Blakey

joined 4 years ago
[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"liberalism (...) minus the stuff you don't like. AKA capitalism"

So... Not literally just not liberalism, then? The brainworms it takes to just post whatever on a subject you clearly have taken no effort whatsoever to understand.

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 3 points 6 days ago

say goodbye to nonce island

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

"uh I didn't vote for the fascists, I voted for the party that tolerates the fascists, failed to put up any kind of real opposition to the fascists, and lost an election to the most obviously incapable candidate of all time . . . And who then handed power over peacefully to the fascists while spewing platitudes about how important it is to work peacefully with the fascists. And who also have 95% of the same goals as the fascists just with a progressive coat of paint. And that is totally different and makes me the adult in the room" you would have been totally on board with appeasement.

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago

Yeup. One of my guilty pleasures is the"ask a manager" blog, and she (Jewish-American) had a Jewish-American reader write in the other day because someone had put up a swastika at her workplace and the company was failing to do anything about it. Just to prove that we need to be careful about antisemitic infiltration, this was an escalation from a previous piece of vandalism where someone had put up "kill all Zionists", which the company also refused to do anything about (and while that's fair given, y'know, Zionists, the fact that the follow up was a literal hate crime I think does paint a picture of what's going on there)

Of course the infuriating thing about this kind of antisemitic co-opting of antizionism is that it makes it impossible to reasonably say "well... Maybe Zionists ARE bad and it's no more unreasonable to say 'kill all zionists' than 'kill all fascists'", because yeah, when someone's putting up fucking swastikas you WILL look like a freak.

I dunno, fucking Nazis never fail to make literally everything worse.

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago

He's literally a veteran, let's not be giving him too much credit

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck me, that's grim

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

M-R was after the publication of Mein Kampf. Hitler had been openly saying he planned to murder the soviets - all of them - for years by the time of the pact. Why, do you think, were the Soviets willing to sign it anyway? Why wasn't there an anti-nazi alliance at the time of M-R? Who else signed treaties with the Nazis and in what order? There's some fascinating history in the lead up to WWII but you have to be willing to actually look into it rather than just looking for excuses to trash talk the USSR.

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

definitely not burning even more hours I can't spare on dark souls 3

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

remember your volcel pledge

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If every human on Earth simultaneously turned communist and decided to save the world, we could reverse it.

I don't think we could, tbh. We've passed so many tipping points, lost so much stuff. Everywhere you look it's shit like "nearly 33% of the world's adequate or high-quality food-producing land has been lost at a rate that far outstrips the pace of natural processes to replace diminished soil." (Actual quote from a guardian article)

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago

nah I'm Scott Morrison, coming from the Engadine mcdonalds

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

they threw me in the gutter and shat my pants:(

 

no using them to figure out where I live, come 'round and make fun of me ok

It's orchids time!

A spider orchid. They're some of my favourites - you don't get the full effect in a photo, because they're big! About the size of your hand, with the petals outstretched. There will be more.

The humble donkey orchid! I don't see a lot of them and didn't get a good photo.

These are pink fairy orchids. They're super cute and there's a path along a creek near where I live where you can see hundreds of them at once which is really lovely, but hard to take a photo of.

Cowslips. I love them, they're really bright and cheerful and again pretty big.

Another spider orchid. King spider orchid, maybe? Lots of white spider orchids where I live - that and green.

But this one has some pink! I love the deep magenta and fringe on the labellum.

And apparently I've hit my limit for one post. I'll leave it for a bit then post more. Probably you can tell I like my orchids (although not every flower photo I take is of one! I get peas and kangaroo paws and their relatives too!) Plenty more where these came from.

1
Possums (hexbear.net)
 

Last year while waiting to start my studies, I spent a few months volunteering for a project radio tracking Ringtail Possums. The ringtail possum is a small nocturnal arboreal marsupial, and a lot cuter than opossums

I was involved in all parts of the field work - weighing and measuring, collaring, releasing, getting pissed on (they respect neither god nor man), releasing and tracking the possums.

We did unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) lose some to predation by foxes and cats. These were possums that had been injured and rehabilitated at a wildlife hospital and the high predation rate was pretty much the reason the study was carried out. Obviously not showing photos of those, but it was pretty upsetting for the rehab volunteers (and for we field volunteers too, of course! But we didn't really know the possums personally the way the hospital volunteers did.) We also found a few collars that had fallen off - they're designed with a weak link to try and eliminate any strangulation risk. Mostly the evidence we saw around lost collars suggested they were fine.

We started with 22 candidates for release; one sadly needed to be euthanized before release, due to the severity of its injuries and the fact it wasn't recovering. One was initially released but we then found it dehydrated and disoriented the next day while tracking it, right by a busy street - he was taken back into the hospital for further rehab. Of the others, by the time the several months were up, only I think four were still being tracked (most of the others knocked their collars off - we didn't lose 80% to predators!) which is a good result, to be honest, because this group of possums had been put through "possum finishing school" to try and train them to be scared of predators. Straight releases in the past did show predation rates on that order. So as sad as it was to see the ones that didn't make it, from what we could tell, the rehab's efforts were not in vain and the training did help. Which is especially nice when you consider how devastating it must have been to the hospital to learn that the vast majority of the individuals they treat were being eaten by introduced predators (it's a wildlife hospital, so losing some to eagles or quolls would have been sad but nowhere near as upsetting!)

I got this opportunity as a recent graduate (environmental science and conservation biology) through my contacts at the uni, but members of the public who had volunteered at the wildlife hospital were also involved. It was a very rewarding experience so I highly recommend it to anyone who has a similar opportunity.

Bonus: while out spotlighting a few months after the program ended, I saw some with their babies!

These were brushtail, not ringtail, possums which is why they look a little different. Didn't get a photo but shortly after this, they decided they didn't like being watched and the baby climbed up on mum's back to get a ride away from the strange man with the bright light 🩷

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