Meanderings

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

A fictional example based on the actual understanding failures I’ve seen in many cases where someone regurgitates things they’ve heard from science reporting/ social media posts without reading into the publication:

When someone makes a statement like “they surveyed scientists and it turns out that 78% of them don’t even think climate change is a thing”, neglecting to mention that

equal weight was given to all participants’ opinion as “scientists” whether these were top-of-their-field environmental scientists or first year students in something unrelated

none of these surveyed scientists were weeded out on grounds of conflict of interest (e.g. scientists who stand to profit from further activities that current understanding says would contribute to increasing severity of climate change or make it harder to reverse)

the only ones contributing to that 78% group were ones who were not remotely specialised in the field and/or had a clear conflict of interest

And/or the way the question was asked and the result reported aren’t equivalent, e.g. neutral, slightly disagree and strongly disagree responses all reported as one big block of ABSOLUTELY NOT, and “do you believe climate change is happening at all” vs “have you seen signs of climate change in your area this year” vs “do you believe climate change is influenced by human activities” vs “do you believe climate change is entirely caused by human activities” vs “do you think climate change is something humans can actually do anything about” vs “do you think corporate actions to reduce climate impact make a difference” vs “do you think combating climate change should be a top priority for scientific research funding” vs “do you think combating climate change should be a top priority for your government’s agenda this year” etc. all dumbed down and lumped together as a monolithic “do you believe in climate change” by the reporter/poster.

Have you guys seen that clip