Endlings: Florida Panther - Oct 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, which is why I wanted to talk about Riordan and Oshiro’s ‘Court of the Dead’ novel (CoD), when I realized that it was not that different from the Florida panthers. Say what?

This week, ‘Bizarre Beasts’ released the episode about the Florida panthers – the wild cats, not the sports’ team and, again, it is a straightforward retelling of the Wiki page, plus an audio quote of Ms. Betty Osceola, an important person among the Miccosukee Native Americans. She is talking, to nobody’s surprise, about the Florida puma, and-

-And, yes, the obligatory statement: the North American ‘panther’ is another name for the puma, Puma concolor; it is only a distant relative to the ‘true’ panthers – the jaguar and the leopard; its’ closest relatives are the cheetah and the jaguarondi, a little-known wild cat that doesn’t look anything like the jaguar. Pause.

…All cats resemble one another; the differences between a tiger, a puma, a bobcat, and a housecat are mainly due to their sizes; there are few specialists as there are among the bovids, for example, or the rodents. This allows the felines to be very successful carnivores, and the puma is one of them; it is still the top feline carnivore in North America west of Mississippi. In the east, it is another story, as only the state of Florida still has any in the wild. This group of pumas was shrinking fast, due to inbreeding, so the U.S. government brought several pumas from Texas to fix this – and they did. But because the Florida wild themselves are shrinking, the pumas there are still dying-out and people need to fix this situation – just watch the BB episode for yourself. Stop.

So, here is the situation – after the series’ premiere that talked about the potential recreation of the passenger pigeon (done by a completely different narrator), and the dodgy episode about the dodgy silphium plant, BB hit its stride – the Florida panther episode is straightforward and simple, with nary a problem; it is delivered in a touching, poignant manner that is supposed to resonate with its’ audience – and perhaps it does. Only, is it enough to make the latter care enough to do something, to be affected by the BB delivery? That is the question.

On the other hand, we have ‘The Court of the Dead’ novel, where Will and Nico (a homosexual WASP couple) team-up with Frank and Hazel (a heterosexual POC couple) to help many monsters who don’t want to be evil, defeat a group of villains that are quite reminiscent for J-Ro’s Ministry of Magic in her HP books. These days she is keeping quiet (for her own reasons), but Mr. Riordan is going full speed ahead!..

Of course, he might not have a choice – when he stopped featuring sexual minorities and the like in his YA novels (‘The Trials of Apollo’ series), the price for his books fell to a flat $10-$15 dollars a book, that is very cheap by modern standards, and perhaps even a financial loss. Therefore, if Mr. Riordan wants to stay in the green (and work for Disney), he has to toe the party line, and if not, then just look at Gina Carano – she did not, and so she is gone.

Therefore, again, Mr. Riordan continues to release progressive and forwards-facing books; the problem here is that the society may not care; these days, the Americans are highly individualistic, and care only about what they think; a book, no matter how well-written, is not enough on its’ own to change their opinion – you need federal support to do so. In the U.S. In particular, this is a chancy and an unlikely thing to have or to manifest, and so that is that. ‘The Court of the Dead’ remains an inert, almost impotent, almost pointless and unrequired YA novel that does not do anything, or does not affect anyone, just as the ‘Endlings’ series of BB do – or don’t do. Sad, isn’t it? That is real life, however. It sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

 

Endlings: Silphium - Oct 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the silphium plant instead. Pause.

This is a somewhat different topic from my usual discussions, so, firstly, what was the silphium plant, beyond the obvious? The honest answer may surprise you: no one knows. It died out fully, presumably, during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, and it was supposed to be a spice that improved the taste of food and an aphrodisiac.

What could it have been? Jonathan Drori in his book “Around the world with 80 plants” calls it a plant of the Ferula genus, but others suggest the genus Thapsia instead; still others proclaim that silphium was not a plant in the Ferula genus, but rather asafoetida, latex gum, made from the roots of such plants. Pause.

The depictions of this plant exist, but they are stylized, and do not fully match the depictions of the extant Ferula & Thapsia plants; that would not be wrong, as silphium could have been its’ own species, but as Ms. Suta at BB pointed out, the depictions of silphium overall show it having stems and leaves of one plant, flowers of another, and fruits of yet a third, making it something of a chimera, then… Wait, what?

The word ‘Chimera’ has several meanings, but we’re interested in the most well-known: a Greek imaginary monster, so ridiculous that it could not have existed for real, as it had a leonine head, a caprine body, and a serpentine tail. Not even the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the Chimera was ever real, and neither are its’ descendants, ‘lesser chimeras’, the children of human imagination.

Silphium, unfortunately for some, seems to share the Chimera’s baseline traits: a mixture of features of different species, though plant, not animal. This is important, as while people usually know plenty of animal species, the species of plants are more obscure, and one often needs a lot of botanical experience to differentiate between, say, an American basswood, a European linden, and a cultivar of either one of them. You can say: “This beast looks like a tiger, but it is not a tiger, because it has [insert traits here]”, and even complete homebodies will identify it correctly as a lion, a leopard, or even a jaguar. However, if you say “This plant looks like a fennel, but it is not a fennel, because…” then identifying it becomes much harder, because of the obvious. In addition, people said that “silphium looks like a Persian herb, but it is not the same because it tastes differently”, eh?

Gastronomy, now, is something else. People also say “The sauce for the goose is the sauce for the gander”, but people had different tastes in food since the Stone Age, and food preparation is an important variable, too. The Persian Ferula species might have tasted worse than the Libyan silphium did, or it might not have been. Pause.

…Libya is a reason why I have paused, too – you know what else Libya is associated with? The “Odyssey” – Homer put his Lotus-eaters and their Lotus tree there. Like silphium, people argued about the identity of the Lotus tree for a while now; there are several RL plant species that fit the identity of this mythical plant, but not entirely, just as it is with silphium.

Could silphium been a myth, just like how the vegetable lamb and the unicorn are? Technically yes, but there are plenty of evidence that it did exist, right? Nero received the last stalk of it, (what he did with It is another matter entirely), and The Julius Caesar supposedly had much more in his treasury, but the problem with such declarations that by now they are just historical anecdotes, where separating fact from fiction is simply hard. JC might have really had ‘1500 pounds of laser’ in his treasury, or he might not have – now it is hard to tell.

(Silphium is also called laser or laserwort, but the plants of the genera Laser & Laserpitium are not related to it at all. Fun!)

These days, of course, separating truth from fake news can be done easily enough, but in the Ancient period? Not so much, and silphium’s obscurity made it worse. Even the reasons of its’ extinction are conflicting: Johnathan Drori proclaimed that it was the overharvesting, but Ms. Suta at BB suggests that overgrazing and the desertification that follows were to blame instead.

Now, since we’re talking about ‘Bizarre Beasts’, listen – BB does not do wholesale cheating, but it can alter its performance accordingly; the ‘Endlings’ premiere, the passenger pigeon episode, was done grandly, with a guest speaker, and the BB staff sending out tiny plastic pigeons afterwards. The silphium episode, on the other hand, was much more subdued and restrained; Ms. Suta moved on quickly enough to talk about the general ‘extinction is bad and why’ topic, and the episode was about 10 minutes long, almost 30% shorter than the passenger pigeon piece. Why?

Because BB did their research and realized that underneath all the historical anecdotes and culinary discussions might be a chimera – a plant that never was as it was described; it existed – it might still exist – in another way entirely, but the way Pliny and friends described? It never been.

Finally, getting back to the silphium’s extinction – could it have been saved? (If it was a real Libyan plant?) Again, we get more ambiguity – Drori suggests that silphium was very hard to move and translocate, but…

On one hand, this sort of operation is hard to do, even now – only a few years ago people tried to introduce African cheetahs to India; the Indian government was difficult, (and when the cheetahs were introduced, they died out in India quite quickly). In addition, when it comes to translocating just some of India’s only Asiatic lions, (they live in the Gir forest; from the genetic P.O.V., they are a part of the leonine subspecies that live in West and Central Africa), India flat-out refused. Things could have gone in any way, but then the Donald’s government partially alienated Modi’s India, it turned from the U.S. to RF and CPR, so now the West are not bothering India with their rewilding projects, lest it gets worse. Bully, and yes, translocating silphium from Libya to other countries might have been just as hard, but on the other hand, the Roman republic/empire of that time was much less concerned about PR; if there was silphium in Libya, and it was profitable, they would have done something about the status quo – but they did not. Maybe because there really wasn’t anything profitable in Libya, not even silphium? Until time machines become available to the public, we will never know.

For now, however, this is it. See you all soon!

Endlings: Passenger Pigeon - Oct 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Endlings’, the Bizarre Beasts’ (BB) not-a-spin-off, instead. This episode’s topic – the passenger pigeon.

Some time ago, BB produced a promoting video of this event, where two women, Ms. Suta and Ms. Green, painted/colored a bunch of small plastic pigeon models and discussed the passenger pigeon’s Wikipedia article. It was not quite a scam, but it felt almost like one. This time, it is different – a completely new narrator, (and of a male gender too) discussed the passenger pigeon, why it died out and if it can be brought back.

…No, Colossal Biosciences (CB) are not behind it; this time, it is a different company, who claims that it will bring the passenger pigeon back, (in a manner of speaking) by 2032. Right now, it is October 2025. This means, that the company (Let’s call it RR), puts a ‘time stamp’ on its’ rewilding project – in 6 slash 7 years, few people can remember about RRs’ promise to bring the passenger pigeon back if RR chooses to go for the obscure approach… Interesting, and kind of suspicious.

The actual process of ‘bringing back the passenger pigeon’ is not too different from how CB plans to bring back the giant moa: CB plans to accomplish their project by combining the DNA of the emu and one of the tinamou species, while RR plans to combine the DNA of the passenger pigeon (it can be recovered, apparently), with that of its’ closest relative – the band-tailed pigeon – and inject the combo into the rock pigeon’s eggs…

As we discussed in the past, a tinamou-emu hybrid do not make a moa, especially a giant one. As for the pigeons, the passenger pigeon was a part of the Columbinae subfamily, the typical pigeons and doves in layperson’s terms, but it had its’ own genus and kept to itself; since at its’ peak the passenger pigeon numbered in millions, this was easy.

The band-tailed pigeon, meanwhile, belongs to the American pigeon genus that consists of 17 species, all of which are more closely related to each other than to the other birds, so what makes the band-tailed pigeon so special in regards to the passenger pigeon? The video does not tell us.

This brings us back to the passenger pigeon. It stood out from the rest of its’ pigeon and dove cousins by, well, the obvious. It lived and bred in bulk. It fed in bulk. It was usually in motion, looking for new food sources, (mostly grains, nuts, fruits, and the like). It was much more aerodynamic than many other pigeons – and it did not seek human cities to live in, unlike some other pigeons and doves. Pause.

…You take – intentionally or unintentionally – those features away, and the result is not a passenger pigeon, but some other bird. Pause.

There is no indication that RR intends to do this, but their process has the passenger pigeon DNA combined with the band-tailed pigeon’s, and perhaps the rock dove’s as well. There is no indication that the passenger pigeon’s DNA will be dominant, but if it will be…

…If the passenger pigeon DNA will be dominant, then the new bird will try to live like the extinct passenger pigeon did, which includes breeding and living in bulk. Will the 2030s North America be able to sustain this kind of population? Probably not without some massive landscape rewilding. Will the American society and government be willing to do this sort of massive landscape rewilding instead of building new urban centres? Probably not. And without large tracts of wild North American woodland, the new passenger pigeon will die out again, that’s the bottom line, unless…

…Unless it is being recreated not for rewilding purposes but for commercial ones, in which case the enthusiasm and the support for RR’s passenger pigeon project will drop. Listen, pigeons may not be as thoroughly domesticated as ducks and chickens, but they are domesticated and bred – for good looks, for mail carrier service, and for flesh and feathers too; we do not need another pigeon species/breed/GMO in the mix.

Let us pause and take a deep breath. The RR passenger pigeon project comes with options. It may work and we will have the new passenger pigeon – but we will not be ready for it and it will die out. It may sort of work, and will have a new genetically modified pigeon, which may act like the passenger pigeon, or not, for both the band-tailed and the rock pigeons belong to different genera than the passenger pigeon did, and both act – and look, and are built – differently from the passenger pigeon. Alternatively, the RR project will just fizzle out in the next 6-7 years, and we will have no new pigeon for our troubles.

Sigh. The narrator at ‘Endlings’ himself was rather sceptical of the passenger pigeon project; he tried his best to sell it to the audience, but he couldn’t fully do it. (The fact that he knew that most of us would forget about this video by the end of the week probably played a role too). The details of successfully bringing the passenger pigeon back to the U.S. are too many and he did not appear to have all of the answers – RR did not give it to him. Stop.

So, in conclusion. CB’s rewilding projects are exuberant and showy, but they do put CB into the spotlight, and CB cannot weasel out of this too easily. RR’s approach, on the other hand, allows them to do exactly that, and it is not an improvement over CB’s approach, sadly…  Looks like the rewilding projects/concepts/etc. in the West are in for some bad times…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Marvel Zombies - Oct 4

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Jane Goodall is dead. Let us talk about something else – say, the now released Marvel™ Zombies?

Yeah, no. Marvel™ Zombies is not bad, but-

-But, first, again, it is a comb-over. Alongside the F4 film, set in an entirely different universe, Disney/MCU released ‘Ironheart’, the adventures of Riri Williams, and it was bad. Politically incorrect as well, and Disney, in all of its’ incarnations, including Marvel, hates this. Therefore, it released ‘The Eyes of Wakanda’, another online miniseries, and they were not bad, just rushed, as we have discussed earlier. Consequently, once the dust settled, and the bad taste of ‘Ironheart’ vanished, Disney/MCU released Marvel™ Zombies, a spin-off of the previously released ‘What if?’ a Marvel universe where everything is as bad as possible, and oh, all that angst! …Somehow, Disney/MCU are in no hurry to get rid of them, and how does this mini-series end? Why, it is with Riri Williams! Pause.

Disney can be stubborn and sneaky – or so it thinks. In the SW universe, the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ (movies 7-9) and how Disney/SW handled them, fractured the SW fan base and caused a lot of damage to the franchise, and what did Disney/SW do? Release ‘The Mandalorian’ series, which were a hit (despite their own problems, cough), and the S3 season of the series? (‘The Book of Boba Fett’ does not count), showed how the SW of the sixth film’s finale became the SW of the seventh film’s premiere. The fan base realized this clearly enough, and the reactions were mixed. Disney/SW did not despair, and are releasing a feature film sequel to the now-finished series in the near with a trailer that is clearly showing that the Empire (aka the First Order) is coming back. How that film will go we will have to wait and see. So how does this connect to Disney/Marvel?

Just as Disney used – or tried to use – ‘The Mandalorian’ to fix the fans’ issues with the Disney SW vision, it seems to be trying to use Marvel™ Zombies to fix the fans’ issue as to how they view Riri ‘Ironheart’ Williams. In SW, ‘The Mandalorian’ did not quite work as how Disney thought it would work, and in Marvel, the same thing can be said about Zombies: they probably will not work as to how Disney wanted them to work. Riri Williams is still disliked by the fans.

Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, of course, the Marvel fans can easily dismiss Marvel™ Zombies – they are not part of MCU, but an alternate universe, not unlike the 2025-F4 film. In this case, of course, not unlike the AAA series (remember Aggie-poo?) Marvel™ Zombies become just a waste of Disney/Marvel time and resources that would be better used in other means. Ah well, Disney – in all of its’ branches and affiliations always did have more money than common sense… Real life is still worse – just look at the Philippines and their earthquake… Oh, wait, they were overlooked in favor of the Donald’s latest rant – but that is another story…

For now, though, this is it – see you all soon!

CB and the dodo bird - Sep 19

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and CB (i.e. Colossal Biosciences, if someone is confused), is intent on making it worse, apparently.

With the grey/dire wolves, they actually have something: three grey wolf puppies (Arctic wolf subspecies, most likely), with some biological & anatomical modifications that are supposed to make them more like the extinct dire wolves. Lately, the news of those three are rare, hopefully, then, they have not died on CB’s watch.

With the moa birds, CB ignored the fact that we still have samples of the moa birds’ skins, feathers, and the like, and proclaimed that they will hybridize the Australian emu with the South American tinamous, and release the new hybrids into the New Zealand wilds. This movie is of a dubious legality, but the fact that there is no guarantee that the resulting hybrid ratites will be viable supersedes that. Therefore, lately, the commotion around the would-be revived moa birds is dying down, and CB’s celebrity sponsors, such as Sir Peter Jackson, (who made the ‘Hobbit’ and LotR movie trilogies), are keeping quiet.

Now, (September 2025), CB is launching yet another proclamation: they recovered some sort of primeval pigeon gene that will allow them to recreate the dodo. CB just needs chicken eggs. Pause.

The dodo were pigeons. They were very specialized pigeons, they had their own subtribe, and their closest relative was the solitaire, another specialized flightless species that died in the 17^th century as well. Their closest living relatives belong to the pigeon tribe Raphini, whose members are relatively big and bulky, especially for flying birds.

…The Columbidae birds (pigeons, doves, etc.) come in two main varieties: sleek and streamlined, or big and bulky. The dodo and the solitaire were two extremes of the second variety, but their living relatives, such as the Nicobar pigeon and the crowned pigeons, also tend to be heavyset, though nowhere as extreme as their extinct kin was. Where do the chickens enter?

Nowhere, that is the thing. Chickens are gamebirds, members of the Galliformes order, completely separate from the aforementioned pigeons, doves and co.; the chicken and the pigeon may look superficially similar to each other, but they are just as closely related as the red fox and the hedgehog – i.e. not at all aside from the most basic ties. To use chicken eggs (and genes?) to bring back the dodo is about as logical as using elephants to bring back the Smilodon.

As for the primeval pigeon genes/genomes/etc. …The name alone is rather unfortunate and populistic – and also vague and generalized. CB gives no concrete guarantee that using this technique will bring back the dodo precisely and not something else entirely. A creation of a brand-new pigeon species, flightless or not, would be exciting, but it would not be re-wilding, not really. Rather, it would be playing God with life (with birds, to be more specific), and that is something else. Of course, whether CB would go this course, and not just take the sponsors’ money and run, is another question…

So, to recap: in a matter of years, in less than a decade, CB went from something respectable to half-frauds and half-madmen, who have done science in general, and rewilding in particular, a bad service indeed. To make matters even worse for them, there is no real source of dodo DNA – a head and a leg is all that remained of a rather enchanting RL species; pity that it could not co-exist with humans and their companions, (such as domestic pigs turned feral, and rats). CB – or anyone else – just would not be able to acquire dodo genes at all, and what they are offering instead may just suffer from a bad, populist name, or perhaps CB is just pulling a completely banal, ordinary, con. The future will show. Real life seriously sucks, sometimes.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

 

'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

'Coyotes' the moviie trailer - Sep 9

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then I watched the trailer for the upcoming 2025 ‘Coyotes’ movie and realize that Hollywood can suck even worse. Let us discuss.

First, why wolves are known to be man-eaters (in the past, however distant), and coyotes are not? Frankly because they do not have the strength. A grey wolf (not to be confused with several other canine/lupine species) and a coyote look superficially similar, but the wolf is much more formidable.

A coyote – on average – is about 1 m in length, (without the tail) and weighs about 16 kg. A grey wolf, on the other hand, is about 1.5 m in length (also without the tail) and weighs about 60 kg. Most of this weight comes from muscle, and a wolf’s skull and jaws are wider and stronger than those of the coyote are; a coyote is more of a precise strike carnivore, and a grey wolf aims for greater mass damage instead.

Again, how do carnivorous mammals kill? In general, (there are always exceptions), they either go for a precise strike (on the throat, more rarely on the muzzle or even the skull), or, conversely, they bite and tear – tear off pieces of flesh, live… You need physical strength in both of these scenarios, of course, but the second one requires a much stronger bite, and a much stronger (and durable) body to handle such rough hunting. Lions, spotted hyenas, and grey wolves have it, and they all hunt big prey – African buffalo, antelopes, and deer (including the elk and sometimes the moose), in case of the wolves.

By contrast, the jackal and the red fox, the coyote and the striped & brown hyena do not normally hunt big animals; they prefer to scavenge, or to eat smaller prey, such as rodents, rabbits, and hares. The hyenas, true, have a more powerful bite than their canine counterparts do, but they are still at half the size of the spotted hyena, and in general defer to it, when they encounter it.

The ancestor of the more successful spotted hyena drove the ancestors of the striped and brown hyenas into the African deserts, and sort of forced the ancestor of the aardwolf to become an obligate insectivore – but we digress.

…Only not, for in North America the relationship between grey wolves and coyotes isn’t unlike that of… lions and spotted hyenas, for example, only more one-sided: the wolves’ tower over their coyote cousins, they are much stronger and heavier than the coyotes are, and they hunt in large packs, while coyotes hunt in pairs or alone. There is footage – from the Yellowstone Park – of wolves killing coyotes in packs. One on one, a wolf might let a coyote be; a wolf pack will make short work of it.

Enter humans. They drove the grey wolf to extinction in the North American East, and in the West its’ population is still reduced. The coyote adapted and flourished alongside humans, (as did the raccoon and the red fox)… but there were no cases of attacks on humans by any of them, (unless rabies or a similar factor was involved). The coyote may look like a wolf, generally, but unlike the wolf, it is not mentally wired to tackle prey as big as an adult human being… Enter the coydog.

It is exactly what it sounds like – it is a hybrid of a domestic dog, (either intentionally or a feral animal), and a coyote. Just like its’ bigger cousin the wolfdog, this hybrid seems to be quite fertile, (but then again, the question if the domestic dog an independent species, a subspecies of the grey wolf, or just a domesticated wolf with artificially derived physical differences is still open), and is doing well enough in North America.

The American coyote is not known to be a man-eater. The Australian dingo, (again, either a domestic dog turned wild, a separate species, a subspecies, or something else entirely), is. In addition, unlike the coyote it hunts in packs, as the grey wolf – or the feral populations of the domestic dog – do. More succinctly, the dingo is not as big as the grey wolf is, but it can be dangerous to people, and sometimes, it is.

Now, in North America, we get cases of domestic dogs interbreeding with grey wolves and especially coyotes – and unlike them, domestic dogs are not afraid of humans. Oh, they are peoples’ best friends, but with a metaphorical switch, they can be their worst enemies instead. When they attack, the results are bad and often deadly for the humans. You put in coyote, let alone grey wolf DNA into the mix, and the result is worse – but where does it leave the upcoming ‘Coyotes’ movie?

‘Coyotes’ apparently aims to be a social satire or something else, not unlike how ‘The Death of a Unicorn’ was. (Remember that sad pile of horse apples?) Fair enough, and the script is intentionally screwy and unrealistic – but the poor coyotes. Moreover, my point is that if they renamed the film ‘Coydogs’, and had not purebred coyotes, but coyote-feral dog crossbreeds, it would have worked just as well, and been more accurate, so there is that. The movie cast and crew decided that that would be too much effort, so we will probably end up with some anti-coyote hysteria, something that we do not really need right now – but it is real life. It sucks.

This is it for now – see you all soon!

Hyenas (and Zombies) - Sep 08

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, therefore I was going to talk about the upcoming Marvel™ Zombies special, but then Textbooks Travels YouTube channel presented a video about five hyena species, including the one new species, and I had to watch – hyenas are some of my favorite animals, you know?

Anyhow, after going through about 30 minutes of video footage of the various hyena, team TT finally reached the supposed new species in question – and it is the aardwolf. Pause.

Here is the thing. There are four modern species of hyena, and they are all specialists in their unique ways, all are different from each other in various different ways. In case of the aardwolf, it is the smallest and the weakest hyena species, one that is specialized in feeding on ants and termites, it is an unassuming and nocturnal animal, most people in Africa (especially the not-tourists) are ignoring or just unaware of it, and for the rest of the world, the situation is not much better. That is one.

Two is that there are two aardwolf subspecies. Pause.

Let us backtrack a bit. Out of the four modern hyena species, the spotted and the brown hyenas are monotypic; there is just one species of each without any greater genetic variation. With the striped hyena and the aardwolf, the situation is different. The striped hyena has up to five subspecies, but they all differ from each other mostly by where they live – from northern Africa (the Sahara desert) to Middle East, to Central Asia, to India, (mostly the north-east – like its’ sister species the brown hyena, the striped hyena is primarily a desert dweller/specialist). The aardwolf is less extreme, but it too has two subspecies – one in east Africa and the second in the south Africa – that have some minor physical differences, and thus they are two separate subspecies – but they differ from each other primarily by where they live. Team TT took this concept and proclaimed that no, the two populations are two different species of the aardwolf (aka two different hyena species), but so far there’s no consensus on that, so I’m going to call out them (him) and say that their proclamation about there being five hyena species in the modern world is wrong. Anything else?

…The aardwolf really got the short end of the stick in the TT hyena video – it had the least amount of footage & screen time, it had to share with the bat-eared fox. The two are not related at all, the hyenas are part of the cat half of the mammal carnivore family tree, and the wild dogs are the more ancient clan out of the two. That is part of the reason as to why wild dogs are found all over the world these days, (excluding Antarctica), while the hyenas are not. Just like some of their cat cousins, they tried to imitate the dogs, to try to beat them at their own game – and outside of Africa, they failed. The spotted hyena is as a formidable a pack hunter as any dog, but it is savannah animal, unlike the brown and striped hyenas (or the big cats such as the lion and the leopard); it does not do well in the desert, it cannot cross the Sahara into Eurasia. The brow hyena, of course, is hemmed in by the two oceans on one hand, and it does not enter the savannah, because there it would be outcompeted by the local predators/scavengers before it reached the African east (where Africa is connected to Eurasia). The striped hyena is already there, of course, but it is half the size and muscle of the spotted hyena and just like the brown hyena, it is a desert specialist and does not enter more fertile areas, (such as the Southeast Asian jungles, for example). In addition, the aardwolf is an insectivore, it feeds on insects and as long as they are plentiful, (and they are), it is happy. So is the bat-eared fox, of course, but we are talking hyenas here, not foxes and other wild dogs.

…The point here is that without humans being in the picture, the hyenas are doing just fine, even though about 87.5% of their global population is in Africa. By living there, they avoid competing for food resources with the wild dogs, and thus both them and the wild canines are satisfied.

In addition, where does it leave the Marvel™ zombies? In their own part of MCU multiverse, of course – they were introduced In Marvel’s™ now finished ‘What if?’ animated series, and it will be somewhat interesting to see as to how Earth-89521 will deal with the undead threat. The hyenas, in fact, should be of little help there – the aardwolf is an insectivore and does not eat carrion to begin with, the spotted hyena prefers to hunt live prey, and the brown and the striped hyenas, while scavengers, are nowhere as formidable as it is. Therefore, the humans of that dimension will have to defeat the zombies one way or another, mostly by themselves – and we will have to wait until September 24, 2025 to see how it plays out…

Well, this is it for now, see you all soon.

Eyes of Wakanda - Aug 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’… Pause.

Well, first let me admit that, apparently, I got it wrong – the video of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee painting plastic pigeon figurines wasn’t the Kickstarter, more like a special feature to motivate the financing of the Kickstarter, or whatever… Fair enough, but listen: LN openly admits that her YouTube channel is a business venture, she is in for money – and she shares money with her underlings and coworkers. Have to respect her for her openness and honesty, if nothing else, (and there is much more).

BB, on the other hand… are largely similar, but are not as successful as LN is. In part, this is because they’re a part of PBS, and PBS overall is suffering due to the Donald’s meddling in the American world, (real life sucks, remember?), but still, the sight of Ms. Sarah and Ms. Aimee just painting tiny pigeons while muttering some facts about the pigeons from the Internet… just no…

In addition, speaking of facts, what about the ‘Eyes’? Yes, they are a work of fiction, but in the episode 1x02, they went after the ‘Iliad’, and…

Yes, true, there was a Troy in RL, and there possibly was a Trojan War in RL too, but so far, we have no idea what actually went down, so we have to accept Homer’s version as canon, which makes ‘Iliad’ & ‘Odyssey’ about as real as MCU. Moreover, Achilles, Odysseus, and co. are a part of Marvel comics – and been so for a while, nothing new here, but, again, what is with the disrespect? The second episode of ‘Eyes’ plays fast and loose with the ‘Iliad’, so it will ruffle some feathers – it ruffled mine, which is why I am writing about the ‘Eyes’ more than 2 weeks after it had aired. Pause.

Taking a breath and starting anew. In many ways, the ‘Eyes’ are clichéd and banal. In the first episode, Noni is the maverick who makes the right in choice in saving Wakanda from… what? Exposure? The Lion did not care about it, he wanted to rule outside of it, but because Wakanda had a PR problem even in the 1260 BC or so, the Dora Milaje sent Noni to bring the Lion to heel – she caused him to die instead, but, hey, she recovered the artefacts, so yay! She becomes a War Dog instead.

That is one of Wakanda’s flaws – it is isolationist, it wants to stay largely isolated, it comes down hard on those, who disagree with it, yet when those dissidents leave and start their own thing, the Wakandan government (well, the royal family) short-circuits and does its’ best to bring those dissidents to heel or just kill them. MCU and co. deal with this problem by making such renegades evil, but still, it is not one of Wakanda’s best aspects.

Back to the ‘Eyes’… sigh. The Lion was a variant Killmonger from the first Black Panther film, and the final episode actually sets up the first Black Panther film, to a certain extent. The Lion wasn’t a bad character, but as a villain? He fell flat.

In addition, in the second, ‘Iliad’ episode, we have B’Kai, who joined the Greek army to retrieve a Wakandan amulet, and he does. He also lets Helen run away with Paris-

Helen never escaped with Paris; Paris died awhile before Odysseus came up with the Trojan Horse, and Helen would eventually return home with her legal husband, Menelaus. Helen of Troy, in fact, is partially a romantic heroine from the knightly stories of later days, and partially – a modern femme fatale, but we digress.

I don’t want to discuss all the ways how much did the ‘Eyes’ mess with the ‘Iliad’, I’ll just point out that Memnon/B’Kai isn’t from Homer – he is from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’; he was an Egyptian, or an Ethiopian, general, sent to help the Trojans. He was also the son of Eos, or Aurora, the goddess of Dawn. He went against Achilles, died, and his entourage became birds. Sigh. If the bigwigs in MCU wanted to, they could have made quite a story about the Wakandan meddling the Trojan War and remained much more true to the original classical sources as well.

As for the last two episode of the ‘Eyes’… Pause. The first two episodes were connected to each other via the character of Noni and the plot continuity; the last two episodes were much more detached from each other and the first two. Were there supposed to be more episodes of ‘Eyes’ than just four? Did some rushed editing had to take place? Disney/MCU are not telling…

Anyhow, the third episode feels like a filler – the south meets the east, that sort of thing, Wakanda meets the K’un Lun, eh? It does not amount to anything… and the final episode mostly just sets-up the first Black Panther movie. Fun!

Only not, as B’Kai, for example, reminded me of Grant Ward, who betrayed his new friends for duty. Only because B’Kai’s duty was to Wakanda, not to Hydra, he is a protagonist, rather than an antagonist instead. MCU really does its’ best to recycle the old ideas in new ways, but maybe it should just go with outright new ideas instead? It worked for the new F4 film…

There is one more aspect to the ‘Eyes’, however – the African/Afro-American one. As the ‘Black Panther’ films showed, they are MCU’s Afro-Futurism reps, and for Disney/MCU, political correctness in regards to the Africans/Afro-Americans is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, before the ‘Eyes’, MCU’s latest depiction of Afro-Americans came from ‘Ironheart’ – I’m talking about Riri here. In the BP2 film, she was… average. In ‘Ironheart’, MCU did not know what to do with her, and it showed – she made Sony’s Kraven look good. Also – competent and coherent, (the movie, not the main character). Something had to be done, so MCU quickly made, or remade, the ‘Eyes’, and used them to cover up ‘Ironheart’ as the latest MCU bit that features people of color. The ‘Eyes’ do a better job of it than ‘Ironheart’ did, but then again, almost anything would – ‘Ironheart’ set the bar this low, and the ‘Eyes’ still feel like a rushed job that MCU doesn’t really needs, you know? Ah well, Disney/MCU have a better idea of what MCU/its’ audience needs than MCU’s actual viewers do no doubt… That is real life for you. It sucks. Just look at the Donald, Putin, and the Alaska story – but we will discuss that another time…

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

 

Bizarre Beasts: Pasenger Pigeon - August 09

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I spent an hour of my life listening to Ms. Sarah Suta and friend discuss – among other things, but primarily that – the life and the extinction of the passenger pigeon. (It happened in 1914 – spoiler alert!) Therefore, let us talk about this bird.

The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, evolved about 5.33 MYA – that is a couple of million years before the appearance of the Australopithecus primates in Africa, and unlike them, the pigeon lived only in North America. Despite being, well, a pigeon, it did not look much like the feral pigeon/rock dove that is found in the cities worldwide – rather it looked more like a mourning dove, for example: it was relatively slick, streamlined, and with a long tail. A body shape adapted for long distance travel, put otherwise.

Off topic: the doves and pigeons are more varied than people realize it, but they can be sorted into two baseline groups: slender and bulky. The dodo was an extreme case, but the other members of its’ ‘tribe’, the Raphini, are also big and bulky, as far as flying birds go; on the other hand, the passenger pigeon was a member of the Columbini tribe, and just its’ relatives, it flew just fine; in fact…

…In fact, the life and the ecology of the passenger pigeon was defined by flight: it was a migratory bird, travelling the North American continent to avoid winter and to find food. Like the other pigeons and doves, this bird was primarily herbivorous, and ate fruits and berries, as well as grains, cereals, and seeds: food that is easily digestible and found mostly on the trees. That is important, again, because unlike the homebody dodos, the passenger pigeons were migrants. What next?

The passenger pigeon’s migratory lifestyle was its’ defining feature: for centuries, the native North Americans had the humongous flocks of those birds as a part of life. Did they eat the pigeon? Yes, obviously, but their hunting weapons were… simple enough for the natives to be incapable to dent the great flocks, plus the passenger pigeons were rather adapted to co-existing with the non-too-friendly native North American humans, so they were able to handle it. Then the European settlers arrived. Everything changed.

Native North Americans lived in a homeostasis with nature, they conceived themselves to be a part of it, and adjusted their attitudes, and lifestyles, accordingly. The Europeans never had this idea, and adjusted the natural world to suit their needs. In case of the passenger pigeon, it meant that the European settlers began to kill and eat them in bulk; in a matter of decades, (say, from 1850s to 1900s), the great flocks of the passenger pigeons were gone.

Could the settlers and their American descendants have co-existed with the passenger pigeons? Not how, say, Colossal Biosciences would deliver this idea: the great flocks of those migratory birds did decimate the crops of fruits, and grain fields, and the like, and they would return time and again, making farming, such as it was, hardly possible. Instead, the passenger pigeons would have to be managed, (think modern forestry), maybe domesticated, maybe not. People have domesticated pigeons, obviously¸ but they were the ‘Old World pigeons’ that belonged to an entirely different genus from the passenger pigeon, (it had no immediate relatives, BTW), plus those pigeons were domesticated to be served as messengers and mail carriers – at first; the elaborate domestic breeds that don’t look like pigeons and certainly don’t appear to be able to function in the wild came later, when the need in carrier pigeons began to decrease. (However, some still exist even today). Whether the passenger pigeon could have been domesticated and managed as the modern ‘domestic’ pigeon was, is unknown.

The modern ‘domestic’ pigeon has a stable feral population, but unlike the extinct passenger pigeon, it has a broader diet and much smaller flocks, and it has larger egg clutches and/or reproductive rates: the passenger pigeon’s population was so huge and so stable, at first, that the passenger pigeons managed their population growth slowly: they could afford to take ‘hits’ that would hurt the populations of their less numerous cousins. The passenger pigeons were even able to survive the depredations of the colonists and their descendants – at first, and then they did not.

The Americans did try to preserve and/or to manage the last passenger pigeon populations in the U.S., for various reasons – but they failed. In the 1890s-1900s the concept of nature conservation was too new to be successful, plus the perpetually migrating, (ok, almost perpetually migrating, but still), were not the easiest birds to manage. Now, in the modern times, the situation is different, (technically speaking), but the idea of bringing back the passenger pigeon is not being discussed, at least not in public.

Why? Aside from the practical point of view – the passenger pigeon was perfectly edible to humans – the birds were more colorful, beautiful, and natural than the modern RL feral pigeon/rock dove is. They can fit into the modern world more easily than the dire wolf and the moa birds. They are also easier to manage than the dire wolf and the moa birds, and – easier to create, perhaps? Colossal Biosciences are ‘recreating’ the moa by modifying the tinamou with emu genes, or vice versa. Whatever hybrid will emerge, if it is viable and non-sterile, it still will not be a moa.

…Of course, with a ‘recreated’ passenger pigeon it will be the same situation: it will not be the original passenger pigeon species that died out by WWI; it will be something entirely new. However, it will be easier to pass the bird as the ‘recreated passenger pigeon’ and it will be easier to manage. However, no – CB has focused itself on the moa and the dire wolf (and whatever else it is doing behind the scenes). Sad, really.

…But not as sad as me watching a pair of young women painting miniature plastic figurines of apparent passenger pigeons for an hour, (that’s how long they painted, not how long I watched), while quietly discussing the abovementioned info about the bird. They have read the Wikipedia article about it and that is it. They had a private conversation about it, painted some plastic, and put it into the livestream. Oh, and there was a Kickstarter involved that had people send Sarah, Aimee, and friends money for Sarah and Aimee to do the above. Suddenly, Lindsey Nikole does not seem to be so mercenary anymore, and the CB – not such frauds.

That, however, is a story for another time. See you all soon!

 

F4, 'Ironheart' +etc. - July 27

Disclaimer: real life sucks. First OO is gone, and then HH, so now king Hades has to call queen Persephone to help him deal with the double emergency. Now onto the F4-2025 movie?

Hard to say. RL was not idle recently and CB unleashed the host species of their upcoming to be resurrected giant moa species – the greater tinamou and the emu. Why? Because among the ratites, the tinamous are the closest relatives to the extinct moa, whereas the emu…

CB also proclaims that the emu is a close relative to the moa birds. It is not – the two ratite lineages were quite distant from each other. However, it is the biggest modern ratite (and modern bird overall) after the African ostriches, so it is reasonable to theorize that CB is going to ‘augment’ the emu DNA with that of the tinamous and see what happens. In case of the wolves, this strategy worked… supposedly. Lately the trio of Romus, Remulus and Khaleesi vanished from MM, you know? The point, however, is that for most people grey and dire wolves are just… wolves, they expect them to be externally similar to each other, so when they see… well, wolf puppies, they don’t really care just what kind of wolf puppies they are – if CB says that they’re dire wolf puppies, they’ll believe CB, period.

With the birds, it is more complex, especially with such a unique species as the South Island Giant Moa: physically, it is quite different from both the emu and the tinamous. Whether CB will augment an emu with tinamou genes, or vice versa, the result will not be a moa, even if CB will successful. What will It be, (and that is a big if), is another question…

In addition, yes, again, the emu is not the best candidate for a resurrected moa – the moa preferred to live in forests, and the emu lives on open plains instead. Even behaviourally, the potential new hybrid will not be like the original species. The cassowaries, who are the emu’s closest relatives, do live in the forests, but they are smaller than the emu, and much more aggressive. Naturally, CB will not have anything to do with them. What else?

Well, the F4 film. To me, it feels like a successful reworking of the 2000s F4 films, which worked. This puts ‘First Steps’ miles above the ‘Ironheart’ mini-series, which is forgotten already.

Why?

Because ‘First Steps’ is a soft reboot of sorts: it takes place in a completely different universe from ‘the sacred timeline’ with completely new characters – and it is a success. Now Disney/MCU can make more Marvel adventures in this universe with an occasional something or other taking place in the original MCU timeline as well.

‘Ironheart’, on the other hand, takes place in the MCU, just as Disney/MCU lose interest in it. ‘Ironheart’ is better than SW-2025, (but that is a low bar), but worse than 2024 ‘Kraven’. It is not a mash of two different movies, more like a failed case of having its’ cake and eating it too. ‘Ironheart’ fluctuates from being depended on Tony Stark and his legacy in the MCU world, to being completely detached from it. The cast, the crew, everyone else did not really know what they were doing, and they did not care about it either. The result? ‘Ironheart’ is almost forgotten by now, as is MCU itself by now – somewhat, but that is another story.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

CB and the giant moa birds - July 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I was about to talk about ‘Ironheart’, perhaps, or the JWR movie, when Colossal Biosciences (CB) came back out of nowhere, and proclaimed that they are bringing back the giant moa birds. Pause.

Let us roll back to the dire wolf adventure – re-creating those mammals is already hard because they belong to a different genus, one that is separate from all of the genera of the modern canines, none of them, from the grey wolf to the grey fox of the Americas are close relatives of the dire wolf. Giving ‘primitive’ traits and characteristics to the modern grey wolf puppies does not make them dire wolves. Pause.

With the moa birds, the situation is different from the wolves’. See, the moa birds are part of the ratites, or Paleognath birds, a separate infraclass from the rest of the birds for they do not have the keel bone anymore… only not. One lineage does.

The tinamous of South America are enigmatic and little studied birds; they behave largely like the gamebirds of the rest of the world, (aside from Australia), and they can fly, however poorly. Yet, they are also ratite/Paleognath birds, and they are the closest modern relatives of the extinct moa birds. Silence.

Let us expand. All of the Paleognath birds are related to each other, but there are nuances. The African ostriches (two species) are a sister group to everyone else. Next are the America rheas (also two species), followed by the tinamous and the moa birds, and finally we have the extinct elephant birds of Madagascar and their closest living relatives – New Zealand kiwi birds on one hand, and the Australian emus and cassowaries on the other. Take a breath.

Now, with dire wolves, CB were able to swing it using the parallel evolutionary similarities between them and the modern grey wolves, and even that didn’t really float. With the giant moa birds, what candidates will CB use to ‘recreate’ them? Genetically their closest living relatives are the tinamous, but they do not behave or look anything like the giant moa birds did, so giving them the anatomical characteristics of the moa birds won’t work – the resulting mutations won’t be viable or beneficial most likely. Meanwhile, behaviorally, among the ratites, it is the cassowaries of Australia who are most like the giant moa birds are, but…

…But however the moa birds did behave, and we will never know because they became extinct because of the Maori before the Europeans could study them, the cassowaries are solitary birds with aggressive tempers who are not afraid of humans very much and who are known to attack them. Out of the two groups, the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries… ok, the biggest two species of the giant moa birds were bigger and more massive than the cassowaries are, and so, if CB and co. will try to make bigger and more massive modern cassowaries, they just might end with an ecological disaster, and they don’t want that, hopefully.

On the other hand, Peter Jackson, the maker of the LotR and the ‘Hobbit’ movies seems to have invested into CB’s recreation of the giant moa birds, so now, CB does have to deliver something, at least on the level with the genetically modified dire/grey wolf puppies, or else there might be a lawsuit and some sort of a PR disaster for the company. Pause.

Do I care about CB? Not particularly. The wolf story was not a bad one; they could have just stuck with mammals and went along. Now they are off into the deep end, and with at least one celebrity along for the ride, they are likely to have a PR explosion in their faces – but they asked for it. Still, it will be interesting to see as to what will develop out of this statement of theirs – but it probably will not be a giant moa bird. (We do not really have any DNA of theirs, incidentally).

End

Thunderbolts - May 3

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In part, it might be my doing – but I never denied it – so now let us talk about the new ‘Thunderbolts’ film instead.

First, it works. It works, because it mostly keeps away from politics, whether RL or MCU, and talks about the titular characters dealing, and defeating, their inner darkness, while managing the conflict with Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, or – ‘Don’t call me Val!’ Pause.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, who are a bit of Marvel’s Suicide Squad, (run by DC instead). Moreover, the DCEU itself is being remade right now, so let us not talk about it, and get back to MCU and the ‘Thunderbolts’.

…Throughout SW, there was no mention of Val or the Thunderbolts, but now, in the post-SW MCU, there is no mention of the Skrulls, the She-Hulk, or the Marvels; MCU is pretending that all of the above haven’t existed, and the CA: BNA movie, the D: BA TV series, and now – the ‘Thunderbolts’ film confirm it; there’s a distinct feeling of ‘in with the new’ with all of them. Even the titular team is named not after the general ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, aka the Red Hulk, but after some obscure piece of MCU in-verse trivia instead. Fun!

MCU’s Taskmaster/Taskmistress is dead – a pity – and there is no mention of Kate, even though she and Yelena had plenty of chemistry in ‘Hawkeye’. However, the market (and the political climate) directs, and with 4 years of a Republican president in charge of the U.S., Disney and its’ branches, including MCU, are changing. We have discussed it, when we talked about AAA, so let us not repeat ourselves. Anything else?

The special effects were impressive, another one of MCU characters that vanished was Rick Jones or whoever, who helped Natasha in her ‘Black Widow’ film; ah well. ScarJo is going to appear in the next JP reboot now, and it makes the ‘Black Widow’ film appear like a classical masterpiece. What else?

…Everett Ross, who appeared in both ‘Black Panther’ films, was also killed off in the SW; since he was ‘Don’t call me Val!’ ex-husband, this is somewhat important. Only not, since Val is flirting (sort of) with the Red Guardian (Alexei) already. Well, since the Thunderbolts (the characters) are forming some sort of a crazy family, (minus the dead Antonia), this is to be expected. Whether or not this will amount to anything is another story; for all we know, in the next film there will be no mention of the Thunderbolts’ team… just as there was no mention of Sam in the ‘Thunderbolts’ movie, not really, making Bucky’s appearance in CA: BNW kind of strange and unbalanced…

So, in conclusion: the ‘Thunderbolts’ work. They work as a movie, and in particular – as a standalone movie. However, Disney/MCU is a live action Marvel Comics Universe, which means that it all will be interconnected – in theory. In practice, as depicted by the now forgotten AoS, this might not be so. In AoS, the first 3 seasons were sufficiently tied, with ties to the greater MCU. From S4 onwards, however, this was not the case at all, and after the final, 6^th, or 7^th, season, no one is remembering AoS anymore; they didn’t even appear on the ‘What If?’ series, (aside from Coulson, who doesn’t quite count there). Put otherwise, quite regularly, MCU discards characters, plot lines, and more – there is no guarantee that the ‘Thunderbolts’ will be different.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Death of a unicorn - April 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Death of a Unicorn’ film.

Or not, as despite its’ title, the film is rather lackluster and banal. Pause.

Well, there is nothing to pause. A father-daughter duo bring down (accidentally) a unicorn foal and bring it to the father’s boss and his family, (idle rich, whereas the father and daughter are more of working-class people), who promptly abuse and experiment on it… wait. This makes ‘DOAU’ sound actually exciting, while in reality, it feels more like the second Jurassic World film, just with unicorns, rather than dinosaurs; it is a straightforward D&D RPG film, just set in a modern setting, with scientists rather than sorcerers or wizards. In addition, hey, some of the secondary characters are people of color, so there’s that box ticked off!.. Second pause.

Third try. ‘DOAU’ has a lazy script, and while the cast do their best to liven it, the script still fails. Yes, now, the unicorns are more than just horned horses, but so what? Until the 19^th century, perhaps, when the unicorn had a lot of cultural meaning, when the dominant view was that of the Western society, that it is a gentle, pious beast, then ‘DOAU’ could, and would, have been shocking and edgy, but not anymore. Now, the unicorns include the Far East’s qirin and kilin, (remember the last Grindelwald film? Those Far Eastern creatures had a relatively important role in it), animals that blur the lines between the dragon and the unicorn, though they are fully benign. In the RF, there is the Indrik-beast, a mighty monster that is reminiscent of the Near East’s karkadann, (more of a rhino than a horned horse). The Near East also had the al-miraj, a carnivorous rabbit with a single horn, as well as the shadhavar, a unicorn with a hollow horn – when the wind blew, it made a lovely sound with the horn; other creatures, including humans, would approach the shadhavar and be devoured. Finally, in the sea, there was the campuchurch, a marine unicorn with flippers rather than hooves. I.e., real life folklore had plenty of ‘monstrous unicorn’ ideas, but the A24 Company opted to go with a classic, with a twist on it that is just insipid.

The virtuous maiden… she’s played by Jenna Ortega; between “Wednesday” and the “Beetlejuice 2” film, she’s typecast; in this role, yes, she swears and has a nasal ring to make her more modern, but it doesn’t appeal to anyone, as neither the modern audiences nor the fans of the classical ‘the maiden and the unicorn’ approach will care for the ‘DOAU’ film. I did not care much for the ‘DOAU’ film and I have watched it. It ranks right there in the bottom with the ‘Dr. Odyssey’ franchise – but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

D:BA S1 finale - April 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The debate about the CB wolves being or not being dire has become more subdued and out of the spotlight, but real life still sucks.

The S1 finale of D: BA is as dramatic and well-made, as one expects from Disney/MCU – quite good. Of course, there is the question as to how Fisk is getting away with a de-facto secession from the rest of the U.S., but who cares? The first season of D: BA is over, and the world is ready to move on.

Also, keep in mind, that CA: BNA film is showing events that are happening at the same time, so the greater U.S. government just might not be finding time to deal with Fisk and his Napoleonic complex or whatever, and the Kingpin/Mayor is bribing people like crazy to get away with it, and MCU wants its’ own version of Gotham, so there you have it, folks! Question answered!

In other news, meanwhile, a rebooted version of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (WWD) is coming to you in 2025! The original WWD series is something of a classic by now, (and not only because it was released in 1999 either). The new WWD has some big shoes to fill – and the viewers will go Snowwhite-2025 on its’ ass if it fails.

Finally, back to PBS Nature show about the female empowerment and nature. Last week, the episode was actually done well – it balanced gender politics and wildlife protection… in the U.S., so what did the YouTube channel do? It downplays them in favour of a nature document about Africa. Maybe it was because of the entire dire wolf excitement, maybe not; this week, the show is about South America instead, and PBS Nature is not downplaying it at all. I wonder why…

…In addition The Weather Network is airing a rather nice documentary series about Canada, its’ provinces, and probably territories. It is quite fun to watch, and I advise you to do so – it certainly is better than just to argue about dire wolves…

For now, then, this is it. See you all soon!

D:BA and dire wolves - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then Colossal Biosciences Company threw dire wolves at us. Pause.

Initially, I intended to discuss the penultimate S1 Daredevil episode, which had Bullseye coming back, and Murdock (Daredevil) taking a bullet for Fisk (Kingpin) because of reasons? Apparently? Does anyone care about those two anymore anyhow? Dire wolves are more interesting than MCU, these days.

…Of course, these days, at least some news outlets discuss with an authentic feeling, who makes a better jam and/or spread – king Charles III of Great Britain or Megan Markle, his younger daughter-in-law. Seriously, and compared to this sort of news, MCU’s D: BA show is cutting-edge political drama or something along those lines. Nevertheless, what about the dire wolves?

…I am a sceptic when it came to CB’s claims. See, while the RL dire wolf (let us leave Westeros out of this, the topic is already quite confusing), is a true canine, (as opposed to a bear-dog, a bear, or any other kind of mammal carnivore), it also belonged to a completely different genus than the modern wolves do. However, so what?

See, even CB admits (sort of) that their dire wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – are not exactly purebred dire wolves, more like grey wolf/dire wolf hybrids. Eh? The problem with that statement that in nature hybrids occur only between animals that share the same genus, albeit belonging to different species. Pause.

Let us try again. We are talking only about mammals here; in other animal groups, such as birds (say, songbirds), or amphibians (such as the tailed salamanders) the hybrid situation might be quite different, but along the mammals? Either it works or it does not.

See for yourselves. On one hand, we have horses and donkeys, whose hybrids are sterile and can’t really make a new species; big cats, whose hybrids aren’t sterile but can’t survive in the wild due to health-related reasons; and the two species of the gnu antelope, whose hybrid offspring also aren’t sterile but have plenty of health defects that they die quickly enough. Pause.

On other hand, we have the beluga and the narwhale whales, for example, or the better-known polar and grizzly brown bears, whose hybrid offspring are viable and are increasing in numbers. The wolf branch of the wild dog family, incidentally, is in this boat too, as the various coyote/grey wolf/domestic dog hybrids of eastern North America are growing more numerous and are establishing their own independent populations…

That said, those wild dogs are all in the Canis genus, while the extinct dire wolf is not, not anymore, at least not at the moment. In addition, if you look at the related animals that belong to different genera, they do not form hybrids – just look at rhinos or elephants, for example. African and Asian elephants do not hybridize, not even in captivity, unlike the big cats, and the black and white rhinos of Africa do not hybridize – unlike the feral domestic dogs and the Ethiopian wolf. The latter is a separate, albeit related, species to the grey wolf of the northern hemisphere – the term ‘wolf’ covers almost two dozen animal species, living and extinct, most of whom are related to each other (i.e. they’re canines), but some are not…

Where were we? Right, the DNA of the dire wolf isn’t in as a good a condition as that of the woolly mammoth is – what’s left of the dire wolf are mainly fossilized bones, teeth, and the like. Extracting DNA from them, even if the dire wolf was in the same genus as the grey wolf, doesn’t guarantee success; the fact that the surrogate mothers were domestic dogs, aka a third canine species, separate from the other two (I’m going with this theory), only complicated the situation: how did their pregnancies go? How did the births go? Did the mothers survive or not? However, no, all we get are sterilized reports of a success, and automatic reactions to those reports. Neither is a reliable source of information and so far no one outside of CB has much to go on. Still…

Remember Ms. Nicole from my last week’s entry? Or rant, whatever. As it was said, she was hired by CB, or something similar to make six videos about mass extinctions; so far, two of them were aired, but we talked about this; the point is that one would expect her to jump onto the dire wolf promotion bandwagon, because CB are her employers or something, but no. She is keeping mum about them instead and seems to have outright distanced herself from the CB. Does she know something about this that we do not? Maybe, maybe not, but I, for one, am sceptical of just what CB’s latest wolf pups are. Real life does suck, but sometimes it is less sucky and more complex and complicated instead…

This is it for now. See you all soon!

D:BA 'Art' - April 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us… still talk about it, in a manner of speaking. First, in regards to PBS Nature: if their first, rhino-based episode was a product placement without any product, their second episode, which talked about Madagascar’s lemurs was a complete opposite – it delivered. It talked about Madagascar and its’ rewilding programs, in terms of lemur return (to the wild), in general terms – such as the replanting of the bamboo that the lemurs eat (the episode was de-facto about the greater bamboo lemur), and also – about the wilderness education of the Madagascar people. There was very little aesthetics, plenty of authenticity, and the only unnecessary element, in a manner of speaking, was the gender issue – this online show is about women taking care of the wild, but taking care of the wild and humanity’s social gender politics do not really overlap…

Speaking of humanity’s (ok, the West’s) social gender politics? Let us mention Ms. Lindsey Nicole. I’m probably not the biggest fan of her – this driven and determined young woman wants to get ahead of her competition, and remain afloat; in particular, when Biden and the Democrats were in charge, she made a point of mentioning her alternative sexual orientation, (but nothing more, nothing concrete). Now that we got a ‘new’ U.S. president and his Republican political party, all of her mentions of her alternative sexual lifestyle are gone – LN wants to stay afloat… and she’s succeeding: just last week she launched into yet another online series, this one a collaboration with another YouTube channel, a series that deals with mass extinctions… it is essentially a re-telling of Animal Planet’s™ ‘Animal Armageddon’ series. You have to give LN her credit though – she is a great populizator, her aggressive ‘shock and awe’ delivery style works, and she is always open to collaborate with other people – she really wants to be successful, and so she is. Kudos and a shout-out to her.

In addition, what about this week’s D: BA episode, ‘Art’? It works about as well as you would expect it to work: this season’s mini-bad, Muse (a male villain) is dead already since the season is done in another couple of weeks, and on its’ own, D: BA works just fine. As a part of the greater MCU, however…

‘Mayor’ Wilson Fisk has introduced the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, or AVTF. Um. While we acknowledge its’ connections with some RL issues in the U.S., what about the Sokovia accords? In the ‘She-Hulk’, Matt himself says that they are done and gone, so shouldn’t AVTF be outdated or something? As the Kingpin, Fisk did not care about popular opinion, of course, at least not too much, but as a mayor of NYC, he should, and he is intelligent enough to recognize this fact.

Listen, in RL, analogues of AVTF, such as ICE, exist because people – some people, including some of the Americans, and quite a few of them – approve of them and their actions; numbers matter, and if enough people approve of them, these ‘analogues’ will stay and even flourish, and propaganda – especially the mild one delivered by Disney and its’ daughter organizations – won’t be enough to see them off.

…Not to mention that even internal American propaganda has its’ limits, as the outcome of the elections-2016 showed, for example. However, Disney and co. cannot learn, or do not want to learn and accept, or something. Since they do not, their promoted values do not stick, as the companies cannot change and adapt – it could cost them money in the end, and they do not want that. Much better just to do a token service and be done with it. The viewers and the public will not object too much – they can adapt, on the other hand, as demonstrated by Lindsey Nicole… Real life certainly can suck, and it does.

This is it for now – see you all soon!