You Know What, Screw Falling Uncontrollably In Love. Nah Man. I Want To Meet Your Eyes Across The Room

this is going to be difficult -> i am capable of doing difficult things -> i have done everything prior to this moment -> this difficulty will soon be proof of capability

Ada Limón, from "The Widening Road", Sharks in the Rivers

"we live in an uncaring universe"

false. i care very deeply. am i not a part of this infinite universe?

So Kinder, wir gehen das jetzt einmal schnell durch mit der Neuwahl und so. Hier ist die derzeitige Wahlumfrage:

Jetzt einmal kurz schreien und dann aufgepasst:

Das ist jetzt erstmal n grober Richtwert. Statistisch kriegen die Grünen und die Linke wahrscheinlich weniger Stimmen als in vorläufigen Umfragen, während CDU/CSU und vermutlich AfD mehr Stimmen kriegen. Wir nehmen die Werte jetzt trotzdem mal so.

Wir beobachten folgendes: - CDU gewinnt beinahe garantiert - Die FDP kommt nicht über die 5% Hürde - Die Linke erst recht nicht - 14,3% aller Stimmen haben keinen Einfluss auf den Bundestag, weil die entsprechende Partei zu klein ist - Die AfD hat keine Sperrminorität, selbst wenn sie sich mit dem BSW zusammentut

Das gibt uns die folgenden Koalitionsmöglichkeiten:

Bis jetzt lehnt die CDU eine Koalition mit der AfD offiziell ab. Bei den Grünen sind sie gespalten. Die einfachste und fürs Image attraktivste Option für die CDU/CSU ist eine Koalition mit der SPD. Das ist jetzt nicht gerade großartig, aber nicht ansatzweise so katastrophal wie Schwarz-Blau.

Hier ist der Knackpunkt: Wenn durch ein mittleres Wunder sowohl die FDP als auch die Linke in den Bundestag einziehen, sieht die Verteilung plötzlich so aus:

(Grafik stellt ein Szenario dar, bei dem beide Parteien 5% der Stimmen erhalten. Bei Einzug durch Direktmandate weichen die Nummern etwas ab, die Optionen sind aber die gleichen.)

Die "kleinstes Übel" Große Koalition ist nun keine Möglichkeit mehr. Welche Koalition in diesem Fall zustande kommt, lässt sich nicht mit Sicherheit sagen, aber die AfD wird für die CDU plötzlich sehr viel attraktiver aussehen.

Natürlich muss man dazu sagen, dass der Anteil an AfD dadurch schrumpft. Wirklich relevant ist das aber nur im Falle der Sperrminorität, die sie ja auch vorher nicht hatten.

(Wenn entweder FDP oder Linke die 5% schaffen, ist eine knappe GroKo noch möglich. Allerdings ist es wahrscheinlicher, dass die FDP die Hürde kriegt als die Linke.)

Die Zahlen werden sich im kommenden Monat natürlich noch ein bisschen hin- und herbewegen, und die Wahlergebnisse werden nochmal anders ausfallen, aber die Tendenz haben wir ja schon besprochen.

DESHALB:

Die eigene Stimme nicht verschwenden!

Wenn die 14%, die Klein(st)parteien wählen, stattdessen SPD oder Grüne wählen, hätten wir fast schon Chance auf Rot-Grün.

Die CDU wird stärkste Kraft.

Daran lässt sich nicht mehr rütteln. ABER wir können beeinflussen, auf wie viel Widerstand sie trifft. Je mehr SPD, desto weniger CDU in der GroKo.

Überleben ist wichtiger als Reine Moral.

Ja, SPD ist auch kacke. Ja, ich würde auch gerne lieber die Linke wählen. Ja, ich finde auch, dass die alle was falsch machen, und moralisch verwerflich sind, und Dinge tun und sagen, die mich zum Kotzen bringen, und für die ich mich schäme, deutsch zu sein. Ja, ich bin der SPD eigentlich scheißegal. Aber die SPD will mich zumindest nicht fucking tot sehen. Das Gleiche kann ich, als queere trans Person mit Uterus, nicht über die CDU sagen. Und über die AfD sowieso nicht. Und wenn ich Migrationshintergrund oder kein Einkommen hätte, wärs noch dreimal so schlimm.

Wir hatten das grade erst in den USA. So verdammt viele Nicht- oder Protestwähler. Und jetzt haben wir den verfickten Salat. KÖNNEN WIR DAS BITTE VERDAMMT NOCHMAL NICHT NACHMACHEN??

Wählt strategisch. Bitte.

Die Linke kommt nicht in den Bundestag. Deine lokale Furzpartei kommt nicht in den Bundestag. Steck deine Stimme nicht dahin. Steck sie wohin, wo sie was ändern kann. Wenn du SPD halt gar nicht hinkriegst, wähl zumindest Grün. Auch das begrenzt die Macht der CDU und AfD. Und je mehr sich ändert, desto wahrscheinlicher können wir nächstes Mal wieder was Schönes wählen.

“Please, let him be soft. I know you made him with gunmetal bones and wolf’s teeth. I know you made him to be a warrior a soldier a hero. But even gunmetal can warp and even wolf’s teeth can dull and I do not want to see him break the way old and worn and overused things do. I do not want to see him go up in flames the way all heroes end up martyrs. I know that you will tell me that the world needs him. The world needs his heart and his faith and his courage and his strength and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his– The world needs anything he will give them. Damn the world, and damn you too. Damn anyone that ever asked anything of him, damn anyone that ever took anything from him, damn anyone that ever prayed to his name. You know that he will give them everything until there is nothing left of him but the imprint of dust where his feet once trod. You know that he will bear the world like Atlas until his shoulders collapse and his knees buckle and he is crushed by all he used to carry. Dear God, you have already made an Atlas. You have already made an Achilles and an Icarus and a Hercules. You have already made so many heroes, and you can make another again. You can have your pick of heroes. So please, I beg you– he is all that I have, and you have so many heroes and the world has so many more. Let him be soft, and let him be mine.”

— Please, let him be happy ( j.p. )

every time I see some bigshot scientist revealed as a fraud my knee-jerk reaction is "hell yeah elisabeth bik got 'em good" AND IM RIGHT

SHE NEVER QUITS!!!!

ICONIC!!!!

fuck the tits or ass debate, i find eyebags sooo attractive. your exhausted, sleep-deprived, mildly haunted aura has bewitched me body and soul

I had to read this one book for school and after I'd finished I sat down and just. Seethed. I'd just spent multiple hours reading when I didn't want to. I wrote essays that weren't 30% as heartfelt as the average Tumblr post about how excited we are about a new episode of smth. Because I was being judged on it and criticised on it and why would I be vulnerable.

It was a good book. That's what made me so angry. It was a good book and I'd have enjoyed it if it weren't eternally connected to an unfair German teacher and tense hours reading as fast as I could now.

"It's okay if you don't want to read the classics" okay but you should try. Books hit different when you're not being forced to read them.

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.