#war on nature

[dirt-goth]

As much as I want to be a wholly joyous about the fact that Henry Kissinger is finally fucking dead, as he deserves... There's a lot of me that can't help being upset with. With the fact that he lived to 100 years old. He got better medical care, better housing, and a better, more stable life for those 100 years than billions on this planet ever going to see and he did it specifically through exploitation, state sanctioned murder, and lies. He lived to 100 years comfortably on a legacy of violence that rarely threatened his personal comfort. I want to be joyous that he's finally dead, because the world IS better with him dead, but the reality is he won a long time ago.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In the predawn hours of 6 June 2023, a pair of explosions rocked the Kakhovka Dam, a 3-kilometer-long hydropower facility on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Waking up that morning to the unfolding catastrophe, “I couldn’t believe it,” recalls Volodymyr Osadchyi, director of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute (UHMI). “I thought it had to be fake news.” But footage captured by a Ukrainian military drone showed water from one of Europe’s largest reservoirs gushing through a gaping breach in the dam.

Over the next 4 days, 18 cubic kilometers of water surged downstream, inundating more than 620 square kilometers and affecting 80 settlements. Scores of people died, and many more are unaccounted for. Up to 1 million people lost access to drinking water. In October, the Ukrainian government pegged the cost of the disaster, which it blames on Russia, at roughly $14 billion. Nearly half that figure— $6.4 billion—is an estimate of lost ecosystem services due to chemical pollution and habitat destruction along the Dnipro, one of Europe’s largest rivers.

Assessing environmental harm in the midst of a war in which the Dnipro itself delineates more than 300 kilometers of the front line is not easy. But Osadchyi and other Ukrainian researchers have been sobered by what they’ve found so far. The toll includes heavy damage to a unique sturgeon breeding facility, flooding of nature reserves and agricultural land, and a death blow to countless organisms adapted to brackish estuaries near the confluence of the Dnipro and the Black Sea. Billions of mussels are rotting on the former reservoir’s desiccated lakebed. And the Kakhovka’s destruction has added a new wrinkle to a puzzle that arose earlier in the war: the unexplained deaths of dolphins and porpoises in the Black Sea off Ukraine’s southern coast.

Such ecological miseries pale in comparison with the atrocities Russian forces have committed against Ukrainians during a nearly 2-year war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. But when the long and grinding war finally ends, Ukrainians will confront environmental damage that extends well beyond the Dnipro to widespread chemical contamination of agricultural fields and forests from shelling, the wanton destruction of protected areas, and the laying of innumerable mines that experts say will take decades to clear.

“The environmental cost of the war has been immense,” says Sergei Mosyakin, director of the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, part of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS). “The ecocide that Russia has inflicted on our country will be studied for generations to come.”

Yet as in all wars, nature has found places to thrive when humans are displaced. For instance, because it has been too dangerous to fish in much of the Black Sea, fish stocks are thought to be rebounding. With hunting banned in a wintering ground for migratory birds on the southern steppe, near the Black Sea coast, “the situation for many populations of birds is so much better now,” says Vasiliy Kostiushyn, an ornithologist at the I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology (IZAN), also part of NAS.

The ecological legacy of the Kakhovka disaster is similarly nuanced, as new habitats emerge on terrain scoured by floodwater and in the former reservoir’s driedout lakebed. The Ukrainian government has vowed to rebuild the dam after the war. But some experts hope it will change its mind and allow a natural recovery—and perhaps even accelerate efforts to rewild parts of the lower Dnipro Basin.

“Kakhovka is a tragedy,” says marine ecologist Galyna Minicheva, director of NAS’s Institute of Marine Biology (IMB). “But it is also a huge and unprecedented natural experiment.”" - Richard Stone, "Laid to waste: Ukrainian scientists are tallying the grave environmental consequences of the Kakhovka Dam disaster," Science. Vol 383, Issue 6678. January 4, 2024.

[planariaareneat]

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

[supertaliart]

Skywalker Siblings Part 3

First Previous

[demaparbat-hp]

Golden Boy (and Silver Girl) for the Kintsugi AU.

[senatortedcruz]

Coming of age under Bush II builds character (ensures I will never vote Republican in my life)

[hayden-christensen]

I see Anakin’s new teaching method is to “do as I say, not as I do.”

AHSOKA - PART SEVEN: DREAMS AND MADNESS (2023) STAR WARS: EPISODE II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

[paperglader]

i just feel like someone should take one for the team and write the fanfic where miss homotron goes to dragonstone on foot, meets her situationship’s new lover, and immediately goes like blind with jealousy and fury (rhaenyra, as always when alicent’s near, looks and behaves like a very confused kicked puppy)

i just need homotron and saphotron to meet, so the real war can begin

[reality-detective]

War on natural remedies 1961 to 1975: funded by the AMA. Imagine being arrested for selling basil?! 🤔

[warandpeas]

United Nature: Belly Rubs

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"ROUND-UP OF WAYWARD CANINES SUCCESSFUL," North Bay Nugget. May 29, 1933. Page 2. --- Several Impounded Saturday; Hunting Force Increased to Twenty Today ---- Following numerous complaints of indignant citizens concerning damage being done newly-planted lawns and gardens by wayward canines, G. A. Winton, official dog catcher, assisted by extra men supplied by the city foreman, declared war on the stray animals Saturday and up to today had a goodly number coralled in the city dog pound. His extra force numbered seven men on Saturday, and today it was increased to 20.

Of late, citizens have called into play baited rat traps and other ingenious devices in attempts to keep the wandering canines from tearing up properties, and in some cases, it is reported, even guns have been oiled up and made ready for action.

[nothing-but-flowers88]

Ok imagine you’re commander Cody, you’ve been passed out in medbay after a mission and you wake up to find about 10 of your brothers having a some debate. Your heart skips when you realize they found the picture of your general, your Obi-Wan, you keep inside your armor. And the encrypted note confessing your love you keep on you for Obi Wan to find if you die in battle. How do you react?

A. Scream

B. Cry

C. Pretend you’re still asleep to regain strength so you can destroy them

[raduzhnayaiskorka-blog]

«Old friends shouldn't be forgotten!»

[purple-ravaged]

kakashi x star wars

[necromanticcowboy]

Maybe Maul didn't need to go to such extreme lengths to make sure Obi-Wan had no means of escape...