#specifically because of the fossil

[and-this-gun-i-found]

Borealopelta markmitchelii has gotta be my favourite Dino SPECIFICALLY because of the one fossil remain we have of them that looks ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!

LOOK AT IT

It looks like a sculpture

Absolutely gorgeous

This is how B. markmitchelii became my #1 guy

EVERYONE WHO SEES THIS HAS TO TELL ME WHAT THEIR FAVORITE DINOSAUR IS GO GO GO

[bonefall]

On the topic of Flight Rising (as a fellow FR enjoyer) I'm curious what flight(s) you've been in? If you dont want to share thats fair but it's interesting to hear peoples reasonings. I joined in the early days of sign up windows, didn't have internet and got put in Lightning by a friend who made the account for me. It has been years and years, don't even know that friend anymore and am still a die hard Spark.

I was actually a Light flight to begin with! Which is another thing that must be an Absolute Shocker, I'm sure. Girlboything who likes writing was in the flight well known for being full of weird writers.

My move was to the Wind flight because minty green is my favorite color. I do love the aesthetic of the wind, the kites, and the traveling, but I'm actually saving up gems to go to Earth next. I think I vibe the most with its lore, even though its scenery is a little uggo. I love how many cities are there, I love the idea of the crypts and the hidden treasures, preserving and documenting history.

I kinda wish you got a free flight change every like... 5 years. That's more than long enough to be fair I think. I've been playing since 2016 which is actually 8 years so... idk give me free flight change. let me out. im literally from the travel guys let me travel

[nicolefirekitty]

transport of all kinds have had to be reinforced to be able to withstand the different abilities of vivosaurs. however, flight-based vivosaurs often seem uninterested in air travel, some even choosing to fly alongside the vehicles

based on this

[codecicle-archive]

Help wait you're 14?? ok that makes sense actually (NO OFFENCE)

every once in a while someone decides to actually read through my pinned and I get an ask like this a little while after don't worry anon you're not the first to be surprised and you won't be the last o/

[arolesbianism]

Sigh. Nikola why must you be one of the more interesting oni characters. I don't wanna think abt you with your stupid spiky blond hair and your unethical science that mostly just serves to make Jackie more shitty by proxy. But I do. Because you're kind of orbo blorbo. Fuck you Nikola I hope you explode again

[knowerofuselessfacts]

I WANT TO VISIT YOU

I wanna visit you too!

Also, I kinda wish I could take you to the shores of one of the Great Lakes to go rock hunting. Best ones are in Superior though so we'd have to take a trip lol

[bogleech]

This whole sequence in jurassic park is so incredibly funny to me now as an adult because it reads so much like a power fantasy written by the lamest most annoying dinosaur guy ever. A child, for some reason, heckles a dinosaur fossil. Totally something children do. And specifically ridicules the dinosaur by saying it looks more like a bird, which he finds stupid. BUT WAIT!! The badass middle aged paleontologist is here to give such a based and awesome lecture about his favorite dinosaur it owns the shit out of that punk ass ignorant child. Just obliterates him on the spot. And everyone clapped.

[gorgynei]

(puts on my botany hat) okay. so the firelights tree is very specifically inspired by a ginkgo tree

some examples of ginkgo leaves ^ extremely distinct! the firelight tree's are pretty big compared to the real thing though

this is interesting mostly because on earth, the gingko tree (Ginkgo biloba) is the only extant species of order Ginkgoales and is extremly old

fossil of a ginkgo leaf from. a long time ago ^

gingko trees also specialize in growing in disturbed environments (environments near flowing bodies of water or impacted by wildfire, invasive species, floods, volcanic eruptions, etc.) and prefer areas with lots of water drainage, which fits well for it's ability to grow in the firelights hideout!

[pangur-and-grim]

Hi! I have a dinosaur question for you, but idk how ridiculous it might be. So I love triceratops, and I keep thinking about how the cowards never give the dinosaurs feathers. What do you think triceratops feathers would look like? My uneducated mind pictures something like a peacock.

so with dinosaurs, we have to rely on fossil evidence. if there’s evidence of feathers, then they should be depicted with feathers. but if there’s instead evidence of scaly, pebbly skin (like with most ornithischians), then it’s more accurate to depict them with that. the most you could give a ceratopsian is feathers that have been modified into quills, and even then you’d have to do research on the specific species you want to depict, to see if that’s reasonable. I would be hesitant to give Triceratops quills. take this with a handful of salt, but I think the latest on them was weird nipple-like scales.

it does seem like proto-feathers were a basal trait in dinosaurs, because the pycnofibres that pterosaurs have look to be feather analogues (meaning that the archosaur that branched into dinosaurs and pterosaurs likely had proto-feathers), but there are many lineages that went on to lose those feathers. even some theropods (the classic feather group!) may not have had feathers. so it isn’t always a matter of cowardice, it’s more that we have to pay attention to the evidence wherever it points, even if that means we don’t get a fun fluffy T. rex or peacock triceratops. and I am definitely mad about this.

[emmg]

He wrestles with a feverish appetite, this crude and uninvited urge that intrudes at its own whim—though, really, when would such thoughts be welcome? It is not refined, not proper, to sit opposite her and let his mind wander to the gloss of her lips, to wonder how she might taste, to wish that the mascarpone she savors so languidly were his own flesh, heavy and impatient. 

He despises himself for it—wants to be better, finer, something more than hunger in its basest form. And yet, he wants. Sweetness, yes; kindness, yes; love in all its quiet splendor—but also salt and sweat, the lush, slippery heat between her legs, his or hers or both, some mingled thing he might catch on his fingers, press back inside her, trace along her trembling thighs as he coaxes her to completion. 

But it is not only this. No, his disease is greater, more humiliating still. He thinks of grand, maudlin absurdities. Of flowers left on windowsills, of rings slipped onto fingers, of days spent making memories out of nothing. And it is this, not lust, that he fears might truly appall her. Because hunger, after all, is easy to satisfy. It is love, foolish and relentless, that tends to send people running. 

You mustn’t be so sentimental, someone had murmured that to him once. He can no longer summon the speaker’s face, nor their voice, nor even their gender, only the ghostly trace of the words themselves, breathed or sighed, said once or, more likely, many times.

It became, in those gauzy, amber-lit years of his youth, something of a running jest. An affectionate, exasperated refrain, volleyed at him with the regularity of a well-worn melody. 

"Don’t fucking propose to the waitress, Volkarin. She’s bringing you a beer, not subtly signaling that she wants to die in your arms," Johanna would mutter, leaning back against the sticky wood of some dimly lit tavern, where they debated spirits over spirits.

"They’re funding your research, Emmrich, not secretly applying to be the mother of your children."

"Your new assistant is very handsome. Try not to hyperventilate when he hands you a quill."

He laughed along. It was funny, after all. Until, inevitably, it wasn’t. Until the joke, fossilized through sheer, relentless overuse, lost its shape and became a dull thing, something to stub his patience against. Until his forced little chuckles gave way to eye-rolls, to abrupt departures, to a growing sense that he was, in fact, trapped in some long-running farce penned by a particularly untalented playwright.

They were all married now, every last one of them—the tireless jesters, the committee of mirth who, years later, still found delight in flogging the same long-dead horse. And he wasn’t. Not that he was alone, of course. He had his affairs, his amusements, his charming little entanglements. But still, from time to time, a most delicate and specific malice stirred in him. 

He wanted to dig up some particularly malicious little corpse, whisper something truly awful to it, and dispatch it to haunt them. Not in any grand, dramatic fashion. No moaning, no rattling of chains. Just a gentle, relentless nuisance. A ghost of mild inconvenience. A door that won’t quite shut. A draft they can’t find. A whisper when they’re shaving. A misplaced document on the morning of a big presentation. 

The sort of thing a petty man might dream up. And he has, after all, always been petty.

He tried, though. He tries still. To smooth the edges of his affections, to hush the operatic swell of his heart, to trade grand declarations for something gentler, something more palatable. Not entirely, of course—self-betrayal is a vulgar thing. But enough. Just enough to keep from frightening them, from scattering them like startled birds. 

For Rook, mostly. Because Rook is not like him. Rook does not do sentiment. Rook has the supreme, indifferent ease of someone born beautiful, the kind of beauty that turns heads and opens doors without so much as a sidelong glance of acknowledgment. Rook has never had to earn affection—it accumulates around her the way cigarette smoke clings to velvet. Rook rolls her eyes at poetry. Rook, with her lazy smirk and her miraculous ability to construct entire, fully functional sentences composed exclusively of obscenities.

He loves Rook very, very much. He suspects Rook loves him too, in her own peculiar way. She smiles, she laughs, she allows him his embarrassing little effusions, even kisses him for his trouble—then, with perfect timing, calls him a dweeb and steals the last sip of his drink. 

It’s fine. He’s learned to translate. In Rook’s private dialect, dweeb means yes, fine, I suppose you amuse me, a kiss means I would be inconvenienced by your untimely death, and drinking the last of his whiskey? That, of course, is a vow of eternal devotion. Or something like that.

It all collapses into a feverish, tangled catastrophe one evening. A breathless, ill-advised implosion of longing and lust and something dangerously adjacent to reverence. She is so, so beautiful, and he wants to touch her, of course, but also—he wants to read to her. Not the dull, airless sonnets, no, but the real poetry, the ones thick with scandal, with sin, the ones that might cajole that sharp little smirk from her lips. Maybe while his fingers are inside her. Maybe precisely then.

He wants to coax pleasure from her, whispering thick, illicit syllables against her skin, punctuating each lewd phrase with the curl of his knuckles, just to see how the two mingle, just to see which makes her gasp first. To see if she’ll arch into it, if she’ll moan, if she’ll laugh. Because of course she’ll laugh. She always does. Even when he licks his fingers clean, even when he settles between her thighs, even when he finds his own satisfaction in the aftermath of hers, she will be laughing. 

It happens like that, and yet, not like that at all. Because as he collapses against her, boneless and spent, something dreadful and unmistakable unfurls in his chest—too late, of course, always too late. His sentimentality, that incurable affliction, has caught up with him at last, threading itself through his ribs, pressing its damp, foolish hands against his throat. 

He bows his head to her chest, breathing her in, willing himself to contain it, to gather the wet, trembling edges of his absurd little heart and tuck them out of sight. Perhaps she will not notice. Perhaps she will feel only the smile he presses into her skin, as if that might smother the rest. 

A silence—brief, terrible, perceptive. 

"Oh no," she says, and he feels her fingers weave into his hair, loose and lazy and terribly knowing. "What the fuck did I do?" 

He shakes his head—not much, nothing at all, everything. Just a little.

"Nothing, my darling," he says, only slightly unsteady. "Nothing at all. I am—" a soft exhale, an almost-laugh, "—very happy." He swallows. Feels the first pangs of self-reproach begin to bloom, acid-sweet. "Only… allow me a moment to gather myself. It will pass." 

A brief caress at the base of his neck. Then, just as he begins to sink into it, she shifts, shoves, displaces him. He rolls onto his back, compliant, expectant, and she follows, settling astride him, her thighs bracketing his ribs, her cool hands framing his face. 

"Happy?" she confirms. 

"Yes, happy." 

"Hm." A small, satisfied noise. "Good. Happy and pretty. You’re so very pretty." 

She does not elaborate—she never does—but she kisses him. Thoroughly. His cheeks first, then his chin, the arch of his brow, the slow, methodical placement of lips upon skin, like affixing wax seals to letters never meant to be sent. His eyes, last. She drags a fingertip down, drawing his lids closed as if dimming a lamp. Then, the press of her mouth, warm, dry, familiar. And then—oh.

The flick of her tongue, feline and quick, slips between his lashes, parting what she has only just sealed, grazing the raw, unguarded wet beneath. He flinches; she giggles, breath skimming his cheek, unreasonably pleased with herself. 

She does it again, slower this time, the tip of her tongue tracing the curve of his eyelid. Then once more, lower now, across the ridge of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. A methodical, absentminded mapping—kisses pressed to skin with no particular urgency, a grazing of teeth when the impulse strikes her. He lies still beneath her, utterly at her mercy, though she is hardly in a hurry to exploit it. She seems content merely to taste him, her breath leaving damp traces that cool, then tighten, then disappear. 

Chocolate, yes, still lingering from earlier, something dark and rich that settles at the back of his throat just from breathing her in. Salt, too, a faint sting where sweat beads along the curve of her upper lip. 

Finally, an exhale. A minute adjustment of her weight as she lifts her head, pleased, apparently, with whatever inscrutable calculation she has been making. A kiss, light as a comma, stamped onto the very center of his mouth. 

“There you go,” she announces, stretching her arms overhead, yawning into her wrist, smiling that slow, pleased smile of hers. “All cleaned up. Not a tear in sight, since you seem to find your own emotions so mortifying.” 

"Thank you," he says, and, disastrously, feels like he might start crying again. 

"Mm-hm." A pause. Her fingers tapping absently against his cheek. "There’s a joke in here somewhere." 

"Is there?"

A frown, thoughtful, exaggerated, her brows knitting together in careful concentration before giving way to a terrible smile. "Yes." A beat. Then, the telltale flicker of something truly indecent behind her eyes. "Something about staying hydrated. Or maybe—" a pause, as if she is weighing her options "—eating out your third eye." 

He laughs then immediately chokes as she presses her hand to his throat for balance, the casual weight of it cutting off just enough air to send his body into brief, ungraceful revolt. 

"Never short on dreadful puns, I see." His voice, when it returns, is slightly hoarse. 

"Never," she agrees. Then, with a flourish of indulgence, she leans down again, kissing his eyelids one by one. “So you continue doing this—” kiss, kiss, kiss “—and I'll continue doing that.” 

Disgracefully, absurdly, he cries again, even as she laughs, even as her laughter spreads like ink in water, pulling him under, until the whole thing disintegrates into some ungovernable mixture of mirth and misery. He is laughing too—helplessly, wet-faced, ridiculous—and she, entirely unbothered by his descent into sentimentality, licks at the salt on his cheeks like a cat, or perhaps some particularly devoted dog, calling him pretty, pretty, pretty in that lazy, drawling way of hers, as if the word itself were a charm, a refrain, a verdict.

He wants to ask her why—why this word, why now, why, of all possible things, she has settled on this ludicrous, ill-fitting descriptor as he lies before her, blotchy and unsightly and utterly, embarrassingly undone. But she only snorts into his collarbone, her breath warm, unbothered, and the chant continues, pretty, pretty, pretty, until he is left with no choice but to accept it.

In the morning, his eyes are red. Lucanis notices. Davrin notices. The two, incapable of letting a thing be, set about turning his misfortune into sport, taking turns to see who can unearth the most appallingly indecent explanation.

He feels a migraine approaching. 

And then Rook arrives, deposits a cup of coffee into his hands, and, without so much as a glance at him, declares, “He snorted too much powder last night. Leave him alone.” 

Ah. 

Oh.

He sits there, staring at her, vaguely appalled, impossibly infatuated, hopelessly starry-eyed. Very well, then. She has let sentiment in—however unwittingly, however carelessly—and now she will drown in it. And then, once she is thoroughly waterlogged, he will buy her all the gold in Nevarra. 

[lucybubblegum]

love the litwick line!! started with one in a pokemon ttrpg, only increased my love for a pokemon i already adored

i haven't had the chance to use hisuian zoroark at all but frankly i don't think i need to its such a good design alone that it can carry that opinion

there's honestly not many if any bad ghost types, and even then i probably still love them lol though i will ask, any particular reason its specifically honedge in your top 10?

just here to wonder what ur favorite ghost type pokemon is, mines mimikyu personally (also my favorite type, and my favorite pokemon in general, though gengar comes close)

Mimikyu is such a good choice. Definitely top tier. I also love the litwick line, alolan marowak, hisuian zoroark, skeledurge, ceruledge, pumpkaboo, lunala, annihilape, and honedge.

Top 10 in no particular order is probably the best you'll get. I am notoriously bad at picking favorites.

[bonefall]

Odd question but I actually know very little about geology;

Does anyone have good resources where I can learn how places get iron in the soil? Like... how does that happen? How would you know if a place would be iron oxide-rich?

This is specifically about if BB!Cats have access to Ochre but I'm casting a wide net here

[reasonsforhope]

"Tuesday’s [April 9, 2024] definition-shifting court ruling means nearly 50 governments must now contend with a new era of climate litigation.

Governments be warned: You must protect your citizens from climate change — it’s their human right.

The prescient message was laced throughout a dense ruling Tuesday from Europe’s top human rights court. The court’s conclusion? Humans have a right to safety from climate catastrophes that is rooted in their right to life, privacy and family.

The definition-shifting decision from the European Court of Human Rights means nearly 50 governments representing almost 700 million people will now have to contend with a new era of litigation from climate-stricken communities alleging inaction. 

While the judgment itself doesn’t include any penalties — the case featured several women accusing Switzerland of failing to shield them from climate dangers — it does establish a potent precedent that people can use to sue governments in national courts.

The verdict will serve “as a blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures,” said Ruth Delbaere, a legal specialist at Avaaz, a U.S.-based nonprofit that promotes climate activism...

Courting the courts on climate

The European Court of Human Rights was established in the decade following World War II but has grown in importance over the last generation. As the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, an international human rights organization, the court’s rulings are binding on the council’s 46 members, spanning all of Europe and numerous countries on its borders.

As a result, Tuesday’s [April 9, 2024] ruling will help elevate climate litigation from a country-by-country battle to one that stretches across continents.

Previously, climate activists had mostly found success in suing individual countries to force climate action. 

A 2019 Dutch Supreme Court verdict forced the Netherlands to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent, while in 2021 a French court ruled the government was responsible for environmental damage after it failed to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals. That same year, Germany’s Constitutional Court issued a sweeping judgment that the country’s 2019 climate law was partly “unconstitutional” because it put too much of the emissions-cutting burden on future generations.

Even in the U.S., young environmental activists won a local case last year against state agencies after arguing that the continued use of fossil fuels violated their right to a "clean and healthful environment."

But 2024 is shaping up to be a turning point for climate litigation, redefining who has a right to sue over climate issues, what arguments they can use, and whom they can target. 

To start, experts overwhelmingly expect that Tuesday’s ruling will reverberate across future lawsuits — both in Europe and globally. The judgment even includes specifics about what steps governments must take to comply with their new climate-related human rights obligations. The list includes things like a concrete deadline to reach climate neutrality, a pathway to getting there, and evidence the country is actually on that path...

Concretely, the verdict could also affect the outcomes of six other high-profile climate lawsuits pending before the human rights court, including a Greenpeace-backed suit questioning whether Norway's decision to grant new oil and gas licenses complies with its carbon-cutting strategy.

An emerging legal strategy

In the coming months, other international bodies are also expected to issue their own rulings on the same thorny legal issues, which could further solidify the evolving trend. 

The International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights all have similar cases working through the system.

"All these cases together will clarify the legal obligations of states to protect rights in the context of climate change — and will set the stage for decades to come," said Chowdhury, from the environmental law center."

-via Politico, April 9, 2024

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Sorry if you've already covered this, but I was scrolling socials and saw that the San Antonio zoo got a large donation to expand their savanna habitat. The only thing that jarred me as I read through their expansion plans was apparently they're going to be outfitting some 'safari' vehicles so guests can be taken into the habitat to feed and interact with the animals (from within the vehicle). I was always under the impression that this kind of interaction wasn't necessarily good for either the humans or the animals-- is there a way it can be done ethically?? Anyway, I just thought it was interesting!

Ooo, okay, your question aligned with a thing I've been chewing on for a while, so let's talk ~ethics~ and ~philosophy~ aka this is gonna be a bit long. I do promise I'll answer your question, though!

The first thing I want to note is that you're really asking about two different things, which are almost always conflated these days when it comes to talking about animals: welfare (is the animal happy / healthy / safe) and ethics (is what's happening good / moral / acceptable). It's really important that we distinguish between the two, because welfare is an objective measure of physical and mental wellbeing, and ethics are a human construct that involves subjective interpretation.

A useful but highly oversimplified example of this is the bothering of cats for online videos. Pestering a cat to get a funny reaction once in a while may not impact their overall welfare. Welfare is the cumulative impact of an animal's experiences, which means that single acute moments may not weight heavily on the entire balance. If the cat is healthy, fed well, enriched, and has a good and positive bond with their humans, those momentary irritations for videos might not matter much. That doesn't mean that you or I, as viewers, might not still find bothering an animal for internet clout ethical. We can believe that humans shouldn't ever unnecessarily put their pet through negative experiences, and we can think that doing so just because it brings the human money or fame is distasteful. But! We have to recognize that as used in this example, those ethical stances aren't inherently tied to the animal's welfare state. Many people I know who dislike cat-bothering don't care if the animal has good welfare outside of that situation - they don't like that the situation occurs at all, ever.

So, back to your question. You're wanting to know if it's okay for a zoo to have a drive-through aspect of an exhibit where people get to feed the animals. You're asking if it's safe for the humans and for the animals (which is a welfare question) and if that type of interaction is ethical. I could just tell you that of course it's fine, San Antonio is an AZA zoo and their accreditation only allows them to do "good things" but that's now how it works here (nor is it the reality of accreditation).

The safety aspect is one I'm not worried about. It's actually a pretty common thing for reputable facilities to do some sort of vehicle tour in savanna habitats, whether in the guest's vehicle (safari parks) or on a hay-ride type vehicle (zoos). Many of those allow guests to feed out specific parts of their animals' diets. Offhand, I know Tampa and Fossil Rim both have feeding tours like this in a staff-driven vehicle. It's not specified from the zoo's press release, but I can guarantee you that guests will not be driving those vehicles - which means the interactions will be proctored by staff and what people are feeding out will be carefully regulated. The habitat is going to have rhino, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, and antelope/gazelle, and I'd guess that the drive-through is going to stick to those latter two and maybe additional species. Those are animals where a car is an appropriate safety barrier.

As to if it's ethical to do? It's spiny question, because it depends very directly on the ethical perspectives of the person you're asking. I think it's fine - you may not. Let's break down the different things that come into consideration on the ethical side, and my responses:

"The zoo is commercially exploiting animals by letting people pay to get closer." If the issue is that people paying to get closer to animals is using them for money, well, that's the business model of a zoo (non-profit or not, they still need revenue to operate). So IMHO it's not like it's "less ethical" than anything else the zoo is doing, using that framing.

"Zoo animals should be allowed to be wild and undisturbed by guests driving in their habitats." Zoo animals aren't wild, and their entire lives revolve around humans and the human work schedule. As long as a vehicle entering the habitat doesn't have a negative welfare impact (e.g. they're not scared of it), it's not very different from the rest of the routine of managed care.

"Feeding zoo animals will encourage people to try to feed wild animals." Thanks to obnoxiously viral content creators, people are going to try to feed wild animals no matter what. Doing it in a proctored situation where a staff member can try to do some education at the same time is probably the best possible scenario.

"People just do those tours to get close to cool animals." People are always going to want to touch the animals. If being able to pay for a tour keeps them from jumping the fence to try to pet a rhino, great.

There's one more that I want to talk about separately, because I think it's where a lot of confusion gets generated. It's this idea that "Humans shouldn't be interacting with animals at all, any interaction is unethical and bad for the animals." This is a welfare crossover, but not one actually informed by welfare science in a captive situation. And I think it's because the internet lacks nuance. Yes, it is absolutely correct to say that with wild animals, you should never ever try to feed a deer out of your car (or similar). It is incredibly harmful to those animals on both an acute and chronic timeline. But thanks to the rage-bait algorithms on social media and people endlessly justifying doing stupid, dangerous, bad things (and getting pushback for it), there's been a lot of bleed between the public's understanding of what wild animal welfare is and what captive animal welfare is. Combine that with the reality that captive animal welfare cannot be assessed or diagnosed from a single context-less clip, and that people with strong beliefs and no practical experience with the field/species/individual will pass judgement loudly to their audiences...

The result is almost a reflexive believe in many sectors of the internet that any human-animal interaction that isn't couched as a "rescue" is inherently unethical, for reasons people often can't articulate. Which is why, I think, so often people want to support certain aspects of captive animal management but feel guilty for doing so. I see this a lot in the questions the blogs gets, and I'm glad people feel comfortable asking, because it's important to think through not just the individual instances but the patterns leading us to question them.

So yes, I'd say that a staff-led experience in a vehicle chosen for safety is an ethical way to proctor an interaction between guests and certain savanna species. It will vary by facility - I'm always more wary about guests driving, although many drive-through safaris are fine - and by setup. I think what San Antonio is doing will be fine, though, and will be interested to see / hear about the setup when they start up.

If you've got a question about ethical captive management, I'm always happy to talk about it - but I'd invite you to poke around in your head a little and send me not just your question in the ask, but your thinking about why or why not something might be concerning. It's great practice for understanding why you relate to animal ethics the way you do, and where those beliefs come from.

[probablyasocialecologist]

There is a strange idea in some environmentalist circles that human population is the main cause of ecological breakdown, and that humans have an intrinsically negative impact on ecosystems. Both claims are incorrect. First, human ecological impact is entirely a function of the system of production and provisioning. It depends on what is being produced, under what conditions, and how the yields of production are distributed. For instance, an economy that uses mostly public transit, renewable energy, multi-unit housing and plant-based protein can meet human needs with a fraction of the impact of an economy that produces a lot of SUVs, fossil fuels, mansions and industrial beef, and which allocates a bunch of totally unnecessary production to service the fantasies of overconsuming elites. Remember, we know it is possible to provide decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people with 30% of current global energy and material use, by ensuring efficient technologies and focusing production on socially necessary goods and services. That much is fairly straightforward. But one might say that, even so, every person will always have some negative impact. This too is incorrect. Again, it depends entirely on the production system, and specifically, what people are mobilized to do. Under capitalism, labour is mobilized overwhelmingly to produce things that are profitable to capital. But labour could just as easily be mobilized instead for regeneration. Using straightforward public finance mechanisms, we can fund massive programmes to reforest barren lands, regenerate degraded ecosystems, restore biodiversity, advance agroecological methods, etc. Under these conditions, it is possible for societies to not only have minimal negative impact on ecology, but to have a net-positive impact, actively improving ecological indicators. People buy into the myth of the intrinsic destructiveness of humans because we have come to take capitalism for granted. But it is 100% possible to organize production and labour differently. Under capitalism, we are compelled to produce whatever is most profitable to capital, even if it is destructive to humans and nature. Under conditions of economic democracy, we can produce what we know is necessary for well-being and ecology.

Jason Hickel

See this paper for the "decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people with 30% of current global energy and material use" stat

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

THE BIG MONKEY HAS LANDED With the Gigantopithecus fauna I finish no. 40 in our formation piece series. While being very challenging, this composition was a joy to figure out, and not just because of the animals. The verticality of these karst landscapes always fascinated me.

Besides the greatest of apes this fauna is filled with an enormous amount of mammals, not to dissimilar to La Brea in diversity maybe. But instead of tar we mostly have to thank rodents, specifically porcupines, for the preservation of these fossils. Their need for calcium makes them...

..hoard bones in their borrows and caves. If not eaten they have a good chance of fossilizing despite the warm and humid climate. As you can see this size chart by Discord member JW , only a fraction of this diversity made it in, but I tried to cover nearly every major clade.

One thing you will notice is the absence of birds. This is in part because of taphonomy, one part maybe because procupines don't like to chew on bird bones and another appears to be THAT THE BIRDS WE HAVE ARE NOT PUBLISHED ON YET, ARRRGHHH. (this is a call out post)