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nattaphum · 1 year ago
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Pond: Allow me to explain 'Phakphum'-ness in my perspective.
We are very, very close. Before everything in the world of Be On Cloud happened. Everything seemed to be arranged for us to be close from way back. Wherever I take Mile to, to meet any of my friend groups, there has never been anyone who is not okay or disliked Mile, not a single one. Mile is everyone's comfort zone. A gentle person and always making and keeping things fun for everyone. If Mile can do something for someone, he would do it, he is not a burden to anyone, even on days he's very drunk, haha. This thing is and has always been something of Mile, and he has grown to be even a greater person, especially in the 2-ish years with be on cloud.
Mile is someone who has shown me that receiving good energy and the warmth of family love, clearly has a positive effect on other people.
I still think that coming to work behind the scenes here of this person whose life doesn't seem to lack much. But having to sacrifice his time to live the life that he likes, his personal life, including the love of eating that is a lot, a lot, lotttttttt, it's not easy at all, but he did it well and tries and gets better every day. People around or people that know him, even if they are not close, never disliked or were malicious towards Mile, not a single person. And likewise, I've never seen Mile do that to anyone in front of or behind my back, really.
All that i posted, I just want to tell the people who love and support Mile again that you really, really love the right person.
For those who may still not understand, don't like him, or try to do something bad to this person. I really am saying that if you can open your mind, open your mind. But if you can't, then don't waste your time trying to hurt him. In the end, the person who gets tired of themselves is you, some day. And it's a sin to think about hurting good people, you know that right? Hahaha
During our recent trip, we used to talk about it back then, that we'll go to Tomorrowland but when we have things to do that are so gigantic and powerful, it's very difficult to make that happen. But we consider that it's really good to go. A small trip, but it perfectly fills our hearts with great energy. Ready to continue to create happiness moving forward.
[translation by mileapo_sp]
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dailyanarchistposts · 6 months ago
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Chapter 2: Mutual Aid Among Animals (continued)
Migrations of birds.— Breeding associations. — Autumn societies. — Mammals: small number of unsociable species. — Hunting associations of wolves, lions, etc. — Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. — Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. — Darwin’s arguments to prove the struggle for life within the species. — Natural checks to over-multiplication. — Supposed extermination of intermediate links. — Elimination of competition in Nature.
As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigour and joy, hasten northwards to rear their offspring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy, and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in perfect peace-all protecting one another.
“For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms everywhere.”[24]
And here are the robbers — the strongest, the most cunning ones, those “ideally organized for robbery.” And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they watch the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individual. But as soon as they approach, their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he suddenly dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.[25] And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life, the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of that life.
Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes,
“you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the ledges, all the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to a height of from two to five hundred feet, literally covered with sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls.”[26]
Each of such “bird-mountains” is a living illustration of mutual aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird; but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one’s orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another’s eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so “charming and touching” that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest: and that is why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the moralist’s point of view, because the views of the moralist are themselves a result — mostly unconscious — of the observation of Nature.[27]
Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows’ nests; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Couës, saw, for instance, the little cliff-swallows nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of the prairie falcon (Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the cañons of Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour; they never let it approach to their colony. They immediately surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at once.[28]
Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters, generally including several species. Social life is practised at that time chiefly for its own sake — partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young nuthatchers (Sitta cæsia), together with tit-mouses, chaffinches, wrens, tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.[29] In Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of America the young horned larks live in large societies, together with another lark (Sprague’s), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several species of buntings and longspurs.[30] In fact, it would be much easier to describe the species which live isolated than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young birds — not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their daily food.
And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds-their migrations — which I dare not even enter upon in this place. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands; they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain well chosen direction — a fruit of accumulated collective experience — the strongest flying at the head of the band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous year.[31]
This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied; it offers so many striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits, subsidiary to the main fact of migration — each of which would, however, require a special study — that I must refrain from entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer to the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place, always on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys north or south, as also those which one sees in the north, after the birds have arrived at their breeding-places on the Yenisei or in the northern counties of England. For many days in succession — sometimes one month — they will come together every morning for one hour, before flying in search of food — perhaps discussing the spot where they are going to build their nests.[32] And if, during the migration, their columns are overtaken by a storm, birds of the most different species will be brought together by common misfortune. The birds which are not exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and southwards with the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So far from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate individual the advantages of better food or shelter which are to be found in another district — they always wait for each other, and gather in flocks, before they move north or south, in accordance with the season.[33]
Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the Steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route they followed; the march past of the dense column lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedition which lasted for two hundred years; while the grass plains of Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra, the hartebeest, and other antelopes.
Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground-squirrels, marmots, and other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants, rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still further north we find the herds of the musk-oxen and numberless bands of polar foxes. The coasts of the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals of sociable cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the débris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres.
Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find social habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small groups. And yet, even among lions “this is a very common practice to hunt in company.”[34] The two tribes of the civets (Viverridæ) and the weasels (Mustelidæ) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than it is now; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered as eminently characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss.[35] Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case in France some five-and-forty years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl’s testimony) sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs. The prairie-wolves (Canis latrans) are known to associate in bands of from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo occasionally separated from its herd.[36] Jackals, which are most courageous and may be considered as one of the most intelligent representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in packs; thus united, they have no fear of the bigger carnivores.[37] As to the wild dogs of Asia (the Kholzuns, or Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and overpowering bears and tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs, and the hunting organizations of the painted lycaons are highly praised by Cumming. Nay, even foxes, which, as a rule, live isolated in our civilized countries, have been seen combining for hunting purposes.[38] As to the polar fox, it is — or rather was in Steller’s time — one of the most sociable animals; and when one reads Steller’s description of the war that was waged by Behring’s unfortunate crew against these intelligent small animals, one does not know what to wonder at most: the extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the mutual aid they displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or stored upon a pillar (one fox would climb on its top and throw the food to its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to despair by the numerous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in societies where they are not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw the black bear of Kamtchatka in numerous packs, and the polar bears are occasionally found in small groups. Even the unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain association.[39]
However, it is especially with the rodents, the ungulata, and the ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests, the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The ground-squirrel — a closely-akin genus — is still more sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with common efforts.
The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling; but they live in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia — the souslik — of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone, lives in numberless colonies; and while the Russian provincial assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy of society, it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful way. Their play is so charming that no observer could refrain from paying them a tribute of praise, and from mentioning the melodious concerts arising from the sharp whistlings of the males and the melancholic whistlings of the females, before — suddenly returning to his citizen’s duties — he begins inventing the most diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All kinds of rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved powerless, the last word of science in this warfare is the inoculation of cholera! The villages of the prairie-dogs in America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them a prairie-dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its neighbours by means of short barkings. As soon as the approach of man is signalled, all plunge in a moment into their dwellings; all have disappeared as by enchantment. But if the danger is over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come out of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch one another, they worry one another, and display their gracefulness while standing upright, and in the meantime the old ones keep watch. They go visiting one another, and the beaten footpaths which connect all their heaps testify to the frequency of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have written some of their best pages in describing the associations of the prairie-dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the polar marmots of the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as regards the marmots, the same remark as I have made when speaking of the bees. They have maintained their fighting instincts, and these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their big associations, in the face of free Nature, the unsociable instincts have no opportunity to develop, and the general result is peace and harmony.
Even such harsh animals as the rats, which continually fight in our cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-rats of Canada, they are extremely sociable. Audubon could not but admire “their peaceful communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy happiness.” Like all sociable animals, they are lively and playful, they easily combine with other species, and they have attained a very high degree of intellectual development. In their villages, always disposed on the shores of lakes and rivers, they take into account the changing level of water; their domeshaped houses, which are built of beaten clay interwoven with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the beavers, the muskrats, and some other rodents, we already find the feature which will also be distinctive of human communities — that is, work in common.
I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.[40] Precisely, the pleasures; because it is extremely difficult to say what brings animals together — the needs of mutual protection, or simply the pleasure of feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate, our common hares, which do not gather in societies for life in common, and which are not even endowed with intense parental feelings, cannot live without coming together for play. Dietrich de Winckell, who is considered to be among the best acquainted with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate players, becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known to take an approaching fox for a playmate.[41] As to the rabbit, it lives in societies, and its family life is entirely built upon the image of the old patriarchal family; the young ones being kept in absolute obedience to the father and even the grandfather.[42] And here we have the example of two very closely-allied species which cannot bear each other — not because they live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are too often explained, but most probably because the passionate, eminently-individualist hare cannot make friends with that placid, quiet, and submissive creature, the rabbit. Their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship.
Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of horses, which includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the zebras, the mustangs, the cimarrones of the Pampas, and the half-wild horses of Mongolia and Siberia. They all live in numerous associations made up of many studs, each of which consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male. These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have disappeared from the surface of the earth were it not for their sociable spirit. When a beast of prey approaches them, several studs unite at once; they repulse the beast and sometimes chase it: and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached from the herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the prairies, they gather in herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals strong, and migrate. And when a snow-storm rages in the Steppes, each stud keeps close together, and repairs to a protected ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found after the storm half dying from fatigue. Union is their chief arm in the struggle for life, and man is their chief enemy. Before his increasing numbers the ancestors of our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskii, so named by Polyakoff) have preferred to retire to the wildest and least accessible plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they continue to live, surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the Arctic regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.[43]
Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken from the life of the reindeer, and especially of that large division of ruminants which might include the roebucks, the fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex, and, in fact, the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides, the Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of their herds against attacks of carnivores; the anxiety displayed by all individuals in a herd of chamois as long as all of them have not cleared a difficult passage over rocky cliffs; the adoption of orphans; the despair of the gazelle whose mate, or even comrade of the same sex, has been killed; the plays of the youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But perhaps the most striking illustration of mutual support is given by the occasional migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once on the Amur. When I crossed the high plateau and its border ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from Transbaikalia to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.[44] Two years later I was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur where it is narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in succession, upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the Cossacks were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in which already floated a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed every day, and the exodus nevertheless continued. Like migrations were never seen either before or since, and this one must have been called for by an early and heavy snow-fall in the Great Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate attempt at reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains. Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under snow two or three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense territory (almost as big as Great Britain) from which the scattered groups of deer must have gathered for a migration which was undertaken under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, and realizes the difficulties which had to be overcome before all the deer came to the common idea of crossing the Amur further south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The fact is not the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes of North America displayed the same powers of combination. One saw them grazing in great numbers in the plains, but these numbers were made up by an infinity of small groups which never mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose, all groups, however scattered over an immense territory, came together and made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page.
I also ought to say a few words at least about the “compound families” of the elephants, their mutual attachment, their deliberate ways in posting sentries, and the feelings of sympathy developed by such a life of close mutual support.[45] I might mention the sociable feelings of those disreputable creatures the wild boars, and find a word of praise for their powers of association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.[46] The hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a work devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might be given to the sociability and mutual attachment of the seals and the walruses; and finally, one might mention the most excellent feelings existing among the sociable cetaceans. But I have to say yet a few words about the societies of monkeys, which acquire an additional interest from their being the link which will bring us to the societies of primitive men.
It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and intelligence, are eminently sociable. Evidently we must be prepared to meet with all varieties of character and habits in so great a division of the animal kingdom which includes hundreds of species. But, all things considered, it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of social life, are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few exceptions. The nocturnal apes prefer isolated life; the capuchins (Cebus capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small families; and the orang-outans have never been seen by A.R. Wallace otherwise than either solitary or in very small groups of three or four individuals, while the gorillas seem never to join in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey tribe — the chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons, and so on — are sociable in the highest degree. They live in great bands, and even join with other species than their own. Most of them become quite unhappy when solitary. The cries of distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands — the old ones taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained that it is dead and that they are helpless to restore it to life. Thus James Forbes narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a fact of such resistance in reclaiming from his hunting party the dead body of a female monkey that one fully understands why “the witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race.“[47] In some species several individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search for ants’ eggs under it. The hamadryas not only post sentries, but have been seen making a chain for the transmission of the spoil to a safe place; and their courage is well known. Brehm’s description of the regular fight which his caravan had to sustain before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the valley of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.[48] The playfulness of the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which reigns in the families of chimpanzees also are familiar to the general reader. And if we find among the highest apes two species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not sociable, we must remember that both — limited as they are to very small areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two islands of Borneo and Sumatra have all the appearance of being the last remnants of formerly much more numerous species. The gorilla at least seems to have been sociable in olden times, if the apes mentioned in the Periplus really were gorillas.
We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in societies is no exception in the animal world; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now, were living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and waged a permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from which they formerly derived food. “On ne s’associe pas pour mourir,” [We do not associate to die] was the sound remark of Espinas; and Houzeau, who knew the animal world of some parts of America when it was not yet affected by man, wrote to the same effect.
Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of evolution; and, according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer, so brilliantly developed in Perrier’s Colonies Animales, colonies are at the very origin of evolution in the animal kingdom. But, in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution, we see association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it becomes reasoned. With the higher vertebrates it is periodical, or is resorted to for the satisfaction of a given want — propagation of the species, migration, hunting, or mutual defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds associate against a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination sometimes appears in two or more degrees — the family first, then the group, and finally the association of groups, habitually scattered, but uniting in case of need, as we saw it with the bisons and other ruminants. It also takes higher forms, guaranteeing more independence to the individual without depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents the individual has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when it prefers being left alone; but the dwellings are laid out in villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all inhabitants the benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc., sociable life is maintained notwithstanding the quarrelsome or otherwise egotistic inclinations of the isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed, as is the case with ants and bees, by the very physiological structure of the individuals; it is cultivated for the benefits of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of course, appears with all possible gradations and with the greatest variety of individual and specific characters — the very variety of aspects taken by social life being a consequence, and for us a further proof, of its generality.[49]
Sociability — that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like — the love of society for society’s sake, combined with the “joy of life,” only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.[50] We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behaviour of the young in mature life, there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an excess of forces — “the joy of life,” and a desire to communicate in some way or another with other individuals of the same or of other species — in short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the animal world.[51] Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at the appearance of a bird of prey, or “a fit of gladness” which bursts out when the animals are in good health and especially when young, or merely the desire of giving play to an excess of impressions and of vital power — the necessity of communicating impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living beings pervades Nature, and is, as much as any other physiological function, a distinctive feature of life and impressionability. This need takes a higher development and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals, especially amidst their young, and still more among the birds; but it pervades all Nature, and has been fully observed by the best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even amongst the ants, and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together the big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already.
The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating the places where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of course, well known from the pages that Darwin gave to this subject in The Descent of Man (ch. xiii). Visitors of the London Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the satin bower-bird. But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely spread than was formerly believed, and Mr. W. Hudson gives in his master-work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds: rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on.
The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several species of birds, belongs to the same category of social instincts. It is most strikingly developed with the chakar (Chauna chavarria), to which the English have given the most unimaginative misnomer of “crested screamer.” These birds sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they frequently sing all in concert. W.H. Hudson found them once in countless numbers, ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined flocks, of about 500 birds in each flock.
“Presently,” he writes, “one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water — then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again.”
On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered in pairs and small groups. About nine o’clock in the evening, “suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous evening song.... It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear.”[52] It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man. “They are mild-tempered birds, and very rarely quarrel” — we are told — although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons useless.
That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life, taken in its widest sense, has been illustrated by several examples on the foregoing pages, and could be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if further evidence were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or the species, the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those animals which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of survival and of further evolution, although they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save the intellectual faculty. The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently social faculty. Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived. Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants, the parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest sociability with the highest development of intelligence. The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of intelligence.
Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society — life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.[53] We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy — not love — attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Büchner have given a number of such facts.[54] J.C. Wood’s narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.[55] So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a distance of thirty miles.[56] And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct, the question necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent with the theory of struggle for life as it has been developed by Darwin, Wallace, and their followers? and I will now briefly answer this important question. First of all, no naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century. Life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions, “By which arms is this struggle chiefly carried on?” and “Who are the fittest in the struggle?” will widely differ according to the importance given to the two different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as “metaphorical” — the struggle, very often collective, against adverse circumstances. No one will deny that there is, within each species, a certain amount of real competition for food — at least, at certain periods. But the question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent admitted by Darwin, or even by Wallace; and whether this competition has played, in the evolution of the animal kingdom, the part assigned to it.
The idea which permeates Darwin’s work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that competition, we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled “Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species,” we find in it none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance: it is taken as granted; and the competition between closely-allied animal species is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one, at least (relating to the two species of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.[57] But when we look for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us:
“We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature; but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life.”
As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a slightly-modified heading (“Struggle for Life between closely-allied Animals and Plants often most severe”), he makes the following remark (italics are mine), which gives quite another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says:
“In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the two, the stronger killing the weaker; but this is by no means necessary, and there may be cases in which the weaker species, physically, may prevail by its power of more rapid multiplication, its better withstanding vicissitudes of climate, or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common enemies.”
In such cases what is described as competition may be no competition at all. One species succumbs, not because it is exterminated or starved out by the other species, but because it does not well accommodate itself to new conditions, which the other does. The term “struggle for life” is again used in its metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real competition between individuals of the same species, which is illustrated in another place by the cattle of South America during a period of drought, its value is impaired by its being taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons emigrate in like circumstances in order to avoid competition. However severe the struggle between plants — and this is amply proved — we cannot but repeat Wallace’s remark to the effect that “plants live where they can,” while animals have, to a great extent, the power of choice of their abode. So that we again are asking ourselves, To what extent does competition really exist within each animal species? Upon what is the assumption based?
The same remark must be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a severe competition and struggle for life within each species, which may be derived from the “extermination of transitional varieties,” so often mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time Darwin was worried by the difficulty which he saw in the absence of a long chain of intermediate forms between closely-allied species, and that he found the solution of this difficulty in the supposed extermination of the intermediate forms.[58] However, an attentive reading of the different chapters in which Darwin and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the conclusion that the word “extermination” does not mean real extermination; the same remark which Darwin made concerning his expression: “struggle for existence,” evidently applies to the word “extermination” as well. It can by no means be understood in its direct sense, but must be taken “in its metaphoric sense.”
If we start from the supposition that a given area is stocked with animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all the inhabitants — each animal being compelled to fight against all its congeners in order to get its daily food — then the appearance of a new and successful variety would certainly mean in many cases (though not always) the appearance of individuals which are enabled to seize more than their fair share of the means of existence; and the result would be that those individuals would starve both the parental form which does not possess the new variation and the intermediate forms which do not possess it in the same degree. It may be that at the outset, Darwin understood the appearance of new varieties under this aspect; at least, the frequent use of the word “extermination” conveys such an impression. But both he and Wallace knew Nature too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only possible and necessary course of affairs.
If the physical and the biological conditions of a given area, the extension of the area occupied by a given species, and the habits of all the members of the latter remained unchanged — then the sudden appearance of a new variety might mean the starving out and the extermination of all the individuals which were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new feature by which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination of conditions is precisely what we do not see in Nature. Each species is continually tending to enlarge its abode; migration to new abodes is the rule with the slow snail, as with the swift bird; physical changes are continually going on in every given area; and new varieties among animals consist in an immense number of cases — perhaps in the majority — not in the growth of new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its congeners — food is only one out of a hundred of various conditions of existence — but, as Wallace himself shows in a charming paragraph on the “divergence of characters” (Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no extermination, even no competition — the new adaptation being a relief from competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence of intermediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for the new conditions — as surely as under the hypothesis of extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms.
The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation of groups of animals, for the origin of new varieties and ultimately of new species, which was indicated by Moritz Wagner, was fully recognized by Darwin himself. Consequent researches have only accentuated the importance of this factor, and they have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by a given species — which Darwin considered with full reason so important for the appearance of new varieties — can be combined with the isolation of parts of the species, in consequence of local geological changes, or of local barriers. It would be impossible to enter here into the discussion of this wide question, but a few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action of these agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often take to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well-known physiological effects on the squirrels. If this change of habits does not last — if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch woods — no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters altered — in consequence of, let us say, a milder climate or desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods — and if some other conditions concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating region — we shall have then a new variety, i.e. an incipient new species of squirrels, without there having been anything that would deserve the name of extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the new, better adapted variety would survive every year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time, without having been starved out by Malthusian competitors. This is exactly what we see going on during the great physical changes which are accomplished over large areas in Central Asia, owing to the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial period.
To take another example, it has been proved by geologists that the present wild horse (Equus Przewalski) has slowly been evolved during the later parts of the Tertiary and the Quaternary period, but that during this succession of ages its ancestors were not confined to some given, limited area of the globe. They wandered over both the Old and New World, returning, in all probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in the course of their migrations, formerly left.[59] Consequently, if we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place. No exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the ancestral species: the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties and species have died in the usual course of events — often amidst plentiful food, and their remains were buried all over the globe.
In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and, carefully re-read what Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we see that if the word “extermination” be used at all in connection with transitional varieties, it must be used in its metaphoric sense. As to “competition,” this expression, too, is continually used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph “On Extinction”) as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two portions of the same species for the means of existence. At any rate, the absence of intermediate forms is no argument in favour of it.
In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen competition for the means of existence continually going on within every animal species is — to use Professor Geddes’ expression — the “arithmetical argument” borrowed from Malthus.
But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well take a number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants of which enjoy plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation of any kind; and seeing that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while the population is now what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there has been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the truth is that from year to year the population remained stationary, for the simple reason that one-third of the new-born died before reaching their sixth month of life; one-half died within the next four years, and out of each hundred born, only seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if such is the case with men, it is still more the case with animals. In the feathered world the destruction of the eggs goes on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are the chief food of several species in the early summer; not to, say a word of the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird’s nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so terrible in theory.
As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and cattle in America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even of wild animals imported from Europe (where their numbers are kept down by man, not by competition), they rather seem opposed to the theory of over-population. If horses and cattle could so rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved that, however numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that time in the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the prairies could maintain. If millions of intruders have found plenty of food without starving out the former population of the prairies, we must rather conclude that the Europeans found a want of grass-eaters in America, not an excess. And we have good reasons to believe that want of animal population is the natural state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given region are determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the region, but by what it is every year under the most unfavourable conditions. So that, for that reason alone, competition hardly can be a normal condition but other causes intervene as well to cut down the animal population below even that low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them — the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance — but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike. Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and if several such days come in succession the horses grow still more exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which compels the already weakened animals to remain without any food for several days, and very great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are so severe that if the season has been more inclement than usual they are even not repaired by the new breeds — the more so as all horses are exhausted, and the young foals are born in a weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus always remain beneath what they otherwise might be; all the year round there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet their population increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the Buriate owner makes ever so small a provision of hay in the steppe, and throws it open during days of glazed frost, or heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his herd. Almost all free grass-eating animals and many rodents in Asia and America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say that their numbers are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year they can struggle for food, and that if they never reach anything approaching to over-population, the cause is in the climate, not in competition.
The importance of natural checks to over-multiplication, and especially their bearing upon the competition hypothesis, seems never to have been taken into due account The checks, or rather some of them, are mentioned, but their action is seldom studied in detail. However, if we compare the action of the natural checks with that of competition, we must recognize at once that the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks. Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged ants which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or half-dead bodies of the formica de fuego (Myrmica sævissima) which had been blown into the river during a gale “were heaped in a line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing without interruption for miles at the edge of the water.”[60] Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr. Altum, a German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about animals injurious to our forests, also gives many facts showing the immense importance of natural checks. He says, that a succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the exodus of the pine-moth (Bombyx pini) destroy it to incredible amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths disappeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights.[61] Many like examples relative to various insects could be quoted from various parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also mentions the bird-enemies of the pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes; but he adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it are a far more terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy the moth over very large areas at once. As to various species of mice (Mus sylvaticus, Arvicola arvalis, and A. agrestis), the same author gives a long list of their enemies, but he remarks: “However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year.” Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless quantities; “one single sudden change can reduce thousands of mice to the number of a few individuals.” On the other side, a warm winter, or a winter which gradually steps in, make them multiply in menacing proportions, notwithstanding every enemy; such was the case in 1876 and 1877.[62] Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as regards squirrels.
As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch. Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed during some exceptionally severe winters, that they quitted the moors in numbers, “and we have then known them actually to be taken in the streets of Sheffield. Persistent wet,” he adds, “is almost as fatal to them.”
On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually visit most animal species destroy them in such numbers that the losses often cannot be repaired for many years, even with the most rapidly-multiplying animals. Thus, some sixty years ago, the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood of Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of some epidemics; and for years no sousliks were seen in that neighbourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous as they formerly were.[63]
Like facts, all tending to reduce the importance given to competition, could be produced in numbers.[64] Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin’s words, that nevertheless each organic being “at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction,” and that the fittest survive during such periods of hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of the animal world were based exclusively, or even chiefly, upon the survival of the fittest during periods of calamities; if natural selection were limited in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or sudden changes of temperature, or inundations, retrogression would be the rule in the animal world. Those who survive a famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent. No progress could be based on those survivals — the less so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with an impaired health, like the Transbaikalian horses just mentioned, or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of a fortress which has been compelled to live for a few months on half rations, and comes out of its experience with a broken health, and subsequently shows a quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection can do in times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed upon the Polar birch in case of need; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease; no Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with Europeans. They may better endure hunger and cold, but their physical force is very far below that of a well-fed European, and their intellectual progress is despairingly slow. “Evil cannot be productive of good,” as Tchernyshevsky wrote in a remarkable essay upon Darwinism.[65]
Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields for its activity. Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support.[66] In the great struggle for life — for the greatest possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of energy — natural selection continually seeks out the ways precisely for avoiding competition as much as possible. The ants combine in nests and nations; they pile up their stores, they rear their cattle — and thus avoid competition; and natural selection picks out of the ants’ family the species which know best how to avoid competition, with its unavoidably deleterious consequences. Most of our birds slowly move southwards as the winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and undertake long journeys — and thus avoid competition. Many rodents fall asleep when the time comes that competition should set in; while other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large villages for obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the continent, migrate towards the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of food. And the beavers, when they grow numerous on a river, divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate, nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do what the titmouse does, and what Wallace (Darwinism, ch. v) has so charmingly described: they resort to new kinds of food — and thus, again, avoid competition.[67]
“Don’t compete! — competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!” That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. “Therefore combine — practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral.” That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done. That is also what man — the most primitive man — has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies.
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ciginatree · 3 months ago
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i swear sugar daddy ricky will NOT leave my mind hhnghrnhhrh
need some form of hc im losing my shit ☹️
The fucking chokehold that sugar daddy ricky has on me is unholy
-Maybe you met him online, maybe you met him on tour, the origin didn't really matter to either of you
-He thought you were absolutely stunning and wanted you to be his asap
-The fact that you're a few years younger than him didn't bother him at all
-It started as a one night stand, both of you enjoying yourselves obviously. Then it turned into frequent hookups. Then he started showering you with gifts
-One night he was insistent on taking you to dinner before you went back to his place. It was a relatively nice restaurant, nothing too fancy, but he paid for everything
-The next day you find a box with a note that reads "Wear this the next time I take you to dinner". Inside was a gorgeous, deep purple, cocktail dress with matching lingerie
-The night you wore that dress he took you to an extravagant restaurant miles away. Lobster, filet mignon, wine, anything you could want he paid for
-When you finally went back to his place you spent all night fucking; the lingerie stayed on the majority of the time
-He buys you diamond necklaces, perfume, silk robes, he even leaves straight cash left in heavily sealed envelopes
-You bring him pleasure and happiness, he makes sure to reciprocate even though he's already incredible in bed
-And the gifts don't stop while he's on tour. Packages will show up on your doorstep and flowers are delivered to your work constantly
-As time passes, he flies you out to various tour stops to show you around the cities. Europe, South America, North America, you name it. He flies you out at least once per tour
-The most memorable vacation he took you on was a two week long trip to a private island resort in Fiji. He had been gone for months on tour and wanted to get away and splurge
-He takes you to clubs and parties, showing you off any chance he's able to. After all, you're his princess, his sugar baby; and he shows off what's his with pride
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Tags: @abiomens @exitwoundsx @rumoured-whispers
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seeminglyranch87 · 11 months ago
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Taylor & Travis Timeline
December 2023 - part 2
December 10 - Chiefs v Buffalo Bills, Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City.
Travis Kelce arriving ahead of game
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Taylor flies into Kansas City to attend the Chiefs game with her cousins, Travis' cousins & friends at Arrowhead Stadium
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Travis made a brilliant play contributing to a touch down but was denied due to a team mates penalty.
During the game, NFL announcer and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo referred to her as "Travis' wife" while on the air with announcing partner Jim Nantz.
"As you see, Kelce's wife, Taylor Swift, in the audience," Romo pointed out, quickly correcting himself and saying, "I'm sorry -- girlfriend."
"Not yet," Nantz said in response.
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Chiefs were defeated 17 - 20.
Taylor and Travis leave the stadium together
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Taylor and Travis together with team mates, coaches friends and family gather at Miracle Pop Up Bar
Travis' barber shares a photo of Taylor and Travis (x)
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Lots of photos emerge from the party with Taylor and travis taking photos with friends - these have been cropped...
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December 11 - Taylor is nominated for a Golden Globe for The Eras tour movie.
USA Today reports that Taylor has donated $1 million to a Tennessee tornado relief Fund (x) after a Tornado ravaged the state on Saturday 9 Dec.
ET article (x)
According to Cheterah Jackson, a Columbus, Ohio-based real estate agent and friend of Travis', the couple rented a luxury bus to transport their group and reserved the Christmas bar in downtown Kansas City for friends and family. 
Jackson tells ET, "My boyfriend Calvin Locke... is Travis' friend and has known him since the 7th grade. We were in the suite at the game, which was filled with family and friends."
"Taylor is an absolute sweetheart. She is very down-to-earth and kind." 
"Taylor and Travis are so in love. It was so cute seeing them together and I can see them getting married"  
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December 12 - Taylor returns to NYC. Pictured with Miles & Keleigh Teller
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December 13 - New Heights Ep. 68 airs (x 5:05)
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Jason and Travis limit talking about Taylor although when the brothers chat about the No.1 & No.2 sales of NFL jerseys in the UK, they give credit to Swifties for helping with the success of topping the sales and Travis gives a "shout out to Kylie and Taylor." Travis suggests that perhaps they could "find our way over there this off season and say hello to everyone in person" and record a live show in the UK. Jason replies "we also got an opportunity to do one in Australia - we could make it a world tour"
Any one know of an international pop star who may be touring in the UK and Australia in 2024 that coincides with the NFL off season? Are the Kelce brothers hinting that Travis and perhaps Jason will join Taylor on tour next year? It should be noted that Patrick Mahomes has also raised the idea of possibly catching the Era's Tour in Europe in the off season too...
The boys answer "No Dumb Questions" from handle "metal-as-hell", a reference to Taylor's TIME article calling Travis "metal as hell" when he publicly declared his interest in dating Taylor.
Taylor Swift's 34th Birthday - Taylor heads to Banzarbar, NYC with friends to celebrate her birthday into the early hours of the morning - Happy Birthday Taylor! The paps even broke out into song to sing Taylor "Happy Birthday". Note Travis remained in KC with commitments to the Chiefs. This was expected.
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December 14 - Taylor and friends share photos from the birthday celebration the evening before (x)
instagram
December 15 - Taylor is named Billboard's No.1 Greatest Pop Star (x)
It didn’t seem possible that anyone could have a year this dominant: not this deep into the streaming era, not this long after the oft-proclaimed death of the monoculture, not when the entire industry seems to be in crisis over how to capture and hold onto listener attention. It was a year not to be judged against Swift’s 2023 peers, but against the entirety of modern pop history. 
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There is no wasted potential with Taylor Swift, no what ifs – the chance was there for her to have one of the greatest years any pop star has ever had, and you know that she grabbed it. Taylor was here. No one who was around for her 2023 will ever forget it.
With reference to Taylor's relationship with Travis, Billboard's Andrew Unterberger says:
... rumors were beginning to swirl about her and Kelce. The Chiefs star had become increasingly coy in his comments about the pop icon, saying he’d invited her to come see him play a home game (after he’d seen her Eras show in Kansas City that July). She did indeed do just that on the September 24th, with her presence at Arrowhead sending both the worlds of sports and pop culture into a frenzy, and leading to numerous posts and videos of non-football-conversant Swifties sharing the sport’s rules with one another, so they could better understand what was happening in between the shots of their hero in a private box with Kelce’s mom Donna.  From then on, every Sunday (and a couple Mondays and Thursdays) of 2023 was overtaken with Taylor talk: Would she be showing up at the Chiefs’ next game? What other celebrities would she be attending with? What kind of Kelce swag would she be wearing, and what would that mean about their relationship? What do you mean Kansas City is on a bye week?While Swift’s short relationship with Healy was extremely controversial to Swifties and her long relationship with Alwyn was largely uninteresting to everyone else, her love story with Kelce – a well-liked, unproblematic figure, a Super Bowl-winning superstar as an athlete with enough of a Q rating as a celebrity to host SNL – was universally accessible, and found near-100% public approval. You didn’t need deep grounding in Swift Lore to understand the relationship, because it just felt right: the All-American athlete dating the All-American pop star. 
Go to part 1 of December 2023
Go to part 3 of December 2023
Return to the timeline
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bluewavesofchange · 11 days ago
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The girl and the dragon
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I don't own Yugioh or it's characters or Beauty and the beast
Chapter 12
Miles away from the castle in the village tavern was Zigfried, a scowl on his face as he was trying to forget about his humiliation from just a few days ago, a pint of ale in front of him, far from the wines and ciders he was used to, nothing more than a cheap drink to drown out his sorrow. He could hear the people around him snickering and gossiping about him, how he had wasted his time trying to get Serena and how he had spent so much money on a wedding that would’ve never happened, how he was attacked by a crow and then got thrown into a pool of mud and to make matters worse his handsome face was riddled with claw marks…
He listens to the people chortling behind him, snickering as he can feel them mocking him. Maybe it was time to cut his losses and return home, he can’t bear anymore humiliation and rejection any longer. His name nothing but mud in this village…
He sighs as he takes a swig of ale when the door to the tavern flies open, everyone in the room going silent at the occupants turn their attention to the man in the doorway, his long hair tied back in low hanging pony tail, an eye patch going over his left eye, an elegant and expensive looking suit adorning his figure and a long black cloak hanging from his shoulders. A grin on his face as he lifts a small bag of gold coins in the air as he strode over to the counter, the bar tender raises a brow as the other partisans get back to their drinking.
The mystery man sits beside Zigfried getting the young man’s attention, his eyes widening, “Uncle?”
Maximillian Pegasus was a renowned artist across Europe, his pieces on display in galleries far and wide, his realistic portraits and landscapes were impeccable, a true talent for this day and age. He was charming and was the life of a party, a real ladies man as the bachelor had opted to never settle down, not wishing to be tied down by a wife or children. But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy a ladies company from time to time…a little inspiration for his art works was always a good thing.
He was the brother of Zigfried’s mother, the head of the family name and the owner of the vast wealth that came with it. He never cared much about his family as he preferred to travel the world and live his dream, free from obligations and responsibilities however he always had a soft spot for his nephew, the young lad reminding him of himself (though with none of the artistic skills). He taught the young man all he needed to know about being an upper-class gentleman, and how to win over any woman’s heart. They attended many parties and gathers together, drinking the finest wines and eating the most expensive foods with a beautiful woman at their side.
Zigfried admired his uncle, jealous sometimes of how every seemed to like him without even trying (probably just suck ups because he was a famous artist) bur right now he wouldn’t preferred Pegasus left him alone.
The silver haired man set the bag of gold coins on the counter, grinning at the bar tender, “Another round for these good people kind sir, and a glass of your finest wine.”
Zigfried rolled his eyes as the people in the tavern cheered when they heard they were getting free drinks, muttering under his breath as he lifted his pint to his lips, “Bunch of pigs.” His uncle looked at him with a frown, “Is that any way to speak of the people that so graciously welcomed you into their village my boy? I thought you had better manners than that.” He says as he thanks the bartender who had placed his glass wine in front of him, picking it up and swirling around the liquid before taking a sip.
Zigfried rolls his eyes before staring down into his mug, “All they’ve been doing is mocking me and insulting me behind my back. If it were my choice I would call them much fouler things.” Pegasus raises a brow as he sets down his glass, “What are they gossiping about you my boy?” Zigfried doesn’t answer, not wanting to expose his humiliation to his uncle. Unfortunately the bar tender didn’t feel the same way, “Lad set up a whole wedding for Ms. Muto and was thrown out of her cottage when he went to propose to her...not to mention got himself a face full of mud and a crow attacking him.” the man says before going to tend to another customer.
Zigfried growled as he glared at bar tender, did know about in this village have a sense of privacy? Pegasus looked at his nephew with a raised brow, “Well that explains why your face looks the way it does…but why would you go and do something so stupid? I wasn’t even aware you were interested in marrying. She must be some special woman for you to act so foolishly.” The elder man sipped his wine, one of the other folks in the tavern speaking up as they had overheard the conversation the two wealthy men were having, “I wouldn’t call her special…a down right strange thing…her and her family alike.”
“Yea, always going on about her sick brother and keeping to herself, only ever talking to the Duke. Damn odd ones the both of them.” another one chimes in as he downs his drink. “First day anyone saw her she was looking for work and wearing trousers…going to every store she could find asking for a job. Heck she even went as far as asking the blacksmith until Mrs. Potts let her help at the bakery.” Pegasus turned to look at the others, “Is she not from here?” the bartender walked back towards the artist as she was cleaning a glass, “No. She arrived here with her brother and grandfather, claiming they were from the east across the sea.”
“My, that does sound intriguing.” The wealthy man states as he glances at his nephew who had been quiet the entire time, sulking in silence. The bar tender sets a bowl of nuts on the counter, “She is albeit a bit strange. Girl’s got a good heart and knows how to run a kitchen. Mrs. Potts bakery has been quiet since Ms. Muto took a few days leave…word has it her brother’s health took a turn for the worse.”
“Oh my, that’s awful. Poor thing.”
The bar tender nodded his head in agreement as he puts a few of the clean mugs and glasses away. The silver haired man turned to his nephew with a grin, “Why have you never mentioned her in your letters? She sounds like an interesting lady…must be a real beauty to have turned your mind to mush.” Zigfried glared at his uncle, “She is a little minx, tempting me with her bejewelled eyes and ebony locks, a rare gem from a far off land, an unobtainable goddess that has scorned me at every turn!” he takes a large swig of ale before his uncle takes the mug away, “I think you’ve had enough.”
The pink haired man pouted before lowering his head till his face was hidden in his arms that had crossed on the table. The bar tender shakes his head, “It’s been 5 years since she’s been here and 5 years of you trying to woo her. You’re humiliation and rejection is on your head lad.” He takes the mug from Pegasus to go put in the sink. Pegasus wanted to say something but a drunken man stumbles towards them, slapping Zigfried on the back, “Cheer up laddie, it ain’t yer fault. Damn woman’s a witch as far as any of us are concerned.”
“Oh don’t you go sprouting that nonsense again Frank.” The bar tender glares at the man who shrugs, “It’s true! No one ‘ere liked ‘er before they tasted her baked goods! Then suddenly poof everyone is eatin out of the palm ‘er hand! Its black magic I tells ya!” he shouts as he swings his arms around, Pegasus ducking out of the way before he could be hit in the face, a few other patrons agreeing with him. The man turns to the others, “We should burn ‘er at the stake before she can do anythin else to us! Before she can corrupt our kids and kill our cattle and bring hell unto our village!” more men stood up and cheered, alcohol causing their logical minds to turn well illogical, feeding off a superstition nobody believed anymore.
The bar tender grabs the man by the arm and yanks him towards the counter, “If you are going to spout such nonsense in my place of business, you and your buddies can just leave. I will not have you soil Ms. Muto’s good name with your outdated beliefs.” He shoves the man away, “Go home to your wife and son Frank, you’ve had enough to drink.”
Frank glares at the bar keep, “She’s put her spell on ya too and ya can’t even see it.” he stumbles out of the tavern, drag his group of friends with him. Zigfried watches them leave, a strange thought coming to mind…that bird did come out of nowhere and just attack him…even landed on the woman’s shoulder afterwards as if it was commanded by her…maybe she was a witch…but that’s stupid.
Pegasus sips his wine, finishing the glass before ordering a refill, “It would seem you are in over your head with this lady…is she really worth all the trouble you’ve gone through?” Zigfried sighed as she rubbed his forehead, it was a point of pride at this point, he had been chasing after her for 5 years now and he had tried everything, he was obsessed with her at this point and wanted her more than anything. But was it worth all the humiliation he had gained?
His uncle pats him on the back, “Well if you truly wish to continue your pursuit than try discovering what is the most important thing in the world to her and focus on that…”
“Well that would be an easy one. All she spends her time on is her family and that dying brother of hers…”
Pegasus grins “Use that to your advantage. Offer help for her ailing sibling, find the best doctor in the world and bring him to her. Show her your caring and gentle side and she will fall right into your lap my boy.” he gives his back one last pat before taking his glass and going to socialize with some of the ladies in the room that had been staring at him.
Zigfried sat in silence mauling over his uncles words…it was a smart plan and what he knew about Serena it could very well work but…he had a better idea…they say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar but you can catch more mice with cheese and a trap. If he threatened to take her brother and grandfather away because she is incapable of looking after them, and the only way she could keep them from being institutionalized was to marry him, well then she would do more than fall into his lap, she would be begging on her knees for him.
A nasty smirk forms on his face as he gets up and leaves a few pieces of silver on the counter before leaving the tavern, going to find his horse and head to the city to find the Mad House he had in mind for his plan…
Sugoroku was wondering the streets, asking and begging for help to rescue his granddaughter from a monster that was holding her captive in a castle in the dark woods. But nobody seemed to be listening, ignoring him, after all it was just the ramblings of an old man who was clearly going through some kind of mental break. However Zigfried had passed by, hearing every word…more fuel to convince the institute that Serena couldn’t possibly care for a sick child and mad grandfather…
Back at the castle…
Serena was still with Seto, the man fast asleep but was suffering from another fever. Better he rest and sweat it out. Serena gently dabbed his forehead to try and cool him off. Since he had woken up the two adults had done nothing but talk, both learning more about each other. Serena revealed she could read and write but was also fluent in 2 languages; English and Japanese, while also learning a 3rd which was French. She learned how to use a sword from her grandfather whose family were well known fencers. She had a love for baking and cooking, saying that it always helped to calm her mind and ease her tensions.
She learned that Seto use to draw and play music but hadn’t done it in years; a look of sadness filled his eyes while his face remained indifferent. Serena was curious as to know why he stopped but didn’t press the matter, knowing that forcing it out of him would do no good. Instead she asked about the history of the castle and the mystical tree that grew in the garden.
Seto states that this place had been in his family for generations and that the tree was here far longer than that, nobody really knowing its origins, some legends that had been passed down stating that a sorcerous had planted the tree here to help the people in the area that were dying from a plague, promising to return to check on her gift every few hundred years. The castle had been built around it and the Kaiba family had been its protectors and care takers ever since.
She enjoyed listening to him speak, his deep voice was surprisingly soothing and a sensation for the ears…eventually she noticed how tired he was getting, standing up and helping him to get comfortable before he fell asleep. She was glad he had finally woken up but he was still not well and she didn’t know what to do.
She heard the door slowly open, her gaze turning upwards as she tensed up, waiting to see who would come in, suspecting it either to be Ryou or Atem…but instead she saw another face…
Mokuba had heard everything that had happened from Mana, how his brother had gone off to save the woman that was staying with them and had gotten hurt in the processes. He was standing by the window of his room, watching to see if his brother would return and got worried when he spotted the woman with Seto on the back of her horse, the eldest Kaiba being severely hurt.
Mokuba wanted to go see him many times but also he didn’t want to. He feared that his big brother was never going to wake up and that he was going to lose the last bit of family he had left. He didn’t know if he would be able to handle that heart break and loneliness…but then Atem burst into his room and informed him that Seto was awake, the young teen following his friend to his brother’s room, only to stop and listen to the two adults speaking inside.
Mokuba was shocked hearing his big brother speak in a tone that he only used with him, gentle and well…normal. No hint of anger or bitterness that he had become known for. Even going so far as to apologies for what he did. And the look he had in his eyes for the raven haired woman as she tended to his wounds, the soft and tender glow in his gaze. Mokuba could hardly believe it…maybe there was a chance for the curse to come to an end and they all could live happily ever after…
But he could see that Seto wasn’t doing so well and the concerned face on the woman’s face as she wiped a cool wet cloth over his brow…the young teen deciding to step in and introduce himself…
Serena looked at the boy before her, he looked almost like Seto but his hair was longer and had a soft and gentler expression on his face. He had the same scales and wings as the other but his teeth weren’t as sharp and the claws on his fingers didn’t look as menacing. He looked worried almost as he walked over to the side of the bed, not saying a word. He looked almost shy in a way.
They sat in silence for a moment before Mokuba finally spoke up, “Is he gonna be ok?” seeing his fierce and intimidating brother look so weak and vulnerable was almost disturbing, for someone with such a big personality to see so helpless didn’t sit right with Mokuba.
Serena could see the worry written all over the boy as a soft smile formed on her face, wanting to reassure him, “I’m sure he will recover. He is a fighter from what I can tell…” Mokuba nodded in agreement, “You have no idea.” There is silence between them again as he curls up next to his brother, resting his head on his brothers shoulder. Serena finds the scene rather sweet and wonders if they were related…
“My names Serena…I’m guessing you must be his brother or cousin maybe?” she asks softly. Mokuba gives a small nod, “His my big brother…he’s…all I have left in this world…” he says with a sad tone as he presses himself further into his brothers side, glancing up at Seto’s sleeping face before looking at the woman, “My names Mokuba. Sorry we haven’t been introduced yet.”
“That’s alright. I’m glad I could meet you.” She turns to Seto and gently dabs a bit of sweat from his cheek, taking note of his uneven breathing. She sighs softly as she wished there was more she could do for him, Ryou had mentioned that they didn’t have must medicine to help with fevers or infections, only having the ointment left as none of them had been able to leave this place within the past few years. She watched as Mokuba held onto his brother, making her think of her own little brother…she knew how the young teen must be feeling as she had gone through a similar thing with Yugi over the years.
He would often have fevers that he wouldn’t wake up from for days…back in the day when she was still living in Japan her grandfather would buy a special herd from the market that Serena would cook into a soup that would help break the fever and make him better…
Her eyes widened as a thought came to mind. It was a long shot but she had to try. She stood up and headed towards the door before stopping for a moment and looking back at Mokuba, “Will you be able to watch him for a moment? I’ll be back soon.” The boy raised a brow as he nodded, “What are you going to do?” She smiled at him, “Something that I hope will help.”
She leaves the room and heads down the hall.
It took a moment but she soon found the kitchen, she marvelled at the sheer size of it all and unlike the rest of the castle everything in this room was clean and well kept, not a thing out of place. She ran her hand over marble counter, her eyes traveling over the space; it was bigger than the cottage where she and her family lived. She shook her head to pull herself from her thoughts as she started to look for a pantry.
It didn’t take long before she found it, her eyes growing even wider as she stepped inside. Some of the shelves were empty, the ingredients probably used up over time. But the rest had all kinds of spices, herbs, preserves, grains, wheats and flours, so many things she could use for baking and cooking…but she had a task to complete first. She searched through the herbs and spices, her hope slowly dwindling until she spots something in the back of one of the shelves…
She couldn’t reach it, quickly searching for a step stool before freezing when she sees a strange man in the doorway, he had wild light blond hair and dark skin similar to Atem, his arms and parts of his face were covered in feathers, a charming grin covering his face, “It seems a little blue bird has flown into my kitchen. And a beautiful one at that.” he leans against the doorway, he spoke in a heavy French accent. Serena stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do, “I beg your pardon?”
The man chuckles as he stands up straight and bows, “Oh where are my manners? The name is Melvin petit oiseau. And you must be the damsel that has been ensnared in the master’s les griffes, Ms…?”
“Serena, Serena Muto.” she says hesitantly, the man stands up straight and strolls over to the shelf she was standing by and gets the small bag of herbs she had seen and hands it to her, “May I ask what you are doing in my kitchen?” he crosses his arms, still smirking. Serena carefully holds the back as she slowly opens it, a smile forming on her face as it was exactly what she was searching for. She pulls out one of the stems and brings it close to her face and smells it, closing her eyes as her senses are filled with the scent of home…
She sets it back in the back as she looks at the odd man who had his head tilted, waiting for a response, “I wanted to make something for Seto to help break his fever…I’m guessing you’re the chief here?” Melvin nods as he grins, “The one and only madam. You are welcome to use my facility, if…you allow me to help and teach me this dish you want to make?” Serena raised a brow, “Why?” Melvin chuckles as he leads her out of the pantry, “I am a man of culture and culinary arts. I am always looking for new recipes.”
Serena is hesitant but nods, “I don’t see why not…let’s get started.” She smiles as the pair gets started. Turns out Melvin could conjure up fire and used it while he was cooking; Serena had to admit she was in awe of his knife skills as he chopped up the vegetables and chicken before adding it to the pot while Serena combined the herb with some spices and other dry ingredients in a mortar, adding it to the broth. The kitchen fills with a rich and delicious aroma.
The soup would need to boil for a while so Serena decided to make some freshly baked bread to go with it, it felt good to work with her hands again, it always helped to clear her mind and rejuvenate her spirit and Melvin seemed it be going through the same thing, the chief singing in French while he started to prepare dinner for the rest of the occupants in the castle.
Once everything was done, Serena tasted the soup and let Melvin have a sip too, the woman needing to keep in a laugh as the strange chief fell to the ground, saying that his taste buds must’ve died and gone to heaven, telling the woman she was welcome to come cook in his kitchen anytime.
She dished up some of the soup into 3 bowls and set it in a tray with a plate holding a few slices of bread. She takes it back to the room, relieved to see that Seto was awake, his little brother sitting by his side talking up a storm.
Seto had woken up and was surprised to see Mokuba with him, but he should’ve guess he would come visit him eventually. He wondered if he had met Serena yet. Speaking of the woman she wasn’t in the room when he woke up. He felt a twinge of panic when he didn’t see her, thinking that she might’ve run off but his brother reassured him that she had just gone off to get something to help make him feel better.
He had a conversation with his brother for a little while, listening to him ramble on about things like he used to back when they were little. It was kind of nice…he looked up when he heard the door opening, a small smile forming on his face when he sees Serena. His eyes landing on the tray of food she had brought in, quickly realizing how hungry he was. Mokuba smiled and waved at her, welcoming her back as she walked over and set the tray down, picking up one of the bowls and holding it out to Seto, the hearty aroma hitting his nose, it smelled amazing.
Mokuba helps him to sit up and Seto carefully takes the bowl, his claws wrapping around the warm dish. Serena hands the younger Kaiba a bowl too as well as spoon, the young teen digging in immediately. The woman sat down to tuck into her own bowl when she noticed that Seto wasn’t eating, just staring at the dish…
She wanted to ask why he was eating but figured out why…she hadn’t seen him using any utensils during their last dinner and he probably going to use one now. She sets down her spoon and sits beside him, reaching over and gently resting her hand on his forearm, giving it a small squeeze before set took hold of her dish and raised it to her lips, taking a small sip while glancing at Seto out of the corner of her eye.
He seemed to relax a bit more as he did the same, his eyes widening as the warm broth hit his tongue before running down his throat. It tasted wonderful, unlike anything he had ever tasted before…filled with flavour and something else that he couldn’t put his finger on…all he knew was that it felt like home…
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sonofcoulson · 1 year ago
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1969 Blue Marvel II
This story line seems like a good fit…mostly. Set in '69 not '72. Also the team won't be referred to as the 'Mighty Avengers' as the Avengers are a long way off…
Adam has an undersea base that Namor made for him at Peggy's request to keep Adam safe from persecution.
Adam has moved on from Peggy after s2 of Agent Carter as she was more romantically interested in Sousa/memory of Steve. He has a family now, Candace (formerly Marlene) and Kevin that help out with his secret superheroing from his secret base. It has been secret as the President thought that America wasn't ready for a black superhero as per the comics (to be further explored in TFATWS). Candace is a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was assigned to make sure Adam wasn’t trying to be a superhero. She quit, changed her name and married him and helped him carry on Superheroing in secret.
The plot:
Open on a character called Lichidus overseeing the upcoming dissection of a scared and frantic half-human creature. They inject it with a small amount of silver to get it to cooperate. Then he monologues about how their plans are nearly come to fruition. Then he sling rings out of there but he should have stuck around because they didn't use enough silver and the creature's hand begins to twitch…
Cut to:
Lord Montgomery Falsworth has been investigating sightings of his missing brother and his supposed victims for nine years. S.H.I.E.L.D. won't give time or money to it anymore so he has been doing it on his own time and dime. However when he does get a tip, the trail has usually gone cold by the time he gets there. So Peggy suggested he seek out the Blue Marvel who can travel faster than the speed of sound.
Adam is living undersea as mentioned above. He has secretly been fighting crime with his family's help ever since the President's no superheroing decree forced him underground/underwater. He feels bad that Kevin's education is being disrupted. Candace agrees but very much blames the government and not Adam. Kevin loves the adventure and doesn't care as much about missing school, though he does seem very bright and feels he is missing out on friends and having a normal life.
When Falsworth contacts him they bring him back to base (he is impressed with the Talokanil engineering and technology) and run through the supposed sightings of his brother.
Several victims were mauled or bitten to death in very similar ways. It started in Austria but now there are reports across much of Europe. Every victim had been completely drained of blood. In many of these cases witness reports describe a man who looks like a vaguely monstrous John Falsworth near or actually leaving the scene. 
There had been no sightings for several months but Peggy had called in with another drained victim with similar wounds at a small village near Tunguska, Siberia two days ago and suggested Falsworth come to visit Adam.
Adam goes as fast as he can. Falsworth and Candace are picked up by Howard Stark in his mkII Quinjet and go by air (so Kevin has to go too, but it will take them some time). They are all equipped with special long distance wireless communicators by Howard. They are also backed up by Peggy, Brian and Jacqueline Falsworth and a contingent of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. There is a risk that other S.H.I.E.L.D. higher ups or the American government would come down hard on helping the Blue Marvel and on wasting S.H.I.E.L.D. resources. But Peggy and Howard want to support James after everything he's given to the cause.
Adam arrives in Siberia at night. He scouts near where the victim was found from the air. He widens the search and spies a humanoid figure moving strangely a few miles off. He flies down to engage and is caught off guard by a sudden attack. Surprised by the creature's strength, he is struggling to regain the upper hand as it tries to bite him. Though he would have come out on top eventually, he gets a surprise assist. They fight him off together but the new hero wants to make sure Adam wasn’t bitten before pursuing. Adam introduces himself. His 'saviour ' is Eric Brooks aka Blade aka Daywalker aka the Dhampir aka the half vampire. He is immune to vampire bites as he is half vampire. He is not vulnerable to sunlight or silver as he is half human but garlic gives him indigestion. He has tracked the creature on and off for several years but this was the closest he's ever been.
Adam explains who they think it used to be.
Blade: Don't care who he was, only care what he's gonna be. Dead. Permanently this time.
Adam informs the following team that they believe he has found John and is following the trail.
Blade is very good at tracking vampires (Adam is taken aback that vampires are real), so leads the way.
They come across the aftermath of a battle. There are several dead soldiers dressed in black combat gear. A bear is poking around the cadavers.
They try not to disturb the bear, but it picks up their scent. It charges. Blade says if you stand your ground it will stop charging. Only it doesn't.
Adam takes off and, not wanting to hurt the creature, blasts nearby to scare it off. But it doesn't flinch. Blade has to dive out the way at the last moment and he and Adam fight and manage to subdue the bear, which transforms into a woman, unconscious in the snow.
Surprised, they nonetheless spring into action. Blade wants to leave her and follow the monster's trail, but Adam shames him into helping the woman, who would otherwise die from exposure. They find a groundsheet in one trooper's pack and wrap her in it. They reason that the troops must have come from a base nearby and follow their trail instead. Adam uses his flight to spy ahead and they find and reach the base swiftly. There are signs of a breakout. The heavy main door is hanging off it's fixings.
The clues that led Blade to Siberia suggested the creature had been taken against its will, so the breakout made sense. But there doesn't seem to be a lab or holding cell.
Eric's tracking skills lead him to a hidden door, but they don't know how to open it. Adam starts working to figure it out and Blade finds some combat gear for the woman to wear.
Thanks to her part bear physiology she recovers quickly and starts growling and shouting at them in broken Russian. Her appearance and voice are becoming more bear-like as she gets more aggressive.
Adam (To Blade): How's your Russian? 
Blade: Not so good!
They try to calm the situation and she eventually realises they mean her no harm. Adam calls Candace with his special Stark designed communicator and she translates for them, allowing the three to talk:
Bear (after dressing): *I never thought I would wear this uniform again.*
Adam: You know those troopers?
Bear: *Some of them. I thought you were with them.*
Blade: Who are they?
Bear: *Deathwalkers. They are a death cult, dedicated to the order of Chthon.*
Blade: The order of what?
(*indicates translation by Candace)
Chthon is an elder god, who would destroy this universe and remake it in their own image. To bring them from their dimension requires a great sacrifice. The Deathwalkers believe the destruction of an entire continent is necessary.
To achieve their aims and to live to see this rapture, they need to drink vampire blood as it slows the aging process to the point of near immortality. However, the more immortals you create, the more vampire blood you need and the less vampires you have.
They decided to create their own vampire/human hybrids using the bones of an ancient vampire and the Talisman of Kamar Taj. The Talisman merges two creatures together and had been stolen from Kamar Taj by a rogue sorcerer.
Bear had been a Deathwalker and had drank vampire blood many times, granting her a very long life.
In return, she had been "volunteered" for early experiments with the Talisman and more simple creatures, without really knowing what she was getting into. She was merged with a bear. She became a bear for so long afterward that she almost forgot who she was.
A former friend took pity on her and released her into the wild. She believes she mauled them on the way out, being more bear than woman at that time.
As things stand now, she can't remember her name or family and is trying to piece her history together. She thinks she was a believer, but her transformation without consent showed her how monstrous the Deathwalkers were. She means to stop all their operations and kill their leader. His name is Lichidus.
She reasons John Falsworth was discarded as a failed experiment at their former base in Austria (taken over by Hydra during the war) but he came back to (un)life anyway. The Deathwalkers must have caught up with him and brought him back here for more experimentation. Bear, who never strayed that far from the base, saw him escape and his treatment at the hands of the Deathwalker troops prompted her to intervene. The surprise of her attack gave Falsworth the upper hand and allowed him to escape.
Bear shows them the secret door and the three of them manage to wrench it off with their super strength. There are several vampire hybrids in cages, some are children. The adult ones draw the children in close and hiss at the intruders. They are all having blood pumped from them via intravenous lines.
There is a file, in Russian, on John Falsworth and the aftermath of a fight round an operating table.
Blade is checking more dead Deathwalkers for bite marks. As he is doing so one comes back to life and attacks him. He dispatches them with ruthless efficiency. The caged vampires all hiss at him for killing one of theirs and he wields his blade at them.
Bear is angry at him in Russian. Candace says that the Bear said he shouldn't kill them, they're victims, like her. They just have to remind them they're human. He says try saying that when a vampire has just ripped your throat out. She doesn't understand. They talk at eachother angrily. Adam is trying to make peace when more of the Deathwalker troops and scientists come back to (un)life.
They retreat, battling their way towards the broken secret door and when the broken main door comes into view they see the troopers from the earlier battle coming through the gap. They have been turned as well. The Bear's strength and Blade's skill aren't enough to hold them back. Even Adam's strength and concussion blasts only halt them temporarily.
Adam: Didn't you check them for bites?!
Blade: We were being attacked by a bear!
They fight hard but are almost surrounded. Adam calls to Candace and asks if they're almost there. She says they're just a few minutes out, hold on, but they can't. The vamps pretty much match Blade and the Bear in strength. The Bear doesn't want to transform as, though she'll be stronger, she'll more vulnerable to being bitten. Adam is strong enough to hold them off but is in increasing danger of a bite from the sheer number of vampires. Blade is struggling to move his sword. He and the Bear are about to be overwhelmed.
In his frustration, Adam builds up and releases an energy pulse knocking out friends and enemies alike. He passes out from the sheer expenditure of energy.
When he comes to they are on the Quinjet. Candance said she didn't know he could do that. Adam says neither did he.
Blade comes to and doesn't appreciate being knocked out, but is relieved to be alive. The Bear wakes up still in fighting mode but is talked down by Candace before she goes full bear.
Howard is trialling a new collar that dampens superpowers once it can be tailored to the individual. Candace has translated the file on John Falsworth and it seems like the process mutates both sets of dna to accept the other. It also details the make up of the vampiric genome allowing Howard to calibrate the collar. This means they can safely transport the hybrid victims and the Deathwalker vampires back to their base. Though the remaining Deathwalker vampires are restrained. And the effect of the vampire blood they drank is an unknown factor. Risky! But Howard assures them that it's safe. They have Union Jack II and Spitfire to back them up too.
The file on John Falsworth suggests there is a Deathwalker base in New York, though it doesn't detail where.
Adam, Blade, the Bear and James Falsworth stay behind as they have yet to find John. Candace and Kevin stay behind too to be near Adam.
Falsworth is concerned the trail may go cold (figuratively) again. Blade assures him, with the sun coming up, he can't have gotten far.
This gives us Eric Brooks in the 50s! Minor change to his backstory in the Blade movies required!
To be continued…
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my-chaos-radio · 1 year ago
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Release: October 20, 2017
Lyrics:
Time flies by when the night is young
Daylight shines on an undisclosed location, location
Bloodshot eyes lookin' for the sun
Paradise delivered and we call it a vacation, vacation
You're painting me a dream that I
Wanna belong in, wanna belong in
Over the hills and far away
A million miles from L.A.
Just anywhere away with you
I know we've got to get away
Some place where no one knows our name
We'll find the start of something new
Just take me anywhere, take me anywhere
Anywhere away with you
Just take me anywhere, take me anywhere
Anywhere away with you
Fun, little less, fun
Little less
Over-over-over-over
Me, me-me-me, me
Me-me-me, me-me-me-me
Oh
Fun, little less, fun
Little less
Over-over-over-over
Me, me-me-me, me
Me-me-me, me-me-me-me
Truth comes out when we're blacking out
Looking for connection in a crowd of empty faces, empty faces
Your secrets are the only thing I'm craving now
The good and the bad, let me in
'Cause I can take it, I can take it
You're painting me a dream that I
Wanna belong in, wanna belong in
Over the hills and far away
A million miles from L.A.
Just anywhere away with you
I know we've got to get away
Someplace where no one knows our name
We'll find the start of something new
Just take me anywhere, take me anywhere
Anywhere away with you
Fun, little less, fun
Little less
Over-over-over-over
Me, me-me-me, me
Me-me-me, me-me-me-me
Oh
Fun, little less, fun
Little less
Over-over-over-over
Me, me-me-me, me
Me-me-me, me-me-me-me
Take me anywhere
Oh, anywhere
Anywhere away with you, ooh, ooh
Take me anywhere
Over the hills and far away
A million miles from L.A.
Just anywhere away with you (Oh anywhere, anywhere, anywhere)
I know we've got to get away
Someplace where no one knows our name
We'll find the start of something new (Oh we'll find the start of something)
Just take me anywhere
Take me anywhere
Anywhere away with you (Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere)
Just take me anywhere
Take me anywhere (Oh take me anywhere, now)
Anywhere away with you (Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere)
Songwriter:
Fun, little less, fun
Little less
Over-over-over-over
Anywhere away with you
Oh
Rita Ora / Brian Lee / Nolan Lambroza / Alessandro Lindblad / Andrew Wotman / Alexandra Leah Tamposi / Nicholas Gale
SongFacts:
"Anywhere" is a song by British singer Rita Ora from her second studio album, 'Phoenix' (2018). The song was written by Ora, Ali Tamposi, Brian Lee, Nick Gale and its producers Alesso, Watt and Sir Nolan. It was released as a single on 20 October 2017 through Atlantic Records UK. A wistful, dance-pop and electropop love song about escapism, it features a breakdown of stuttering vocal loops. The song has received positive reviews from music critics, and it was chosen as The Guardian's track of the week.
Commercially, the song reached the top-10 in 15 countries, including Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom where it peaked at number two, becoming Ora's eleventh UK top-10 single. "Anywhere" has since been certified double platinum in the United Kingdom by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). An accompanying music video, directed by Declan Whitebloom, shows Ora in various locations throughout New York City. Ora performed the song at the 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards.
Ora said that the story behind the song came from Avicii's single "Lonely Together" (2017), which she featured on, as both were "cut from the same cloth", being developed from a similar guitar line by some of the songwriters who worked with her on "Anywhere". Ora co-wrote "Anywhere" with Ali Tamposi, Andrew Watt, Brian Lee, Alesso, Digital Farm Animals and Sir Nolan. The core of the track was written in Los Angeles in early 2017 and stemmed from the initial hook, "Take me anywhere, anywhere away from here", which then became "…anywhere away with you". It was inspired by Ora wanting to go on a road trip with her friends to escape Los Angeles.
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angleofmusings · 1 year ago
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every time i think about how much the car-centric US infrastructure fails to actually benefit individual drivers i get a little bit more anti-US
we *have* public transit here, but like. if the commuter rail (already a decent walk, or a short drive but only if i’m going to be back within four hours) isn’t running at the time i’m trying to get somewhere. like. it’s 15 minutes to drive to the nearest T stop and then $9/day for parking, plus fares. otherwise to get into the city proper it’s 30–40 minutes of driving in awful traffic, upwards of $30 to park somewhere, and then if it’s for a specific event another 20–30 minutes just to get out of whatever parking garage i had to park in. and then i still have to drive home.
if i want to, say, go to gillette for an event, even taking the train requires going into the city first. driving directly to the stadium is an option but requires buying a parking pass and sitting in awful traffic and spending an hour getting out of the parking lot, or walking a mile to and from a friend’s house to the stadium (which, to be clear, only works if you know someone who lives nearby).
on a larger scale, if you want to go north-south between two places anywhere that’s west of chicago but east of california-oregon-washington, amtrak can’t really help you. you can fly (usually requires driving to the airport and getting an uber/lyft/taxi at your destination) or drive. I-15, 25, and 35 are basically the only north-south interstate highways in that region.
let’s say we’re traveling from helena, MT to albuquerque, NM. (two major cities i picked at random.) google maps doesn’t even offer any train routes. you can take I-15 for 8 hours down to northern utah and then drive 2 hours to I-70, head southeast for six and a half hours until you get to I-25 north of albuquerque, then continue south for 15 more minutes. in total, almost 17 hours of driving. just over 1000 miles, which is over 1600 km.
what if you’re in page, AZ (just south of the utah border) going to aberdeen, SD (about 34 miles / 55 km south of the north dakota border). the fastest route by car is over 20 hours, and requires you to make a big winding circle that takes over 3 hours and almost 150 miles / 240 km to even reach utah, and almost 3 hours more to reach I-70; in total 315 miles / 507 km. (from page AZ to I-70 in crescent junction UT is about 170 miles / 270 km as the crow flies.) and you’ve still got about 15 hours more driving to look forward to! you have to drive almost 5 hours on I-70 to denver, CO (yay, driving through a major city!!) and then 3 and a half hours on I-80 to reach the nebraska border, and 6 more hours after that using mostly state routes to reach aberdeen. total distance as the crow flies: 895 miles / 1440 km. total distance as the car travels: 1286 miles / 2070 km, over 1.4 times as far. and no, you can’t just take the train. and aberdeen is 75 miles from the nearest airport with any flights, and it’ll run you almost $700 per ticket in addition to any cars you have to rent or ride share app fees.
for an EU comparison: from guadalajara, spain (near madrid) to augsburg, germany (near munich) is around 17 hours by transit, or over 18 hours by car. and even that 18+ hours by car is significantly closer to a straight line. (going directly from madrid to munich is even more of a difference: 16 hours by transit, over 19 hours driving. or you can of course take a flight, which will take ~2.5 hours and cost a third as much per ticket as the US example.)
the reason this works is because europe has far less space. the cities are denser, so the infrastructure is denser, too. trains are great at dealing with lower density areas, so why doesn’t the US use them?
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20k-leagues-speedrun · 2 years ago
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CHAPTER VII THE MEDITERRANEAN IN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, “the great sea” of the Hebrews, “the sea” of the Greeks, the “mare nostrum” of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!
It is upon these banks, and on these waters, says Michelet, that man is renewed in one of the most powerful climates of the globe. But, beautiful as it was, I could only take a rapid glance at the basin whose superficial area is two million of square yards. Even Captain Nemo’s knowledge was lost to me, for this puzzling person did not appear once during our passage at full speed. I estimated the course which the Nautilus took under the waves of the sea at about six hundred leagues, and it was accomplished in forty-eight hours. Starting on the morning of the 16th of February from the shores of Greece, we had crossed the Straits of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.
It was plain to me that this Mediterranean, enclosed in the midst of those countries which he wished to avoid, was distasteful to Captain Nemo. Those waves and those breezes brought back too many remembrances, if not too many regrets. Here he had no longer that independence and that liberty of gait which he had when in the open seas, and his Nautilus felt itself cramped between the close shores of Africa and Europe.
Our speed was now twenty-five miles an hour. It may be well understood that Ned Land, to his great disgust, was obliged to renounce his intended flight. He could not launch the pinnace, going at the rate of twelve or thirteen yards every second. To quit the Nautilus under such conditions would be as bad as jumping from a train going at full speed—an imprudent thing, to say the least of it. Besides, our vessel only mounted to the surface of the waves at night to renew its stock of air; it was steered entirely by the compass and the log.
I saw no more of the interior of this Mediterranean than a traveller by express train perceives of the landscape which flies before his eyes; that is to say, the distant horizon, and not the nearer objects which pass like a flash of lightning.
We were then passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunis. In the narrow space between Cape Bon and the Straits of Messina the bottom of the sea rose almost suddenly. There was a perfect bank, on which there was not more than nine fathoms of water, whilst on either side the depth was ninety fathoms.
The Nautilus had to manœuvre very carefully so as not to strike against this submarine barrier.
I showed Conseil, on the map of the Mediterranean, the spot occupied by this reef.
“But if you please, sir,” observed Conseil, “it is like a real isthmus joining Europe to Africa.”
“Yes, my boy, it forms a perfect bar to the Straits of Lybia, and the soundings of Smith have proved that in former times the continents between Cape Boco and Cape Furina were joined.”
“I can well believe it,” said Conseil.
“I will add,” I continued, “that a similar barrier exists between Gibraltar and Ceuta, which in geological times formed the entire Mediterranean.”
“What if some volcanic burst should one day raise these two barriers above the waves?”
“It is not probable, Conseil.”
“Well, but allow me to finish, please, sir; if this phenomenon should take place, it will be troublesome for M. Lesseps, who has taken so much pains to pierce the isthmus.”
“I agree with you; but I repeat, Conseil, this phenomenon will never happen. The violence of subterranean force is ever diminishing. Volcanoes, so plentiful in the first days of the world, are being extinguished by degrees; the internal heat is weakened, the temperature of the lower strata of the globe is lowered by a perceptible quantity every century to the detriment of our globe, for its heat is its life.”
“But the sun?”
“The sun is not sufficient, Conseil. Can it give heat to a dead body?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse; it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat.”
“In how many centuries?”
“In some hundreds of thousands of years, my boy.”
“Then,” said Conseil, “we shall have time to finish our journey—that is, if Ned Land does not interfere with it.”
And Conseil, reassured, returned to the study of the bank, which the Nautilus was skirting at a moderate speed.
During the night of the 16th and 17th February we had entered the second Mediterranean basin, the greatest depth of which was 1,450 fathoms. The Nautilus, by the action of its crew, slid down the inclined planes and buried itself in the lowest depths of the sea.
On the 18th of February, about three o’clock in the morning, we were at the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar. There once existed two currents: an upper one, long since recognised, which conveys the waters of the ocean into the basin of the Mediterranean; and a lower counter-current, which reasoning has now shown to exist. Indeed, the volume of water in the Mediterranean, incessantly added to by the waves of the Atlantic and by rivers falling into it, would each year raise the level of this sea, for its evaporation is not sufficient to restore the equilibrium. As it is not so, we must necessarily admit the existence of an under-current, which empties into the basin of the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar the surplus waters of the Mediterranean. A fact indeed; and it was this counter-current by which the Nautilus profited. It advanced rapidly by the narrow pass. For one instant I caught a glimpse of the beautiful ruins of the temple of Hercules, buried in the ground, according to Pliny, and with the low island which supports it; and a few minutes later we were floating on the Atlantic.
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amber-is-gay · 6 months ago
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okay, so, measuring as-the-crow-flies distance from London to Warsaw distance, we get 904 miles:
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Comparing a similarly-distanced US city pair, in this case Chicago and Denver, we get 920 miles.
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Looking on Google to see the absolute cheapest flight:
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$23. I think this could be a bit biased towards the US flights being priced lower, as I did choose a couple of rather large cities. Nonetheless, while what gets you like 4 countries over in Europe gets you none countries over in the US, please give us some government mandated vacation time I BEG
since moving here ive noticed europeans have no concept of how few americans ever leave USA. every american tourist youve met is of an economic crust that is vastly unobtainable to the other like. 85% generously. no matter what you have believed i can guarantee this. even getting to canada isnt really a possibility and the mexico-US border is highly controlled and militarized.
to put it into perspective. a ~2 hour flight from london to warsaw is like. 30 to 45 USD?
and a 2 hour flight from one US city to another would be about 130 USD
it was very cheap to fly here. i make over 100k USD now and i dont know if ill ever be able to afford leaving. if that gives you an idea of how prohibitive travel is here. i havent even touched on how the US has Zero guaranteed holidays by the govt. many people here go years without ever having an entire week off of work
this has had a like. massive impact on American Brain and they dont even know it because travel isnt even a consideration economically. they dont even know how much more vacation time european countries have guaranteed
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nattaphum · 1 year ago
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Mile Phakphum: Something Is More Romantic With Rain… #LikeYou ^^
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brookstonalmanac · 23 days ago
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Events 10.23 (before 1950)
4004 BC – James Ussher's proposed creation date of the world according to the Bible. 42 BC – Liberators' civil war: Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat an army under Brutus in the second part of the Battle of Philippi, with Brutus committing suicide and ending the civil war. 425 – Valentinian III is elevated as Roman emperor at the age of six. 502 – The Synodus Palmaris, called by Gothic king Theoderic, absolves Pope Symmachus of all charges, thus ending the schism of Antipope Laurentius. 1086 – Spanish Reconquista: At the Battle of Sagrajas, the Almoravids defeats the Castilians, but are unable to take advantage of their victory. 1157 – The Battle of Grathe Heath ends the Danish Civil War. 1295 – The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England is signed in Paris. 1641 – Irish Catholic gentry from Ulster attempt to seize control of Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland, so as to force concessions. 1642 – The Battle of Edgehill is the first major battle of the English Civil War. 1666 – The most intense tornado on record in English history, an F4 storm on the Fujita scale or T8 on the TORRO scale, strikes the county of Lincolnshire, with winds of more than 213 miles per hour (343 km/h). 1707 – The First Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain convenes. 1798 – The forces of Ali Pasha of Janina defeat the French and capture the town of Preveza in the Battle of Nicopolis. 1812 – General Claude François de Malet begins a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon, claiming that the Emperor died in the Russian campaign. 1850 – The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts. 1856 – Second Opium War: Dissatisfied with imperial commissioner Ye Mingchen’s reparations for the alleged slighting of a British-owned vessel and at Consul Harry Parkes’s urging, British Rear-Admiral Michael Seymour launches an assault on the Barrier Forts outside Canton in the first military engagement of the Second Opium War. 1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Westport is the last significant engagement west of the Mississippi River, ending in a Union victory. 1868 – Meiji Restoration: Having taken the shogunate’s seat of power at Edo and declared it his new capital as Tokyo, Mutsuhito proclaims the start of the new Meiji era. 1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe. 1911 – The Italo-Turkish War sees the first use of an airplane in combat when an Italian pilot makes a reconnaissance flight. 1912 – First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins. 1923 – German October: Due to a miscommunication with the party leadership, a militant section of the Communist Party of Germany launches an insurrection in Hamburg. 1924 – Second Zhili–Fengtian War: Warlord Feng Yuxiang, with the covert support of the Empire of Japan, stages a coup in Beijing against his erstwhile superiors in the Zhili clique, crippling their nearly victorious war effort against the Fengtian clique and forcing them to withdraw from northern China. 1927 – The Imatra Cinema is destroyed in a fire in Tampere, Finland, during showing the 1924 film Wages of Virtue; 21 people die in the fire and almost 30 are injured. 1940 – Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco meet at Hendaye to discuss the possibility of Spain entering the Second World War. 1941 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany prohibits Jews from emigrating, including in its occupied territories. 1942 – World War II: Allied forces commence the Second Battle of El Alamein, which proves to be the key turning point in the North African campaign. 1942 – All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard American Airlines Flight 28 are killed when it collides with a U.S. Army Air Force bomber near Palm Springs, California. 1942 – World War II: The Battle for Henderson Field begins on Guadalcanal. 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf begins.
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sa7abnews · 3 months ago
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Iran beware: US moves these 6 top of the line strike options into position in the Middle East
New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/iran-beware-us-moves-these-6-top-of-the-line-strike-options-into-position-in-the-middle-east/
Iran beware: US moves these 6 top of the line strike options into position in the Middle East
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Hurry up. America’s top shooters are moving into position to target Iran.  With Sunday night’s announcement hastening the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and moving the submarine USS Georgia under U.S. Central Command’s control, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is making sure U.S. Central Command is prepared to attack Iran, and/or its proxies, if Tehran strikes Israel in the next few days.Air Force F-22 fighter jet pilots have already unpacked their bags at a Middle East base where they arrived Aug 8.  Here are more top shooters under Central Command’s operational control – that we know of. It’s very unusual for the Pentagon to make announcements about secretive submarines. But then, the USS Georgia is a very special vessel.  Powered by a nuclear reactor, the USS Georgia began life as an Ohio-class “boomer” designed to carry nuclear weapons, then underwent a high-tech conversion into a conventional guided-missile attack submarine.  Now she can carry an astounding 154 precision Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles.  And SEAL teams with mini-submarines.  Add in a highly advanced communication suite, and USS Georgia can stare down Iran all by herself. US ASSETS DEPLOYED TO MIDEAST WILL HELP ISRAEL BUT WILL UNLIKELY ALTER IRAN’S MIND ON RETALIATION, EXPERTS SAYThe USS Georgia was already on exercises in Europe and is positioning in the Eastern Mediterranean. Her Tomahawk missiles have roughly a 1,000-mile range, which equates to good coverage well into Iran.  The most modern Tomahawks also accept targeting updates while in flight, giving commanders maximum flexibility to act on fresh intelligence. That’s six in the Persian Gulf, and two more in the Red Sea, per a count from the Washington Post on Aug. 2.  Crews from ships like USS Laboon have been whacking Houthi drones, missiles and unmanned boats for months.  The DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers can fire Tomahawks, too, as but the destroyers will have some of their vertical launch tubes loaded with Standard Missiles for air defense across the region, as seen when Iran attacked Israel back in April. Austin ordered the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to speed up its transit from the Pacific to the Middle East, where the USS Theodore Roosevelt is already running sustained flight operations.  Nuclear-powered carriers can charge ahead at 35 knots per hour without slacking off, since they don’t refuel.  The Middle East crisis has compelled Central Command to keep a carrier in the Red Sea area almost non-stop for 10 months and it has required four carriers – Ford, Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Lincoln – to meet the tasking. Moving the Lincoln actually leaves the Navy one carrier short in the Pacific. IRAN IS LIKELY WEIGHING ‘RISK OF FAILURE’ BEFORE POTENTIAL ISRAEL STRIKE: JOSEPH VOTELAustin touted the F-35Cs on the Lincoln by name on Sunday, because these stealthy, carrier-based jets have tremendous radar and other sensor capabilities known to intimidate Iran.  In an unusual twist, it’s a U.S. Marine Corps squadron flying the F-35Cs.  Other Marines fly the F-35B vertical take-off and landing variant with amphibious ships.  But this squadron, the “Black Knights” of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron VMFA 314, trains and flies as part of Carrier Air Wing 9.  (Don’t look so shocked.  Marines flew from carriers in World War II and Korea.)Yes, the very jet flown by Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.”  Carrier Air Wing 11 on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt has three F/A-18E squadrons.  They have been busy day and night with air patrols against Houthi aggression in the Red Sea and doing their part in knocking out Houthi drones, missiles and unmanned boats. This ground-attack variant of the F-15 air superiority fighter is affectionately known as the “Mud Eagle” and has been operating quietly in theater for ages. The F-15Es are true fighter-bombers, and their most experienced pilots have thousands of combat hours from the anti-ISIS war.  The two-seat F-15Es carry air-to-air missiles, a gun and “any nuclear or conventional weapon in the USAF inventory.” Just so you know, Iran.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONAustin’s choice to deploy America’s top of the line strike options serves two purposes. The first, obviously, is to deter Iran and constrain Iran’s tactical options as the mullahs mull their retaliation plans.  But the specific choice of these forces is to provide Central Command with capability for sustained, precision strikes against military targets in Iran or among Iran’s militia groups.Don’t forget that U.S. B-2 bombers can reach any spot on the globe.  Also, B-1 bombers were used by Central Command in attacks on Syrian targets. I would not be surprised to see the B-1s in action again with their joint stand-off missiles.Beyond this, expect Britain, France, regional allies like Jordan, and others to have forces in play.Of course, China is taking note of this firepower display. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued a statement on Saturday supporting Iran’s “dignity” and right to self-defense, whatever that means.  Iran is the center of Mideast terror and China is Iran’s top ally. Gen. Erik Kurilla at U.S. Central Command will soon have all he needs to defend, deter or strike back. As they strive to keep a lid on this crisis, we owe a big debt of gratitude to the American men and women making these crisis deployments in the Middle East. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REBECCA GRANT
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chloemarievaughan · 6 months ago
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May 8
we left our tiny jail cell hotel room bright and early, to take the 7:45 train to Edinburgh, switching trains in Glasgow on the way. the line from Glasgow to Mallaig, which we did in pieces between the Harry Potter route to mallaig and today Fort William to Glasgow, is called the West Highland Line, and it is often voted the best train journey in the UK. Having taken it I can wholeheartedly agree! we had another gorgeous set of views winding back out of the highlands to Glasgow. The downside of the north to south direction of travel was that we got worse views toward the end when we were approaching Glasgow; it felt SO strange to see so many people, houses, roads, and infrastructure after all the relativel sparse populated areas we have been through in the past week. Our reservations for seats were once again facing backwards; grey decided to sit in our seats but I jumped around a bit to take pictures based on the views. However our train was very full so there weren’t too many options for switching sides, and eventually the only seat on the good side for the views was directly next to a heater so I understood why it was still open 😂 we changed trains in Glasgow, very painless as we got off one train and 5 minutes later were on the next train, and made it to Edinburgh about 1:00. It was a 5 hour train journey that covered only about 130 miles, so definitely our train was not going very fast. But that gave us more time to soak in the views. One of the highlights of the ride was the “Horseshoe Curve” where the train makes a very tight u shaped curve around a valley.
By the time we made it to Edinburgh, we were ravenous; no trolley lady selling snacks in this train, though there was a bathroom on board. we had a ~20 minute walk to our air bnb and if I thought the walk to our air bnb was hilly in Inverness, i was sorely mistaken. Edinburgh is Crazy hilly and it was unpleasant to lug our suitcases along, though I enjoyed the walk as we took in the sheer numbers of people out and about. Grey was feeling a bit claustrophobic- way too many people for an introvert haha.
I love traveling in Europe because each city has such a unique look; there is something so Edinburgh about the sort of dirty stone building with the castle looming overhead, and buskers playing the bagpipes as you walk along the street. Our air bnb has a direct view of the castle! It’s nice to have a lot of space again after our hotel in Fort William. This is Grey’s last day of the trip before he flies back to Denver tomorrow, so he has just one afternoon/evening to get a little taste of Edinburgh.
We tried to drop off our bags in the air bnb , but there was no key in the lockbox. So we headed to a pub across the way and Grey enjoyed his last fish and chips of the trip and I had a very good steak sandwich and a beer. Our airbnb host messaged back that the cleaning lady was still working on our flat but we could be buzzed into the locked door by the cleaning crew to drop our bags. So we did that and then had a walk around for about an hour, taking in the sights. We went into St Giles Cathedral, and another church that had been converted into an art store, and went in a few whisky stores. Grey found a bottle of the Talisker 18 year he loved but it was a bit out of his price range at £195 haha. We had 3:00 tickets to the castle and in retrospect should have bought the audio guide, but we made do with walking around and looking at the exhibits. There are great views of the city from the castle walls, we learned about the 1 o’clock gun; in the old days, time keeping was difficult and so every day at 1:00 a gun was fired to let everyone in Edinburgh and all the ships in the harbor know what time it was. It is still fired today, for more ceremonius purposes as I think we have more accurate time keeping methods now haha. there is a residence where the governor of the castle used to live, a great hall stuffed with armor and old swords, a war memorial where I obliviously took a photo and got a scolding from a security guard because it is forbidden to take photos in there, a museum about Scottish war history with tons of artifacts, and an extremely long line to view the Scottish Crown Jewels. grey was not down to wait in the line and I didn’t mind missing it, so we googled the photo of the jewels and read a little exhibit about it. They were gifts from the pope in about the year 1500, and were used to crown two literal babies, Mary Queen of Scots who was days old, and James the IV? James the Somethingth who was under a year when he became King. They put the crown on the baby and put the lscepter in their tiny hand. Reportedly Mary screamed through her whole coronation.
once we were done with the castle (it was okay, I don’t see how we could have NOT gone there with it being visible from our window haha) we relaxed for a bit in the apartment, Grey checked in for his flight, and we had dinner reservations at 6:45 at the Whiski Rooms . We finally had some DElLICIOUS Scottish food; Grey had venison, which he had been wanting for the past few days after all our tour guides kept talking about the game and hunting lodges in the Highlands. I had braised lamb shoulder which was excellent but did make me feel somewhat guilty later when looking at all the lamb photos we took this trip 😬 and we both did a whisky flight. Grey did a staff pick selection and I did a “whisky regions” selection with one whisky each from the Highlands, Islands, Lowlands, and Speyside. Unsurprisingly I didn’t like the peaty Islay one and I liked the Highlands one the best- it was more similar to the Oban 14 that I liked the best still of all the ones I’ve tasted or the Ben Nevis ones.
we enjoyed another sticky toffee pudding: grey was a fan of the hot salted caramel sauce that came on the side so you could perfectly drip the exact ratio of caramel sauce on each bite. We headed home for a nightcap of the Tomatin 18 we had bought a little airplane bottle of at the Tomatin tour (best Tomatin we tried) and enjoyed the view of the castle lit up at night. tomorrow Grey is flying home to Denver and I have two more days to fill near Edinburgh. I have some fun things planned but Will miss having someone who cares about reading restaurant reviews to find us the best places to eat- I’m more of a “let’s eat in the place next door” convenience traveler 😂 there’s no one I would rather ride trains, drink whisky, and explore the Highlands with than Grey!! love you! :)
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tritonmarketresearchamey · 6 months ago
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Global Delivery Drones Market – Growth Prospects for 2024-2032
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As per Triton Market Research, the Global Delivery Drones Market report is segmented by Component (Hardware, Software, Services), Type (Multi-Rotor Wing, Fixed Wing, Hybrid Wing), Range (Less Than Or Equal To 25 Km, More Than 25 Km), Payload (Less Than 2 Kg, 2 Kg To 5 Kg, More Than 5 Kg), Duration (Less Than 30 Minutes, More Than 30 Minutes), Operation Mode (Remotely Piloted, Partially Autonomous, Fully Autonomous), Application (Retail & E-Commerce, Logistics & Transportation, Agriculture, Healthcare, Food & Beverages, Military & Defense, Other Applications), and Regional Outlook (Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, Latin America).
The report highlights the Market Summary, Industry Outlook, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, Market Attractiveness Index, Regulatory Framework, Key Market Strategies, Market Drivers, Challenges, Opportunities, Competitive Landscape, Research Methodology and scope, Global Market Size, Forecasts & Analysis (2024-2032).
According to Triton’s research report, the global market for delivery drones is estimated to rise with a CAGR of 40.87% in revenue over the forecasting years 2024-2032. 
A delivery drone is a type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is adept at vertical take-off and landing. This feature enables their usage for transporting or distributing packages to consumers during the last-mile delivery process. 
Delivery drones are equipped with systems that help them avoid or avert a collision. This allows ease in navigation for multiple drone deliveries simultaneously, with improved flexibility in varying delivery scenarios.
The rising demand for faster and same-day food delivery drones drives the market growth. Achieving swift and accelerated delivery timelines compared to the conventional transportation method creates a shift in consumer preferences regarding order fulfillment. It also reduces the operational costs of delivery drones. Moreover, the adoption of contactless delivery and online purchases since the pandemic has led to the consistent growth in the delivery drone market. 
Security breaches, such as misuse of drones for criminal endeavors, industrial espionage or unauthorized surveillance, cause serious impacts on drone’s communication and control systems. The susceptibility of drones to hacking reduces its security factor, which hampers the growth of the delivery drone market. Along with these safety concerns, the stringent aerospace restrictions concerning its flying operations restrict the market growth. 
The major market players in the delivery drones market are Airbus SAS, Amazon.Com Inc, Delivery Drones Canada, The Boeing Company, DHL International GmbH Flytrex Inc, Zipline International Inc, SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd (DJI), Skycart Inc, Matternet Inc, Wingcopter GmbH, Wing Aviation LLC, FLI Drone, Fedex Corp, and United Parcel Service of America (UPS).
Furthermore, awareness regarding environmental sustainability and climate change is making businesses opt for eco-friendly logistics. Powered by electric propulsion systems, delivery drones are efficient for navigating direct routes for last-mile delivery with zero fuel consumption. 
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openingnightposts · 7 months ago
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