Insert clever title here

Of course you do, they’re fantastic. They come in two models, one with tan head stripes and one with white head stripes. But the gene that controls stripe color also has a bunch of other effects! It’s a supergene!

To briefly sum up a grueling amount of fieldwork by people who were probably not getting paid nearly enough, basically the tan-stripes are nurturers and the white-stripes are fighters, across both males and females. White-stripes chase away intruders more, tan-stripes bring more food to the nest. Tan-stripe females bring more bugs to their chicks than white-stripes, white-stripe females are more aggressive and sing more.

There is a reason Jordan Peterson picked lobsters, not sparrows, to get all MRA about, because the sparrow ladies are ALL about the tan-striped males. Sexy nurturing tan-stripe males are immediately grabbed up by the more aggressive white-stripe females (who are also dead sexy if you’re a sparrow.) Then the remaining birds pair off, so you get tan and white couples reproducing in virtually all cases—nurturing male with aggressive female, hyper-aggressive male with hyper-nurturing female.*

And this is good!** Because it turns out that they can have a tough time if they don’t mate across stripes—white x white sparrows often come out undersized if they come out at all. There was some cool recent genetic sequencing and one particular chromosome is way funky, inverted, and scrambled in the white-stripes. So now every white-stripe has a funky chromosome and a normal one, and every tan-stripe has two normal ones.***

This is all really unique and means that white-throated sparrows effectively have four sexes, because they now only reproduce with a member of the opposite stripe and sex chromosome, and their offspring may be any one of the four sexes. The stripes have essentially become a second sex chromosome.

The geneticists involved think the funky chromosome probably showed up as a weird import from somebody gettin’ jiggy with another sparrow species. Presumably this created a hypersexy female whose white head stripes brought all the boys to the yard, and very unusually, that bred true.

Is that cool or what?!

*No word on whether there is a resulting sparrow tradwife media genre.

**Leaving aside the impact on the emotional health of the non-sexy sparrows.

Hey, let’s talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven’t been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.

And it is a trap.

An ask like this has several purposes.

First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.

The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.

Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually…. very much not the case. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)

The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don’t like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.

Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:

Notice that I blacked out the names above? That’s because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn’t just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient’s entire community.

The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.

Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG

If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*

They assume good faith from a follower, they’re off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.

Because yes sure we are all gonna die but in the meantime and maybe even because of that, there's joy. Even if it's only a bird half glimpsed from a moving vehicle, even if it's only the warmth in a cup of coffee, even if it's only the memory of someone who adored you as whole-chestedly and unconditionally as you deserve to be adored, joy is real in the world.

And tomorrow morning as I write this, the sun will shine along the passage at Newgrange and the sun daggers will frame the petroglyph in Chaco Canyon, and that is evidence that the long slow celestial mechanics of reversion to the mean will pull us inexorably back to springtime and the first green things growing out of the earth. The elders before me built these monuments to remind me to remind you that the sun will return.

And in the meantime let's hold hands in the dark. Let's tell the bleakest jokes we can think of at funerals to try and get the bereaved to laugh. Let's hug each other to coregulate our tender nervous systems that are trying so hard to keep us safe and alive. Let's watch how fast the efficiency of solar power is overtaking that of fossil fuels (effectively free energy by 2035: let's live to see it.) Let's revel in gods like pigeons and coyotes that can learn to coexist with humans.

I just run across a book claiming to be a dark retelling.

And the. The fucking summary. Reads. 

“You can expect ‘touch her and I’ll unalive you’ vibes.”

Reblog posts you like from independent creators/artists/etc!

Wiping down my dash at the end of an evening, I see your read-more, over-hear your rant in the tags, so I pour you a drink.

She says tumblr I’m feeling like shit today can you send me some posts for a smile can we talk about slash, can you fill up my dash so I won’t have to think for a while

Laa dahdah didee dah La dahdah didee dah dadum

And sometimes we blog with a beer

And when I proudly boast that I’m older than most, 

She’s technically a monster too. She might not look it at first glance and seems mostly human, but it isn’t deniable even despite her looks compared to the other monsters. 

But she realizes that she is still not like the rest of the monsters either and may not have entirely the same experiences as them, which is why she feels that she might not belong to or deserve to go to the support group. By sometimes passing as human, she feels she isn’t worthy of the space. 

The sad reality though is even though she’s mostly human in appearance, that tail she has undeniably would still cause her some struggle. Humans are still gonna look at that tail and think she’s a freak. There are probably still accommodations she needs because of the tail that she may still struggle to have access to. Even if it is just the tail, that tail is still enough to other her from humans and cause her problems and discrimination. 

She should get to belong in that support group even if she gets told she’s not monster “enough”. She still shares some of the same struggles as them that are caused by being a monster, and needs support. 

Panel 1: A wolf man wearing a pale blue polo shirt and dark blue pants faces the viewer. He is saying, “Uh… I’m sorry ma’am, but this is a support group for monsters only.” With his right hand, he gestures to a group of monsters sitting around a table in the background. The monsters are a giant bat, a gorilla, and a dragon. They are facing away from the viewer.

Panel 2: A white woman with blonde hair wearing a pink striped shirt and dark capri pants says with a smile, “Well, actually, I AM a monster.” The wolf man replies, looking skeptically, “… How?”

Panel 3: The woman responds, while looking at the viewer, “Well, you see, my mother was a mermaid and my father was a minotaur.” Above her head, there is a thought cloud depicting a mermaid in a tank holding hands and looking lovingly at a Minotaur who is standing outside of the tank.

Panel 4: The wolf man, still looking dismissive, says, “Riiight. And let me guess: You got the human half from both of them.” The woman responds, “Exactly!” The wolf man says, “Gotcha. Hardy har har.”

Panel 5: The wolf man points and makes a snarling face at the woman, saying, “Ya know, it’s insensitive mockery like this that makes us need these groups in the first place.” The woman holds up her hands defensively, leaning away and looking surprised. She says, “Huh?”

Panel 6: The woman says, “Listen sir, I’m just here to drop off my brother and I’ll be on my way.” She still has a worried expression and gestures to her brother behind her. Her brother has a Minotaur upper half and a fish lower half. He is riding a mobility device. He says, “This guy buggin’ you sis?” while raising an eyebrow.” The wolf man looks astonished.

Panel 7: The woman is shown walking off-panel to the left. She says over her shoulder, “I’ll be back to pick you up at seven.” Since her back is to the viewer, we can now see that she has a tail. Her brother says, “Sounds good, thanks.” The wolf man continues to look astonished.”

The chances are fairly high that tumblr will again be infiltrated by people trying to throw the election. I’m sure this time it will look like a lot of “I went and voted but we still got Biden” or “Biden secretly changed the student debt relief plan! He’s no better than the GOP!” (incidentally: this is not true, or at least it’s a VERY poor framing of what happened).

Even if the person saying that kind of stuff isn’t a bot, they may be consuming and spreading interference propaganda.