Bad news on all fronts, so here’s something that can cheer you up.

Birds are dinosaurs (this isn’t breaking news; bear with me). It isn’t that dinosaurs “evolved into birds”; it’s that we saw the evolutionary result and called them birds before we knew what dinosaurs were. If you think that’s disappointing, then think about them ripping a fish from the sea or tearing apart a worm with their fearsome claws and beaks or swooping down at 60 mph to grab and devour a hapless vole or basically just fucking with Tippi Hedren. It’s pretty awesome. Randall Munro at xkcd explains it better, as usual.

So how does that make life better? Just start calling birds “dinosaurs”. As in, “Man, Gary, I got like zero sleep. These dinosaurs were making a ton of racket outside my window,” or “Our blueberry bush is doing great, but I can’t keep the squirrels or the dinosaurs away.” You’ll see that makes every day just a little better.