#developmental state

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In its entire lifetime (from 1936 to the early 1950s), the new penal system [of the Republic of Turkey] worked on the basis of a duality of “old” and “new” prisons. The four-stage progressive system was actually never implemented. In practice, there were only two stages: staying in the old prisons (all non-labor-based prisons) and working in the new labor-based prisons. The original stage system was allegedly abandoned due to financial inabilities (to construct individual cells for each inmate was too expensive for a small economy). However, I argue that the emerging duality was in perfect accordance with the broader bureaucratic project in which the prisoner world was divided into two spheres based not on (temporal) stages but on (functional) compartmentalization. The old prisons served as a deterrent in order to tame the working prisoners in the new labor-based prisons, whereas the latter served as an ideal to reach for those in the old prisons.

It was not compulsory to go to the modern labor-based prisons; in fact, it was a privilege. The convicts of petty crimes, the recidivists, and the political criminals were excluded from the new prisons. For the rest, an age-limit (a maximum of thirty to forty years) and a restriction on the minimum remaining prison term (between one and four years) applied. Moreover, the forms filled out by prison administrators and physicians in each prison would indicate whether prisoners had shown “good conduct.” Once transferred to the new prison, each working day counted two days of imprisonment, in other words, the remaining sentence was reduced by half. In addition, the prisoner-workers earned daily wages, and they did not stay in an actual prison building but in dormitories. If a prisoner-worker broke the rules (which was presented as “betrayal”), he was sent back to the old prison, and all of his earned days and money were appropriated.

In consequence, the prisoner-workers and the reserve army of prisoners lived immensely different lives in two dissimilar institutional spaces. The ruinous situation of the old prisons was the recurrent subject of complaint in the reports of the regional congresses in 1933. In 1940, 1945, and 1946 the deputies made visits to their electoral districts and wrote reports to the Ministry of Justice regarding the unhygienic conditions and primitive environment in the prison houses. All old prisons were suffering from a lack of sanitary toilets, of sunlight, of modern buildings, and of sufficient space (in one case, six hundred to eight hundred convicts lived in an old church that had been converted into a prison). Among others, the typhus epidemic of 1943 hit the prisons so seriously that the Ministry sent steam cabinets to sanitize the clothes of the inmates.

Life in the labor-based prisons, however, was represented in total contrast to the conditions of the old prisons. The İmralı Island Prison, in particular was turned into a dream-world for the new penal regime. Over the years, many ministers of justice (once even the president) made ceremonial visits to the island, accompanied by journalists and politicians; many columnists publicized the experiment in the national papers. In the 1940s, hundreds of law students made research trips to the island and prepared reports and monographs. In one instance, Professor Sulhi Dönmezer stayed for ten days on the island in order to investigate its autarchic economy. Even high school students and teachers were brought to this symbol of modern life. Visitors were amazed by the freedom enjoyed by the prisoners in this setting without handcuffs or prison bars. Economist and bureaucrat Vedat Nedim Tör found here the essence of an ideal life and even wrote a play entitled The Men of İmralı. Cambridge Professor Clive Parry, after his visit, published an article on İmralı and wrote: “I have no hesitation in saying that the Imrali penal settlement is the finest thing of its kind which I have seen in any country.”

There is no evidence to suggest that these representations of the ideal docile convict-worker were simply ideological fabrications. In fact, albeit probably exaggerated, this relatively better-off life in the labor-based prisons was a direct outcome of the dual structure of the prison system, which divided the prisoner pool into a reserve army (in the old prisons) and a labor aristocracy (in the new ones). There were lower levels of brutality in the new prisons, not necessarily because of humane ideals, but because of the threat of being sent back to the old prison in which the reduction of sentence by half would cancelled. In that sense, there was no “job security.” Contrary to generic prison regulations (for example, of the Ottoman period), which on paper forced all prisoners to work (without any success, ever), this dual system creatively established a miserable nonworking space and a privileged working space so that the structure itself enforced voluntary laboring. Hence, “being fired” was a real threat in the new prisons. On İmralı Island, for instance, 443 prisoners (out of 4,889) were sent back to the old prisons between 1935 and 1947 for various disciplinary reasons, and among the 19 escape attempts, 16 were captured and sent to the old prisons with heavier sentences while the other three died.

The effect of the structural violence created by the dual prison system was also observed in the Zonguldak coal mines. The case of the mines is particularly illuminating because it gives an opportunity to compare the situation of the prisoner-workers to other forced-laborers who were employed in the coal basin under the Compulsory Labor Regime enforced during World War Two. The Compulsory Labor Regime was the response of the state to the so-called “labor problem,” which had prevailed since the early 1930s. In a nutshell, the labor problem denoted the lack of a steady labor force (not to the lack of a labor force). Many male villagers used to work in the mines and in other factories for a short time in order to earn some cash; however, since they kept being connected to their village economy and household or had opportunity to change their job, they did not compose a full-fledged working class, an enduring labor force attached to one single factory. Thus, the labor turnover rates were high: It was 68.3 percent in the Karabük iron factory and 24.7 percent in Ergani copper mines in 1941. In the Ereğli coal mines basin, a worker spent fourteen days per month on average in the mines in 1936. Absenteeism prevailed, too: For example, in Guleman East Chromes, in July of 1943, only 116 of 402 workers showed up every day (30 days).

Accordingly, the new National Protection Law (1940) allowed the government to take extraeconomic measures over workers during the extraordinary war years. The relevant articles of the law were immediately implemented in February 1940 with a decree that constituted compulsory labor regime at the Ereğli coal basin, and the sanctions were toughened in 1942 with another decree. Numbers demonstrate the inordinate system: In 1948, of 27,000 workers in the basin, only 5,000 (18 percent) were free workers; the others were conscribed from men living in the Zonguldak region. Of these compulsory workers, 5,000 were steady workers, and the remaining 15,000 were working alternately for one and a half months. In addition, there were 1,000 to 1,500 soldiers and 1,261 prisoners working in the mines. Apart from mines, the forced labor regime broadened to include construction of public works (roads, bridges, railroads). In sum, what war mobilization in 1940 aimed to accomplish was to secure a fixed worker supply for the growing state-run enterprises.

Even though both compulsory work and prisoners’ work are forms of unfree labor, the structures of force and legitimacy were in complete contrast. Peasants under the yoke of compulsory labor regime tried their best to frustrate the implementers. Every one out of ten forced workers succeeded in running away from Ereğli coal basin (9.7 percent in 1942 and 10.7 percent in 1943). Villagers made use of the infrastructural incapacity of the state to escape this “collective conviction-psycho” in the mines. Compulsory labor regime, seen as drudgery, had no legitimacy at all, and the forced workers had every reason to sabotage the system. This was, however, not true for prisoner-workers. Although the official declaration that the prisoner-workers in Ereğli/Zonguldak mines were working “like sheep” should not be accepted without reservation, substantial evidence exists regarding the submissive attitudes of the convicts. In 1939, the official inspectors reported that prisoners and free workers work together without having any coordination problem. It was testified in 1994 by one of the workers, Sabri Eyüp Demir, that the prisoners’ working conditions had been “very good; they had no difference from us.” The prisoners were, it was reported, not only hard-working but even more productive than the free workers. The 1949 observations of Gerhard Kessler, professor of sociology and social policy, supported the reports:

Because every day spent in the pits is regarded as two days of confinement and because their life in mine basin is freer than that in the prison, they are ready to tolerate everything in order to spend most of their sentence here; they constitute the most obedient part of the work force.

Hence, desertion was considerably rare among the prisoners in comparison to the compulsory labor force. Demir, the above-mentioned worker, said, “I didn’t hear [any escape affairs]. Their concern was to finish the sentence, and go away.” Erol Çatma, historian of the coal basin, concluded that the convict workers were in general quite content, and they attempted to run away only when they were afraid of being sent back to the old prisons. The common reason of sending them back was sickness, which turned the convict into a useless burden for the enterprise. Of significance is the fact that while being hospitalized meant for forced workers at least a temporary escape from the mines, it was a disaster for the convict workers. For them, the alternative to the mines was not being sent back to their village, but to the old prisons. Nevertheless, epidemics such as syphilis, malaria, and typhus were widely seen in the basin due to the impact of war and the absence of public health measures. Thus, the attempts of hospitalized prisoners to escape turned into a serious problem to be related by the public prosecutor of Zonguldak to the minister of economics. The penal system based on labor caused “the abandonment of unproductive prisoners to the margins of penitentiary life.”

In conclusion, the dual-prison system had a peculiar structural effect on convict workers’ attitude in the workplace. Both in the agricultural prisons like İmralı Island and in the mining zones of mixed labor like the Zonguldak coal basin, prisoners worked under threat of being “fired”—that is, of being sent to miserable conditions for a reduplicated period of time. It was not only in the propaganda of the national press that the degree of physical violence in the new prisons was considerably low; similar to the rules of free labor market, without any workers’ rights, oppression was shifted from workplace to the general labor structure. In the compulsory labor regime, however, violence was extensively observed, as “firing” was not an option. In other words, forced workers had nothing to lose for being subversive, but the prisoner-workers had something to lose, which made them work voluntarily even more than the free workers. While debates in the literature previously focused on whether (and how) unfree forms of labor contributed to or impeded the development of capitalism, scholars have now turned away from a rigid dichotomy between free and unfree labor and have instead proposed “a multiplicity of forms of exploitation.” The dual structure of the penal regime in Turkey in the 1930s and 1940s complicates the free/unfree dichotomy by highlighting a particular form of unfree labor, which differed not only from the compulsory labor regime in Turkey, but also from other convict labor cases like chain gangs and prison industrial complexes."

- Ali Sipahi, “Convict Labor in Turkey, 1936–1953: A Capitalist Corporation in the State?” International Labor and Working-Class History No. 90 (Fall 2016): 247-250.

[johnjankovic1]

The Tenth Amendment: A Trickle-Up Developmental State

The coming of the railroad was the death knell of the old frontier. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, 1893

Already dispelled is the fallacy that America’s railroads were the sole preserve of men with private means since Washington’s industrial policy was the vanguard of this sprawling infrastructure. There was more at work than just rugged individualism. The young Republic’s fixation on ‘internal improvements’ predated locomotives as the government was already the benefactor of canals, roads and the like. Hitherto waterways were the darling of subsidies only because the locomotive had yet to be invented until the Erie Canal’s inauguration in 1825. But the adoption of this new technology from England occurred posthaste. The embryo of railroads was first conceived in the lower tiers of the federal system where the impetus to such infrastructure resided with state and local governments. The Maryland General Assembly was the first to enact a charter officially sanctioning a railroad between its port city of Baltimore and the Ohio River after its anxiety over losing the race for westward expansion. Provisions therein included the right for municipalities to be substantial stakeholders in the newly formed company should they choose. This business interest was also bestowed eminent domain rights to veto holdouts in its acquisition of land (Dilts 1996).

The charter established 30,000 shares in the company valued at $100 apiece. Maryland became a vested interest with an equity of 10,000 shares; the city of Baltimore reserved 5,000 shares (Stover 1987:17). Thereafter the remainder of capital was raised from merchants and financiers alike. Half of the financial scaffolding for America’s first railroad therefore emanated from legislative bodies. Private investors were then raring to invest based upon such asymmetric risk. In effect public ownership at any scale hedges against losses or failure for the quorum of shareholders in question. Whether intended or not, whenever a company’s investment becomes quasi-public it can automatically be considered a de facto monopoly. Government bristles at the idea of competing interests upsetting its stake in that said company and will thus preserve its marketshare at all cost in this public-private partnership. Although ethically dubious the practice of privatizing profits and socializing risk often yields great prosperity in a positive-sum game. For the city of Baltimore the solvency of the B&O Railroad venture was itself an existential imperative. Further to the south the city of Washington D.C. enjoyed a head start to secure business for its port of Georgetown by chartering the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O).

This new waterway between the Potomac River and Ohio presaged the diversion of trade away from Baltimore. In response the B&O would be Baltimore’s gambit to safeguard the city’s future primacy when the proven technology of canals were well known to create wealth and jobs. The railroad’s construction was a canal-adjacent investment to stave off the spectre of economic irrelevance. Although partisan dissent did oppose the idea of underwriting massive debt on behalf of a private company the rich dividends were not so easily dismissed. A windfall accompanied Baltimore’s unbridled access to America’s interior from the traffic of agricultural commodities like grain, tobacco and pork. The fusion of public and private interests by the coalition of railroad boosters bestirred the latent forces of production as this iron link reconciled Baltimore to the Ohio valley. Years later this industrial policy offered a blueprint espoused by the federal government in founding the Transcontinental Railroad. The saga of the B&O Railroad charter really is a case study of industrial policy avant la lettre. Prior infrastructure in the likes of canals, ports or lighthouses came to fruition from subsidies in contractual form by tender. The B&O separately materialized as a sui generis venture: half public utility; half private company.

State and municipal legislatures both held equity in a corporate charter which was itself an aberration. This novelty broke with tradition of passive investment by placing government at material risk in an otherwise speculative pursuit. No precedent existed hitherto whereby the public treasury was a vested interest alongside private shareholders. Over a century later the staying power of this practice would be seen in the bailouts of distressed companies like Eastern Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Chrysler or General Motors. But otherwise no ex ante reference could be consulted at the time to expound the agency of government taking a direct stake in a company deemed critical for the commonwealth. So whilst both Maryland and Baltimore were adamant on preserving their place in the national supply-chain they were equally seduced by the dividends for their electorate. Micromanagement of a company thereby substituted for the more aloof method of soliciting contract bids which were common for mail routes. But ephemeral subsidies like the foregoing did not confer the same control as the quasi-nationalization of a company. Such a hybrid structure in ownership of public investment in corporate equity acutely differed from the state-owned model of public works whose costs were recouped by tolls.

An outright purchase of stocks was the polar opposite to service contracts awarded to independent companies which were au fond government proxies entrusted with public monies. Collaboration in those days never included any semblance of equity participation. Indeed canals and turnpikes were funded by state treasuries; postal subsidies would separately spur pan-American or transcontinental routes for commerce. Instead the B&O railroad experimented with a novel instrument to hasten the realization of this public good for transportation by allying public with business interests. The real causality for this innovation can be readily discerned. Maryland and Baltimore were hard-pressed by the spectre of New York’s Erie Canal and the legislative assent for the C&O Canal in 1825. Without a swift correction both the state and city would be fated to be marginalized from trade altogether. It was incumbent on the two to stake their future on a new form of infrastructure. Hence the B&O railroad evolved into a microcosm for a new variant of industrial policy to mobilize functionaries and financiers alike in the first partnership of its kind. Not long after did this mixed model gain currency as Cincinnati acquired the Little Miami Railroad (Hedeen 2021) or Kentucky and its state capital of Lexington exercised part ownership of the Lexington-Frankfort Railroad (Boyd 1964:6).

In time this atomized version of industrial policy for railroads trickled upward to the federal level. The logic behind this statecraft being first under the financial wizardry of state and local governments derived from the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment. Any enumerated powers not explicitly reserved for Washington were delegated to states and municipalities. This omission of plenary authority and its constitutional exegesis still divides Congress to this day. The descendants of Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian schools of thought have long been at cross-purposes over this third-rail of an issue: Alexander Hamilton extolled centralization; Thomas Jefferson adhered to devolution. This feud saw that the federal government directly intervened in markets very seldom. Only twice heretofore had elected leaders sought to correct markets with the Federal Lighthouse Act of 1798 to finance the guardrails for navigation and the Federal-Aid Road Act of 1806 to build the Cumberland Road. So whilst the federal government showed a reticence about its mandate a vacuum was filled by the prerogatives of states. The Tenth Amendment was no dead letter and the fear of the Supreme Court’s policing anesthetized infrastructure at scale for the republic. It was President Abraham Lincoln who would later become the first contrarian.

[nychthemeron-rants]

No wonder she's so scared. She's expected to live to ONE THOUSAND. 1000 and she's 50.

Even elves only live to 400. Two generations of ELVES will live and die before her. Id be terrified too.

[disgustedorite]

is it weird that I'm against surgical alteration of my body on the basis of my fascination with the human body as a biological machine, to where the idea of removing or destroying any part of said machine is actually worse than any dysphoria it gives

[lesbiangiratina]

My curse is i honestly actually think dizzy’s pre strive look was extremely cute. It can get a little uncomfortable in x/xx stuff, but less so in xrd where her immaturity is less emphasized and yknow shes like an unambiguously adult married woman with a son. But also my brain is mainly firmly lodged in pre xrd gg. So i have to live with it

[xxxbloodskiesdarkwaterxxx]

The fact that the Dungeon Meshi fandom has, so far, completely fucking ignored the age differences between these characters so I'm subject to pedophilia and severe age gaps in the MAIN TAGS is just...

[fooltofancy]

it's difficult to imagine ilya outliving the scions, tbh.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

The Thai Communal Wardrobe item #105

Only Friends ep 2:

Last Twilight ep 6:

[bbq-hawks-wings]

One of the most isolating experiences of my life has been consuming animated media for decades (especially since it was one of the only activities to do while the grown-ups were busy), learning and becoming inspired by it and the way it expanded my consciousness and ways I interpret and interact with the world by simply absorbing it, coming to understand the depths of detail and craft and storytelling a true master of the art can produce with every facet of it including sound and color and movement and shape and stillness - only to try to speak about it with someone (usually my parent's age or older, but occasionally a contemporary) and they say, "idk I just can't take anything animated seriously" and I have to immediately pray for patience and self-control to keep from devouring all of my fingers out of despair.

[friendraichu]

ProPublica: Illinois Wants to End Oversight of Developmental Disability Institutions

"Across the country, states have significantly downsized or closed their large-scale institutions for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities in favor of smaller, more integrated and more homelike settings.

But in Illinois, a national outlier, such efforts have foundered. Efforts to close state-operated developmental centers have been met with strong opposition from labor unions, the communities where the centers are located, local politicians and some parents."

[pinnithin]

will wood wasnt fuckin lying when he said "how many milligrams of you are still left in there" huh

[prodigalknight]

eta

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[bookquotesfrombooks]

“It is important to remember that the enforced idleness and neglect that characterized Pennhurst was the inevitable result of society’s decision to lock “different” people away.”

J. Gregory Pirmann

Pennhurst State School and Hospital

[reasonsforhope]

"Once thought to be extinct, black-footed ferrets are the only ferret native to North America, and are making a comeback, thanks to the tireless efforts of conservationists.

Captive breeding, habitat restoration, and wildlife reintegration have all played a major role in bringing populations into the hundreds after near total extinction.

But one other key development has been genetic cloning.

In April [2024], the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced the cloning of two black-footed ferrets from preserved tissue samples, the second and third ferret clones in history, following the birth of the first clone in December 2020. 

Cloning is a tactic to preserve the health of species, as all living black-footed ferrets come from just seven wild-caught descendants.  This means their genetic diversity is extremely limited and opens them up to greater risks of disease and genetic abnormalities. 

Now, a new breakthrough has been made.

Antonia, a black-footed ferret cloned from the DNA of a ferret that lived in the 1980s has successfully birthed two healthy kits of her own: Sibert and Red Cloud.

These babies mark the first successful live births from a cloned endangered species — and is a milestone for the country’s ferret recovery program.

The kits are now three months old, and mother Antonia is helping to raise them — and expand their gene pool.

In fact, Antonia’s offspring have three times the genetic diversity of any other living ferrets that have come from the original seven ancestors.

Researchers believe that expanded genetic diversity could help grow the ferrets’ population and help prime them to recover from ongoing diseases that have been massively detrimental to the species, including sylvatic plague and canine distemper. 

“The successful breeding and subsequent birth of Antonia's kits marks a major milestone in endangered species conservation,” said Paul Marinari, senior curator at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. 

“The many partners in the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program continue their innovative and inspirational efforts to save this species and be a model for other conservation programs across the globe.”

Antonia actually gave birth to three kits, after mating with Urchin, a 3-year-old male ferret. One of the three kits passed away shortly after birth, but one male and one female are in good health and meeting developmental milestones, according to the Smithsonian.

Mom and babies will remain at the facility for further research, with no plans to release them into the wild.

According to the Colorado Sun, another cloned ferret, Noreen, is also a potential mom in the cloning-breeding program. The original cloned ferret, Elizabeth Ann, is doing well at the recovery program in Colorado, but does not have the capabilities to breed. 

Antonia, who was cloned using the DNA of a black-footed ferret named Willa, has now solidified Willa’s place as the eighth founding ancestor of all current living ferrets.

“By doing this, we’ve actually added an eighth founder,” said Tina Jackson, black-footed ferret recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an interview with the Colorado Sun. 

“And in some ways that may not sound like a lot, but in this genetic world, that is huge.”

Along with the USFWS and Smithsonian, conservation organization Revive & Restore has also enabled the use of biotechnologies in conservation practice. Co-founder and executive director Ryan Phelan is thrilled to welcome these two new kits to the black-footed ferret family.

“For the first time, we can definitively say that cloning contributed meaningful genetic variation back into a breeding population,” he said in a statement.

“As these kits move forward in the breeding program, the impact of this work will multiply, building a more robust and resilient population over time.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, November 4, 2024

[sotiredofendos]

A system is a collection of alters. Alters are chronically dissociated self states, with different neurological pathways that often are accompanied by a varying degree of amnesia. Dissociation is caused by stress/trauma. Alters are a byproduct of dissociating from trauma. You can’t dissociate from trauma you do not have. You cannot dissociate without trauma. You cannot have alters without trauma. You cannot have a system without alters.

You cannot be a system without trauma.

Do you have to know about the trauma ? No. Does it have to be a certain type of trauma ? No. Does it need to be a certain severity ? No. It just needs to have occurred during critical developmental period of the brain. Before the ego states have stitched together, it must be chronic, and beyond the child’s stress threshold, otherwise it will not disrupt the developmental growth. This is different for everyone. The reason trauma cannot be listed as a diagnostic criteria, is because there is no “xyz trauma that causes dissociative disorders”. It’s completely unique to each person suffering from the disorder. And in often cases, the person suffering from the disorder isn’t aware of their trauma. That’s the point of the disorder. This does not mean you don’t need trauma to suffer from a dissociative disorder. Systems are byproducts of dissociative disorders, you cannot be a byproduct of a disorder you do not have.

Endos are not systems. What do I mean by this? I mean that, by definition, that term is not suited for them, and is not meant to describe them. Just like kinning doesn’t mean you’re a system, just like roleplaying doesn’t mean you’re a system, just like religious practises such as tulpamancy isn’t a system. You are perfectly free to do whatever you please, truly. But do not compare it to being a system. You do not share our experiences. You are a different community entirely, and that’s ok.

But please, for the love of god, stop invading our community, and stop spreading misinformation about an already stigmatised and misunderstood disorder.

I understand if you didn’t know better. But please, educate yourself, and stop spreading this misinformation. Being a system isn’t an identity. It’s not a label. And please, stop comparing it to being queer. This is a mental illness. Being queer is not a mental illness.