japanese is a kind language bc if u forget how to write a kanji it will hold your hand and say “it is ok, u can still write in hiragana and everyone will understand”
if u forget one character in chinese u suddenly illiterate and there is no way to help you. you mispronounce one thing and suddenly your mother is a horse
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#languages #japanese #chinese #mandarin #cantonese
hello this is my favorite post ever and also life goals
Awww,,, goalsssss
Not scene but reblogging anyway cuz this is my blog and I think it’s SO FUCKING IMPORTANT as a young trans person to see older trans people that are still happy and alive and in a good place in life with people that love them. We all deserve this <3
And there’s pollinators, and it’s lower maintenance, and (imo) it looks so much better ✨
The book is 1984, which is neither. It's anti-authoritarian, which tells you a lot.
Ya know, sometimes I wish the joke *didn’t* write itself.
Imagine actually being so evil that you'd rather make sure your writers suffer financially instead of just paying them the pay they deserve.
Hell truly has some seats reserved already, holy shit.
Time to start throwing money at strike funds, y’all.
As someone who’s been on strike, more than once, it’s hard really hard. It’s especially devastating when you know your employer has decided to just walk away from the table
Even if you can’t support financially you can help by keep talking about the strike and showing support for the striking writers
The positive stories an posts online really helped me and my coworkers when we were on strike
Even the people driving by giving the friendly beeps past our picket line helped
The more public support the striking writers (any any striking workers) the more likely they are to succeed in negotiations
Teachers have tried this and are amazed when their classes don’t go feral like in the book. It’s almost as if the book was supposed to be satire and not a treaty on the nature of humanity.
there’s a timeskip
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
THERE’S A TIMESKIP
after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!
AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because
THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING
AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA
HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -
#tbf the dude wrote it to be a dick
yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.
i read about this in rutger bregman’s human kind, a book i cannot recommend highly enough, but if you don’t want to go and read a whole book about the inherent goodness of humanity (which again, you really should) then the relevant excerpt can be found here.
Much as I adore hippos, this is undeniably just. (via @persian-slipper)
Relatable
Consider the following
figured out a way you can search for posts that are tagged TWO things on a blog!!! feeling clever
for anyone else who didn’t know, this is the format!:
https://[blogURL].tumblr.com/search/%23[tag1]%2C%20%23[tag2]
remove the [brackets] when using it!
mods are asleep, share hacks that make the site usable against its will
okay, I finished Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams earlier today! I did say in the post a few hours ago I only had about 40 pages left. I also reread about another 80 or so pages that I read last year just to refresh my memory. So, I'm now going to do the (potentially) depressing task of listing out the endangered species features in this book, and seeing if any are still alive. I don't know yet how depressing or exciting this post might be.
Madagascar
This part of the book is from a trip in 1985, where they went to try and find the aye-aye lemur. I am pleased to report that the aye-aye is still alive, although still endangered. Woo-hoo! The aye-aye is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is so unique it has no taxomic family (no related species.) They are considered evil, or harbingers of death, in folk belief, so they face danger from being hunted and killed.
Indonesia
In this chapter, they travel to the island of Komodo to look at the Komodo dragons. Komodo dragons, thankfully, are still alive, but still endangered due to the fragility of their habitat. They're at risk of volcanoes, earthquakes, habitat loss, fire, tourism, loss of prey from poaching, and illegal poachnig in general. Climate chane and sea level rise also threaten their habitat. There are 1,380 mature individuals left in the wild and 3,400 total.
Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaïre at the time of the book's publishing)
In this chapter, they end up seeing two animals. They traveled to the country to see the northern white rhinocerous, but also ended up seeing mountain gorillas too because, as Adams says, "It is very hard to go all the way to Zaïre and not see them." Mountain gorillas, although listed as endangered, are still around. The World Wildlife Fund lists their population as just over 1,000 individuals. The specific area that Adams and Carwardine visit in the book, Virunga National Park, has seen an increase in population. When they visited in the late 80s, there was a population of 320, but as of 2010 there were 480.
Here's where my post actually gets sad. The animal that Adams and Carwardine actually planned to visit in the DRC was the northern white rhinocerous. In 1988 at the time of the trip (or perhaps 1990 at the publishing of the book), there were 22 individuals left in the wild, all in Garamba National Park. Twenty two. Douglas Adams writes about the sad state of their population, and compares it to the success of the subspecies the southern white rhino. He ends that section of the book with the sentence: "The point is, we are not too late to save the northern white rhinocerous from exctinction."
Feeling very energized after reading this, I had set down my book and pulled out my smartphone to google the northern white rhinocerous. The bad news is, the northern white rhino is functionally extinct in 2023. There are only two left in the entire world, and both are female, mother and daughter. Garamba National Park has suffered years of turmoil from politcal unrest, wars, insurgents, and poachers. In 2008, there were no northern white rhinos left in the wild and only 8 left in captivity.
There's some tentatively good news. Before the last male died in 2018, his sperm was collected. The remaining two living females cannot carry babies anymore, but the daughter's eggs were gathered. There's a team of scientists trying IVF, and since 2019 they've managed to get 24 embryos from one female and two males. They're planning on using another southern white rhino as a surrogate. Will this save the species? Who knows. Any babies that result will have to be inbred--either siblings or half-siblings. No genetic diversity remains in the subspecies. But it is interesting to me since this sort of thing used to not be possible at all for endangered species.
New Zealand
The first birds mentioned in this chapter is the Kea, which is also endangered, but this chapter isn't really about them. It's about the Kakapo. The Kakapo are probably my favorite animal described in this book, because they seem so silly. It's a wonder they never managed to go extinct at any point in history. I love them. Fortunately, there's good news for Kakapo: they're doing better!
Actually, I saw a tweet about them literally earlier today:
ALTThey're still considered critically endangered, but this is good news. As of 2023 there are 248, which is a significant increase in the ~70 that existed when the book was written. Yay, kākāpō! They're very cute.
China
Here is where the post gets sad again. In this chapter, Adams and Carwardine visit the Yangtze in search of the baiji river dolphin. It has been 21 years since the last confirmed sighting of the baiji, and 17 years since they were considered extinct after no trace of them could be found. I find this particularly sad, because part of the chapter in this book has Adams and Carwardine visiting with the Tongling Baiji Conservation Committee, and their construction of a nature reserve on the river. The end of the chapter seems hopeful based on this hard work, so I also feel quite sad for all these people in 1989 who cared so much and were still unable to save these animals :(
Mauritius
This is the final chapter of the book, and covers quite a few animals. The original intention was for them to be looking for the Rodrigues fruit bat. These bats are endangered, but with increasing population. By the time of the book's publishing in 1990, the population had just passed the 1,000 mark. The Philadelphia Zoo website says with breeding programs, there are now 20,000 left in the wild.
Another species mentioned is the Mauritius Kestrel. In 1974, there were only 4 individuals left. Now, thanks to breeding programs, there are about 400 left in the wild as of 10 years ago. That's amazing, but it is a bit worrying still--in 2005, there were 800 in the wild. So there was a wildly successful reintroduction and now the population is dipping again. But if they survived it once, I think we can help them survive it again.
Another bird mentioned is the pink pigeon. As of the publishing of the book in 1990, there were less than 10 in the wild. Now, thanks to conservation efforts, there are approximately 480. They've suffered some loss of genetic diversity, though.
Finally, the echo parakeet is mentioned. As of the time of the book's publishing, there were less than 15 remaining in the wild. I am happy to say that as of 2020 there are more than 800 birds left in the wild, and their status has been moved from endangered to just vulnerable--a step up!
That brings me to the end of my tumblr book report. I was actually mildly surprised and happy to see that only two of the species mentioned in the book are extinct/functionally extinct, and that the others were saved from the brink. I seriously thought while googling some of the birds at the end that they would be gone, but fortunately they're still around.
Goodnight! I spent way too long writing this!
