Much Bad Luck

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Island, You Land, We All Land: The Centralis Archipelago

In between the narrow strait separating the continents of Nodera and Easaterra lies a small group of five islands, that have been separated from the northeast peninsula of Easaterra for only 500,000 years. And yet in this in this relatively short span of time life has evolved in strange ways in these secluded islands: as islands in isolation become hotspots for unusual routes of evolution, and the Centralis Archipelago is no exception.

No other example illustrates this better than the badgebears of Isla Maslum, the largest and most northernmost of the islands that unlike the others was once part of the Noderan mainland. On the scrubland of southern Nodera lives the common striped badgebear (Badja badja badja), a lapdog-sized omnivorous ferrat that feeds on a wide range of available food. However, in the forests of Isla Maslum, lives a different subspecies: the insular striped badgebear (Badja badja maslum), still technically the same species as its mainland relative. However, the differences are obvious: the insular subspecies is at least three times as big as the mainland one, and is entirely herbivorous, feeding on fruit, seeds, and low-lying vegetation that grows in abundance close to the forest floor. In the absence of competition, the insular striped badgebear has filled an entirely new niche, despite otherwise still closely resembling its mainland subspecies in nearly every other respect save for size and diet.

Isla Maslum is also home to grazing hamtelopes, most notably a close relative of the rusty hamtelope, the painted hamtelope (Erythrocervimys piniata maslum). Free of competition from large grazing jerryboas the painted hamtelope is free to conquer the open grasslands of the eastern side of the island. Its conspicuous bright coloration is used in social signaling, with the lack of predators making camouflage less necessary.

Meanwhile, on the other islands live very unusual forms of ratbats, which spend most of their time hunting on the ground and only rarely and clumsily taking flight. It has not been long since the ratbats first evolved flight, and yet here in these islands some are already on their path to flightlessness. Having flown to these islands only 100,000 years ago, they quickly filled the niche of ground predator at the expense of their flying capabilities, and are now, for all intents and purposes, now confined to this isolated ecosystem.

On Isla Vodum lives the ground foxbat (Nyctovulpes kitsuni vodum), a Labrador-sized omnivore that forages on the forest floor for small rodents, insects, fruit and berries. Still capable of short bursts of flight to ascend trees, it is now by no means a significant flyer, unlike its relatives on the Easaterran mainland, which, as with the badgebears, are technically the same species, but now in a subspecies behaviorally different from its still-extant forebearers.

Meanwhile on Isla Dolum lives another insular ratbat, that has independently began losing its flight as well. Known as the Dolumian catratbat (Nyctoailurus felinoides dolum), this tiny carnivore is about as big as a small housecat, and is an avid predator of the numerous abundant furbils and duskmice that are endemic and plentiful on the island. Hunting its prey on the ground, it has almost all but lost its ability to fly: an unnecessary expenditure whose energy is better spent toward better running, after its grounded quarry.

However, despite these unique adaptations that they have developed, the endemic fauna of the Centralis Archipelago have essentially backed themselves into a spot of trouble. Evolving in isolation, they have lost many of their abilities to deal with competitors: and should the islands reconnect with the mainland in the distant future, these strange new pioneers may struggle in the face of new adversity: forced to adapt, or go extinct trying.

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I'd like to add also that so many of those people who used to get antisemitism on the left and spoke out about it back in before October, even people who comforted me back in when Israel and Hamas were fighting in 2021 - they have now adopted the very tropes of left-wing antisemitism they used to condemn.

So a while back, a fairly left-wing friend of mine was shocked at the thought of Left-Wing Holocaust Denial, asking how it could even be possible, how can the Left even deny the Holocaust given everything (quote: “why would the LEFT be in denial? After you read Elie Wiesel, you can’t deny any of it. Same with Maus, Frieda Appleman-Jurman’s memoirs, and all that. Also, Lois Lowry won a Newberry medal for Number the Stars”). So I’ve been chewing on this for a while now.

First, Right-Wing Holocaust Denial is straight up “denial that the Holocaust happened”–often with an undertone of “But we wish that it had and it was a great idea”. They deny the number of deaths, or excuse the Nazis, or say that the Jews had it coming, or say that it didn’t happen at all, that sort of thing. It’s a very blunt, straightforward form of denial.

Comparatively, Left-Wing Holocaust Denial takes a different, more sophisticated form that functions on multiple levels–with an undertone of its own along the lines of “the Jews are exaggerating to try to portray themselves as victims”–and to talk about this form of denial, I have to explain what the Holocaust was.

So this gets a bit long, because what is being denied is long, but I will ask you to bear with me.

But, TL:DR:

Right Wing Holocaust Denial denies the body count and the atrocities…

Left Wing Holocaust Denial denies everything that built up to it, the centuries of Othering and murders, and the aftereffects.

Keep reading

Fresh Waffles and knock knock wildelifecomic.com

EVA preparations at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

The Indian side of the Indo-Gangetic plains, one of the most populous patches on Earth and home to over half a billion people. Each white dot is a human settlement.

my quality of life has improved tenfold ever since i was introduced to breezewiki, a site that exists solely to remove the bloat from fandom.com wikis. no more ads, quizzes, random autoplaying videos, popups, recommended pages from other sites, or discord server member lists. just the wiki. these things are finally readable again

If you’re reading this please be nice to yourself today because you do matter

The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment

Lake It or Leave It: The Great Lakes of Nodera

It is early morning on the continent of Nodera. The twin suns bathe the landscape in a warm orange glow, as they rise together side-by-side on the eastern horizon, closer together in the sky than any other time of the year: midwinter.

The morning light casts its glow upon a tranquil scene near the shores of an enormous aquatic landscape: the Great Lakes of Nodera. The largest inland body of water on the surface of HP-02017, the Great Lakes connect to the sea by a river system opening out to the Centralic Ocean, and is comprised of a system of several interconnnected bodies of water, gouged into the landscape by the shifting tectonics of Nodera and filled up with water by the action of erosion and precipitation ofver the course of countless millenia.

In this tranquil lanlocked lake several signs of life begin to stir in the cool morning breeze, as the residents of the water's edge awaken to begin their day. On the grassy banks, a large, beaver-sized rodent begins to amble about in search of food, its bold stripes serving as a warning to potential predators of its potent defense mechanism, while up above in the sky, soar several winged figures: ones that from a distance one would suppose to be birds -- until they remembered that on this planet, there were no birds at all.

It has been another 10 million years since we last explored the diversity of this planet's evolution, and from those humble creatures of the Middle Rodentocene strange new forms have emerged. Strange new forms that on a surface view uncannily resemble the familiarity of Earth's fauna, but upon a closer look are revealed to be an entirely different creature, molded from their ancestors by the forces of evolution in an ever-changing world.

The Great Lakes of Nodera have been filled by a diverse ecosystem of aquatic life, such as forests of water plants which become home to freshwater shrish: descendants of krill that have become analogues of the fish on Earth and now have colonized this inland body of water as well. Some of them migrated upriver to spawn, found the lakes, and ultimately came to permanently settle there, becoming a part of the local ecosystem-- and a veritable food source for the descendants of the planet's first aquatic hamster, the pondrats (Aquacricetus spp.)

Ten million years have done wonders on the humble pondrat, as it comes to dominate aquatic niches throughout the lake systems. One of the more basal and populous of these are the smellcastors (Castorocricetus spp.), a group of amphibious omnivores that forage for shrish, mollusks and water plants. They are roughly the size of Earth beavers and quite closely resemble them too, save for one conspicuous feature: lacking the beaver's paddle-like tail, or indeed any tail at all, they instead propel themselves through the water with webbed, flipper-like hind feet. Smellcastors are so called for their defensive tactic of spraying an overpowering scent from modified anal musk glands that can seriously irritate a predator's sensitive nose: their bold markings are warnings of their ability, and many predators quickly learn to leave them alone.

Other descendants of the pondrat that make a living in these waters include the lutrons (Lutracricetus spp.), which are smaller and more slender than their striped and smelly cousin and spend far more time in the water, pursuing shrish with grace and agility and seldom emerging onto dry land, where their flippered hind feet make them awkward and clumsy waddlers. Another relative is the pug-billed ratypus (Brachycephalomys platypoides), a bottom-feeding pondrat with a distinctive squashed-in face and wide, sagging lips and cheeks. Long whiskers help probe for small invertebrates in the muddy pond bottom, which the ratypus slurps into its mouth and stores in its cheeks while it swims, surfacing every few minutes to breathe, chew and swallow.

And the life on the lake system isn't limited to just pondrats: in the resource-rich environments of the Great Lakes other lineages have thrived as well. The hamtelopes, specifically the long-legged ratzelles (Cervicricetus spp.), have put their elongated limbs to good use to take advantage of soft water plants growing in the shallows, becoming lanky waders that spend much of their time in knee-high water feasting on the abundance of water plants. Meanwhile, on a higher rung of the food chain lurk the searets (Lutrodiromys spp.): large aquatic ferrats that hunt like crocodiles, ambushing prey like wading hamtelopes and pondrats while swimming half-submerged, with the help of powerful crushing jaws that can drag prey underwater to drown.

But of greater interest are the vaguely-avian flyers that congregate in the skies above the Great Lakes: the ratbats (family Nyctocricetidae). Descended from the flittering jazzhand of ten million years prior, they have webbed wings of skin like bats, and fly in the daytime like birds, but are neither: like all other vertebrates in this planet, they are hamsters, albeit ones that through eons of evolution now barely resemble the familiar chubby rodent that comes to mind with this name.

The clapping, insect-seizing motions of the jazzhand have given rise to active powered flight in the ratbats, with their webbed hands merging with their patagia and becoming a true, functional wing. Two of their fingers have lengthened into supports for their wings, while the other two fingers bear large claws and toe pads, and are used for walking quadrupedally on the ground, with the wing fingers flexible enough to fold out of the way when walking and keeping them from dragging their delicate wings on the ground.

One of the most common ratbats seen in the skies around the Great Lakes is the squift (Nyctocricetus spp.), an agile insectivore that specialized to feast on the abundance of flying insects that breed and nest in water. Swarms of them congregate above the lake's surface during the breeding season, and the squifts are never far behind, darting acrobatically through the swarm to snatch up insects midair. Its close cousin, the duskflapper (Pteromys spp.) has a similar lifestyle, but instead emerges at dawn, dusk and Beta-twilight, feeding on the buffet of flying insects active at this time, and thus avoiding competition with its diurnal relative.

Ratbats have reached a massive amount of diversity since they first achieved powered flight, and among the hundreds of species living in this time are a wide array of different niches: their ranks including not only insectivores but also seed-eaters, nectar-feeders, and even predators of small ground rodents. But most notable are the shrishers (Piscivenatomys spp.), large plunge-divers with wingspans of almost six feet, and are the biggest flyers of the Late Rodentocene. They specialize on feeding on shrish, and thus have long snouts and multi-cusped molars, allowing them a good hold of their slippery prey, and not content to snatch them from the surface, dive in the water like gannets to seize their prey underwater before bursting back into the skies with their meal in tow. Specialized oil glands on their skin keep their fur water repellant, and so shrishers are commonly seen vainly preening themselves constantly, to keep their fur all greased up and resistant to sogginess when diving after their aquatic prey.

The Great Lakes of Nodera, like many isolated ecosystems, has become a sanctuary for unique and endemic lifeforms, and the unusual hamsters that have adapted to live in an aquatic environment. But their isolation is not to last: as East Nodera gradually breaks away from West Nodera with the drifting tectonics, the Great Lakes will soon be opened up to the sea- and with it, the aquatic hamsters, in the distant future, soon find themselves in a vast new body of water ripe for the taking: the Centralic Ocean itself.

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