GOITER SPONGES ARE NOT A TOY!

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.

In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.

“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut

“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”

Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.

“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”

it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.  

the tags above actually aren’t true, and i think we can, and should, dispute this argument without misrepresenting it: the op-ed in question states that chelsea mitchell “lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-new england awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to transgender runners,” and “was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two transgender runners,” although i have to say i find the choice of verb there pretty fascinating—‘was bumped,’ mitchell writes, as though she were a royal who’d been demoted from the position she believed to be her birthright, and not merely a runner who hadn’t run fast enough that day to earn it.

really, i think a more salient point here is one i’ve seen others make before, which is that ultimately, biological advantages are the name of the athletic game—as someone who’s 5′6″, i was never going to have the mechanical advantage of rowers who were 5′9″, 5′11″, even 6′ in some cases. that’s just physics! should i have turned around and said, the women outperforming me don't count as women, they're too tall and i’m going to sue to have them excluded from competing with me on that basis? what a gross, pathetic move that would have been.

as one of the trans girls who beat mitchell in that 2019 race, andraya yearwood, observed at the time: “one high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “one sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.” there are an enormous number of factors that shape athletic performance, and very few of them correlate directly to so-called ‘biological sex’—i’m AFAB, and plenty of cis men are shorter or slighter than i am, including classmates i had in high school.

but if we’re talking about testosterone, which tends to be at the heart of athletic gatekeeping: both yearwood and terry miller (the other trans girl mitchell is subtweeting) had started HRT before ever lining up against cis girls, and had, according to court documentation submitted by the ACLU, “circulating hormones... comparable to the hormone levels of non-transgender girls.” what’s more, as the ACLU motion further specifies, neither yearwood nor miller were undefeated in their track careers, nor did either have dominant race times among high school girls nationally—in fact, mitchell herself beat both yearwood and miller at the connecticut state championship in 2020! so clearly the supposedly-insurmountable advantage enjoyed by transfeminine athletes is in fact wholly surmountable, and arguments to the contrary nothing but petulant, entitled prejudice.

but enough of all this—let’s end on a sweeter note. here are miller and yearwood in 2019, at an awards ceremony honoring them for their courage: