Greater rhea (Rhea americana)
The greater rhea is a species of flightless bird native to eastern South America. It inhabits a variety of open areas, such as grasslands, savanna or grassy wetlands. Weighing 20–27 kilograms, the greater rhea is the largest bird in South America.The species is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN. A small non-indigenous population of the greater rhea established itself in Germany. One male and five females escaped from a farm in Groß Grönau, Schleswig-Holstein, in August 2000. These birds survived the winter and succeeded in breeding in a habitat sufficiently similar to their native South American range. The greater rhea is a silent bird except during mating season, when they make low booming noises, and as chicks, when they give a mournful whistle. During the non-breeding season they will form flocks of between 10 and 100 birds. When in flocks, they tend to be less vigilant, but the males can get aggressive towards other males. When chased they will flee in a zigzag pattern, alternately raising one wing then the other. These flocks break up in the winter in time for breeding season. The rhea’s diet mainly consists of broad-leaved foliage, particularly seed and fruit when in season, but also insects, scorpions, small rodents, reptiles, and small birds.
photo credits: Rufus46, Arpingstone, Florian Timm
I just had a guy proudly unfollow me because I said mean things about Nazis.
I took a quick scan of his page and he’s an underweight, single dude that’s obsessed with guns and violence and openly and proudly a pedophile.
Damn, Nazis, you just love comforting to stereotypes don’t you?
I just realized that any Nazis reading this won’t be smart enough to parse that comment so I’ll dumb it down for you.
Nazis are only Nazis because they’re too stupid and pathetic to get anywhere in life so they blame others for their own failure and resort to fantasies of violence because they’re impotent, weak children that are desperate to be strong.
They’re also all pedophiles.
The best part about posting anti-Nazi posts is that you get to find all the Nazis following you and either they leave or you get to block them!
#yes all nazis
Okay, okay, hold on, pause.
As a Jew and a CSA survivor
It is not helpful to say things like “all Nazis are pedophiles” or “all Nazis are failures.” IT’S NOT.
Because then you run into people who are well-dressed and well-spoken, highly successful, respectful toward children, very clearly understand the concept of boundaries …
… and if all Nazis are failures and pedophiles, then those people clearly aren’t Nazis, right? Even if they have a house covered in Nazi memorabilia, even if they hang out on Stormfront, even if their bank PIN is 1488 and they send their children to a private school explicitly “to avoid all the Jews and [Black people],” they’re not Nazis.
Being a Nazi means you hate nonwhite people and call for the extermination of Jews.
Period.
You can be a Nazi and be wealthy.
You can be a Nazi and be a bestselling author.
You can be a Nazi and think pedophiles are disgusting.
(Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian because he disapproved of cruelty toward animals? True facts.)
Please stop using phrases like “all Nazis are pedophiles.” THEY DON’T HELP ANYONE AND THEY PUT AT-RISK POPULATIONS IN EVEN MORE DANGER.
Just … stop.
We have real life examples of these kinds of Nazis by the way! People like Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes purposely put on an air of respectability in order to further promote their racist, white supremacist ideas. Gavin McInnes, leader of the Proud Boys (a blatant far right/gun rights group based in the Pacific Northwest), uses this to his advantage, despite the fact that he has shown up in interviews wearing body armor and carrying a rifle.
As ideal as it would be for all Nazis/far-right activists to fit into the impotent, manchild stereotype, they will use it to their advantage. There’s a reason why the Unite the Right protestors wore polo shirts and clean jeans and pants, why Richard Spencer wears suits in public; it’s so that people like us can’t just got them into the “infantile racist pedo” box. They’re trying to mainstream their ideas and make fascism normal again. They’ll co-opt leftist language, engage in civil debates, and make themselves appear more “woke” than the people fighting for women’s and queer equality, so that they can poach leftist supporters away from our side.
Innuendo Studios, run by the fantastic Ian Danskin, has an entire video essay series dedicated to covering what he calls “The Alt-Right Playbook.” They’re incredibly well researched, entertaining, and informative, and I’ll link a couple of his videos that I think are basically mandatory viewing for anyone looking to counter fascism in any of its forms. But he makes a very interesting point in one video (not a direct quote): “For every crowd of chanting fascists with tiki torches and Nazi pariphenalia, there is always a clean-cut philosophy type with a megaphone ready to disavow the racists while being one himself.”
We’re in a scary situation right now, not just in America but also across Europe. Liberalism (I use the term in its classical meaning, not what it has come to represent in American politics, which many just use as a synonym for communism) and its belief in innate human rights are being attacked by fascists. Both sides are fighting a philosophical, if not physical, war, and in war your opponent will do whatever he can to gain an advantage over you. While I may not be a liberal (I trend much further left politically) I recognize that fascism and fascists represent a threat to liberalism, democracy, republicanism, and everyone who isn’t white or cis or straight. We need to pull out this weed from the political soil.
Time to get some gloves on.
(All videos have content warnings in the first few seconds of the video, please make sure there isn’t anything in them that would trigger you. Make sure you’re taking care of yourselves and I hope this really long post didn’t piss you off or anything <3)
@the-peculiar-bi-tch thank u so much for this ^^
It’s a monster from the deep. Divers came face-to-face with a rare sunfish, off the coast of Portugal. From here
WHAT THEFUCK
Prairies are some of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, with the tallgrass prairie being the most endangered. Only 1-4% of tallgrass prairie still exists.
Prairies are critically important, not only for the unique biodiversity they possess, but for their effect on climate.
The ability to store carbon is a valuable ecological service in today’s changing climate. Carbon, which is emitted both naturally and by human activities such as burning coal to create electricity, is a greenhouse gas that is increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reports from the International Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 2,000 climate scientists from around the world, agree that increased greenhouse gases are causing climate change, which is leading to sea level rise, higher temperatures, and altered rain patterns. Most of the prairie’s carbon sequestration happens below ground, where prairie roots can dig into the soil to depths up to 15 feet and more. Prairies can store much more carbon below ground than a forest can store above ground. In fact, the prairie was once the largest carbon sink in the world-much bigger than the Amazon rainforest-and its destruction has had devastating effects.[source]
I just have to add–that extensive root system? It’s not just how the plant eats, and how it keeps itself from getting pulled out of the ground during storms, or dying when its aboveground portion is eaten… it’s how it talks to its friends and family, how it shares food with its friends and family, and more than likely, how it thinks. That’s a whole plant brain we’ve domesticated away, leaving a helpless organism that has trouble figuring out when it’s under attack by pests, what to do about it, has very little in the way of chemical defense so it can do something about it, and can’t even warn its neighbors. Even apart from the ecological concerns, what we’ve done is honestly pretty cruel.
Here’s some more articles on this too!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/02/plants-talk-to-each-other-through-their-roots
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internethttps://www.the-scientist.com/features/plant-talk-38209
Whether or not you think this should qualify as a form of “intelligence” as we know it (which in itself as a pretty nebulous and poorly defined thing), plants exhibit complicated interactive behaviors that help them grow and thrive, and the way we harvest a lot of them for our produce just doesn’t even give them a chance to reach their maturity and begin trading nutrients the way they’re supposed to.
this is why I get so defensive about grass on Tumblr, and yes, I recognize how ridiculous that sentence is. The anti-lawn-culture movement - which is great in many ways! - is very anti-grass, because they think of grass as this plastic green stuff that American dads spray on everything, at the cost of Perfect Beautiful Nature. But grass is incredible. The reason that people commonly like to surround themselves with grass is because it is a fantastic plant. And yet it’s associated with the boring and mundane! People think of it as, like, background noise. They think of it as the floor. It’s like some kind of carpet to them, to be complained about occasionally because it isn’t a forest or vegetable garden. They don’t even care about it, and then they complain about it. But let me tell you: the Grass Fandom is extremely rewarding.
Obviously, it isn’t a good idea to terraform landscapes into lawns. Golf courses can fuck right off. Nobody needs to water lawns (if lawn grass turns yellow in the heat, it is almost always because it has simply gone dormant; it’ll turn green as soon as it gets some water. You don’t need to water it, it will resurrect itself.) But neither is it a universally good idea to rip up established lawns and yards and greens in order to replace them with vegetable gardens or whatever (unless you need to, or if the grass can only live there with extensive life support in place.) Grass is an excellent plant to have around the home or town; it allows pets, poultry and children to play and piss and shit and walk, and it kindly breaks all of it down; you can walk on it, and it forgives you; it prevents erosion, saving our vanishing topsoil with a ferocious stubbornness; it locks the moisture into the ground, produces a renewable harvest of grass clippings that can be composted for rich green manure, and respires nearly year-round in some areas.
I mean, grass resists being stomped on all day! It keeps high-traffic outdoor areas from becoming mudpits or dusty swathes! That’s seriously impressive in a plant. To replace that durability in public and private spaces, you’d often have to lay down gravel or chippings for people to walk on, which isn’t green and doesn’t grow and has to be acquired from somewhere. Isn’t grass impressive? Name another type of plant that will carry you like that.
Like, the OP mentions grasslands and climate change. You almost never hear about this, because the eco-public prefers the concept of trees as the Most Eco Plants Ever. Everyone loves trees sooooo much, that there is this constant background insistence that planting loads of trees will fix environmental damage forever, and that the world would be better if it all looked like some Eurocentric fantasy of a mossy fairy forest.
Now, trees are great! I am also in the tree fandom. But trees aren’t hugely efficient at fixing carbon - and across most geographical swathes of the planet, they only work part-time. They only grab carbon dioxide and produce oxygen during the stages of their life cycles when they are “awake” and actively growing - so not during winter, not in their old age, etc. And contrast with wild native grass, which apparently considers carbon capture and sequestration to be its favorite hobby. But you almost never hear people going on about “preserving grassland” or being “grass-huggers” - and that is incredibly important! Let’s talk more about grass!
And vast tracts of the world - magnificent biomes on every part of the planet - are not native forests, but native grassland. Steppes, tundras, prairies, savannahs and scrublands are places that trees don’t dominate, but they are bursting with important and diverse life - often centered around the rhythms of native grasses. Trees don’t live in Antarctica, but grasses do! Grasses are GREAT. They harbor life! They support life!
Grass forms the basis of the human food supply - we eat grains more than anything else. Grains are grasses, and we also use and eat the animals that eat grass. The great domesticated cereal grains of the world - maize, rice, millet, wheat - allowed for food storage, which allowed towns and civilizations to form. And the domesticated animals which have carried our societies on their backs for so long - cows, sheep, horses - all eat grass. Grass is so incredibly important to our daily lives. And it’s beautiful! And complicated! And clever! It’s so much more than a floor covering.
Resist the insistence that grass = lawn. (and in some climates and geographies, embrace that ‘lawns’ are a natural environment.) Encourage and celebrate the native grasses of your area! Whether they’re tallgrass or bamboo, they are very exciting and important. Perhaps you’d like to meet the nearest patch of grass - a lawn, a park, or a strip of green in a city. Is it delicate bentgrass? Tough and resilient ryegrass? Is it invasive? indigenous? Formerly invasive but now naturalized? What is it used for? Who loves it?
Just. Grass is so great! Join the Grass Fandom today!
It’s a grassroots movement
Anatomischer Atlas des Pferdes - Friedrich Andreas Gerber, Joseph Simon Volmar - 1832 - via e-rara/Universitätsbibliothek Bern
First official poster for Candyman (2020), dir. Nia DaCosta
Starring: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tony Todd, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo
In theaters June 12, 2020
I’m too angry and overwhelmed about this article to not share it. This was published early today (Jan 21st, 2020) after 20 months of investigative journalism by Justin Nobel, and everyone should read this.
Some key points:
- Oil and gas drilling produces a byproduct called brine, which turns out is very radioactive.
- This radioactive waste is transported in unmarked (no radioactivity placard) trucks by drivers who have no idea how radioactive their load is, and have no safety equipment to protect themselves or others. The standard brine truck is 1,000 times above DOT limits.
- The waste is not regulated by the EPA, or anyone. “In fact, thanks to a single exemption the industry received from the EPA in 1980, the streams of waste generated at oil-and-gas wells — all of which could be radioactive and hazardous to humans — are not required to be handled as hazardous waste.”
- “In 2016, a brine truck overturned on a bad curve in Barnesville, Ohio, dumping 5,000 gallons of waste. The brine water flowed across a livestock field, entering a stream and then a city reservoir, forcing the town to temporarily shut it down.”
- Radioactive brine is given to towns across America to be used as road salt in the winter, or “dust tamper” in the summer. “On a single day in August 2017, 15,300 gallons of brine were reportedly spread.” If you’ve ever wondered where radioactive waste gets stored… well one answer is that they simply spread it across roads. Does your town do it? Who knows. You might want to find out.
- “Regulators defend the practice by pointing out that only brine from conventional wells is spread on roads, as opposed to fracked wells. But conventional-well brine can be every bit as radioactive, and Burgos’ paper found it contained not just radium, but cadmium, benzene, and arsenic, all known human carcinogens, along with lead, which can cause kidney and brain damage.”
- “Animals on Kerri’s farm [near an injection well] dropped dead — two cats, six chickens, and a rooster. A sheep birthed babies with the heads fused together. Trees were dying.”
- “A lot of guys are coming up with cancer, or sores and skin lesions that take months to heal,” [Peter] says. Peter experiences regular headaches and nausea, numbness in his fingertips and face, and “joint pain like fire.”
- “Randy Moyer, a former brine hauler in Pennsylvania [..] says he quit the job when burning rashes and odd swelling broke out across his body after only four months.”
But hey, I’m sure it’s fine.
This is all 100% horrifying, but do note they have amended one of those bullet points.
Correction: This article originally stated that the standard brine truck in Pennsylvania would be carrying radium “1,000 times above DOT limits,” according to a study by radioactive waste specialist Marvin Resnikoff. He has since revised that number because it was a calculation using Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards, not the DOT’s. The standard brine truck would be six times above DOT standards.
Not that this improves the overall situation much.
