dta, tbqh

we’ve passed 3k! thank you all so much, I can’t tell you how grateful i am, honestly. This absolutely means the world to me. I know some people struggle to find the link, I’m sorry about that. Here is the link: https://www.gofundme.com/vyqfze-help-me-get-an-accessible-van

I also have a paypal and a cashapp!

Paypal: [email protected]

For two years, researchers from USA Today, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity have been ingesting the bills introduced in all 50 state legislatures, yielding a corpus of more than 1,000,000 bills, and then consumed months of computer time on a large cluster, comparing these bills to “model legislation” promoted by lobbyists, using a text-mining engine that could identify paraphrases, synonyms, and other techniques used to file the serial numbers off of these bills.

They found that more than 10,000 bills that were notionally authored by elected lawmakers drawing a salary at public expenses were actually authored by lobbyists; more than 2,100 of these bills became law. These bills are a wishlist of special-interest legislative favors: limits on your ability to sue a company that injures you, limits on your right to protest, limits on your right to abortion.

Many of the lawmakers who signed onto these bills as cosponsors say they had no idea they were supporting “copycat” legislation. Though copycat bills are sometimes right wing, sometimes left wing, and sometimes about enriching a specific industry, the most common political valence of the bills is right wing, and familiar names like ALEC (previously) lead the charge.

These bills are given deceptive names (“The Asbestos Transparency Act didn’t help people exposed to asbestos. It was written by corporations who wanted to make it harder for victims”); and they are supported by an ensemble cast of “experts” who rove from hearing to hearing, testifying on the bills; they are often used to overturn local legislation (such as state laws that overturn city ordinances on Airbnb, higher minimum wages, limits on plastic bags, etc); and are a source of enormous profits for the companies that support them (“One that passed in Wisconsin limited pain-and-suffering compensation for injured nursing-home residents, restricting payouts to lost wages, which the elderly residents don’t have.”).

https://boingboing.net/2019/04/11/asbestos-transparency-act.html

The fact that we need things like huge global exports and mass transit infrastructure just to meet our basic needs is a key feature of this system of control since it simultaneously requires government and private industry management. We can’t even dream of a life without governance and industry because then who would make the trains run on time?

This is what it means when we talk about how important logistics and infrastructure are. Not to bring back train discourse again but the fact that we need a complex mass transit system to get to work means we need a government to run it, private industry to pay our wages, our government to keep our dollar stable so we have a certain level of buying power with the private company selling us our groceries etc. So yes, trains are literally oppressive - their existence is part of how we are intentionally kept dependent on this ever expanding system and therefore need governments and private industry to organise it.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said the fires were “especially painful” because they were a reminder “of a very dark past of intimidation and fear.”

“This is a reflection of one depraved individual,” he added. “It is not a reflection on the state of Louisiana.”

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No gas. And I have to take my kid to the doctor today. I have no idea how I’ll do it.

If it all works out, I can make my car payment right before the 22nd to avoid a repossession. I’m also attempting to get a damn tax advocate so I can try to get my refund before June. And trying like hell to get other shit, both financially and health wise, sorted out for me and the kids.

Birds don’t have a significant sense of smell and will not reject a baby if it’s been handled, so you CAN return a fallen baby to the nest. However, some will abandon a nest (and the babies in it) if it’s been disturbed by predators–you are a predator, fyi–so don’t mess about with nests unless absolutely necessary.  Read this if you’re not sure how to identify a fallen baby versus a fledgling.

It’s illegal to keep most native birds in America, and most hand-raised birds have a very hard time surviving in the wild. If you find a downed bird that cannot be returned to its nest for some reason, contact a wildlife rehabilitation center.

Keep your pets away from downed birds. Even if they don’t attack the bird, the bacteria they carry can be harmful. As much as possible, keep your cats indoors, especially during baby bird season.’

Don’t feed birds bread. Basically none of them get any nutritional benefit from it. Instead, offer bird seed, nuts, fresh greens, or other bird-safe foods. Do a bit of research if you’re regularly feeding a particular type of bird. 

If you’re looking for something you can find in a corner shop to feed to birds, try unseasoned sunflower seeds or peanuts, lentils, or split peas. Most of the contents of an undressed salad are fine as well–lettuce and spinach are good; onions and tomatoes are not. It’s always smart to just google it if you’re not sure!

Don’t put out fiber-based nesting materials for birds. This includes cloth, hair, string, etc. This sort of stuff often wraps around their feet and results in them loosing legs or toes. Dryer lint is also not good, same with pet fur that’s been treated with flea removers. Really, birds manage to find nesting materials just fine, they don’t need the help. 

Check out your local bird cams! Many cities have resident raptors that nest in locations equipped with web cams. Just google the name of a city and “falcon cam” and see what comes up! Most of them will have laid eggs by now, which means there’s a bird in the nest almost 24/7, and soon there will be awkward baby birds of prey. Now is a great time to check them out!

Stiliger sp.. A new species of sea slug?

I was in the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia recently, shooting macro video of tiny skeleton shrimps on a green algae stalk, when my dive guide Mamang and I noticed a small sea slug next to them.

This is a sacoglossan, a herbivorous animal commonly known as a sap-sucking slug. It pierces the algae and sucks out the sap from the cells.

Those large, clear appendages on the back are called the cerata, or kerata, and the green ducts are branches of its digestive gland. If you look closely you can see material travelling up and down those green ducts.

It’s possible this is a solar-powered slug. Some sacoglossans keep chloroplasts from the algae alive in their body, where they continue to photosynthesize the sun’s energy into sugars, a phenomenon known as kleptoplasty.

On the head you can see two black primitive eye spots, and a long pair of sensory stalks known as rhinophores. It looks like it’s lost part of one of them. You can even see branches of the digestive gland in the head.

At first I expected this would be a known species of sea slug, but I’ve been unable to find any match, and I’m now told that it’s probably a new species in the Stiliger genus. There are a few other species of Stiliger that have been observed in the field but not described and named.

It wouldn’t be possible for scientists to officially designate this as a new species without examining samples. The form of the radular teeth for example is important in differentiating between species, and DNA testing is becoming increasingly important.

This specimen was at the dive site Jahir at a depth of 10 metres. It was just a few millimetres long. I’d love to hear from you if you believe this is a known species.

I shot this footage at while diving with YOS Dive Lembeh - Eco Beach Resort (http://yosdivelembeh.com/). Thanks to my dive guide and critter spotter Mamang.

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If the Old River Control structure fails, a sequence of things will happen. 

First…we already know that if that happens…there is nothing we can do to shift the river back to its old bed. Nothing. The Army corp of Engineers has admitted it. Engineers who study such things have admitted it. Such a thing is beyond our ability. If the Mississippi carves a new channel for itself, that’s it. We learn to live with it, period end of sentence. 

The most immediate thing would be that the Atchafalaya river ceases to exist. The moment the Mississippi jumps to the Atcafalaya’s channel, it’s the Mississippi. It will be until the Mississippi jumps channels again. Every town and person along the current course of the Atchafalaya is in deep, deep trouble, because a flood’s a-coming, and there is no power of humans that can stop it. All people can do is get out of the way. 

The old channel will become a bayou. And now that the force of the river isn’t pushing out to sea, the salt water will infiltrate back up the much, much smaller distributory stream that will be left. 

Remember Baton Rouge? Remember New Orleans? They’re gonna lose the main source of their fresh water. Both are tidal salt marshland now. New Orlean’s port is high and dry and useless. Ships full of exports and imports are stranded, and the marine shipping industry for the Midwest is hamstrung just like that. Farmers cannot ship produce out. We cannot ship goods in, because there is no longer a facility on the Mississipi that can unload marine cargo. Billons more is lost, possibly trillions. The only thing to be done is move, people and industry both. 

New Orleans and Baton will empty out, in all likelihood. Without fresh water, people will have to relocate. In a decade, they’ll be ghost towns, and eventually the swamps will reclaim what’s theirs. 

There are a terrible lot of industrial plants built along the Mississippi near New Orleans, because they cannot run without a source of fresh water. They’re all useless once the Mississippi abandons them. Billions upon billions of dollars, left high and dry and unable to run. Billions more in production lost. 

Rice farms drown or go high and dry. Commercial oyster beds around the Atchafalaya die because there is now too much fresh water. Soybean fields drown. 

Now, this is of course all completely natural. The wildlife will adjust. It has before, every time the Mississippi changes beds. This is normal. It’s natural. 

But for the humans that built their lives in its way without thinking forward, because with our little mayfly lives the river seems a static thing, unchanging…

…well. 

Disaster isn’t really the proper word, because there’s been nothing of this scale before. Something greater would be needed to describe the lives and livelihoods ruined. 

But despite that, it’s gonna happen. Sooner or later, it’s gonna happen. 

Further reading that may interest you; 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya