Agatha Writes

If you like these weekly compilations, please consider tipping me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. The world just gained a marine protected area the size of France

“The French Polynesian government announced that 520,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles) of ocean surrounding the Austral and Marquesas Islands — two of the most biologically rich archipelagos on Earth — would receive the highest level of protection, where no mining, trawling or industrial fishing is permitted. [… These waters] host marine species found nowhere else on Earth, such as the Marquesan domino damselfish. They are also critical habitat for endangered sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, as well as a key spawning ground for tuna.”

2. Minnesota now has a wind-powered green ammonia plant

“If the process can be scaled up, it could help ensure farmers have cheap, reliable fertilizer. […] As a stable, efficient carrier of hydrogen, the homegrown ammonia could eventually supply raw material for other types of fertilizers, transportation fuels, and high-temperature industrial processes like ironmaking. “It’s about 100 times cheaper to store and transport ammonia than hydrogen[….]””

3. A 5.3-million‑year‑old whale graveyard has been found on the floor of the Indian Ocean

“The site […] dates back more than 5 million years and is one of the deepest known whale-fall ecosystems in the world. [… It spans 746 miles and] contain[s] 476 whale fossils as well as five active whale falls[… which] were teeming with many strange-looking creatures, including jellyfish, brittle stars and bone-boring worms—many of which may be new to science, according to the researchers.”

4. Why Building Transmission Along Highways is Better for Birds

“[Audubon has] helped pass legislation allowing transmission lines to be built alongside highways in Minnesota, Colorado, and most recently Iowa. […] Utilizing existing corridors for new transmission lines is generally better for birds than building on previously undeveloped land, [because… since they] have already been cleared and managed for infrastructure like highways and railways, they reduce the risk of additional habitat loss and fragmentation.”

5. First Live White Abalone Found in 5 Years During Channel Islands Survey Sparks Hope for Recovery

“On May 12th, 2026, a research mission aboard the [NOAA] research vessel Shearwater identified a living white abalone as part of the Wanted Alive! White Abalone campaign that engages citizen scientists and recreational divers to record potential sightings of the creature. […] The team also successfully deployed the new eDNA sampler and collected samples for future analysis.”

Zelda Reacts Part 14

ugh another set of armour that I just LOVE and I'm so happy I thought of an idea for it. this is all I wanted in the canon ending!! *screams at sky* okay I am calm...

Zelda Reacts Part 8

shoutout to that one person who said something about Link in knights armour and being extra chivalrous - it never left my head and here we are XD

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

Some sources for those who may not know:

Steve Dain, whose public transition led to him being fired from his job as a teacher. Trans men in the Bay Area would go on a pilgrimage to meet when when they started their transition.

Jamison Green, who took over FTM International and it's newsletter after Lou's death

Reed Erickson, who used his inherited wealth to bankroll early LGBT movements (and also did other wild rich people shit). His foundation "helped to support, both through direct financial contributions and through contributions of human and material resources, almost every aspect of work being done in the 1960s and 1970s in the field of transsexualism in the US and, to a lesser degree, in other countries."

Alexander John Goodrum, who founded TGNet Arizona and helped pass Tuscon's nondiscrimination ordinance. In 2001 he wrote "Gender, Identity Politics, and Eating Our Own," an essay on infighting in the trans community.

Rupert Raj, who started some of Canada's earliest trans advocacy organizations

Kylar Broadus, the first openly trans person to testify before the Senate

Pauli Murray also deserves more recognition; he was a Black feminist legal scholar who did invaluable work for the Civil Rights Movement. He never transitioned, having lived much of his life before trans (and especially FTM) treatment was standardized and accessible. He was labeled schizophrenic by doctors for seeking testosterone and testing to see if he was intersex, to explain his gender identity.