"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?
This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.
as someone in the field of ecological conservation, I can promise without a shadow of a doubt that people DO care. SO MANY people care.
I have to race to sign up to volunteer trips because even with dozens of spots available, people rush to devote their unpaid free time to helping the environment. these trips often fill up within hours. people care.
you will see a lot of bad news because that is the kind of news that people pay the most attention to. I know this more than you'd think from my optimism- not only do I live somewhere facing some of the most extreme ecological issues on the planet, I also spend my time studying the Bad Stuff every single day.
to see all of this firsthand and stay hopeful is proof enough that there IS hope. I promise there is good news, brilliant news, all the time. it's just less visible. but it's no less important or impactful.
i love learning about animals ive literally never seen or heard of before. what amazing diversity of life on this planet earth. what the hell is a japanese serow
As today is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s a great time to revisit Dinah from Devon’s memory of this historic event. And yes, still makes me laugh.
(Mouse requested a bedtime story about “nothing.”)
Once upon a time there was nothing, and it lived in the corner of Mouse’s room. There was space between the bed and the cupboard that was big enough for nothing else.
There wasn’t much room for nothing in Mouse’s house. Everything everywhere had something in it, and sometimes more. Everywhere that looked like it might have nothing really had something, like dust or a cornflake or a LEGO head or a shadow, and if it looked like there was nothing for even a moment, someone would come and put something there.
It was very hard to be nothing in Mouse’s house. Every corner had something in it, and if it didn’t, there was a spider living there. Everything was always some colour or another, and usually some noise. Everyone was always putting a book down on you. Or spilling Ribena on you and pretending they hadn’t. Or complaining that there was no room for anything, and shifting about all the other things, but never making room for nothing - only moving it uncomfortably about the house. “Nothing’s ever where I put it in this house,” they’d say, but complaining.
And even when they weren’t doing all that, they were always talking about nothing. Someone would always be tripping over it, and then would yell that they had tripped on nothing - there was no privacy for nothing around here - or they were saying that nothing was wrong. Even when it was quiet someone would say, “did you hear that?” And, “what was that?” And, “it must’ve been nothing.” They would poke it; and then say out loud that they had poked nothing, but never got into trouble for it!
As a result of this, nothing began to feel cross, and put-upon, and uncomfortable. It was also a bit lonely, and wondered if it wanted to be something. So it thought very hard, and was SOMETHING.
This was certainly more interesting, and everyone came and looked at it, and said Look At That Thing, and That Really is Something. They poked it, and said they had poked something, and that something was there. They said, “I can smell something,” but with more interest this time. Then they spilled Ribena on it, and something came out of the corner and ran about the house, and everyone wanted to know all about it, and why the Ribena was in Mouse’s room in the first place.
Something was interested in the attention, because it was true - it really was something. It was chased all around the house now. Everyone said, “it’s up to something.” But instead of sitting quietly, something wanted something to do.
So something followed Mouse, but at a distance, because Mouse was always tripping on something. And Mouse and Mama went out in the pushchair, and something followed them.
Mouse said, “I see something!” And Mama said, “what do you see?”
And Mouse said, “I see GEORGE.”
With that, George had to be George, and was a boy thing. He was puzzled by this, and sat in Mouse’s lap, and was pushed around in the pushchair. “What is a George?” George asked.
Mouse explained that a George was a bit like a monkey, with a tail, red, with a face, a lot of red fur, and small, and smelly. Smelly of sharks.
“I’m smelly of sharks?” George said, quite unexpectedly upset by this. “What do sharks smell like?”
(George had only just stopped being nothing, and didn’t know.)
Mouse explained how sharks (which astute grownups will remember are small BLÅHAJ stuffed toys that mice incidentally shoplifted from IKEA, across which we shall draw the veil of amnesty) smell of bedtime, and possibly Ribena.
“I don’t like that,” said George, and tried being George anyway. George went to the shop, and ran about on the floor for a bit, and everyone said, “what is THAT?” And it was George.
George said, “I want to go home,” so they went home, and went to bed with the shark.
But then George knew the end was coming, and so he said to Mouse, “this is too much. I want to go home.”
and George didn’t fit in his corner any more - because it was big enough for nothing.
So George went POP and turned back into nothing.
Mouse said, “yes,” and nodded. And Mouse talked to George anyway.
And then Mama came and said, “who are you talking to, Mouse?”
fantastic. i love it. i posted this after my wife said it yesterday and as i was doing it i was like "this can't be an original thought. as soon as i hit post someone's going to say 'you stole this from a tweet from 2014' and i'll say 'no, i stole it from my beautiful wife.'"
Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).
When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".
When the boat is still being built, your say "it".
When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".
When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".
When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.
If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").
If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")
If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").
If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.
If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.
I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.
inability to correctly perceive 3d objects is in fact far more dangerous when someone is driving a car next to you then when they're like, sending emails to you.
In an ideal world, everyone has read Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, and I’m just preaching to the choir.
But if by any chance this post reaches anyone who hasn’t read this marvelous, delightful book, let me tell you what you’re sleeping on:
A perfect example of how to write the most oblivious protagonist while still making things clear to the reader what’s going on
A competent protagonist who still has relatable self-esteem issues
Oblivious p I n I n g she wants Howl so bad and is in SUCH jealous denial
Misunderstandings related to that obliviousness
The most ridiculous Drama King to ever slime his own house
But who also is head over heels for that adorably oblivious protagonist
Like he dotes on her and she just thinks the whole time he doesn’t like her
Okay it’s not exactly enemies to lovers, but like, Sophie has such an impression of Howl’s reputation due to his own efforts to blacken his own name that Howl has a lot of work to do to correct her impression of him
and besides which, he really is a slitherer-outer so you can hardly blame Sophie’s frustration with him
and besides which Sophie does meddle an awful lot so you can hardly blame his own frustrations with her
I mean she basically just barges into his home and insists on staying an indeterminate time, like just tonight or you know, forever?
On that note, it’s not fake dating but these two are essentially living in a domestic relationship before they even kiss
File under: how to write a romance without needing the protagonists to kiss!
When Sophie insists on cleaning all the time Howl is just like “??? why??? do you want to clean when you are so awesome and powerful and could do so much better??? i keep telling you there’s a spell for that and you do not have to clean???? but if it’s what you want to do I guess?????”
like for real he’s just disappointed that she seems to only think she’s good for serving and doing chores and wants her to want more for herself
you can reread the book and try to pinpoint when Howl starts loving Sophie but then you cannot and for sure it just must be a case of ‘he was already in the middle before he knew he begun’
like he cures her aches and pains and he buys her nice clothes clearly trying to cater to her taste and
when he has to redo his whole HOME he asks her what kind of shop she wants to run and he buys her old home like as if they’re already married and they’re building a new home together
and Howl tries multiple times to break her curse, but in the end only SHE can really break it bc like I said this story is brilliant
and the WHOLE TIME, the whole time ALL OF THIS doting and pining is going on, Sophie looks like a 90-year-old woman and Howl is just head over heels for her
I mean with tropes like these???? what are you waiting for?
PS WAIT TRAVESTY I FORGOT – awesome sisters caring for each other!!
so i feel the urge to add a bit of context here because i find the vague on-screen text deeply underwhelming.
this is not just "a picture", it's Pale Blue Dot, one of the most famous works of astrophotography ever made public. and it was not just "a dying spacecraft", it was Voyager 1, a probe launched in 1977 to study the atmosphere and moons of Jupiter and Saturn, among other things. both Voyager probes carried on them a golden record meant as an introduction to humanity for any alien species that might discover them (if you saw Kane Parsons' Backrooms, you've heard the contents of that record coming out of a cardboard caveman standee). they did this because NASA planned to sundown these probes by letting them drift out of the solar system to parts unknown. Voyager 1 is currently 16 billion miles away, the farthest any manmade object has ever traveled from earth.
AND it's not even dead! despite supposedly being a "dying spacecraft" all the way back in 1990, Voyager 1 is not expected to be fully out of commission until 2036. to keep the probe alive they've switched off unneeded tools, adjusted its trajectory, even essentially updated the firmware, and through all that time it's basically never stopped sending back priceless data for scientists to analyze.
this is the original Pale Blue Dot, by the way:
it's relevant because "a single point of light smaller than one pixel" makes a lot more sense in the context of the original than it does in the heavily corrected version up top, where our pale blue dot looks more like a vibrant dwarf star. the difficulty of spotting earth in these waving curtains of space IS the entire impact of the picture! the blue dot is "pale" because it's hard to see! by making earth stand out so brilliantly, Terribly Interesting have inadvertently created the impression that earth is this vibrant glowing pearl, bright for all to see for billions of miles around. and it just isn't! the point is not that we can see earth from far away, but that we almost can't, because we aren't the center of the universe! when science educators past have used this image they often referred to one where the earth is circled in bright red, which only further emphasizes how small and fragile our home really is.
but hey, if you DO want an improved version of Pale Blue Dot you don't even need photoshop:
this is Pale Blue Dot Revisited, released by NASA in 2020. this is a reinterpretation of the original data using modern image processing techniques to create a more realistic or at least more high-definition rendering of the scene. it's important to understand that this is not the original image dropped into photoshop and airbrushed. strictly speaking, there isn't an "original" Pale Blue Dot the way there are negatives of traditional photography. astrophotography is almost always the product of raw data being deliberately interpreted by scientists, so the same data can produce many different images (ie if they want to emphasize the infrared spectrum vs visible light). similar work was done by Don P. Mitchell in ~2005 to enhance images taken by Soviet Venera probes of the surface of Venus to be less noisy.
here's an original:
and here's Mitchell's version:
i'm not here to argue which is "better" (and i highly recommend you read the source for this one because it's quite fascinating), just to give another example of the process in action and hopefully clarify how it's distinct from editing a jpeg in photoshop. also i just think it's neat!
which is the real reason i went to the trouble of making this post. Terribly Interesting may indeed find all of this to be terribly interesting, but it appears to be interest for the sake of a vague transient feeling of having been interested and little else. it doesn't name the probe, the photo in question, nor does it give historical context for the mission it was part of. the only substantial thing it says about the probe, that Voyager 1 is a "dying spacecraft", is so frustratingly oversimplified it may as well just be a lie.
so what's actually learned here, if you're someone who knows none of this history? that one time there was a thing and it did a thing? earth tiny from far away?? obviously it's just one image macro but i see this kind of thing making the rounds SO often, a screenshot with like two sentences on it explaining the image with as little descriptive text as possible. it's like there's a space-themed inspiration-posting rulebook that says you can't imply the existence of information not contained within the image. mention NASA? mention Voyager 1? mention Pale Blue Dot? nope! "a dying spacecraft" took "one last photograph", and here's a photoshopped version to make earth more visible.
and it might not even get to me nearly as much if this was any other space photo. i could accept that space stuff is complicated and this kind of fast-food image can only say so much if we were talking about Cassini or JWST's role in helping us find exoplanets. but this is Pale Blue Dot, the brainchild of arguably THE science communicator Carl Sagan! he wrote a book about Pale Blue Dot, he was on TV to announce the image personally! it's arguable that no astrophotograph exists whose context has been more digestibly packaged for laymen than Pale Blue Dot, which just makes it that much more egregious when someone doesn't go to the trouble.
so much of what i love about astronomy and studying the past & future of space travel is that everything you can learn is a doorway to learning more. you can't earnestly read about Voyager or Cassini or Venera or any other mission without finding some odd searchable detail and going "wait, what is that" and immediately falling down an hourslong rabbit hole to find an answer. and you'll never reach the bottom! i love reading articles about cutting edge astrophysics written for people in, like, early grad school, because i fully comprehend maybe 10% of it, vaguely understand 20% (on a good day), can kind of wrap my head around 30%, and find the rest totally inscrutable... but that's still a solid 60% scrutability rating even at the lowest-quality end of the spectrum! i'm no expert and i never will be, but in scouring the written expertise of others i almost always find one or two ideas that end up sticking with me forever. and it starts, every time, from questions about a photograph.
the sin of the above image is that it's solipsistic. it doesn't give you anywhere to put your curiosity or interest, doesn't invite you to leave their website and learn more than they have space to share, it doesn't even tell you anything useful about its subject! it reduces the entire history of Pale Blue Dot down to a vague and nondescript wonder that's just a pale imitation of the highly specific and ideologically driven wonder that Carl Sagan wanted us to feel.
here, feel it for yourself:
----
[P.S.: before you lament that this is an "AI" problem, while yes "AI" has radically increased the volume of low-value (often negative-value) inspiration bait like this, know that this has been a problem in online science education for a LOT longer than chatgpt's been around. this example isn't extraordinary, just close to my heart. nothing new under the sun and all that]
