Intertwined In Soul And Fate.

Han dynasty scholar Wang Chong gives an argument against the existence of ghosts

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.

reblog to take a bite out of this styrofoam cup nobody can stop you go ahead and do it

Google Docs

Trigedasleng Grambank Features List

Introduction Grambank Features for the Trigedasleng Language Compiled by David J. Peterson Last updated October 15, 2023. Trigedasleng is t

I've made a new conlang Grambank entry for Trigedasleng! Jessie Peterson created a Google Sheets spreadsheet that conlangers can copy and fill out in order to share their work. I did one previously on High Valyrian, and now the Trigedasleng one is finished.. This won't tell you everything about the language, but it'll tell you a LOT in a very small space. If you'd like to do something like this for your conlang, the blank one can be found here.

Just Like the First Time.

Reblog to make him lose another 200 billion, like to make him lose 1 billion

I have a deep reverence for deep nuts jokes. I worship at their alter and carve them into my skin.

Heyo @the-forgotten-throne I'm making a conlang and im looking for some stuff to help with the world building and religious aspects of the culture if you wanna hmu

OFFER:religions, im geting my masters in religious studys (mainly antiquity) both the mythos of a religion and its function

OFFER: world building tips and pointers. World building is in everything, but is done poorly more often than not. I've studded wayyyy to much history, psychology, physics and economics to get sloppy with world building and I love teaching!

REQUEST: help in building a Conlang (or general linguistics advice)

I really love what you guys are doing! Hope you find this when everything gets set up!

Thank you!

In my defense my fingies was cold and you are warm and good

I think we all need some soup right now. Reblog to give prev a bowl of their favourite soup.