Daniel Carden Nemo

@danielnemo.bsky.social

1632 Followers 1704 Following

EIC @ https://www.amsterdamreview.org/ danielnemo.com

Did you know that proximity to the mother is an inborn need for all mammals?
Did you know that prairie dogs have a language so detailed they can describe the color, size, and speed of approaching predators?
Izmir, Three O’Clock Just ahead on the nearly empty street two beggars, one of them with no legs, carried on the other's back. They stood—as an animal stands on a midnight road, frozen in the headlights— for a moment, then went on crossing the street like schoolboys at play while the myriad clocks of the midday heat ticked in space.
Are you aware that industries promoting meat and dairy products have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, even if it's at odds with scientific, environmental, or ethical insights?
Did you know that goats outperform dogs in certain problem-solving tasks involving memory and learning?
Did you know that crows remember human faces for years, teaching their young who to trust and who to fear?
Pentecost of the stones. And with crackling tongues... The city weightless in the wide sweep of the midday hour. A burial in seething light. The drum that drowns out the pounding fists of trapped eternity. The eagle swirls higher and higher over the sleepers. Sleep, where the millwheel turns like thunder. The stomping of a blindfolded horse. The pounding fists of trapped eternity.
Did you know that most farm animals are slaughtered at a fraction of their natural lifespan, often before reaching social or cognitive maturity?
Did you know that octopuses can use tools, solve puzzles, and express moods through rapid color changes of their skin?
It’s getting dark in Huelva: sooty palm trees and the train whistle's darting silver-white bats. The streets have filled with people. And the woman rushing through the crowd carefully weighs the day’s last light on the scales of her eyes.
Did you know cows have best friends and experience stress when separated from them?
The probing eye turns sunbeams into police batons. And in the evening: the clamor from a party downstairs shoots up through the floor like surreal flowers. Across the plain. Darkness. The car seemed rooted in place. An anti-bird shrieked in the starless void. The albino sun hung above dark lakes hurled onto the plains.
Is it worth asking whether taste or tradition are strong enough justifications for actions that involve large-scale suffering (around 6 billion animals killed every day by the food industry)?
Did you know that elephants pass the mirror test of self-recognition, mourning their dead and revisiting the bones of lost kin years later?
Weather Scene The October sea glints coldly with its dorsal fin of mirages. Nothing remains that remembers the white dizziness of the regattas. An amber glow over the village. And all sounds in slow flight. A dog's bark is a hieroglyph painted in the air above the garden where the yellow fruit outwits the tree and lets itself fall.
Did you know meat-eaters unwittingly shut down their brains’ automatic response to the pain of animals?
Did you know the limbic brain found in mammals is not only the seat of dreams and value judgements, but also the center of emotionality?
The Man Who Woke to Singing Over the Rooftops Morning, May rain. The city’s still as quiet as a pasture hamlet. The streets are quiet. And an airplane engine rumbles blue-green in the sky.— The window’s open. The dream in which the sleeper lies outstretched becomes transparent. He moves, beginning to grope around for attention’s instruments— almost in space.
Did you know that, given their sharp senses and unique sensitivities, some farmed animals may be capable of suffering even more intensely than humans?
A tangle of black spruce and smokey moonbeams. Here’s the sunken cottage and no sign of life. Until the morning dew murmurs and an old man opens— with a shaky hand— the window and lets out an owl. And further down, the new house stands steaming with the laundry butterfly flapping at the gable
Did you know scientific studies show animals demonstrate behaviors associated with consciousness, planning, and emotional response?
Did you know massive amounts of resources (grain, corn, soy, and fresh water) that could be directly consumed by humans are used to grow livestock?
Did you know “a mammal will risk and sometimes lose its life to protect a child or mate from attack?”
Did you know humans eat around 70% of the mammals on the planet?
Did you know the limbic brain found in mammals is not only the seat of dreams and value judgements, but also the center of emotionality?
Did you know “humane” labels are largely unregulated or misleading, and animals are still bred, confined, and ultimately killed long before their natural lifespan?
​Did you know our destruction of habitats has led to the loss of two-thirds of the planet’s vertebrates?
December. Sweden is a hauled-up, unrigged ship. Its masts stand sharp against the twilight sky. And twilight lasts longer than day—the road that leads here is rocky: first light doesn’t arrive till noon when winter’s colosseum rises, lit up by surreal clouds. Then all at once the white smoke lifts dizzily from the villages. The clouds, high and unending. The sea grubs at the sky-tree’s roots, distracted, as if listening for something.
Did you know that many animals show signs of trauma, depression, and learned helplessness when confined in factory farms?
Do you think the concept of personhood has been defined at the expense of other forms of life?
You can play a music piece so differently it becomes a different piece. Playing it backward there’s a sense of being followed. Say: compose me a replacement. Soft-touched by a ghostdance >> transferring to mezzotint >> transferring to aquatint the squares on the floor have many drawers.
Did you know massive amounts of resources (grain, corn, soy, and fresh water) that could be directly consumed by humans are used to grow livestock?
What do the possibilities of human nature hold if they fail to take into account those of the non-human world?
At the point of departure. Our spruce-clad coastland lies in a bog of haze and mist like a slain dragon. Far off: two steamers calling out from a dream in the fog. This is the lower world. Motionless forest, motionless water and the orchid’s hand reaching up from the earth. On the other side, beyond the channel but caught in the same reflection: The Ship, like a cloud weightless in its own space.
Did you know the UN has reported that “the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global?”
No one listens to poetry, it’s true. Although it makes up a non-synthetic impulse in each dynamic of revelation. Can’t tell which is which in the shape we have just taken. We’re kobolds of the mythic universe. We inhabit some eternity a slush pile aside from most baptismal interference.
Did you know the brain of a single honeybee contains nearly a million neurons?
Are you aware that animals used for eggs and milk are slaughtered once their productivity declines?
The white flock grows: great gulls dressed in sailcloth from wrecked ships but stained by the smoke of forbidden shores. Alarm alarm around the gash from a vessel! The gulls crowd in close and form a bunting that signals “prey here.” They course across the open water with blue fields striding through the foam. A phosphorescent path toward the sun
Did you know animals not only influence the living environments of the planet but also lead “complex lives that involve feelings and mental control?”
System of Lines and Arcades A poem by Daniel Carden Nemo
Did you know meat-eaters unwittingly shut down their brains’ automatic response to the pain of animals?
Did you know the animal industry is the leading cause of deforestation worldwide?
Did you know that most farm animals are slaughtered at a fraction of their natural lifespan, often before reaching social or cognitive maturity?
Day-Night Shift A poem by Tomas Tranströmer translated from Swedish by Daniel Carden Nemo
Did you know there are “underlying commonalities in emotional perception and expression” in all mammals?
Friends A poem by Marin Sorescu translated from Romanian by Daniel Carden Nemo
​Did you know our destruction of habitats has led to the loss of two-thirds of the planet’s vertebrates?
Do you think concern for animal welfare along with the use of animal products could represent a case of cognitive dissonance?
Did you know the limbic activity of mammals draws their emotions into immediate congruence?
Did you know that nurturance, social communion, (vocal) communication, and play are rooted in limbic territory?
Did you know that mammals are endowed with limbic brains same as humans?
Are you aware that pigs exhibit play behavior well into adulthood, indicating emotional complexity and a need for well-being?
Did you know birds were the first creatures to have dreams?
On a winter morning you can feel how the earth surges forward. Against the house walls a blast of air rattles out of nowhere. Surrounded by motion: the tent of tranquility. And the secret rudder in the migrating bird flock.
Did you know “humane” labels are largely unregulated or misleading, and animals are still bred, confined, and ultimately killed long before their natural lifespan?
Are you aware that calves deprived of maternal contact show long-term changes in stress reactivity and social behavior?
The herring gull, the sun captain, steers his course. Below him is the water. The world is still sleeping like a many-colored stone in the water. Undecipherable day. Days— like Aztec hieroglyphs! The music. And I’m enmeshed in its tapestry, with arms raised high—like a figure out of folk art.
Did you know science now shows the lives of other organisms are far more complex and sentient than we thought?​