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[sliceofwholewheat]

the public response to neil gaiman being accused by several women of sexual assault is exactly why victims often struggle to come forward. like how is anyone gonna give the benefit of the doubt to a guy claiming one of his victims has “false memories” as if that isn’t the type of stupid ass rebuttal only a science fiction writer could come up with. 20 year olds don’t create false memories, neil, that’s pseudo science.

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hey guys if you actually care about mexicos water crisis please consider boycotting brands like coca cola and heineken. they are the ones running mexico's water supplies dry. I am aware of the "mexicans drink too much coke lmao" stereotype but it is because they have made us dependent on their brand, making it so in certain places of mexico, a coca cola bottle is cheaper than water. all thanks to our ex president Vicente Fox <3

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Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

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Holy shit. The Israeli whistleblower story CNN just broke is insane. I cannot believe what I’m reading

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"Fossil leaves of typical cretaceous plants." Geology, Vol.III. 1907.

Internet Archive

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so often i think back to when the notre dame caught fire and how so many celebrities and people with influence rallied to send money for rebuilding

it’s a beautiful building. i do love old architecture. but…

these people have stayed silent for the many beautiful buildings destroyed by the israeli bombardment in gaza. have not said a word for the centuries-old feats of architecture that have been lost forever.

have not said a word for the many thousands of innocent palestinians who have been martyred or permanently injured in this genocide. or, worse, have spoken against these people.

is this the world we live in? where one singular building in a western country is more important than the lives of a whole population? where people struggling to make ends meet for themselves can still put aside money to help palestinians whilst millionaires do not?

i stand with palestine. forever and always i will stand with palestine. and i do not ever want to idolise influential people who do not also stand with palestine.

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children are starving at the fastest rate that the world has ever known

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there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

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I haven't purchased a HP item in close to a decade - I use the books I already had as doorstops or to prop a laptop up for meetings nowadays.

There is NO "death of the author" with JK Rowling - she controls and continues to profit from her IP, and uses that money to fund hate groups.

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Utah will become the third state to restrict trans persons from using bathrooms in buildings other than schools, alongside Florida and North Dakota. However, the legislation in Utah is of a different caliber as North Dakota’s bill only applies to correctional facilities and dorms and Florida’s legislation only applies to government-owned buildings.

In accordance with the bill, trans individuals could also be charged with voyeurism and/or criminal trespass if they use publicly owned bathrooms that align with their gender. According to Utah’s law, these class B Misdemeanors are punishable with up to six months in jail and a fine starting at $1,000 if charged and convicted.

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The knowledge of some common plants

Since many people don't know most of the plants around them, this is information on some plants that are commonly seen in many places throughout the world

This is Lamium purpureum, also called Purple Deadnettle.

It's called deadnettle because it looks like a nettle but it doesn't sting you

This plant is a winter annual—it grows its leaves in the fall, lasts through the winter, and blooms and dies in the spring

Its pollen is reddish orange. If you see bees with their heads stained reddish orange, it is likely because they have visited Purple Deadnettle

This is Trifolium repens, white clover

It is a legume (belongs to the bean family) and fixes nitrogen using symbiosis with bacteria that live in little nodules on its roots, fertilizing the soil

It is a good companion plant for the other members of a lawn or garden since it is tough, adaptable, and improves soil quality. According to my professor it used to be in lawn mixes, until chemical companies wanted to sell a new herbicide that would kill broadleaved plants and spare grass, and it was slandered as a weed :(

It is native only to Europe and Central Asia, but in the lawns they are doing more good than harm most places

Honeybees love to visit clover

Four-leaf clovers are said to be lucky

This is Achillea millefolium, Common Yarrow

It has had a relationship with humans since Neanderthals were around, at least 60,000 years, since Neanderthals have been found buried with Yarrow

Its leaves have been used to stop bleeding throughout history, and its scientific name comes from how Achilles was said to have used Yarrow to stop the blood from the wounds of his soldiers. A leaf rolled into a ball has been used to stop nosebleeds

It is a native species all throughout Eurasia and North America

This is Cichorium intybus, known as Chicory

The leaves look a lot like dandelion leaves, until in mid-spring when it begins growing a woody green stem straight up into the air

Like many other weeds, it has a symbiotic relationship with humans, existing in a mix of domesticated or partially domesticated and wild populations

It is native to Eurasia, but widespread in North America on roadsides and disturbed places, where it descended from cultivated plants

Its root contains large amounts of inulin, which is used as a sweetener and fiber supplement (if you look at the ingredients on the granola bars that have extra fiber, they usually are partly made of chicory root) and has also been used as a coffee substitute

A large variety of bees like to feed upon it

This is Phytolacca americana, known as Pokeweed

It is easily identified by its huge leaves and its waxy, bright magenta stem

It can grow more than nine feet tall from a sprout in a single summer!

If you squish the berries, the juice inside is a shocking magenta that is so bright it almost burns your eyes. For this reason many Native American people used it for pink and purple dye.

It is a heavy metal hyperaccumulator, particularly good for removing cadmium from the soil

All parts of the plant are poisonous and will make you very sick if you eat them, however if the leaves are picked when very young and boiled 3 times, changing out the water each time, they can be eaten, and this is a traditional food in the rural American Southeast, but I don't want to chance it

British people have introduced it as a pretty, exotic ornamental plant. I think that is very funny considering that here it is a weed associated with places where poor people live, but maybe they're right and I need to look closer to see the beauty.

If you see magenta stains in bird poop it is because they ate pokeweed berries- birds can safely eat the berries whereas humans cannot

This is Plantago lanceolata, Ribwort Plantain

It grows in heavily disturbed soils, in fact it is considered an indicator of agricultural activity. It is successful in the poorest, heaviest and most compacted soil.

The leaves, seeds, and flower heads are said to be edible but the leaves are really stringy unless they are very young. Of course, it is important to be careful when eating wild plants, and make sure you have identified the plant correctly and the soil is not contaminated

I have also heard the strings in the leaves can be extracted and used for textile purposes

and that's some common plants you might often see throughout the world

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I think it's always important to be reminded that the worst video you have seen from Gaza is in fact a drop in an ocean of atrocities committed by Israel every single minute of every day. Think about it, for that video to reach you, the horrific moment had to happen with someone who has a camera to be around and for that person to have a functioning phone service to upload it and for the video to circulate enough in order to reach you. Always remember that what you're seeing is what is happening to a single person out of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza trying to survive this genocide, each one of them with a heartbreaking story of their own that probably will never manage to reach your feed. Things are infinitely worse than what we can even fathom. 

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I haven't purchased a HP item in close to a decade - I use the books I already had as doorstops or to prop a laptop up for meetings nowadays.

There is NO "death of the author" with JK Rowling - she controls and continues to profit from her IP, and uses that money to fund hate groups.

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there's something very uniquely evil in the fact that the food aid dropped to gazans by the US wasn't halal