Sideblog for other anime: Ao no Exorcist, Hozuki no Reitetsu, etc. etc. and SPORTS ANIME: Haikyuu, Daiya no A, Ookiku Furikabutte, Hoshiai no Sora, Kuroko no Basket, etc etc. as long as it is any anime under the sun. MULTIFANDOM TBH
You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.
For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:
Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning
Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.
(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.
When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.
It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:
Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.
Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.
Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’
They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.
Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’
They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.
Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’
The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.
Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.
“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’
The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.
It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.
Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’
Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.
Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’
Unfortunately, KOSA is back with revised language and deceptively incorporated into the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. Tell Yo
Likes are great, but I need you to reblog and call. If you call after hours, you won't have to speak with anyone! You'll be prompted to leave a message. That's what the call script is for.
Update: The Republican-introduced Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act now incorporates KOSA.
Remember KOSA, the dangerous internet censorship bill that claims to protect children? Its proponents are trying once again to push this bill through.
The newest proponents are none other than Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino of X (formerly Twitter). You should be wary of any social media regulation bill they support. With their encouragement, Senators Blumenthal (D-CT) and Blackburn (R-TN), the bill’s sponsors, are making one last push to shove this bill down our throats. There’s some concern that they may try to attach the bill as a rider to any mandatory funding bills, though House Speaker Johnson has qualms about pushing a bill with such dire free-speech implications this hastily.
And make no mistake, the bill is still terrible for free speech. Despite its proponents’ claims that it’s now “content neutral”, it still restricts functionality related to multiple issues, so it remains dangerous to LGBTQ+, minorities, and anyone expressing dissent. Effectively the bill requires websites to identify people whom the service “knows is a minor” and restrict features that make certain content available to them. This can result in an age-gate (which might require proving your age and identity), but may also result in wholesale censorship of any content deemed too risky to host.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the harms include:
LGBTQ+ youth will be at risk of having content, educational material, and their own online identities erased.
Young people searching for information about their sexual health and reproductive rights will find their search results stymied.
Teens and children in historically oppressed and marginalized groups will be unable to locate online information about their history and shared experiences.
Activist youth on either side of the aisle, such as those fighting for changes to climate laws, gun laws, or religious rights, will be siloed, and unable to advocate and connect online.
Young people seeking mental health help and information will be blocked from finding it, because even discussions of suicide, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders will be hidden from them.
Teens hoping to combat the problem of addiction—either their own, or that of their friends, families, and neighbors—will not have the resources they need to do so.
Any young person seeking truthful news or information that could be considered depressing will find it harder to educate themselves and engage in current events and honest discussion.
Adults who are unwilling to share their identities will find themselves shunted onto a second-class internet alongside the young people who have been denied access to the full online public sphere.
The EFF has built a resource hub to educate and fight back against these intrusive surveillance measures. With the recent passage of the 18-bill online surveillance package out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, it is more important than ever that we let our representatives know that this legislation is unacceptable.
As there have been significant changes made in the legislation, if it passes the House, it will have to be approved by the Senate again. So now is the time to also let our senators know that we oppose this legislation, which is bad for everyone.
We continue to oppose KIDS/KOSA and ask you to do the same.
Call your Senators and tell them: We still want you to vote NO on KIDS/KOSA!
This will affect all of us. Do your part to stop it.
It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!
MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK
202-224-3121
i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills
Crucially, this is being led by a lot of Democrats. This is not just Republicans sneaking bullshit in while they have the power to simply not listen to anyone; your democratic representatives will continue to co-sponsor and speak in support of this unless they know you, their voters, do not want them to.
The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.
"Democrats and Republicans in Congress have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online. The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.
At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity.
That’s because the KIDS Act at least strongly incentivizes — and, for some services, outright requires — age verification. Many platforms will turn to age verification to avoid potential liability under the law. Companies like X, video-sharing services like Vimeo, and others with a history of users’ populating social feeds with edgy content may be required to verify users’ ages because they host a certain amount of content deemed “sexual material harmful to minors,” a term that the KIDS Act defines broadly.
That’s a big problem for people who need to be able to use the internet anonymously, since, as Taylor Lorenz has previously written about in The Intercept, “there’s no way to reliably verify someone’s age without verifying who they are.”
Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them. Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources. [...]
Mandating age verification effectively hands Big Tech and the government a skeleton key to the identities of every whistleblower, dissident, and investigative reporter who uses online platforms, not to mention everyone else, including children. This kind of surveillance on steroids that surrenders our right to speak, report, and read the news anonymously won’t make anyone safer."
It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!
MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK
202-224-3121
i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills
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