#we carry our dead

[weirdlookindog]

Jean Veber (1868–1928) - Nous portons nos morts (We carry our dead), 1905

[mushtoons]

they're so in love, but like in a lesbian way

[thatone-churro]

chat i am NOT appreciating the stares i got from walking across campus to cvs in my hoodie and sweatpants as if we didn’t just sit through ANOTHER hurricane like chill man i didn’t sleep well let me get my monster to finish my logic homework in peace 😭

[snakegirlselves]

I know who she was. Who she wanted to be. Who I was. What I wanted to do. But now we've replaced her and I'm somewhere completely unlike anything I've known. I know what she knew. Except what I want to do. And all the rest don't know either. The tree, the dragon, the snake, the child, the bot and the braid, they don't know. We know who we are, who we were, but now we have to find where we stand and where we want to go.

And I'm scared

[icefire149]

.

[tiktaaliker]

ok I know I'm already in the process of writing an extremely long video game retelling/au where the protag is a nonhuman who gets suddenly and unwillingly put in a situation where they have to pass as A Normal Guy by the threat of harm/death while also being put into a role where they're the Only One capable of saving the world. but what if I started a DIFFERENT one too

[mydr3aminvi0let]

really annoying and cruel and evil and messed up all my friends don't live in the same city. ive got so good at being alone ive convinced myself i could live the rest of my life alone and never be any less happy, and i still believe that, but then we have a good conversation or they make me laugh too much and it's like. oh. this is what it's all about. why can't we all live in the same building

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[mylordshesacactus]

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

[stopfunkinwmyheart]

[rhalgrsrightfist]

ᴛᴀɢ ᴅᴜᴍᴘ 𝟏

☀⊱••• ⸺ dys an sohm in，rohs an kyn ala na! ⧼ ooc ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ bow down，overdweller! ⧼ submission ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ (hear) answer (look) answer (think) answer together. ⧼ answered asks ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ children of the land，answer this: ⧼ ask prompt ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ gobbies gonna rise up，boom like thunder! ⧼ promo ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ broken，faded，how long have i waited. ⧼ queue ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ come and play，for the night is bright and you can sleep when you're DEAD! ⧼ dash games ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ we are the dreamers. ⧼ dash commentary ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ pa-paya，paya pa-paya paya pa-paya! ⧼ crack ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ rise with me，rise with me，rise with me (RISE UP!) ⧼ self-promo ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ i'll be your idol，your only one. ⧼ video ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ o wide open midnight sky，please carry my voice aloft. ⧼ my art ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ oh i have awaited you patiently all this time; past every fate. ⧼ closed starter ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ foward and back and then forward and back and then go forward and back，then put one foot forward! ⧼ thread ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ for this journey's end is but one step forward to tomorrow. ⧼ thread end ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ flee from what you do not see. ⧼ dni ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ our song of hope，she dances on the wind higher，oh higher! ⧼ music ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ one brings shadow，one brings light; one more chapter we've yet to write. ⧼ wip ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ in monochrome melodies，our tears are painted in red. ⧼ art ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ come play with me，darling; you'll bе surprised! ⧼ open starter ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ deep inside we're nothing more than scions and sinners. ⧼ introspection ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ authors of our fates orchestrate our fall from grace. ⧼ one-shot ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ thou must live，die，and know. ⧼ psa ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ well come and well met，my brave little spark. ⧼ pinned ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ good king moogle mog，good king mog! ⧼ meme ⧽ ☀⊱••• ⸺ silent steel breathing，breathing. memory writing，reading. ⧼ saved ⧽

[hockeytwittereats]

Christmas Tree Farm is a song about how adults made a place where you felt safe when you were a child and now that you're an adult you can still return there to feel safe and loved when the world gets too much.

folklore has a lot in it about healing some of the deep wounds of childhood all over it including the fairy garden vibe of the album.

evermore looks at the adults we lost along the way and how those moments of lost innocence affects us.

Robin is looking at a child as an adult and wanting to give them a space like you had when you were a kid.

[13thpythagoras]

I believe Marx erred in eschewing religion altogether.

Marx should have worked with religion rather than against it; Jesus was already a communist in the wings waiting to be drafted into the movement, Marx missed a huge opportunity to highlight how Jesus was essentially a communist, and that there are a great many revolutionary bible passages that support this, such as

Mathew 19:23-24 — Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Is it not plain as the noon-day sun? Jesus Christ is telling Christians to give up everything they own at the altar of the Lord and become disciples of HIM! Similarly, this was a requirement of ancient Pythagoras, and many of the mystery schools, to gain entrance into their secret societies.

Luke 12:15: Then [Jesus] said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”

Communism then, making many of the same demands, it baffles me and bewilders me why and how man-with-a-brain TM Karl Marx could have missed this astronomically significant connection that he was tapping into a much older lineage of thought. Perhaps it is hubris, and the desire to be an original discoverer of original truth, that hero the west craves.

Yet it is through my learnings from eastern philosophies that taught me to cast off the need for a hero, or necessarily, salvation. Balance is the central value of the eastern perspectives, I've found, not salvation.

Calling religion the opiate of the masses and telling people to get over it does nothing to show people a better way. Now the Dalai Lama is exiled from his majestically beautiful homeland and there are countless other stories like this, where religious freedoms are trampled under authoritarian structures.

Jesus was absolutely an anti-racist and anti-capitalist if you look at the bible, he's the poster child of our movement, essentially telling people to come back to Jesus and that they've lost their way, and that antiracist-democratic-socialist-communism is actually the preferred method of governance for Christians, always has been; it's a train to get on, reclaiming these roots.

[pibsboots]

I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.

It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.

When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.

Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.

Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.

I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.

But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.

With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.

If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.

Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.

Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.

Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.

It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.

All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.

There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.

[sodacowboy]

genuinely don’t understand how people are close to their siblings

[lastoneout]

I keep thinking about all of the disabled activists and people before me who stranded themselves on the 4th floor of buildings for weeks and crawled up stairs and fought with airline staff and schools and doctors and refused to stop existing in the face of injustice and bigotry no matter how big and scary and hopeless it seemed. Every time I get angry and scared the protests that lead to the creation of the ADA pop up again and remind me that disabled people are so much fucking stronger than anyone has ever given us credit for, and I can't help but be proud of that. And I know not all disabled people feel like we should take pride in our disabilities and have flags or whatever, but I think not just living, but thriving, in spite of a world that wants us dead and gone, in the face of both illness and persecution, and how we've not only bought ourselves forward, but uplifted the disabled people around us, secured more equal futures for everyone who will come after, and truly changed the way so many abled people have seen us for the better is something to be damn fucking proud of.

We have always been here and we always will be, there will never be a world without disabled people because being disabled is not bad, it's a natural part of the human experience and yeah it sucks some times but even when it sucks we have fought to build beautiful, unique, happy lives with people, both like us and not, and that should be celebrated.

The first sign of human civilization is the healed femur. The body of the profoundly disabled person who would have needed help to even just eat being carefully laid to rest after decades of a full, happy life. The medicinal plants showing even before we were entirely human we were doing what we could to not just survive, but alleviate suffering while we're at it. Above everything, evolution selected not the baby who can walk and eat and be quiet, but the one that can ask for help.

Disabled people are not just angry cockroach motherfuckers who refuse to die, we are proof of humanity's HUMANITY. Proof that natural selection selected a species that takes care of each other. From healed femurs and medicinal plants to vaccines and IVs and insulin to now, we are driven to help one another, we are at our strongest when we don't leave our most vulnerable behind. And I am living proof of that. My mother is living proof of that. Every disabled and chronically and/or mentally ill person I know is living proof of that.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but will carry that shred of humanity's true nature inside me like it's my fucking soul. I am scared and angry and hurt, but I have a lifetime's experience being scared and angry, and I can shake off the kind of pain that would make Atlas crumble to dust like it's nothing but a stiff fucking breeze. Disabled people have always been here, turning fear and anger and pain into joy and beauty and connection, and I'm not going to let everyone who came before me down. I'm not going to give up. Not now, not ever.

It's okay if you're disabled and you've hit your limit, you're too scared and tired and hurt, I won't blame you. But I won't abandon you, either. I might not be able to right all of the wrongs in the world, but I'll be strong, I'll carry all of you with me, I will not give up.

As I've said before, society hates a cripple who won't die, so we must spite them and live anyway.

Please, live anyway. I know if anyone can, it's us.