rebeccathenaturalist:

What Are Whale Fall Ecosystems?

We often think of ecosystems as large areas of land and water that may cover many square miles. The truth is that they come in many sizes, and may shift, change, and even disappear depending on factors like climate, natural disasters, and so forth. But there are some phenomena that are essentially micro-ecosystems that only take up a very small space in the grand scheme of things. One of the neatest examples of this is a whale fall.

Whales include the largest animals that have ever lived; a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) may reach almost 100 feet in length and weigh over 200 tons. When a whale dies close to shore it may end up washed onto the beach; the waves may carry it back into the water as the tide returns, or humans may have to resort to drastic measures to remove the giant carcass (up to, and including, blowing it up with half a ton of explosives.)

Octopuses and other sea life arranged on and around a whale skeleton at the bottom of the ocean.ALT

By National Marine Sanctuaries, CCA-2.0

Keep reading

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knitmeapony:

barclaysbianca:

Meme news: The Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah came out as bisexual at the age of 76

That’s her, btw


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She’s an icon and also very talented. We Stan.

Diversity win! Icon for indecision comes out as bisexual!

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mortalityplays:

3liza:

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u know it smells crazy in there

underwater odour, underwater funk

stinking up his bubble like an underwater skunk

underwater thesis, he won’t underwater flunk

already published papers but they underwater stunk

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3liza:

triviallytrue:

3liza:

runawaymarbles:

3liza:

leftoblique:

3liza:

triviallytrue:

I just don’t really understand the modern discourse on homelessness. I mean the conservative position is pretty well staked out at this point (send the police to harass, arrest, and occasionally kill them) but what’s the liberal messaging here? Affordable housing, sure, but seriously, what’s the plan for people who can’t work or otherwise make money?

approaching this from a cutthroat cost-saving position would win so many more votes if the Democrats actually gave a shit because we know 100% for sure from many many studies at this point that even if the voter personally hates the homeless and want them to die, it’s still less expensive to just put them in free apartments than it is to 1. keep paying for emergency and addiction services 2. keep paying for survival crimes 3. keep paying for sweeps 4. keep paying for sit/lie/loiter enforcement 5. keep paying for disposal of property and human bodies. 6. keep paying for arrest, imprisonment and transport. it’s cheaper to put the fentanyl addict who will never ever get a job and WILL spend all day on his stoop with a bottle in a paper bag harassing people who walk past (to be cartoonishly bigoted about it) into a free apartment than it is to put him in prison, a shelter, on the sidewalk or into a bus, and while the average Seattle liberal (for example) is actually cartoonishly bigoted, i really think they could be made to vote for free housing instead of criminalization if anyone cared to campaign for it in a way that worked. but the moderate “left” keeps hammering on compassion (which doesn’t get enough votes) and the center and right keep hammering on punishment, which does get votes but is completely unsustainable in a municipal budget even if you personally enjoy the cruelty aspect of it.

so idk! idk. even my leftist leftist friends here are still hung up on “build more housing”.

As someone who is reasonably familiar with left politics and urbanism in Seattle (and as someone who has participated closely in a couple of leftist city council campaigns) my take is: you need both - and more.

Yes, you need to house homeless people before you do anything else about homelessness because (as you rightfully point out) it’s the cheapest, most effective, and frankly only way to “solve” the problem for any reasonable definition of “solve” that doesn’t involve war crimes.

You need places to hose homeless people that aren’t crowded shelters with draconian rules and little privacy; where people can have their partners/kids/pets with them, etc. Places that provide dignity and not just a mattress and a roof.

But the state we’re in now is the result of decades and decades of poor planning creating interlocking catastrophes of unlivability.

We’ve got a minimum 5- or 6-figure housing deficit in the city. If we somehow found places and housed the current homeless population we’ve still got people who are right on the edge of not being able to afford housing and who are being pushed out to precarious situations and ridiculous commutes - which then tangles roadways and destroys the environment (because our density and mass transit are also shit; nice job, Seattle).

In order to aggressively house the current population and prevent a continuing flood of people becoming homeless or ending up in financial precarity due to housing costs, you need to build a fuck-ton of affordable housing. Public housing; below-market rate subsidized housing; but also: market-rate housing. A lot of below-market-rate comes from old housing stock, but if the demand is too high then rich people will occupy those units and the price can’t float down.

And since cost to build is sky high, getting new public and subsidized housing requires a lot of public investment and regulation.

Building a bunch of market-rate housing (including ADUs after ending single-family zoning) is definitely part of the solution, but it’s just a band-aid on a much larger problem. But unlike all of the other solutions, it makes money for developers and landlords and doesn’t require raising taxes, so it’s also the easiest one for anyone to the right of Kshama Sawant to support. (It also doesn’t require people to live in the apartment next to that fentanyl addict, which helps when you’re trying to win elections.)

Untangling all of these problems is not easy. The only real long-term solution is (in my opinion, which you can take with a sizable grain of salt) a combination of public housing, subsidized housing, an actual income tax to fund all of it instead of regressive property and sales taxes, elimination of single-family zoning (which we’ve technically done, but e.g. setback and lot coverage rules need to be eliminated as well), and better transit. Also just guaranteeing people housing.

A lot of those things are being worked, but progress is slow, and in the meantime wealthy urbanists are over-focusing on the battles they are winning and trying to convince themselves they don’t need to do the other, harder things 🤷🏻‍♀️

https://sccinsight.com/2021/09/14/what-the-2020-census-data-tells-us-about-housing-in-seattle/

according to this article we currently have approximately twice the number of vacant residential units as we do homeless persons in this city. total units, not individual rooms/beds/living places. idk how many of these units are multiple bedrooms. but the simple math is that we already HAVE the housing. this isn’t even getting into the massive wastelands of empty office space post-pandemic. so why do i keep hearing “build housing”? we’ve been building housing according to this article very successfully for a decade, why are there more unhoused people every year? I’m not challenging you I’m saying these are the numbers i keep hearing and they don’t make sense if all the policy leftists in the city think building is the correct approach. i don’t have any information about why these two sets of numbers–“we don’t have enough housing, build more” vs “we have more than twice as many places for people to live as there are people unhoused”–contradict each other. do you know?

My guess? They’re not building housing that anyone who doesn’t have a tech salary can afford. We passed a law a few years ago that says that developers have to make a certain number of affordable units for every expensive one, but the fine for not complying is– shocker– less than the cost of building said housing, and keeps the lots clear for houses and townhouses with unnecessary granite countertops, and so forth. (Remember when they were planning to demolish the showbox to build “badly needed housing” in the form of million-dollar apartments? Yeah.)

That count is also from 2020 and things have been going steadily downhill since.

right, this brings me back to the thing i said yesterday: “build housing” is a red herring and does not work and is siphoning energy off the actual problem, which is that capital holds surplus hostage for profit. what i don’t understand is why all my housing problem leftist friends and politicians in Seattle keep saying build housing and i never hear about the empty units. unless there’s something complicated going on with municipal math that i don’t know about yet, and if that’s the case someone please let me know. but with the information i think i have at the moment, it really seems like building doesn’t work and isn’t necessary anyway unless it is specifically purpose built housing projects. the tithed units don’t work and developers will continue to hold empty units hostage until someone forces them to rent it to the market at living rates (not market or speculative rates), or simply seizes it for public housing via policy coup. which i realize is picking out seats on the Enterprise Tumblr posting, but every other possibility–besides a more organized grassroots approach to squatting–appears to have been struck off.

right, this brings me back to the thing i said yesterday: “build housing” is a red herring and does not work and is siphoning energy off the actual problem, which is that capital holds surplus hostage for profit.

it’s the other way around - capital holding surplus hostage for profit is an unsolvable problem and the only way around it is increasing the supply until the market rate drops to a living rate

and like, increasing housing supply does drop the cost of housing, that’s why so many people who own housing are trying to prevent it

if they can hold it hostage then supply won’t increase, regardless of the actual number of unjts. which is exactly what has been happening. I’m not a municipal policy or legal guy so I’m vaguely aware I’m just saying “babby’s first City housing problems ideas” here and there are a million reasons why we can’t do any of this easily or maybe at all, but nevertheless: units ARE (apparently?) being built, and then just sat on. unless we are building municipal housing projects with zero market-rate units (market rate in Seattle is about $1500 for a studio rn) and zero developer control and no landlords except “the city”, thereby increasing units specifically for the population were discussing, the solution is to reduce landlord agency in the first place, which i know is the single most difficult thing to legislate because all the money in the city will fight to the death to prevent it. someone suggested Airbnb controls which is a really good half-measure that i think(?) i have heard good things about from other cities but idk. but i never even see “just attack the landlords and force them to release the empty units (reduce rents, put them on the market, accept applicants, whatever the holdup is, destroy it with legislation) with various punishments” suggested by Seattle progressives. maybe it’s because no one thinks it’s worth trying, i don’t know. capital is probably just too much of a leviathan in Seattle.

I’m not in Seattle but I know a huge problem in California is that massive companies will build huge expensive housing developments and then just sit on empty units, taking a massive tax write-off for the loss of income or whatever (I don’t even pretend to understand how having empty buildings gets you a tax-write off, I’m not a finance guy). So there’s an actual incentive to just build expensive bullshit and not really bother to actually fill it.

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rebeccathenaturalist:

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the iconic fish that we most commonly associate with the ecological devastation of dams is the salmon. However, sturgeons also face extinction due in part to these massive structures that not only change the flow and temperature of rivers, but can cut fish off from their breeding grounds. That includes in my home state of Missouri.

Sturgeons are really incredible animals. Their unique lineage split off from the rest of the fish during the early Jurassic, 175 to 200 million years ago. Sturgeons themselves can be comparatively ancient, with some individuals living 150 years. They may not breed until they are at least 25 years old.

Lake sturgeons (Acipenser fulvescens) are one of many species driven close to extinction by overfishing for meat and roe, as well as habitat loss and pollution. For the past three decades biologists have been reintroducing this species to parts of its historic range in Missouri, and for the third time since conservation efforts began they have witnessed these fish–now grown up–spawning. Previous observations were made in 2015 and 2022, meaning the recovery is still quite recent.

But it’s proof positive that restoring habitat, once again, is one of the best ways we can help wildlife. Long may the sturgeon swim!

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  • #I love sturgeon #they have ganoid scales!
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horsecoded:

gayweeddaddy69:

spaghettioverdose:

micro-usb:

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As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China


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cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please

Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals

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monikahmakes:

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23-31. Mixed fibers over cardboard form.

Oh I am PLEASED with this one. And it feels really good to hold and touch, both because of the texture and because of the shape. Currently building more forms!

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havinghorns:

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I accidentally brought a portrait lens to the Sheep and Wool Show so have some Sheep Portraits.

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