Endlings 'akikiki bird - June 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about this week’s ‘Endlings’ episode – the ‘akikiki bird? Pause.

By now it is evident even to the BB cast and crew that ‘Endlings’ came to a dead end – there’re only so many variations of the story that you can have when it comes to endlings – to extinctions. In the story of ‘akikiki, the extinction occurred in the wild – in captivity, this bird is still managed and raised and controlled by the people; how will those birds act when they are released in the wild isn’t talked about.

Right, the eventual return of the ‘akikiki. The reason why it is extinct in the wild is the introduction of the avian malaria, made worse by the climate change. Right now, the mosquitoes are being managed – people are trying to swamp the Hawaii mosquito population with genetically incompatible males so that the mosquitos would lay infertile eggs and die out. Pause.

Let me try again. The ‘akikiki birds are being raised in captivity – it costs money and the people who are raising the ‘akikiki birds are getting paid. To breed incompatible mosquitoes, you need money, and so the breeders are being paid. Somehow, the ‘akikiki birds became cash cows, and even the people at BB/’Endlings’ sense this, and are uncomfortable by this, and so they spent talking, (for only 10 minutes), how hard it was to acquire the ‘akikiki eggs, and how hard it is to raise them in captivity, and so on. They are right, but it does not deny the fact that the ‘akikiki birds and all that’s related to them became a money-making process, and people are good at keeping money-making processes going, you know?

The BB/’Endlings’ people know this too, and so they wrapped-up the ‘akikiki bird story quite fast – maybe one day it’ll return to the wild, and maybe it won’t – the climate change situation is still unresolved. Real life sucks, you know?

This is it for now. See you all soon.

PJO, Riordan, and Ms. Haynes - Jan 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. My apologizes for vanishing for the rest of 2025, but real life sucks, and I did not have a regular access to computer until now. I really hate my life, you know? That said, the ‘Endlings’ have ended for now, (and we will talk about them some other time), MCU is about to bring forth ‘Wonder-Man’ by the end of Jan 2026, (and we will talk about it then), so what is left?

The second season of PJO, mostly. After the excitement of the first season, the second is going down much quietly, people have accepted this PJ reality and just go with it – or not. The sirens, for example, clearly designed via 3.5 edition’s D&D Monster Manual II, are just… not working. This probably brings us to Annabeth (and Clarisse). Pause.

Once upon a time, there was plenty of racebending artwork – not just of PJ, but also of HP and the like – and then the first season of PJO came out, and racebending became official, and unofficially? The racebending stopped. Even via the AI, as well as the more traditional artwork. In fact, the popularity of the entire Riordan franchise still appears to be gradually dying down, which brings us to Ms. Natalie Haynes.

Ms. Haynes, judging by her books, both fiction and non-fiction, wouldn’t object being noticed by Disney or someone like that; to achieve this, she’s trying to be politically progressive, especially in ‘Deific Might’ (that features a particularly cheeky goddess Athena on the cover)… just when the progressive politics are dying – thanks to the Donald (at the moment). Moreover, as I wrote in 2025, most of the time, Ms. Haynes’ prose is more mind than passion, more Athena than Medusa (by her standards), and while she does get passionate (say, about Phaedra in ‘Pandora’s Jar’), most of the time she is not. Therefore, it is rather hard to get excited/involved/etc. in her writings as well. You read them, and you are done. Onto Athena?

Athena… is a special case for Ms. Haynes – she is clearly her favorite goddess, she tries to put her into every entry of PJ and DM. Ms. Haynes tends to be long-winded anyhow, (and it doesn’t always work in her favor), but when Athena, (or Odysseus, Penelope, or Homer), is talked about, she becomes especially so. Ms. Haynes has her favorites, and no matter how hard she tries to some across as a politically progressive person, she does not always achieve this. So what does Riordan has to do with this?

As we have seen the goddess Athena in PJO, she too is now Afro-American, as is Annabeth, her daughter. This means nothing, because Athena is a fully blooded goddess and can look like everyone. This is traditional, in fact, because in Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’, (as well as the later works, especially Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’) Athena was quite fond of disguises and could be anyone, before revealing her godly might and surprising the unlucky mortal. She got it from Zeus, of course – the king of gods and mortals really loved disguises, especially when it came to seduction; he usually didn’t go as himself (unless the other party themselves was divine, like Leto or Maia), but rather as someone else – as the lawful husband when he sired Heracles, as his own daughter when he seduced Calypso, as a bull, or a golden rain, or – you get the idea. How does Athena fit here?

Zeus was worried about himself being dethroned. After all, his father, who was dethroned by Zeus himself, so there was tradition, dethroned his grandfather and since it was in Zeus’s disfavor, he did not like it. Therefore, his Olympian children were rather worried about him whipping out his old thunderbolt and sending them off the Olympus into who knows where. There are actually myths about Apollo (and sometimes Poseidon) having this sort of experience – usually serving mortals as well. Riordan’s TTOA books have precedent on their side.

For Athena’s part, she was the daughter of Metis. Zeus was worried that Metis will bear a son, who will dethrone him, so he swallowed her, and Metis bore Athena, a daughter, instead. I.e., Athena is the son that Zeus always wanted – a daughter who cannot inherit his throne (or deposit him – theoretically). In addition, for her part Athena is always obedient to Zeus in the canon and usually does what he wants and nothing more. That is one.

Two is that Athena is wisdom, true, but… the wisdom she gives is the one that the person already has. Look at Aphrodite. As love, she can be anyone, so all of those depictions of her are all true – she can take any shape, from a skinny blonde-haired woman to a short and busty redhead, to anyone else – and she will always be Aphrodite. Athena, too, can be anyone or anything – an old woman, a bird (and not just an owl), your best friend or even your sibling – and she will always give wise advice. Only… everyone has their own wisdom (and common sense), and that is what Athena does. She tells the person not so much what they want to hear, but rather what they are already thinking; she helps them work through the thinking process and arrive where they want to go mentally – and that can be dangerous. In the ‘Iliad’, for example, Athena pretended to be one of Hector’s brothers (who wasn’t Paris), who promised to help Hector with his fight with Achilles – and so Hector went to fight Achilles, and his brother (let alone Athena) wasn’t there to help him, and that was one of the reasons he died.

The rub there, of course, is that it might’ve been one of Hector’s brothers (who wasn’t Paris), who wanted Hector to die so that he can be the next commander in chief of the Trojan forces, and Athena just helped him figure out how to do it – how to set Hector up. Athena, the wisdom, does what you want to do, she helps you get to your goal without caring about morality, and if you fail, or succeed, and the price is paid – Athena is already gone; she usually does not care about mortals, normally she does not care about the mortals at all…

You know who, or what, this sounds like? An AI or a robot. Athena is almost all intellect, normally; she does not have much emotions. Poor Annabeth has her work cut out for her trying to impress her divine parent – it is not that Athena does not care about her children; it’s that she doesn’t do that emotionally. Moreover, I do not think that she would have children without Zeus’ permission – he is not exactly grandfather material, he is always suspecting that there is a rival within his family and so he keeps his thunderbolt ready and primed. If he suspected that Athena was not loyal to him, he would smite her too – as he did with Apollo, most likely. Therefore, Athena can prance before Ares and proclaim that she is better than he is at war and his domains, but in reality? It is a superiority of a computer/robot over a human being (in a matter of speaking), and we all know how it goes does in a sci-fi movie (or a TV series) – the human eventually triumphs…

It would have been an interesting twist, if in PJO Riordan did not make Ares the villain in the ‘Lightning Thief’ book, but rather Athena: she could have started as this flawless, perfect being, and then gradually the titular hero and his friends realized that this perfection is hollow and that Athena is manipulating everyone without caring about anyone. Chronus, of course, would still be the puppeteer; Athena would be free from his control and would spend at least a couple of books putting her life back together after this disaster. (Instead of Trials of Apollo, we could have Trials of Athena – that would be interesting too). However, no – Ares is a stereotypical villain, Percy defeats him, and Ares recovers his standing by the third book of PJO, the end. Clichéd and boring – no wonder that Riordan’s world is slowly fading into overall oblivion, Disney+ series or not. Meanwhile, Ms. Haynes?

The same thing. Her fiction books, feel like they have been written by an A.I. (or Athena) – smooth, flawless, easily forgettable. Her non-fiction books… Ms. Haynes tries to be politically progressive, but sometimes she sounds like a neophyte who arrived at progressive politics late in her life and who tries to compensate for this fact with extra zeal – and sometimes she sounds more like an opportunist, who doesn’t care about the progressive politics but wants to use them to get ahead… isn’t that Disney? It sure is – no wonder Ms. Haynes is trying to hit all the right notes and be notices – after all, if Disney worked for Riordan, and made him successful and rich, why not for her?

…Because Riordan actually has passion in his writing and emotion. Some of his novels – especially the second pentalogy, where Percy and friends meet the Romans and have to ally with them to defeat the giants – are quite good. Ms. Haynes’ novels are not so much. (In addition, authors are publishing fictive books based on Greek myths quite regularly in the last few years, so Ms. Haynes is also getting lost in the crowd). However, hey, Athena would be proud!

…Athena is not the goddess of creativity or literature – that is the role of the Muses and Apollo. Riordan invested into the latter a lot – five entire books, a whole series. Maybe Ms. Haynes should try to do something similar rather than sticking with ‘girl power’ – something that Athena does not have much in common with anyhow. (Seriously, Athena does not care all that much for mortal women, unlike the other Olympian gods and goddesses). However, hey, it is her call. (The real life sucks, again – unlike the sirens of PJO who are not even good or bad – just bizarre, and looking like some animatronics gone wrong – but that is a rant for another time).

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

Endlings: Guinea Worm - Dec 08

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and recently I have an especially problematic development in my family – but no one wants to hear about it, right? Therefore, since there is no counterarguments, let us get back to the BB ‘Endlings’ series. This week’s topic – the Guinea worm.

In fact, this is a parasitic roundworm, a nematode, who has several hosts, including humans as well as copepods – crustacean cousins. For the copepods, the Guinea worms (they actually have a scientific name, but let’s just stick with this one, as it is quite distinctive) mean one thing, but for humans they result in a lot of pain, as the females of this species, (and those roundworms have both males and females), burst through skin on human legs and lay their eggs in the water, where the larvae encounter the copepods and etc. Those parasites are unpleasant and painful, and on their episode, BB talked about how humans plan to exterminate them all, to drive them into extinction. Pause.

Let’s be honest – the narrator of team BB is himself uncomfortable when talking about this topic: these days, driving any other live organism into deliberate extinction smells of hubris, and that feels even more wrong – gods, even polytheistic ones, tended to punish hubris quite severely…

On a more practical and less esoteric note, I feel doubtful that humans – us – will be able to drive the Guinea worm with extinction without a hitch. Why? Because of the same arrogance, but differently…

Earlier in 2025, for example, the U.S. talked about exterminating several thousand barred owls in order to save the spotted owls. This proclamation was met quite sceptically and unenthusiastically: a slaughter of several thousand owls is not a pleasing perspective to anyone sane and coherent, you know?

On the other hand, there is the practical aspect – and how are people to execute this… execution? Both of those owl species are not as showy as the great horned owl or the snowy owl are, for example – they are shy, retiring birds that hunt during the day in tree hollows, in the tree tops, and so on – they aren’t found so easily, (plus they got impressive camouflage and all). Finding them is not easy or simple or fast, so fulfilling the kill quota is something else, so it is not too surprising to learn that the talk of killing the barred owls has dissipated… Back to the roundworms?

On the Guinea Worm episode the narrator mentioned some other diseases that were eradicated – supposedly, only not entirely, and they can come back. He swears that this is not the case with the Guinea worms, if they are gone, they are gone. Perhaps they will be, but humans are actually bad at driving animals to extinction directly, as a rule it is done indirectly instead, so in this case, if we are driving the Guinea worm to extinction intentionally and directly, then there is a chance that it, this attempt, will fail and we will have something worse on our hands. When humans mess with nature, it is bad. When we do not and act as if we are a part of it, it is not an improvement either. This is the unintentional message of ‘Endlings’.

More precisely, humans should decide if the Guinea worm nematode is as natural as we are and thus we should endure it as our ancestors did in ancient Egypt and medieval Europe, or not – humans are almost supernatural in their power of managing and shaping Earth and nature, and the Guinea worm nematode can go bye-bye and good riddance. No one will miss it. It is a question of human ethics, and that is a discussion for another time.

…Of course human competence is also a part of this question, (re: the owls). If we cannot execute the… extinction due to ‘mechanical’ reasons, then all of the ethics suddenly become more or less redundant instead… Isn’t real life fun?

Well, no, not to me anyhow. However, thank you for your visit to my blog. See you all soon!

Endlings: Przewalski's horse and Genghis Khan - Nov 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about BB ‘Endlings’ once more. This week’s animal – the Przewalski’s horse.

Now, last week’s episode, about the Thylacine, (aka the Tasmanian wolf), was rather lacklustre; this week’s episode is something else because of two points. One is that the Thylacine and the Przewalski’s wild horseserve as foils to each other – both were captured for the zoos, but while that served just as an extra cause of extinction for the Thylacine, for the Przewalski’s horse it was a salvation – the species was able to survive its’ extinction in the wild In the zoos, and those zoo animals served as the initial breeding stock for the rewilding program. Only, as BB points out, returning a formerly extinct (in the wild) animal into the wild is only the beginning, much more management lies ahead. This just might be a subtle criticism to such programs, as Colossal, who appear to do exactly that… once they get to it, of course. When that happens is another question, but BB is gearing up to be prepared already.

That said, the point that BB brings up in this week’s episode is a good one – humans are still the dominant force on the planet, many things happen on Earth with their involvement, and living space is one of them. Namely: to survive in the wild, the Przewalski’s horses need a certain ecosystem, and without human help that would be impossible. Moreover, to achieve this ecosystem, to accommodate the Przewalski’s wild horses, a certain amount of land had to be given up to them, land that could be used otherwise, by other species, including humans. In Mongolia, In case of the Przewalski’s horse, this came true. In other cases, it might not have, and as BB point out, PR and aesthetics (and national pride) were very important, if not crucial, in achieving this – and we come to the second point.

Genghis Khan. One of Earth history’s lynchpins. In this week’s historical anecdote, he, supposedly, saw some of the wild Przewalski’s horses in his day and age, but his horse was spooked by them, and did not approach them. Good for the horses! GK was one of the most formidable and ruthless leaders in human history, and his take on nature was to organize giant, organized (sorry about the repetition), hunts, that took their toll on nature, including wild horses, most likely. Yes, the scale with modern hunting is not comparable, but hunting alone does not cover all of the extinctions on this planet…

Back to Przewalski’s horses and Thylacines, another reason why the latter perished while the former did not… yes, because an Australian marsupial had a worse time surviving in old time zoos than an Asian placental mammal. However, the fact that horses have an entirely different PR than wolves (or anything wolf-related) do, also served a fact. Humans – especially those of the West, of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (initial) origin wanted to save Przewalski’s horses, and so they did, while the Thylacine… while with the Thylacine, it was the other way, and so the Thylacine is gone, extinct, at least officially… Real life sucks, remember?

Well, this is it for now. 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!