Fandoms, Fun and Feminism

Ok girlies time for our prescription 1-2 hour walk, imagine we r all in line like Madeline

“Life after menopause is exceptionally rare in animals. It can evolve only in creatures where grannies help younger family members survive. Only human, killer whale, and short-finned pilot whale females routinely live for substantial periods after they stop breeding. Like humans, killer and pilot whales have roughly twenty-five to thirty childbearing years, then can live another thirty or so. And as Ken’s just explained, some live a lot longer. Up to a quarter of the females in a group are postreproductive. These whales are not waiting to die; they are helping their children survive. As human children often benefit from their grandmothers’ attention, killer whale grandmothers boost their grandkids’ survival. A rather bizarre twist of killer whale society is that killer whale mothers remain crucial to the survival of their adult children. When older killer whale females die, their adult children start dying at high rates, especially males. Male killer whales who are under thirty years old when their mothers die suffer a tripling of the annual mortality rate compared to males in their age group whose mothers are still alive. Male killer whales who are more than thirty years old when their mothers die face death rates more than eight times as high as males in their age group whose mothers are still living. Daughters under thirty show no mortality increase after their mothers’ death. But daughters older than thirty when their mothers die have more than two and a half times the death rate of same-age females whose mothers are alive. Males’ handicaps of the extra drag of their huge dorsal and pectoral fins and the extra food required for their immense size (at around 20,000 pounds, males can be one-third more massive than females) seem to make them reliant on their working mothers for food. Females don’t have the males’ impediments, but while raising young, females may rely on food shared by their no-longer-breeding mothers. Adult females share essentially all the fish they catch, and more than half goes to their children. Adult males share their catch only about 15 percent of the time—usually with their mothers. While no one fully understands their strange death pattern following the loss of a mother, extreme parental care is likely at the root. Toothed whales are the world’s champion nursers. Short-finned pilot whales continue to produce milk for up to fifteen years after the birth of their last calf, likely nursing other females’ young. In bottlenose and Atlantic spotted dolphins (further study might reveal others), some females never give birth. Denise Herzing dubbed them “career females,” because their role in society does not include motherhood. They might be infertile. They might be gay. But their contribution is crucial: they do a lot of babysitting. When Herzing entered the ocean with a visiting nine-year-old girl, “White Patches, the eternal babysitter herself, had never seen me babysitting a young human before. Her excitement vocalizations were audible and electric and she continued to swim around us, eyeing the human youngster attached to me.” (Researchers sometimes call babysitters “aunts.” That’s precisely who they often are.)”

#can i be the guy#ill narrate SO incorrectly#theyll all learn how to talk for themselves just to shut me up (via @cirrus-grey)

I watched a tiktok by a school teacher who hasn't assigned any homework in 12 years a few days ago and I'm still thinking about it because she made some great points. I'll link it here but it's in German.

Oury Jalloh was burned alive in a German police cell while his hands and feet were cuffed to a bed. the cops claimed he had set himself on fire but offered no evidence. No one was convicted. It took 2 more violent deaths in the same police building (Hans-Jürgen Rose, died from internal injuries from blunt force impacts, Mario Bichtemann died from a skull fracture), before one cop had to pay a fine. No cop faced real consequences.

Independent forensic tests and later expert analysis commissioned by Jalloh’s family suggest it would have been very difficult for someone bound to ignite the mattress on their own and that fire accelerants such as petrol may have been involved.

Between 2020 and 2022, thirteen EU countries reported a total of 488 deaths occurring in custody or during police operations. Despite international calls for transparent reporting on such fatalities, most European countries still do not meet UN standards for investigating these deaths, leaving persistent gaps in accountability and oversight. Inconsistencies and inadequacies in data availability further underscore the challenges in maintaining adequate transparency in law enforcement practices.

not to mention that the coastguard in europe are primarily a border patrol force and routinely watch migrants drown to death without intervening.

happy pride month to my favorite piece of official sonic the hedgehog art

What a great time to remind everyone of the tale of "Tales From Sonic is NOT Gay". :3

Filing this in my memory right next to this thread:

If you don't feel interested in romance, don't often have crushes, or dislike the idea of romance in general, I have news for you: Rare Sierra Nevada Red Fox Spotted In Southern Sierra Area For First Time In Nearly A Century

https://twitter.com/birdtickler/status/1552657242909904897?s=21&t=q4JEDIALmV-cAjcoEOypdw

"The ball cleared a small hill, briefly going airborne, then zipped right across Route 94, the two-lane road splitting the park. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes. If there had been opposing traffic, Frank would have become part of a real-life game of Pong, volleying from one bumper to another.

they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.

this post prompted me to refresh my memory on Greenland Shark Facts and this detail about how they feed goes so hard

Good news good news good news! Recent research suggests the eye parasites do NOT blind them!

Hey I'm sure some of you already have novels about this but I'm just thinking about Eliot's timeline. I just noticed in his speech about Toby, it sounds like it was fairly early in his career -- out of the army, he says as if he means fresh out and not sure what he's doing, second PMC he says and crossing the line, as if crossing the line is still maybe new to him, and he meets Toby and he spends a couple months with him and he credits that with stopping him "from falling all the way down."