Perpetual Conscious Meanderings
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Does anyone have an update on where things are at with the writers strike? It’s disappeared from my various feeds and algorithms.
The writers’ strike is ongoing and the studios are still not returning to the negotiating table. Unfortunately a lot of the coverage has tapered off because we’re on 50+ days of striking and it’s not new anymore. The last strike in 2007 lasted 100 days, so don’t be surprised if this strike lasts as long, or even longer.
The biggest recent news is that the Directors’ Guild of America (DGA) voted to ratify their new agreement with the studios (article from June 23), and it appears likely that the actors’ guild (SAG-AFTRA) will also take a deal instead of striking (article from June 24). Although this is disappointing news, it’s completely expected. During previous strikes, the WGA held its own without other unions going on strike. Which is to say—don’t be disheartened by the news that there won’t be a triple strike. The WGA is strong enough!
Please keep vocally supporting the WGA online to keep the pressure on the studios & to keep WGA members motivated and encouraged! There are many ongoing donation drives, such as the Star Trek fan snack squad (Twitter account required to DM the organizer) and the Our Flag Means Death snack squad (opens the PayPal fundraising page—no Twitter required). There’s a longer list of ongoing donation drives here.
The Entertainment Community Fund is also always accepting donations to support entertainment workers affected by the strike. Please boost and encourage your friends to keep supporting the strike. Hashtag #IStandWithTheWGA #DoTheWriteThing to boost the cause!
(via lindywitch)
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walks around the dashboard with my hands behind my back like someone’s grandpa
(via bllbabaggins)
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when a british actor does an american accent everyone’s like “i didn’t even know they were british until they were on colbert.” but when americans do a british accent everyone’s like “they’re supposed to be from east cocksford but their glottal e’s are north dicksford. shameful.”
Saw an interesting interview with Hugh Laurie talking about this (on playing House and ‘getting away with’ doing an American accent):
“…. because they’re much less interested…they don’t have that 'Professor Higgins’ ear for…. class and background and geography and the way the British are much more attuned to wait a second where are you from and what trick are you trying to pull on me by… with that particular choice of words. I think partly again because it’s such a big country nobody really…. it doesn’t bother people so much where you’re from or why you sound the way you sound. America’s a country that’s too big to know itself. Someone living in Florida’s go no idea how people behave or what they eat or how they dress in Oregon, it’s just so far away - whereas we know, of course, we know absolutely everything about… every British drama we watch, we’re like, well that’s High Wycombe, that could never happen because it’s a one way system there! whereas America’s so mythically grand, it’s too big to know it'self, and that actually has an affect with things like accent. ”
(via kleenexwoman)
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[video description: a man playing saxophone in front of a large pipe. everything he plays echoes back through the pipe, resulting in a call-and-response type song. the person behind the camera claps along to the beat. end description.]
a reasonable society would base their entire economy around this
(via starfleetrambo)
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my theory is that reincarnation is real and that’s why everything is so fucked up. we got too many people on earth and their souls were supposed to spend a few more cycles as endangered animals or smthn but we fucked the environment and overpopulated. so we get guys who was SUPPOSED to be black-footed ferrets or whatever til their soul reached maturity but instead they’re like, influencers and politicians. this is also why furries exist.
(via sleepymccoy)
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I don't understand. Are cats not a part of nature? Wouldn't letting them be outside be the natural thing to do, letting nature do its thing even if birds are killed? They are animals, it doesn't seem right to me to lock them in a house for the majority of the time. They probably want to be free, they're supposed to be outside like other animals
Anonymous
Cats (Felix catus) are a domesticated variety of the African Wildcat (Felis lybica). This process occurred c. 10,000 years ago. The cats which reside in our homes are different from their wild ancestors on a genetic level which effects their temperament. They also have decreased cranial volume.
All this to say that domestic cats are, in fact, not a part of nature, in fact they are classified among the top 100 worst invasive species by the Global Invasive Species Database. This is why their presence, and predation, in the environment is so devastating.
As of 2016 cats were implicated in the extinction of 63 species, this is 26% of total distinctions attributed to invasive mammalian predators. That’s 40 species of bird, 21 species of mammals, and 2 species of reptiles. They are considered a threat to the continued existence of 420 species.
I don’t even know how to begin to describe the impact domestic cats have on the environment so here’s a huge list of various studies across the globe.
Do you believe that dogs should be allowed to free-range, to come and go as they please wherever they please? What about ferrets? Rabbits? If you’ve answered “No” to any of these, then why are cats exempt from the basic rules of courtesy other domesticated species are held to?
The idea that “cats want to be free” is an example of anthropomorphizing, or ascribing human emotions to animals. Cats do not have a concept of “freedom,” they do not yearn for something they don’t understand.
That being said, controlled time outdoors can be a good form of enrichment for some cats - this means on a harness and leash accompanied by a person, or in a secure enclosure like a catio. However while some cats may enjoy this others have no interest in, or are actively avoidant of, the outdoors and shouldn’t be forced.
for the record, there is a marked effect of predator animals being outside on local wildlife - essentially, the presence of a predator causes anxiety. This anxiety has major effects on the local wildlife, leading to less reproduction and shorter lifespans.
So. limit the amount of time you take your cat outside, even in a controlled environment. Your cat’s enrichment is not, in fact, more important than the safety and security of local wildlife.
I say this every time the “outdoor cats” debate comes around, but I grew up with a colony of semi-feral outdoor cats as a kid, and I understand why it’s a sensitive topic because I used to feel uncontrollable guilt about not being able to properly care for the cats indoors despite being literally a child.
If you’ve always had indoor-outdoor cats because that’s what you grew up with, because that’s what you thought was best for them, or because that’s what’s considered normal to do, you’re not being called a bad person or an animal abuser or any of those terrible things. Here, I am setting you free from the guilt. We were doing our best, we always have been, and that’s okay, and what matters right now is that our best can be better today than it was yesterday.
With that said, here’s a short list of things that happened to my childhood cats:
- euthanized after being run over by a car
- run over and immediately killed by a car
- euthanized after being found under a bush with her guts hanging out of her
- mauled to death by free-roaming dogs
- died after contracting a botfly
and those are just the ones we found. So many of them just disappeared one day and never returned, and only one or two lived past 7. They got fleas, ticks, roundworms, tapeworms, botflies, and God knows what else. They got in nasty, bloody fights with other cats. They would come home limping from unexplained injuries. And they would just…stop coming home.
There’s a virus called Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or FIV, that is basically what it sounds like: the cat equivalent of HIV. Right now (June 2023) there’s reports of bird flu being found in cats in Poland, and bird flu is very much deadly to cats.
If your neighbor or anyone in your area uses rat poison, a rodent can eat it and then kill your cat when your cat eats the rodent. If anyone in your area uses pesticides, those can poison your cat. Cypermethrin, a common insecticide, is HIGHLY toxic to cats.
Keeping a cat inside isn’t cruel, what’s cruel is letting a cat die an awful, painful death at ¼ its natural lifespan.
The environments humans have created are not “the wild,” they are incredibly dangerous for animals, full of cars and toxic poisons, and cats aren’t as adapted to deal with “natural” hazards either anymore. Feral and outdoor cats exist at much higher population densities than a wild predator would and this means their impact on the wildlife is nothing like a wild predator, and also means their diseases and parasites spread like crazy.
Cats can live into their late teens or even early 20’s but outdoor cats rarely make it past 5. Even if YOUR cat is clever enough to avoid all the hazards, so what? Don’t dumb cats deserve to live instead of dying painfully? Some of them are orange, for God’s sake.
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*crouches to go into stealth*
the cracking of my knees alerts the guards, I am immediately killed
(via sky-guardian-lion)
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there’ve been a few throwaway jokes in various episodes about klingons not bathing that are obviously meant to be derogatory but of course me being the way that i am i immediately thought hey how can i turn this into a worldbuilding thing. and i thought yk i heard that chinchillas cant get wet cause its bad for their health, which i looked up and is apparently bc theyve evolved super dense fur to live at high elevations in the andes. and it turns out Qo'noS is largely mountainous and prone to high winds.
so my hc is that klingon hair is super dense and thick and takes forever to dry once its wet (which tracks bc look at it), plus the typical high winds and arid heat on the continents interior would crack wet skin as it dried, so getting wet is typically something best avoided. funnily enough chinchillas clean themselves by dust bathing in fine volcanic ash, and Qo'noS is an extremely volcanic planet so i think the whole thing works out pretty neatly and im incorporating klingon dust baths into my belief system from here on
(via bllbabaggins)
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fireflies lighting up a rural Pennsylvania field at dusk
As a european i sometimes forget furefkied are actually real and not american folklore/cryptids. Like you’ve got friendly little bugs that glow in the dark….. b r uh
(via bllbabaggins)
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I will never get over how weird it feels to have tragic and emotional chapters of your life where you just also still go to work, and the grocery store, and see funny videos online all while feeling such paralyzing fear and heartache
life just goes on no matter what
(via not-poignant)
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no Male Author Moment has ever made me cringe quite as viscerally as the ending of Grapes of Wrath and that was a full decade before I found out about this
Sanora Babb’s own novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was buried by the publisher after Grapes was published. It was eventually released in 2004, a year before her death.
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