#recolonise

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

why did the ray finned fishes win out in terms of speciation and population in the water compared to us lobe finned fishes? did we lobe finners just have a skill issue (or gill issue if you will) and fumble the aquatic niches?

Ooh, what an exciting question! I didn't know the answer myself, but this news article provides an interesting and good (in my opinion) hypothesis for how. The article explains that in the Devonian, the now-extinct class placoderms and lobe-finned fish were the two dominating animal groups of the aquatic world, no doubt closely followed by sharks who also diversified greatly. So, we did in fact thrive and dominate over ray-fins for a while! However, the Hangenberg event, also known as the end-Devonian extinction that took place about 359 million years ago, sadly brought an end to the placoderms as a whole, along with many, many lineages of lobe-finned fishes that used to exist: heck, over 96% of all vertebrate species were lost during this time! With great losses of diversity like this, entire classes of animals gone, well... a power vacuum forms. With only some cartilaginous fishes and ray-finned fishes left, it took them no time to diversify and fill in those previously full niches! Looking at the current diversity of ray-finned fishes, it really doesn't take much to assume that they took this opportunity with stride.

How come sharks didn't quite get as diverse, then? Well... I'm not sure. Perhaps the ray-finned fishes were quicker to reproduce? Maybe bony skeletons are just that much better? Some ponder that a bony skeleton would've been more protective and offered more points of attachment for muscles to allow for more powerful movement. It could also just be that bony fishes can live in freshwater as well as saltwater which allowed them to diversify away from cartilaginous fishes! But these are just guesses.

TL;DR: Us lobe-fins didn't have a gill issue at all — heck, two of of the "fishy" lobe-fin lineages are still alive today after other numerous extinction events! Though, perhaps us tetrapods did in fact develop a literal gill issue soon enough... we were rather quickly on our way to colonise the land and follow in the footsteps of invertebrates during and after the Devonian. In any case, the ray-finned fish just saw an opportunity once a power vacuum emerged, and took it! Super happy for them for taking that chance ngl, clearly it worked out really well for them. Now they're the most diverse group of vertebrates!! Love to see a heartwarming success story of the underdogs winning haha

[reasonsforhope]

For the first time in 100 years, Atlantic salmon are once again spawning in the upper waters of the River Derwent. 

The return of spawning salmon to the rivers of Derbyshire is a real conservation success story. After centuries of intensive river management by the county’s burgeoning factories, the fish were driven extinct in many of its waterways.

Since then, the health of some of the rivers have improved to an extent that salmon can once again spawn. But the routes for the fish to return are still blocked by the remnants of the industrial boom, with numerous dams and weirs still blocking the migratory route of salmon attempting to swim upstream.  

Dr Tim Jacklin is a Conservation Officer for the Wild Trout Trust who has worked on river restoration projects that encourage and helps the migration of fish such as the Atlantic salmon. He was involved with the removal of a weir at Snake Lane, Derbyshire, which allowed the salmon to recolonise the headwaters of the River Derwent.

The catalyst for this work was seeing salmon making it all the way up the River Derwent, but then being stopped from exploring the upper reaches where the river becomes the Ecclesbourne.

“We’d started to see large salmon turning up in the Derwent in winter,” explains Tim. “They became sort of local celebrities really. People were going out with their head torches at night and looking into the river, because it’s not a particularly large watercourse and these fish were quite literally as long as your arm, without it being an angler’s tale.”

“So they attracted quite a lot of attention. But it also highlighted the fact that Snake Lane Weir, which was a concrete structure that had been built in the 1970s to replace an old mill, was a complete barrier to fish getting upstream.”

This prompted the work to remove the Snake Lane Weir and replace it with a boulder rapid that the fish would, once again, navigate over and continue on their journey.

“It’s very rewarding,” says Tim. “We opened up a good ten kilometres of spawning habitat upstream, so that translates into hundreds more juvenile salmon that make their way downstream and hopefully to come back and spawn.”

Putting the river bends back in

A little further upstream on the Ecclesbourne River, the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is working to continue the work started at Snake Lane. At the edge of a farmer’s field a deep, straight channel rushes along under the trees. This was created by diverting the river to increase its flow to power a mill using a weir. This has formed yet another barrier for the migrating salmon.

But not even 20 metres away the ghost of the river’s original route perseveres. Nothing more than a shallow, muddy ditch with a few scraggly trees overgrowing it, the bends and curves of the river’s natural path can still be seen forming the boundary of a field. 

The wildlife charity is now trying to undo the centuries of harm that bypassing the river’s natural route has done, with the hope that the salmon will travel even further up into the headwaters and spawn once more in the gravel of the restored river. 

“A lot of our rivers across the whole country have been straightened,” explains Jenny Kril from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. “Unfortunately, what that does is remove any sort of natural habitat that we would expect to see in a healthy river.”

“What we’re doing is re-wiggling or re-meandering the Ecclesbourne, which is essentially just putting the bends back into it. What that does is change the speed and flow of the water. It creates nice beaches and different habitats for a whole host of different species and just making the river more natural.”

It is hoped that this work will create a greater variety of habitats, which in turn will encourage a greater variety of plants and invertebrates, and so boosting the overall biodiversity seen in this section of the river. But the cherry on the cake would be if the salmon start nesting.

“Over the next few years, we’re going to see this whole area just continue to develop naturally,” says Jenny. “We’ll get some sediment being deposited on some of the beaches creating more habitats, and we’re going to do tree planting to further increase the biodiversity of the area.”

“We’re just going to hopefully watch it become the brand-new river and as it should be again.”

There is a long way to go to safeguard the future of the UK’s rivers, but the work on the Ecclesbourne is showing that with the resources and right interventions change can happen and improvements made.  

“I think we’ve got some huge challenges ahead of us, but you know, they’re not making rivers anymore,” says Tim. “So we’ve got to look after the ones that we’ve got.”

-via UK Natural History Museum, April 8, 2024

[poppyflower-22]

are you taking requests? saw you're multi so i thought id send anyway but its so random,

estabished lando x reader on race day and tom blyth is on the paddock for silverstone and reader gets excited bc she loved him on tbosas and lando gets jealous?

Jealous Jealous

Side note: I've never written on tumbler before. Only Wattpad, so don't judge if this is bad.

Also, I added she is Max's sister because I like reading and writing siter brother bonds.

There’s probably spelling errors and grammar mistakes, but I wrote this in a night.

Lando 24, reader 22. (Dating 1 year but not discussed) Masterlist

When Lando met Y/n, he knew she was a fan of the Hunger Games movies. She loved them a lot. She had read all the books. Everything.

So when the new one came out Lando took her to see it even if he had never really seen one of the previous movies.

Let's just say y/n was hooked onto the main guy who played Coriolanus.

It was something Lando didn't really know about. But he thought nothing of it as it was highly unlikely that they would See this Tom Blyth fellow at a race.

Five months after the movie was released, Lando had completely forgotten about his girlfriend's crush.

It was race day at the Silverstone track. Lando and y/n walked into the paddock hand and hand, smiling at the fans that where there.

Y/n gasped and stoped suddenly. Lando frowned confused on why you girlfriend stoped.

"What's wrong?" He frowned and followed her eye sight to see a man in dark jeans and a dark shirt. Shaggy brown hair. "Who's that?" He asked slightly jealous at the way his girlfriend was looking at the man.

Y/n slapped him on the arm lightly, not looking away from Tom. "That's Tom Blyth. The guy who played Coriolanus Snow in the new hunger games movie." She explained to him. Gushing over him.

"Ahha." He made a face of recolonisation. When they watched the new movie y/n was obsessed with Coriolanus Snow and gushed about how Tom was a good actor to play him.

"I'm going to say hi." She spoke suddenly kissing his cheek and sleeping over to Tom who smiled at the girl.

Lando watch with his arms crosed. It's not that he didn't trust y/n it was that Tom guy. He watched as he placed his arm around her waist for a picture and he clenched his jaw.

He wouldn't say anything because it would only make her sad. He hated the way her face lit up as he asked her a question. Jealousy was sweeping in through his veins.

Max, who was walking down the paddock saw his sisters boyfriend frowning and followed his eye sight.

He laughed knowing Y/n liked Coriolanus Snow and extension to who played him.

"No need to be jealous." Max commented as he pattered Lando's shoulder shaking the boy from his thoughts.

"I'm not." Lando scoffed and went back to watching his girlfriend as she bid the Brit goodbye.

"Say that to your clenched jaw and your posture." Max chuckled just as y/n was standing in front of them.

"Max." She beamed and kissed him on the cheek. Y/n looked over at Lando with a happy face. "Tom said he was coming tot he McLaren garage. So I said he could stand with me." She gushed.

"How wonderful." Lando smiled at her in fake happiness.

Max chuckled watching them walk away knowing jealous Lando is a funny Lando. He had seen Lando get jealous when guys would come up to her in the clubs.

Lando clenched his jaw hard as he watch Tom make y/n laugh and throw he head back in laughter.

All day y/n had been showing Tom around. And when she was with Lando a bit, all she talked about was Tom and how he filmied Billy The Kid in the snowny mountains.

Charles had teased him about it but backed of seeing the anger in his eyes.

Lando was suited up and ready for the race and was talking to Will. He knew driving like this was a bad idea. Being frustrated beofer a race, never good.

He was normally a jealous guy but he also knew no one could match up to him. But this Tom guy could.

He was handsome. Older. The Verstappen's had a thing for older people. (🤭) Y/n only being 22.

Lando took a deep breath knowing y/n would never cheat on him. Or do anything like that to jeopardise there relationship.

Zak was about to ask Lando a question when Lando pushed his helmet into Will's hand abruptly and stored over to y/n.

"-and then he gave me all thease roses-" y/n was cut of from talking to Tom as Lando grabbed her hand and basically yanked her to his driver's room. "Hey!" She yelled.

Lando ignored her until he pushed her lightly into his driver's room.

"What was that for? I was talking to Tom." Y/n asked closing her arms watching Lando as he signed and then clenched his jaw.

"Do you like this Tom Blyth guy?" He blurted out.

Y/n frowned confused, not knowing what he was talking about. "What?"

Lando signed annoyed, "All day you have been hanging out with him. Laughing with him. Just Tom, Tom Tom." He ranted.

"That dosnt mean I like him." She told her Brit boyfriend.

Lando shook his head, "You barely spent the day with me."

"Your racing today Lan."

"So." He pondered crosing his arms.

Y/n laughed suddenly knowing what he was feeling. "Your jealous." She stated.

Lando shook his head. "I am not." He refused in a child's way.

"There's nothing to be jealous of. We were just talking. That's it." Y/n assured him.

"You looked pretty happy with him." He told her with a frown.

Y/n matched that frown and crosed her arms, now a little angry. "Jesus Lan, we were just talking. Yes I have a crush on him but that's only because we just watched hunger games." She sighed uncrosing her arms and looking away. "We actually have alot in common. As friends. He also has a girlfriend."

Lando looked away from her. Y/n sugged her shoulders with a sly smile, "Well he dose have nice hair though." She couldn’t help but teased.

Lando's head snapped to her direction. "No way. You can't love his hair. You love my hair." He refused making his way over to her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

That was true. Y/n loved Lando’s hair. She had helped him keep his curls more healthy looking. Y/n loved to play with his as well as Lando loved it when she pulled his hair during sex.

Y/n sighed and pulled him into her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and started playing with the hair on the back of his neck.

"I'm jealous." He confused. When y/n tried to pull back he refused and held onto her longer. "I'm scared that you'll leave me for someone older. You said when we first got together your type was older men and you liked British people."

Lando dl tightened his hold on her a little, "I don't want to lose you."

Lando was insured about losing the only person he loved more in the world, other then his family.

Y/n sighed and closed her eyes, she finally pulled away from Lando and put her hands on his cheeks. "I do like older men. I do like British men. But I love you." She spoke softly. She smiled at him, making him smile back. "You are the man I will always come home to. You are the one I love. No one, not even a crush I have will stop that because that's it. A crush." She told Lando.

"I love you." Lando smiled kissing her on the lips. Y/n smiled through the kiss.

"I love you." She replied breathless when they parted.

Lando signed and rested his head on her forehead. "I'm sorry for accusing you of liking that guy."

"You mean Tom." Y/n giggled.

"Hmm." He hummed, not caring of his name.

"God Lando." She checked, kissing his cheek before stepping away from him. "Now go out there and race." She giggled as he led then out of his driver's room.

When they got back to the garage Will looked over at them and Lando shot him a thumbs up to indicate it was all good.

Lando turned to his girlfriend. "But do stay with Lilly or something." He pleaded.

Y/n giggled. "Sure." She kissed Lando again beofer he was called over to his engineer. She would do it to ease his nerves and insecurities.

As y/n steped next to Lilly, Tom looked over at her and shot her a smile. She shot a small one back, before talking to Lilly.

Yes she loves Tom Blyth as a crush but her true heart belongs to Lando. He had nothing to worry about, ever.

He would be the one she spend the rest of her life with. What she didn’t known was a ring was resting in Lando’s bed side table. A ring that would sit on her left hand at the end of the year.

<><>

[sweetdreamspootypie]

Day 2 of a right wing government

Smoking is good now

Active recolonisation trying to remove te reo māori and te tiriti o waitangi from government and legislation

When a reporter questioned this asking "what's the point of that then?" The deputy prime minister went on a rant about the conspiracy of government funded (?????) media

Cool cool cool

Can't even ask "why was that your first policy decision" without a direct headlong hurtle into "fuck you I'm trying to be a fascist how dare you question me and the general public should have doubts about the integrity of the media so no one will ever trust you when you question me in the future"

That's probably why this was their first move actually

Set the bar of comparison at batshit and normalise the slide

[lost-technology]

So, lads, lassies and laird's, I've been watching the Fallout TV series. I'm about halfway through it. The Fallout series are video games that I like a lot - I haven't played them all, but I'm enough of a fan that I've legit made FOOD from The Official Vault-Dweller's Cookbook gifted to me by my late nephew (I was drinking homemade Nuka-Cola yesterday). The super-fans are going to wank and whine about the lore-details, but I take it as its own entry and am enjoying it so far (even though I miss the NCR). I'm actually SURPRISED that a live-action show based on video games is as good as it is. (They usually suck, this is pretty good...) Anyway, just what does this have to do with Trigun (other than both things taking place in post-apocalyptic desert settings)? Well, there is the 200+ year old guy (ghoul) with the long shot up duster which I addressed on this blog before as "Perfect wardrobe - if anyone makes a live action Trigun, pay attention to this). Cooper isn't quite the "Vash" here, though... his morals are more... Wolfwood? Left of Wolfwood? He's actually an excellent study in broken morals as he used to be a very decent guy in his pre-war life... No... it's how main character Lucy is giving me some inspiration. Lucy is the Vault-Dweller. She comes from a sealed underground Vault that her ancestors fled into to escape the bombs. The Vaults, however, were never meant to save anyone. Lucy's Vault currently has a population-problem (everyone's getting incesty), it's connected to two other Vaults and there's a trade-thing going on, including for breeding, but there's definitely something weirder going on that the series is unfolding... And everyone in her Vault is super-idealistic. They're all peaceful people who live by peaceful ways and they have an agriculture-area (NOT AT ALL unlike the Geoplant-room / recreation room of a SEEDS ship!) that is set up to simulate Nebraska. So when Lucy goes out into the outside world in her quest to find her kidnapped father (is stuff that happens in episode 1 really a spoiler???) she's just very... trying to do things peacefully and with good morals in this... wrecked and horrible world. She cites The Golden Rule a lot. But then... she gets quickly and progressively "grittified." She has to do some awful things to survive and carry out her quest, although she actually sticks to her moral code. (So far, I've only seen her directly kill once, in self-defence, and it is arguable that the subject was in the realm of not-human-anymore and death-was-a-mercy) and she was shocked by it. And immediately after, she did a kindness to someone who betrayed her simply because she decided that she was not going to let the world change her. "I will never become you." Reminded me of Vash a bit - Born in a sealed metal spaceship with artificial environs, not unlike a Vault (save that SEEDS was actually meant to save Humanity, not experiment on it, not that...um...experiments didn't happen *tugs collar*). The SEEDS folk that we meet (Rem, Luida, Brad) seem to come from an optimistic, idealistic perspective in contrast to the survival-world of the desert planet. Instead of a world to colonise / recolonise according to a peaceful plan sold to their ancestors, it's a dog-eat-dog nasty world where murder is common. And yet, Vash sticks to his guns and keeps to ideals and doesn't let him change him for the worse by his own hard-won decision, in spite of absolutely everything. This, of course, also has me thinking of my WIP fanfic in which Rem survives and what I was doing in direction in that with her and continued survival having to face a post-Fall world and no longer being a pedestal-figure for Vash, but having to be a real person and surprising him and gaining grit (in a strictly in-character way). So, of course the story of this TV series, being what it is, is jogging my brain.

[divinekangaroo]

Been reading the Sadeian woman after @normalbrothers mentioned it in relation to Diana Mitford, many thoughts but tumblr (and no computer on holidays) is. Poor format for those thoughts

That said, in a(n unrelated?) tangent, the books framing of the written pornographer’s role in reinforcing sexual dynamics/norms (and that this is why de Sade was at least worthy of analysis because he challenged sexual/gender/power dynamic norms) makes me wonder regarding the propensity (call it the dominance; the dominant minority) of readerfic these days (writ by women for women and using the 'self insert' motif to tackle first person POV) and how it’s recolonised fannish spaces back to a particular model of acceptable pornography through sheer flooding quantity .

“our Chr1s+ian (?) moral duty to reclaim queer pornography to reassert normative sexual dynamics between a man and a woman, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman*” and clean up all that dirty sexual power gender role dynamic complexity etc etc etc there’s only a very limited range of acceptable incest to fetishise etc etc mumble mumble even gay readerfic back to hole and prod mumble mutter mumble

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I am creating a world where there have been interracial marriages since like they met and it's been thousands of years since. It's a very interconnected world now with basically no racial purity (is there a better way to say that? because that seems rooted in racist vocabulary and my world is the opposite). The only people who do not mingle are those akin to the uncontacted tribes in real life. Mainly, I'm trying to figure out how to figure out what people look like - there's only so few people out that are very mixed race, there's too many that are mixed but only specific mixes like White/Black, White/Asian, White/Hispanic. No..now, this isn't taking place on Earth but they are still human and I'm only able to come at it with how real actual people look like. No, bascially all of my world will be people who look White/Black/indigenous American/indigenous Pacific Islander/indigenous Asian/East Asian/South Asian/Hispanic/etc... Everything gets mingled, churned up in the gene pool and spit out. I'm not sure how to go from there. There are so so few actual examples that are very mixed. Also, I'm not at all an expert at looking at faces so yeah.. a lot of times I'm not even sure what I'm looking at in a racial trait. Hell, there are real life instances of let's say, looking at a Chinese and Japanese side by side, someone can tell them apart and where the differences. I still have no idea what they're looking at. Hell even someone actually Chinese couldn't tell what the differences were. Of course, I don't need to get very specific in details at all, but I have to have some sort of description that isn't well a lazy description that says nothing.

Feral: So, this ask gives me the idea that you were raised in a pretty racist culture (I can relate) and are trying really hard to leave that behind. And I want to encourage you to push into real education. Intention is not enough when it comes to shedding what we were taught, often subliminally, and consciously relearning - and that doesn’t feel good the way the color-blind approach many nascent liberals tend towards does.

It seems like you’re still caught in certain patterns of thinking, especially in the idea that eliminating racial distinction and sublimating and homogenizing is anti-racist when it’s actually kinda colonialism in a fancy new hat. And the “races” in your ask - a mixture of racial identities, ethnic identities, and very broad geopolitical groups - already have a huge genetic diversity within them and in several cases do in fact already overlap with each other.

There’s also a misunderstanding of how physical traits are genetically passed. They aren’t amalgamated like mixing blue paint and red paint and creating purple paint. Skin color, hair color, hair texture, and face and facial feature shapes and sizes don’t just meet in the middle between what the two parents have - and keep in mind that this kind of thinking is usually only applied when thinking about the children of a racially-mixed couple and not of say a white parent of Italian descent and a white parent of Scandinavian descent. 

 And there are traits that can seem to disappear from a family line only to pop up generations later. A more diverse gene pool will not produce a population of individuals indistinguishable from one another; there will be even more diversity of physical traits - specifically traits that we’re not accustomed to seeing together in our more racially segregated world.

Utuabzu: Something you should seriously consider is the background of your world. Is this the planet humans (or equivalent species, but let's just assume you're asking about humans) evolved on or is it a colony? Because if it's the former then it's pretty unlikely that you could homogenise the entire global population without some sort of catastrophic bottleneck event, something that reduces the global population to a small number in a single location that then recolonises the planet. Because the reality is that most people don't want to leave their communities of birth, not permanently anyway. People like to live in the place they consider home, and to live in a culture they understand, and absent a significant push or pull factor they will want to stay roughly within their home environment. This is part of why you don't generally see mass migration between countries with equivalent levels of economic development and political/social stability.

Given that, it's pretty hard to see how you could get enough migration around the world for long enough to homogenise the gene pool. There's probably always going to be general regional trends. There's also what Feral said about how genetics works. Appearance isn't just controlled by one or two genes. It's controlled by a huge array of genes that we still don't entirely understand, and many genes impact multiple seemingly unconnected things. A good example of this is that the gene for red hair also produces pale skin, because it prevents the production of eumelanin (the black pigment) while allowing the production of pheomelanin (the orangy-brown one). This is also why red haired people freckle - freckles are made with pheomelanin - and don't tan - tanning uses eumelanin.

Now, if you aren't writing about the home planet, you could have a fairly homogenous population due to something called the founder effect. Basically, because when a new population is established the genepool is limited, the traits of the founding individuals can have an outsized impact on the later genepool, with normally recessive genes spreading to enough individuals that the trait they code for becomes extremely common. So long as the population is predominantly composed of descendants of these founders, this effect is likely to remain active - so, so long as there isn't mass immigration that outnumbers the people born in the colony to at least one parent descended from the founders. This is easily enough accomplished by having the colony be really far away, and thus having an unreasonably long travel time for most people. If it takes many years to get there, few people would be willing to abandon their whole lives to migrate to a place they've never been.

A final thing to consider is that race is not and has never been a genetic or biological category. It's a social one. It can be correlated with certain physical traits, but it doesn't necessarily need to be, and in many parts of the world the salient 'racial' categories share most phenotypic traits. In others 'race' isn't particularly correlated with phenotype at all, and is instead primarily about culture or even religion. And not every society even has a concept of 'race'. You can simply not mention it, and instead have characters with a range of phenotypic features that nobody ever comments on, and it can be assumed that 'race' is not a relevant concept in that culture.

[lancebeamon22]

SOUTH AFRICA Smartly Recolonised Again…

[ospreyeamon]

All the SWTOR levels being designed for viewing from the third-person camera makes it feel like the galaxy is really into monumental architecture during this period of history. Which is … plausible?

The Sith Empire wanting to project grandeur and intimidation through all its public buildings, from military bases and factories to stations and government offices, would be very on brand for them. The hutts need their doorways to be at least 3x3m rather than standard humanoid scale and engage in self-aggrandising nonsense like solid-gold statues. The Alderaani nobility have clearly been sliding into dysfunctional decadence for a while, given the mess they’ve made of their planet.

So, the Great Houses of Alderaan built monumental country estates and museums, the hutts built monumental casinos and palaces, the Sith Empire built monumental temples and state offices, but that still leaves questions about other parts of the Republic. The Jedi Temple on Tython is explicitly of Alderaani architectural design so … huge light airy spaces are in fashion?

It might say something about the Republic’s problems with prioritising and corruption, if you wanted to look at it that way. On Coruscant, the Senate Rotunda is flush with gilded decorations, but parts of the ecumenpolis’ basic infrastructure down in the Works are still on fire after the Sacking. The recolonisation of Taris is a white elephant, with a bonus additional risk that the rakghoul plague will escape the planet through the increased traffic. Corellia’s “morale-building” museum of industry that its government built at great expense in the middle of an economic depression, instead of using the funds for any of the thousands of more sensible projects you could engage in during a depression. All those Senators accepting bribes from the Sith Empire (and the Migrant Merchants Guild, and Czerka, and-) would be the kind to greenlight fancy buildings to frequent at the expense of more effectively equitable projects.

[reasonsforhope]

"Discarded shells from restaurants and hotels are being used to restore damaged oyster ecosystems, promote biodiversity and lower pollution in the city’s bays...

Nestled in between the South China Sea and the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong has been seen historically as an oyster hotspot. “They have been supporting our livelihood since ancient times,” says Anniqa Law Chung-kiu, a project manager at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Hong Kong. “Both oysters and their shells are treasures to humans.”

Over the past five decades, however, the city’s sprawling urban development, water pollution, as well as the over-harvesting and frequent seafloor dredging by the lime industry – which uses the crushed shells to make construction material – have destroyed Hong Kong’s oyster habitats and made the waters less hospitable for biodiversity.

The more oyster colonies falter, the worse the problem gets: oysters are filter feeders and purify water by gobbling up impurities. Just one Hong Kong oyster can filter up to 200 litres of water a day, more than any other known oyster species. But decades of rapid industrialisation have largely halted their water-purifying services.

The depletion of Hong Kong’s natural oyster reefs also affects the ability of local farmers to sustainably cultivate their oysters in a healthy environment, denting the reputation of the city’s 700-year oyster farming tradition, designated by Unesco as an “intangible cultural heritage”.

Inhabitants of the coast feel abandoned, says Ken Cheng Wai-kwan, the community leader of Ha Pak Nai on Hong Kong’s Deep Bay, facing the commercial city of Shenzhen in China. “This place is forgotten,” Cheng says. “Oysters have been rooted here for over 400 years. I ask the question: do we want to lose it, or not?”

A group of activists and scientists are taking up the challenge by collecting discarded oyster shells and recycling them to rebuild some of the reefs that have been destroyed and forgotten in the hope the oysters may make a comeback. They’ve selected locations around the island where data they’ve collected suggests ecosystems still have the potential to be rebooted, and there are still enough oyster larvae to recolonise and repopulate reefs. Ideally, this will have a positive effect on local biodiversity as a whole, and farming communities.

Farmers from Ha Pak Nai were among the first to hand over their discarded shells to the TNC team for recycling. Law’s team works with eight oyster farmers from Deep Bay to recycle up to 10 tonnes of shells every year [over 22,000 pounds]. They collect an average of 870kg every week [over 1,900 pounds] from 12 hotels, supermarkets, clubhouses and seafood restaurants in the city, including some of its most fashionable establishments. About 80 tonnes of shells [over 176,000 pounds] have been recycled since the project began in 2020.

Restaurants will soon be further incentivised to recycle the shells when Hong Kong introduces a new fee for waste removal – something that is routine in many countries, but only became law in Hong Kong in July and remains controversial...

Preliminary data shows some of the restored reefs have started to increase the levels of biodiversity, but more research is needed to determine to what extent they are contributing to the filtering of the water, says Law.

Scientists from the City University of Hong Kong are also looking to use oyster shells to increase biodiversity on the city’s concrete seawalls. They hope to provide tiny, wet shelter spots around the seawall in which organisms can find refuge during low tide.

“It’s a form of soft engineering, like a nature-based solution,” says Charlene Lai, a research assistant on the team."

-via The Guardian, December 22, 2023

[backwardscaplando]

do we think the huge ass union jack fell off alex’s car and almost hit logan’s as an act of recolonisation

[jloisse]

Dans un entretien exclusif accordé au Figaro, l’ex chef d’Etat major des armées françaises, le Général Lecointre, annonce une recolonisation militaire de l’Afrique par la France et l’Europe dans les 10 prochaines années.

[depizan]

Why do you think the Republic decided to try recolonising Taris? The reasons we're given - sticking it to the Sith Empire by rebuilding!!! - seem too stupid to have made it past a budgetary committee. I suppose there could have been pork-barrelling going on, but if so whose being porked up? The Saresh family? Contractors on the project? Or did the idea start as something more sensible before being steadily derailed, like building a space station above Taris to help control those hyperlanes?

That's a really good question! A friend and I once jokingly theorized that the planet has some sort of "bad idea" field that lures people in to provide food for the rakghouls. (Because, lets be honest, the Empire deciding to invest all that time, energy, and personnel into sabotaging the Republic's rebuilding makes about as much sense as the rebuilding does.)

But if the planet does not have an enormous "bad idea" field, then it has to boil down to strategic importance or some other secret reason why a rakghoul infested disaster zone suddenly attracted so much attention.

I'd be tempted to go with strategic importance, since it is near a major hyperlane, except that I don't think it's near the right hyperlane. Or, well, the most likely hyperlane, since there's three that go from Sith Empire space to the Republic: the Hydian Way, the Perlemian Trade Route, and the Daragon Trail. Of those, the one I'd expect the Republic to sink the most money and effort into protecting is the Daragon Trail, since it goes directly from Korriban to Empress Teta, in the Deep Core.

So if there was going to be a secret Republic project, I'd place it at Empress Teta, not Taris. Greatest danger, no inconvenient rakghouls.

(Or, depending on how exactly hyperlanes work, somewhere else along the Daragon Trail.)

Then again, the Hydian Way is kind of the hyperlane, so there could be some psychological/political advantage as well as strategic sense in finding a way to protect it. So if we have to have all the Tarisian nonsense, a secret project to protect the hyperlane is probably the best thing to go with. Anything left on the planet begs the question of why no one attempted to retrieve it before and the official reason is clearly nonsense.

It's still not a great explanation because of the Daragon Trail (and the Perlemian Trade Route), unless there are multiple secret efforts to protect hyperlanes.

Perhaps it really is that the rakgouls, en mass, create a bad idea field that causes people to come to Taris and be eaten.

[crvvys]

things I’ve been reading about lately: the CIA trying to recolonise Africa during the time that various African nations were gaining independence with the main focus being on the Congo. the history of Romani people from their arrival to Europe to their enslavement in East Europe and the expulsions and genocide they faced in West Europe. and most recently China’s economic colonialist project happening in the Caribbean specifically in Jamaica.

[aradak-tribunal]

Excellent news, drones of all hives, since we first gained alien support in the war against the Coyul, the Yexa Exiles have been delving into the ruined hives of deceased dynasties. To learn lost knowledge about them, recover cultural artefacts, and most importantly, to find dormant eggs.

Once the dormant eggs were found, they were taken and stored at the Yexa Monastery until they were in the possession of a working Nursery Machine, to avoid the common issue of defects in the hatchlings that spawn from dormant eggs.

Thanks to the aid of alien hives, and the generous donation of Nursery Machines by the Xav Empire, the Yexa have successfully grown hatchlings from dead dynasties, and the first batch have begun pupation.

Since the hatchlings weren't exposed to hive pheromones, they will pupate into Queens, and once they emerge from pupation, they will have their rightful and lawful lands restored to them by decree of the Tribunal, and recolonisation of the dead territories will begin.

The Vur Grand Hive was the only great hive of Aradas to break the agreement not to settle the lands of dead dynasties, so their violating hives will have to resettle. This one hopes they abide by the decree.

[butchstalinist]

Your opinion that Russia is subjugated by the West is wrong. Russia is the West colonising a huge amount of Asia, trying to recolonise Ukraine, and has been causing mayhem and massacres in Africa.

😂