I Love You Cloudy Skies I Love You 60F/16C Temperatures I Love You Cool Winds I Love You Dewy Grass I

one thing about asoiaf is that it frequently invites you to have sympathy for characters who've carried out varying degrees of morally repulsive acts (most apparent with pov characters such as theon, cersei, tyrion, and jaime but also sandor, joffrey, and even viserys). and most of these characters have received some equivalent of, what may look like 'narrative comeuppance' : theon flayed by ramsay, cersei made to perform her walk of atonement, tyrion sold as a slave, jaime losing his hand, joffrey's painful, drawn out death etc. except the scenes really aren't framed like that since the series doesn't seem to buy into that idea. all these incidents are not just deserts but moments of horrible injustice against these characters. and that's a little series thesis statement in itself, no neat category of monsters whose misdeeds can be addressed by a single moment of karmic justice but people like you and me who hurt others and have been hurt and continue on living. it's saying, here's this person who is capable of great cruelty influenced and motivated by their experiences with the world, but will you also hold understanding and sympathy in your heart for when the world is cruel to them in return? given what most fandom discourse looks like... the answer to that question is unfortunately a resounding no for a lot of readers.

tumblr is about to be the social media equivalent of that olympic skater who won gold bc everyone in front of him fell over

So I was going through an image gallery of these old Wizard of Oz promotional pictures and uh-

...🤐

Good News Network

In World First, Horned Oryx Upgraded from Extinct in Wild to Endangered Owing to Decades of Zoo Work

The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country.

"In one of Africa’s last great wildernesses, a remarkable thing has happened—the scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, is now classified only as endangered.

It’s the first time the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest conservation organization, has ever moved a species on its Red List from ‘Extinct in the Wild’ to ‘Endangered.’

The recovery was down to the conservation work of zoos around the world, but also from game breeders in the Texas hill country, who kept the oryx alive while the governments of Abu Dhabi and Chad worked together on a reintroduction program.

Chad... ranks second-lowest on the UN Development Index. Nevertheless, it is within this North African country that can be found the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve, a piece of protected desert and savannah the size of Scotland—around 30,000 square miles, or 10 times the size of Yellowstone.

At a workshop in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, in 2012, Environment Abu Dhabi, the government of Chad, the Sahara Conservation Fund, and the Zoological Society of London, all secured the support of local landowners and nomadic herders for the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx to the reserve.

Environment Abu Dhabi started the project, assembling captive animals from zoos and private collections the world over to ensure genetic diversity. In March 2016, the first 21 animals from this “world herd” were released over time into a fenced-off part of the reserve where they could acclimatize. Ranging over 30 miles, one female gave birth—the first oryx born into its once-native habitat in over three decades.

In late January 2017, 14 more animals were flown to the reserve in Chad from Abu Dhabi.

In 2022, the rewilded species was officially assessed by the IUCN’s Red List, and determined them to be just ‘Endangered,’ and not ‘Critically Endangered,’ with a population of between 140 and 160 individuals that was increasing, not decreasing.

It’s a tremendous achievement of international scientific and governmental collaboration and a sign that zoological efforts to breed endangered and even extinct animals in captivity can truly work if suitable habitat remains for them to return to."

-via Good News Network, December 13, 2023

generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???

beach boys… city girls… mountain goats…

And if it is a prayer, it might as well be a confession.

Tower Princes

when you think about it tho pliny the elder is kind of the funniest guy in the world like. he wrote all these books about natural history that he was wrong about where he confidently claims things like “some animals only have blood during certain parts of the year” and then when mt. vesuvius erupted and destroyed pompeii and herculaneum he said “oh mt vesuvius is exploding? let me go check it out” and then he died