#ecological considerations

[cselandscapearchitect]

Natural Turf vs. Artificial Grass: Battling the Urban Heat Island Effect in the Low Desert

The low desert region faces the challenges of the urban heat island effect, where urban areas experience significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to human activities and the built environment. As we strive to mitigate this heat island effect, one key consideration is the choice between natural turf and artificial grass. Both options have their own advantages and…

[flimsy-roost]

[fencesandfrogs]

I’ve decided I’m keeping plants pretty similar to earth plants, because botany is so ridiculous that I don’t even need to make shit up. Also, Tuvok hybridized a Vulcan flower with an earth orchid. So like. Plant hybridization is crazy, but this is like the Spock mammal thing.

Anyway I’m considering having my CAM plants be a major branch because like. What are the odds of convergent evolution creating that change multiple times on TWO planets. …high enough that I’m only considering having CAM be a major decision.

Plants also lend support to my thoughts on the Forge: there’s a carnivorous vine from that hat area, and.

Y’know what no i’m not using my walk home to type out half formed thoughts on low nitrogen environments. Please research carnivorous plants if you’re curious; pitcher plants are a favorite of mine.

So anyway they don’t really make sense in an arid desert environment IMO. But by an oasis?? Oh yeah, now we’re talking.

I’m not 100% sure that I’m keeping the major divisions of plants from earth, but like. I didn’t take botany for nothing. Ya boy knows his gymnosperms and monocots and so on and he wants to be able to use that knowledge.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hi. My wife referred me to you for your knowledge and enthusiasm for ecology. If I wanted my fictional fantasy world to have a saltwater river (my world is weird), how could I explain or justify that? Is it even possible, ecologically speaking? Anyway, love your posts and thank you!

I have been considering this with my colleague who is a physical geographer with a passion for riverine geomorphology and she wants to sit down with me and discuss the possibilities more fully. So I may yet update this post with more options.

But, the short answer is yes, there are options to make it possible.

The one we've best fleshed out so far basically comes down to groundwater contamination. Groundwater is contaminated with massive salt input (this would likely need to be anthropogenic - up to you whether that looks like Evil Factory Output, massive magical damage post-war, or any other consideration.) One or more of the river's main tributaries is fed primarily by this groundwater store, so it cannot flush through. Once it meets the sea, it would be brackish around the estuary anyway, but this would mean halophilic species - those tolerant of salt - would be able to spread backwards back up the river channel. Depending on what you want, for plants this could mean cordgrasses (saltmarsh formers), seagrasses along the riverbed in slower areas, or potentially long, linear stands of mangrove forest; in all of those cases, it's much more likely on a slower river than a faster one.

Now, a salt river will be far more erosional than a fresh one, so the river banks and bed would be eroding more. This means higher quantities of suspended sediment in the water, so the water colour would be murkier and browner than if it were fresh. However, if its a river with slow meanders, you might get little patches of saltmarshes establishing, where the erosion turns into deposition instead, so although the water would have a colour difference it would be extreme; on faster bits, though, it would.

There would be, either from the groundwater at the top of the catchment or along the river channel, a certain amount of salt incursion into land. This would basically make arable agriculture in those areas nigh-on impossible, but you could maybe try farming something like samphire along the banks. The exception would be areas that were away from the contaminated aquifer, that also got plenty of rainfall OR freshwater groundwater imputs from another part of the catchment. Even then, though, it couldn't go too close to the river.

Floodplains need considering, too! Floodplains only flood during wet weather events that cause the river to overtop the banks; the rest of the year, they're dry. In this case, that means you might have areas that are freshwater marshes, or maybe even normal grasslands/scrub for most of the year, which then suddenly get inundated with salt. That'll kill all those organisms quite rapidly. You wouldn't have any trees in those areas, and they'd look like mudbaths for the majority of the time, I'd imagine. Very ugly wastelands. These would then provide even more lost soil into the river, for even more browning of the water.

That much sediment would therefore mean the estuary would be a depositional one - new land forms at it. It would probably have a delta. This means lots of mudflats with lots of marine worms and other invertebrates, and consequently insane levels of wading bird diversity to feed on them (plus foodstuffs - oysters, cockles, octopus, smaller fishes, etc). Loot up Korean getbol for an idea of how impressive these things can get. Saltmarshes and/or mangrove forests, too! Depending on climate. Mangroves are a tropical species.

HOWEVER, this is just one idea we've explored so far, so I shall update you if we think of others

[sabertoothwalrus]

For the ask game! Laios dunneshi 4&8 please and thank you!!

:3

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

Chowder

8. What’s something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

ohhh my god when people overstate how much he’d want to eat things. Especially people. Laios does not want to eat people!!! Especially by the end of the story he’s very considerate of ecology and not just mindlessly killing monsters/animals for the heck of it. He’s very pragmatic

Also he CARES a lot about people!!! He wouldn’t have gotten so upset about Shuro if he didn’t!! He gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and the only real grudge he has is towards his parents and the people that bullied him/Falin.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Viewing landscapes as products of past human labour is a first, crucial step for an environmental history of work. Raymond Williams noted how ‘A considerable part of what we call natural landscape … is the product of human design and human labour, and in admiring it as natural it matters very much whether we suppress that fact of labour or acknowledge it.’ The extent to which labour is part of the landscape varies with geography as much as with history. In any case, removing the image of work from the landscape has produced the dominant vision of nature in the Western/industrial culture that has led to romantic views of ‘the environment’ as something to be protected from work and, therefore, from working-class people, even though environmental historians and political ecologists have documented that private property, the market and state control, not labour, have been the main forces behind resource exhaustion.

Stefania Barca, Workers of the Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change

[erose-this-name]

humans are not the default race

In every scifi and fantasy setting with """races""", humans are the default.

If you're lucky, we're the short-lived, fast-reproducing pests that are all white Europeans for some mysterious reason, and also have disproportionate rates of being raised as undead because we can't be bothered to make zombie dwarf minis or animate a vampire gnome that has to jump up to bite a tall person's neck.

(We've got BOTH human AND elf skeleton warriors! Oh, hey, I just changed the scale, now it's a hobbit skeleton OR a giant skeleton! Such skeleton diversity! No, Khajiits can't be bone boys, a skeleton with a tail and a cat skull is just TOO SPOOKY)

I feel like a lot of people don't realize that we (Homo sapiens) have the longest running endurance of any land animal. Being able to run a marathon is not normal.

(It's because we evolved the very unusual hunting strategy of Slowly Chasing Gazelles While Throwing Sticks At Them Until The Gazelle Collapses From Exhaustion Then Casually Walking Up And Bashing Their Head In With A Rock™).

Even Neanderthals probably couldn't match our tenacity (they were considerably stronger and tougher though, but by no means dumber judging from the size of their brain cavities{which was bigger than ours actually})

(the evolutionary Neanderthal hunting strategy was probably something like Jumping Out And Stabbing A Wooly Rhinoceros With A Pointed Stick, Then Getting Punted 12 Feet Into a Tree But Getting Right Back Up And Doing It Again Until It Dies Because You Have Superhuman Bone And Muscle Density. And If You Do Break One Of Your Unbreakable Bones Your Homies Will Take Care Of You Until It Heals™

[Neanderthal skeletons are found with healed fractures surprisingly often despite said bones being much stronger and denser than ours, they just kept evolving denser bones until they couldn't even swim without sinking like a rock, but they still got broken all the time])

So given that we, Homo sapiens, actually literally used to be the "species that specializes in sheer endurance, determination, and unbreakable fucking will", I want more fantasy and scifi settings where we are that way! I think the only setting where that's even remotely the case is Undertale. We're not just the "default" intelligent species!

The only reason we're good at everything is because we can make complex tools and can learn and aren't bound by instinct. Which, by definition, all fantasy races would also be able to do. Otherwise, they'd just be considered animals. Like trolls or Redditers.

The "default" species should just be really good at making tools and quickly adapting, but kinda suck in every other category. So I guess gnomes or goblins are the default d&d race.

And Humans are certainly not the Tolkien "that one race that lives short lives and reproduces faster than everyone else and is good at farming" because:

A) we actually do already live relatively long lives for mammals of our size and also GIVING BIRTH CAN KILL US, AND IF OUR PARENTS DON'T RAISE US JUST RIGHT THAT CAN ALSO KILL US, WE ARE SPECIFICALLY VERY BAD AT REPRODUCING

B) we are in no way adapted to farming, and most of our modern health and societal issues stem from the fact that we aren't meant to farm or be civilized, but do it anyways.

We only farm because it helped us survive the ecological collapse at the end of the ice age, now we're in too deep to go back.

When the ice age ended (quite abruptly) the ecosystem couldn't provide for hunters and gathers anymore, a bunch of things were getting heat stroke, sea levels rose, hibernation and bloom cycles and reptile gender ratios were out of wack, predators died out because herbivores died out because plants weren't doing well. Decomposers like vultures and worms had a field day (Until they didn't [RIP condor population]). It would take a while for a new ecological equilibrium to emerge and for evolution to fix things.

But farming doesn't need any healthy ecosystems except for the soil and pollinators, mostly, so that still works. And farming makes more food meaning you can have more people. So now there's more people.

But that also means you can't ever go back to foraging without all those extra people dying of starvation. So, anarcho-primitivism would technically be the most deadly ideology if implemented, and therefore is not based, unfortunately. Here's hoping for an apocalypse to do that for us! (I would not survive it)

Fun Fact: those isolated tribal societies like the Sentinelese that still do hunting and gathering only spend 15-20 hours a week doing that and another 20 doing camp chores, and the rest of their time forming meaningful relationships and not being depressed.

Notice how most of what they do as "work" (hunting, fighting, hiking, berry/mushroom/etc picking, cooking, camping, arts and crafts, oral history/story telling) are things that we need to do during our limited free time as "hobbies" just so that our "work" doesn't drive us insane. Thus leaving less time for relationships, etc.

If we were actually good at farming or industry or civilization, then things like math and repetitive manual labor wouldn't be work. They'd be the most fun activities.

Sure, these foragers die young, but so did medieval peasant farmers who were even less healthy since they had much less diverse diets (a lot of carbs) and got plague more often thanks to cities and their close proximity to livestock. Our modern sedentary lifestyle is bad too.

Hobbits are suited to farming (also Entwives I guess). Hobbits are quite good at it, at the cost of not being as good at much else (besides going unnoticed and throwing for some reason), they inherently enjoy farming life quite a bit and most* aren't haunted by the sense they should be anything else, like we are. *(The Took family got that Call To Adventure 'tism)

We only think that we're not special or can't be anything other than what we currently are because we no longer have anything else to compare ourselves to. The Neanderthals and Denisovans died out tens of thousands of years ago and the fucking aliens are somewhere, presumably

We are special, only we survived.

But at the cost of becoming the species equivalent of an abandoned child raised by wolves. We fantasize about these things because we all know that we shouldn't be alone. But our perceptions of ourselves are twisted by our trauma and lack of socialization.

Personally, the realization that having lost our family was probably our fault makes that hurt so much worse.

[mutant-distraction]

credit: Coffee loves

This is a Flying fish up close. They can propel themselves out of water at speeds of more than 56 km/h. Once in the air, their rigid “wings” allow them to glide for up to 200 meters.

Flying fish, belonging to the family Exocoetidae, are remarkable marine creatures known for their unique ability to glide above the water's surface.

These fish are equipped with unusually large pectoral fins that function like wings, allowing them to leap out of the water and glide for considerable distances to escape predators. They are primarily found in warm oceanic waters around the world, including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Typically, flying fish can glide up to 200 meters at a speed of about 60 kilometers per hour, using their tails to generate the necessary thrust by rapidly beating the water surface before takeoff.

In addition to their distinctive gliding capability, flying fish have adapted to a variety of oceanic environments, often seen in both coastal areas and the open sea. They feed on a diet of plankton and small marine organisms, making them an integral part of the ocean's food web.

Their unique behavior not only aids in evasion from predators like dolphins and larger fish but also makes them a subject of interest for humans, leading to their depiction in folklore and their role in various culinary traditions across different cultures. Their fascinating ability to glide and their ecological importance highlight the incredible adaptability and diversity of marine life.

[distantlcver]

Councillor!Sevika + Wife!Sevika x Fem!Reader

- married life and stuff :)

“Any mistakes are made out of pure hatred and disrespect for this language. The English have taken enough from this world, I will not let them have my tongue as well.” -ao3 author

She watches the Food Network in her free time and the cooking segments on PBS on the weekends to destress. Sitting on the council is not the most appealing in terms of engagement and overall work expectations, not to mention her “uppity colleagues,” as she calls them.

It’s mindless and empty, but entertaining enough to grab her attention—a small escape from the towering piles of paperwork, files, and documents she has to look over before the sun rises again. She’ll lean back on the sofa, shedding the day's stress, and watch skilled hands assemble a gourmet bolognese or some fancy steak arranged like a flower with hand-churned and seasoned butter.

She’ll tuck you under her arm, play with your hair as you watch together, and point to the final dish on the screen before she scoffs:

“I could make that shit,” she mumbles. “Of course, honey,” you say, and kiss her hand.

neither of you could make that shit

─────── ✶ ───────

After many failed attempts at communication—when emotions were high and the air especially tense—you both came to an agreement that something had to change.

She watches her tongue around you and tries (emphasis on tries) to mind her temper and regulate any frustrations that come with the day job. She’s mindful of her language, making sure not to curse when speaking to you as a sign of respect and overall consideration. It takes time, and she’s not perfect, but she tries.

That doesn’t stop her from the occasional string of curses you hear coming from the home office when she encounters errors in paperwork or remembers another meeting she has to attend.

In turn, you try to be more patient and understanding of the dedication and time her new role takes from your time together.

You visit her during lunch and push dinner back late to make sure you both can eat together. You walk her home from work on nights when she’s in the office particularly late.

She puts an and to the reeaaalll quick refusing to let you walk the streets alone so late at night. She scolds you for insisting, arguing that you’re just too impatient, and stubborn.

“You’re too cute, baby. Someone’s gonna snatch you up,” "I'm not a child sev-," "I know baby, but Just wait for me please ," she whispers, "I’m always comin' home—you know that.”

─────── ✶ ───────

She has an extensive collection of old R&B and jazz records she plays when fixing things around the house or doing chores. Mindlessly tapping and humming along to the beat

Her record player is an old, shoddy thing she built herself as a teenager, made out of recycled parts she found in scrap yards and junk drawers. the speakers muffle to sound every now and then blending together the lyrics with the background vocals and acoustics.

Even with her role on the council —and more-than-satisfactory salary, she refuses to buy a new one.

She plays Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me” on repeat while working and swings you around to “Two Can Have a Party,” because neither of you can really dance.

─────── ✶ ───────

✧ small bonus

She insists on fixing everything herself and doesn’t believe in hiring anyone to do anything.

her philosophy: “If I can’t fix it, I shouldn’t own it,”

When you finally hire someone behind her back, she hovers incessantly, making sure they don’t mess anything up, mumbling curses whenever they touch something. She side-eyes you with a *what the fuck* look.

─────── FIN ───────

[brucewaynehater101]

so in a number of ancient cultures it was inappropriate, unacceptable, and probably even an executable offense to look directly at the emperor with the idea that they have divine right to rule or they're descended from the gods or whatever.

Space Emperor Tim of many names had made it no longer an executable offense but his planets still find it very disrespectful for anyone, besides the royal consorts, to look directly at their baby space emperor. They actually appreciate and approve that he wears a mask, so clever and considerate of their baby emperor to restrain his divine glory in such a way! He's also a babie and so it's inappropriate and unacceptable to the empire for anyone to go around and have actual realistic images of their emperor or his equally babie consorts around everywhere. Instead all images of the imperial group is very stylized or they all incorporate the emperor's mask on not just him but also his consorts/bodyguards/whatever they are to him on whatever planet. Further, even on just one planet there are a lot of different ideas of what makes someone or something beautiful but fortunately for C4 all shades of human skin tend to be perceived as a color usually used on something to make it seem extra cute, and their relative smallness make all of them, especially Bart with the fluffy hair, the equivalent of kirby in the eyes of the empire, smol, adorable, probably able to destroy everything but you forget because, again, smol and adorable.

That being said, all the merch, from statues to commemorative spoons, tend to be recognizably probably a human in a mask and that's as close to being identifiably any member of the C4 that they typically get.

Tim has put in protocols just in case someone tries to visit the empire while impersonating him or any of his friends. So far no one has tried but if Damian ever goes to the empire as Robin he's going to inadvertently be dealing with some trouble. Or he may get written off as a baby cosplaying as their beloved emperor and Damian will be extremely pissed off because people are being condescending and cooing at him for the respect he's displaying towards their beloved emperor.

It would be hella cool if some of the planets gifted YJ a variety of masks. Perhaps the team ends up with a collection of different styled masks (with various beauty standards and styles) as the planets' gesture of gratitude, respect, and reverence. Some are styled similar to discowing, but others have wildly complex designs or simplified ones.

It'd be cool to see various designs, colors, concepts, etc. The regular Robin mask is used most often in fanart, but perhaps they play around with mask designs.

I think Damian would enjoy learning about different animals species on the planets. Maybe Tim entrusts upkeeping planet ecological systems to him at some point

[fatehbaz]

[E]very [interspecies] meeting in fact reminds us that the being we meet is and always shall be strange to us […]. When beings meet there is a distance between, such that in encountering the slug we also encounter something beyond the slug – a multitude of life we cannot sense. [...] So despite shared histories and the close proximity in which slugs and [humans] live, the slug retains a certain darkness as a creature apart; something is held in reserve […]. And so fleeting awareness of the irretrievability of the lives of others intensifies poignancy, such that despite a gulf separating the [human] from other creatures, some connection, however fleeting, is made to something – however strange. Refusing to dismiss the everyday and the banal is an ethical response. […] Slugs are there: sliming, chomping, and oozing around quietly and that should be enough to give them consideration.

[Text by: Franklin Ginn. “Sticky lives: Slugs, detachment and more-than-human ethics in the garden.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 39, Issue 4. 2013. Bold emphasis added by me.]

---

So, can an insect speak? And if yes, do we understand it? Wittgenstein maintained that ‘if a lion could speak we would not understand him’, by which he implied that we do not share the ‘form of lion-life’ that would make lion language fully transparent to us […]. A similar insight was [...] expressed by [...] [a twentieth-century] honeybee researcher [...]: Beyond the appreciable facts of their life we know but little of the bees. And the closer our acquaintance becomes, the nearer is our ignorance brought to us of the depths of their real existence. But such ignorance is better than the other kind, which is unconscious and satisfied.

[Text by: Eileen Crist. “Can an Insect Speak?: The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language.” Social Studies of Science, Volume 34, Issue 1. 2004. Bold emphasis added.]

---

Animal studies scholarship tends to emphasize animal-human relations, encounters, and similarities. […] Jellyfish and other gelatinous creatures [...], however, float at the far reaches of our ability to construct sturdy interspecies connections [...]. Uexkull’s theory […] insists upon multiple worlds […], a capacious admission that a multitude of other creatures dwell as part of worlds that humans cannot readily or completely access or grasp. Three-quarters of a century later Terry Tempest Williams wonders what it would be like to be a jellyfish. […] [She] writes: “Perhaps this is what moves me most about jellies – their sensory intelligence […] the great hunger that is sent outward through the feathery reach of their tentacles. Imagine the information sought and returned.”

[Text by: Stacy Alaimo. “Jellyfish Science, Jellyfish Aesthetics: Posthuman Reconfigurations of the Sensible”. In: Thinking with Water. 2013. Bold emphasis added.]

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Although we cannot ‘speak’ with nonhumans in any straightforward way, what we can and more importantly do do is become articulate with them in various ways. [...] If there is a way out of this historical impasse [alienation, climate crisis, global ecological degradation], [for some] it is not to be found in attributing some of ‘our’ qualities to ‘them’. It “would not be a matter of ‘giving speech back’ to animals […]. Perhaps the task is not to seek to compare the dance language of bees […] with human language, the ‘intelligence’ […] of Monarch butterflies with human intelligence, […] but rather (or at least in addition) to find a way of thinking about these ‘remarkable things’ that grants them positive ontological difference in their own right. […] [It] is concerned with what is always a multitude of others rather than a singular other […]; and it is radically nonanthropocentric […].

[Text by: Nick Bingham. “Bees, Butterflies, and Bacteria: Biotechnology and the Politics of Nonhuman Friendship.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Volume 38, Issue 3. 2006. Bold emphasis added.]

---

Starfish may seem to be still, but longer attention [...] shows them [slowly] moving, changing. [...] Then there are beings [like some insects] that experience hundreds, thousands of generations within a human lifetime. For such beings, the memories, learnings and modes of passing on experience are, it almost goes without saying (yet it must be said as it is so often not), radically different from any human’s in terms of the ways they experience change. The immensity of the alterity is, literally, incomprehensible to humans. We can't know what these beings know. But we can be aware that they have knowledges and experiences beyond us. [...] [W]e should know they live and experience and think beyond us. We should seek respect and be aware of how our lives are entangled […]. It is not abstract, or empty.

[Text by: Bawaka Country et al. “Gathering of the Clouds: Attending to Indigenous understandings of time and climate through songspirals.” Geoforum Volume 108. January 2020. Bold emphasis added.]

[psink]

Makoto Teruhashi and Sai's (Kusuo's cat form) guidebook's full pages translation:

(left side) Disaster element: Siscon delusions in full swing! False accusations victim

A perverted older brother who loves his sister way too much A top idol who plays leading roles in blockbuster movies and popular TV dramas. (On the surface) he is a friendly, handsome and pleasant young man, but... ↑ This is Mugami Toru's true nature. He suffers from an extreme case of a sister complex. When it comes to his little sister, his delusions run wild.

? To avoid encountering･･････ Stay away from Teruhashi-san!! The other party is a top idol. He usually doesn't interact with people, but if you happen to get involved with Teruhashi-san, you'll become the victim of his escalating delusions! ! If you happen to encounter･･････ Teruhashi-san was over there!! He's in love with his little sister all day long. If you bring up the topic of Teruhashi-san in a conversation, all of his attention will shift to that. If possible, an avoidance technique is to involve other people.

(right side) Ecological information: 【Name】 Teruhashi Makoto 【Stage Name】 Mugami Toru 【Height】 178cm 【Weight】 64kg 【Birthday】 March 4th 【Blood type】 A

Disaster Status: Intelligence D, Physical Strength C, Acting ability D Kokomi ♡ Delusions◎ Popular ◎ Demon-Eye Detective Joker Actually a pervert ◎ Got it!

Overall disaster difficulty: 60% (C) A celebrity and a demon. Harmless, as long as you're not in contact with Teruhashi-san.

[Kusuo]: His inner-self is too disappointing and pitiful.

Main appearance spots Where does Teruhashi's older brother, a popular idol, for whom it'd be bad if he got discovered, frequently show up!? (top left) He's popular, but you can encounter him somewhere around there During the break from his drama shoots, he sometimes relaxes in nearby rest areas. Who knows, maybe he'll get to meet his sister there☆

(bottom left) He's popular, but if it's for Kokomi He took a break from Tamo-san's TV show to show up on his younger sister's school trip. He announced his participation in front of Saiki's house.

(top right) He's popular, so the drama shoots are also nearby! When shooting dramas, he pushes for the location to be his hometown, so that his younger sister can see his impressive appearance.

(bottom right) He's popular, so it'd be bad if it gets discovered He watches the movies he stars in with his beloved younger sister in a local movie theatre. He gives her commentaries, for her sake.

Asou-sensei's idea memo: Older brother + cute younger sister = siscon. His stage name is Mugami Toru. When you combine it and his given name, it becomes "communication". His last name is a play on "telepathy", so I think it's a well-thought-out name. By the way, the name Kokomi is a pun on "to see the heart" and "the heart is beautiful".

(up and middle left) Disaster element: Even in the cat world, he reigns on top!

A mysterious cat with an enlightened, detached gaze Saiki transformed into a cat form. He transformed because of Anpu, who had settled in Saiki's house without permission. This was actually the only time he turned into a cat. ← Since he was originally human, he's got a considerably intiminating presence.

! If you happen to encounter･･････ No way! Are you doing it outside? Because he was originally human, although he could do it outside if he wanted to, expectedly, he prefers to do excert indoors. If something inclines him to go to the bathroom, he'll retreat indoors.

(middle right) Ecological information: 【Name】 Sai (Saiki Kusuo) 【Height】 54cm 【Weight】 4.5kg 【Birthday】 August 16th 【Blood type】 Unknown Disaster Status: Intelligence S, Physical Strength A, Punch power S Uncontrollable Toilet Seat

Overall disaster difficulty: 10% (E) [Kusuo:] If you pet me, I won't show any mercy. (bottom left) Main appearance spots Since it's just a one-time cat transformation, the range of activities is extremely limited. To put it plainly, it's just one block.

The surroundings of Saiki's house, one block Since he doesn't travel far, as Sai, his actions were limited to about one block surrounding Saiki's house (bottom right) On top of Saiki Kuniharu's head It's no exaggeration to call the top of his father's head, Sai's reserved seat. The view and comfort of standing there are excellent.

Asou-sensei's idea memo: When the series first started, I never imagined that Saiki would turn into a cat. His psychic powers have come so far...! [Power] inflation is scary, isn't it?

== Other guidebook pages: Kuusuke + Teruhashi Kusuo + Kuriko

[acti-veg]

sorry for dumping this in your inbox; you’re the only person who would be even remotely sympathetic to what i have to say and i’d lose all my fandom mutuals if i posted this publicly. what i want to say is that it drives me up the wall how you cannot criticize ANYTHING about humans on here without someone calling you an ecofascist. god forbid you don’t agree that humans are “just beautiful apes who like to make art and hold hands! uwu” or “the Supreme Master Species that will singlehandedly save every other species on Earth from extinction (with no mention of the fact that we’re the reason why they are going extinct in the first place)”. even vegetarian/vegan rhetoric expressed in the most progressive, leftist terms gets branded fascism. truly anyone on tumblr who has ever reblogged any of those bullshit posts about how leather/wool/beef etc. is actually Great and Eco-friendly is just another useful idiot of carnism. all faults of the way humans relate to animals get blamed on capitalism, ignoring the fact that humans were being cruel to nonhuman animals LONG before capitalism became dominant across our society. “humans are just a species like any other so it’s okay to [act of animal cruelty that is universally accepted] because we’re part of the ecosystem!!” In what world is factory farming (or any animal ag) part of any ecosystem??? it actively destroys ecosystems. We’re not a species like any other—while I’m no fan of human extinction or governmental population reduction plans, it’s obvious that we’re a uniquely destructive species and acknowledging that doesn’t make you a fascist. In fact, fascist leaders throughout history would scoff at the idea of any other animal deserving equal consideration as humans (hitler being vegetarian does not count; he didn’t really care about the vegetarian cause, he was just a hypochondriac)

I think people have a pretty poor understanding of what ecofascism actually is, particularly on tumblr it must be said. We have this unfortunate tendency here to sort of half understand a social/political term, then we turn it into a catchphrase divorced from the original context and without any real nuance.

It is perfectly fine and in fact necessary to acknowledge the unique destructive potential and history of our species. We have more power than other species ever has, and we have wielded that power to radically reshape the earth to suit our needs. Homo sapiens wiping out most of the world’s megafauna (and possibly other sapiens as well) long preceded capitalism, and pretty much every time humans arrived on any continent or island, ecological diversity massively declines.

I actually think that the acknowledgement of these facts can be a guard against eco-fascism. When people talk about culling, a return to pre-industrial society, massively reduced population etc. we can point the fact that a vastly smaller, largely hunter gatherer human community very likely wiped out many species way before industrialisation, or even organised agriculture. We throw around a lot of ‘noble savage’ stereotypes about our ancestors and modern indigenous hunting communities, but this is really a rewriting of human pre-history to fit modern ideals about the noble Stone Age hunter living in harmony with nature. This is pure fantasy.

None of this means that humans are inherently bad or destructive as individuals. Our story not a story of a vindictive species destroying for the sake of destruction, it is a story of a species whose technological power quickly overtook our wisdom, and that is still the case now. Plenty of humans use that power for good, and plenty of us have lived ecologically successful lives without harming our wider communities. Our history should be used to inform our future, so that we can avoid making the same mistakes.

Where things start to veer into ecofascism is when we begin to brand humans as some sort of disease. When we talk about humans as an ‘invasive species that needs to be culled,’ when we blame this destruction on overpopulation or industrialisation. This all too often translates into harmful and often racist policies like forced birth control, sterilisation, and other anti-natal policies.

I think the left accuse each other of ecofascism a lot as a silencing technique, but in my experience it tends to be what happens when right wingers weave environmentalism into their ultranationalist views. Ecofascism is a harmful ideology that should be taken seriously, and that just isn’t what we’re doing when we throw the term at anyone who is trying to seriously reckon with the destructive history and potential of human animals, and our obvious exclusion from natural ecosystems.

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: So, that "If you like dragons so much..." moment in the S2 trailer...

....yeah I'm sure this'll be fine.

For no particular reason, I wonder what diplomatic relations are like between Shuro's island (of which he is prince) and this one, and with the Western elves. Btw, to zoom in...

goodforhim.gif

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Mithrun has the 'looks effortlessly, unconsciously cool' ability and, apparently, the instinct to stand dramatically in high-up places, of Kaladin Stormblessed. I have to respect that.

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Thistle seems completely unable to parse that Falin isn't just the dragon. He doesn't just treat her as a tool: by the standards of this comic, he treats her like she's dead. Hell, he treated the dragon like it was dead: ignored its need to eat (and rest), smothered its will under his own....and now he's doing the same thing to Falin. He's not even aware that she needs to eat. He's forgotten what is necessary to be alive, even though he still goes through some of the motions himself.

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hi this is the most painful thing so far. Laios thinking this through with typical Laios systematic consideration. And this is one of his foremost thoughts, that he won't let Marcille have Falin's perma-death on her hands; he'll do it himself.

Hey, you know what? The Stamatis family from Greater Boston COULD do Dungeon Meshi, and the Toudens COULD do Greater Boston. I'm gonna think about that later.

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hey Laios what the FUCK does that mean.

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LOVE this visual. God the chapter covers are all so good.

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eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes

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ok I WAS spoilered for Marcille being a half-elf, too, but I think this is the first mention of it in canon! Very exciting! I don't know what it means for her socially, but I can't wait to find out!

It's so funny to think fo Thistle probably wandering past Senshi at some point and just kinda going, "Weirdo," and continuing on his way.

The great thing about this fight is that it genuinely WOULD be better if Thistle won and the lion remained bound. Mithrun lasted what, like a couple decades at most, as Lord of his Dungeon? Thistle has kept this place stable for like a thousand years (as the demon slowly fed on not just his desire but those of all the people he was trying so hard to protect.) He's trying just so hard, this poor guy. Whom we definitely do need to stop, because he IS losing this battle for his own sanity, and with it, the stability of the dungeon.

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*singing* eyes eyes eyes eyes...

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Dude, weren't you raised mostly by tallmen? How are you this racist.

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Marcille, I love you. Laios, I love you in a different way.

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Ouch.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING

eyes eyes eyes eyes...

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unironically excited for Thistle to enter his maniacal laughter phase in anime s2.

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I'm fascinated with how this comic portrays the patterns of natural ecological biomes and the patterns of human social structures and history with exactly the same tone. The behaviors of animals and monsters and humans. The psychological profile of a dungeon lord and the corresponding life cycle of a dungeon. I want to eat it. I want to put an ecologist, an anthropologist and a political scientist in a room together with this comic, and listen to them talk about it. I want to kiss Ryoko Kui on the mouth. I don't want to do my chores, go to bed and then go to work, but unfortunately life SUCKS that way. Motherfucker why is it 1am again.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Beyond East & West Differences of Personality

The work by Markus and Kitayama (1991) has had a major effect on social, personality and developmental psychology and raised awareness for cultural considerations in psychology.

Despite the positive impact, there has been limited empirical support for independent and interdependent self-construals (Matsumoto, 1999) with some studies reporting contradictory findings.

Vignoles' & Colleagues Study

Recent research conducted by 71 researchers, across 33 countries and encompassing 55 cultural groups challenged the dichotomous view first proposed by Markus and Kitayama.

The researchers conducted a series of studies (Vignoles et al., 2016) that examined a single dimension of Independent/Interdependent, Western cultures as wholly independent, the relationship between individualist and collectivist cultures and Independent/Interdependent self-construals, as well as the role of religious heritage and socioeconomic development of cultures. 

Using data from over 7,000 adults, the authors identified:

7 dimensions that encompass both independent and interdependent self-construals

Difference

Connection

Self-Direction

Self-Reliance

Consistency

Self-Expression

Self-Interest

At the level of the individual, these 7 dimensions represent the different ways that we see ourselves (perception) and our relationships with other people.

The dimensions can also represent cultural norms about self that are reinforced and maintained by cultural practices and social structures.

Result & Implications

When the researchers tested the 7-dimension model, their results contradicted many long-held beliefs about independent, individualistic, interdependent and collectivist cultures.

First, Western cultures scored above average on five of the dimensions but were below average on the dimensions self-reliance and consistency.

Thus, the common view that Western cultures are wholly independent was not supported.

Latin American cultures had scores very similar to Western cultures on the difference and self-expression dimensions but scored higher on consistency and self-interest which also challenged the common view of Latin America as wholly interdependent.

The economically poorest samples in the study scored highest on self-interest and were negatively associated with individualism, whereas Western cultures scored high on commitment to others which challenges the view that rich Western cultures are selfish.

Religious heritage was also an important variable in the study. Muslim and Catholic samples had very distinct dimension profiles that showed high scores for consistency. This may be related to the tenets of both faiths that salvation is related to behaviors so behaving consistently – across different situations and settings would be important.

The results of Vignoles and colleagues demonstrated that self, whether measured at the individual level or cultural level, is NOT binary.

Note

Independence and interdependence is a complex interaction of heritage, socioeconomic development, settlement patterns, and ecological contexts.

By moving away from a dichotomous view of self, psychologists have an opportunity to expand our understanding of self and its relationship to culture.

Sources: 1 2 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[mysticstronomy]

WILL HUMANS EVER GO TO MARS??

Blog#417

Wednesday, July 10th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Mars has called to us since ancient times. To humans across the eons, the red-tinted speck glinting in the night sky has garnered special attention, with myths and legends wound around its possible ties to Earth. As we observed Mars with telescopes, this fondness graduated into a scientific fascination.

Within only about the last half century, as science has continued to advance, we gained the ability to land scientific instruments on the Red Planet. Beginning with the Viking probes in 1976 and continuing through the Perseverance rover and its flying companion, the Ingenuity helicopter drone, this robotic exploration has allowed humans to discover complex secrets of Mars.

But this is far from the end of our ambitions. Indeed, humans have planned crewed missions to Mars since at least as far back as the 1950s. Scientists and CEOs alike have crafted intricate ideas to establish a presence on the Red Planet, ranging from small-scale research outposts to major settlements. Elon Musk’s plans to put a million people on Mars stand as a particularly bold example.

Yet even with all the money and influence being poured into the goal of putting boot prints in the Martian regolith, there remain considerable doubts that we will ever actually get there. Between economic and ecological problems mounting here on Earth and the major challenges facing even the most basic mission to send humans to Mars, the impetus to spend the money necessary to fund such an initiative has ebbed with the political tides perhaps more so than any other space mission.

But the fascination remains, and the call of Mars is still as loud as it was to the futurists of the past. There seems to be something of a destiny in this call that makes it all but inevitable that humans will one day step down onto the surface of Mars, much as we once first stepped onto the surface of the Moon.

This history itself is instructive. In the earliest days of the Space Race, many people thought it inevitable that humans would one day set foot on the lunar surface, even if it took decades as opposed to the scant few years promised by visionaries like John F. Kennedy. But the illusion of inevitability is not proof of its existence in fact, as many failed predictions through history have shown.

Even the Moon landings were subject to faulty predictions. The New York Times’ 1920 declaration that rockets could not fly through space due to the lack of air comes readily to mind. Yet on July 21, 1969, two men from Earth stepped onto the surface of the Moon, proving all but the most determined doubters wrong. Will their spiritual successors at NASA and other space agencies one day follow suit on Mars? The first person to step on Mars likely walks among us now, and their moment in history may be coming soon.

Originally published on https://www.astronomy.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, July 13th, 2024)

"WHAT IS THE COLDEST PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM??"