"I am an animal" - Nature Notes

[Aubrey McFate]

I don’t think it’s strange, he only had two children! There would be no problem if everyone only had 2 children

If every couple only had 2 children, we'd probably be static to slightly decreasing, but Linkola advocated for something like a drop from 8 billion to a few hundred million. Even then, though, someone would have to have the children, so I guess he could've considered himself "among the elect." Better the children of Luddite ecologists than Daniel-Day Lewis. And yet I think one of his daughters disowned him.

 

[A scanty bit of thing]

If every couple only had 2 children, we'd probably be static to slightly decreasing, but Linkola advocated for something like a drop from 8 billion to a few hundred million. Even then, though, someone would have to have the children, so I guess he could've considered himself "among the elect." Better the children of Luddite ecologists than Daniel-Day Lewis. And yet I think one of his daughters disowned him.

Well yes, can’t argue with you that 2 children now isn’t going to tremendously slash the numbers too quickly.

Lol @better the children of luddite ecologists than Daniel Day Lewis though!! Girl, SO TRUE!

 

[nicky wire's legs]

Nicky wires daughter would never disown him. She wears his clothes! She knows how cool and amazing her dad is. Imagine if he had some little philistine of a daughter who didn't know how cool he was and had no appreciation for anything that wasn't of the moment. That would be f***ing terrible. But that would never have happened to nicky. The universe wouldn't have let it.

 

[Aubrey McFate]

Nicky wires daughter would never disown him. She wears his clothes! She knows how cool and amazing her dad is. Imagine if he had some little philistine of a daughter who didn't know how cool he was and had no appreciation for anything that wasn't of the moment. That would be f***ing terrible. But that would never have happened to nicky. The universe wouldn't have let it.

Maybe he got lucky. There's no parental recipe that ensures the children will follow the parents' model. His daughter might just be humoring him because he's her money & lifestyle spigot. Why turn it off? And aside from the one time when he wished death by AIDS on Michael Stipe, Nicky Wire isn't terribly controversial, so there's no pressure on her to disown him. Pentti Linkola's daughter disowned him because he'd become something of a pariah in Finland, since he was an admitted "eco-fascist" and wrote an essay praising the Nazi aesthetic and made comments about how he didn't want "nappy headed" immigrants in his country. She may've wanted to preserve her own material benefits. All she was really passing up were some meager royalties from his writings and a cabin on a remote property where she'd be living like Agafia Lykova if she'd thought her dad was worth following all the way.

 

[nicky wire's legs]

Maybe he got lucky. There's no parental recipe that ensures the children will follow the parents' model. His daughter might just be humoring him because he's her money & lifestyle spigot. Why turn it off? And aside from the one time when he wished death by AIDS on Michael Stipe, Nicky Wire isn't terribly controversial, so there's no pressure on her to disown him. Pentti Linkola's daughter disowned him because he'd become something of a pariah in Finland, since he was an admitted "eco-fascist" and wrote an essay praising the Nazi aesthetic and made comments about how he didn't want "nappy headed" immigrants in his country. She may've wanted to preserve her own material benefits. All she was really passing up were some meager royalties from his writings and a cabin on a remote property where she'd be living like Agafia Lykova if she'd thought her dad was worth following all the way.

no, she is not just humouring him and using him as a money spigot. nobody would treat nicky that way. everyone who knows nicky probably feels incredibly blessed to have him in their life, ESPECIALLY his daughter, because imagine being nicky wires daughter?!?! even though nicky's daughter is fabulous and cool and maybe the most beautiful girl ever (that was always going to be a given), like nicky, there's something wholesome about her. she wears clothes from H&M and marks& spencer and her dads closet and has normal looking friends. she's not out there in balenciaga and gucci surrounded by a bunch of fake, plastic bimbos.





so cool

nicky IS lucky. nicky is always lucky, because as an inveterate optimist that's the kind of energy nicky attracts which is what makes him such a life affirming character. when you look at nicky and his life and family it makes you almost believe in a perfect world. i often wonder if that was hard on richey, to have for his best friend someone for whom everything in life just seems to slide beautifully into place and therefore isnt aware of all the possible existential snags and potholes a person like richey might find themselves in.

 

[goinghome]

I don't really believe in "balance" because I think at this point the human effect on nature is so profound and destructive that nothing short of our decimation or extinction will restore any ecological balance to things. So I'm a nihilist there. I just love cats. They have such grace and savagery. I know conscientious people can look disapprovingly on them sometimes. Even my favorite environmentalist writer, Pentti Linkola, was an ornithologist who hated cats with a passion for their destructiveness, and he called them "the angel of death imported from Egypt."

Are you familiar with Linkola? If not, here are some excerpts of his musings on cats on a blog called the Order of ATWA which looks (inexplicably) devoted in part to thinking the Manson family was righteous. I don't follow the blog; I just Googled "pentti+linkola+cats" and it was the first result. There's a YouTube channel called Linkola Translations that has some nice documentary footage from Finnish tv of him, his musings, and his Luddite life. He was a firm believer in severe population reduction. Strangely, he begat children; I assume he came to his dire conclusions afterwards. Not a vegetarian, but he killed his own food and wasted nothing.

I hadn't heard of Pentti Linkola. He'd be pleased to hear about the existence of a 'birth gap', according to some, and of excess deaths in the news.

The idea that society's become too complex to maintain is cropping up a lot these days -
https://www.resilience.org/stories/...ocieties/?mc_cid=1408385995&mc_eid=59c179f953

Always something new to worry about e.g. did you know Deep Warming will be as bad as greenhouse gas emissions soon? - https://aeon.co/essays/theres-a-deeper-problem-hiding-beneath-global-warming

For humanity and hope without sacrificing a clear-eyed view of challenges, I turn to the likes of Jem Bendell, Joanna Macey, Elinor Ostrom, Kate Raworth and Vandana Shiva

 

[goinghome]

A poster and pamphlet about ponds that can be downloaded here - https://www.antaisce.org/ponds

 

[goinghome]

A week ago,

Icelandic Fisheries Minister, Svandís Svavarsdóttir has called off this season’s fin whale hunt!

The Icelandic government has suspended all fin whaling, with immediate effect, until at least the end of August, on the grounds that it breaks Iceland’s own animal welfare laws. On top of this, no new licences have been issued for 2024 onwards.

After decades of campaigning and a lot of hard work behind the scenes, this really looks like it might be the end of whaling in Iceland.

Most Icelandic people now oppose whaling, and we are proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with them to send the Icelandic government a powerful message - the slaughter of whales is not acceptable.

Success! Fin whaling in Iceland is suspended after officials say hunts are unlawful

The Icelandic government has suspended all fin whaling in the country after an animal welfare report deemed them unlawful

uk.whales.org

 

[goinghome]

Otter party!

Sea otters are being re-introduced around California:

At least in the Pacific Northwest, sea otters and humans have coexisted for 10,000 to 15,000 years. As the glaciers receded, humans and otters arrived at the same time. “Indigenous knowledge and archaeological evidence suggest that humans excluded sea otters from certain shellfish harvesting areas, enabling coexistence. We think there are lessons there that might help us ‘re-learn’ how to coexist today,” Tinker suggests.

The Elakha Alliance, which was founded by the late David Hatch, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, is working with US Fish and Wildlife, tribes, shark specialists, environmental groups and fishery advocates along the coast to develop a reintroduction plan that considers all involved parties.

- https://reasonstobecheerful.world/sea-otters-reintroduction-coastal-ecosystem-climate/

Any other animal discoveries out there?

 

[goinghome]

Another recent visitor to my door

A few days after I took it, I watched him or his pal toddle under the shed in broad daylight. No neighbour's cat around these days to scare them off, I guess.

 

[goinghome]

Someone I know nimbly described this incident to me, despite English not being their first language:

Jimmy the tom cat caught a mouse yesterday. Playing with it in the yard
the two of them attracted 5 magpies. They surrounded Jimmy in a circle of
not more than 2 meters in diameter and wanted the mouse. Jimmy, all too
happy about the public, kept playing even more wildly. Exchanging their
roles the magpies started to pick Jimmy's tail, convincing him to let
the mouse go and turn around attending the picker. But he is experienced
and didn't fall for this trick.

I watched the scene for about 10 minutes. What an experience in
social-interchange/study observation this was for me! Gang crime in the
country side ; )

At the end I intervened and freed the mouse. She got away. Six angry
faces staring at me...


(Linking to https://www.morrissey-solo.com/thre...rrissey-flavour.150782/page-9#post-1987541840 )

Further reading!!
A 1968 book by René Dubos, is called, So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Human_an_Animal

Similar to the tendency for humans not to recognise that animals resist the cruelty doled out to them, called '“anthropodenial” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion." https://theconversation.com/memes-a...lious-orcas-and-sea-otters-too-quickly-210622
+
try April Short et al - https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/...tent&eId=117d7794-f12a-4510-af4b-f62cc5513b7e
+
https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-face-the-climate-crisis-with-spinoza-and-self-knowledge