> Pine martens were driven to extinction in England at the turn of the 20th century by the loss of forests and persecution, with gamekeepers in particular targeting the animals for preying upon pheasants and poultry.
> Studies have also shown the pine martens are effective predators of grey squirrels, giving hope that they may provide a natural control for the introduced squirrel, which damages trees in commercial plantations and has virtually wiped out the red squirrel in England.
If, like me, you were wondering whether they also predate red squirrels, apparently pine martens hunt and eat grey squirrels far more, as they're able to easily raid grey squirrel nests. Red squirrels have evolved alongside pine martens and have better awareness to the threat they pose. This article was informative:
Anecdotally I can say that red squirrels and Pine Martens can co-exist quite happily, as I live in an area where we see both regularly and the presence of the Pine Martens doesn't seem to intimidate the squirrels or reduce their numbers significantly.
Also turns out that Pine Martens are quite fond of peanuts.
Sometimes they might go further on suitable thin branches, but I doubt that this matters much. I have never heard of a case when a marten could not advance towards a squirrel due to fear of breaking the branch.
What red squirrels can do and martens cannot do, is to jump down from the tree from a relatively great height without injury, due to their low weight and fluffy hair and then climb into another tree, far from the marten.
It is likely that this behavior of some squirrels is what has lead to the evolution of the flying squirrels.
Seems interesting! But I’m referencing the complete lack of mention (Afaict) of unions, syndicates, and socialism more broadly. Capitalism is diametrically opposed to workers rights, by definition — the most rights you can hope for are the ones that you can win in the free market. Which, ya know, if that was enough why would we need an NGO think tank?
It just seems like empty talk, in other words. Giving workers more of a voice is 100% meaningless unless that voice is literal direct power over the decisions taken by their firm. Not, like, pizza party listening sessions once a quarter.
Hopefully I’m just missing it! I mostly only looked at their 10 principles.
I skipped ahead in the book to chapter 8 entitled "Rewiring the Machine", which delves into what to do, and the first point is "Worker Power", with unions specifically mentioned.
He recounts this story in his book, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is a cracking read. The audiobook is narrated by him, so I imagine that would be worth a listen (not done it myself). I had the privilege to see him talk in London several years ago, and the thing that struck me from both the talk and the book, was how curious he is is about things, and his general attitude of just trying to do the things he was interested in regardless of obstacles, exploring his ideas, no matter how hard, outlandish or crazy they were.
We've run the Juice Shop as a capture the flag competition at my work twice now, once as an individual event, and then a few years later as a team event. Heartily recommend it, it's a lot of fun, you learn a lot, and it's very, very addictive. A great way of learning how these exploits work.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. I think where kindness really plays a key role is not passing snap judgements on people and their motivations. It's easy to interpret people's actions or intentions in a negative light, thinking they don't care or are incompetent. I would also like to add that kindness is not just being kind to other people, but to yourself as well. It's easy to beat ourselves up about the mistakes we make, or blaming ourselves for outcomes that sometimes are beyond our control. We can't be perfect.
For the most part, I like to live in a world where the default position is that we're mostly well-intentioned, rising apes rather than fallen angels (RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett). This is clearly not always the case, and it's important to accept that, but it shouldn't stop me from still aspiring to be as kind as possible in my own life.
100%. I'd also add that it doesn't mean you don't have to make tough decisions that some people won't like. But there's a way to do that that leaves those people knowing that your decision-making process was fair and not capricious. That it's in the best interests of the team, project, organization, company.
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