coyote teeth

Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), chick (fledgling), family Cuculidae, order Cuculiformes, Arizona, USA

We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.

It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.

An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.

What is organic fertilizer made from? Bone and blood meal, from slaughterhouses. Or composted manure, from commercial livestock operations.

The fertility in the soil comes from the activities and deaths of animals. It is possible to have a fully vegan organic farm in theory, I read a whole book about it, but that’s just one ecosystem. (Full disclosure, this was homestead-scale at best, and part of this man’s system involved using human manure to fertilize hungry crops like corn where the food bit is far from the soil so you don’t have to worry about bacteria. Yes. Is it vegan if there’s animal poop in it, if it’s a human animal? Also how can you really certify that your farm is vegan? Certainly you can’t do it on a commercial scale; the mechanical harvesters of your huge monocrop fields are committing genocide on your fieldmice etcetera. The book wasn’t claiming it was vegan, btw, he was just saying he didn’t use animal inputs, so. ymmv there. i forget his name, but i’m sure it was a rodale book.)

Death is part of the circle of life, and to artificially pry animal death out of ecosystems that require it is a kind of violence.

Sure, we can try to minimize our harm, but smugly buying quinoa in the bulk section isn’t the place literally everyone should pick as the point where they stop caring.

It started with someone listing "places with uncanny energy," like gas stations on a road trip, empty movie theaters, etc.

Then someone reblogged it and said those are called "liminal spaces," defining liminal as in-between, neither one thing nor another.

Tomorrow (July 4th, 2026) is the 10 year anniversary of the-crepes-of-wrath's comment, which:

Predates the 2020 spike in interest by four years

Predates the original backrooms post, and the the creation of r/liminalspaces by three years

Predates the earliest mention that KnowYourMeme attributes to Twitter by two years

I'm pretty sure this is the moment the term "liminal spaces" was attached to this sort of imagery, and it's TEN YEARS OLD TOMORROW!

Here's one about Tumblr trans discourse. And another. And another.

Here's another about Tumblr political discourse. And another.

Here's a massive book about Tumblr communities. Many of the chapters will also include irl spillover from their digital counterparts.