the bait and switch way this is written literally made me laugh out loud
biden: my new plan guarantees four additional years of free education
kids in high school: holy shit free college?!
biden: oh no two years of pre-school and then two years of college*
*only at select locations, restrictions apply
not to be a biden sucker bc i do truly hate him but i will say that free preschool will help out SO many families. and only 2 years of college is a pussy move but also pls dont shit on community college? a LOT of ppl go to community colleges for their first year or two to knock out gen ed requirements. so like. yes this still sucks bc it is not everything that we need but also its not an entirely lost move. i do still hate the way he (or his social media team ig lol) worded this though. nasty
A reminder that the biological species concept is an arbitrary method of determining “species” that falls apart when you apply it to non-tetrapod groups or to deep time, and in fact all species concepts are arbitrary ways for humans to categorize and classify life in a way that makes sense to them.
Heck, even within mammals it falls apart when you consider camelids and Panthera.
In a super-nutshell: the biological species concept holds that a “species” is a group of organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring. That is, each species is reproductively isolated from all others. Following this, hybrids between two species under the BSC should be unable to produce fertile offspring.
But this falls apart when hybrids are fertile. Ligers and reportedly jaguleps are fertile, as are hybrids between dromedary and Bactrian camels (and theoretically also camel-llama hybrids, but the latter has never been tested). Does this mean that lions, leopards, jaguars, and tigers are all the same species? Likewise with llamas, dromedary and Bactrian camels? These are arguments for why the BSC doesn’t always work as intended, and shouldn’t be used as an across-the-board species concept.
It applies to SO many vertebrates. There’s a lot of documented hybridization with fertile offspring in birds- for example, many falcons can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, and wild Western Gulls and Glaucous-winged Gulls have produced the EXTREMELY successful fertile hybrid “Olympic” gull. SO many other birds also interbreed in the wild! I think it’s estimated that something like 15% of wild bird species have been documented to hybridize?
It also calls to question, for example- if Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis could interbreed and produce fertile offspring (and we know they did) can they be considered different species? What about dogs and wolves? Are a chihuahua and a gray wolf the same species? They can interbreed, after all. What about coyotes? We know there are fertile coydogs and coywolves. Domestic cats- we have cross bred them with TONS of different small wild cat species and gotten fertile offspring.
And these are just a few examples. Species across the board are churning out fertile offspring all the time. And this is why there’s a species problem- with no clear place to draw the line between species, how do we decide what a species is? Because at the end of the day, every lineage is a gradient, without clear divisions between populations, and “species” is just a word we came up with to try and break things into smaller, more digestable pieces
I was talking to my mom the other day, and she said she was going to start going to the gym, because its important care for your body. I’m disabled w/ multiple chronic illnesses, so going to the gym is impossible for me. She seemed to realize this, and started to backtrack, saying like – its part of taking care of herself, and I interrupted and said, “Its okay mom. You and I taking care of ourselves look very different”. And thats what I would like you to know.
Taking care of yourself looks different.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like fruit smoothies and gym visits, cutting out sugar and weight training.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like hospital visits, feeding tubes and ports. Needles and tests.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like taking medication and lying down in a cool dark room.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like getting any calories in their body that they can.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like adding in more vegetables and trying to go outside to get sun more often.
For some people, taking care of themselves looks like seeing a therapist, keeping symptom journals, and practicing mindfulness, meds, or grounding techniques.
We all have different needs. Please don’t feel bad about how you care for yourself just because someone else is able to do “more”, or their care is more performative or obvious. Please don’t look down on someone for caring for themselves in a way that you do not. Medication and rest are just as important as exercise and vegetables.
Keep doing your best to care for yourself, the best way you know how. Your self care and health is important, no matter what it looks like.
ifesbob 