#ecosystem development

[bitcoinmasterhub]

Berachain Launches BERA Token Airdrop with $632M Value

Berachain’s BERA token airdrop, valued at $632 million, rewards community members as the decentralized network goes live. Claim your tokens via Metamask and OKX Wallet #bitcoin #crypto #kripto #token #defi #memecoin #dogecoin #solana #btc

The launch of Berachain’s native token, BERA, has sparked significant attention in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, with the network preparing to go live later this week. The total initial supply of BERA stands at 500 million tokens, with 48.9% allocated to community engagement efforts, including airdrops, ecosystem development, and research initiatives. As part of this, Berachain plans…

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Endangered Species Highlight: The Water Cone Wizard

(inspired by this post)

[inksandpensblog]

I haven’t caught up on the live yet but I saw names for the mercs being thrown around, so I’m just gonna let y’all know that I will continue using whatever names strike my fancy for the mercs whether they’re the names Alan’s team uses for them or not.

[cameoliob]

Does Eriss have any hobbies outside of sports? Or a favorite subject in school?

OMG HIII THANK YOU FOR ASKINNNGGG I love having an excuse to yap about her omg

So hobby-wise, i really cannot stress how much this girl loves grav ball. I mean it's unnatural. Like Kallus and Zeb have TRIEDDD to get her into other things but she simply yearns for the court

To be fair, though, sports don't take up ALL of her time, and in the handful of hours a week she'll get to herself, she's probably just curling up in bed and reading a book or something (if you're wondering, she prefers thriller novels) In her teens onwards she's not really an extrovert by any means; she does have friends, of course, but you won't be seeing her at any social hours by any means.

Now, I can very easily imagine that Kallus and Zeb would want to instill a love for education in their kid, right? Teach them how to ask questions and find answers based in fact so that they dont make bad, ill infomed descisions that they'll have to reap the consequences of later in life? (cough cough, Kallus, cough cough). Eriss was a pretty naturally inquisitive kid, and I couldn't imagine a world where they wouldn't foster that?

So basically she's an academic fucking weapon if there ever was one. I mean, she's a competitive workaholic (hmmmm I wonder who she got that from hmmmm) who genuinely enjoys school (which, tbh, is a little bit terrifying but i made her like that so ig i cant really nitpick) so it's really a no brainer that she's an academic force of fucking nature

My girl graduates college as the Salutatorian from her graduating class with a bachelors in science for chemical engineering (RAHHHH WOMEN IN STEM RAHHHHH) (and Kallus and Zeb are obviously the proudest parents in the whole galaxy, ofc)

TLDR: Eriss Kallus-Orrelios is a woman in stem who likes grav-ball and thriller novels

[ursidanger]

Nothing compares to the bond shared between a loyal henchman and their boss

(Indago created by @fabba-banna; Juniper created by me)

[serpentface]

What exactly are living gods in the blightseed universe?

Ok here's the (DANGEROUSLY vestigial at this point) Meta Deeplore:

There is a material form of energy that is utilized by biological bodies essentially as an animating force. This IS the vaguely defined, extremely ambiguous magic in the setting. It is what produces the actual experience of Consciousness and can be basically considered 1:1 with conscious experience. All life utilizes this energy (whether actually conscious life in the traditional sense or not).

It cannot be created or destroyed, and rather follows pathways of dispersal between one material plane and a parallel plane. This parallel plane is 'the ether' 'the dreamlands' etc, and has its own matter. Discrete entities from the dreamlands are essentially formed as a byproduct of consciousness and, when interacted with, are deeply susceptible to the influence of conscious Thought (they are essentially matter organized By consciousness and can be reorganized by consciousness)

These are the entities that can become living gods. Dreamlands fauna occasionally slips into prime material reality, at which point they are directly under the influence of consciousness and can be transformed. Dreamlands fauna in of itself is not directly perceivable but produces a sense of Presence, like the feeling of being watched when alone in the wilderness, a 'third man effect', a sense of inexplicable awe or fear, seeing shadows from the corner of your eye, etc. The combination of their tangible effects and their susceptibility to consciousness creates a self-reinforcing cycle that produces living gods.

IE: if one is on a forest and people experience the sensation of its presence, belief that there is some entity there may develop. This will follow the lines of the cultural worldview- say there are already beliefs in spectral hounds that encounter travelers at night, it might be interpreted as a location-specific hound, given a name and identity through stories. This in turn causes the dreamlands fauna to physically embody that form and the assumed qualities, and people will start having absolute materially real encounters with it, thus reinforcing the initial beliefs that created it and generating new elements of the mythology. This is what a living god is.

They need persistent, localized, and coherent beliefs to hold their forms. If a village creates a living god and is then wiped out in a disaster, the god will gradually lose its form and return to its initial state of a sense of Presence. This is also a limiting factor on the 'size' and power of a living god, if an entire religion formed around it and became a widespread phenomena, the living god itself cannot 'keep up'. It is sustained on direct and localized interactions, so belief becoming widely dispersed (especially if the localized belief is lost) will cause it to gradually become less discrete. The effect of this property is that living gods are almost always minor deities or spirits tied to a specific location by a specific nearby culture. A lot of deities in larger religions may have once had a living god component that is now indiscrete.

The living god of the Ur-tree is an unusual exception in that it was created over millennia, basically by the survival instincts of the Plants it interacts with, and has held its form over hundreds of millions of years due to this being ubiquitous and un-susceptible to cultural change. The only thing that could 'kill it' is if its forest was entirely destroyed.

So 99% of living gods can be described as thoughtforms created by the process of folkloric/religious development. They are created BY people and not the other way around, and nothing about their nature confirms or denies the existence of other deities or etc.

And yeah I'm going to be 100% real I am REALLY tempted to dump even this extremely ambiguous magical element like it is soooooooooooooooo fucking NOT important to the setting at this point. I've kind of allowed 'literal god entities created by mortal belief' to be just a tiny part of the world's fabric by their nature, like it works within the worldbuilding for such a hugely significant concept to ultimately be insignificant in the overall framework, so I COULD just Leave It but idk. If it were not for me wanting to still have my big fucking god tree and a talking dog as an actual character it would be out of here soooo fast..........

[hana-bobo-finch]

beautiful creature keepin herself nice and tidy

[girderednerve]

Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don’t realize is AI-generated.

With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla’s entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use.

“Investigating these authors, their book covers, their social media, etc takes A LOT OF TIME, especially with the volume of questionable material increasing month to month (and that's not including the sheer amount of legitimate books published each month in adult fiction that I'm looking at),” one librarian who asked to remain anonymous so she could talk openly about her job, told me. “Is it the best use of my time doing this work on top of my other duties when customers may or may not care? And with the rising multitudes of AI generated content, will there come a point where it just ‘is what it is?’”

This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop. Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry. While the term now encompasses what seems like AI-generated content as well, it predates the rise of generative AI, and also refers to the glut of low quality, often self-published ebooks or book “summaries” that are common on Hoopla. As some librarians told me, the sheer quantity of books in Hoopla’s service makes it seem more valuable because it offers such a large number of books, but in reality that number is misleadingly inflated by this slurry.

Several of the librarians I talked to said that they are worried about discussing [the problems raised by Hoopla's weak, unclear selection policies, including the 2022 inclusion of explicitly white nationalist texts,] because of the growing hostility towards libraries and groups like Moms for Liberty demanding that books about LGBTQ rights, race, and ethnicity be removed from libraries. One the one hand, librarians want to curate their collections and make sure their patrons are getting access to quality information. On the other hand, they don’t want people to think that they are trying to censor what materials patrons can access in way that’s comparable to what organizations like Moms for Liberty want. None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information.

[brothermoth]

Rdr2 set my standards too high I can't play any other semi realistic games without going "damn this is not nearly as beautiful as rdr2" someone should euthanize me, I think

[cruyffista]

essential listening 👆

[asordidbarwere]

Scavengers Reign fucks so so so so hard. I wish I were a fly on the wall in the concept art department there is not a SINGLE concept in this show that hasn't blown my fucking mind with its creativity 👌

[asgardian--angels]

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time and effort to put together the long climate/environment post, especially the online resources. I've wanted to replace the neglected/dead non-native plants at my place with native plants for months, but didn't know where to start my search for species except to walk around my local nature preserve trying to find something that isn't invasive lol. I'll be able to start (re)introducing native plants this month because of you :-)

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad the post has been helpful and inspiring. If you'd like more directed guidance on native plants, I can probably point you in the right direction if you can give me a general area to work with (state would suffice!). In general, go for keystone species- those that are common in your area and support many kinds of insects- or pollinator favorites, or host plants for rare/imperiled butterflies/bees/moths.

[thecraftgremlin]

Goddamn, Scavengers Reign is a good show!

It’s got everything! Gorgeous backgrounds, amazing creature design, an honest to god butch lesbian in the main cast, an evil psychic salamander baby, body horror, a robot gaining consciousness by literally becoming an organic life form, it’s Good Shit!!!!

[gremland]

the wildest thing about coming back to fandom tumblr after a hot minute is that now there are fucking...bots??? like character ai bots??? people are using or requesting instead of engaging with each other or actually creating something themselves like. idk i try to be a very live and let live fandom enjoyer but this truly rubs me the wrong way and i am judging you about it

[manishpathak]

🌱 What does #EcoIntegrity mean?

It's about healthy, whole ecosystems where nature thrives!

What does a truly healthy forest, a vibrant coral reef, or a thriving wetland look and feel like to you? That's the essence of Eco Integrity – the ability of an ecosystem to maintain its natural richness and function.

What aspects of nature's integrity do you value most, and what local examples come to mind? Share your thoughts below! 👇

[hellfyre]

i love spending so much time developing world building stuff like the ecosystem and culture of a fake early 2000's exclusive gore forum for my horror novel instead of actually writing chapters lol