Sleepy boy

(via)

He’s a musician

(via)

The Tribune, Coshocton, Ohio, November 25, 1924

Endangered Species Sightings from This Year

This is thought to be the first time in over 20 years that a blue whale was spotted off the Coast of Massachusetts.

I highly recommend watching the video and listening to the reaction of the people on the whale watching boat--the cheers and emotion in some of their voices, especially the woman saying "I'm trying not to" when someone jokingly tells her not to cry.

This is the first time ever that a mother clouded leopard with two cubs has been spotted on a game cam!

"After being considered regionally extinct for over a century, giant anteaters have been spotted roaming once again in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state. Scientists have concluded these returned natives ventured over from Argentina's Ibera Park, where conservationists have released around 110 rescued and captive-bred anteaters since 2007."

Over 100 years and the anteaters are finally coming home!

Hey, the ACLU is getting people to send letters to your Reps to have Congress pass the No Kings Act.

This act would make constitutional amendments to ensure that even sitting presidents are held liable for their actions. That NOBODY is above the law.

Their goal is 150k messages sent and at the time of writing this they're about 2.1k off from that goal!

ACLU gives you a prefilled message that you can edit to send to make the process easier, and will send it out for you.

This only takes a few minutes!

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.

Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

In person

Also:

Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

But yeah, go do citizen science, please!!!

I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

I am so serious when I say that now is the time to take your activism offline. I am not spending the next four years squabbling on social media or getting woke points by reblogging posts that my followers already agree with. There are real places in your offline community where you can do good if you seek them out

Also: DEESCALATE ALL CONFLICT THAT ISN'T WITH THE ENEMY. We have so so so so much in common, are so much more aligned, with each other than we do the people we need to fight against. We're going to have disagreements. We're going to feel strongly on different sides of an issue. But now more than ever we need to find ways to address those things without alienating each other and pushing others out of our movements.

Thank you for adding this!! There are lots of people who we are aligned with in values if not in action, and we need to harness those shared values instead of yelling at each other. Trump won the popular vote, which means there's a hell of a lot of people out there who actively want facism. We don't have time to argue about who's right and wrong about minutiae.

@eebeesee's comment a few weeks ago was that the two of us don't quite agree on what the ideal society looks like. But in our lifetimes we are not going to get to a point where those differences are anything more than theoretical. So debating them can be a fun exercise in political theory, but letting that disagreement get in the way of actually accomplishing any of the 2000 things that would have to happen before our goals actually diverge is a great way to do absolutely fuckall.

coo

IF YOU LIVE IN THE US, PLEASE READ THIS

Posting this from the bird app since I hope it can help people.

People have been contacting the White House directly to demand a recount, especially since there has been evidence that not every ballot has been counted and will be thrown away if it hasn't been cured.

The link to contact the White House is here!

The following screenshot comes from here!

If you need help writing something, check under the cut! I've provided a prewritten response from one of the replies!

(sorry to tag, we NEED people to see this information. DO NOT GIVE UP. if the recount saved 2020, it could save 2024)

@fishcow99 @destiel-news-channel @cipherexists

@pichuamiibo @b0tster @hjartasalt @tiktoks-for-tired-tots

@i-am-a-fish @hellsite-hall-of-fame @heritageposts

@writing-prompt-s

BIGGER TUMBLR USERS PLEASE SPREAD THIS. THIS IS IMPORTANT. THERES ARE MILLIONS OF DISPLACED VOTES. WE NEED A RECOUNT

I was walking on a rather remote beach when I came upon this Whip eel drying up in the sun. These are intertidal eels that can actually handle themselves out of water for a bit, but it’s not normal for them to be fully exposed in direct sunlight like this. The tide was at least six hours from coming in and I felt like this eel was in distress, so I made the decision to dig him out and return to the ocean. His body was too delicate to be simply pulled from the hole without injury, so I got to digging.

This endeavor took about 40 minutes as the eel was quite long and difficult to excavate. Also had to continually refill my temporary eel pond to keep him from drying out entirely while I worked.

If you are an eel aficionado like myself, please enjoy this silly little video of the relocation process set to some jaunty royalty-free disco music.

literally what i'm thinking watching this

Don't forget in addition to the waterhole in the Namib desert in Nambibia, and the other water hole in the national park in Namibia, there's also the the National Aquarium, in Baltimore, USA. My favorite is the sharks and rays at Blacktip Reef, but there are also jellies and colorful fish!

~~

Oh, wait, last minute breaking news! In the national park, we've zoomed in on a rhinocerous taking a nap!

reblog if you need a hug

Reblog to give the person you reblogged this from a much needed hug

so, about dean rescuing cas…

❗️Nevada voters - this is going to sound weird, but PICK UP YOUR PHONE if an unknown number calls.

**Lots of signatures on ballots are not matching and your ballot may need to be fixed.

TLDR; yes, signature matching is an antiquated way to verify ballots but it is still being used. Reportedly thousands of ballots here need to be cured. Answer the phone!

If you want to help cure Nevada ballots:

❗️Nevada voters - this is going to sound weird, but PICK UP YOUR PHONE if an unknown number calls.

**Lots of signatures on ballots are not matching and your ballot may need to be fixed.

TLDR; yes, signature matching is an antiquated way to verify ballots but it is still being used. Reportedly thousands of ballots here need to be cured. Answer the phone!

Happy fox