Andulka
Noah Kahan
The Bowery Presents
oozey mess
if i look back, i am lost
Mike Driver
bliss lane
ojovivo
roma★
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Claire Keane
Doug Jones
Sweet Seals For You, Always
NASA
@theartofmadeline
Today's Document
Misplaced Lens Cap
KIROKAZE
noise dept.
gracie abrams
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@ripplesinstillwater
the year is 2035. the new beauty standard is for women to cut their ears off, as ears are a masculine trait which make the face look too big and hearing isnt necessary as it doesnt align with being demure. evil feminists say perhaps this is unnecessary and ears are natural. women are agressively proclaiming they are cutting their ears off due to sensory issues
honestly i think im good without that thanks
Apparently I can't use my imagination unless I use AI
text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]
And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.
They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?
I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.
AI companies are heavily invested in making themselves relevant. They want people to believe they can't do the things they have done unaided before and to make them become reliant on the AI models, so the AI models' existence is artificially justified.
If you look at this and still continue with that liberal "sex work is just like any other work" thinking you're simply a fucking monster
To my knowledge, this is the largest study ever conducted on this topic. The conclusions stand.
i can't be the only one who's just straight-up ... bored with women hating themselves. my mom keeps lamenting to me how upset she is about her gray hair. my friend stares at her laugh lines every day in agony. my sister loses sleep over the horrible unbearable thought of looking fat. and every time these women i love open up to me, i can't help but think ... then stop staring at yourself? stop drowning yourself, narcissus, and just fucking live your life instead of sitting in front of a mirror obeying cosmetic corporations' lies. just stop it. this is getting ridiculous. you're too smart to be falling for this bullshit. "oh no but these men who hate women told me that if i'm ugly i'm worthless!" girl if you actually believe that then good luck. but i am getting worse at being supportive of people whose nonsense worldviews keep them trapped in pain. stop looking at yourself start fucking living i am pleading you deserve to be happy and it is stupid that you disagree
Also I am asking all of you, once again, to learn about ecosystem conservation and restoration instead of wallowing in "we are already past the point of no return" or that it will take "millennia" to restore ecosystems.
You have to understand that nature does not work in the same timeframe as ours. Protecting and restoring ecosystems is RIDICULOUSLY inexpensive and requires very little industrial technology; shovels and saplings are not exactly high-tech. But it takes time and long-term projects with people determined to do it. Maybe we are too focused in our "we want it now" thinking, but what you see today is not what you may see in 10, 20, 50, even 80 years if you live that long.
But it works. It's working right now, and when capitalism is replaced by socialism and we stop thinking on short-term gain, when our societies are focused into the common welfare instead of accumulation, it will even work better. Again I could point out to individual examples but instead, I encourage you to learn about ecology. We are well past from the catastrophic "Earth will die and there's nothing we can do" predictions from the 80s. We know what to do, we know it can work.
A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nat
This article talks about this very much in the "see? ecology can help the economy too!" tone that unfortunately is sort of necessary to convince people in the current capitalist system. But I don't want you to focus on this right now.
I want you to KNOW how doable this is. How inexpensive this is, how POSSIBLE THIS IS. That people working and loving the land and nature they live in is possible. That these projects WORK, THEY DO restore and preserve ecosystems. That humanity is neither a plague that destroys everything or a passive bystander on its own destruction but that these are actual things that can be, are, and will be implemented, backed by actual science and results. This is not empty #hopecore #hopepunk feel good stuff, these are things you can learn about, even work towards, and you can most certainly demand they are part of our society.
Are you listening to me?
"I'm just losing hope." Then get some fucking conviction. Millions of people around the globe are working their asses off and seeing results. What they are doing IS WORKING.
This orange peel story was huge years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/a-fruitful-experiment-in-land-conservation/
Beavers reintroduced to historic wetlands improve them at such a level that we can see the improvements from space: https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/nasa-satellites-reveal-restoration-power-of-beavers/
Africa is successfully slowing desertification and restoring historic farming soil with their Green Wall project: https://welcomeafrica.org/en/africa-combats-desertification-with-a-belt-of-life/
There has even been success at regrowing coral reefs--something which I am old enough to be told was impossible. But people have been hard at work for decades since then, and this is one of the results: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240308123248.htm
REPAIRING THE DAMAGE IS ENTIRELY WITHIN THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY.
THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE IF YOU HAVE THE CONVICTION TO BACK IT UP.
When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.
The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.
Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.
So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.
This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.
(Source 1)
(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)
(Source 3)
Unfortunately, I don’t have citations, but I have heard about the same phenomenon through Nat Geo Live presentations in the Amazon and Serengeti. Most individuals who are poachers or use slash-and-burn farming are doing this out of survival, not ignorance or greed. They have families to feed and children who will starve if they don’t find food or money. As OP said, fixing the human suffering fixes the conservation issue and is a win-win, while preaching conservation to starving people does nothing.
But on top of that, you know who the most ardent conservationists are once security has been achieved? The people who had once been forced to poach or slash-and-burn to survive. You know who’s great at tracking down gorilla poachers? Ex-poachers. Who’s good at understanding and advocating for people forced to do these things to survive? Ex-poachers. Who can convince others to take a chance on finding a better way to survive? Same answer.
It is win-win-win. As ecologists, conservationists, and environmentalists we must get out of our ivory towers of knowledge, stop carrying them into the field, and remember humans are part of the ecosystem too. And that sustainable change will never happen if human needs aren’t addressed.
I also love this story about the arapaima in Brazil. They increased the population of this endangered giant fish literally a hundred times over- from 3,000 to 300,000- by ending the total ban on arapaima fishing and instead creating legal fishing organizations. The fishing organization members get trained on how do population counts and determine how many fish they can take while still leaving enough for the population to grow.
The former illegal fishers are now sought-after experts, because they know how to spot the arapaima and tell juveniles apart from adults. They get to keep practicing the fishing skills that were passed down to them. The actual process of fishing is easier because they can work together and don't have to sneak around. The profits are higher because they can sell the fish openly to restaurants and to the public. The fishing organization members make sure that other people in their communities don't fish illegally. And the numbers of arapaima keep going up and up, so there's plenty to go around even as more people join the fishing organizations.
If you click all the way through to the report from the conservation org that started the fishing organizations project, there are quotes from fishing organization members:
"We built a second house and I'm putting my oldest two kids through college on the money we get from fishing."
"Nowadays you have young people walking around with pockets full of cash saying "I got 6,000 from fishing this year!" It used to be you wouldn't even get 50 reais of pocket money."
"At the first harvest after we started the fishing organization, I saw full-grown arapaima for the first time, really big ones like they're supposed to be. Before, I had only heard about how big they could get. That's when I knew that our work was paying off and we could keep moving forward."
loudly going "YOU'RE GOOD YOU'RE GOOD" to myself to ward off the memory of every embarrassing thing i've ever done
I actually learned a fun therapy trick for this!
The statute of limitations on arson is 6 years.
So whenever I remember an embarrassing or shameful thing I’ve done, I ask myself if it was worse than arson. If it wasn’t, and it was 6 or more years ago, I forgive myself.
Also just the comedic shock of going “well, that was a stupid and mean thing I said, but 6 years is the statute of limitations on arson” helps.
I don’t care how common it is, it is not NORMAL for every single man to have started watching porn as a teenager and continue to do so for the rest of his life. it is not normal for children to consume porn or have easy access to it. it is not normal for grown men to prefer a screen over real human interactions. it’s not normal to have erectile dysfunction at 25. it’s not normal to have women displayed to you like a product at the click of a button. none of that shit is normal.
The rage I feel whenever I see that "You're absolutely right!" BS
Source: @laceypaigepoetry on Instagram
it's genuinely bullshit that you should be required to own a mobile phone for participation in literally any aspect of life
this should be illegal and i'm not fucking joking
I'm not going to leave this in the tags cause I would like to expand on this with a situation I ran into a few months ago:
I took a Greyhound in November to my current state. I had a homeless man approach me and ask if I knew where the next bus was headed. He needed to buy a bus ticket, and was completely stranded in that city because the bus stop itself did not sell physical tickets. It required purchasing them online, and he didn't have a phone. He had cash with him to afford it, but literally could not buy a ticket because he didn't have a phone or debit card of any kind.
The bus driver allowed him to just ride for free that day so he could get to his destination (3~ hours from there), which was incredibly kind of them.
More recently, I had to download an app for my friend to use a parking meter because they got rid of letting them take change and debit cards. An app for a parking meter.
I'm currently dealing with homelessness and do you have any idea how lucky I am to have a phone that's paid for? Half the resources I go to require a phone number or email to sign up for assistance (or more ironically an address but that's besides the point).
It's shit like that, that makes me HATE how everything requires a phone, an app, an email ect to use basic shit, especially when it's not needed. It's inaccessible to so many people, and not just those going through homelessness.
Phone broke? That sucks. Is your phone dead? Too bad. Missed payment on your phone plan? Fuck you, better suck it up. Don't have data or signal? Uh oh better find somewhere with it.
It's a disadvantage at BEST to the average day to day citizen and it's absolutely exhausting. At worst I honestly think it's a symptom of fascism.
So cool!😍
I work at my local JCC with the children in our community and this looks like it could be something of theirs.
The l'dor v'dor of it all 💛
also idk if anyone else has seen this but ive seen an uptick in positive '2016 was peak' posting and i really and truly can not relate. literally what the fuck are YALL referring to bc that year absolutely fucking sucked ass what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what’s really amazing to me is that people are so afraid of body hair on women that even in a shaving commercial they won’t show a hairy leg. they demonstrate the razor by shaving a hairless leg. they show their product being completely useless instead of showing leg hair. it’s just crazy
