#popular national parks

[nationalparksassociation]

Discover And Explore About The Best National Parks In The World

Discover, explore and learn more about best national parks in the world. We're sure you'll gain a fresh perspective on the world's natural beauty when you look at each of these incredible gems and realize how important it is to preserve it before it disappears. To know more visit: https://bit.ly/3Mk9ns4

[orofeaiel]

North Fork Skokomish River

[pellinni-photo]

landscape with mountain lake of synevyr national park. green carpathian nature scenery in summer. coniferous forest on the hill reflecting in the water. popular travel destination of ukraine

[deerbrush]

summer ends too quickly

[britneyshakespeare]

you know what i also always used to think polar seltzer must've just been the biggest seltzer brand in the world, bc really what do i know about the world of seltzer? what IS there to know about it? i knew when i was a very young girl that my nana drank polar seltzer and that it was fizzy water. i looked it up yesterday and they're based in worcester, massachusetts

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

Hola, a friend and I are thinking about doing a sightseeing trip to Madrid in the middle of november. Do you have some insider tips what we should see? :)

hi anon, yes of course !!!

so, one thing about madrid, it isn't a monument city but a walking city. i'd say walking through the city center, centered around the two main squares, puerta del sol and plaza mayor (both also massive tourist hotspots so expect a ton of people). just walking around that area, around arenal street, calle mayor (main street), carretas street and others is enough to get a feel of the oldest part of the city (also called 'madrid the los austrias' or 'austrian madrid', when spain was ruled by the habsburgs). it's my favourite area honestly, alongside the barrio de las letras, which you can get to walking or in a few metro stops. its name translates to 'neighborhood of the letters' because a ton of writers lived here, and you can find phrases from spanish literary classics engraved on the streets, it's lovely.

apart from that central area, other cool spots i would really recommend you should check out is gran vía (busiest street in the city, it literally translates to 'broadway', it has a ton of theatres as well), malasaña (hip arts district, love the vibe, also it's so beautiful and there's always stuff going on, really nice place to go out at night as well), chueca (next to malasaña, it's the queer district!!! also very beautiful), debod (my actual favourite place in the city!!!!!! it's this hill that holds an egyptian temple - the temple of debod - that was gifted to spain after the aswan campaign, you can visit it and also the views from the city from here are lovely, you can find the best sunset here), el rastro (the largest flea market in the country, you can visit it every sunday, you can find anything here. also nearby, in the cuesta de moyano, there's a book fair also open only on sundays), retiro park (our main park, really pretty, it's very nice to just chill; it also has a lake you can row on, and cool statues and stuff), and the royal palace (it's open to the public if that's your thing, but the area around it is very very nice, i always end up here when i hang out with my friends).

now let's talk museums!!!! madrid has a ton of museums, i'll tell you the ones i recommend but depending on what you're looking for there's probably something for you. important to note is that at least the prado and the reina sofía museums are free everyday one hour before they close !!!!!! important !!!!!! check in case there's other museums that do this, but i'm unsure, i think it's those two and maybe the thyssen?

so. the main three art museums in madrid are the prado museum (the counterpart of the louvre, that sorta vibe), the reina sofía museum (our modern art museum, only stuff from picasso onwards), and the thyssen museum (ngl i haven't been here, it's a private museum made out of the collection of this one countess). all of them (more or less) are in the prado boulevard, which is also very nice to walk by so it's always lovely to go there even if you don't enter the museums. nearby there's also the national archaeological museum, my personal favourite one.

other smaller but also cool museums that i love are the madrid history museum (the facade is insane, also has tons of cool maps of the city), romanticism museum (an old romanticism-era palace with romanticism-era paintings and other stuff), cerralbo museum (underrated af; it is the personal collection of this one noble, the building itself is absolutely insane), and the sorolla museum (if you like sorolla this is your place!).

(i'm nearly done i swear)

if you have time and want to visit a nearby city, my recommendations are: alcalá de henares (really close to madrid, it has the second oldest university in spain, with a medieval feel to it, it also has the madrid archaeological museum - it was a roman foundation under the name of complutum - and most importantly, it's known for being the birthplace of miguel de cervantes, writer of don quijote!!!! you can visit his house, it's now a museum :), el escorial (deep in the mountains, it has the monastery of el escorial, maximum icon of spanish renaissance, it was the winter palace of the monarchy and holds the royal crypt, where most of spanish monarchs have been buried), toledo (oh if you love medieval cities you'll love this one. it was the first capital of spain, and it is most known for being the city that during the medieval times had christians, muslims and jews living peacefully. there's tons of churches, mosques and synagogues to visit, and it is very well preserved, with narrow steep cobblestone streets, cannot recommend it enough), and segovia (toledo is to the south of madrid, and segovia to the north! it is most famous for its roman aqueduct, the best preserved and highest in the country, and it also has a ton of historical buildings, including its alcázar, a palace that inspired the sleeping beauty castle !!!!!). also it's not a city but there's a national park in madrid, the sierra de guadarrama national park and it's super beautiful, it's this lovely mountainous area perfect for hiking or just chilling, and depending on when in november you come, you might see snow!

as a final warning!! i don't know where you're from but in november madrid is probably colder than you are expecting so make sure to pack some extra layers just in case !!!

[misterlemonztenth]

08-27-24 | Arches National Park, Moab, Utah. via namk1. misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

[ratatatastic]

hiiii didn't get to watch the game today would u happen to know if there were any giffable senko moments? love u mwah <33

unfortunately there weren't too many moments this game but here are the few that i caught

after the swaggy goal 4 minutes into first sasha heads to the bench and pats senkos leg and senko gives him a good shoulder pat for a good assist and amazing play that lead to the swaggy goal

bench celly for the erod goal in the second i just love how he has his towel in his hands, throws his hands up in joy, remembers he still has his towel and that it looks dumb and just chucks it behind him as he eagerly awaits to fistbump the boys

senko tries to make a play in front of the crease halfway into the second period but broberg blocks him, skinner makes the save and kulak fucking football tackles him to the ground

and we get, whatever this is... so what that tongue do senko *i get pulled by a vaudevillian hook offstage*

after the third when he tries to make a play with forsy but he gets blocked out by kulak and he checks the flex of his blade after skinner gloves his shot

ofc if it does not go in it must be the stick!

edmonton oilers @ florida panthers game 1 | 6.8.24

[researching-anomalies]

I've been working on a world building project for the past few months and I'm finally ready to share it with folks! Welcome to Lookout Basin!

Get the PDF here: https://uncertaintycrossing.itch.io/lookout-basin-national-park-vgfall2023

(Free/pwyw)

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Dive into fun at Lookout Basin, California's first paranormal National Park! This all inclusive visitor's guide can help you and your family plan a fun trip to the West Coast this fall season. Find thrill seeking fun with our hiking trails through anomalous areas to our boat tours across an active graveyard. Have a more relaxed visit with our Sphinx riddle nights or ghost educational programs. With a variety of activities across the park, Lookout Basin has something for everyone.

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Inspired by Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, Fablehaven, SCP Foundation/Wanderers' Library, and various folklore stories, Lookout Basin National Park, Visitor's Guide Fall 2023 is a non-traditional storytelling exercise, where the world of Lookout Basin is explored through the park advertising. The entirety of the Lookout Basin universe will be explored through weird ways of storytelling, with other oddly formatted books and an interactive game planned in the future. 

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[phosphorusab]

A grown ass man lured a 14 year old girl out to a park at night, abused her, killed her, dismembered her and scattered her remains in public parks and rivers. Now if that girl was a cisgender girl, the general public would rightfully put the blame on the perpetrator for taking advantage of and murdering a minor.

But because Pauly Likens Jr was a transgender girl, the general public is going full trans panic defense, even though the perpetrator said they met on Grindr, if that was even true. Grindr doesn’t verify the age of its users and legally doesn’t have to due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which means half of sexually active queer adolescents will use this app and fall into the hands of predators.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/national/2021-07-12/unseen-part-3-popular-gay-dating-app-grindr-poses-exploitation-risk-to-minors

Grindr has been known to have a sexual exploitation of minors issue, and I just know that people are going to see that Pauly Likens Jr and her killer may have used this app to blame Pauly for her own demise.

It’s just like they did with Gwen Araujo in 2002 (a 17 year old trans girl killed by 4 grown ass men), Mercedes Williamson in 2015 (a 17 year old trans girl killed by a grown ass man) and Nikki Kuhnhausen in 2019 (a 17 year old trans girl killed by a grown ass man). You stop being an innocent kid who is capable of being victimized when you’re trans. You’re a threat to other kids your age or younger, and you’re a precocious sexual provocateur towards adults. This applies especially to transgender girls - complete dehumanization and transmisogyny.

This pattern of transgender teenage girls being taken advantage of by adults and killed is completely unacceptable, and society should start acting like it.

[nationalparksassociation]

Discover Popular National Parks with the National Parks Association

Uncover the beauty of Kruger, Yosemite, and other popular national parks with the National Parks Association. Get in-depth info on the most visited parks in Africa, Europe, and across the globe. View this infographic to know more and visit us.

[orofeaiel]

Towering Trees

[reasonsforhope]

"The Yurok will be the first Tribal nation to co-manage land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed on Tuesday [March 19, 2024] by the tribe, Redwood national and state parks, and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League, according to news reports.

The Yurok tribe has seen a wave of successes in recent years, successfully campaigning for the removal of a series of dams on the Klamath River, where salmon once ran up to their territory, and with the signing of a new memorandum of understanding, the Yurok are set to reclaim more of what was theirs.

Save the Redwoods League bought a property containing these remarkable trees in 2013, and began working with the tribe to restore it, planting 50,000 native plants in the process. The location was within lands the Yurok once owned but were taken during the Gold Rush period.

Centuries passed, and by the time it was purchased it had been used as a lumber operation for 50 years, and the nearby Prairie Creek where the Yurok once harvested salmon had been buried.

Currently located on the fringe of Redwoods National and State Parks which receive over 1 million visitors every year and is a UNESCO Natural Heritage Site, the property has been renamed ‘O Rew, a Yurok word for the area.

“Today we acknowledge and celebrate the opportunity to return Indigenous guardianship to ‘O Rew and reimagine how millions of visitors from around the world experience the redwoods,” said Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League.

Having restored Prarie Creek and filled it with chinook and coho salmon, red-legged frogs, northwestern salamanders, waterfowl, and other species, the tribe has said they will build a traditional village site to showcase their culture, including redwood-plank huts, a sweat house, and a museum to contain many of the tribal artifacts they’ve recovered from museum collections.

Believing the giant trees sacred, they only use fallen trees to build their lodges.

“As the original stewards of this land, we look forward to working together with the Redwood national and state parks to manage it,” said Rosie Clayburn, the tribe’s cultural resources director.

It will add an additional mile of trails to the park system, and connect them with popular redwood groves as well as new interactive exhibits.

“This is a first-of-its-kind arrangement, where Tribal land is co-stewarded with a national park as its gateway to millions of visitors. This action will deepen the relationship between Tribes and the National Park Service,” said Redwoods National Park Superintendent Steve Mietz, adding that it would “heal the land while healing the relationships among all the people who inhabit this magnificent forest.”"

-via Good News Network, March 25, 2024

[adrift-at-c]

How does calling, writing, or protesting exert pressure on a politician? These are all ways of making a request of a politician, why would that politician grant that request? Only because not doing so costs them something. What does ignoring a letter cost a politician? Mostly support. Why would a politician want to avoid losing your support?

Because they might lose your vote.

Calling, writing letters, and protesting* are all ways to tell a politician "Do this or I will not vote for you." Protesting* in particular is a way to say "Do this, or not only will I not vote for you, I will hurt your public image, which will convince others not to vote for you." If you are not willing to follow through with this threat and withhold your vote, ignoring these requests has no cost to the politician. Ignoring you is perfectly safe.

That isn't to say that withholding your vote is always the best strategy, but it is a strategy, and like all strategies it has tradeoffs. If the politician ignores you, you take the risk that a worse politician will win, in exchange for the possibility that future requests will be granted now that the other politician knows your threats are genuine. This makes sense only if the cost of losing is low, and the benefits of being heard by a politician are high.

The opposite tactic of voting for a candidate regardless of whether or not they listen to you makes sense if the cost of losing is high and the benefits of being heard are low. However, this too has tradeoffs. You can ensure the worse politician doesn't win, but you are giving up any leverage you might have over the better politician to do so, and can't expect them to listen to your requests. You don't get to ask that politician for anything, because they now know that if they refuse, you will say, "I understand, and I will give you whatever you want anyway."

I think that in this election, the second strategy makes the most sense. But if you intend to use it, you need to be realistic about what it will cost. You can't have your cake and then base your strategy on eating it too.

*Protesting has the ability to make use of threats other than withholding your vote, and can still exert pressure if you can find one. The college protests earlier this year took this form. "Divest yourself of holdings in companies contributing to the genocide in Palestine, or I will prevent your campus from operating, costing you increasing amounts of money with each day you refuse." However, if you don't explicitly make such a threat, your protest can only communicate a threat to withhold your vote.

I have no idea what Harris' actual views on I/P are, but even if she is fully pro-Palestine wouldn't she still have to meet with Netanyahu? I mean realistically any change the US can possibly make would have to involve talking to Israel, right? Presidents meet with Putin even if they hate him/Russia's actions because that's how international politics works, it doesn't mean they like/agree with him

Well, theoretically, there's a bit of political game playing involved yes. But because the ICC has issued warrants for Netanyahu's arrest, if we're strictly following international law, Netanyahu shouldn't have been meeting anybody, he should have been arrested. But we're not doing that because the US currently thinks the ICC is wrong, which is a bad look for the US and which undermines the strength of international law, so I think this is bad and also wrong, but that's what's happening at present. And although US presidents etc have historically met with Putin, they would not at this point because Putin also has warrants out for his arrest. The difference between how the US has treated Putin v Netanyahu is, as it seems, pretty hypocritical.

Practically speaking, as you say, meeting with Netanyahu is a bit of a political game. The US has historically been a very strong ally to Israel and the US has historically been very much involved in the normalization of relations vis a vis Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and the US would very much like to remain involved in brokering a lasting peace, which involves not seriously alienating Netanyahu and Israel et al. Netanyahu and his far-right government are the ones holding up the ceasefire, and the US is only able to exert pressure so long as they are a valuable ally to Israel - if Israel has nothing to lose, in other words, the US loses its ability to exert pressure. And Harris wants very much to hang onto that ability, because she's setting herself up to exert more pressure than Biden has.

Harris has been critical of Israel. Harris is the highest-ranking Dem that has been critical of the situation in Gaza. She has been upfront about highlighting the suffering in Gaza. She's not oblivious to the conversations going on re: Palestine and the ongoing genocide. She's not sticking her head in the sand on it.

“The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time - we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”

But she's trying to walk a very careful line on public sentiment re: Israel and Palestine. She's going to be very cautious to condemn anything with even a whiff of antisemitism in strong terms. She's going to be very cautious to affirm Israel's right to exist and to defend itself, which she does in the article linked above, with the caveat that "how it does so matters." But her willingness to call attention to the crisis ongoing in Gaza and her willingness to imply wrong-doing by Israel in how that crisis has been created signals to Netanyahu that her government will have stronger limits than Netanyahu has encountered previously. Will she be a perfect candidate? No. Will she always align with my moral compass? No. Will she be totally evil? Also no.

As voters, what does this mean for us and how we support Gazans and Palestinians?

To me this is very simple. Harris is a candidate who is willing and able to exert pressure on Israel to end the genocide and, ideally, to broker a long-lasting peace. Trump is a candidate who is willing and able to exert pressure on Israel to blow Gaza off the face of the earth. Between "willing to tell Netanyahu this is unacceptable" and "willing to tell Netanyahu to break out a nuke," I'm voting for the former every fucking time.

Not voting or voting third party doesn't actually tell Democrats anything except that you didn't care. They don't have a list of people who would otherwise have voted blue if only they'd taken harder pro-Palestine stance, they're not cross-checking your voting status against your social media posts and going, oh, nuts, we lost that one. Not voting or voting third party doesn't exert pressure on the Dems to go more left, you're not "teaching them a lesson," you're not making a point. It's non-information. It's not a boycott - it's a white flag. It's giving up.

You know how you exert pressure on politicians? You call. You write. You protest. Are you still calling your representatives about Gaza every day? Are you going to town halls and asking them about what they're doing to stop the genocide? Pressure is exerted through participation.

Progress is made by the people who show up.

If the Dems lose, you can pressure them all day and it won't make a difference because they don't have any power to make a difference. And the racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Middle East far right won't be listening no matter how much you shout.

I'm not giving up on Palestinians just because some greyface anon on the internet tells me I'm a bad person for choosing to vote for the candidate I can pressure to make a change.

I'm also not going to give up on people here at home who's lives are hanging in the balance. I'm a queer woman with a uterus and a pre-existing condition - I simply do not have the luxury or the privilege to stay home in November. I do not have the luxury or the privilege of being a single issue voter. I'm not going to give up on trans kids or immigrants or BIPOC or women or disabled folks or poor folks. I'm not going to give up on healthcare or on libraries or on public schools or on the environment or on the court systems. I'm not going to give up on safe workplaces and livable wages and safe products. I'm not going to give up and let corporate monopolies and censorship and AI and five rich dudes decide what the future will be.

Don't you care? Don't you look around you and care about the people in your own communities? Or are those people too real, too complicated? Do you only care when you can win points off it in someone else's inbox on tumblr dot com?

Is Kamala Harris going to be the perfect pro-Palestinian candidate? No. But I'm not inviting her to brunch. I don't need her to be my bestie. I don't need her to be my moral compass - I have one of my own, thanks.

I just need her to step forward instead of back.

Progress is made one step at a time.