Toadvark

I haven't been around much (work, life, you know the drill) but I'd like to say a continued THANK YOU for running Mander. 😄

Argh tone on the internet- I'm not mad or anything, just wanted to state my opinion since ours are so wildly different, and it's interesting that all of these ideas will have to coexist in gaming spheres.

Speaking strictly as a player, this is the opposite of what I would want in a game. The...intention, I guess, is what I want when I play anything story-driven. Chatting with ai on purpose feels upsetting to me and I think I would feel tricked if I encountered it as a par-the-course kind of thing (knowingly or especially unknowingly) in a game.

But- I haven't encountered it yet, and perhaps it could really, really work!

I think it's always good to see such things enacted, and it's rarely done on such a broad scale. Common names are a big bucket of chaos for joe schmoe anyway^*^, so I'm all in favor of adopting anything more descriptive or in relation to field marks. I feel that the changes being broadcast so publicly will lead curious people to learn more about the history of birding, too- and hopefully lead to understanding why this sort of thing matters.

* Often broad species names, even. I've found that the general public has no idea of the difference between a mouse, mole, vole or shrew, and has even less of an idea that there are multiple species of all of them.

I found it extraordinary- I'm unsure if another movie has made me feel the whole gamut of emotion like this one did, and each heartstring was tugged differently. Skillful stuff.

Great find- Cerement's ID is on the dot. They're delightfully bizarre to stumble upon for the first time, aren't they?

Loads of oddball relatives out there as well. I haven't seen this one due to the range being restricted to the west coast (US), but it's completely absurd (Allotropa virgata).

I ran the photo through iNaturalist and it suggested a group of flies I've never seen before- broadly Tachinidae, and more narrowly it zeroed in on the genus Adejeania. Seems like a safe guess in terms of location, too!

I'm on my phone and have no clue what hell these links may unleash, but here's the album on youtube and spotify.

...Now that I think on it, it's been so long since I listened to the 99PI episode, I can't even remember if they make use of or even mention the album. Apologies for my fanboy hat maybe being screwed on a little too tight! 😆

EDIT: As for their non-Wild-Ones work, I tend toward their first two albums since they're a bit more... moody 'n dramatic than the newest one. They're a side project of a bunch of musicians, so the discography is pretty small and easy to get through.

Aww!! I didn't expect to see this here, I'm smiling like a big dork. I'm an utter fangirl for the band behind the music, Black Prairie, so I heard about and read the book right as it was released (and may or may not own the album on vinyl lol). Just as you said, the book is a great jumping-off point for so many topics...The segment on butterfly conservation stuck with me, for whatever reason.

After all these years I think the song "Waltz for George and Tex" is my favorite. 🪺

Ohh they look so healthy! I know they're tiny snakes to begin with, but the ones I stumble across are very thin and lithe compared to this one. Great find. :)

I LOVE their coloration at this stage. What a good find. 😄

...Bearded pigs eat and disperse Pinanga subterranea’s fruits, but we’ve yet to find out how and by whom the flowers are pollinated.

I'm so charmed at the idea of subterranean pollinators

The palm was already known to local people but it had remained unnoticed by scientists, who believe the case highlights the need to collaborate more closely with Indigenous communities.

Say it again for those in the back! Indigenous knowledge is going to be even more important to learn and preserve as modernization presses ever on.

Good article- I like that first map a lot. The basic point applies to so many of our relationships with nature.

My personal example: Grew up in a house with some attached greenspace in the Midwestern USA, and the woods and riparian areas are terribly overrun with amur honeysuckle, which was originally imported and planted to prevent erosion. It grows fast, early, and tends to form a bit of a monoculture, blocking light from other understory plants and hardwood saplings. Anyway, over the last 10-15 years I've been helping my parents clear the honeysuckle from the little patch of greenspace near us, and there's far more biodiversity now. Tiny hardwood saplings are surviving germination and growing!

Ofc this opens up all sorts of discussions on like...nostalgia, invasive vs endemic vs naturalized, how much to even consider what things "ought" to look like vs what we're capable of doing.

But it was wild seeing the effect of futzing with one plant, in one tiny area, happen with my own eyes. Making sweeping changes to waterways would be unreal to see.