prismatic-bell
Biologists Respond to ‘Science Denialism’ Regarding Outdoor Cat Control

neolithicsheep:

crazyeddieme:

neolithicsheep:

elodieunderglass:

zoologicallyobsessed:

royksoupp:

zoologicallyobsessed:

According to researchers, coordinated critics have mounted a “misinformation campaign designed to purposefully fabricate doubt regarding the harmful impacts of outdoor cats and stymie policies that would remove outdoor cats from the landscape.”

The conflict stems from a groundbreaking study published in 2013 by scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That study evaluated the combined impact of the tens of millions of outdoor cats in the United States. The authors found that roaming outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year and are the leading source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds in the country. Similar results have since been confirmed in Canada and Australia.

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To those of you still in denial about how bad outdoor cats are to wildlife not just in your own countries but globally here’s the cold hard scientific facts stating that you are apart of a movement of uneducated critics spreading misinformation. 

Here’s the link to the open-source scientific artificial as well:

but what about…. all the rats, mice etc they kill… hmmmmm

Maybe click the actual scientific research and read it before leaving a comment hmmmmm it would have saved you the embarrassment of proving the point of research. Which was that people that criticise keeping cats indoors were found to have zero actual evidence to back up their criticisms, therefore all their claims were based on nonsense or emotions. 

Yikes! Think this is a good lesson in clicking links before you comment!

This study is going to cause so many ructions in the public…. buckle in, guys

You have not seen ructions in public until you’ve seen me tell a bunch of farmers to keep their barn cats indoors and encourage black snakes to take care of their Rodent probs because at least the snakes don’t spread toxoplasmosis.

Nobody does a ruction like a six foot plus dude who is secretly afraid a five foot snake will casually slither by and be all “sup”

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Anyway here is my Chief Rodent Control Officer after taking a tithe of eggs which she does when there’s not enough rodents around

Yeah it’s not too hard to predict how that conversation will go:

You: You know those cats running around your property that won’t let a human touch them if their lives depended on it?  You need to bring them all in the house.

Farmer: haha good one.  You know they’d freak the hell out, right?  Assuming that I could catch them and drag them in in the first place.  And how am I supposed to control the rats if all my cats are inside?

You: Bring in a bunch of snakes and…

Farmer: haha go away now.

I love it when people assume I am not in fact a farmer myself. I’m a shepherd, with sheep. I don’t have barn cats because, among other reasons, cats spread toxoplasmosis. You know what toxo does? Probably not. You’re probably not dependent on small ruminants for any part of your livelihood.

Toxoplasmosis causes abortion in sheep and goats. Every ewe or doe who fails to lamb or kid is lost milk, lost meat, a lost replacement animal in the flock, lost cash from the sale of a new herd sire to someone else. When you have rare breed primitive sheep like I do, each lost pregnancy is also the entire breed slipping closer to the brink of disappearing.

You also appear to be unaware that there are live traps for catching the very feral barn cats - I’m SO glad someone who knows my profession, life, and attendant tools so well chimed in - we also use them to eg trap raccoons, foxes, and possums who are predating small livestock like chickens and rabbits. Incidentally, did you know cats can shed salmonella which can go on to infect your chickens? Why are you raising your own chickens for eggs and meat if you’re just going to get the same salmonella roulette you could get at the grocery store without all the goddamned work?

Chickens will also eat mice and young rats, incidentally. If you’ve got an honest to God adult rat infestation in your barn your husbandry practices are fucked up six ways from Sunday and you need to build better feed containers before you do anything else. The country isn’t the city. We do a lot more mice here.

You could of course also get yourself a nice working terrier and while you’re doing chores let the dog go to town on the rodent population.

Because if you actually have barn cats you can’t get near, they’re serving as a potential reservoir for rabies (which will pass to any mammal including you, including cattle), feline distemper, toxo, salmonella, and a host of parasites starting with coccidia and running out to various worms that don’t much care if they infect a barn cat or, yknow, a pregnant cow worth $2000.

So no, actually, that’s generally not how the conversation goes. But thanks for chiming in, city kid, assuming I was not in fact a working shepherd.

9:58 am + 17485 Rblg
mandromeda

misanthropemom:

finnglas:

I’m going to give you the best piece of Adult Life Is Hard advice I’ve ever learned:

Talk to people when things go to shit.

I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company

I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.

- Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.

- Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.

- Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.

- Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.

You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.

Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:

1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.

2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.

3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution. 

Anyway! I hope that helps! Don’t just assume the answer is “no” before you’ve even begun. There is more help out there than you ever imagined.

being nice goes far to get people on your side.

4:02 pm + 54683 Rblg
ree-fireparrot
pais-s sent a message:
I was under the impression that the Bury Your Gays/Dead Lesbian tropes were only problematic when written by straight cis writers. I might be misinformed but I think you're in the clear on that one
glumshoe replied with:

ree-fireparrot:

glumshoe:

I never like to use my identity as a factor when assessing the ethical acceptability of my actions or opinions. I’d rather they stood for themselves, independent of where I fit on a social framework. If I have an opinion or perform an action that would be considered offensive or misguided were I a straight cis person, I do not want to use “well, I’m not” as a free pass.

My actual identity is… vague. In the court of public opinion, I do not want to rely on it as an excuse or a defense, because everyone seems to have inconsistent criteria for who is entitled to tell certain types of stories or express certain sentiments. My personal feelings or identity do not affect whether other vulnerable people may be harmed by my creations or sentiments. I do not want to write something that would be ethically objectionable for a straight, cis person to write

Probably not a bad philosophy to have no matter what flavor of marginalized you are unless you’ve extensively studied the issues at hand and talked to lots of other people in that demographic besides yourself. I think the danger is kind of related to the “one story syndrome,” except the one story is yours rather than the single person in the demographic you aren’t part of that you’ve interviewed. Never assume your experience is universal and all.

3:59 pm + 215 Rblg
#a good addition #this is kinda why I tend to lean on Assume Good Faith #cause i feel like choices should stand up for themselves #esp if its obvious you Get the thing #or why the Thing
hattersarts

hattersarts:

may is essentially the safest person in nyc because she has a superhero & villain keeping tabs on her approx location at all times to make sure she doesnt get caught in any crossfire of fights.

peter calls may bc he SWORE she was in the vicinity of a fight he was having w/ sandman but she’s disappeared now….

1:14 pm + 2153 Rblg
#spiderverse
shizukateal

shizukateal:

cookievampiress:

i-am-the-inksinger:

speedlionfc:

gemiblu:

supahbeefcakes:

deadjosey:

ohmahgawddion:

One reason why I love anime. The emotion of the voice acting is too strong

did

did this anime waifu just tear down the edgy pretentious pseudointellectual facades we construct for ourselves as an obfuscating substitute for actual worth of character and accuse us of being so wrapped up in our own insular self-validating atrophied emotional comfort zones that we can only relate to others through pop culture allusions and mental dominance contests instead of a genuine emotional connection between two human beings

what the hell man

at first i read the above explanation thinking it was just a bunch of long thrown in words meant to make something simple complicated….but that is the perfect explanation for what I just watched

It’s been mentioned many times before, but the voice actress did this in a SINGLE take… makes it all the more impressive

I reblogged this yesterday with no comment, but after watching the clip again… no. No, that response up there with all the big words?

That’s exactly what the character was telling her counterpart to knock off. Big words. Big words with the assumption that everybody listening or reading will understand or have the energy and means to research what they don’t. Big words that communicate a big ego and little consideration for others.

She’s telling him to come off his pedestal and talk to her as himself, with his own words - words she can understand, because no, she’s not a walking dictionary or thesaurus or history book or anything like that, and unlike him she also doesn’t pretend to be, even though she’s arguably just as “exposed” to all these things by way of his presence in her life as he is by way of his presence on the internet.

What is “obfuscating”? What is “insular”? What is “pseudointellectual”? Fine that you seem to know their definitions, but you aren’t addressing an audience that can or should be expected to know those things. For god’s sake, I do know those things and I still had to keep stopping to figure out what the hell was being said.

She doesn’t understand these things because he never tries to help her understand. She doesn’t understand why he thinks he’s educated and edgy just because he talks about blood and knows a little bit about this religion and that world issue. She very clearly wants to understand, but he’s so busy being clever that all she gets out of him is, “It’s really cool, but you wouldn’t understand it.”

So no, that… big jumble of words up there is not what’s going on. What’s going on is that an anime character just called the internet age on its bullshit.

And while she was at it, she threw some damn heavy shade at everybody who uses their entire stock of big words in casual settings without stopping to read the room and consider their audience.

^

this right here is so fucking important. As someone with ADHD, I struggled with having to decipher this bullcrap in my Liberal Arts classes or any time I needed to read shit for essays and it felt like pulling teeth. I would always think. “DUDE you’re talking about art!! Fuck off with the big words and just tell why I should give a shit about this damn painting!!” I’m not saying if you use big words fuck you I’m saying if you ONLY use big words fuck you. Especially when you’re to talking down to me about something I should understand. It’s a social wall that will leave you feeling cold and lonely up on your high horse. and If you do this and want to knock it off: 

Don't always say: pseudointellectual 

Try to say: pretentious or full-of-it 

Don’t always say: insular

Try to say: ignorant or  a don’t know don’t care attitude 

Don’t always say: obfuscating

Try to say: Confusing or messed up 

Soon you’ll find that people with actually wanna talk to you/ read what you write if they can understand what fuck you’re even on about! 

Ok like, those are good interpretations and good things to know, but it’s not what’s happening in the clip. The context is that she’s his childhood friend and she isn’t an otaku like him so for all the time they’ve known each other she’s been asking him to explain what is the appeal of all that pretentious stuff he finds cool, which of course he can’t do because he is an edgelord pretending to be all smart and cool for barely knowing those things. And in this scene the dude is doing a project with his other friend who is into the same otaku stuff that he is and when she asks what the stuff is about and he answers “I’m not gonna tell you because you wouldn’t understand anyways” he’s basically giving her a massive fuck you to the years of emotional labor she did trying to bond and understand him through his bullshit otaku interests.

1:07 pm + 282848 Rblg
#added for context #which more posts could actually use
laurdlannister-kingslayer

laurdlannister-kingslayer:

ttbngaming:

laurdlannister-kingslayer:

vaporizedvisions:

laurdlannister-kingslayer:

vaporizedvisions:

laurdlannister-kingslayer:

I didn’t know jesse mcartney was voicing nightwing on young justice……

He been holding it down since season 1.

I am ashamed to not notice this 

i did notice m-gann brother is max goof lol

And the guy who voiced Cyborg in Teen Titans plays almost every black man on that show. He be having full scenes where he talks to himself in different voices.

lol yeah i know that man got job security

There are only 3 black voice actors
Khary Payton for the teenaged-young adult black males

Cree Summers for every black woman

Dave Fennoy for any senior black man

oh wait they added keith david to the mix

10:18 pm + 67 Rblg
oshkeet

I kind of like stories where they reuse character models for different stories because you get some peace just assuming the horrible fate of any of your favorites was just some actor’s job

9:03 pm + 4 Rblg
edaigoa
Anonymous sent a message:
Hey~ can you tell us about the straw hats with veils coming down to cover the wearer's face we see mostly in wuxia? I have seen some very pretty ones with added accessories like pearls and flowers too. What are they called?
ziseviolet replied with:

ziseviolet:

Hi, thanks for the question!

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The traditional Chinese veiled hats that we mostly see in Wuxia are called Weimao/帷帽. I wrote about the history of Weimao in this post. Please also see this post by fate-magical-girls for further information on the history/evolution of Chinese veiled hats.

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As you’ve noticed, it’s recently become trendy among Hanfu wearers to decorate Weimao with various kinds of accessories such as pearls and flowers. The effect is really pretty!

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Weimao can be worn by men as well:

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For more references, please check out my Weimao tag

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Hope this helps!

Images: 123, 45  

6:27 pm + 11213 Rblg