elsquibbonator

[elsquibbonator]

[elsquibbonator]

Eco-Tainment: Beep

I bought this book at my town library's book sale earlier this month. I was taken in by the glowing reviews on the cover, one of which compared it to Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures, a book I enjoyed. So I assumed I would enjoy this book too. Unfortunately, I did not-- at least, not to the extent I was hoping I would.

Beep is narrated by the titular squirrel monkey, who befriends a girl named Inga (who can understand his speech, though exactly how isn't made clear) and follows her from his Costa Rican home to New York. There, he attends a speech by Greta Thunberg, visits the Bronx Zoo, and ultimately is told by the other animals at the zoo that he is to fulfill a prophecy by saving the Earth from its greatest threat-- humans. After freeing all the animals from the zoo and forming an uprising against the humans, they band together to help Beep find his long-lost lover, while at the same time fulfilling a prophecy that he will kill off most humans and allow animals to reclaim the world.

It's a fascinating premise, but Beep mostly squanders it. The first half, which consists of Beep adapting to life in New York and discovering a world he never knew existed, is enjoyable, but by the time we get to the the second half-- where he leads an animal revolution against humanity and ultimately fulfills a magical prophecy that kills off the majority of the human race-- I'm left wondering what the writer's intent was.

The book suffers from an extremely reductive, black and white view of environmentalism, so lacking in nuance that it almost borders on parody. Zoos are just animal prisons. Humans are evil down to the last man, woman, and child, except for a handful of "sensitives" who can live in harmony with nature. Technology is evil, no exceptions. This is what people who hate environmental fiction think the entire genre is like.

Beep wastes a potentially interesting premise with a misguided, albeit well-meaning, environmental message.

[elsquibbonator]

i will never be against piracy ever but i also need physical media to remain

[elsquibbonator]

IKEA ecology

Most environmentalists agree to some extent about what the goal of conserving nature is—to preserve the world’s ecosystems in more or less the state they existed in prior to being disturbed by humans. In theory, that sounds pretty simple. In practice, it’s anything but. Many of today’s supposedly “unspoiled” ecosystems are actually operating with skeleton crews, their largest and most impressive species having gone extinct thousands of years ago. For example, North America no longer has mammoths, ground sloths, wild horses, saber-toothed cats and mastodons.

One proposed solution to this is the idea of rewilding—introducing species that fill similar niches to extinct ones, or outright re-creating extinct species via cloning or generic modifications. Earlier this month a company called Colossal announced that they had re-created dire wolves, a species extinct since the ice age.

If that sounds like science fiction, it is. The animals Colossal made were not dire wolves— they were grey wolves with slightly modified DNA. It would not be realistic to expect them to fill the niche of dire wolves. This is a mindset I call “IKEA ecology”, after the big box furniture store whose instructions are usually along the lines of “insert tab A into slot B”. The logic, then, is that if you insert “species A” into “niche B”, the ecosystem will continue to function just as it did when the original occupant of “Niche B” existed. And that’s just not true.

When it comes to re-creating ecosystems that have lost their most important species, there is no substitute for actually bringing those species back. And in the case of the North American megafauna, we have no idea of that is even possible.

[elsquibbonator]

chicken jockey being the last possible 4chan post is fucking hilarious but there's so many amounts of comedic irony to it.

it's like a tyrant dying from falling over a medium sized brick wall. humiliating end.

[elsquibbonator]

Ahhh, there’s the obvious conclusion.

If we can de-extinct* species, surely there’s no point in worrying about endangered species anymore! We can bring them back anytime!

*depending on your definition of de-extinction.

[elsquibbonator]

A sign of the times, I'm afraid.

wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating

[elsquibbonator]

A Dire Issue

It might come as a surprise to many of you that we are already fully capable of re-creating extinct animals. In fact, the first (and, admittedly, so far only) extinct animal ever cloned was a Pyrenean ibex in 2003. The baby ibex lived for only seven minutes before dying of a lung defect, but there's no doubt about it; the technology works. So when Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based genetic engineering company, announced today that they had created a living dire wolf, a species extinct since the Pleistocene, many major news outlets took them at their word.

But what Colossal has created is not a dire wolf. In fact, it doesn't even contain any dire wolf DNA. What they have done is genetically engineer a gray wolf to exhibit traits the dire wolf is thought to have had-- but which it might not have actually had, since as per the latest research dire wolves seem to have been more related to dholes and African wild dogs than to gray wolves. In short, Colossal's creation is not the revival of an extinct animal, and it is dishonest for them to claim it is.

This is problematic on multiple levels. For genuine advocates of de-extinction, it casts the entire movement into disrepute by making it look like a fraud. For paleontologists, it is frustrating because it creates a false image of what these animals looked like in life that disagrees with what we know from fossils. An actual clone, or even an accurate genetic reconstruction, of a dire wolf would look nothing like the animal Colossal has bred.

But many people who have seen the headlines about Colossal's work are convinced that they have made a real dire wolf. Colossal's other planned efforts at re-creating extinct animals fall into the same category-- a "mammoth" that is essentially an Asian elephant engineered to have thicker fur, a dodo that is little more than a genetically altered pigeon, and so on. As the Pyrenean ibex proved, actual de-extinction is possible, and if anything Colossal is a distraction from it.

A pack of dire wolves squares off with a pack of gray wolves over a bison carcass. Given the significant difference between these two species, slightly modifying a gray wolf's genome will not result in a dire wolf.

[elsquibbonator]

Ace myself, and reblogging this for everyone else who feels left out of queer discourse.

dear aros, aces, demis, and all aspecs, the queer community is nothing without you

sincerely, queer allos

[elsquibbonator]

This is only relevant if you or someone you know lives in North Carolina:

A candidate for NC Supreme Court, Jefferson Griffin, lost by a small margin, confirmed by two recounts. He’s suing the Board of Elections, arguing that 60,273 early votes should be nullified. All of these early voters showed their ID and the votes are legal. (For some reason, these voters didn’t have their social security number or driver’s license number in their voter file. Neither the state Board of Elections nor state law says that this makes them ineligible.)

The names of the voters that are contested are publicly available, but most of the voters don’t know they’re on the list and that their vote is in danger of being nullified.

What to do? Visit this website:

Scroll down to the search tool. Search your name and the names of any family or friends who voted in North Carolina in November. (You can narrow it down by County.)

Keep scrolling until you get to the map. If you live in NC, zoom in on your neighborhood — you can’t see the names associated with dots on the map, but you can see if there are people in your neighborhood who should be alerted. If so, you can spread the word.

If you or a friend is on the list, there are instructions for what action to take (calling your local Board of Elections, emailing Jefferson Griffin to ask your name be removed from the list, etc.)

Share this website widely!

[elsquibbonator]

what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?

would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?

[elsquibbonator]

NYT has been discouraging reporters from sharing photos of luigi mangione - not due to concerns for his safety but to dissuade sympathy - and refuses to post his alleged manifesto in full. and today, they published an opinion by bret stephens about how brian thompson is the "real working class hero" of this story.

reddit deleted luigi's account, which was completely innocuous and consisted mostly of him giving out advice in health subreddits. they're also deleting any post that includes his alleged manifesto and banning users for sharing it.

luigi yelled that this was "an insult to the intelligence of the american people" while he was being dragged by police and news pundits are framing it as a deranged and violent outburst. news media are picking apart details of his life to paint him as a cold-blooded and mentally ill individual. even something as innocent as playing "among us" with friends is being framed as some insidious look into an assassin's disturbed psyche, ffs.

news media are also capitalizing on luigi's supposed "bizarre and impossible to understand" politics as an obvious way to paint him as a scary individual when the guy is... a centrist, at most. whose views are similar to those of your average college-educated white guy.

multiple news media also keep harping on about how luigi comes from a rich family. an obvious attempt to break the class solidarity that's been formed around this case by continuously trying to tell us "oh he's not like you guys" while ignoring the now pretty well-documented accounts of his multiple health struggles throughout the years.

and all this, and he hasn't even been found guilty of the crime he's allegedly committed. luigi is, as of right now, still innocent until proven guilty. and the news are trying to tear him apart because they obviously fear the symbol he's becoming for low and middle class america.

[elsquibbonator]

Fired Up

When there's an out-of-control fire, you need to put it out. It's pretty simple logic, and to be fair, the huge wildfires that have been devastating southern California over the past week definitely need to be brought under control. However, destructive though these fires may be-- and it should be emphasized that, while some amount of fire is definitely natural, these far exceed that-- some of the means of fighting them have their own environmental drawbacks.

You've probably seen news clips of airplanes and helicopters dropping water on wildfires. In some cases, such as the California fires, this water is taken directly from the nearby ocean. Aircraft equipped with sea-skimming "scoops" or under-slung buckets dump up to 3,000 gallons of water at a time on the flames. The goal isn't so much to extinguish the fire as to keep it from spreading. However, dumping thousands of gallons of salt water on an un-burned forest has predictable consequences. The salt remains in the soil, and can end up killing the local vegetation.

To their credit, most wilderness firefighters don't use ocean water very often for this exact reason. However, they use other things that have similar issues. Instead of water, many forest fire fighters-- both on the ground and in the air-- use artificial fire retardant liquids. These brightly colored liquids, usually colored red, pink, or orange, are more effective than water at actually extinguishing a fire. However, the chemicals they contain can remain in the environment for years.

The retardant is made up of ammonium polyphosphate, which allows it to cling to surfaces and remain wet for much longer than water would. However, it also contains large amounts of chromium and cadmium, both metals that are typically classified as hazardous waste if not properly disposed of. Concentrations of these metals spike in rivers and lakes after wildfires, often leading to significant die-offs of fish and other aquatic life.

As wildfires become more and more intense, we need to learn how to fight them. And ideally, we need to learn how to do that without destroying the very same ecosystem we are trying to protect.

The brightly colored fire retardant dropped by firefighting aircraft, such as the 727 here, is effective at putting out forest fires but can be toxic to wildlife.

[elsquibbonator]

can we just like. talk about how absolutely insane it is for trump, THE PRESIDENT* OF THE UNITED STATES, to talk about using military force on sovereign nations to seize territory??????? like excuse me what the fuck?? are we serious right now because i’m sorry even if he isn’t being serious he is still THE PRESIDENT and his words carry weight. whether we like it or not. this would undeniably be an act of war. WAR. he would start a third world war against our ALLIES

*(former, but also will be current as of the end of this month)

[elsquibbonator]

On Dasher, On Dancer, On. . . Driller?

You all know what's happened. At least, I hope you do. One of the biggest promises that convicted felon and soon-to-be-47th President Donald Trump has made is "energy independence", which sounds nice at first, until you realize it means drilling for oil on American territory-- including on protected land such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Oil companies have long had their eyes on the Refuge, which sits above some of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. Unfortunately, not only is the land protected, and in theory off-limits to any sort of industrial development, but it is also where the Porcupine caribou herd, the largest herd of caribou (or reindeer) in North America, migrates to give birth. Any development of the area would have a destructive trickle-down effect on the Refuge's ecosystem at all, affecting not only the caribou, but every other species there.

Unfortunately, the issue of whether it is legal to drill for oil in the Refuge is not clear-cut. There have been several attempts to push a bill opening the Refuge for drilling through Congress, one of which nearly passed in 1989 before the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused both parties to sour on the idea. Later, in 1996, Bill Clinton rejected another bill that would have allowed for drilling in the area. During George W. Bush's presidency, there were more attempts, some of which were even approved, but few amounted to anything. Right now, the wildlife in the Refuge is still, in theory, protected. But the Refuge's status as such is uncertain in the near future. The incoming administration is certainly less environmentally-conscious than any before it, and more likely to permit oil drilling. Hopefully, though, any future efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will not have any more success than those in the past. The caribou and other animals that live there are depending on that.

A herd of caribou walks past an exploratory oil well in Alaska. If the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is opened for oil drilling, this could become a lethal threat to arctic wildlife.

[elsquibbonator]

TOGES!!!!!!

SO MANY TOGES!!!!!

ITS A TOGE DUMP!!!!!!

Behold, the togepi line more like birbs than ever before! I had a lot of fun just messing with their looks and floof, and then colouring I just threw out the window and went with whatever works worked mentality. Did not strive for perfection but just what felt right and I like how it all turned out in the end XD

I had the vibe of Togepi looking more like a baby chick than usual, Togetic being a mix of a chicken and a dove, and Togekiss being a mix of a snowy owl, dove and a hint of parrot for the crest of feathers on its head.

Please enjoy baby birb, awkward teen birb and beeg mama birb!

[elsquibbonator]

I've always considered myself a man of reason, born into a world lacking it entirely. Admittedly, as depressing as that was, some of the un-reason was at least entertaining. I didn't take the possibility of Trump winning seriously back in 2016, and neither did a lot of other people. When it happened-- and once the successive waves of shock, anger, and grief had worn off-- I looked for specks of hope. Trump could still lose in 2020, and he did. The system of checks and balances in the government was still in place, at least for the time being. Democrats had won down-ballot positions in a number of states.

But like I said, I'm a man of reason. And seeing Trump not only win this year, but win the popular by a comfortable margin, told me that I still hadn't grasped the true extent of just how little reason the world contained. That's clearer now. After you know what.