Hey Everyone, Please Consider Buying The 2024 Itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- It's 373 Games, Game-making

Good News Network

Bison Ranchers Return Thousands of Animals to Native Lands and Witness Total Rejuvenation of Ecosystem

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet.

"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.

Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.

That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.

“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.

“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”

As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.

Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.

The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.

Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.

Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.

Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.

Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.

“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"

-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.

During the 3 years gap, Minato tried really hard to remake Pipe's type, but every time they were a little bit "different" (but all cute)

It's about time for LGBTQ+ youth to take back their power, so we're awarding grants up to $10,000 for projects that support LGBTQ+ youth in their own communities and schools

"But what if my school's not accepting or doesn't have a GSA club?"

We hear that - that's why LGBTQ+ youth can pair up with various different types of organizations to apply for a Changemakers grant, including:

• Nonprofits

• Public libraries

• LGBTQ+ centers

• Public schools and GSA clubs

• And other youth-supporting community organizations!

A fave example: One of our previous grantees from a GSA club in Vermillion, South Dakota couldn't get their school on board with their idea. So instead, they paired up with a local mural artist organization to create a giant sparkly unicorn Pride mural on the side of a downtown restaurant - which went on to earn the town a USA Today Reader's Choice award for small towns with the best art scenes!

Youth + a partner organization can apply for a grant now by May 5th at itgetbetter.org/changemakers

gofundme.com

Donate to Hot meals 4 Starved Palestinian Kids in north Gaza, organized by Hani Almadhoun

Do you know what it’s like to watch your family starve? I do. My… Hani Almadhoun needs your support for Hot meals 4 Starved Palestinian

Donate!!!!!! Boost!!!!!

please think of the disabled people of gaza. please think of the diabetic people of gaza. please think of the neurodivergent people of gaza. please think of those whose lives are relying on medicine that has either stopped coming in due to the blockade, or is available in such scarcity that its price has skyrocketed.

we're approaching winter. on top of the challenge of securing waterproof tents and sufficiently warm clothing, some diabetic people in gaza have stopped taking their insulin as they can no longer afford it. those who are able to acquire it for now know every shot may be their last.

I can't believe I have to say this again

The Atlantic

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

Look. I've posted about how piracy fucks the little guys at least twice already, but guys, seriously, I'm being so fucking real with you, PIRACY FUCKS THE LITTLE GUY.

And this is just another shining example of how.

8 of my titles are on this list. 8 of my titles that I spent months writing, editing, revising, crying over, screaming over, plotting, putting my heart into have been pirated, and then used to train some soulless AI that will then go on to make money for a big corporation, without my consent.

And I'm on the lower end. Other authors literally have over 100 works on this list. New authors just getting into this have their debut books on this list.

I repeat, this was done without our consent. This was done because someone pirated our book, and made it available to the general public for free.

So when I beg you to please not pirate books. When I tell you that it's literally ripping the potential to make our art our livelihood from our hands. When I say that every author would 100% rather you come to us and ask us about where to find our books outside of pirate sites, or even to see if we have any ARCs available if you can't afford it. . .

I do so because in the end the only one you're hurting is artists who are just like you. Just trying to put food on the table. Working long hours. Giving up weekends. Putting everything they've got into their work. And all we're asking for is that you not pirate our books, so that we can pay our bills.

We do this thing because we love it, but there's no reason that doing something we love that provides entertainment for others shouldn't make us enough to live off of. If you don't believe that, I'm afraid you've fallen for the brainwashing bullshit that some jobs "just aren't worth anything". And that, my dears, is a larger problem than I have the ability to express.

Everyone should make a fair wage from drive thru workers to writers.

Everyone should be able to pay their bills.

Don't pirate shit.

Thank you, goodnight.

Good morning people! The world unpaused their favorite genocide today.

DO NOT STOP SPEAKING FOR PALESTINE.

The thing is that like “edgy humour” really is a GIANT red flag among young white men……you hear white boys making racist jokes all the time but people tend to brush it off and assume they’ll grow out of it or that they’re just going through a harmless edgy humour phase and like…..some of them might grow out of it but that’s not the POINT! They’re racist NOW! They’re spreading islamophobic ideas NOW and we brush it off because we assume they’ll grow out of it in the future but whether they do or not is irrelevant; they need to grow out of it Right. Now. Or more lives will be lost.

Anyone who reblogs this post will have their user written on a poster saying "We Stand With Palestine" that I hope to put up somewhere in the village I live in, or the town that the village is next to.