Good thing we also have more thylacines than ever before, right?

Nah, son. Thylacines have, in a way, become cryptids since their extinction, complete with cheesy travel shows where some bogan tells you all about how they totally saw one time and they’re 100% sure it was a thylacine they barely saw from a distance running away through the tall grass after sunset. I’ve seen similar shows about Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, and others. They don’t exist anymore, making your chances of seeing one alive no more likely than seeing Bigfoot, which is the point I was making. Animals thought to be extinct being officially rediscovered is a pretty rare occurrence; I assure you it doesn’t happen “regularly”. It’s a big deal when it happens because it’s quite rare. Yes, I’m familiar with the stories of all the other extinct species you mentioned as well. The ivory-billed woodpecker is still considered by most ornithologists to be extinct, and the last widely accepted sighting of any individual was in 1987, despite some supposed (but not universally accepted or entirely conclusive) sightings every once in a while. In 2020, a guy working for Fish and Wildlife claimed to have ID’d one in video footage, but it must not have been very compelling because the very next year Fish and Wildlife proposed declaring it officially extinct. People claim to have sighted the ivory-billed woodpecker not infrequently, much like the thylacine. What is infrequent is any compelling evidence whatsoever, however.

There have been many sightings and footprints found of Bigfoot, too. I live in the Bigfoot sighting capital of the world and new sightings are routinely reported. If the “Portland” in your name is in reference to the one in Oregon, you do too.

The last widely accepted sighting of a wild thylacine was in 1933, nearly a hundred years ago. Even if any tiny, isolated pockets had managed to escape extermination (which is unlikely on an island without much mountainous terrain or dense forest, especially when everyone and their grandma was out hunting them for the bounty the government put on their tails), they’d be in big trouble owing to genetic drift by now. You always hear people say “I know what I saw,” but do they really? It makes me circle back to the Bigfoot thing. At least some of the people who claim to have seen Bigfoot genuinely believe they really saw him.

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Sounds like Europeans need to step up on being a dumpster fire if they want as much coverage as us. Be the change you want to see in the world!

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Very nice. Now let’s see how rich it’s made you, OP.

The best part of this meme is that Brexit had literally nothing to do with it whatsoever, the guy just decided to expand his markets to other places, which he could have done either way, and well might have. He expanded his international enterprise across a wider part of the world, and you mean to tell me he started making more money? That’s pretty amazing! Why isn’t everyone doing this?

Yes, this is all correct. It was my intention to differentiate the extreme hell-blazes we often see today that completely destroy forests (soil and all) from the much smaller healthier, and more regular fires that merely thin them. Fires are important, but because of gross forest mismanagement, now for forests to undergo their natural burn cycle is to completely burn to a crisp.

Perhaps in the short term regarding albedo, though IR still largely shines through. Once the smoke dissipates soon though, it’ll be back to “normal”, except now with a large boost in CO2 levels, leading to more heating. Except it won’t be normal because the blackened forests then decrease the albedo even further than it was before. Burnt forests also get less snowpack, which again further reduces albedo. Anyone who’s dealt with heavy wildfire smoke knows the smoke tends to trap heat under it like a big blanket, too.

Wildfires (especially as big as we see them today) are definitely a net bad thing for the environment, health, communities, etc.

C’est la vie

Just yesterday I was searching for photos in Brave. Right from the outset without clicking on anything, there was a huge, unclosable banner taking up a third of the screen that was an ad for Etsy or something. I tried to go to settings to change it to how it was before, but I was confronted with another ad in the settings:

“Want ad-free search results? Upgrade to Search Premium™ today!”

Time to finally make that switch to Firefox, I guess.

There’s an ongoing medical study I’ve been participating in for the last several years. Each year, the questionnaire asks all kinds of crazy questions like if I’ve ever died or ever been shot in the head, among others. If one is actually unsure, perhaps the answer is actually “yes” lol

Robocop is fantastic sci-fi, but this comparison to reality kind of falls apart right at the beginning with the part of corporations helping rioters. Has that ever actually happened? Is there any real evidence of that at all? Corporations have a long history of crushing riots, strikes, and protests with private security forces, such as the Pinkertons. Large corporations are also frequent donors to police departments and police projects. They’d much rather just buy buildings in the part of town that already has low property values and jack-up the prices to a tenant without any recourse but to move out or pay up, even if that means many apartments will sit empty for long stretches at a time.