Just in case anyone needs a reason to not feed wildlife- this story out of Washington is a pretty good reminder. This lady has been feeding raccoons for years and now she’s just had to call authorities for help because hundreds of them are parked out on her property and are so aggressive trying to get food that she can’t get into her house.
Neighbors have been reporting excessive raccoon mortality on the adjacent road and several attacks on pets, but still everyone on this video was just talking about how cute it is. Why can’t people see how unfair it is to disrupt an animal’s life like this? What do they think will happen to these raccoons? They should be scampering through a forest or marsh eating crayfish and berries and bugs, not hotdogs and cat food. This is a nightmare situation and it’s entirely one person’s fault.
what is that! it looks like a nipple, but it’s new and on the back of her hind leg. I’m taking her in for her arthritis shot on Monday, so I’ll have someone take a look
oh, okay 😊 yay
just got back from the vet! she said it looks like one of those benign tumours that old animals get, and that she won’t biopsy unless it changes colour or grows super large. this is Pangur’s second harmless lump (she has a lipoma between her front legs), and I’m sure there will be more to come. live long, get lumpy!
greer hit me up if you’d like to have this card but i couldn’t not write this
my friend tarek has been doing some amazing community organizing in palestine — he’s been teaching classes for children with my other friend farah AND distributing water and providing iftar meals during ramadan throughout rafah! his brother just had a major orthopedic surgery he had to wait about a year for and since food and water is incredibly scarce he can’t properly recover. please donate to their efforts!!!
quick reminder: tarek isn’t just a word on your screen, he is my friend.
he’s 21, the same age as me. before the war he was studying to be a translator and he dreamt of voice acting, just like so many of you reading this. (he’s pretty good too actually.) he would probably not call himself a poet but every few days he posts something so beautifully worded that he might as well be a poet laureate. he recently wrote: “gaza is sick of being praised by anyone. gaza is tired that its image is on satellite tv. gaza is sick of its name in the sad poems. gaza is tired of the repeated endings.” the message is clear — sentiments are not enough, his people need HELP.
every day i tell him im doing everything i can. and it’s true, i am, but its barely anything, as i’m disabled and bedridden. i’ve kept that fact from him out of shame because i see what he has to endure each day, but i feel SO POWERLESS. every time an announcement breaks that more bombs have dropped in the night or more innocent people were gunned down in broad daylight, my heart sinks with terror and i wonder if i’ve lost my friend. it really would mean so much — not just to him, to me — if you could donate anything you can spare to tarek and his family. he deserves the whole world and more.
yesterday tarek almost got on a water distribution truck that was targeted with bombs. the day before his neighbors had their house bombed (during Eid) and that whole family died. please help my friend
the “dire wolves are no longer extinct” stuff is gonna be the most annoyingly persistent science misinformation for the next decade at least
All right. I’ll take a crack at weighing in.
Is Jurassic Park a movie about frogs? Are frogs the reason millions of people spent hours of time and billions of dollars watching those movies?
Based upon the “facts” of the story, you’d have to admit that this is technically correct, but is it true?
The argument being presented here is that these aren’t really Direwolves, because they have a basis as Gray Wolves and they have subsequently been modified. I’d argue that adding the essence of what a Direwolf is to what was the essence of a Gray Wolf changes and destroys the necessary defining properties (essence) of Gray Wolf, making the creature’s new necessary defining properties Direwolf.
In other words. If the essential properties of Direwolf are added to Gray Wolf, isn’t it now Direwolf and not Gray Wolf?
I’d go even further and say that since direwolf and gray wolf DNA is virtually identical, they have actually de-extincted the direwolf simply by making a gray wolf the size of a direwolf
The argument being presented is not that these aren’t direwolves because they have a basis in gray wolf DNA. It is that these aren’t really direwolves because they have no direwolf DNA. None. Not any at all.
These are gray wolves that have been GMO’d to look like direwolves.
The premise in Jurassic Park is that the dinosaurs used actual DNA of the dinosaurs that were revived. Frog DNA was used to fill in the gaps, yes, but even in the films, Ian Malcom and Alan Grant–who never agree on anything–agreed that the parks dinosaurs were only kinda-sorta revived dinosaurs specifically because DNA from other animals was spliced in. If direwolf DNA had been used in the creation of these animals, we would be having the Jurassic Park debate. It wasn’t.
They aren’t direwolves just because they’ve been modified to look like them. In order for direwolves to be revived from extinction, they would’ve needed to use actual direwolf DNA and they didn’t.
This effort is distinct from efforts to revive the woolly mammoth, which do in fact use mammoth DNA. Or to revive the Pyrenean Ibex, which also use DNA from the extinct species. Or to revive the thylacine, which also use DNA from the extinct species. That wasn’t done in this case. They didn’t pull a Jurassic Park because they didn’t do the same thing as what was done in that franchise.
almost every comment I’ve gotten on this post, both arguing for and against these being dire wolves, is making the same mistake that i alluded to several times, which is assuming that a dire wolf is the fantasy creature that looks like a normal grey wolf, as portrayed on game of thrones.
Dire wolves, the real animal, are not wolves. “wolf” is just the common name of the animal, akin to “mountain goat”. The dire wolf was a species of wild canid that wasn’t particularly closely related to grey wolves; no more than a wolf is related to this:
at the very least the animal’s head shape was much different to grey wolves, and even if it looked anything like them at all (ex. both having similar coat patterns), they would still be recognizably distinct animals, ala mountain lions and african lions or ostriches and cassowaries. No, “sharing most of their DNA” does not mean two different species look like the same animal (unless you think humans and gorillas are the same thing), and that certainly wasn’t true of dire wolves and grey wolves, given the former, again, have massive disproportionate heads among other anatomical differences:
The animal they’ve bred here has not been “GMO’d to look like a direwolf” or “given the essential properties of Direwolf”, it’s just a normal looking wolf, allegedly going to grow bigger because pop culture portrays dire wolves as bigger than grey wolves (they aren’t) and only white because the wolf on game of thrones is white (what are the chances a large mammal from a temperate climate would have pure white fur?)
The equivalent here isn’t “a literal jurassic park dinosaur that technically has frog dna”; the equivalent would be if someone edited a infinitesimally tiny amount of a frog’s dna to match the *hypothetical dna* of a dinosaur and claimed the completely average looking frog they hatched was a resurrected t rex. The argument here - “it’s a dire wolf because it looks like one” vs “it’s not a dire wolf, it just looks like one” is completely ignoring that the jurassic park t rex of the situation looks exactly like a normal frog.
when i say my gender changes to the tune of the bit i mean a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and if he can’t then god forbid women do anything
jokerkind specibus ass
ALT
But you still recognized that as a Homestuck reference.
What were YOU doing at the devil’s sacrament?
i googled the words & got results from the homestuck wiki. that’s not attending the devil’s sacrament that’s investigating suspicious noises in the woods by lanternlight
A game called South of Midnight comes out on April 8th. Y’all keep complaining about media having the same storyline over and over again with the same white people at the forefront. I need you to blow this game the fuck up.
Black female main character. With American South mythology woven in. Completely different
I NEED THIS GAME TO SUCCEED I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS GAME YOU HAVE NO IDEA
I’m looking you in your eyes right now. Play this game. Play this fucking game.
Allow me to add to this because there’s some incredible qualities to South of Midnight which makes this game worth checking out, even aside from it being new and different. First of all, the game is married to the STOP MOTION ANIMATION style!! My mind was fucking blown when I heard that. They created puppets of characters and animated the opening cinematic, maybe even more, i don’t know, because Im still experiencing the game, but even the animations in the game itself have a stop-motion-like effect that you can turn off in the settings if its weird on your eyes. The art of the game is GORGEOUS, the setpieces, the backgrounds, the characters, it has a very rich and unique style born from that attempt to mimic stop motion and its tactile, eerie looking puppets.
The music is PHENOMENAL, most of the main characters seem to have their own themes they sing as you progress their levels, that give you a greater understanding of their inner lives and struggle. The main protagonist is chatty, loves throwing in sassy remarks but is also kind and empathetic to those she meets. She was chosen perfectly for the role of Weaver.
And the mythology, of course. I won’t speak on it much because this is my first time engaging with the culture and mythos of the deep south (the only other experience i have with it, is damn Princess and the Frog) but damn, what an introduction it is. I am deeply fascinated and excited to meet the other figures that have been teased to me in promotional material. The gameplay is a mix of platforming, puzzle-solving and hack-and-slash, which is done solidly. Ive seen no bug or experienced any issues yet. And here’s the trailer below for you to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xRuUaJYNtI In a word, there’s some incredible artistry and passion on display and indeed, as OP mentioned, it gives us a culture and a story unlike any in pop culture. If you can’t buy it, definitely at least check it out and show it to someone who you know might take interest!
The US-backed terrorist state of Israel killed Palestinian chef and co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, Mahmoud al-Madhoun.
Mahmoud was able to feed over 3,000 Palestinian civilians a day through the genocide.
Let’s keep giving it all we’ve got for the Gaza Soup Kitchen. Israel has repeatedly targeted and killed those who have given service to the Gaza community.
Donate as much as you can or if you’re unable to, share this post so it reaches more people! Any amount, even a dollar, can help the heroes of the Gaza Soup Kitchen to feed the people of Gaza.
“ Only if you use the scientific definition of species! However, if you use my definition that I just made up-“
It’s a lot worse than made up, even; it’s also how some pseudoscience quack racists try to redefine different ethnic groups as “subspecies” of humanity.
people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry
If you’re using gen AI because “you want to make art but don’t know how/can’t learn/it’s easier/whatever”
You don’t want to make art.
You want someone to make art for you, but you don’t want to pay or exchange anything of equal value for it, and also you want it right now, in whatever style you fancy that moment, and in whatever quantity you want. You’re greedy and entitled and it is just that simple. You don’t want to make anything.
Every donation, no matter how small, counts, and currently as of the time I write this post 668 people have donated. Encouraging my followers active on here to donate or reblog
