Hubris is A Coward's Word

& that 1% regret rate is almost entirely “Yes I’m still trans but the surgery was bad, or the transphobia i encounter is so much worse than anticipated, or I was pushed towards a specific treatment by my binary-oriented doctor when I wanted a non-binary transition” etc.

Actual ‘whoops, I don’t identify as trans anymore” cases are closer to 0,02%.

people absolutely get to detransition and retransition and whatever (I personally know about six people who "detransitioned" from being binary trans people, and then transitioned again later as nonbinary people, for example) but the idea that a small number of people going "oops got this wrong" somehow justifies gatekeeping everyone else is criminal, and mostly a deliberate ploy to block us from getting what we need

Wildlife tracking tips.

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Please please please don't click those phishing texts

idk. too many people drive like they don’t realize (or care) that they could die and/or kill someone. as a result of the way they are driving. sorry if i sound lame or ancient i just feel insane witnessing the lack of concern on a regular basis. The vehicle you are in is thousands of pounds going many miles an hour. do you know this

For fun you can describe a negative feature of christianity. Then wait: soon enough someone will say “that’s not true! not all christians believe that!” and proceed to describe their own personal heresy

This whole thing is fucking horrible. To take this man away from his pregnant wife for SPEAKING!!!!!! This evil ass country and its idiotic demonic ass president.

in the figure of “just a little guy, just a little birthday boy” is the image of 21st century ethics. everyone is constantly trying to like position themselves as uniquely non-agentic, to defer or deny what power they have or can have over others, to self-absolve by adopting an affect of ignorance or victimhood or perpetual adolescence that can be transmuted into moral righteousness

now apply this to lgbt infighting/"politics"

the sort of transmisogynist grievance politics all over your blog, that says talking about women’s oppression is infighting but talking about men’s oppression is always salient and necessary, and ties itself in knots to turn this resentment into “theory,” is one of the defining expressions of this self-exculpatory phenomenon

To be israeli has to be be what it was like to be white during slavery in America. If you ever wondered what white confederates would have done had they had social media, its inhumane shit like this.

you don't have to wonder. post reconstruction, folks in the south liked to take picture of the family posing in-front of lynching victims and send those a Christmas postcards. collectors still have a bunch of originals you can see. i don't recommend it

Have we become so fearful, have we become so cowardly – That we must extinguish a man because he carries the blood of a current enemy?

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION S04E21 | The Drumhead

worm if it was PG-13

(gripping the skink with both hands, pale and feverish, sweating and shaking as I look at myself in the mirror) “killing a character is a valid writing choice that can be a crucial plot mechanic and lend beauty and depth to the story as a whole” (wretches up blood into the sink) “even when it’s my favorite character”

I also drew it

when you realize

What can baleen whales even DO about orca whales. Like can they even fight back. Imagine being a huge fat floating mass of delicious meat living in an open void with no shelter to retreat to and there are these mouth torpedos that might just decide to show up and rip you open just whenever.

Whales would have gone extinct rather quickly if so. But despite the modern tendency to hold killer whales up as some kind of unstoppable super-predator, other whales have evolved several defensive measures, which work to different extents, but the fact that whales do have scars from killer whale attacks is proof enough that they can and do escape. As a general rule, size does matter, and young and weak whales are far more likely to be killed than adult, healthy whales.

There are two main options: flight or fight, which represent different tradeoffs. For speedy prey, it may be energetically wasteful to chase after it. For aggressive prey, the risk of injury may not be worth it.

Rorquals like the fin whale (below) represent flight. They evolved for speed. They may not be able to outrun killer whales, who are fast enough to outpace Dall's porpoises, but they can present the killer with an undesirable amount of effort to expend. However, those whales then have little ability to defend themselves if caught.

If escape is out of the question, then the whale can and does fight back. Sometimes whales turn belly up to protect their vulnerable flippers and undersides. The tail itself is a powerful weapon (more on that below). There's at least one account from 1866 where a bowhead whale was seen smashing its flukes on a killer whale's head, apparently killing it.

Whales that fight back tend to be more robust, more maneuverable, and often have encrustations of barnacles on their bodies, like on this grey whale below. The barnacles on them act both as armor and as sharp edges that can cause injury.

I know that the original post said baleen whales, but sperm whales have to be mentioned as they're big bags o' blubber too. They're big, they have teeth and strong tails, and live in pods of their own. Males alone are probably too dangerous for even a pod of killer whales.

Remember when I mentioned the tails? A pod of sperm whales will adopt the "marguerite formation" when under attack. This puts the vulnerable member in the center, surrounded by a wall of tails.

Finally, special mention has to go to the humpback whale. A rorqual (normally a flight species), it has evolved to fight instead. They use their tails and long, barnacle-encrusted flippers to defend themselves, and group together when under attack. The combination of tail and sharp-edged flippers provides the humpback with protection front and back.

And it gets better. Humpbacks will go out of their way to mob killer whales, even interfering in killer whale attacks on other marine mammals and driving them off. Adult humpbacks, with their natural weaponry and great size, are probably the only animals that deliberately engage with and drive off killer whales with impunity, with sightings of even single humpbacks approaching 10+ killers fearlessly.

What I'm trying to say is that Cassie totally would have kicked David's ass in humpback whale morph.

All images from Wikipedia.

References

Ford, J. K., & Reeves, R. R. (2008). Fight or flight: antipredator strategies of baleen whales. Mammal Review, 38(1), 50-86.

Jefferson, T. A., Stacey, P. J., & Baird, R. W. (1991). A review of killer whale interactions with other marine mammals: predation to co‐existence. Mammal Review, 21(4), 151-180.

Pitman, R. L., Deecke, V. B., Gabriele, C. M., Srinivasan, M., Black, N., Denkinger, J., ... & Ternullo, R. (2017). Humpback whales interfering when mammal‐eating killer whales attack other species: Mobbing behavior and interspecific altruism?. Marine Mammal Science, 33(1), 7-58.