#KM2

[disguisedbee]

No time to explain! Take my hand.

Or, in other words, I drew Quill again. Please ignore the proportions and the background hand... Actually, both hands... And everything else...

Ugh.

[aero-bourne]

A little doodle for @disguisedbee 's fanfic

Based loosely on the EMT students I've interacted with lol

[sprachgefuehle]

And this is the Hambach pit. At 45.7 square kilometres (!) it's the biggest open brown coal pit in all of Europe and the place where bagger 293 is used.

Several entire villages had to be relocated for this pit, including villages that were over 1000 years old.

For over 20 years, activists have been fighting its expansion with direct action and permanent protest camps in order to protect Hambach forest which was supposed to be cut down. In 2020, they achieved total legal protection for the remaining forest, but only after they had been met with police violence year after year.

Hambi is also where one of my favourite protest videos ever was filmed:

These baggers are not neutral technology, they are negatively impacting people and nature and it's the only thing they are built to do.

This shot of a giant excavator in Germany slowly making its way to a coal site 25km away. [March, 1999]

[larsbrstuen]

Velkommen til Nordre Land

Ekte landsbyliv og levende grender

Fra fjord til fjell

Nordre Land kommune er 955 km2 og ligger i nordenden av Randsfjorden og strekker seg nordover til Synnfjell med kommunens høyeste punkt Spåtind 1414 moh. Nordre Land har et variert næringsliv, byggeklare tomter og godt barnehage- og skoletilbud. 

Kommunefakta fra SSB

Kommuneblomst

[genuinelyshallow]

Israel has done what we all predicted and warned about. Simple, pure evil. They pushed Palestinians by carpet bombing everywhere till they all had to go to the least bombed place (No, Rafah was never completely safe. They were bombed there, too, to a horrific degree), and then, after cramming what nears a two million civilians with about 600 thousand children, they are asking them to leave... to where?! Nowhere. They are just saying leave. So then, when they kill them all, they can say 'Oh, we warned them'

It was all predicted, and no one did a thing

Rafah is now the most densely populated place in the world, with a population of about 1.5 million and prehaps more in 64 km2. About 25 miles squere.

25 miles squere

A marathon is 26 miles straight. You can at least run through Rafah in length once and in width twice and pass the 1.5 million Palestinians. That's how crammed it is. With no where to run

[webzineculturemarche]

Tour du Lac de Vassivière : Victoire de Julien Ferreira et Elodie Besnier-Kervern

Crédit photo : Brune Lacroix Julien Ferreira s’est imposé ce samedi 22 juin 2024 sur la marche nordique du Tour du Lac de Vassivière, épreuve inscrite au calendrier du Marche Nordique Tour. La 27ème édition du Tour du Lac de Vassivière a rencontré un beau succès avec un record de participation : 1.500 inscrits sur les différentes courses (marche nordique, course nature, Tour du lac), dont 300…

[anxiouslittlecarrot]

The Mercator projection really elongates the northern hemisphere specially because of the way the landmasses are distributed. We use that one conventionally because obviously Europe and the US like it better. It gets really obvious when you look at Greenland, which in reality is a quarter of the size of Brazil

Btw, on thetruesize.com you can drag and drop country maps to compare their actual dimensions, it’s pretty cool!

As an Australian I love the whole "Australia is a death trap full of vicious deadly animals" cultural myth. Every place has some deadly animals in it who will fuck you over if you don't understand them; we're not more dangerous than anywhere else. BUT we get to look badarse by existing when people pretend we are. No downsides.

[armatofu]

[reasonsforhope]

Camera-trapping data revealed in a new study show a steady recovery of tigers in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex over the past two decades.

The tiger recovery has been mirrored by a simultaneous increase in the numbers of the tigers’ prey animals, such as sambar deer and types of wild cattle.

The authors attribute the recovery of the tigers and their prey to long-term efforts to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.

Experts say the lessons learnt can be applied to support tiger recovery in other parts of Thailand and underscore the importance of the core WEFCOM population as a vital source of tigers repopulating adjacent landscapes.

The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data.

Thailand is the final stronghold of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), the subspecies having been extirpated from neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the past decade due to poaching, habitat loss and indiscriminate snaring...

Fewer than 200 tigers are thought to remain in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, only a handful of which are sufficiently undisturbed and well-protected to preserve breeding tigers. 

The most important of these protected areas for tigers is the Huai Kha Khaeng Thung Yai (HKK-TY) UNESCO World Heritage Site, which comprises three distinct reserves out of the 17 that make up Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM). Together, these three reserves — Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thungyai Naresuan West and Thungyai Naresuan East — account for more than a third of the entire WEFCOM landscape.

Now, a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation documents a steady recovery of tigers within the HKK-TY reserves since camera trap surveys began in 2007. The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007.

Healthy tiger families  

The study findings reveal that the tiger population grew on average 4% per year in Hua Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest and longest-protected of the reserves, corresponding to an increase in tiger density from 1.3 tigers per 100 square kilometers, to 2.9 tigers/100 km2. 

“Tiger recoveries in Southeast Asia are few, and examples such as these highlight that recoveries can be supported outside of South Asia, where most of the good news [about tigers] appears to come from,” said Abishek Harihar, tiger program director for Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.

Among the camera trap footage gathered in HKK-TY over the years were encouraging scenes of healthy tiger families, including one instance of a mother tiger and her three grownup cubs lapping water and lounging in a jacuzzi-sized watering hole. The tiger family stayed by the water source for five days during the height of the dry season.

The team of researchers from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kasetsart University, and India’s Center for Wildlife Studies deployed camera traps at more than 270 separate locations throughout the HKK-TY reserves, amassing 98,305 days’ worth of camera-trap data over the 19-year study period.

Using software that identifies individual tigers by their unique stripe patterns, they built a reference database of all known tigers frequenting the three reserves. A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year [over the course of the study].

Ten of the tigers were photographed in more than one of the reserves, indicating their territories straddled the reserve boundaries. The authors conclude that each of the three reserves has a solid breeding tiger population and that, taken together, the HKK-TY landscape is a vital source of tigers that could potentially repopulate surrounding areas where they’ve been lost. This is supported by cases of known HKK-TY tigers dispersing into neighboring parts of WEFCOM and even across the border into Myanmar.

Conservation efforts pay off

Anak Pattanavibool, study co-author and Thailand country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay that population models that take into account the full extent of suitable habitat available to tigers within the reserves and the likelihood that some tigers inevitably go undetected by camera surveys indicate there could be up to 140 tigers within the HKK-YT landscape.

Anak told Mongabay the tiger recovery is a clear indication that conservation efforts are starting to pay off. In particular, long-term action to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to boost the tigers’ prey populations seem to be working, he said.

“Conservation success takes time. At the beginning we didn’t have much confidence that it would be possible [to recover tiger numbers], but we’ve been patient,” Anak said. For him, the turning point came in 2012, when authorities arrested and — with the aid of tiger stripe recognition software — prosecuted several tiger-poaching gangs operating in Huai Kha Khaeng. “These cases sent a strong message to poaching gangs and they stopped coming to these forests,” he said."

...ranger teams have detected no tiger poaching in the HKK-TY part of WEFCOM since 2013.

-via Mongabay News, July 17, 2024

[aymanfamily]

Evacuation of my Neurological Patient Brother 🥹🙏

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I’m reaching out to you today, on behalf of my husband, with an urgent request for assistance. My family is currently facing an unimaginable situation as I desperately seek to evacuate them from the ongoing crisis in Gaza including my brother-in-law, who is a neurological patient, and my mother-in-law who is 70 years old, and she is not only grapples with the challenges of aging but also shoulders the burden of chronic illnesses, including high blood pressure and diabetes. My brother-in-law's condition requires specialized medical care, as he suffers from a benign tumor in the cerebellum. He underwent two major surgeries to remove the tumor, and an internal valve was installed to drain the cerebrospinal fluid.

This operation led to a permanent disability in movement and stiffness in the muscles of the legs, especially the left side. He needs constant follow-up and permanent rehabilitation treatment, as he was receiving two physical therapy sessions weekly to relieve muscle stiffness, but since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip (more than 4 months ago), he has not received this service, and in the same context, he needs daily medication which is simply not available now in Gaza, as the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has been severely impacted by the ongoing conflict, with limited resources and a shortage of medical supplies. It is crucial that we act quickly to evacuate him to a safer location where he can receive the necessary medical attention and support, in addition to the evacuation of 6 other members of my family.

As many of you may be aware, Gaza has been experiencing a devastating humanitarian crisis for years. The recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has worsened the situation, leaving innocent civilians trapped and in desperate need of help. Knowing that we live in Gaza City, but the Israeli occupation army forced us to evacuate our homes and move to the center or south of the Gaza Strip. We left our home on 13th Oct. 2023 and moved to the center of the Gaza Strip, which was supposed to be a safe area, but then the Israeli soldiers began military operations in the central region. Therefore, we were forced to move to Rafah, living in a house including 20 members. Currently the Israeli Occupation Forces are threatening to invade Rafah, where 1.4 million people are taking refuge in an area of 55 km2. If Rafah is invaded, more massacres will be committed in addition to the massacres that were and are currently being committed in all areas of the Gaza Strip. Note that our house was directly hit by a missile, and currently the Israeli army does not allow us to return to Gaza city and to our homes, in addition to the fact that Gaza currently does not have the minimum necessities of life, such as electricity or clean water, in addition to the scarcity of resources. So, in an attempt to save our lives, we are planning to evacuate to Egypt, but the cost of evacuation is exorbitant, far beyond what our family can afford, therefore I'm setting up a GoFundMe campaign to raise USD $59,000. Here is the breakdown of the funds: • A total of USD $49,000 is estimated to cover the expenses associated with obtaining permits to leave Gaza, as well as crossing fees at Rafah, at the Egypt-Gaza border. This amount breaks down to USD$ 5,000 - $7,000 per person (7 people). • It is estimated that USD $10000 will be sufficient to cover the basic needs of my family in Egypt, including their accommodation, food, and other essential. Every donation, no matter how big or small, will make a difference. Even the smallest contribution can help us an inch closer to our goal of saving our life. Knowing that times are tough, and the invasion of Rafah could happen at any time, noting that the crossing with Egypt is in the city of Rafah, and it is possible that the crossing will be closed at any time due to the invasion, so I hope you help as soon as possible. Many thanks in advance for your contribution to save our lives.

My gofundme link:

Thanks for your trust and support ❤️🙏

[skopostheorie]

Texas is almost double the size of Germany. That's literally one state. Double the size. Of Germany.

I will say, while the diversity among US states and regions is greatly exaggerated when measured by typical metrics of "culture" (language, traditions, history), whenever I look up the land size of a state and it's bigger than Austria, I do get a little dizzy

[disguisedbee]

Find the story here!

[northameicanblog]

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada: St. John's is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. The city spans 446.04 km2 and is the easternmost city in North America (excluding Greenland). The closest European settlement is Fajã Grande, Azores, Portugal, about 2,000 km away. Wikipedia

[wachinyeya]

The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, Resighini Rancheria, and Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community designated the first ever Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA) in the U.S. along the northern California coast.

The tribes plan to steward nearly 700 mi2 (1,800 km2) of their ancestral ocean and coastal territories from the California-Oregon border to Little River near the town of Trinidad, California.

As sovereign nations, the tribes say they’re not seeking state or federal agencies’ permission to assert tribally led stewardship rights and responsibilities; rather, they want to establish cooperative relationships recognizing their inherent Indigenous governance authority.

The tribes aim to restore traditional ecological knowledge and management practices that sustained the area’s natural abundance before colonial disruption.

[wiliserie]

best iptv android box

Discover everything you need to know about the Mecool KM2 Android TV Box, including its features, performance, and more. Get the best out of your device with our comprehensive guide! Overview of the Mecool KM2 Android TV Box Brief history of the brand Mecool: Mecool is a brand that specializes in developing Android TV Boxes…etc

[bestanimal]

Round 3 - Actinopterygii - Salmoniformes

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Order: Salmoniformes

Common Name: salmonids

Families: 1 - Salmonidae (“salmon”, “trout”, “char”, “graylings”, “freshwater whitefish”, “taimens”, and “lenoks”)

Anatomy: relatively primitive appearance for teleost fish; slender bodies; rounded scales; pelvic fins placed far back with an adipose fin towards the rear of the back; forked tail fins; single row of sharp teeth

Diet: plankton, smaller fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects and larvae, tadpoles, sometimes fish eggs

Habitat: worldwide, mainly Northern hemisphere with introduced populations in the Southern hemisphere; most salmonids are migratory species which spawn and spend their juvenile years in shallow gravel beds of freshwater streams, creeks, rivers, lakes, and wetlands, migrating downstream upon maturity and spending most of their adult lives in larger bodies of water such as brackish estuaries or the sea; some are landlocked

Evolved in: Late Cretaceous

Propaganda under the cut:

Many salmonid species are considered keystone organisms important for both freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, due to their middle position in the food chain creating a biomass transfer from oceanic to inland waterbodies.

The Bering Cisco (Coregonus laurettae) may migrate as far as 2,100 kilometres (1,300 mi) inland to spawn in remote, pristine rivers. They do not feed during their migration, which is typical among salmon, but rare in whitefishes. It takes 4-9 years for young Bering Cisco to reach maturity.

The Pollan (Coregonus pollan) is a freshwater whitefish known only from five Irish lakes: Lough Neagh, Lower Lough Erne, Lough Ree, Lough Dergand Lough Allen. The Pollan is endangered, facing competition from introduced, invasive species such as Northern Pike (Esox lucius), Roach (Rutilus rutilus), and Zebra Mussel (Dreissena polymorpha). The population of Pollan relies on captive breeding and restocking of its endemic Irish lakes for survival.

Bear Lake is a freshwater lake on the Idaho–Utah border in the Western United States, about 109 square miles (280 km2) in size. Bear Lake has a high rate of endemism (native species not naturally found anywhere else), many of them being Salmoniformes. These include the Bonneville Cisco (Prosopium gemmifer), Bonneville Whitefish (Prosopium spilonotus), and Bear Lake Whitefish (Prosopium abyssicola), as well as a unique population of Bonneville Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus virginalis utah). There have been attempts to transplant these species to other areas without success, with the exception of Bear Lake’s Cutthroat Trout strain. Invasive Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) have been introduced to Bear Lake, in an attempt to give fishermen more variety, but the Lake Trout both feed on and compete with the endemic fish.

The Inconnu, also called Sheefish, Ak Balyk, or Beloribitsa (Stenodus leucichthys), is a freshwater whitefish originally native to the Caspian Sea. However, it is extinct in the wild, and exists only in fish hatcheries, with populations only maintained by stocking. The Inconnu used to migrate 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) upstream from the Caspian to their main spawning grounds, the Kama River, until dam construction, particularly of the Volgograd Dam in 1959, completely impeded the migration and natural reproduction of this species. There have been no efforts to reestablish their natural migration routes. The introduction of invasive Mnemiopsis comb jellies into the Caspian, which compete with the Inconnu for prey, also contributed to their decline.

Some populations of Nelma (Stenodus nelma) (image 3) do not migrate, spending their entire life in freshwater instead.

Like Bear Lake, the much larger (and MUCH deeper) Lake Baikal of Russia also has endemic salmonids. These include the Omul (Coregonus migratorius), Baikal Whitefish (Coregonus baicalensis), Baikal Black Grayling (Thymallus baicalensis), and Baikal White Grayling (Thymallus brevipinnis). The Omul specifically is considered a delicacy, and is the object of one of the largest commercial fisheries on Lake Baikal.

As they are highly sensitive to changes in water quality, Graylings (genus Thymallus) may be considered indicator species: a species which can reveal the qualitative status of the environment. The Arctic Grayling (Thymallus arcticus) (image 2) has largely disappeared from many of the Southernmost parts of their former range.

The Arctic Grayling is one of the main food sources for the Iñupiat People of the Alaska North Slope.

Lake Ohrid, which straddles the mountainous border between the southwestern part of North Macedonia and eastern Albania, is yet another lake with endemic salmonids. Lake Ohrid is one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, giving its 200+ endemic species plenty of time and room to speciate! However, both of Lake Ohrid’s salmonids, the Ohrid Trout (Salmo letnica) and the Belvica or Belushka (Salmo ohridanus), are endangered due to heavy fishing, intentional hybridization, and degradation of water quality.

Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) are very popular as a food fish, and overfishing as well as habitat destruction has impacted the population in some areas. As a result, the species is the subject of conservation efforts in several countries, as well as the focus of aquaculture (fish farming) in many countries. At present, Norway produces over 50% of the farmed world supply of Atlantic Salmon.

The Siberian Taimen (Hucho taimen) is the largest salmonid, with an average length of 70 - 120 cm (2.3 - 4 ft) and weight of 15 to 30 kg (33 to 66 lb). The largest ever recorded, supposedly caught in the Kotui River in Russia in 1943, was 210 cm (6.9 ft) long and weighed 105 kg (231 lb). Siberian Taimen can live up to 55 years or more, and adults can go after terrestrial prey such as rodents and birds.

One Mongolian legend tells of a gigantic Taimen trapped in river ice. Starving herders were able to survive the winter by hacking off pieces of its flesh. In the spring, the ice melted and the giant taimen climbed onto the land, tracked down the herders, and ate them all.

The Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) is known by many common names, including Mackinaw, Namaycush, Lake Char, Touladi, Togue, Laker, Grey Trout, Siscowet, Paperbelly, Lean, and Mud Hen. Lake Trouts are known to sometimes naturally hybridize with the Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) (image 1), and these hybrids are called Splakes (male brook with female lake) or Brookinaw (male lake with female brook). These hybrids are normally sterile, but self-sustaining populations exist in some lakes.

The Jaunet (Salvelinus neocomensis) was a deepwater char species endemic to Lake Neuchâtel of Switzerland. The last specimen was fished up in 1904; research undertaken in the 1950s and 2003 failed to find evidence of the survival of this species after the last reported specimen. Deepwater char are highly sensitive to changes in the quality of the water, and the extinction of the Jaunet may have been due to economic development around the lake.

The critically endangered Sakhalin Taimen (Parahucho perryi) of Russia and Japan is the only living member of its genus. It is one of the largest, most ancient salmon species, with fossils of the genus dating back to the mid-Miocene. Degradation of the Sakhalin Taimen’s environment by logging, oil exploration, and change of land use to agriculture have contributed to its decline, and the fish is also caught as bycatch and by recreational anglers. Present populations are estimated to be less than 5% of their historic levels.

Pacific Salmon (genus Oncorhynchus) are known for dying after they spawn, typically after a migration back to the habitat in which they were born. Some, such as the Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) (image 4 and gif), also go through significant bodily changes during spawning, changing colors and growing humped backs and a hooked snout, and adopt unique mating rituals and hierarchies. Females will select, prepare, and defend a nest site until they die or are displaced, while males fight over females or sneak into their nests to fertilize their eggs. Males must make the decision whether to invest energy in fighting for a female or for longevity on the spawning grounds. They do not feed during spawning, often for months before they reach the spawning site, and the high energy cost of migration, courtship, and reproduction eventually leads to their death, their bodies feeding the environment that their children will call home.