it is absolutely BONKERS to me, the number of people in the united states i have talked to who have never even heard of the battle of blair mountain. how the largest labor uprising in our history manages to skirt by so many leftists unknown is just downright astonishing. the largest labor uprising, and the largest armed uprising, period, since the civil war.
did yall even hear me?
THE LARGEST ARMED UPRISING!! besides the civil!!! fucking!! war!!! was fought in 1921 in the name of LABOR RIGHTS AND UNIONS by TEN THOUSAND RIGHTEOUSLY PISSED, STRIKING COAL MINERS
these absolute fucking LEGENDS marching out the hollers of west virginia, wearing their red bandanas and wielding their papaw’s shotguns pointed at the lawmen. waging war against the fucking UNITED. STATES. MILITARY!!! for their right to work safely and be paid fairly!!!
and people just like. don’t know about that? put some fucking respect on west virginia!!! and fellow appalachians, yall best just own it when ignorant people call you a fucking redneck cause our ancestors did that shit and they did it for us
The mine owners hired planes to drop bombs on the striking workers. Chemical weapons and leftover WWI explosives were also used against the striking workers. All for the “horrific crime” of wanting to join a miner’s union.
That is why we celebrate Labor Day in September. That is why Labor Day is a national holiday.
To the best of my knowledge, the continental United States has only suffered air-to-ground attacks four times in the nation’s history.
9/11
One (1) successful fire balloon attack courtesy of the Japanese Empire in WWII
The Battle of Blair Mountain
and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
A full half of these attacks are US citizens bombing other US citizens because the victims of these attacks were willing to do the hard work required to improve their material conditions within the oppressive systems that defined their lives.
Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man’s boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you’re excited about it.
crane husband…..
this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.
(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:
Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s. The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.
As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.
It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.
Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.
The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.
They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.
Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris–and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.
Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.
Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent. (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)
It worked!
Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility–sometimes the biological dad and his mate–both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.
However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them. (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)
Chris accepts that he is pretty much married to this bird. White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive. (At the time of the article, Walnut was 36, and Chris 42.)
Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this
she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she’s simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)
His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)
the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and “sitting” on artificial eggs so she thinks he’s performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)
“chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES.” (alternately: “chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She’s 36, she’s very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! …Is there a downside? WELL…”)
chris sits any potential human partners down, like “my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already… Attached” (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) “Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding… the relationship is open, but very committed”
just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.
well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.
Not only is he ‘married’ to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes
the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was
World Heritage Post
I regret being the bearer of bad news, but I thought it should be shared that Walnut passed away in January of this year (2024). There’s a lot of mixed info about the lifespan of cranes (due to people misunderstanding what a median is…) but the average for most species I know of is 20-30 years (in the wild if nothing eats them/they don’t die young), and 30-45 in captivity, with the oldest known white-naped crane having loved to be 46. Given that she was 42, this old gal did good, and I’m certain she will be missed by folks here.
We cannot believe it, but we’ve been making War and Peas for 13 years now!
In that time we have created hundreds (or thousands even?) of comic strips and while we sometimes feel like old hands, we still always feel a tingling sensation when we post a new comic.
“Funnies” sometimes seem detached and yet are always highly personal. Although these stories (or at least most of them) have not happened to us personally, they flow out of us onto the blank canvas and create something akin to meaning.
Thanks to our readers (YOU) we can continue this path and we couldn’t be more grateful to be on this journey with you.
You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.
Like imagine you find a 7 year old in the woods and she’s like my mom is gonna kill me because I’m prettier than her and she’s not kidding. You know this queen is that sort of person. So you and your roommates adopt the kid and tell her don’t talk to strangers. And she keeps talking to strangers and getting poison combs stuck in her hair and whatnot.
Like yeah that’s kinda stupid but also she’s seven. She likes apples.
Also imagine it from the hunter’s perspective. The queen tells you this bitch is prettier than me I need you to take her out in the woods and kill her. And then you see who you’re supposed to kill and it’s a 2nd grader. Like how are you supposed to react to that sort of situation? Kill a human child? No. Because you’re not a brainless evil minion you’re just some guy dealing with a cartoonishly evil monarch. Of course you let her go.
Bad look for the Prince of course. Even if she did age while she was in that glass case. He saw a dead woman and just decided to keep her. And once she stopped being dead he was like we’re married now
He did cause the evil queen to dance to death in red hot shoes though. That was kinda cool.
With the acknowledgement that I’m grasping at straws, is it ever directly confirmed that the Prince wasn’t also 7?
See, I think that still works.
You are the guardsman assigned to protect the eight-year-old Prince. You are currently in the middle of the forest because he absolutely had his heart set on “going hunting”, and the royal second-grader should definitely not be traipsing around the woods on his own. You let him go a little on ahead and he comes running back talking about how there’s a dead girl in the clearing and there’s no-one else around and he wants to take her home because she’s really pretty, Hans, and she’s all alone!
You let him drag you to said clearing and okay, that is one angelic-looking dead child alright, and on the one hand the quality of her clothes and the craftsmanship on the coffin (who builds a see-through coffin?) speak to potential Consequences if you simply carry her off, but also for the amount of vines that have grown on the coffin she looks extraordinarily un-decayed, so you should probably get the court alchemist’s opinion on that, and there’s no way he’s going to come all the way out here in his embroidered velvet curly-shoes. And also this kid is technically assigned by God as your natural superior, or something.
So fine. You hoist the coffin onto your shoulder (it’s not like the Prince can do it. He’s eight.) and head back toward the castle, Prince chattering blithely all the way. And then you turn your ankle on a rock and suddenly there’s a thump and a cough and a lot of shouting from inside the coffin and you have now become a key player in a tense political incident with the next kingdom over.
Dwarves are short, powerfully built, with presumably a strong circulatory system and a culturally strong warrior ethos as well as a cultural tradition of strong and intricate craftsmanship. All of these factors make them ideal jet fighter pilots.
Oh, SHIT, and then that leads to Dwarven astronauts? Good with the cramped conditions, modules that are designed to let the astronauts get their hands into the wiring if they needed to, rugged designs, less likely to go stir crazy if they don’t get out in the open air. They’d be incredible.
A circulating video of sisters who bought the same clothes for their husbands 😂❤️
this gag NEVER fails to make me laugh. watching them all file in one by one and collectively laugh harder every time the next guy walks in…i could watch videos of this practical joke all day
Their faces as they collectively realize they’re married to the funniest women on the planet
i love how he looks a little surprised and amazed with each letter. the long pauses. the delight at getting them all right. proto-blues-clues. a man genuinely enjoy the wonder of learning with the children watching.
Dawww, he's like our Boika. Our friend adopted him along with his brother from another mother, Broken Bob (both street cats that were super fierce, but turned into literal pussy cats)
Their whole skin is so hydrophobic that it is covered in a thin layer of air. They breathe that air bubble as shown, but it’s not just like holding their breath. Oxygen in the air will be replenished from the water due to the large surface area, almost like a gill. Many aquatic insects, like giant water bugs, also use oxygen diffusion similarly if they don’t have gills.
She is not directly paid for her work to vet papers, she has been hit with legal action & death threats by scientists who hate that she’s exposing them and their financial fraud, and she keeps at it every single day, combing through thousands of papers to make science more fair. Please consider supporting her!
Looks like Los Angeles when I moved out here during some major el nino rains in '97... I drove through 6-12 inches of water all the time. (it is better now, but there are still a lot of areas that have crap drainage)
Flooding in Montréal, and other Canadian cities, is becoming a more frequent occurrence. (Shutterstock)
Urban flooding is increasingly concerning in Canada, where water drainage systems are at risk of being overwhelmed. Natural watersheds have been greatly altered by construction disturbing the natural ways that water flows from rainfall, across the land and into water bodies. The result is that drainage infrastructure must cope with increased water volumes at both higher speeds and flow rates, as well as deteriorated water quality due to pollutants such as oil and organic waste.
CBC News covers the impacts of climate change on flooding in Canada.
Additionally, stormwater mixes with wastewater in the drainage network in the combined sewer systems that were widely developed in the past. Sudden and heavy rainfall can lead to the network overflowing beyond its capacity, discharging untreated sewage into neighbouring water bodies. This has severe consequences, such as toxic algae blooms that deplete the oxygen found in the water, potentially killing aquatic plants and animals.
In the coming decades, storm intensities are expected to increase, potentially exceeding the design capacity of older networks. Reducing runoff flowrates and volumes through blue-green infrastructure could provide some much-needed relief to drainage systems that may be overwhelmed as stronger rain events become more frequent.
The good news is that there are actions to restore the natural hydrological cycle, which would make Canada’s cities more flood-proof.
Blue-green infrastructure
Engineering practices incorporating artificial and natural elements attempt to re-establish the natural water cycle that existed before urbanization. These can include slowing down stormwater runoff flows, retaining them for a given period of time, and infiltrating water into the ground where possible.
Multiple terms are used to refer to these practices, such as nature-based solutions, blue-green infrastructure, best management practices or low-impact development.
There are many existing examples in Canadian cities, such as: green roofs that soak up rain, rain gardens that can filter out pollutants, and ditches covered in plants that can reduce the speed of water flow.
The green roof at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
(Shutterstock)
Some of these blend seamlessly into the surrounding urban environment, and may be unnoticed by people passing by who may be unaware of the key role that these spaces play in managing stormwater.
Reducing volumes
New urban developments are already integrating these forms of blue-green infrastructure in their planning.
For older, already existing drainage systems, retrofitting existing underground drainage networks with blue-green infrastructure will be crucial to deal with combined sewer overflows (CSOs). The most effective way to reduce CSOs is to reduce the stormwater flow that is directed towards the drainage network. Ideally, stormwater would never mix with wastewater, but achieving that would require redoing the entire drainage system in some areas, which is unfeasible.
This is where adding blue-green infrastructure can prove useful to reduce runoff flows and volumes at multiple points across existing networks, decreasing the possibility of overwhelming them.
Urbanists and planners have taken advantage of such opportunities to fully revitalize the built environment, incorporating more green spaces into streets and improving the design of elements such as sidewalks, cycling lanes and public spaces.
Even in areas where CSOs are not an issue or where dedicated stormwater networks exist, retrofitting existing drainage networks with blue-green infrastructure will be an asset to mitigate the impact of climate change.
Challenges of retrofitting
Retrofitting existing drainage networks with blue-green infrastructure is not straightforward. Cities face the logistical headache of planning and executing roadwork, and there are also multiple constraints on a technical level. Each form of blue-green infrastructure has specific requirements for elements like terrain slope, maximum area drained and soil types, among others, restricting where they might be implemented.
Available space is an issue itself for practices like rain gardens or retention ponds, especially in dense urban areas where different land uses compete for the scarce land available. The depth and layout of existing utilities may also render connections between blue-green infrastructure and the drainage network impossible unless significant stretches of pipes are replaced.
In some cases, the limitations may even be external to the municipal drainage network itself. Some older buildings have a single connection out from the building towards the municipal network. As such, all of the wastewater and any stormwater collected in the building’s internal piping get mixed before it even leaves the lot.
Storm-proofing cities
Urban planners and municipal governments around the world started to slowly address these issues more directly decades ago, but centuries of harmful urbanization practices cannot be undone overnight. Most communities in Canada moved away from building combined sewage networks in the 1950s and started implementing separated wastewater and stormwater networks.
There are now thresholds that new developments must meet in terms of flow rates directed to the municipal drainage systems, as well as the maximum admissible concentration of certain pollutants present in stormwater. Provincial guidelines in Ontario, Metro Vancouver and Québec address these.
The City of Vancouver implemented a target to intercept and clean 90 per cent of the annual rainfall volume.
There is still much work to be done. However, the opportunity to transform our cities’ landscape, our relationship with stormwater and our impact on the receiving water bodies is here. Given the limitations discussed above, some of these improvements will be slow. Ultimately, that is precisely how incremental shifts add up: small trickles come together to form rivers of change.
Mauricio Carvallo Aceves receives funding from the University of British Columbia, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the National Research Council, Mitacs and the City of Surrey.
imagine you’re a guard for your castle, and you see this lady calling for help and saying she’s the queen, so you bring her in and everyone watches as she fucking eats the babies in there and just goes, “yep. Sure. New queen.” Because she got them, along with you, all high on psychedelics. And then she transforms into a giant fucking blue creature and crawls away, never to be seen again.
God forbid women do anything
The pheromones aren’t the equivalent of psychedelics, though! It’s more like a woman came along who was so beautiful and so motherly that you decided she was your new mom, even if she did eat your baby sisters. (Though to be fair to the ants, they probably can’t tell she’s eating their sisters. This all happens in pitch black darkness, normally!)
Ah wait, misremembered lol. They don’t think the caterpillar is a queen–they think it’s a *larva that will become a queen.* A young princess, basically! That’s why she’s put in with the larvae–the actual queen gets her own chambers!
In this species, the larvae that will become queens are pampered. The larvae that will become workers are abused, to keep them from growing into queens. So, I guess if the queen larva wants to eat a peasant larva, that’s okay!
