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I’ve collected some spooky vintage cemetery imagery.
Today's Document

tannertan36
Sade Olutola
YOU ARE THE REASON
Not today Justin
dirt enthusiast
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Peter Solarz
No title available

JVL

Andulka

No title available
ojovivo
Xuebing Du

pixel skylines
hello vonnie
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
we're not kids anymore.

Origami Around
Keni

seen from Canada
seen from South Africa

seen from France
seen from United States

seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from Türkiye
seen from France
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye

seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from United States
@seebirds
Source details and larger version.
I’ve collected some spooky vintage cemetery imagery.
Do y’all wanna hear about some absolutely crazy shit going down in the birding world right now
Okay I warned y’all this would be a lot but here we go. As background you should know that for many birders, the hobby is a lot more than just going outside and watching birds. There is a competitive angle where the goal is to spot as many bird species as possible and record these sightings on your personal “life list”. As some bird species can only be spotted in remote locations across the globe, it takes a decent amount of time, dedication, skill, and money to fill out life lists that number in the thousands. As can be expected, many of the individuals with these mega life lists become quasi celebrities in the birding world. Chief among them is Peter Kaestner, a lifelong birder who has been meticulously recording his life list over decades as the de facto top birder. As he has added to his list bird by bird, thousands of interested avian enthusiasts have been following along and celebrating his milestones. Most exciting in recent months is his intrepid journey towards becoming the first birder to ever record seeing 10,000 different species. The entire birding community has been watching him creep towards 10k with growing excitement. Kaestner is deeply respected in the birding community and there is great trust for his well-documented list.
So now the twist. Just as Kaestner was getting closer and closer to 10k, a previously unknown birder named Jason Mann suddenly joined an app called iGoTerra (not the most common app for birding records) and all at once added observations of close to 10,000 birds. Suddenly, Kaestner being the first birder to reach this milestone isn’t such a sure thing, and both he and mysterious newcomer Mann seem to be scrambling to count as many birds as possible as the race narrows.
On February 9th Kaestner announces he’s hit the milestone and seen his ten thousandth bird, the Orange-tufted spider hunter. The birding world rejoices! As a ~crazy~ coincidence, Jason Mann just so happens to announce on the same day that he has also hit the milestone and he actually did it before Kaestner. He writes an article about himself that is somehow both shamelessly masturbatory and also has that weirdly impersonal AI generated article feel.
Well obviously the birding world is a little skeptical of this random ass dude suddenly swooping in to snag this milestone that has been years in making. Naturally, people started looking a little closer at Mann’s list, and it has some… let’s say interesting observations. It appears from his own reports that Mann has casually rediscovered several species of birds and not bothered to tell anyone. Some of the most ludicrous observations include:
New Caledonian Nightjar- has not been seen since 1939
Manipur Bush Quail- only one suspected sighting since 1932
Zapata rail- Unbelievably rare, and largely inaccessible due to environment
Taiga bean goose- Not the rarest goose in the world but Mann’s reported sighting was from North Korea. And it was apparently the only bird recorded there. So he just went to NK, saw this goose, and that’s it? Weird.
These are just a few examples of many, many fishy recordings. The issue here is nobody knows who Mann actually is, and the only places providing information about him (such as his LinkedIn) are really bizarre in a way I don’t have time to dig into here. Mann (or someone claiming to be him) actually took to BirdForum.net to defend himself, where he offered a long-winded and somewhat fumbling explanation for his life list. He claims that all of these mythical bird sightings were erroneously counted by the iGoTerra app, and he hadn’t meant to include them at all. He assures us that the rest of the recordings are entirely legitimate. Mann said in his post that in light of these mistakes he is ceding his victory to Kaestner, but was quick to say he has still totally seen more than 10k birds- even if they’re not all recorded correctly. He sent Kaestner a vaguely condescending email that Kaestner responded to with, in my opinion, far too much grace.
So now the birding community is left trying to figure out this bizarre and unexpected outcome. Is Peter Kaestner in fact the first birder to record ten thousand birds? A shadow of doubt has been cast on a title that everyone has expected to be his for years. Some birders are sincerely congratulating Jason Mann for his accomplishment in the field, and others are suggesting he isn’t even a real person but in fact some kind of artificial intelligence birding psy op. It is absolute chaos, and nobody in my life wants to hear me rant about this
Common Raven (Corvus corax) teasing a gull (Larus spp) - series by Sandra Gilchrist
According to the photographer, the raven eventually left and the gull seemed no worse for wear after the interaction.
ketzal_coatl
Great Blue Heron
🤨
wait check this out
•_• <- guy with a cursed eye
ROBI RODRIGUEZ | DAZED DIGITAL | MARCH 2017
Pierre Fouché. 1994.77 or Lebenslänglichen Explosionsglück, 2020.
Rayon chords from a World War II parachute.
men invented maps they had to spread on tables so they could watch each other bend over hands flat arms outstretched
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Here are all the images I’ve so far designated creatures of the night.
Compare the way gymbros/bodybuilding enthusiasts/etc. talk about the influence of genetics on success to the way rationalist/more general social optimizationist IQ enthusiasts talk about the influence of genetics on success.
Every gymbro on the planet will acknowledge that good genetics play a role, often a pretty large role, in how much muscle you can expect to gain—especially if you're a natural lifter (as opposed to enhanced). But this is virtually always said merely as a caveat, never the centerpiece of discussion. The centerpiece of the discussion is always effort and training methodology. Why? Because the assumption is that if you're here, listening to a gymbro talk about gym shit, you want to get jacked. Your genetics are what they are, so why dwell on them? The point is, what can you do, with whatever genetics you happen to have, to get as jacked as possible. And the answer is ultimately "yeah, some people are gonna have a higher natural ceiling than others, but you won't know where yours is until you try—apply yourself as if you have a chance to be the best in the world, and even if you don't reach those heights, you'll probably end up pretty fucking jacked". And this is true. And as far as I'm concerned, it's the best way to think about the notion of natural talent.
IQ enthusiasts are always talking about how we should be testing IQ early and sorting people into social roles based on their scores. I despise this kind of thinking. I'm not Terence Tao, I have no desire to pretend I'm Terence Tao. But I like math, and I'm gonna try to get as good at math as I can possibly be. If someone had tested me at a young age, decided I wasn't cut out for math, and filtered me into a different social role, I would regard that as an injustice (a grave injustice) against me. People should be empowered to pursue their own ends, that's my eternal mantra when it comes to politics. Maybe society would achieve more net productive capacity if we filtered the people with natural math talent into math roles or whatever. I cannot underscore enough the degree to which I do not fucking care.
I have no sympathy for people who want to tell others who to be.
merima.rose