Just Your Everyday Bird On Fire

hope is a weapon, by @mumblesplash (x)

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

115 colonists: okay

governor: ends up spending 3 years in england bc of a naval war with spain or some shit

governor: gets back to the colony to find everyone gone

governer: sees the word “croatoan”, the name of a native american tribe, carved into a post

croatoan tribe: has members and children with blonde hair/blue eyes, pale skin

If you want to automate your home a bit, but you don't want any "smart" tech, you can just buy remote controlled power sockets instead

They are a lot cheaper and easier to set up and use than some home automation smart tech nonsense

They don't need an app (but some models come with optional apps and there are apps that are compatible with most of these)

Many of them use the 433mhz frequency to communicate, which makes most models compatible with each other, even if they are from different manufacturers

The tech has been around for a long time and will be around for a long time to come

You don't have to put any fucking corporate listening devices like an amazon echo in your home

Mantis shrimp have the 12 to 16 cones compared to a human 3... But they also can't easily distinguish between colours. Humans get that rainbow blend, while mantis shrimp get 16 blocks. We can tell the difference between yellow and orange - mantis shrimp can't.

And also - ultraviolet vision is nothing special - most crusatations can see in ultraviolet, and that range impedes colour vision - almost everything is blue shifted.

Also their distance vision sucks.

In this case, I’m using an example from Aotearoa NZ, but this is applicable to birds globally with a variety of different outcomes.

An on-going problem we monitor in Aotearoa NZ is a human-based threat to kākā, one of our larger native parrots. Well-meaning but completely misguided, people often feed them bread, nuts, crackers, chips, and anything else they have on them (kākā are often curious with people, get close, and there are plenty of areas where they cross over with residential and recreational human areas for easy contact).

In 2016, 80% of kākā chicks being monitored by scientists in Wellington died, all due to metabolic bone disease. This disease leaves chicks with distorted limbs and bone abnormalities and is completely avoidable by not feeding kākā ‘human food’.

Metabolic bone disease in birds is caused by digesting foods with high ratios of phosphorus to calcium, which is considered dangerous for rapidly growing birds, as it causes a lower-than-average level of calcium in the plasma. Foods that fall into this category for young birds are (but not limited to) corn, nuts, pasta, potato, rice, beans, bread, crackers and cheese – all things people frequently leave outside to feed birds. Symptoms can include weakness, abnormal stance, difficulty in walking, broken feather shafts, and the more extreme signs are limb deformities, limb fractures, and scissor beak.

A very notable case is this young kākā from Waiheke Island, that in 2018 had to be euthanised by the Auckland Zoo, as it’s scissor beak and skull abnormalities were too severe to have any quality of life.