On Inattentive Traits Of Adhd

I have a Twitter account devoted to Aeniith only now! Go follow me on @Aeniith_ if you’re so inclined!

Tidbits, musings, ideas, fact, and more on worldbuilding, conlangs, etc.

i think it is bad to say that a group of people, whose schools and places of worship get firebombed in several places around the world , talking about the danger they face is equivalent to “white people whining about reverse racism,” but hey

Loud noises can be scary when you’re just a little cat

27 January: International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On this day we honour and remember the approximately 22 million innocent souls who fell victims to hate racism and prejudice crimes, nearly 7.5 million of which were slaughtered for being who they were.

6 million Jews (1.5 million of which were children)

1.5 million Romani

270 000 People with disabilities (be it physical or mental)

55 000 gay people (approximately)

14 million civilians, caught in the crossfire, famine and ugliness of war from all over Europe.

This day is an important reminder of what once was and what should never be again.

May their rest be more peaceful than their life and may their memory be a blessing.

Never Forget.

The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment

Retro Rodents: The Furbils and Duskmice

By 10 million years PE the hamsters have diverged into many different forms, such as ungulate-like runners, mustelid-like predators or macropod-like hoppers. But while some of the resident rodents have further specialized away from the basic rodent body plan, two lineages, the furbils (family Caudatocricetidae) and the duskmice (family Cricetomuridae) are notable in having retained fairly conservative rodent anatomy, and are all the more successful for it: these two unassuming lineages have attained a diversity rivalling that of the jerryboas, and fill nondescript mouse, rat, hamster or gerbil niches all across the world.

The furbils, the more derived of the two lineages, are highly social creatures with long, tufted tails, displaying a very marked sexual dimorphism in many species, with dull, drab females and extravagantly-adorned males sporting striking markings and decorative tufts and manes of fur, which are used for display and attracting mates. Furbils tend to live in harems of several breeding females and one dominant male, while younger males are typically solitary and roam about searching for an opportunity to breed with any receptive females. Furbils are omnivores, feeding on insects, invertebrates, seeds, nuts and fruit, and males are known to attain their brilliant colors from pigments in their food: their colorful fur serving as an honest advertisement to their good health.

Male furbils are highly territorial, with the most brightly-colored and brilliantly-patterned males being the ones most attractive to females. This same coloration makes them more conspicuous to predators, as an unfortunate side effect: however, the fact that it gets them a higher chance to breed nonetheless allows them to more effectively spread their genes at the cost of individual longevity-- and in addition, essentially shows off their fitness by advertising an intentional handicap: a male that survives to breeding age even with such visible colors must be a very fit individual indeed, as far as females are concerned.

The most distinctive furbil characteristic of all is their long tail, which depending on the species serves a wide array of functions: for display, social signaling, or balance. One lineage of furbils, however, the subfamily Caudotomae, have a different, more drastic use of their tails: as a defensive measure used to divert predator attacks.

The Caudatomae are unusual among their furbil kin as they are solitary and come together only to mate, and as such lack the marked sexual dimorphism of their cousins. They have instead opted their tail into a lure, with the tuft at the end serving to draw predator attacks away from their body and head. Usually this is only meant to distract the predator and allow the furbil to escape: however, should the tail be caught, the furbil can actually detach it completely and flee from danger, as a special joint at the tail's base allows it to break off with little injury when sufficient force is applied. Unlike lizards who use a similar tactic, however, the tail-dropping is a one-time trick in the animal's whole lifetime, as it does not regrow once shed-- as such, it is a costly sacrifice that is only used as a last resort if no other means of escape is possible.

One very peculiar species, however, has compensated with the lack of mammalian regeneration with a downright absurd adaptation: multiple fracture points along the length of its tail. Known as the fuse-tailed dynamouse (Fragmacaudamys cabuum), it can fracture off its tail a maximum of up to three times, as its tail is comprised almost entirely of three very long and stiff vertebrae. Its reddish fur camouflages it well in Beta-twilight, the time when it is most active, but a conspicuous yellow tuft on the end of its tail serves as a predator distraction tool. If the tail breaks off at a joint the tail quickly heals the end of the stump and a new tuft of yellow hair soon grows around the injury, restoring the form and function to a now-shorter tail. Once a dynamouse has broken its tail three times, the tuft forms directly at the base of its rump, and while no longer to shed any more segments, can still serve as a distraction by making predators attack the wrong end and still giving the now-truncated dynamouse a fair chance to flee.

Just as strange and diverse as the furbils are the even more basal duskmice, small, stocky short-tailed rodents that still very closely resemble their hamster ancestors. Duskmice are a diverse group numbering nearly a hundred species, most of which are nondescript mouse-like seed eaters that hoard food in burrows and emerge at night and sometimes at Beta-twilight to forage, avoiding the many diurnal predators active during the day.

Some duskmice, however, have taken off to unusual niches, to take advantage of food sources beyond the reach of other hamsters. One genus, the molemice (Subterramys spp.) have adapted into specialized burrowers, developing large clawed forepaws for shoveling away dirt and hairless flat noses to push loose soil aside. They tunnel underground in search for roots, tubers and worms, and rarely ever come to the surface unless disturbed or if their burrows are flooded by heavy rains.

Another duskmouse lineage, the pondrats (Aquacricetus spp.), have instead taken to the water to feed on aquatic invertebrates and water plants that occur in abundance in freshwater bodies such as lakes and streams. They are the first hamsters on HP-02017 to specialize to a water-dwelling lifestyle, and as such have utilized a very unusual part of their anatomy to thrive in wet habitats: their cheek pouches. Acting as both flotation device and air storage, they can contract specialized muscles in their cheeks to compress the air, allowing them to sink and dive, and when returning to the surface quickly reinflate their cheek pouches to rise quickly to the top. Due to this specialization the cheeks can no longer be used as a food storage, and the pondrats instead hold food in a new different set of pouches that open lower in their mouths, surfacing every now and then to feed on their haul while floating at the surface.

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And thus with the duskmice ends the list of diversity in the Middle Rodentocene, the peak of speciation in a world of the small and scurrying. Our next stop will be at the Late Rodentocene, 20 million years PE: a time of even more diversity, but one that heralds the end of an age-- and a new promise of even greater things to come.

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I don't want to hear anything about solidarity with queer Palestinians from people who cheer on their principle oppressors. Queer Palestinians in the West Bank lost friends at the Nova concert massacres, but some people don't care. An Israeli Arab won Miss Trans Israel but none of them cared. Even in opposing Israeli policy towards queer Palestinians, none of them called for reforming the asylum process or to end policies of threatening to out Palestinians in order to turn them into informants. They prefer queer Palestinians to die than for their lives to improve through *Israeli* actions.

dana international 💕 israeli queer royalty 🇮🇱👸🏻

the first trans contestant and winner of eurovision !!!! 🇮🇱

Last question for now: How do I get dates to show up on my posts? I don’t like everything being undated.

What’s the difference between text and chat?

The Early Therocene: 30 million years post-establishment

Tallest of All: The Girats

The great success of the boingos across the plains and grassland of the Early Therocene would spell bad news for the hamtelopes. While enjoying a brief success in the Middle Rodentocene, they would eventually be outcompeted by the boingos, with a more-efficient means of locomotion and more-specialized teeth for eating tough grasses. As such, the hamtelopes would be pressured into other niches as they were pushed out of the plains: many would become forest and jungle herbivores, others would remain as small hare-like grazers in the plains, and only on isolated environments do the hamtelopes get to dominate with the absence of competition.

But one family of hamtelopes stubbornly stuck to the plains, and despite the abundance of competing boingos grew to megafaunal sizes. However, they reached higher up, into the treetops where the boingos could not reach, and so were selected to grow taller still, and so this trend reaches its logical conclusion in the Early Therocene, with the tallest hamsters ever to walk the planet: the girats.

Towering high-browsers that feed on the sparse trees in the open plains, the girats reach tremendous heights of up to 16 feet, with their long legs and even longer necks. They evolved prehensile lips and long, flexible tongues to grasp and pluck branches and stems from trees, while their incisors served as pruning shears to clip off leaves to be swallowed. With virtually no competition for these high leaves the girats dominate and thrive, managing a coexistence with the other grazers that drove off most of their smaller relatives.

Girats are mostly solitary, though occasionally gather in groups to seek out mates during the breeding season. Male girats are easily distinguished from females by the presence of large, keratinous horns sported on their protruding cheekbones, which they use in headbutting contests with other males, swinging their heads at each other and trying to inflict bruising whacks onto their rivals with their blunt, hammer-like horns.

At least a dozen species of girat range all across Nodera and Easaterra, where they vary in color and the arrangement of their horns. The axehorn girat (Altocervimys securiceros) is the most common species in Nodera, while its relative the trihorn girat (Giraffacricetus triceros) lives further south in the savannah of Nodera. Meanwhile in the tropical forests of central Easaterra lives the splendid girat (Procerocricetus magnificens), one of several species in the genus Procerocricetus that adapted to denser jungles instead of the open plains. Unlike their cousin the axehorn girat, the trihorn and splendid species possess sharper horns, due to the need of extra defenses with the increased number of larger predators further south, and as such are less aggressive toward their own species than the axehorns: with more pointed weaponry, a headbutting contest between two rival males can easily result to death for them both, and such they rarely fight unless absolutely necessary.

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Map of New Zealand in Mario-ish style.

by TheGeographyPin