library-graffiti:

nudityandnerdery:

nudityandnerdery:

I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they’ve killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.

Thanks to whoever tried, but I knew they’d never allow it.

Let’s do it the old fashioned way. Spread it far and wide.

(via major-trouble)

mylordshesacactus:

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It’s…been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought–better to light a single candle, right?

If you’re familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you’re likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation’s poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive–a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino–a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood–but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn’t happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We’ll learn from it. It’s what we do. We’ll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It’s a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won’t save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We’re getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we’ll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species–an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn’t interbreed even if they could produce any–and they can’t.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It’s a holding action, just a holding action, but not “just”. There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew–not believed, knew–that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions–where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

(via absentlyabbie)

rafeandonlyrafe:

well 🧍‍♀️ as a reminder this blog is NOT a safe space for trump supporters but it IS a safe place for women, queers, trans ppl, people of color, undocumented people, and any marginalized group.

(via superhusbands4ever)

finnglas:

ladyimtolstoy:

A friendly reminder to USians: if you are planning to vote on Election Day, your mantra is “Nothing I see today convinces me not to go vote.”

Exit polls suggest DT cannot be caught? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Exit polls suggest KH has it in the bag? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly red? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly blue? YOU STILL GO VOTE.

Polls can be misleading (intentionally or not). The methodology can be biased (or simply poor). Early results may not reflect what the full count will show. There may be a red mirage. NOTHING YOU SEE CONVINCES YOU NOT TO VOTE.

The biggest Democratic win in swing states means nothing if democrats don’t turn out everywhere to keep the reliably blue states blue.

VOTE. Wear appropriate weather gear if you think you may have to stand in a line outside (coat, hat, gloves, umbrella, sunhat, whatever, you know where you live). Bring water and a snack and something to do (book, game on your phone, podcast and headphones, whatever, you know what you like). GO VOTE.

NOTHING YOU SEE ON ELECTION DAY CONVINCES YOU NOT TO VOTE.

Mantras against psychological voter suppression:

Exit polls suggest DT cannot be caught? “Fucking WATCH ME.”

Exit polls suggest KH has it in the bag? “Just gonna tie that bag up extra tight. The bigger the victory, the more humiliated Trump will be.”

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly red? “I refuse to let them ignore me.”

Pundits are saying the country is swinging overwhelmingly blue? “Watch how blue we can go, motherfuckers. Read ‘em and weep.”

There’s no situation in which voting is not a middle finger to everyone who wants us to be silenced unto death. Do not go gentle into that night – make yourself a huge fucking pain in the ass for the fascists.

themissingmango:

guiltrose:

do me a solid and just reblog this saying what time it is where you are and what you’re thinking about in the tags.

(via tightrope-tragedy)

steveharringtonss:

Friendly reminder that this blog is pro-choice and if you don’t think everyone should have full control of their own body, then kindly unfollow me right now and go to hell

(via pterawaters)

camilicy:

Bunnies and one guest 🐯

(via lesbxdyke)

castielsgal:

They tried to silence you… but you always kept fighting!

(via babyboywilson)