It kind of sounds like they’re advising you to ditch responsibilities that you don’t think matter in favor of more important-seeming ones, which is the kind of fucked up ladder climbing and damn the consequences that puts sociopaths in most of the positions of power in the world.

In early 2025, beaver activity in the Brdy Protected Landscape Area, Czech Republic, contributed to the restoration of a wetland ecosystem. A family of beavers constructed a series of dams that accomplished environmental goals set by the Czech government, which had delayed its proposed project since 2018 for bureaucratic and financial reasons. The beaver-built dams saved the Czech government approximately US$1.2 million, providing ecological benefits including improved water quality, enhanced biodiversity, and better water retention.

Beaver-engineered dam in the Czech Republic

Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who’s the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5’ 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?

Edit: Okay, I checked.

The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains.

An English mile is defined as 8 furlongs, 8 presumably being chosen because it divides by 2 and 4. What a cockamamie system of measurement.

Edit Again: Okay, I checked again.

The modern English word mile derives from Middle English myle and Old English mīl, which was cognate with all other Germanic terms for miles. These derived from the nominal ellipsis form of mīlle passus ‘mile’ or mīlia passuum ‘miles’, the Roman mile of one thousand paces.

A pace is a unit of length consisting either of one normal walking step, or of a double step, returning to the same foot.

This is all still very silly.