Pennant-winged Nightjar (Caprimulgus vexillarius), male, family Caprimulgidae, order Caprimulgiformes, South Africa

photographs by Manfred Suter

This is Andrey X, a Jewish Israeli pro-Palestine activist.

I don't know how to describe this video so I'll just write out what he's saying:

me trying to convince myself that the whole spectrum of human emotions is a good and necessary thing to feel even if its not comfortable while im actively experiencing emotions that make me feel like my bones are being dissolved in acid

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Goes insanely hard

To provide further context from what I understand the bill wanted to take the rights guaranteed to the Maori in said treaty and expand them to all New Zealand citizens. The issue with that is that it sort of defeats the point of the protections of the treaty.

Saint Jellyfish Exhorter by seok young choi

I relate to Reimu because I would also rather be getting drunk and railing a tgirl witch than doing my job

hey everyone, look at what I found

Wow is that duck shaped

Golf Courses ARE Being Converted

The Solarpunk "fantasy" that so many of us tout as a dream vision, converting golf courses into ecological wonderlands, is being implemented across the USA according to this NYT article!

The article covers courses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, and New York that are being bought and turned into habitat and hiking trails.

The article goes more into detail about how sand traps are being turned into sand boxes for kids, endangered local species are being planted, rocks for owl habitat are being installed, and that as these courses become wilder, they are creating more areas for biodiversity to thrive.

Most of the courses in transition are being bought by Local Land Trusts. Apparently the supply of golf courses in the USA is way over the demand, and many have been shut down since the early 2000s. While many are bought up and paved over, land Trusts have been able to buy several and turn them into what the communities want: public areas for people and wildlife. It does make a point to say that not every hold course location lends itself well to habitat for animals (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make great housing!)

So lets be excited by the fact that people we don't even know about are working on the solutions we love to see! Turning a private space that needs thousands of gallons of water and fertilizer into an ecologically oriented public space is the future I want to see! I can say when I used to work in water conservation, we were getting a lot of clients that were golf courses that were interested in cutting their resource input, and they ended up planting a lot of natives! So even the golf courses that still operate could be making an effort.

So what I'd encourage you to do is see if there's any land or community trusts in your area, and see if you can get involved! Maybe even look into how to start one in your community! Through land trusts it's not always golf course conversions, but community gardens, solar fields, disaster adaptation, or low cost housing! (Here's a link to the first locator I found, but that doesn't mean if something isn't on here it doesn't exist in your area, do some digging!)

It's important to push back as hard as possible against the idea that the outside world should be entirely comfortable and should feel completely safe (which is meaningfully different from actually being safe) because when this goes unchecked you end up with people who think that the sentence for being annoying should be death. This is maybe the most apparent in how people talk about drug use and homelessness; I spoke with a woman this summer who told me that she hoped her neighbors overdosed and died to "teach them a lesson" because they have frequent overnight guests, something which is objectively mildly annoying and not meaningfully dangerous. Unhoused people are incarcerated, displaced, brutalized, and left for dead because they annoy people and offend people's sensibilities. The inability to just walk away from an inconvenient or unpleasant situation, to just manage annoyance and inconvenience and discomfort, kills people all the fucking time.

types of nap, ranked by me (an experienced napper)

the siesta: the oldest and most reliable form of nap! you go to sleep around noon. you wake up an hour or two later feeling well-rested and prepared to face the rest of the day. this is the pinnacle of nap perfection. 10/10

the businessman’s nap: you have a limited amount of time on your hands, so you schedule a nap into your packed timetable and set an alarm. you spend half the duration of the nap worrying that you’re wasting valuable nap time by lying awake, and the other half sunk into a torpor so deep that when your alarm rings, it takes you a good few minutes to remember your own name. once you’ve splashed some cold water on your face you feel much better. 7/10

EW STICKY: you were cold at first, so you piled on the blankets and wriggled into your favourite comfy sweater. this was nice. now you are awake and trapped in a horrible sweaty gordian knot of your own devising. this is not nice. when you peel off the sweater you find to your horror that you have left an actual damp patch behind on the bed, like some sort of giant dead fish that can’t stop leaking its gross fish juice everywhere. 5/10 it was at least cosy to start with

the interrupted nap: someone barges into your room and starts talking to you. “wtsfhggl?” you enquire. they give you a judgemental look, and ask why you are sleeping in the middle of the day. “ghhfshsxkls,” you reply, graciously. they tell you to get up. you get up. the rest of the day feels like an extension of whatever dream you are having before you were disturbed. you boil with quiet resentment and shame. 4/10

the unsuccessful nap: you are tired. you want to take a nap. you lie down. you wait. you wait. time moves sluggishly forwards. you wait. your brain feels like a cup of mushy porridge but your eyes refuse to close. the noise of your fan is infuriating. you wait. eventually, you are forced to accept that this nap is simply not going to happen, and you have wasted 45 minutes doing absolutely nothing. god fucking dammit. 2/10

the handy-dandy fast-forward button: you really just want this day to be over as soon as possible, and the best way you can think of to do that is to take a nap. you only meant to sleep for an hour, but when you wake up it is already evening. the day is over. you glean no satisfaction from this. you kill time until you feel justified in going back to bed again, and spend the rest of the night tossing and turning, unable to sink back into the blissful stupor from which you so recently emerged. 0/10

The Unpleasantness: when you fall asleep, it is dark. when you awaken, it is light. this is the natural order of sleep, but perverted into a form that is frightening and wrong. you feel deeply unsettled and do not know why. are you sick? what does time mean? what does anything mean? maximum despair. -1000/10.

Holy fucking shit of all the possibilities I did not see that one coming.

X

X

the main problem with this time of year is the irresistible urge to get fully into bed at like 5:34 pm and outside is like yesss, yesss do it, it's what you deserve yesss. like is it depression or is it just november

pesident babas extremely popular flagship policy, ECONOMY IS GOOD, is going to prove hard to beat