#"...on the Road to Extinction.."

[damnfandomproblems]

I am a little curious but because of the recent news going on about how tumblr is on the road to extinction, what will be the future of this blog? Will you guys move to another platform or sink with the ship to the very last end?

I'm not aware of the recent news but for those who've been on this hellsite long enough, this has to be at least the fifth time in a decade there have been fears of tumblr shutting down. My plan now is the same as it was all those other times, just keep posting until the day the site won't allow you to log in anymore. Beyond that, no idea, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

[rabbitcruiser]

World Rhino Day

Visit a wildlife preservation, “adopt” a rhino, or donate to any of the many organizations caring for this fascinating but tragically endangered species.

Almost every child in the world should be able to immediately recognize this magnificent beast, with its heavy grey skin and prominent horn (or horns!) upon its snout. The rhinoceros is a much-loved critter!

However, it is deeply endangered in the wild and is quickly on the road to extinction if something isn’t done to help this animal in its plight. So it is that World Rhino Day was established to help raise awareness and protect what remains of these magnificent creatures.

History of World Rhino Day

As far back as the early 1990s, the crisis related to rhinos in Africa, particularly the black rhinos in Zimbabwe, became well known and people began to be concerned. By 2010, it was apparent that the potentially hazardous future of the Rhinoceros still wasn’t well known to various people around the world. At that time, most people did not know just how close the planet was coming to the total extinction of this majestic species.

So critical and dire was the condition of the species that less than 30,000 rhinos were alive in the world at that time. It was because of this that the WWF-South Africa announced World Rhino Day with the desire to save the world’s remaining rhinos, an effort that grew to be an unprecedented success.

In 2011, a woman named Lisa Jane Campbell fired off an email to Rhishja, a fellow lover of rhinos who wanted to see the five species of rhinos in the world continue to thrive and be there for future generations to enjoy.

At the hands of these two incredible women, World Rhino Day has become a phenomenon that spreads across the globe and has been a resounding success.

There’s still work to do though, as there are only about 100 Sumatran Rhinos left in the world, and between 60-65 Javan rhinos. So, while the rhino populations of Africa are doing well, there are certainly still more to save.

Taking the time out on Rhino Day to be aware and share the concern about the struggle this species faces is a great way to celebrate the day!

How to Celebrate World Rhino Day

Celebrating World Rhino Day starts by people deciding to educate themselves on the plight of rhinoceros in the modern world. In this way, people can figure out what actions they can take to help save those that remain. Try these ideas for celebrating this important day:

Learn More About Rhino-Friendly Organizations

Take a look at these reputable organizations that are doing what they can to help remove the burden from the lives of rhinos:

World Wildlife Federation (WWF). For almost 50 years, WWF has been working on behalf of rhinos by aiming to expand protected areas where rhinos can live and breed safely, improving security to prevent poaching, helping with law enforcement to keep the trading of wildlife illegal, and promoting wildlife based tourism that expands experiences and funds more efforts toward conservation.

Save the Rhino International. Beginning in 1992, Save the Rhino uses extreme challenges to raise money in the UK and beyond to help fund efforts for rhinos. Working to protect rhinos from poaching, educating communities who live near rhinos, and bringing experts together to share information and skills allows this organization to be effective in their goal of saving the rhinos.

International Rhino Foundation. Fighting for the survival of rhinos, this organization offers support through grants and field programs that have affected rhino conservation in at least ten countries. Focusing on protecting, education, breeding, conservation and demand reduction, this group was also founded in the early 1990’s.

Adopt a Rhino Orphan

In addition to the organizations listed above, Helping Rhinos is a group that pairs people with baby rhinos whose parents are not able to take care of them. Adoption participation is a minimal cost per month or year, and those who want to adopt can choose which baby rhino they want to help support.

Adoption comes with a certificate with the name, photo, and fact sheet of the adopted rhino as well as a subscription to e-news from the Helping Rhinos Organization. Check out the website to see stories of which rhinos are available for adoption and how they came to be rescued and placed in the rhino orphanages for care.

Share with Family and Friends about Rhinos

Rhinos are such an impressive symbol of strength, resilience, and tenacity that it would be a heartbreaking shame to have those traits disappear as they become a species that used to exist. Don’t let these magnificent creatures disappear from the world, get together with friends and family and see what you can do to help build funds to protect them.

Throw a little party or get-together in honor of Rhino Day where guests can be educated on the worries about the future for Rhinos. Be ready to share fun facts about the uniqueness of rhinos, how important they are to their habitat areas, and what makes them such an interesting species. Help guests understand what they can do to help promote the cause, and perhaps take some donations to send to organizations, or encourage guests to consider adopting one of the orphan rhinos.

Source

[ehrendame]

“The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion by an external enemy is on the road to extinction.”

[Resi, hands on hips, smirking with that unmistakable Bavarian flair:]

"Oh honey, that’s not nationhood, that’s a tantrum in jackboots. You can’t just slap on more medals and hope no one notices the cracks in your foundation. If you're funneling money into tanks while your people can’t afford bread, don’t be surprised when they start throwing stones. A real power stands on the strength of its people, not just the size of its cannons. And calling every protest an 'invasion'? Please. Even I know the difference between defending a border and bulldozing your own soul."

[kj-bishop]

"We are putting far too many species on the road to extinction, mostly because we keep destroying their homes for agriculture, logging, mining, and housing estates." - Peta Bulling, Australian Conservation Foundation

[appalachianfuturism]

I wonder how much of an influence manguebit was on the development of solarpunk. Here's an english translation (by Philip Galinsky) of the original mangue manifesto: Caranguejos com cerebro / Crabs with brains. It's clearly super 1990s but yall can see the potential connections and inspirations, right?

THE MANIFESTO MANGUE The first mangue manifesto was written by Fred Zero Quatro and Renato L. (Renato tins) and was distributed to the Brazilian press m 1991. Below is my translation of the text into English. This version of the manifesto (quoted in Teles n/d: 5-6) is slightly different from the version that appears on the debut CD of Chico Science & Nagao Zumbi {Da Lama Ao Caos, Sony CD-81594/2-464476,1995) (see footnote for major difference).

Caranguejos Com Cerebro [Crabs With Brains]

Mangue - The Concept Estuary. The terminal part of a river or pond. A portion of the river with salty water. On its margins are found the manguezais, communities of tropical or subtropical plants flooded by the movements of the tides. Through the exchange of organic material between the sweet and salty water, the mangues are among the most productive ecosystems of the world, despite the fact that they are always associated with filth and with rottenness. It is estimated that around 2,000 species of microorganisms and vertebrate and invertebrate animals are associated with the sixty mangue plants. Estuaries furnish areas for the laying of eggs and for breeding for two-thirds of the annual fishing production of the entire world. At least eighty commercially important species depend on the coastal marshes. It isn't by accident that the mangues are considered a basic link of the marine food chain. Aside from the mosquitoes and other bugs, enemies of housewives, for scientists the mangues are taken as symbols of fertility, diversity, and richness.

Manguetown - The City The wide coastal plain where the city of Recife was founded is cut by the estuaries of six rivers. After the expulsion of the Dutch in the seventeenth century, the (ex) "mauridan" dty [named after the Dutch leader Maurice] grew in an unorderly fashion, at the cost of mctiscriminate landfilling and the destruction of its manguezais, which are on the road to extinction. As a counterpart, the irresistible madness of a cynical notion of "progress," which elevated the city to the position of metropolis of the Northeast, was not slow in revealing its fragility.

It only took small changes in the "winds" of history for the first signs of economic sclerosis to manifest themselves in the beginning of the '60s. In the last thirty years, the syndrome of stagnation, allied with the permanence of the myth/stigma of the metropolis, has only led to the accelerated aggravation of the picture of misery and of urban chaos. Today, Recife holds the highest index of unemployment in the country. More than half of its inhabitants live in favelas [slums] and alagados [shacks built on stilts in the mangue]. And, according to an institute of population studies of Washington, it is today the fourth worst city of the world in which to live.

Mangue - The Scene Emergency! A shock, quick, or Recife will die of a heart attack. You don't need to be a doctor to know that the simplest way to stop the heart of a person is to obstruct its veins. The fastest way also to obstruct and evacuate the soul of a city like Recife is to kill its rivers and fill up its estuaries. So what is there to do to prevent sinking in the chronic depression that paralyzes the citizen? Is there a way to give back the spirit, delobotomize/recharge the batteries of the city? Simple, fust inject a little energy in the mud and stimulate what still remains of the fertility in the veins of Recife. In mid-91, an organism/ nucleus of research and creation of pop ideas began to be generated and articulated in various points of the city. The objective is to engender an "energetic circuit" capable of allegorically connecting the good vibrations of the mangue with the world network of the circulation of pop concepts. Image symbol: a parabolic antenna put in the mud. Or a caranguejo [crab] remixing ANTHENA by Kraftwerk [a Euro-tech group] on the computer. The mangueboys and manguegirls are individuals interested in Chaos Theory, World Music, Legislation about means of communication, ethnic Conflicts, Hip Hop, Chance, Bezerra da Silva [a samba musician of Rio originally from Recife], Virtual Reality, Sex, Design, Violence and all the advances of the Chemical applied in the terrain of the alteration/expansion of consciousness.* Mangueboys and manguegirls frequent locales like the Bar do Caranguejo [The Crab Bar] and the Bar do Mare [The Tide Bar]. Mangueboys and Manguegirls are recording the collection "Caranguejos ComCerebro" [Crabs with Brains], which brings together the bands Mundo Livre S/A, Loustal, Chico Science & Nacao Zumbi, and Lamento Negro.

*In the liner notes to Da lama Ao Cios, the rest of the manifesto reads as follows: "Mangueboys and manguegirls are individuals interested in charts, interactive TV, anti-psychiatry, Bezerra da Silva, Hip Hop, miction-, [a made op term that apparently plays on the words for "media" and "idiot* or "idiotic"], artism, street music, John Coltrane, chance, non-virtual sex, ethnic conflicts, and all the advances of the chemical applied in the terrain, of the alteration/expansion of consciousness."

The history of Solarpunk

Okay, I guess this has to be said, because the people will always claim the same wrong thing: No, Solarpunk did not "start out as an aesthetic". Jesus, where the hell does this claim even come from? Like, honestly, I am asking.

Solarpunk started out as a genre, that yes, did also include design elements, but also literary elements. A vaguely defined literary genre, but a genre never the less.

And I am not even talking about those early books that we today also claim under the Solarpunk umbrella. So, no, I am not talking about Ursula K. LeGuin, even though she definitely was a big influence on the genre.

The actual history of Solarpunk goes something like that: In the late 1990s and early 2000s the term "Ecopunk" was coined, which was used to refer to books that kinda fit into the Cyberpunk genre umbrella, but were more focused on ecological themes. This was less focused on the "high tech, high life" mantra that Solarpunk ended up with, but it was SciFi stories, that were focused on people interacting with the environment. Often set to a backdrop of environmental apocalypse. Now, other than Solarpunk just a bit later, this genre never got that well defined (especially with Solarpunk kinda taking over the role). As such there is only a handful of things that ever officially called themselves Ecopunk.

At the same time, though, the same sort of thought was picked up in the Brazilian science fiction scene, where the idea was further developed. Both artistically, where it got a lot of influence from the Amazofuturism movement, but also as an ideology. In this there were the ideas from Ecopunk as the "scifi in the ecological collaps" in there, but also the idea of "scifi with technology that allows us to live within the changing world/allows us to live more in harmony with nature".

Now, we do not really know who came up with the idea of naming this "Solarpunk". From all I can find the earliest mention of the term "Solarpunk" that is still online today is in this article from the Blog Republic of Bees. But given the way the blogger talks about it, it is clear there was some vague definition of the genre before it.

These days it is kinda argued about whether that title originally arose in Brazil or in the Anglosphere. But it seems very likely that the term was coined between 2006 and 2008, coming either out of the Brazilian movement around Ecopunk or out of the English Steampunk movement (specifically the literary branch of the Steampunk genre).

In the following years it was thrown around for a bit (there is an archived Wired article from 2009, that mentions the term once, as well as one other article), but for the moment there was not a lot happening in this regard.

Until 2012, when the Brazilian Solarpunk movement really started to bloom and at the same time in Italy Commando Jugendstil made their appearance. In 2012 in Brazil the anthology "Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável" was released (that did get an English translation not too long ago) establishing some groundwork for the genre. And Commando Jugendstil, who describe themselves as both a "Communication Project" and an "Art Movement", started to work on Solarpunk in Italy. Now, Commando Jugendstil is a bit more complicated than just one or the other. As they very much were a big influence on some of the aesthetic concepts, but also were releasing short stories and did some actual punky political action within Italy.

And all of that was happening in 2012, where the term really started to take off.

And only after this, in 2014, Solarpunk became this aesthetic we know today, when a (now defuct) tumblr blog started posting photos, artworks and other aesthetical things under the caption of Solarpunk. Especially as it was the first time the term was widely used within the Anglosphere.

Undoubtedly: This was probably how most people first learned of Solarpunk... But it was not how Solarpunk started. So, please stop spreading that myth.

The reason this bothers me so much is, that it so widely ignores how this movement definitely has its roots within Latin America and specifically Brazil. Instead this myth basically tries to claim Solarpunk as a thing that fully and completely originated within the anglosphere. Which is just is not.

And yes, there was artistic aspects to that early Solarpunk movement, too. But also a literary and political aspectt. That is not something that was put onto a term that was originally an aesthetic - but rather it was something that was there from the very beginning.

Again: There has been an artistic and aesthetic aspect in Solarpunk from the very beginning, yes. But there has been a literary and political aspect in it the entire time, too. And trying to divorce Solarpunk from those things is just wrong and also... kinda misses the point.

So, please. Just stop claiming that entire "it has been an aesthetic first" thing. Solarpunk is a genre of fiction, it is a political movement, just as much as it is an artistic movement. Always has been. And there has always been punk in it. So, please, stop acting as if Solarpunk is just "pretty artistic vibes". It is not.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, I guess.

[wehatejulietsimms]

With Juliet doing nothing now, and BVB on the road to extinction, I wonder will A and J have a child!? They don't have to if course but Andy has mentioned several times that he'd like at least 1.

.

[deflare]

Day 23, and while it’s not the Lamenters*, it IS another Blood Angels successor, so I guess that’s good enough. Today, we talk about the Flesh Tearers!

The Flesh Tearers are a Second Founding chapter, formed from the Blood Angels right after the Horus Heresy. They got their name from their first chapter master, Nassir Amit, who had been known as ‘the Flesh Tearer’ because he was a warm and compassionate sweethea--no, just kidding, because he had a tendency to go hard on fighting in hand-to-hand combat and ripping people apart. The lads he recruited for his new chapter shared his predilection.

As the millennia went on, the Flesh Tearers didn’t get any less rip-and-tear-y. They settled on the vicious death world of Cretacia, recruiting from the local populace of hardcore survivalists. They needed the supply of unmutated recruits, because the Flesh Tearer’s geneseed has started falling apart. They have a ridiculously high rate of troopers falling to the Black Rage, becoming even more mindlessly murderous, to the point where they’re having trouble sustaining their numbers. The chapter seemed on the road to extinction, until Guilliman rolled in with a bunch of Primaris marines to shore up their numbers and provide more stable geneseed. This sudden recovery from doom is messing with the poor Flesh Tearers’ heads.

The Flesh Tearers are high on the list of chapters that should really make the Imperiom look at themselves and ask, “Are we the bad guys?”

*BONUS ROUND, let’s talk Lamenters!

Like I mentioned yesterday, the Lamenters are the product of the Cursed Founding. They were an attempt to fix the problems with the Blood Angels’ geneseed, trimming out the Black Rage and Red Thirst. And it worked! Sort of.

The Lamenters are known for having shit-awful luck. The chapter has had to fight a surprising number of desperate last stands; in the biggest incident, when defending against a Chaos Space Marine attack, they got abandoned by their allies and were left to defend a planet’s worth of Imperial citizens on their own, reduced to only 200 survivors before they got relief. Those survivors then immediately got lost in a warp-storm for ages on their way home. The Lamenters found themselves on the wrong side of the Badab War (pulled in by bonds of friendship) and got fucked up by the Minotaurs, before being assigned to a penitent crusade to make up for their ‘rebellion’. The crusade sent them right into the face of a bunch of Tyranids. And most recently, even as they survived that crusade, the Black Rage return, hitting the Lamenters with a vengeance.

Despite the shit they’ve gone through, the Lamenters are still sons of Sanguinius, and they retain a core of nobility. Many of the desperate last stands they take part in happen because they refused to give up on civilians that other Imperial units considered lost causes. Where so many Space Marines are motivated by rage, hatred and contempt, the Lamenters are motivated by love for their fellow human. Their chapter motto says it all: For those we cherish, we die in glory.

Also, there’s a song about them.

Master post here

[birgittesilverbae]

Why are the Aes Sedai in decline? I am fine with spoilers obviously.

the Black Ajah have spent millennia infiltrating the White Tower with the primary goal of weakening the Tower both politically and in the One Power in advance of the Last Battle. by the time of the series ~20% of Aes Sedai are Black sisters

the upper echelons of the Tower (Keeper/Ajah Heads/sitters/Mistress of Novices) are rife with Black sisters. these positions carry a lot of influence in the creation of Tower law and policy (e.g. the regulations surrounding recruitment and age restrictions for novices), and hold significant sway in Aes Sedai culture and custom (e.g. discouraging marriage, obedience to leaders of your Ajah, inter-Ajah relations). the Black sisters installed in these positions have used their power to sow discord within the Hall and the Ajahs, limit the amount of initiates in the Tower, and cause a decline in incidence and strength of channeling ability in the population of the continent proper. Additionally, they take advantage of the access to the widespread intelligence networks that accompanies these positions to further whatever campaign they're leading (see Duhara's lynchpin role in the Vileness).

more generally, the Black Ajah has had bouts of murdering strong and experienced sisters, but go off I guess.

To get an idea of the full impact of the Black Ajah infiltration, look to the off-continent cultures. Unlike other groups of female channelers who hold political power in their cultures (Wise Ones, Windfinders), the Aes Sedai: fail to find all women born with the spark, very very rarely bear children, are weaker on average, hold themselves apart from the general populace, etc. The success and sway of these groups compared to the position of the Aes Sedai at the time of the series is jarring.

There are arguments to be made for the Black Ajah simply taking advantage of flaws already present in Aes Sedai culture and driving wedges into them, as opposed to creating the cracks themselves, which is fair. And probably also for the Black Ajah to be like "oh wow they're really breeding ability out of the population for us with their isolationist customs, what a happy coincidence". but I'm more inclined to point to the fact that the Tower is rotten at the core as the reason the Aes Sedai are on the road to extinction when the series begins

[cobaltspartan]

"the nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion from an external enemy is on the road to extinction. such is the current state of our nation."

been rewatching lotgh a couple episodes each day, and it's great as usual I'm having a lovely time, but the political breakdown and philosophizing on the alliance POV does make me feel like I'm being beaten with hammers

[vixlenxe]

“The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increases military budgets, and then uses its power internally to suppress the citizens on the pretext of invasion by an external enemy is on the road to extinction.”

"A militarist country can thrive through military means, as long as it gives just as much attention to it's other aspects, a nation called Garlemald on my homeworld managed to do it, it was mostly military & technology focused, but still thrived as it cared for other parts of it. But when the country fell into the hands of a ruler that didn't care for it, that's when things started falling apart."

"Though, I don't really feel like I have any rights to talk about what it means to run a mere city, let alone a whole country. I am just a traveler now, someone who seeks adventure & freedom, I'm not fit to run anything."

[ax100]

Ax’s Promare headcanons - Post-World Blaze (pt 1)

Hello! I’m back again! and 15 pages deep into my headcanons doc! It’s getting a bit out of hand!

This is the second in a series of posts I’m doing to help me figure out the cultural and historical milieu that Promare is set in, because there is a lot left up to interpretation. Which can be a headache when you have a penchant for wanting to be canon-compliant when writing fic!!! (Related: Click here to read the first post on my Historical Context (Pre-World Blaze) thoughts!)

But again: all of this is just my own personal interpretation, and I am in no way saying that this is the gospel truth. This holds true only insofar as my fic (coming soon!) goes. Fair warning that this is long and rambly and not that well-written LOL this is just me sharing my thoughts.

Enjoy!

HISTORICAL CONTEXT (POST-WORLD BLAZE: THE FIRST 10 YEARS)

Simply put, the world was in shambles after the Great World Blaze. Half the world population had been wiped out. Almost all the arable land on Earth had been torched, no longer usable. Clean water was now rare, as all the water sources were now saturated with ash, which also choked the aquatic wildlife. For a time, it seemed like mankind was on the road to extinction.

The next few years were difficult. There were many who survived the Blaze, only to perish in the aftermath. At this point, everyone in the world had just one goal: survival. There’s nothing quite like the threat of extinction to band everyone in the world together. World peace and all that. Slowly, society rebuilt itself. The concept of the nation-state was lost, and mankind reorganized itself into city-states, scattered throughout the barren landscape.

Whereas majority of the research prior to the Great World Blaze was focused on ‘Why is this happening?’ the research that took place after focused on ‘How do we survive this?’ and ‘How do we prevent this from happening again?’ Researchers worldwide focused on developing the technology needed for indoor farming, fast-growing GMOs for food production, water purification, and air filtration. Prometh himself focused his research on two prongs: still, on understanding the nature of the Burnish condition, while developing technology to help defend against Burnish fire and the threat of another Blaze possibly happening. His technology was never meant to be used as a tool for oppression; rather, he intended it as protective, a means for people to defend themselves and stop fires where they may start. (ofc, we all know what happened to that)

It took somewhere between 5 to 10 years after the Blaze for the world to get back on its feet and for some sense of normalcy to finally return, depending on where you were. After a long struggle—the losses from the Blaze and its aftermath—society was finally starting to flourish once more. Humankind recovered surprisingly fast, all things considered. With city-state populations being smaller than nation-states ever had been, things got done more quickly. Less people, less red tape, and everyone operated with a greater sense of urgency. Not only did society recover (as best as it could, at least), but it was developing even faster than before. The city-states quickly established themselves, and with the life-supporting technologies coming into place, people started to move on from surviving, to thriving once more. Still, in most of these settlements, it became markedly clear: Burnish were not welcome.

Even though the collective world population had focused on trying to make it through those rough years, that didn’t mean that they had forgotten their outrage at what had happened. Hatred for the Burnish was at a high more than ever. It didn’t help that most of the survivors from the Blaze were Burnish, being able to withstand fire and all. They were barred from rejoining society, if not chased out—or worse, killed on account of being Burnish. Many of them eventually died out in the wastelands either from starvation or disease. Mad Burnish, considerably weakened in what was essentially a post-apocalyptic world, did what it could to provide aid, but it was never enough.

Once society got itself back on its feet, now came the next question: What to do with the Burnish? There were very strong opinions. There were multiple instances when scientists and politicians almost came into blows in the meeting rooms; there were some instances they actually did. People on the street cried for justice in all forms. Some called for the complete extermination of the Burnish. Some called for segregation. A very, very small movement called for peace, to let Burnish back into society. Most were fine with just leaving them out to rot in the Wastelands, as they had come to be called; let the elements claim them with no skin off their backs.

Although talks on what to do about civilian Burnish went on for a long time, there was one thing all the city-state representatives agreed upon: that Mad Burnish was a threat, and if the world didn’t want another Blaze to raze the planet to the ground again, they had to be eradicated. Thus, the International Counter-Terrorism Federation was formed. It mandated the establishment of a counter-terrorism unit in each of its member city-states, and made it possible to have a coordinated global front against the threat of terrorism—mostly that which was instigated by Mad Burnish. In the city of Promepolis, this special unit was colloquially known as Freeze Force.

NEXT UP: Historical Context (Post-World Blaze: Years 11-20, Loosening Grudges)

[rabbitcruiser]

World Rhino Day

Visit a wildlife preservation, “adopt” a rhino, or donate to any of the many organizations caring for this fascinating but tragically endangered species.

Almost every child in the world should be able to immediately recognize this magnificent beast, with its heavy grey skin and prominent horn (or horns!) upon its snout. The rhinoceros is a much-loved critter!

However, it is deeply endangered in the wild and is quickly on the road to extinction if something isn’t done to help this animal in its plight. So it is that World Rhino Day was established to help raise awareness and protect what remains of these magnificent creatures.

History of World Rhino Day

As far back as the early 1990s, the crisis related to rhinos in Africa, particularly the black rhinos in Zimbabwe, became well known and people began to be concerned. By 2010, it was apparent that the potentially hazardous future of the Rhinoceros still wasn’t well known to various people around the world. At that time, most people did not know just how close the planet was coming to the total extinction of this majestic species.

So critical and dire was the condition of the species that less than 30,000 rhinos were alive in the world at that time. It was because of this that the WWF-South Africa announced World Rhino Day with the desire to save the world’s remaining rhinos, an effort that grew to be an unprecedented success.

In 2011, a woman named Lisa Jane Campbell fired off an email to Rhishja, a fellow lover of rhinos who wanted to see the five species of rhinos in the world continue to thrive and be there for future generations to enjoy.

At the hands of these two incredible women, World Rhino Day has become a phenomenon that spreads across the globe and has been a resounding success.

There’s still work to do though, as there are only about 100 Sumatran Rhinos left in the world, and between 60-65 Javan rhinos. So, while the rhino populations of Africa are doing well, there are certainly still more to save.

Taking the time out on Rhino Day to be aware and share the concern about the struggle this species faces is a great way to celebrate the day!

How to Celebrate World Rhino Day

Celebrating World Rhino Day starts by people deciding to educate themselves on the plight of rhinoceros in the modern world. In this way, people can figure out what actions they can take to help save those that remain. Try these ideas for celebrating this important day:

Learn More About Rhino-Friendly Organizations

Take a look at these reputable organizations that are doing what they can to help remove the burden from the lives of rhinos:

World Wildlife Federation (WWF). For almost 50 years, WWF has been working on behalf of rhinos by aiming to expand protected areas where rhinos can live and breed safely, improving security to prevent poaching, helping with law enforcement to keep the trading of wildlife illegal, and promoting wildlife based tourism that expands experiences and funds more efforts toward conservation.

Save the Rhino International. Beginning in 1992, Save the Rhino uses extreme challenges to raise money in the UK and beyond to help fund efforts for rhinos. Working to protect rhinos from poaching, educating communities who live near rhinos, and bringing experts together to share information and skills allows this organization to be effective in their goal of saving the rhinos.

International Rhino Foundation. Fighting for the survival of rhinos, this organization offers support through grants and field programs that have affected rhino conservation in at least ten countries. Focusing on protecting, education, breeding, conservation and demand reduction, this group was also founded in the early 1990’s.

Adopt a Rhino Orphan

In addition to the organizations listed above, Helping Rhinos is a group that pairs people with baby rhinos whose parents are not able to take care of them. Adoption participation is a minimal cost per month or year, and those who want to adopt can choose which baby rhino they want to help support.

Adoption comes with a certificate with the name, photo, and fact sheet of the adopted rhino as well as a subscription to e-news from the Helping Rhinos Organization. Check out the website to see stories of which rhinos are available for adoption and how they came to be rescued and placed in the rhino orphanages for care.

Share with Family and Friends about Rhinos

Rhinos are such an impressive symbol of strength, resilience, and tenacity that it would be a heartbreaking shame to have those traits disappear as they become a species that used to exist. Don’t let these magnificent creatures disappear from the world, get together with friends and family and see what you can do to help build funds to protect them.

Throw a little party or get-together in honor of Rhino Day where guests can be educated on the worries about the future for Rhinos. Be ready to share fun facts about the uniqueness of rhinos, how important they are to their habitat areas, and what makes them such an interesting species. Help guests understand what they can do to help promote the cause, and perhaps take some donations to send to organizations, or encourage guests to consider adopting one of the orphan rhinos.

Source

[noosphe-re]

Slow Food Manifesto

INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT FOR THE DEFENSE OF AND THE RIGHT TO PLEASURE 

Born and nurtured under the sign of Industrialization, this century first invented the machine and then modelled its lifestyle after it. Speed became our shackles. We fell prey to the same virus: 'the fast life' that fractures our customs and assails us even in our own homes, forcing us to ingest “fast- food”. 

Homo sapiens must regain wisdom and liberate itself from the 'velocity' that is propelling it on the road to extinction. Let us defend ourselves against the universal madness of 'the fast life' with tranquil material pleasure. Against those - or, rather, the vast majority - who confuse efficiency with frenzy, we propose the vaccine of an adequate portion of sensual gourmandise pleasures, to be taken with slow and prolonged enjoyment. 

Appropriately, we will start in the kitchen, with Slow Food. To escape the tediousness of "fast-food", let us rediscover the rich varieties and aromas of local cuisines. 

In the name of productivity, the 'fast life' has changed our lifestyle and now threatens our environment and our land (and city) scapes. Slow Food is the alternative, the avant-garde’s riposte. 

Real culture is here to be found. First of all, we can begin by cultivating taste, rather than impoverishing it, by stimulating progress, by encouraging international exchange programs, by endorsing worthwhile projects, by advocating historical food culture and by defending old-fashioned food traditions. 

Slow Food assures us of a better quality lifestyle. With a snail purposely chosen as its patron and symbol, it is an idea and a way of life that needs much sure but steady support.

[sciencespies]

Photographs From the Last Quiet Places on Earth

https://sciencespies.com/nature/photographs-from-the-last-quiet-places-on-earth/

Photographs From the Last Quiet Places on Earth

It happened just before dawn. The murmur of bat wings fluttered above me, somewhere within earshot. I lay among the rocks and realized, not for the first time, that my camera was wildly insufficient. In the moonless, inky hours before the sunlight creeps back in from the east, there is very little to see. All I could do was listen to these sightless fliers feeding above me in the stillness.

Having spent my career working as a photographer in remote, hard-to-reach areas, it took me nearly two decades to fully realize that the least appreciated and often the hardest gems to document are not the vistas I chase with still cameras, but the auditory elements that surround them. It was that blanket of calm—layered with the notes of wind, wings and scampering claws—that remained with me long after my pixels were processed.

Although Iceland draws more than two million visitors a year, the population is a mere 357,000, and some 80 percent of the country is uninhabited. It’s not hard to escape to the wild. The rushing, gurgling sounds of glacial rivers provide an especially valued tonic. The Markarfljot River is fed by the Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull glaciers, and flows 60 miles to the Atlantic. It’s one of many displays of energy and power that give Icelanders a deep reverence for nature.

(Pete McBride)

On one assignment, involving a 750-mile trek through the entire length of the Grand Canyon, I’d set out to create a visual inventory of the wilderness, but after some 500 thirsty, thorny miles, I starting craving not more lenses but a better microphone. I wanted to capture the choir of croaking frogs, the rare applause of rain on rock, the hum of tarantula hawks, the echo of lambs bleating, the wind carrying a change in weather. It was all such a marked contrast from the usual noises that engulfed my life at home: traffic, trucks, lawn mowers, airplanes, construction sounds, portable music beats, my phone buzzing.

My craving led me to Gordon Hempton, a self-described acoustic ecologist. Hempton has spent nearly four decades capturing what he calls the planet’s “jukebox” of natural sounds. He has recorded the music of insects and owls, mountain ranges and jungles, the rustling of prairie grasses and the echoing vibrations inside a log of Sitka spruce.

People tend to think of elephants, with their enormous bulk and trumpetlike calls, as loud beasts. In fact, their footsteps are surprisingly stealthy, and their habitats reverberate with sounds unheard by us. Much of their communication takes place between 1 and 20 hertz, low frequencies out of range of the human ear. But those signals help herds keep in touch with each other over distances as great as six miles. Elephants perceive these vibrations not through the air but through the soles of their padded feet.

(Pete McBride)

Hempton uses the word “silence” to describe what he’s after, even though he isn’t seeking a vacuum. He’s looking for the soundscapes that emerge when human noise disappears—antidotes to the din of a mechanical, beeping world.

“Silence is the think tank of the soul,” Hempton told me softly during a Skype interview earlier this year. “All religions share and revere silence.” He warned that quietude “is and has been on the road to extinction for a long time.”

When winds subside on the Fish Islands—the part of the continent closest to the tip of South America—there are moments of blissful peace, interrupted only by the occasional seal, Gentoo penguin or skua bird. Nonetheless, the industrialized bustle of far-away lands is becoming increasingly evident, perhaps even heard in the trickle of meltwater. The nearby Antarctic Peninsula is facing some of the highest temperature increases on the planet. The area has lost 163 billion tons of ice each year since 2002.

(Pete McBride)

He has the data to prove this. In 1984, after Hempton had spent some years chasing silence, he identified 21 places in his home of Washington State (an area of 71,298 square miles) that were free of human-made noise for intervals of 15 minutes or longer. In 2007, Hempton reported that only three of those places on his list still fit that criterion. Today, he believes a natural silence longer than 15 minutes is rare in the United States and all but gone in Europe. Even remote wilderness areas and national parks are frequently crisscrossed by jets, shrinking the average noise-free interval to less than five minutes during daylight hours.

This noise pollution is harming animals. A study last fall at Queens University Belfast found that human-made sounds threaten the feeding, migration and communication of more than 100 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. But noise pollution is also bad for our own health. It can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attacks, stress and insomnia. In 2011, the World Health Organization concluded that 340 million Western Europeans (roughly equivalent to the U.S. population) lost at least one million years of healthy life each year because of traffic-related noise.

Quietude, though, has been shown to promote the regeneration of brain cells in the hippocampus, which is key for learning, memory and emotion. Preliminary findings also suggest that it can be therapeutic for certain types of depression and dementia.

Perched at nearly 12,000 feet, this salt flat is the largest in the world. The ancient lake bed spans 3,900 square miles, so featureless that geophysicists have compared it to an ocean with no waves. While the visual expanse can be overwhelming, the silence is equally striking. The flats are visited by breeding flamingos and bands of salt miners, but they remain relatively untrammeled. That might change with growing global demand for batteries: Major lithium reserves are believed to lie under the salty surface.

(Pete McBride)

Hermits, writers and philosophers who sought solitude in the woods may have been on a more medicinal path than we’ve given them credit for. “Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century transcendentalist, as he recorded natural sounds with the best microphone he had available: a pen.

Whenever I come back from an assignment documenting a quiet corner of the earth, I often notice how much clearer my mind feels. The quandaries of life seem simpler, my attention a tad sharper. Even after I reacclimate to the higher decibels of modernity, it feels as if the medicine of silence has eased my mental noise.

On the south side of Mount Everest, sherpas build a route each climbing season. These men—known locally as the Khumbu icefall doctors—say that in order to create the safest passage, they listen to the ice creak, whine and moan. At the top of the icefall, between Camps 1 and 2, is an area known as the Valley of Silence. At nearly 20,000 feet, it’s famous for its tranquility. But the steepness of the slope, and the constant rise and fall of temperatures, make the valley prone to roaring avalanches.

(Pete McBride)

This became ever more noticeable during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic when there were significant drops in tourism and travel, and industrial lockdowns. While many commented on the hushed tones of neighborhoods and the increased awareness of bird sounds again, a report in the journal Science reported that the lockdown was “the longest and most coherent global seismic noise reduction in recorded history.”

A photo composite captures a day of air traffic in and out of Aspen, Colorado, after a July 4th weekend.

(Pete McBride)

A photographic composite captures a day of helicopter traffic—363 flights—in the western Grand Canyon.

(Pete McBride)

A time-lapse photo of planes crisscrossing the night sky in a renowned wilderness area in Colorado.

(Pete McBride)

The images on these pages are some of my visual meditations on the sounds and silences of nature from throughout the years. They are the backdrop to the Khumbu lullaby of Mount Everest’s glaciers moving underfoot, the distant rumble of an elephant. They document the deep stillness in the basement of the Grand Canyon or the thin-air emptiness of the Altiplano’s ancient lakebed of the Salar de Uyuni. I hope these photos can serve as reminders of what the natural world has to tell us—if we listen.

#Nature

[thomaspitilli]

Art Schools Are On The Road To Extinction I probably should have named this article, ‘Colleges Are On The Road To Extinction’, as most of the things I’m going to say here also apply to the basic idea of colleges as a whole in 2020.