Fandom and Feeling

Maybe it helps if you read the book but I remember the characters although they more stock Vietnam war movie characters. The leader trying to get his men out alive. The one with mental illness. The Native American guy.

-red pandas in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. they can live in those you-pick orchards and delight tourists, and in the winter the big ones can be harvested by the farmers for food and fur. america also has native bamboo, as well as plenty of escaped invasives.

-koalas in southern california. we already have a lot of feral eucalpytus in the state and it makes our wildfires way worse. let's put koalas in there too. coyotes can hunt them like dingos do.

-cheetahs in colorodo, wyoming, nebraska, and oklahoma. we had cheetahs here once, that's why pronghorns are so fast. let's give them something to really haul ass about.

-spotted hyenas in texas and new mexico. did you know there's actually a shit ton of oryx already roaming around new mexico? they were brought in for a game preserve. oryx can fight off lions, but spotted hyenas are actually superior pack hunters with some of the highest kill rates of large cooperative predators in the world. we might have a problem with ranchers, but like: fuck ranchers. they already decimated the mexican wolf populations. they deserve hyenas.

-pangolins. i would drop these guys in arizona honestly. everyone in arizona hates and fears fire ants. i think entire neighborhoods would throw ecstatic parades for pangolins (which smell much better than giant anteaters) at least until a pangolin dug straight through their pasteboard condo.

-new zealand's little penguin in louisiana. they burrow into mud and sand banks during the day and tolerate quite hot temperatures! i think they'd do fine, and louisiana is sliding into the gulf anyway. let's have penguins there. i'd also try them out in new england in case lousiana is just too swampy for them. i feel like new yorkers would go insane with pride over having penguins around. they would act like they invented the whole concept of penguins. we should let them.

-water buffalo. georgia and the carolinas. i just think it would give everyone there some interesting new problems.

Europe: Wombat

We've had enough of your fucking rabbits and foxes. Here, have a huge badger type thing that can destroy cars with its arse. It'll outcompete your badgers and where will you be then. Haha.

Asia: Wombat

We've had enough of Indian camels ruining our deserts. Here's something to ruin your terrain for a change.

North America: Wombat

We've had enough of United States tourists with no manners. Here's some tourists with even less manners.

South America: Wombat

WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR FUCKING CANE TOADS. WOMBATS FOR YOU.

Africa: Wombat

The feral ostriches aren't actually all that much of a problem right now, but in revenge for the problem they will probably become in the future, have some fucking wombats.

Antarctica: Wombat

I'll take it right back home and warm it up I promise I. I just really want to see a wombat walk and dig in the snow.

Australia: Wombat

Maybe it helps if you read the book but I remember the characters although they more stock Vietnam war movie characters. The leader trying to get his men out alive. The one with mental illness. The Native American guy.

Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic

the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal

this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately

somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large

following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor

today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea

While I don't actually want to know his real identity, because in my mind, his real identity IS CHUCK, I have assumed since Barbie came out that he is in fact Ryan Gosling.

I have little concrete evidence to back this up, and in fact, again, I do not want to know the truth. But this feels like a hilarious head canon I should mention at some point.

Dovekie aka Little Auk (Alle alle), family Alcidae, order Charadriiformes, Iceland

The political opponents that have the centrist Democrats newly energized and willing to fight like hell are the democratic socialists who have become a powerful organizing force within their party and some of its most popular national figures.  That’s according to the New York Times, which reported yesterday that the centrist organization Third Way, in concert with unnamed “moderates,” plan to launch a “discrediting campaign” lasting from now until 2028 that takes aim at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the group whose members include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and is a key part of the coalition behind the party’s Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. That campaign will see Third Way not just do opposition research into DSA and target its elected officials but also go after politicians like El-Sayed, who don’t identify as socialists but make common cause with the group. “We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” Third Way’s president, Jonathan Cowan, told the Times about the campaign. This is a month after Cowan and Third Way’s executive vice president, Matt Bennett, warned in the Washington Post that DSA was “not a faction to be appeased,” urging the party to “fight” the group by pledging “money, organization, and spine.” It’s a well-worn joke at this point that Democratic centrists fight the Left harder than they fight the far right. But here, Third Way and whatever “moderates” are part of this effort are actually giving us an honest-to-God, real-life example of it: centrist Democrats’ big play to push back against Trump’s wrecking ball of a presidency was to literally do nothing. Third Way itself has been largely invisible, other than to make a list of words Democrats shouldn’t use, lead a public campaign against leftist streamer Hasan Piker, and tell Dems to be more hawkish. But now that the Left is winning elections, they are jumping into action, pledging to “fight” a “war” and calling on Democrats to show “spine.” You can’t make this stuff up.

[...]

This is the crux of it: centrist Democrats are clearly willing to tear apart their own party and hand power to the forces behind Trump, as long as it means stopping the Left from having any power.