UNAUTHORIZED FUCKING THING

A migratory flight.

Trigger warning for graphic descriptions of injured and dead wildlife.

When a fireworks display occurs near a wild bird roost, the birds simultaneously explode into the night skies in utter panic, which can lead to huge numbers of deaths, usually because these birds either smash their skulls or break their necks as the result of flying into trees, fences, billboards, houses and other solid objects that they cannot see in the gloom and ensuing chaos.

Many of the startled birds who take flight fly at much higher altitudes and for much longer durations than they’re used to to escape the noise, which is energetically costly and physiologically stressful.

Small birds and bats can be knocked from the air and killed by the sonic shock. In 2010, 40 dead sparrows were discovered dead under a roost in a nature reserve after a local fireworks display. The manager of the reserve witnessed a tawny owl fluttering and convulsing on the ground after a particularly loud explosion. It died shortly after.

In Arkansas in 2010, some 5,000 red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, common grackles and brown-headed cowbirds suffered blunt-force trauma after colliding with cars, trees and buildings, an ornithologist from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission would tell National Geographic.

In 2008, federal officials showed that seabirds in the northern California town of Gualala abandoned their nests after a fireworks show, leaving their eggs vulnerable to predators.

Each year in Austin, Texas, the Congress Bridge bats can be seen fleeing the fireworks display en masse on weather radar, and emergences from their roost diminish noticeably in the days following the Fourth.

In 2018, the Galapagos banned the sale and use of pyrotechnics. According to the BBC, conservationists said that fireworks caused elevated heart rates, trembling and anxiety in many animals. 

The threat to wildlife doesn’t stop at startling lights and sounds; fireworks also have the potential of starting wildfires, directly affecting wildlife and destroying essential habitat. Litter from firecrackers, bottle rockets and other explosives can be choking hazards for wildlife and may be toxic if ingested.

So what do you do if you want to watch fireworks responsibly? Experts say municipalities are more likely to be aware of these dangers than private consumers. Their best advice is to stick to the shows put on by professionals and local governments, which tend to follow guidelines put forth by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among others, about animal safety.

The National Audubon Society offers similar guidelines: “Commercial fireworks are concentrated in one location, rather than in several locations at once, which is what often happens in neighborhoods. This allows birds to take off and land again in a ‘safer’ location rather than continuing to flee noises coming at them from all directions.”

touch starved

I don't mean you can't get good at things through repeated practice. You can do that, I have done that, but I don't trust it.

I was driving this morning and thinking about how I have never developed the blasé contempt for it most people seem to despite never having caused an accident in 20 years because my sense of time is such that I might as well have been driving for a week. I'm a good, safe driver, but I do not have a heap of confidence in my driving despite having regularly done it for two decades because my sense of time is such that those two decades may as well not have happened.

I finished editing a novel today. When I publish it, it will be the 64th novel I have published in the last 10 years, not counting ghostwritten work. You'd think after a decade and 63 novels I'd be confident that I was capable of writing, editing, and publishing a novel—even be confident about the timeline for this—but no. No, I feel like I'm doing it for the first time, every time, and I was surprised to have finished the editing at all, let alone on time. Because those other 63 novels were published in a past I have a vague at best concept of. I have a record that says it happened but I do not feel it.

I cannot trust my future behaviour because for me there is functionally no past. I know it occurred, I have records, but I don't feel it the way people without this kind of memory issue do. I feel inexperienced at everything I've ever done and I cannot accurately estimate my skill level at anything, particularly not on the fly.

i

The Big Timeline Post

SPOILER WARNING. This is as accurate as I could possibly get, interpreting from clues derived from the movie, the game, and some behind the scenes resources. This is my personal Iron Lung timeline fully backed with evidence.

We can infer some things based off of the game lore, movie script, and then by stealing Markiplier's age at the time of filming (Simon is Markiplier's evil bizzaro world self-insert, so it's not a huge leap to make.)

So, let's assume Simon is 33, as this is the closest "canon" approximation we have. We can then do a bunch of math, and...

Whoops! This fell out of my back pocket and into the master reference! Oh nooooo~

Okay, I've got you. Here's the whole graphic in text format, with explanations and sources.

0 EIC | 0 IMC | 1992 AD