@luneandbarbecue I Meant To Rb This WHEN You Made It, But I Still Haven’t Entirely Managed To Figure

On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

AU where Ruby works in a music store and hosts a local radio and Penny starts to come regularly mostly to see her (totally inspired from Life is Strange True Colors-)

Vox

Birds have co-opted our anti-bird weapons in a genius counterattack

Humans install spikes so birds will go away. Birds steal them and do this instead.

Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.

It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.

But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.

Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...

Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.

Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”

Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.

Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.

“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.

Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:

Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.

Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.

...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?

The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate

It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.

Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.

And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...

Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.

But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!

-via Vox, July 26, 2023

An Aether pair of mine— I like using wild colors for the space aliens

Dahlee is [Ruby/Honeydew/Sanddollar] and Keelah is [Ruby/Radioactive/Flaxen]

Been yanking flexing the median nerve in my wrist as a stim lately and that’s on top of A) chronically using my fingers instead of the Apple Pencil to draw and B) doing it nonstop for 2+ months

So while I wait for my wrist to heal enough to draw new things (cause it’s been acting up when I do simple tasks lately) there’s a backlog of stuff I’ve been too executively dysfunctional to post, mostly art but also stuff like uhhhhh an introduction post?? 😭

Think I may start uploading them. I may have to get my friend to nudge me. social media hard

₊˚⊹ ⋆⁺₊✧ Open your eyes..✧˖°. ₊˚.⋆

Soriku double-sided risograph prints!!!

Happy 23rd anniversary KH!

This is a print run of 50~ I will be losing some to the critique in my risography class.

I’m open to sales if prints are remaining after class exchanges! Shipping would have to wait until at least my graduation in May

Information

paper: cotton candy pop-tone

dimensions: 11 x 17 in

inks: risofederal blue x red (front), violet x orange (back)

approx 10 editions are also printed with an extra layer of green on the front, which functionally adds black to Sora and Riku

print job handled personally via university riso machines

This OOAK on scrap paper is my personal favorite. Still deciding what I will do with it

Also, special shoutout to the amazing CanaryWitch @starhoodies, whose Soriku zine gave me an excuse to draw these fluffy boys for class!

Penny's VA (Taylor McNee) took another commission on Cameo of....... Penny singing Skibidi Toilet LMAO

I stopped everything I was doing to make this and I think it was worth it.

I have some simple color icons:

+couples icons: flags are: lesbian, pansexual, pansexual, and bisexual

+the alley outside Medusa's club