Endangered Ugly Things

Here’s an ANIMORPHS animation pitch I made last summer! Created it for a lot of different personal and professional reasons, but now I’m happy to share!

I wrote about this guy in the old version of my blog. At that point, they were still looking for a live one I signed off with "If I’m still blogging by then, I’ll be sure to give you an update."

So... I guess if anyone has been waiting with bated breath since... oh god, 2007, here's your update.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

Spix's Macaws were extinct in the wild for 70 years, and now captive breeding and conservation groups have reintroduced a small population (with more on the way) and there are babies being successfully raised in the wild again.

And what else is there, but hope? We exist for the grace of hope. Those who have lost all hope don't stay here. If you are here to send an ask like this, it is not because you have given up, it's that you are hoping someone will show you that that hope is worth having.

It is!! It always is!!

We had to do it 😁⁠

No. Humans are animals as much as the fish and the bear. We are pack animals who have survived by strong bonds and community.

Do not buy the lie that humans are inherently evil. Societies can trick you into believing this, but it's not the truth of humanity.

Humans crave being together, sharing together, and thriving together.

As an adult who has multiple plush axolotls and pangolins and... actually I should get some coeocanths... it's nice to see so much more of the animal kingdom represented in plushie form.

This is what the shooter looks like.

Gray jacket. Light gray backpack.

This is what the apparent suspect looked like the same day at Starbucks.

Green/brown jacket and black back pack

Notice lack of unibrow.

Luigi day of arrest.

Unibrow present and stubble on face/neck.

Why is this important? Because Starbucks guy doesn't have those.

Which leads me to perp walk luigi.

"Oh they must have a great barber lmaooo" no. Stop joking for a second. No one gets this treatment so why him? Because they are trying to make him look like the Starbucks perp. They think we are dumb and will forget shooter Mcgee doesn't look anything like Starbuck boy.

Luigi said evidence was planted on him like the gun and the manifesto.

I believe this because the manifesto praises the efforts of the policemen on like page one. Like they couldn't even not suck their own dicks for 3 seconds to plant compelling evidence.

Do not let these people fool you. Luigi did not do this. Even though it's funny, even though he's hot even though <insert myriad of excuses I've heard here>. Do not let them get away with brainwashing you into believing he did it even if you agree with what happened.

I'm pro UHC shooter.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Source and more details below. Thanks for posting, OP!

"The rare ʻalalā Hawaiian crow was successfully reintroduced into the wild in Maui more than 20 years after being declared extinct [in the wild], officials announced Wednesday, December 4, 2024.

Why it matters: "ʻAlalā are found nowhere else on Earth, and their existence is essential in Hawaiʻi," per a statement from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which worked to reintroduce the crows. "As they fly from tree to tree, these corvids disperse seeds that help grow new trees and restore native forests."

ʻAlalā "also help provide food and shelter for other indigenous wildlife that share their island," according to the the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. "Their very presence supports and even propagates their ecosystem's rich biodiversity."

The big picture: The endangered ʻalalā are sacred in Hawaiian culture and regarded as spiritual family guardians, per the Hawaiin Department of Land and Natural Resources.

They went extinct in the wild in 2002 and earlier attempts to reintroduce these intelligent birds — one of only two corvid species known to use twigs as tools to reach food — were unsuccessful.

Conservationists have now declared the introduction of five Hawaiian crows to Maui's Kīpahulu Forest Reserve last month a success so far.

What they did: "To prepare, experts raised the two females and three males in a social group to strengthen their relationship-building skills," according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

"This approach helped the ʻalalā practice how they'd depend on each other, giving them every opportunity to succeed in native habitats. Teams also worked closely on prerelease assessments, looking at how the birds were likely to respond to predators and how they'd seek native foods like insects and fruits."

The crows were then transferred from the Maui Bird Conservation Center to a temporary field aviary on the slopes of Haleakalā before being released.

Stunning stat: There were fewer than 20 ʻalalā in the late 1990s. Now, there are more than 110 individuals due to conservation efforts.

What we're watching: "The endgame is to get to a self-sustaining population on Hawaii Island," said Michelle Bogardus, a deputy field supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the Washington Post. "The ʻalalā are part of the natural and cultural fabric of Hawaii Island, and they belong there.""

there is no level of evil where a human stops being a human. if you decide to kill them for their crimes, then you are killing a human. and sometimes that is justified! oil execs and war profiteers have destroyed countless lives in service of their own sick greed, and given the chance to enact that same violence on them, id probably pop their heads like a pimple.

but it is important that we do not shy away from the reality of that choice. it is a human life that is being ended. a person with interiority, feelings, family.

if we stop considering any group as people, even a group defined by their own evil actions, then we are drawing a line to divide society into persons and non-persons, and stating that those non-persons do not deserve to live.

i hope i dont need to explain why that is a dangerous position to take.

these people and all of their evil, their greed, their hatred, are just as much a part of humanity as art, culture, language, food. they are a part of us that has grown malignant and cancerous, and like a cancer, they must be excised for the sake of the whole--but they are still a part of us, made of the same stuff as us, down to their cores.