL for its non-Asian fandom.

We get left out of so much, I feel like we need our own thing. 

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I was tired of being banned on social media for sharing content. How you gonna ban me for saying a 2D fictional character needs to be shot with shite and strung with cobweb? But they did… and I know it’s not just me.

What about the creators? How do they interface with the non-Japanese or non-Korean fandoms? On which misogynistic hell site?

What about the publishers and merchandisers? What about the little Etsy sellers? Why does BL have to hidden away in the databases of mangaupdates, anisearch and anilist? Why does every single manga tracker out there seem to have pitiful listings for BL? 

Is it because we’re a female or queer audience? 

Look at this lil video I made:

Either way, I’ve long felt it’s time for us to do our own thing. So I’ve been building it. Pixel by pixel. Feature by feature on my own.

Juicy has been a small chat group, but I’m the only developer. We’ve always been clear about what we wanted to build: A platform for the fandom, the creators, the publishers, the merchandisers… my goal is a one-stop platform for BL and I am damn close to presenting this new iteration.

This was and remains the core of what I’m building: The largest English platform for BL on the planet. The functionality is one thing, but building a database like that is not a one-person job.

So now I need your help.

First to keep the servers online, so I can continue to build and develop and finally, finally release the mobile app. I can't tell you how much I want that.

I’m close to pushing the new Juicy 3.0 out, and I’m very in love with the work I’ve done since December. It’s a new look, and it works 1000 times better than the previous iterations of Juicy.

I just have hit a wall financially, and need your help and support to get it over the line.

Juicy's ass is fat and I been carrying her mostly alone for two solid years. 

I’m going to launch a Kickstarter for this project in a bit so I can hire another developer  to help with the trickier bits and fine tune the mobile app, but for now, I felt a Patreon would at least help us keep the servers up and maybe, just maybe allow us to afford a few crucial bits that will elevate your experience as a user.

And because I’m a developer, and I can do some pretty kinky shit with APIs and such, if you support this Patreon campaign, you will get some nice feature perks on the platform automagically. You won’t have to pay again to access these perks in-app later.

As many perks as I can cook up anyway, not the least of which will be access to some of the nicer functions and features I’ve already built into the platform.

When the mobile app launches, you will get it first and for free! Plus we’ve been talking about a lot of other ways we can make the platform fun beyond what I've done already.

I plan to monetise the platform in various ways, but in a profit sharing model. You contribute to the database, you contribute content, you get a share of whatever the platform makes. This is already built into the system. This will be open to anyone willing, but to Patrons first.

Finally, I'm limiting the number of people who can subscribe via Patreon to 1000 people. Once we hit that number, the rolls will be closed to new membership, and everyone directed to the platform to pay for any services or merchandise.

My goal for this group of Patrons is that you become an exclusive and tightly knit inner circle.

My hope is that you will help me actively shape what Juicy will become. Your votes and say will carry weight. Your feature requests considered and if possible implemented first.

You will get access to exclusive merchandise, exclusive giveaways and promos (like free stuff), and exclusive programming from the team.

With your help we will produce an exclusive podcast for Patrons only discussing all things BL and Juicy (honestly our conversations are generally wild and hilarious... it will be a rollick for sure), along with other content for Patrons only. We've even planned watch parties and other fun shit... I swear, we want you all to be our greatest ambassadors so we are planning as many treats as we can.

Your access on the platform will be specific to your Patreon subscription and your treatment will be VIP for the life of your subscription.

Finally, the way my auADHD are set up, I have no interest in the dramas of the BL fandom, so this is never going to be about gatekeeping access to anything. It’s about making more access possible. You can help bring us all together and make us stronger as a group.

So do you think Digital Juicy sounds like something you’d like in on?

Okute Sea

Saezuru Murmurs

[thistransient]

Hazy day~ The forecast said real feel 32C, but there was a breeze to counteract it (apparently we go back to winter weather on Friday). The sun and wind and water made me nostalgic for something I couldn't quite place. I also saw a man on a bike (wearing a tea towel as a cape to catch the droppings), with an African Grey parrot on a long pink leash perched upon his head.

[animalsandanimals]

Taiwan Blue Magpie, or Taiwan Magpie, or Formosan Blue Magpie, is the National Bird of Taiwan and a member of the crow family.

[shihlun]

[beyourselfchulanmaria]

午後我去皮革工廠選擇和購進客戶要的側背包的備材-內層式樣半成品，途經北高雄自由三路上著名的黃昏市場買了水果，突然好想吃披薩，於是晚餐去漢神餐廳吃了據說很好吃的"薄餅義大利海鮮披薩"~真的很好吃! 但我希望不是因為我餓了。lol (我喜愛餅皮薄、酥脆和厚起司的披薩。)

In the afternoon, I went to the leather factory to select and purchase the spare materials for the side backpack that the customer wanted - the semi-finished inner layer style. I passed by the dusk market on North-Kaohsiung Ziyou 3nd Rd and bought some fruit (This traditional market is popular specialized in food). I suddenly felt like eating pizza, so I went to Hanshen Restaurant for dinner. then It is said there's a very delicious Italian Pizza store, I picked seafood pizza, umm… simply delicious! but I hope not because I was hungry lol. (I love pizza with thin, crispy crust and thick cheese.) Lan~*

👆 I met a tired bird and gave a little water to it. 🙂 ... later it's flying on the tree. 🐦

👇 I passed by the dusk market on North-Kaohsiung Ziyou 3nd Rd.

👇 A very delicious Italian Pizza restaurant in the Hanshen shopping mall. 😋

👆 這一對夫妻坐在那全程共45分鐘又18秒除了吃和喝，完全沒有任何交談，倆人都一直沉迷在手機裡。 😆😏 我真的很好奇，夫妻生活中的其他的無數個45分鐘，他們是否會珍視和在乎彼此的交談片刻? 還是他們根本就是與手機和網路結婚了。(The couple sat there for a total of 45 minutes and 18 seconds without any conversation except eating and drinking. Both of them were addicted to their smart-phones. 😆😏 I was really curious, among the countless other 45 minutes in that couple's life, will they cherish and care about the moments of conversation with each other? Or are they simply married to smart-phones with the Internet.)

[photosapphicmegs]

First bird picture to post here as I turn an account that I apparently only used for GTA V roleplay on the Xbox 360 into another repository for birbs. Enjoy this brown-headed thrush.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Large-billed crow (Corvus macrorhynchos) in decidious tree with autumn colours, Taiwan.

Photographer: Fabian Muhlberger / Wild Wonders of China

[stamp-it-to-me]

two 1969 Taiwanese stamps from an air mail series

[id: two postage stamps with illustrations of bean geese flying over landscapes. the left depicts two geese flying over foggy, snow-capped mountains. the right depicts a flock of four bean geese flying over the ocean. end id]

[birdstudies]

April 23, 2024 - Taiwan bullfinch (Pyrrhula owstoni) Previously considered a subspecies of the Grey-headed Bullfinch, these finches are found in mountain and foothill forests in Taiwan. Foraging low in vegetation and on the ground in pairs and family groups, they feed on seeds, buds, and catkins, as well as nectar and some insects. Females build loose cup-shaped nests from twigs and fine rootlets in trees and incubate clutches of three eggs alone.

[peterarkledrawings]

© Peter Arkle 2024 WATERBIRD FROM TAIWAN

[thistransient]

descending to TPE