bismuthbookshelf

[bismuthbookshelf]

Another Aussie here: we absolutely do have Hershey's stuff and Dr Pepper here, it's just that they're not that popular (and you can usually only buy Dr Pepper in places that sell American/international foods). (Also are you actually telling me Maltesers aren't a thing in America??? What???)

Also I actually wouldn't consider Sprite a lemonade either, because it's a drink with lemon and lime flavouring. Lemonade is lemonade, and says so on the bottle, whether its Kirks or Schweppes or homebrand or whatever. (Also random thing about lemonade: there's kinda sorta an 'old wives tale' that room temp lemonade (as in the fizzy stuff) is good for sickness/nausea. Pretty sure it's false, but my mum often gave me lemonade if I had like a stomach bug/had been vomiting, and if nothing else, it was nice to sip on to get some of the bad tastes out of my mouth)

an australian walks up to a bar

[bismuthbookshelf]

Swiftie Ask Game Either: reblog so your followers can inbox you a question, or answer the whole list!

Favourite album?

If you were Taylor for a day, what would you do?

Tell us a song you listen to when you're happy/excited

Favourite lyric?

Which era was your first?

Tell us the last song you listened to

Have you ever met Taylor?

Do you collect any items?

If you could change an album cover, which would you pick?

Rank the albums

Do you own any merch? (Fanmade or official)

Tell us a song you listen to when you need comfort

Do you have swiftie friends?

If you were a song, which would you be?

Have you seen Taylor perform live?

Tell us a song you listen to when you're with friends

Have you ever created fanart/edits? (Tell us your tag so we can see!)

Which cat is your favourite?

Rank the Taylor's Versions

Do you have a favourite blog? Tag them <3

[bismuthbookshelf]

I've sometimes thought that if I ever got the chance to do stand-up comedy at an open mic night or something like that, I would base it around the "anti-bullying strategy" that my former high school had when I was enrolled there, because it was, quite frankly, a joke.

[bismuthbookshelf]

Humpback whales are honestly genuinely a massive success story in the world of conservation. In fact I learned about it in a class at university, and literally just dug through my lecture notes (still saved on my laptop) to find the info.

So basically, there was a lot of awful whaling being done around both Australia and Antarctica. Between the years 1909 and 2000, approximately 2 million large whales were removed from Antarctic waters, and it's considered to be one of the greatest industrial slaughters of wildlife in history.

In 1946, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), was introduced, in response to the collapse of whale fisheries, but they weren't initially that great at regulating the industry or conserving whale populations, due to not really having any way to effectively enforce their policies. This was especially the case when not all whale catches were being reported to them, such as in the early 1960s, when 22,000 humpback whales were killed south of New Zealand and eastern Australia, but only 400 catches were reported. The problem? A Russian ship, the Slava, conducting its own whaling operations, and staying unidentified/hidden due to the circumstances of the then-ongoing Cold War. By the mid 1960s, only an estimated 203-272 were left in the Australian population, and whaling practices in Australia began to dwindle away, as whales themselves were forgotten about.

But then, in the 1970s, a few whales were noticed migrating past Point Lookout, at North Stradbroke Island (off south-east Queensland, and the second-largest sand island in the world). And by the 1980s, people began to survey them.

It was very basic surveying at first, with people just using binoculars, but later surveys involved the use of theodolites (also sometimes used for construction and roadworks) to track groups and avoid double-counting. (I remember one of my teachers telling us about a guy who had a holiday home on the island, and his house was in a perfect spot so that he could literally just watch the whales from his kitchen window, and in fact he helped collect a lot of scientifically-important data that way. Sadly I don't remember his name and I didn't type any of it in my notes).

Obviously not all whale species can recover so easily, and many are currently vulnerable or endangered. But humpbacks, as it turns out, are a resilient bunch, and once humans stopped mass killing them, their numbers began to grow! They're also quite tolerant of a lot of human disturbance/interference, which helpd make them great focal points for whale-watching, which in turn leads to more people wanting to help protect and look after them.

Of course, there are still some threats to humpback whales, as is the case for most other marine wildlife, but their numbers continue to grow and grow, and in fact we're not sure whether they've surpassed their typical carrying capacity or whether they still haven't hit it yet!

[bismuthbookshelf]

[Unsolicited nudis: ongoing spread of two non-native nudibranchs along Australia’s east coast]

Forbes et al. (2025)

[bismuthbookshelf]

HEEELPPP a six year old just came into the nature center and she had SO many questions. it's pouring rain and nobody else is here but her family so non-stop for an hour she had my full attention. by the end of it i had half my field guides open to various insects and mammals and birds and she just kept going.

she became extremely fixated on bigfoot and asked about the ways people try to prove its existence until I was explaining DNA to her, and she asked such thoughtful questions! she said, "what if someone found a skull they thought might be bigfoot, and there was hair left over. could we use DNA from hair to prove it's bigfoot?" but before i could answer, she said, "but if you don't have a living bigfoot that you KNOW is bigfoot, to take hair from, how could you know this hair from this dead bigfoot is really bigfoot hair?" !!!! what an awesome question!!

so this 6 year old and i started discussing control groups in scientific studies and she was so engaged!!

then the bigfoot talk led to discussions of extinction which led to dinosaurs, and she said, "what I don't understand is why people say dinosaurs are extinct, but they also say that dinosaurs became birds. how could they all be extinct if they became something else?"

she asked questions that really challenged me in that figuring out how to answer them on the fly in a way that's digestible wasn't totally straightforward.

a few minutes ago, the adult with her said it was time to go and get ice cream and she said, "can't you see I have 1,000 more questions to ask? i have to just bloooowwww them all out now so you don't have to answer them later."

I saw my younger self in her so much LOL. They said they're coming back tomorrow and I said, "I won't be here, but my colleague knows even more than I do!" And she said, "Well, I hope so. He's gonna need to."

[bismuthbookshelf]

[bismuthbookshelf]

[bismuthbookshelf]

Do you not want to give your money to another soulless live action remake whose only true purpose is money-making? Would you prefer to give some support (for free!) to some creators who deserve it way more?

Presenting: VoicePlay! They're an independent acapella group on YouTube (like Pentatonix but cooler) who always put 110% into all of their stuff and it shows! They've just recently released their first ever original song, about vikings who hunt dragons, and it's extremely cool and worth checking out! (Bonus: one of them can even sound scarily like a dragon himself!)

[bismuthbookshelf]

50% exactly! I'm pretty happy with that honestly

I made a quiz about some of my favorite animals :)

[bismuthbookshelf]

Oh boy how do people answer these type of questions? I haven't had an all-time favourite song since I was like 13, maybe! I can't even name a favourite musical!

But since I do want to respond to this somehow, and because it's a Swiftie mutual who tagged me, I've decided to just name a favourite song (or at least one of my favourite songs) from the 5 most recent Taylor Swift albums! (As I'm quite fond of them and I started being a Swiftie when music videos for Lover singles were being released)

Lover: Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince

Folklore: The Last Great American Dynasty

Evermore: Champagne Problems

Midnights: Mastermind

The Tortured Poets Department: Florida!!!

(Any of my mutuals can do this also if they wish

Ask game :D List five of your favorite or top songs, then send this ask to the last ten people in your notifications.

Drive - The Weeknd

Heart By Heart - Joe Jonas

Need - Taylor

Headphones On- Addison Rae

Robin - Taylor

Just gonna tag instead of send:

@trustlife2day @notesonartistry @mangapicasso @bismuthbookshelf @missybellyott @noproof-youjustknow @dreamyeyedrose @dressforvillains

[bismuthbookshelf]

Aw thank you friend <3 You can chat to me anytime, through either this blog or through Acaplaya-Musings! :)

@haethealhell you're definitely cherryblossom :D

@fallingblueroses lavender, but like in a platonic way, and also banana (Meme Queen!)

@ambular-d Ash! :)

@thatonepointbraincell lint /lh (+ ash)

[bismuthbookshelf]

okay I’ll say it nicer:

australia was colonised according to the myth of terra nullius (or empty land). ever since the very early days of colonialism, the land has been framed as something untameable and unliveable. this has justified acts of violence against the first peoples here, in that they are seen as non-people. it has justified the destruction of sacred land in the goal of making australia look more european. (an example: our capital city contains a man-made lake that is now nothing better than a fetid carp pond. it’s disgusting and unnatural). basically, the idea of “taming australia’ has justified endless harm

“everything in australia is weird and dangerous” is not just some silly meme phrase, it is something that arcs back to the very beginning of white settlers laying claim to ‘australia’. and personally I am very sick of seeing it thrown around like it means nothing