#especially in canada and greenland

[darkwood-sleddog]

i do thing it's mighty rich of that recent documentary on joe henderson to call him the "last arctic explorer" in relation to how he works his dogs when there are plenty of indigenous arctic mushers working their dogs in the traditional way without peddling inaccurate and often harmful breed mythology but that's just me.

[proton-wobbler]

Warbler Showdown pt 3; Bracket 2, Poll 2

American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)

IUCN Rating: Least Concern

Range: quite extensive; breeds throughout most of Canada and the northern states, then migrates through the central and Eastern states before overwintering in the Caribbean, and from southern Mexico to northern South America (Ecuador to eastern Venezuela).

Habitat: moist, deciduous, second-growth woodlands with abundant shrubs, as well as thickets found in treefall gaps of old-growth forests. Sometimes classified as a "forest generalist", especially with their diverse overwinter habitats, with habitat depending more on the specific local of the population.

Subspecies: none

Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia)

IUCN Rating: Least Concern

Range: almost the entire continent of North America, save the locals of Nunavut, northern Quebec, and Greenland. Only migrates through the southern US states, and overwinters from southern Mexico all the way to Northern Brazil.

Habitat: breeds in wet, deciduous thicket, especially those with willows. While overwintering, uses a variety of wooded and scrubby habitats, as well as mangroves.

Subspecies: 9*; Mangrove Warbler could be split out as its own species

Image Sources: AMRE (Matt Felperin); YEWA (Tom Murray)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Navigating the next month

December 27, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Handling the news cycle over the next month will be a challenge. The American public is understandably turning away from legacy media in droves—both from exhaustion and disgust. See HuffPo, Americans Are Exhausted By Political News. TV Ratings And A New Poll Show They're Tuning Out.

The temptation to look away is understandable for both political and personal reasons. As Democrats honor the Constitution by facilitating the peaceful transition of power, the first president to interfere with that process will be inaugurated in little less than a month.

While Democrats follow the rules, Trump is ratcheting his obnoxious behavior to unplumbed depths of depravity and lunacy. His race to the bottom does not faze business leaders and major corporations flocking to Mar-a-Lago like gulls after a storm scavenging for scraps at the nearest landfill.

In short, it stinks.

My modest goal over the next several weeks is to help navigate through the unpleasant reality of the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. We can’t look away completely, even though the urge to keep the odiferous news at arms-length is an act of self-preservation. But we have a democracy to defend and cannot do so unless we remain engaged and aware of the threats to the rule of law.

Out of respect for those of you who are gingerly re-entering the news bubble after the holidays (or the election), I offer a 60,000-foot summary in one paragraph below. Details follow. Jill and I are still hosting family through next week, so I will be briefer than usual. (You are welcome!)

The news from 60,000 feet

Trump is making reckless statements about US expansion into Canada, Iceland, and Panama. The 119th Congress will convene on January 3, 2025, and will elect a new Speaker (or not). A joint session of Congress will convene on January 6, 2025, at which time the President of the Senate (Vice President Kamala Harris) will announce the electoral votes by state. By operation of the Constitution and enabling statutes, if a candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes, that person will be elected as the next president upon the announcement of the vote totals by the President of the Senate. The president-elect will be inaugurated on January 20, 2025, at a taxpayer-funded ceremony—which will be followed by obscene galas underwritten to the tune of $150 million by cowardly businesses and CEOs eager to curry favor with a man none of them would hire.

Trump unleashes Christmas Day torrent of insults and threats

As has become a tradition with Trump, his Christmas Day messages quickly traversed the unhinged mental landscape from “Merry Christmas” to attacking the Radical Left Lunatics—a.k.a. “American citizens” whom he was elected to represent.

At one level, it is tedious and off-putting to recite Trump's crass statements on a day that most people associate with peace and hope. If you would like to read the details, they can be found in these articles: New York Magazine / Intelligencer, Trump Christmas Message Was Basically a Villain Monologue, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, President-elect Trump continues tradition of Christmas attacks, takes aim at ‘Radical Left Lunatics’.

At another level, Trump's ugly missives matter, especially when they involve threats to expand US territory into sovereign nations—like Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. Yes, in case you missed it, Trump has directly or indirectly threatened to invade or absorb those three nations into the United States. See Rolling Stone, Trump Threatens to Take Over Canada, Panama Canal, Greenland in Christmas Day Message.

I know that many people have decided to “tune out” Trump's crazy statements—and each of the above falls well into the territory of delusion and detachment from reality. The problem is that there are sovereign nations on the receiving end of those reckless taunts—and their leaders cannot allow Trump's statements to go without response. The response, in turn, will provoke Trump to further lunacy. Wars have started over more trivial matters.

Charlie Angus, Canadian Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, was asked about Trump's threats to make Canada the 51st US state. Angus said,

[T]he message that I'm hearing from people across Canada is they're not afraid of [Trump] because they know you're a convicted felon. They know that all the people that you're bringing in to run your organization right now . . . are all grifters and thieves and thugs. We've got to look after our own interests right now. We will work with your country. We will work with our great neighbors. But, Donald, don't push us around.

In short, Trump's war of words directed at Canada, Panama, and Greenland is not harmless. It will provoke political backlash against the US in those countries. Although it is impossible to predict the outcome of the war of words, the likelihood that it will hurt the citizens of America, Canada, Panama, and Greenland is high.

Donald Trump is unfit to lead the United States—as his reckless comments make clear. That should be a leading story in every newspaper in America every day.

[Robert B. Hubbell]

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson 12.26.24

Heather Cox Richardson 12.26.24

It is starting to seem like the best way to interpret social media posts from President-elect Donald Trump is through the lens of professional wrestling. Never a true athletic competition—although it certainly required athletic training—until the 1980s, professional wrestling depended on “kayfabe,” the shared agreement among audience and actors that they would pretend the carefully constructed script and act were real.

But as Abraham Josephine Reisman explained in the New York Times last year, Vince and Linda McMahon pushed to move professional wrestling into entertainment to avoid health regulations and the taxes imposed on actual sporting events. That shift damaged the profession until in the mid-1990s, wrestlers and promoters began to mix the fake world of wrestling with reality, bringing real-life tensions to the ring in what might or might not have been real. “Suddenly,” Reisman wrote, “the fun of the match had everything to do with decoding it.”

Nothing was off-limits, and the more outrageous the storylines, the better. “[F]ans would give it their full attention because they couldn’t always figure out if what they were seeing was real or not.” This “neokayfabe” “rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment.”

Reisman concluded that producers and consumers of neokayfabe “tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.” In that, they echo the world identified by German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt in her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist,” she wrote, “but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Yesterday, on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, Trump posted a “Merry Christmas to all” message that went on to claim falsely that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal, that President Joe Biden “has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.” The heart of his message, though, was that the U.S. should take over both the Panama Canal and Canada, and that Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, “is needed by the United States for National Security purposes,” and that “the people of Greenland…want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”

Trump’s sudden pronouncements threatening three other countries—he has been quiet about Mexico since its president pushed back on his early threats—have media outlets scrambling to explain what he’s up to. They have explained that this might be a way for him to demonstrate that his “America First” ideology, which has always embraced isolation, will actually wield power against other countries; or suggested that his claim against Panama is part of a strategy to counter China; or pointed out that global warming has sparked competition to gain an advantage in the Arctic.

The new focus on threatening other countries, virtually never mentioned during the 2024 campaign, has driven out of the news Trump’s actual campaign promise. Trump ran on the promise that he would lower prices, especially of groceries. Yet in mid-December he suggested in an interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t really expect to lower prices. That promise seems to have been part of a performance to attract voters, abandoned now with a new performance that may or may not be real.

There is also little coverage of the larger implications of Trump’s threats to invade other countries. Central to the rules-based international order constructed in the decades after World War II is that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. Between 1942 and 1945, forty-seven nations signed the Declaration by United Nations, the treaty that formalized the alliance that stood against the fascist Axis powers. That treaty declared the different countries would not sign separate peace agreements with Germany, Italy, or Japan.

They would work together to create a world based on the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which called for the territorial integrity of nations and the restoration of self-government to countries where it had been lost, and for global cooperation for economic and social progress. In 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco to establish a permanent forum for international cooperation.

What emerged was the United Nations, whose charter states that the organization is designed “to maintain international peace and security” by working together to stop “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and to settle international disputes without resort to war. “The Organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members,” the charter reads. “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” it reads.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is eager to tear down the international rules-based order established by the United Nations and protected by organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His invasion of neighboring countries—Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022—demonstrates his desire to return the world to a time in which bigger countries could gobble up smaller ones, the ideology that after the invention of modern weaponry meant world wars.

On Christmas Day, Russia fired more than 70 missiles and more than 100 drones at Ukraine, targeting its energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian forces shot down more than 50 of the missiles, but the attack damaged power plants, cutting electricity to different regions. Just two years ago, Ukraine began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, following the Gregorian calendar rather than the less accurate Julian calendar still favored by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said the change would allow Ukrainians to “abandon the Russian heritage” of celebrating Christmas in January.

Also yesterday, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia failed, following a series of cuts to telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in November. Today, Finland seized an oil tanker it believes cut the cables yesterday, noting that the tanker may be part of Russia's “shadow fleet” that is waging a shadow campaign against NATO nations at the same time that it is evading sanctions against Russia.

In a joint statement today, the European Commission, which is the government of the European Union, “strongly condemn[ed]” the attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure and said it would be proposing further sanctions to target the Russia’s shadow fleet, “which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget.” It emphasized Europe’s commitment to international cooperation.

Also yesterday, an Azerbaijan Airlines jet traveling from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on its way to Chechnya crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 of the 67 people on board. Nailia Bagirova and Gleb Stolyarov of Reuters reported today that a preliminary investigation by Azerbaijan officials suggests that Russian air defenses shot the plane down.

Newsweek’s Maya Mehrara reported that on Russian media last night, a propagandist close to Putin cheered on Trump’s demand for Greenland. "This is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe, it undermines the world architecture, and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy," nationalist political scientist Sergey Mikheyev said.

Mikheyev supports Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and has called for Russia to add to its “empire” not only Finland and Poland, but also Alaska, Hawaii, and California. Last night he explained that Trump’s approach would undermine the rules-based order that has shaped the world since World War II. If Trump "really wants to stop the third world war,” he said, “the way out is simple: dividing up the world into spheres of influence."

Mehrara noted that academic Stanislav Tkachenko said that Russia should "thank Donald Trump, who is teaching us a new diplomatic language.” He continued: "That is, to say it like it is. Maybe we won't carve up the world like an apple, but we can certainly outline the parts of the world where our interests cannot be questioned.”

But yesterday in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Armenians and Azerbaijanis joined the protesters who are filling the streets to protest the government’s attempt to tie Georgia more closely to Putin’s Russia. They hope to turn Georgia toward Europe instead.

And President Joe Biden issued a statement concerning Russia’s Christmas bombardment of Ukraine to cut heat and electricity for Ukrainians in the dead of winter. “Let me be clear,” he said, “the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Mongabay Environmental News:

A NASA study analyzed the future action of six climate variables in all the world’s regions — air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, short- and long wave solar radiation and wind speed — if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, which could occur by 2040 if emissions keep rising at current rates.

The authors used advanced statistical techniques to downscale climate models at a resolution eight times greater than most previous models. This allows for identification of climate variations on a daily basis across the world, something essential since climate impacts unfold gradually, rather than as upheavals.

The study found that the Amazon will be the area with the greatest reduction in relative humidity. An analysis by the Brazilian space agency INPE showed that some parts of this rainforest biome have already reached maximum temperatures of more than 3°C (5.4°F) over 1960 levels.

Regardless of warnings from science and Indigenous peoples of the existential threat posed by climate change, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, largely with government consent, plan to further expand fossil fuel exploration, says a U.N. report. That’s despite a COP28 climate summit deal “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

In view of the current nonstop rise in greenhouse gas emissions responsible for intensifying climate change, NASA researchers this year posed two key questions: When will the planet’s temperature likely reach an annual average of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels? And what will the global climate look like in great detail all over the world at that temperature?

Disturbingly, their findings indicate that a 2°C increase could be reached between 2041 and 2044 (under higher and lower emission scenarios, respectively) in comparison with the preindustrial period (1850-1900). The planet is currently at 1.15°C (2.07°F) above 19th century levels, with most of this warming occurring since 1975.

A rise above 2°C could put Earth on track for catastrophic climate change impacts, according to the 2023 report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

To investigate the potential multiple effects of a 2°C planet, scientists at the NASA Earth eXchange analyzed the projections of 35 of the world’s leading climate models with a very high resolution that gives results for areas of just 25 square kilometers (9.6 square miles). Many climate models currently use a far coarser resolution of 200 km2 (77 mi2). NEX fine-scaling allowed for estimated climate impact projections on both a local and regional scale, and even on a daily basis.

“If merged into a monthly average, a few days projected to be dangerously hot and humid could get lost in the numbers, concealing the risk for human lives,” explained study lead author Taejin Park, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “Finer-scale information can help identify variations in projected climate change that may be overlooked, so leading to significant impacts on planning and decision-making.”

In the 2040s, global mean near-surface air temperature over land is projected to increase 2.33-2.79°C (4.2-5°F), compared with the baseline period 1950–79. Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe and Asia are projected to reach above a 3°C (5.4°F) increase in annual temperature. Image courtesy of NASA/Taejin Park.

If NASA’s projections are correct, a precipitation increase will occur over much of the northern hemisphere, especially in southeastern Greenland, but also in western and eastern Africa and South Asia, among other places. The Amazon Basin, on the other hand, will see a major decrease in precipitation. Dry regions such as Southern Africa, the North American Southwest and the Mediterranean also could see a precipitation decline. Image courtesy of NASA/Taejin Park.

After 2040, most regions of the world are expected to have more days with extreme heat stress, with heat especially pronounced in the Amazon, Central and Eastern North America, the Mediterranean and Eastern and Northern Asia. Heat stress can be devastating to wildlife, plants and of course, people. Image courtesy of NASA/Taejin Park.

Under a moderate emission scenario, Western and Central North America, the Amazon, the Mediterranean and South Africa will be at higher risk of fires in the 2040s, compared with 1950-79. Image courtesy of NASA/Taejin Park.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse:

Happy Christmas Eve, and here’s your reminder that it’s not normal for an American president to talk about taking over territory that belongs to our allies. Greenland, the Panama Canal, and…Canada. This is, however it’s presented, speculative war talk. It’s invasion talk—how else does one country take over land held by another? We need look no further than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to answer that. The countries Trump mentioned haven’t volunteered interest in joining the United States. And it’s hardly realistic to think they would. Perhaps Trump will drop it when he takes office. But it’s not funny, and it’s not a joke. It’s destabilizing, and destabilization is dangerous, especially in a fraught world. I’m sorry that tonight’s post isn’t one about visions of sugar plums, and I know we all want to be on holiday at the moment, but this is too important to look away from. The idea that there are people sitting around and acting like this is all normal is absolute madness.

“Expansion?” A rival to the Louisiana Purchase? None of these countries are interested in selling. The word they were looking for was invasion. That’s how one country takes over territory from another. In Germany in the 1900s, this need for “expansion” was called Lebensraum, literally, room to live in or elbow room. We all know what happened next. The German geographer Friedrich Ratzel came up with the term Lebensraum in the early 1900s. Under Hitler and the Third Reich, Lebensraum was used to justify “expansion” to the East. There was angry rhetoric about fulfilling destiny and the notion that those countries were filled with inferior people who the Germans should be permitted to elbow out—Jews and Slavs. They compared it to the American expansion to the West. We should not be surprised that the man who, according to his first wife Ivana, kept a copy of Hitler’s collected early speeches, My New Order, by his bed would go there.

[...] Some things are too important to ignore, even on Christmas Eve. Trump is not making friendly jokes with our neighbor Canada about becoming the 51st state. Greenland has its own indigenous people and a long-time relationship with Denmark. Panama’s conservative President José Raúl Mulino released a video reminding anyone who cared to tune in that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong” to Panama. What Trump is doing is dangerous. On top of his lukewarm support for NATO, it could threaten post-World War II stability. Experience has shown that Trump will back down and abandon plans in the face of persistent opposition. The bully does not have the courage of conviction. We saw that when he distanced himself from Project 2025 after its exposure and extensive discussion in the news during the campaign. But he has realigned himself with its goals during the transition period, now that public opposition has dissipated. We saw it happen recently when Trump broke with Robert Kennedy Jr.’s views on polio vaccines after crazy nonsense about a Kennedy ally opposing them surfaced. Senator Mitch McConnell, a childhood polio survivor, made his opposition to that view plain as public outrage swelled. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous,” McConnell said, a view he has unfortunately not shared publicly about a second Trump presidency. It was enough for Trump to back down.

CNN sanewashes Donald Trump’s delulu Lebensraum dreams of putting Canada, Greenland, and Panama Canal part of Panama under American rule by merely calling it “expansion”.

[htr2a]

climate change blackpill megapost

there are several climate tipping points identified in the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change sixth assessment report (chapter 3, specifically). tipping points refer to critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible. they are:

the greenland ice sheet

the west antarctic ice sheet

the atlantic meridional overturning current

monsoon systems

el niño-southern oscillation

tropical rainforests

northern boreal forests

thawing permafrost

extreme heat

current (2022) global warming of ~1.1°C above preindustrial temperatures already lies within the lower end of some tipping point uncertainty ranges. several tipping points may be triggered in the paris agreement range of 1.5 to <2°C global warming, with many more likely at the 2 to 3°C of warming expected on current policy trajectories.

greenland's ice sheet is in disequilibrium and we are committed to 2-3 meters of sea level rise from its melt alone in the next 200 years.

greenland's ice sheets have been melting twice as fast in the last twenty years as they were during the previous century.

rapid increase in the rate of melting of the west antarctic ice sheet is unavoidable.

the west antarctic ice sheet is retreating twice as fast as previously predicted

because of widespread seawater intrusion beneath the grounded ice of the thwaites glacier.

the west antarctic ice sheet will raise sea levels by four meters when it melts.

this is causing the atlantic meridional overturning current to collapse.

the gulf stream (aka amoc) is weakening. 99% confidence. measured volume through the florida straits has declined by 4% in the past 40 years

the gulf stream will collapse between 2025 and 2095. 95% confidence.

the north atlantic is four standard deviations above its historic temperatures.

when the amoc collapses, the arctic sea-ice pack will extend down to 50°n. the vast expansion of the northern hemispheric sea-ice pack amplifies further northern hemispheric cooling via the ice-albedo feedback.

a collapse of the atlantic meridional overturning circulation would have substantial impacts on global precipitation patterns, especially in the vulnerable tropical monsoon regions in west africa, east asia, and india where they will experience shorter wet seasons and longer dry seasons with an overall decrease in precipitation

although recent studies indicate that the amazon will experience net benefit from the collapse of the amoc with cooler temperatures and increased rainfall

increased el niño intensity will increase the frequency and severity of droughts in the amazon rainforest.

even if we were able to stabilize global mean temperature at 1.5º C, el niño intensity will continue to increase for a century

and the amazon rainforest is currently in the worst drought on record, which may indicate it has passed its threshold to maintain its own wet climate.

while widespread and persistent warming of permafrost has been observed in polar regions and at high elevations since about 1980, the highest permafrost temperatures in the instrumental record were recorded in 2018–2019 (data from 2019-2020)

as of 2019 the southern extent of permafrost had receded northwards by 30 to 80km

soil fires in the canadian arctic are burning the peat underground and melting the permafrost. stat from the study 70% of recorded area of arctic peat affected by burning over the past forty years has occurred in the last eight and 30% of it was in 2020 alone.

nasa finds that tundra releases plumes of methane in the wake of wildfires.

in 2023 eight times more land burned in canada than average.

russian siberia experienced a similarly massive fire season in 2021.

a methane source we weren’t expecting was warmer, wetter conditions to increase organic decomposition in tropical wetlands which is releasing ever increasing amounts of methane.

we have been experiencing exponential rise in atmospheric methane since 2006. historical data indicates that we may have entered into an ice age termination event fueled by these methane releases.

we have been over 1.5º C above pre-industrial temperatures since the beginning of 2023.

this may be because of the extreme el niño conditions of the 2023-24 cycle, but breaches of 1.5°C for a month or a year are early signs of getting perilously close to exceeding the long-term limit

and the world meteorological organization expects us to permanently break 1.5º C of warming from pre-industrial levels within the next five years.

the united nations environmental programme (unep) emissions gap report found that current fossil fuel extraction commitments leave no credible path to keeping warming below 1.5º C. based on current policies we will experience 2.8ºC of warming by 2100. even if all current pledges were implemented and followed through with (which they never have been), we will only be able to limit that to 2.4-2.6ºC of warming.

[imaginarianisms]

okay so. this is kind of a vent ive& been meaning to talk about for a while & this isn't directed at any of my moots y'all are fine. ok @ the general majority a.soiaf rpc. take my hand. ok. good. walk w/ me for a sec. gotta have a chat w/ y'all as a native mun.

this is what most of the arctic hemisphere is for white fantasy authors & let's be honest many of the predominantly white asoiaf fandom & rpc: russia, scandinavia & iceland (& of course it's always white scandinavians or northern europeans bc ofc it is & conveniently ignoring the many, MANY indigenous peoples of russia & scandinavia, particularly the sami people who were, y'know, literally always there in norway, sweden, finland & the kola peninsula of russia & are literally Always left out).

this is what the ACTUAL entire arctic hemisphere looks like in reality. that includes not just white european scandinavia but also all of northern russia including siberia which btw russia has MANY indigenous peoples, the sami people of norway, sweden, finland & russia, iceland which has no indigenous population but there are theories supported by genealogy & anthropology studies that indigenous peoples accompanied norsemen vikings to iceland, greenland which has the indigenous population of the greenlandic inuit before danish settlers came, canada which itself has MANY indigenous peoples & alaska which Also has MANY indigenous peoples including the inuit, several first nations communities & alaska natives.

so why is it that Every Single Fucking Blog i& see that has a northern/free folk character - whether canon or an original character - theyre literally Always white european coded, always having blonde hair with blue eyes if it's an original character "skin and hair as white as the snow and eyes as blue as the ice", all that shit. that's a rhetorical question. i& know why. you know why. it's because whiteness is considered the default in our lives & even in our stories & nonwhite arctic peoples or anywhere near the northern hemisphere are considered lesser than, considered an afterthought if even at all. bc y'all would rather have your perfect white instagram model northern characters rather than having diverse characters & actually doing & putting in the fucking work to incorporate nonwhite northern cultures into your fantasy stories despite claiming to be inclusive of everyone. to clarify, there's nothing inherently wrong with having white characters who live in the north but i& need y'all to ask yourselves Why its so overwhelmingly prevalent. bc as an INDIGENOUS mun it makes me& fucking insane.

"b-but a.rcana its in medieval europe!!!!!! :'CCCCC so of course the northerners are european northerners!!!!!" man you wont believe who lives in the arctic europe irl, it ain't white scandinavians, they aren't even indigenous to those lands, it's the sami & the karelians who're the indigenous peoples of arctic scandinavia & the kola peninsula. lmfao. now that's not to say there Aren't ANY people with blonde hair & blue eyes, but it's. really uncommon, even moreso people with red hair and blue eyes, especially historically speaking. the point of this post isn't even saying "there are no pale skinned people in the arctic so dont do that in fantasy", the point is "why are there ONLY white skinned, blue eyed, blonde haired people in fantasy arctic groups when the real arctic consists of so many more ethnic groups than that and why are there so many people just okay with indigenous erasure". the arctic is an extremely diverse place with THOUSANDS of ethnic groups in it & to keep writing & rping your character as all white characters especially if they're blonde is. extremely racist & its throwing aside indigenous folx & asians bc the arctic indigenous peoples look VERY diverse.

above are several different nations ranging from the sámi, to northern asia to indigenous peoples of siberia like the sakha to the tuvan to the chukchi to the nenets to the mongolians to alaska natives to the métis (basically, mixed white, mostly french, english & scottish settlers & indigenous people who're their own distinct indigenous people who, while not from there originally as their homelands are very diverse, historically also travelled up to the northwest territories) & several first nations in the subarctic region like the anishinaabe & cree. hopefully y'all now see what i& mean when there's literally SO MUCH DIVERSITY in the arctic, subarctic & otherwise northern regions in our world with a variety of different skintones from different shades of brown to pale & physical features & hair colors from brown to black to blonde & eye colors to choose from from shades of brown to blue to green. there's SO MANY ideas to choose from & y'all will STILL erase nonwhite peoples.

& that's just the first men in the NORTH (which are the place with the most people who're first men & btw the north is MASSIVE & that's not even including the MANY peoples from beyond the wall so combined they're canonically the largest & oldest of the seven kingdoms), there's technically other families such as house blackwood, house bracken & the now extinct house strong in the riverlands, house dayne, house wyl & house yronwood in dorne, house redfort & house royce in the vale, house westerling in the westerlands, house gardener in the reach, the mountain clans, & the people of crackclaw point claiming descent from the first men groups that could be interpreted as OTHER indigenous groups living in westeros before the andals (aka white european people) invaded & intermarried with the first men & the rhoynar came to dorne & later the valyrians, notably the targaryens, velaryons (who, in house of the dragon, are black) & celtigars (who i personally interpret as east asian, mostly han chinese, due to the yellow god-emperors of yi ti which is ancient china in the paternal line & a valyrian noblewoman who married him but that's besides the point) came to westeros. obviously there's no 1v1 comparison & most people in southern westeros are mixed between the andals & the first men according to grrm but y'all get it.

"but a.rcana!!!! grrm said its loosely inspired by the wars of the roses!!" .... ok and? asoiaf, like our world, still has many different peoples & cultures. using that as an excuse to not include characters of color in your writing in btw a fantasy series? ew. istg y'all will use any excuse to erase or ignore any nonwhite people even in the rpc.

"but a.rcana!!!! there's not very many indigenous fcs!!!" unfortunately that's very true but like. although it's great to have 1 you don't Need a fc do you. use your imagination.

i& can't tell you how angering it is to find that the vast majority of the rpc just. doesn't even entertain the idea of their favorite (yt) stark faves POSSIBLY being indigenous. if there can be black, brown & east asian valyrians there can be indigenous first men. just like the valyrians, there's literally ZERO lore saying that the first men exclusively had pale skin & btw their skintone, just like the native valyrians was literally NEVER described. yall wanna be racist & gatekeep fantasy SOOOOOOOOO fucking bad. please unpack & discard that white supremacist ideology bc science, history & nor fantasy or literally any other genre of literature & television is compatible with it.

g-d forbid j.on s.now be brown skinned & look visibly indigenous like his mother & uncle & being an indigenous man struggling to do the right thing in a world stacked against his cultural values & trying to save his people & the world from literal ice undead (which, by the way, as an indigenous mun in some of my nations we already HAVE creatures like the others, the giants & the children of the forest in our folklore, we don't need to make it up) & having an indigenous man being one of the major heroes of the story. g-d forbid everyone's favorite l.yanna s.tark be a visibly indigenous woman who's as skilled in the art of swordplay & embroidery & be named the queen of love & beauty & being taken from her home & having to mourn the loss of her father & brother who died trying to find their missing daughter / sister & depending on the verse dying in childbirth or living to become a woods witch & warrior & fighting in her nephew r.obb s.tark's army. g-d forbid r.obb s.tark who's white presenting be the noble prince turned warrior king who slaughtered every lannister soldier he saw for the capture then murder of his father & him struggling to do the right thing & trying to be what the king of the north should be, the first movement for indigenous independence in centuries since the targaryen dynasty fell & being tragically murdered. g-d forbid s.ansa s.tark be lightskinned & have red hair & blue eyes & still be the epitome & pinnacle of femininity beauty standards in king's landing who's considered just as beautiful as any white woman, struggle with the genocide of her people & be forced to use her wits & smarts in a place that didn't value honor or kindness & being used as a hostage by the very family who slaughtered her people & being viciously physically abused & sexually harassed by a white blonde haired green eyed tyrant boy king & his mother & no one blinked an eye & then being forced to marry another member of said family to the point of being bodily dragged to the sept & being forced to assimilate in order to survive & being oversexualized & objectified by white men & she's not even treated like an actual person & finally escaping & eventually taking her homeland back as queen of the north in her own right.

g-d forbid a.rya s.tark being brown skinned & being told she looks like her aunt l.yanna be genuinely angry at what happened to her people & learning about other people along the way & becoming a ruthless assassin for it & trying so hard to remove her culture from herself the further away from westeros she is but knowing deep down she'll always be a.rya s.tark & knowing that one day she'll avenge her family & her people. g-d forbid b.ran s.tark be white presenting & be a MORALLY COMPLEX PHYSICALLY DISABLED character who's literally just trying to save the world while being so far beyond the wall that everyone thinks he's dead & he & his (also indigenous) friends m.eera & j.ojen r.eed & hodor have to fight ice creatures & the undead. g-d forbid r.ickon s.tark who looks so much like r.obb being so young when all this happened & doesn't even remember what most of his family & own home looks like & all he knows is the (also indigenous) woman osha from beyond the wall who's his mother figure & his black direwolf shaggydog who's never abandoned him & he has to learn to fight & survive & thrive on the island of skagos where most don't even dare to tread bc of the supposed cannibalism & unicorns & him coming back to avenge his family as a fierce warrior even as a boy & arguably acting more like someone from the free folk than someone in the north.

g-d forbid indigenous men (rickard stark, brandon stark then eddard stark & robb stark) being brutalized & then murdered in front of crowds of cheering (mostly white) people & no one blinks an eye but ofc that doesn't mean anything (/s). g-d forbid the starks & the northmen are literally compared to literal animals & called savages doesn't mean anything race related despite the fact that savage is literally an antinative slur. g-d forbid the b.oltons (for the most part, not all of them ofc, its basically only r.oose & r.amsay) be indigenous villains bc there really aren't any native villains because we're always seen as the noble savage or these always good elf beings bc we're people just like anybody else & people can *GASP* do shitty things to each other & oppress their own people & native people aren't excluded from that. g-d forbid indigenous women being like the mormonts, dacey mormont & lyanna mormont & spearwives being strong & powerful native women & girls. g-d forbid w.yman m.anderly being a fat indigenous man be constantly underestimated by his peers but is actually a vital player in the northern restoration & his brave granddaughter green haired indigenous w.ylla m.anderly boldly standing up for the s.tarks even in front of the frey colonizers.

g-d forbid there be intracommunity issues between the northerners & the free folk bc like irl we clearly all got along so well (/s) like we didn't have enemies in the past & we had conflicts & fights like everybody else. g-d forbid there be indigenous people who look different & are just as diverse as dorne is. g-d forbid the north & dorne don't look at each other & find solidarity. g-d forbid the starks & northmen as indigenous peoples fighting to get their traditional homelands back from usurpers, traitors & colonizers to restore the north, castles, cultures & land back into indigenous hands.

[mariacallous]

Humans have long sullied the Arctic with industrial development—mining operations, oil and gas exploration, military bases. That’s contaminated the landscape with a bevy of toxicants, including radiological material, heavy metals, insecticides, and fuels. That nastiness was often intentionally buried in frozen ground known as permafrost. In theory, as long as that ground remained frozen, the pollutants would stay locked away.

No longer. An alarming new paper in the journal Nature Communications estimates that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are splayed across Arctic permafrost regions, with 3,500 to 5,200 in areas that’ll be affected by thawing soils before the end of the century. The region is already warming rapidly, more than four times faster than the rest of the planet. And that estimated number of sites is likely low, the scientists warn, because thaw might dramatically accelerate in some places. 

As permafrost degrades, it collapses, releasing buried contaminants that flow out in the melted ice. The ground sinks—often spectacularly and rapidly—dragging down aboveground infrastructure like fuel tanks and pipelines. Indeed, that was the suspected cause of a 2020 environmental disaster in Norilsk, Russia, in which 17,000 tons of oil leaked from a collapsed tank.

“The assumption is that permafrost is a hydrological barrier, and it will remain there forever,” says permafrost researcher Moritz Langer, of the Alfred Wegener Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, lead author of the new paper. “That was the assumption for all of these very old sites—especially from the ‘70s, ‘80s, up until the ‘90s—when climate warming and the problem of permafrost thaw was not really on the radar of most people.”

Langer and his colleagues found that 70 percent of these sites are in Russia, with others across Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Some facilities are abandoned and difficult to access and clean up. Others are still operational, and producing yet more toxicants to leak into the environment. (The new paper doesn’t distinguish, though, exactly which sites are which.) As the Arctic warms, expect industrial and military development to creep farther north, adding more contaminants while putting more people in contact with them. And the mushier the soil gets, the harder it will be to use heavy equipment to clean up the messes.

“This idea that somehow we have, functionally, a number of potential Superfund sites that were completely unknown until this paper, but could be mobilizing into the Arctic and potentially international environment, is pretty terrifying,” says Kimberley R. Miner, a climate scientist who studies permafrost contamination at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “To see them take that idea and apply it to actual maps and get actual sites, with permafrost disturbance underneath, was so mind-blowing to me.”

Existing sites are already plagued by a slew of environmental troubles. Oil leaks come from both wells and from pipelines. Radioactive material is buried around military bases. Pesticides like DDT are packed in barrels, then buried. Mining operations are notorious for emitting heavy metals like mercury; other sites are full of arsenic, lead, and other highly toxic elements and compounds. Trucks and heavy machinery carry liquid fuels like diesel, which are prone to spill. 

Once the ground is no longer frozen enough to form a barrier, those contaminants will seep into rivers and ponds, corrupting highly sensitive ecosystems. “This, we think, could also be a dangerous situation for people living up in the high north,” says Langer, as the contaminants mix with drinking water.

That water will eventually empty into the ocean and ride elsewhere on currents. Toxicants can also get airborne: Indeed, the Arctic is already dusted with lead from burning leaded gasoline. Mercury, too, could escape mining operations by taking to water and air. “Mercury that came from the burning of coal and fossil fuels from a century or two centuries ago is still cycling through our biosphere,” says Kevin Schaefer, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies permafrost contaminants but wasn’t involved in the new paper.

Human activity in the Arctic only exacerbates the thaw. Dark-colored roads absorb the sun’s energy, heating the soil. Digging up dirt and tossing it on top of snow darkens the whiteness that would normally bounce light off the landscape. Vehicle tires chew up the soil. “You already have rapidly changing environmental conditions,” says George Washington University climate scientist Dmitry Streletskiy, who studies permafrost but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “But then, of course, on top of those rapid changes, you have concentrated human presence—you have industry and infrastructure. So those are really focal points, where you in many ways amplify those changes associated with climate."

Oh, and the giant new Willow drilling project in Alaska that the Biden administration just approved? That’ll be on permafrost too. “Think about what it takes to establish a pipeline,” says Miner. “You're going to need a road. You're going to have people walking in and out, trampling the permafrost. All of that is going to lead to increased thaw and increased potential for contamination and disturbances to the very fragile tundra landscape. So it's just impacts upon impacts upon impacts.”

This new paper only considered gradual permafrost thaw. But permafrost can collapse much more rapidly, digging holes known as thermokarst. As ice becomes liquid water, it loses volume, forming a crater in which microbes produce the highly potent greenhouse gas methane. This further warms the atmosphere and accelerates permafrost thaw—a gnarly climatic feedback loop.

Adding yet more peril is that as the Arctic warms, wildfires are proliferating. If one sweeps through a contaminated site, it’ll send up plumes of toxicant-laden smoke. That will in turn exacerbate the thaw: Scientists have previously calculated that in north Alaska, thermokarst formation has accelerated by 60 percent since 1950, thanks to wildfires.

In other words, Langer says, their paper’s projection is “pretty conservative.” Some of the sites might thaw even earlier.

Permafrost is already deforming communities in the far north. Airport runways are sinking, roads are wrinkling, and buildings are crumbling. “It's no longer some ambiguous thing that might happen in the future—it's happening today, even as we speak,” says Schaefer. “If this infrastructure becomes damaged because of thawing permafrost, it's extremely expensive and extremely difficult to resolve. These areas are very remote. You can only do things in certain times of the year, mainly the summer.” 

If thermokarst opens a hole in your runway, for instance, it might cut off surrounding communities that rely on supplies brought in by plane. And if you can’t fly, you can’t get out of many places around the Arctic. “It's not like the Lower 48—if I don't make it to Denver, I'll fly to Colorado Springs,” says Schaefer. “These are all really key infrastructure, and it's really difficult to build and maintain.”

But this new paper is at least a step toward localizing the problem, directing governments to where cleanup might be required. Early scientific sleuthing like this is a start, but a fix will take putting a lot of boots on increasingly soggy ground. “In order to manage something, you have to measure it,” says Miner. The next step would take a massive push—one like the US Environmental Protection Agency began in the 1980s to clean up Superfund sites. But with such a patchwork of nations and corporations responsible for the mess, it’s not clear when—or if—that work would start.

[wodania]

you mentioned putting a lot of thought into your asoiaf costume designs, would you elaborate on your inspirations & thought process? i am especially curious about your stark/northern designs

Of course!!! My northern designs are a whole mix of a bunch of different fashions but the main ones I try to use are Ukrainian, Inuit, and Eastern Woodlands Indigenous people. If I were to make a map, it would be Eastern and Northeastern Canada, some of Greenland, and Ukraine. The Starks are a bit complicated because I also use Irish inspiration through their mother, Cat. Sansa also dresses in more southron, court clothes that aren’t popular in either the North or the Riverlands. Some families also lean more towards one culture over others in terms of designs (I haven’t drawn them all be patient). Like one family may be completely Ukrainian inspired while another may be entirely Inuit inspired. There are also hints of Scandinavian fashion here and there, but those are more prevalent in the Iron Islands and beyond the wall.

[moncuries]

Absolutely LOVE your new Zukka piece 😭 saw in your tags that you were considering a belt of some kind, and wanted to let you know that if you're looking for more references, the National Museums of Denmark and Greenland and Museumof Oslo have a collection of digitized skin clothing from arctic peoples - it's on https://skinddragter (dot) natmus (dot) dk and they have a handful of belts as well.

thank you !!! there is a belt i was thinking of, a wampum belt (they are so so interesting).

this is such a great resource though wow! i wish canada had something like this. honestly some of the moh archives look like they're from the age of geocities hahaha unsurprising but interesting to see how many motifs and structures are shared between north american and siberian arctic peoples! and the nivkh boots especially really r so gorgeous if you want to see beautiful and accurate art of the water tribe by an inuk artist, check out @notdayle !

[proton-wobbler]

Warbler Showdown pt2; Bracket 2, Poll 4

Blackpoll Warbler (Setophaga striata)

IUCN Rating: Near Threatened

Range: breeds in Northern Canada and Alaska and overwinters in Brazil - for note, this makes their migration the longest for any member of Parulidae.

Habitat: in Canada, found in boreal black spruce and tamarack forests. Much less picky when overwintering, found in many different wooded habitats (deciduous, rain, cloud, mangrove, and gallery forests), as well as forest edges, second growth, and coffee plantations.

Subspecies: none

Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia)

IUCN Rating: Least Concern

Range: almost the entire continent of North America, save the locals of Nunavut, northern Quebec, and Greenland. Only migrates through the southern US states, and overwinters from southern Mexico all the way to Northern Brazil.

Habitat: breeds in wet, deciduous thicket, especially those with willows. While overwintering, uses a variety of wooded and scrubby habitats, as well as mangroves.

Subspecies: 9*; Mangrove Warbler could be split out as its own species

Image Sources: BLPW (Simon Boivin); YEWA (Tom Murray)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 26, 2024

It is starting to seem like the best way to interpret social media posts from President-elect Donald Trump is through the lens of professional wrestling. Never a true athletic competition—although it certainly required athletic training—until the 1980s, professional wrestling depended on “kayfabe,” the shared agreement among audience and actors that they would pretend the carefully constructed script and act were real.

But as Abraham Josephine Reisman explained in the New York Times last year, Vince and Linda McMahon pushed to move professional wrestling into entertainment to avoid health regulations and the taxes imposed on actual sporting events. That shift damaged the profession until in the mid-1990s, wrestlers and promoters began to mix the fake world of wrestling with reality, bringing real-life tensions to the ring in what might or might not have been real. “Suddenly,” Reisman wrote, “the fun of the match had everything to do with decoding it.”

Nothing was off-limits, and the more outrageous the storylines, the better. “[F]ans would give it their full attention because they couldn’t always figure out if what they were seeing was real or not.” This “neokayfabe” “rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment.”

Reisman concluded that producers and consumers of neokayfabe “tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.” In that, they echo the world identified by German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt in her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist,” she wrote, “but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”

Yesterday, on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, Trump posted a “Merry Christmas to all” message that went on to claim falsely that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal, that President Joe Biden “has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.” The heart of his message, though, was that the U.S. should take over both the Panama Canal and Canada, and that Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, “is needed by the United States for National Security purposes,” and that “the people of Greenland…want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”

Trump’s sudden pronouncements threatening three other countries—he has been quiet about Mexico since its president pushed back on his early threats—have media outlets scrambling to explain what he’s up to. They have explained that this might be a way for him to demonstrate that his “America First” ideology, which has always embraced isolation, will actually wield power against other countries; or suggested that his claim against Panama is part of a strategy to counter China; or pointed out that global warming has sparked competition to gain an advantage in the Arctic.

The new focus on threatening other countries, virtually never mentioned during the 2024 campaign, has driven out of the news Trump’s actual campaign promise. Trump ran on the promise that he would lower prices, especially of groceries. Yet in mid-December he suggested in an interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t really expect to lower prices. That promise seems to have been part of a performance to attract voters, abandoned now with a new performance that may or may not be real.

There is also little coverage of the larger implications of Trump’s threats to invade other countries. Central to the rules-based international order constructed in the decades after World War II is that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. Between 1942 and 1945, forty-seven nations signed the Declaration by United Nations, the treaty that formalized the alliance that stood against the fascist Axis powers. That treaty declared the different countries would not sign separate peace agreements with Germany, Italy, or Japan.

They would work together to create a world based on the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which called for the territorial integrity of nations and the restoration of self-government to countries where it had been lost, and for global cooperation for economic and social progress. In 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco to establish a permanent forum for international cooperation.

What emerged was the United Nations, whose charter states that the organization is designed “to maintain international peace and security” by working together to stop “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and to settle international disputes without resort to war. “The Organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members,” the charter reads. “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” it reads.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is eager to tear down the international rules-based order established by the United Nations and protected by organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His invasion of neighboring countries—Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022—demonstrates his desire to return the world to a time in which bigger countries could gobble up smaller ones, the ideology that after the invention of modern weaponry meant world wars.

On Christmas Day, Russia fired more than 70 missiles and more than 100 drones at Ukraine, targeting its energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian forces shot down more than 50 of the missiles, but the attack damaged power plants, cutting electricity to different regions. Just two years ago, Ukraine began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, following the Gregorian calendar rather than the less accurate Julian calendar still favored by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said the change would allow Ukrainians to “abandon the Russian heritage” of celebrating Christmas in January.

Also yesterday, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia failed, following a series of cuts to telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in November. Today, Finland seized an oil tanker it believes cut the cables yesterday, noting that the tanker may be part of Russia's “shadow fleet” that is waging a shadow campaign against NATO nations at the same time that it is evading sanctions against Russia.

In a joint statement today, the European Commission, which is the government of the European Union, “strongly condemn[ed]” the attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure and said it would be proposing further sanctions to target the Russia’s shadow fleet, “which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget.” It emphasized Europe’s commitment to international cooperation.

Also yesterday, an Azerbaijan Airlines jet traveling from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on its way to Chechnya crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 of the 67 people on board. Nailia Bagirova and Gleb Stolyarov of Reuters reported today that a preliminary investigation by Azerbaijan officials suggests that Russian air defenses shot the plane down.

Newsweek’s Maya Mehrara reported that on Russian media last night, a propagandist close to Putin cheered on Trump’s demand for Greenland. "This is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe, it undermines the world architecture, and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy," nationalist political scientist Sergey Mikheyev said.

Mikheyev supports Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and has called for Russia to add to its “empire” not only Finland and Poland, but also Alaska, Hawaii, and California. Last night he explained that Trump’s approach would undermine the rules-based order that has shaped the world since World War II. If Trump "really wants to stop the third world war,” he said, “the way out is simple: dividing up the world into spheres of influence."

Mehrara noted that academic Stanislav Tkachenko said that Russia should "thank Donald Trump, who is teaching us a new diplomatic language.” He continued: "That is, to say it like it is. Maybe we won't carve up the world like an apple, but we can certainly outline the parts of the world where our interests cannot be questioned.”

But yesterday in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Armenians and Azerbaijanis joined the protesters who are filling the streets to protest the government’s attempt to tie Georgia more closely to Putin’s Russia. They hope to turn Georgia toward Europe instead.

And President Joe Biden issued a statement concerning Russia’s Christmas bombardment of Ukraine to cut heat and electricity for Ukrainians in the dead of winter. “Let me be clear,” he said, “the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[north-american-duck-poll]

Round 3 match 3B

The Canada Goose is widespread and well-known, and can be found even in densely populated urban areas throughout its range, especially in parks and fields. They are often fairly bold, and will hiss like a cat when threatened. While many people consider them to be aggressive, I've generally found that if you respect their space, they will respect yours.

The Harlequin Duck is found along rocky coasts in Canada, the northern United States, and Greenland. On top of the male's distinctive patterning, both sexes can be identified by the white spots present on both sides of the head, towards the back. The male makes a high-pitched squeaking call, and is therefore sometimes referred to as a "sea mouse".

[historia-vitae-magistras]

If I may, do you view Normandy as its own person like Brittany? Would they or Denmark have a relationship with Matthew?

I don't have Normandy being its own personification. It could but I'm lazy and I've got enough a-canonical takes as it is. Brittany is certainly her own person. Magnus and Matthew having a relationship is certainly a thing. Besides French, Greenlander and kind of not really-Russian maritime borders, Denmark and the US are the only land borders Canada technically has even if its just 1 chunk of frostbitten rock at the top of the world. There are certainly Norman influences in the language and vocabulary of Quebec. The adaptation of axes as weapons in French, especially Norman, maritime and later military culture. The long-lot system of settlement along the St. Laurent might be based on the Danish settlement patters in Normandy. There are names that mean things like 'of the sea' and 'cauldron of the aesir' and 'she made in the image of thor' up my family tree alone.

All of these things though, they're out of their original context. They aren't things the average Canadian, French or otherwise would think about. It's more strange blips in the history of empire than real living ties.

I think I answered the Vinland question once but it's an interesting question. I can see Magnus giving Matt shit if it's Matt's turn to hold the Arctic Council or another event in winter giving him a good slap on the shoulder in a "so much for the land of vines!" kind of way but that doesn't make him so. We do have evidence of medieval Scandinavian occupation at L'Anse aux Meadows and sparse evidence of other expeditions into the Canadian arctic but the connections there are tenuous and shaky and all too often used to prop up horrible things so ehh???? It can make me kind of uncomfortable for as much as it interests me.

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

It's important to note that in Alaska, this is a bit more complicated. Not only does the old term not have the same stigma as in Canada/Greenland (though you should never assume it's acceptable), but (and party because) many arctic Alaska Natives don't consider themselves Inuit... especially Yup'ik. And indigenous Siberian are definitely not Inuit.

So in that context, it's preferred to say the specific group such as Yup'ik or Iñupiat. Or if you need to be more general, Alaska Native/Native Alaskan.

Folks, friends, y’all…. esk*mo is a slur. I understand a lot of people don’t know that, I don’t want to be a dick about it, but I’ve been seeing it in fics. Wanna write “esk*mo kisses”? Just say “nuzzled noses” or something.

I’m not here to call anybody out, it’s been in multiple fics, I’m not vague posting. This is just a psa. 👍🏻