#Code extinction

[thepastisalreadywritten]

In tandem with genetically engineering its three dire wolves, Colossal has cloned two litters of red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf in the world, as part of its overall goal of pairing conservation efforts with its de-extinction efforts.

The company, founded in 2021, has previously announced that it plans to bring back the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo bird from extinction.

It says that its work on the dire wolf is a proof of technology.

“This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” says Lamm, who co-founded Colossal with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church.

Colossal — which claims that it has now set the record for the most-ever genetic edits in a living species — says it plans to restore the dire wolf as a viable species and secure ecological preserves for it on Indigenous land in North America.

📹 AMAZlNGNATURE / X

🐺🥹🔊

[jojo-schmo]

I'm spitballing here with a headcanon/theory...

Thinking about the Beast Pack's culture... I could see them feeling abandoned by the previous civilization in the Forgotten Land. Left behind in a crumbling world by people who sought out a better existence without even regarding them as worthy of being saved with them...

Why else could Leon be tricked into executing a plan in the game that would theoretically take them away to that same "land of dreams," if that wasn't a desire held by the Beasts? I could see some resentment towards those ancient people from the Beasts as well.

What if they called the people of that land, "The Forsakers?" The ones who abandoned them for the "land of dreams?" Hmm.

[driftingvoid-155]

I think faz ent hunted osha to extinction just like they did the bears

[hummise]

i don't know the target audience for this but that alternate dimension jayce was thrown into in ep7 was so mag 134 time of revelation i swear to god

[officialgothbf]

Let's just say I'm working on something rn...

[eldritchshapeshifter]

Oh Helsknight is Hunt coded. Oh Helsknight is Slaughter coded. Oh no he’s Desolation coded. No no he’s Flesh coded.

No /hj

that bitch /aff is Stranger and Corruption coded

I take no criticism.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

[luxury-nightmare]

Tma fans, have we considered

The Extinction as Inside by Bo Burnham

[spectralquartzstudios]

My (Rosie) hand slipped. But, TLDR this is a good vibe for the fanfiction. Being able to use the novels and looking into the character concepts has helped me figure out how to write him as trying to atone without 1. Removing his teeth and declawing him. And 2. Not ignore the atrocities. 3. Being realistic about his trauma.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And he is a great example of that depending on continuity.

And for Rosie on how she feels about Megatron I had no good amalgamation of words until yesterday and even then it is a quote - to quote @icaruspendragon poetry book Lazurus Rising (which has been amazing. I feel so seen.)

"I see his challenge and his triumph and I think.

Look at the skill and the spirit with which he rises.

I see his impossible resurrection

I think

Maybe if he can leave the grave, I can too."

And come chapter 3 you'll understand exactly WHY that stanza is important

I've realized this fanfiction has come to be a way that I'm handling some pretty heavy things and having this poetry book and Appalachia troupes of redemption are going to make me so dangerous.

[soullessjack]

conservative X-men fans will see a franchise about an oppressed group of people who fight for their civil rights and freedom in a world that sees them as freaks and monsters and imagine themselves being on the mutants’ side but then can’t even handle masculine cis women in sports or a man with painted nails or cisgender teens on puberty blockers for health issues.

conservative X-men fans will see that oppressed group of freaks and monsters constantly facing the threat of an apocalyptic future specifically caused by hate mongers in powerful positions who very blatantly will and do destroy the same humanity they claim to be protecting if it means destroying Those Freaks and think “wow cool robot.”

conservative X-men fans will agree with the villain who was based on Malcom X and specifically came to hold his beliefs through surviving the Holocaust and claim that he can’t even be considered a villain anymore because his ideology makes sense and is consistently proven right by the humans’ unwavering intolerance, but go into hysterics the minute a real life minority holds any sort of hatred or resentment toward their oppressor.

conservatives in general will always pretend that the media they consume doesn’t have any deeper meaning or purpose other than being entertainment slop because they almost always retreat into media for some type of “comfort” or escape from having to acknowledge reality and their own bigotry. they want the freedom to be bigots without any pushback or consequences so they surround themselves in an echo chamber of fictional characters and universes who can’t argue with them or tell them they’re wrong and bad.

conservatives have to constantly and deliberately turn their brains off to consume a specific piece of media because they know that they would be the villain in it if they gave it an ounce of deeper thought and that’s exactly why they push back so hard against anything that drags them out of their comfy echo chamber, anything that threatens their blissful ignorance.

they thrive on the idea that their media isn’t “that deep” or based in/affected by reality; that there’s no such thing as representation or allegories or coding in media (and alternatively, that representation doesn’t matter or is just propahanda). they thrive on willful ignorance and they want to convince everyone else to be just as ignorant and the death of media literacy is exactly how they’ll achieve it

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The Making of the Colossal Dire Wolves — World's First De-Extinction

7 April 2025

The dire wolf is no longer extinct—and this is the story of how Colossal made it happen.

Discover the advanced tools and technologies behind the revival of the dire wolf, why this breakthrough matters for the future of conservation, and what it means for endangered species across the globe.

In this video, you’ll hear directly from the scientists, conservationists, and visionaries who made the impossible possible.

This moment marks more than just a scientific achievement — it signals the start of a new era in biodiversity and ecological restoration.

The dire wolf is back, and for Colossal, this is only the beginning.

Credit: 3D models created by Visual Science

🐺🥹🤍

[pastellmochi]

WHAG IN TARNATION

[badolmen]

Hate scifi-fantasy magic/energy dichotomies where they talk all about balance but use genocide one side or the other to achieve it. Buddy breaking the scale doesn’t make it balanced. What the fuck do you mean the dark ones are all evil? They have an evil ideology? Okay yeah I see where that can be taken as evil but - NO it’s not balance if the only thing left is the light! You’re telling me there’s never been an evil light user? Oh there has? Then why the fuck has there never been good dark users??? (Answer: author doesn’t care about representing balance they just want easily coded good guys and bad guys).

[namelessprince]

was thinking about a tma riptide au and the shadowskull massacre totally wouldve been a slaughter ritual

[ruleofbirds]

𝚍𝚎𝚟𝚕𝚘𝚐_𝟶𝟷.𝟹

Imagining an ecosystem

The last part of this post is my summary of some research into the late Quarternary period - that's basically everything post the shift from the Pleistocene into the Holocene 12,000 years ago - though I'll also be thinking about much more zoomed-out, evolutionary timeframes going far back into the Pleistocene.

A big feature I want to implement in Rule of Birds is the ability to see real-time activity of life in the sim, but also broader shifts happening over thousands and even millions of years. We'll get to that.

There will also be a couple more code examples, since a few things I learned seemed like they could be represented really well with basic algorithms. We will also get to that!

My best source of information so far has been this book. Incredibly helpful, well written for how scientific it is and pretty up to date.

Notes on co-evolution

One pretty cool thing I picked up was a deeper understanding of this plant you might have seen if you've spent any amount of time in Aotearoa:

This is a pretty "branch-y" example, but these are one of many plants in the Muehlenbeckia genus, also known as Maidenhair. (side note: NZ native copper butterflies love them!) They evolved specifically in response to Aotearoa's isolated conditions, and their twigs branch at wide angles and mat over each other super densely. This >90* branching is called divarication.

There's a whole lot of debate to be had about why this is, and it's a prevalent belief that it was to fight back on how Moa tended to nibble on them. It could also be because of the harshness of the climate.

Now, this branching makes me think of a super fun coding concept called "recursion", which means running a process that contains instructions to run the same process. like a mirror reflecting a mirror reflecting a mirror, and the infinity only ends when you tell it to.

Recursive branching algorithms tell a line to break into two at a given angle, reducing in size by a set amount each time. As you'd expect, these smaller branches keep curling out, potentially never really stopping. The below GIF illustrates how recursive branching looks different as the angle of branching changes.

Another interesting thing I read was the connection between terrain elevation, and the size of Moa that found their niche in a given place.

Based on the size of excavated skeletons, scientists found that larger Moa tended to dwell at higher elevations. (this was not the only factor, this is not a perfect rule) But simplifying, a direct relationship between one set of data and another can be coded with a "map".

here's a simplified version of how you would "map" a height to the size of an object, with a base minimum for the object's size.

Potential major simulation events

The last point I want to focus on is how changes in an environment open and close ecological niches, which can mean a place becomes uninhabitable to a given species. I'm sure this is a familiar concept to anyone living in industrialized society.

quoting The Lost World of the Moa, "Periodic forest destruction by volcanoes [...] has resulted in a vegetation pattern that has shifted for thousands of years." This idea of massive events radically altering the simulation, and having this result in complex and diverse changes in plant life - inextricably affecting animal life, is the main reason I want to add an evolutionary timescale mode.

This doesn't just happen due to major weather events, either - you may think the gargantuan Haast's Eagle must have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to achieve its prehistoric size, but recent evidence suggests that its closest relative is Australia's little eagle. It could well be that a comparably tiny bird found its way over the ditch - and because of the sheer abundance of Moa that had no natural predators - grew drastically in size over just a few million years, to take their place as apex predator.

(How a giant eagle came to dominate ancient New Zealand, Bryce Upholt, Knowable Mag 9/3/2022)

It's because of this that when the Māori people hunted the Moa to extinction around the 13th century, the Haast's eagle followed suit; it had invaded the landscape and changed to fill a Moa- shaped niche, and when that niche was closed, it could survive no longer. These are the sorts of evolutionary epics that could be told with good digital simulation, and they highlight the role we as humans have to be mindful of the ecological niches we depend on.

Ka mua, ka muri. Walking backwards into the future.

Mā te wā.

[kirisclangen]

Putting this in the queue but I’m realizing I have 176 total cats to draw including kits… I’ve only drawn 32. 144 cats left

[telperinquaar]

@vague-magnus-archives

late summer / early fall thoughts