ada

Tuis are from New Zealand. I was there on holiday recently and took the chance to see a lot of birds I normally don't get to see (I'm from Australia). New Zealand has a really unique space in terms of animal life, because it's so isolated. Before the arrival of humans (less than 1000 years ago), there were no large mammals, and no notable land based predators. This means that birds there have filled a lot of niches that would normally be filled by mammals, and also, many of them have lost the ability to fly well (or at all), because flying put them at more risk of air based predators. Some of the birds (like the New Zealand Robins) have no fear, and will come right up to people as they scavenge around looking for insects you might have disturbed.

As a result, since the arrival of humans and the introduction of dogs, rats, stoats, introduced birds etc many New Zealand birds have gone extinct, or under serious threat of extinction. Thankfully the Tui isn't one of them, and is doing relatively well compared to a lot of other NZ native birds. They're a pretty common sight around most of NZ.

That being said, this guy was on Tiritiri Matangi Island, which was an absolute experience itself. The island is a nature reserve, that has been reforested over the last 30 years, and has had a great deal of effort put in to clearing it off all of the introduced land based predators. So birds that are rare elsewhere thrive on this island. Even though the Tui in the photo is quite common, I got to see a lot of other birds that you're unlikely to see on the mainland. It's one of a handful of similar islands around the country, but in this close, it was only a 90 minute ferry ride from the capital city of Auckland, which makes it very accessible. New Zealand has had so much success with projects like these, they're now introducing similar zones on the mainland. Zealandia, near Wellington is on the mainland, and completely fenced off from land predators with carefully designed fences, and the use of mammal specific poison within the sanctuary for critters that do slip through. The goal is over the next decade, to clear the whole city of Wellington from land based predators https://wellington.govt.nz/news-and-events/news-and-information/our-wellington/2024/11/predator-free-wellington-to-expand-efforts-citywide

Yeah, it does

drag has stated that drag accepts they/them as well.

You got your comments removed for misgendering. Your mod log history is right there

Weirdest

I'm referring to a trans person using the attack helicopter slur as an act of empowerment and reclamation, and getting turned on by the community for it.

The point being that she looked like a troll to many people, and was attacked for it, but she was not a troll, and the over the top response did more damage than any troll could have done.

If people cannot understand your experience, it's not because you are trans and they are cis

Well, it's not just that. As you say, even trans folk can't understand other trans folks experience. But that still speaks to my point. Acceptance shouldn't be gatekept behind understanding

FYI, that post was incorrect (and the user has been banned for comments made elsewhere). You can see some clarifications in my reply to the comment.

It's a satire account and community.

It's a nice story, but it's not what happened.

Drag was active long before I made the pronoun post, and that post is the second post I've made on the topic in the last couple of years.

Drags pronouns are to be respected. Everyone's pronouns are to be respected. It's pretty simple.

The need for some people to need to put an "except..." at the end of that last sentence is something I will never understand.

That hasn't changed, and the position long predates your account being created.

That's not quite correct. An instance ban works just fine without corresponding community bans. What didn't work, was content removal. An instance ban issued with removal of all content posted by a user used to just remove content locally without federating the removal.

To get around it, instance bans now issue community bans too, so that content removal federates. However they still create community bans it even when content removal isn't selected during the instance ban.

How did I protect drag specifically? Drag was banned from several blahaj communities and I was quite explicit in support of community mods right to make that decision.

The protection I did offer is the same protection I offer all our users, which is freedom from deliberate misgendering.

Though I can see why you might take issue with that, given that you just misgendered drag, despite our ongoing conversation.