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even-disco-baby · 1 year

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(No caps lock version below asterisks)

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — I HAVE TOLD YOU. I AM THE CITY. I AM LA REVACHOLIERE. I AM…

I AM NOTHING AND EVERYTHING. I AM DYING. I AM AFRAID.

EMPATHY — Her voice is so loud that it is all there is to hear. And it is so small that you barely hear it at all.

She is afraid of silence.

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — I WANT TO LIVE. LOOK AT ME. LOOK ALL AROUND YOU. CAN YOU NOT SEE ME? I AM HERE.

I.

AM.

HERE.

DO NOT ABANDON ME. DO NOT LEAVE ME BLEEDING IN THE STREETS. YOU SEE ME. AND I SEE YOU.

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — BECAUSE…

BECAUSE YOUR BLOOD IS MY BLOOD. I HAVE SEEN YOU CRUMPLED IN THE ALLEYWAYS. I HAVE SEEN YOU HUNGRY AND ALONE. I HAVE SEEN YOU STANDING ON THE PRECIPICE, AND I HAVE SEEN YOU TURNING AWAY FROM IT.

I AM THE PRECIPICE. AND I AM THE LONG WALK HOME. AND I AM THE DYING MAN, AND EVERY MAN WHO DIED BEFORE HIM, AND EVERY WITNESS WHO STOOD SILENTLY BY. I AM THE CITY.

I AM MADE OF YOU. I LOVE YOU.

I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOU DEAD.

Then why is this city *killing* me?

I hate you. Nothing good has ever come from you. I wish you would burn to the ground and be forgotten forever.

I love you, too. You are all that I live for.

But don’t you understand that people have to die for you to continue?

SHIVERS — NO!

NO…

…

RHETORIC — She *is* the people that built her. And so she cannot make sense of her own design— a perpetual motion machine fueled by its own suffering.

INLAND EMPIRE — An infernal engine. Just like you. Just like everyone else.

VOLITION & SHIVERS — NO.

SHIVERS — THEN YOU MUST CHANGE ME. RENAME ME. SHAPE ME INTO SOMETHING SOFTER. DO NOT TURN AWAY AND LEAVE ME TO DIE. DO NOT LEAVE ANYONE TO DIE EVER AGAIN.

PLEASE… DO NOT ABANDON ME TO MY END…

What do you expect me to *do?* I can’t change humanity itself!

I won’t abandon you. We can die together. That’s all we can do.

I am on the side of the adversary. It will not fail me like you always have.

You’re scaring me… I don’t know how to help…

SHIVERS — NO ONE DOES…

BUT YOU MUST TRY. YOU MUST NEVER LOOK AWAY. JUST AS I WILL NEVER LOOK AWAY FROM YOU. I WILL ALWAYS KNOW YOU. I WILL NOT END SO LONG AS THERE IS SOMEONE LEFT TO KNOW.

SO DO NOT LET ME END.

*****

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — I have told you. I am the city. I am La Revacholiere. I am…

I am nothing and everything. I am dying. I am afraid.

EMPATHY — Her voice is so loud that it is all there is to hear. And it is so small that you barely hear it at all.

She is afraid of silence.

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — I want to live. Look at me. Look all around you. Can you not see me? I am here.

I.

Am.

Here.

Do not abandon me. Do not leave me bleeding in the streets. You see me. And I see you.

Who are you?

What do you want?

Why me?

SHIVERS — Because…

Because your blood is my blood. I have seen you crumpled in the alleyways. I have seen you hungry and alone. I have seen you standing on the precipice, and I have seen you turning away from it.

I am the precipice. And I am the long walk home. And I am the dying man, and every man who died before him, and every witness who stood silently by. I am the city.

I am made of you. I love you.

I do not wish to see you dead.

Then why is this city *killing* me?

I hate you. Nothing good has ever come from you. I wish you would burn to the ground and be forgotten forever.

I love you, too. You are all that I live for.

But don’t you understand that people have to die for you to continue?

SHIVERS — No!

No…

…

RHETORIC — She *is* the people that built her. And so she cannot make sense of her own design— a perpetual motion machine fueled by its own suffering.

INLAND EMPIRE — An infernal engine. Just like you. Just like everyone else.

VOLITION & SHIVERS — No.

SHIVERS — Then you must change me. Rename me. Shape me into something softer. Do not turn away and leave me to die. Do not leave anyone to die ever again.

Please… Do not abandon me to my end…

What do you expect me to *do?* I can’t change humanity itself!

I won’t abandon you. We can die together. That’s all we can do.

I am on the side of the adversary. It will not fail me like you always have.

You’re scaring me… I don’t know how to help…

SHIVERS — No one does…

But you must try. You must never look away. Just as I will never look away from you. I will always know you. I will not end so long as there is someone left to know.

So do not let me end.

#disco elysium #harry du bois #shivers #caps #thinking abt la revacholiere as smth that has to beg for her life so long as she bears that name…#but she truly cannot end bc what she is and what the city is at the most fundamental level #is a group of people trying to survive together #and they are all dying and also killing one another and also standing by and watching each other die #and this is the nature of states #they’re fundamentally violent #but the people that make la revacholiere who she is can change themselves and their world…#or at least they can try to… :(#at the end of the day it might not be enough to stop the atomic disaster that’s coming #or stop the pale #but if they give up on living for each other #or on living at all #that’s when la revacholiere truly ends…#many thoughts. head full

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reasonsforhope · 4 months

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Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds

Article | Paywall free

When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”

Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors, despite being defoliated [aka losing all their needles], mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.

“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.

Mild fires strike coastal redwood forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark, up to about 30 centimeters thick at the base, which contains tannic acids that retard flames. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames that consume vegetation on the ground. But the fire in 2020 was so intense that even the uppermost branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize went up in smoke along with their pine needles.

Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates, which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Still, scientists weren’t sure these reserves would prove enough for the burned trees of Big Basin.

Visiting the forest a few months after the fire, Peltier and his colleagues found fresh growth emerging from blackened trunks. They knew that shorter lived trees can store sugars for several years. Because redwoods can live for more than 2000 years, the researchers wondered whether the trees were drawing on much older energy reserves to grow the sprouts.

Average age is only part of the story. The mix of carbohydrates also contained some carbon that was much older. The way trees store their sugar is like refueling a car, Peltier says. Most of the gasoline was added recently, but the tank never runs completely dry and so a few molecules from the very first fill-up remain. Based on the age and mass of the trees and their normal rate of photosynthesis, Peltier calculated that the redwoods were calling on carbohydrates photosynthesized nearly 6 decades ago—several hundred kilograms’ worth—to help the sprouts grow. “They allow these trees to be really fire-resilient because they have this big pool of old reserves to draw on,” Peltier says.

It's not just the energy reserves that are old. The sprouts were emerging from buds that began forming centuries ago. Redwoods and other tree species create budlike tissue that remains under the bark. Scientists can trace the paths of these buds, like a worm burrowing outward. In samples taken from a large redwood that had fallen after the fire, Peltier and colleagues found that many of the buds, some of which had sprouted, extended back as much as 1000 years. “That was really surprising for me,” Peltier says. “As far as I know, these are the oldest ones that have been documented.”

... “The fact that the reserves used are so old indicates that they took a long time to build up,” says Susan Trumbore, a radiocarbon expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Redwoods are majestic organisms. One cannot help rooting for those resprouts to keep them alive in decades to come.”

-via Science, December 1, 2023

#redwoods #california #wildfire #climate change #extreme heat #natural disasters #botany #plant biology #photosynthesis #santa cruz #hopepunk #sustainability #climate hope #united states #good news #hope

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rhiannatruex · 27 days

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Hooded Merganser

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pangeen · 9 months

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" Burrowing Owl " //© Ben Jiang

#California #United States #nature #Portraits #wildlife #birds #Owls #aesthetics #wanderlust #explore #follow #discover

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yabakuboi · 11 days

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"I think it's sweet," Steve says.

Robin wrinkles her nose. "Nothing about Eddie Munson is sweet. He's a sewer rat, at best. Or like twenty opossums in a trench coat."

"Opossums are cute."

"He probably has rabies."

"You say that about me all the time, so I guess that's good. We'll have rabies together."

"He gave you a rock."

"You give me rocks all the time," Steve says, rolling his eyes. He runs his thumb along the textured edge of the rock Eddie'd handed to him.

"Yeah, good rocks." Robin scoffs. "That one sucks."

#steddie #stobin #autism eddie and robin but they have different tastes in rocks #robin like smooth ones especially if they're shiny #eddie likes the ones that are shaped a certain way with texture #steve has jars FULL of their gifts #IS the rock collection/gifting thing an autism-ism??? me and my undiagnosed/undefined mental state does not know #ALSO opossums are naturally extremely resistant to rabies!! fun fact from your local opossum defender yaba

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doom-dreaming · 9 days

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"when i was your age, i was working three jobs to help support my family" and "when i was in college i was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living off of soup"

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO DO THAT. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DO THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THIS ISN'T A CHARACTER-BUILDING LESSON, IT'S JUST BAD

#have you maybe considered even once that an 8-5 job is not the natural human state #'i never had a job with so much leisure time'#YOU NEVER WORKED A SHIFT JOB #EVEN WHEN YOU WERE SCRAPING BY IN COLLEGE #I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THINGS HAVE GOTTEN EVEN WORSE SINCE YOU WERE MY AGE #screams forever and ever #sorry this is literally just incoherent venting

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aimeekb · 4 months

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Find me frolicking in the woods

#Calvert cliffs state park #Maryland #aimeekb #hiking #lesbians who hike #nature #natures staircase #forest #travel #explore #adventure #landscape #forestcore #travel photography #mossy forest #trees #big trees #sunsets #l

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ap0fenia · 22 days

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#oddcore #liminal reality #liminal spaces #surrealcore #fever dream #nature #green #altered mental states #mundane #experience

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mostly-funnytwittertweets · 11 months

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#nature #washington state department #meme #memes #tweet #tweets #twitter #funny #lol

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rebeccathenaturalist · 2 months

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This is from last summer (I found it while trying to clean up browser tabs--oops.) Anyway, it's one of many examples of critically endangered species showing an upturn in population with support. The Devils Hole pupfish is particularly imperiled because it is only found in one flooded cavern in Nevada's Amargosa Desert; the species is likely descended from fish that were washed in there by flooding thousands of years ago, and have managed to eke out a living in the hot, oxygen-deficient water ever since.

This is one of the first species ever listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Devils Hole is threatened by groundwater depletion from well drilling, and after the pupfish's ESA listing there were numerous legal battles between conservationists and farmers over water usage. Water levels reached their lowest point in the early 1970s, but have been slowly rising since then.

Scientists are excited because the current wild population (at least as of last fall) is at 263 fish. That's up from just 35 in 2013, the lowest recorded population ever. There are a few hundred more in captivity, being used to breed more young for reintroduction. The hope is that this fall's wild count will break 300, a good sign for the world's most endangered fish.

By the way, THIS is the entirety of the Devils hole pupfish's habitat, the only place in the world where they are found:

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mityenka · 6 months

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It's literally stomach turning to see how the German government and media are using current events to promote the revisionist narrative that antisemitism in Germany is a foreign body that has been imported by immigrants in order obscure the BRD's own failure at denazification after 1945 and to warrant tougher immigration laws in the future. They do this by dehumanizing Palestinians as a people, associating their culture with terrorism, banning them from mourning the loss of their families, threatening them with deportation, arresting them, patrolling their neighborhoods, banning their cultural clothing from Berlin schools, using police violence against children, etc, etc. Every Palestinian in Germany right now is standing under general suspicion. The vice chairwoman of the CDU, Karin Prien, stated on the topic of fighting antisemitism in Germany: "We have to take their resonance spaces. Close down their mosques, their cafés their associations and confiscate the money that would otherwise be used for terror in the world." A violently racist statement that is not surprising in a violently racist country that has learned nothing from its history no matter how much it pretends to have done so, having cops terrorize the streets in Berlin Neukölln, the district with the largest Palestinian community in Europe while there are Nazis currently sitting in the Bundestag. Complicit in genocide, all of you!!

#i feel like im going insane #do you know that germany plans on having the recognition of israels right to exist as a state be one of the criteria for naturalization in #the future #nothing new of course nothing new germany stands with israel because of personal interests no ethics involved

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malacandrax · 6 months

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Every few months I'm like oh yeah! I can paint! Some hurt/comfort speedpaints >:)

#halstarion #astarion #halsin #bg3 #blood cw #blood #its actually my natural state of working i just always forget #its almost faster than inking ..#theres a sculptural element #so i make a mistake no problem just carve into it with the next brustroke #dont wanna draw fingers no problem just paint some rectangles and then some more rectangles on top for lighting

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reasonsforhope · 4 months

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The Klamath River’s salmon population has declined due to myriad factors, but the biggest culprit is believed to be a series of dams built along the river from 1918 to 1962, cutting off fish migration routes.

Now, after decades of Indigenous advocacy, four of the structures are being demolished as part of the largest dam removal project in United States history. In November, crews finished removing the first of the four dams as part of a push to restore 644 kilometres (400 miles) of fish habitat.

“Dam removal is the largest single step that we can take to restore the Klamath River ecosystem,” [Barry McCovey, a member of the Yurok Tribe and director of tribal fisheries,] told Al Jazeera. “We’re going to see benefits to the ecosystem and then, in turn, to the fishery for decades and decades to come.” ...

A ‘watershed moment’

Four years later, [after a catastrophic fish die-off in 2002,] in 2006, the licence for the hydroelectric dams expired. That created an opportunity, according to Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit founded to oversee the dam removals.

Standards for protecting fisheries had increased since the initial license was issued, and the utility company responsible for the dams faced a choice. It could either upgrade the dams at an economic loss or enter into a settlement agreement that would allow it to operate the dams until they could be demolished.

“A big driver was the economics — knowing that they would have to modify these facilities to bring them up to modern environmental standards,” Bransom explained. “And the economics just didn’t pencil out.”

The utility company chose the settlement. In 2016, the KRRC was created to work with the state governments of California and Oregon to demolish the dams.

Final approval for the deal came in 2022, in what Bransom remembers as a “watershed moment”.

Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted unanimously to tear down the dams, citing the benefit to the environment as well as to Indigenous tribes...

Tears of joy

Destruction of the first dam — the smallest, known as Copco 2 — began in June, with heavy machinery like excavators tearing down its concrete walls.

[Amy Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member, fisherwoman and lawyer for the tribe,] was present for the start of the destruction. Bransom had invited her and fellow KRRC board members to visit the bend in the Klamath River where Copco 2 was being removed. She remembers taking his hand as they walked along a gravel ridge towards the water, a vein of blue nestled amid rolling hills.

“And then, there it was,” Cordalis said. “Or there it wasn’t. The dam was gone.”

For the first time in a century, water flowed freely through that area of the river. Cordalis felt like she was seeing her homelands restored.

Tears of joy began to roll down her cheeks. “I just cried so hard because it was so beautiful.”

The experience was also “profound” for Bransom. “It really was literally a jolt of energy that flowed through us,” he said, calling the visit “perhaps one of the most touching, most moving moments in my entire life”.

Demolition on Copco 2 was completed in November, with work starting on the other three dams. The entire project is scheduled to wrap in late 2024.

[A resilient river]

But experts like McCovey say major hurdles remain to restoring the river’s historic salmon population.

Climate change is warming the water. Wildfires and flash floods are contaminating the river with debris. And tiny particles from rubber vehicle tires are washing off roadways and into waterways, where their chemicals can kill fish within hours.

McCovey, however, is optimistic that the dam demolitions will help the river become more resilient.

“Dam removal is one of the best things we can do to help the Klamath basin be ready to handle climate change,” McCovey explained. He added that the river’s uninterrupted flow will also help flush out sediment and improve water quality.

The removal project is not the solution to all the river’s woes, but McCovey believes it’s a start — a step towards rebuilding the reciprocal relationship between the waterway and the Indigenous people who rely on it.

“We do a little bit of work, and then we start to see more salmon, and then maybe we get to eat more salmon, and that starts to help our people heal a little bit,” McCovey said. “And once we start healing, then we’re in a place where we can start to help the ecosystem a little bit more.”"

-via Al Jazeera, December 4, 2023

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rhiannatruex · 1 year

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knitted forest friends

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pangeen · 11 months

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“ Heavy shorebreak “ // Derek Gomez

#Hawai’i #United States #nature #sea #ocean #coast #shoreline #beach #wave #blue #aesthetics #wanderlust #explore #follow #discover

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officialspec · 6 months

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ill be honest as much as i love to criticise the use of fatphobia for comedy ill never be able to hold the fatphobic jokes in kung fu panda against it

like yea those movies are guilty of dipping into The Usual Tropes for a cheap laugh but not only is the character writing for the fat characters the strongest and most sympathetic ive Ever seen literally just the character designs of the pandas in the 3rd movie get me choked up sometimes. theyre all so appealing and clearly treated with the same care and attention as everyone else without copping out and making them Barely Fat. po is already a size that doesnt exist in film protags and hes still the thinnest person in that whole village and that meant a lot to me

#i havent seen the movies in ages but the design of the ribbon dancer is sooo . AUGH #like not just to have that many fat characters but have them be REALLY fat without being treated as ugly or nasty #OR THEIR FATNESS BEING TEMPORARY !!! its their natural state thats how theyre meant to look!!!!#its easy to get caught in the thinking of like. having fat characters be a minority in a lineup to reflect 'real life'#EVEN THO that isnt always true but regardless #having a cast where the nonfat characters are so few and far between theyre hardly present at all. so fucking enriching 2 me #imo writing-wise the third one is by far the weakest but it still is just so important to me that they designed the pandas like that #can i kfp post on main is that allowed #idk i watched a video essay im emotional abt this again

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