This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In the open grasslands of South Dakota, not far from the dramatic rock formations of Badlands National Park, lives one of the continent’s cutest, fiercest, and rarest animals: the black-footed ferret.

Black-footed ferrets, weasel-like animals with distinctive dark bands around their eyes and black feet, are ruthless little hunters. At night, they dive into burrows in pursuit of juicy prairie dogs, their primary food source. Without prairie dogs, these ferrets would not survive.

From as many as a million ferrets in the 19th century, today there are only a few hundred of these furry predators roaming the Great Plains, the only place on Earth they live. That there are any black-footed ferrets at all is something of a miracle. In the 1970s, scientists thought black-footed ferrets were extinct, but a twist of fate, and an unprecedented breeding effort led by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, brought this critical piece of the prairie ecosystem back from the brink.

In the fall of 1984, when I was a senior in high school in Washington, DC, the protests at the South African Embassy began. Civil rights leaders met with the ambassador of South Africa on Thanksgiving Eve. Timed for maximum press coverage, that meeting became a sit-in, and that sit-in launched a movement. Soon, there were protests at consulates across the country. College students held rallies, built “shantytowns,” and pushed their schools to divest.

Area high school kids like me got in on protesting the embassy too. And we had a soundtrack. “Free Nelson Mandela” had been released by the Specials in March. The leader of that British ska band, Jerry Dammers, later admitted he didn’t know much about Mandela before he went to an anti-apartheid concert in the UK, where a long-simmering boycott movement was rolling into a boil. The DC music scene was pretty wild then—a bouillabaisse of go-go, R&B, punk, New Wave; there was breakdancing in the hallways during lunch hour—and for some of us, ska was sort of a unified field theory. Musically but also culturally. (If you have a racist friend / now is the time, now is the time for your friendship to end.)

But it wasn’t just kids who cosplayed in checked socks or porkpie hats. In 1985, a month after I started college, Artists Against Apartheid recorded Steven Van Zandt’s “(I Ain’t Going to Play) Sun City”—essentially the music world launching its own boycott on South Africa. The song was not (like, at all) great, but the wild cross-genre supergroup—DJ Kool Herc, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Gil Scott-Heron, Pat Benatar, Bono, and Miles Davis to name but a very, very few—guaranteed continual rotation on a relatively new cultural phenomenon: MTV.

We were getting a collective education: Because South Africa was so dependent on Black labor and exports, if industrialized nations withheld trade and investments, we could backstop Black South Africans who’d been directly resisting the Afrikaner regime for decades. So, suddenly, amazingly, we did. By 1986, Congress had imposed sanctions on South Africa and banned direct flights to it. Coca-Cola became the first major company to pull out of South Africa. Sports teams joined the musicians in refusing to play there. Divestment battles raged on campuses and boardrooms for the rest of the ’80s. And they worked. South Africa’s economy ground to a near halt. Mandela was freed in 1990, and negotiations to wind down apartheid began. By 1994, free elections were held and Mandela became president.

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My cousin Lorrie invited me on a ten-day retreat in Peru where we would partake in ancient ceremonies involving the Living Death Drug ayahuasca and—

“Don’t tell me anything more,” I interrupted. “The answer is yes!”

I never watch the trailer before going to the movie. I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Even if sometimes that means the surprise ruins me. I met a big-personalitied Frenchman while traveling and did not take time to get to know him before marrying him and moving into his house in Paris. I guess I don’t feel any proprietary rights over my destiny. I allow the Parisian shopgirls to choose my outfits, and now I will let the Peruvian shamans choose my insides. Whatever they’ve got has to be better than what I got going on now.

Lorrie and I tried to figure out when was the last time we’d seen each other. Thirty-six years ago, when she visited me in Philadelphia!

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Arsenal are currently without a fit first-choice attacker, yet they opted not to explore the transfer market for free agents, a decision that could prove costly in their Premier League title race against Liverpool. With key players unavailable, the Gunners have struggled to maintain consistency, and their latest setback against West Ham highlighted their growing concerns in attack.

Last weekend, Arsenal fans were thrilled when their side secured a late victory against Leicester City, courtesy of two goals from Mikel Merino off the bench. Encouraged by his impact, Mikel Arteta rewarded the Spaniard with a start against West Ham, hoping for a similar performance. However, Arsenal failed to replicate that success and suffered a disappointing home defeat.

The loss exposed the extent to which injuries have disrupted the team. With no natural goal threat in attack, Arsenal lacked cutting edge in the final third and struggled to create clear chances. The absence of key attacking players has undoubtedly weakened the squad, and no one has been able to step up and fill the void.

Sky Sports’ Nick Wright highlighted how Arsenal’s struggles stem from their injury crisis, emphasising that any team would face similar difficulties with so many absentees. Speaking on Sky Sports, he said:

“It was no great surprise that they struggled in attack. Any side would without their four main attackers. The absences of Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, and Gabriel Jesus were keenly felt. The paucity of options available to Mikel Arteta was summed up by him sending on two left-backs, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Myles Lewis-Skelly, when chasing the game in the second half.”