Fun Fact- My Apartment Building Used To Be A Highschool Back In The 50s

Fun fact- my apartment building used to be a highschool back in the 50s

It is EXTREMELY liminal

The derived material is known as chiengora, & it turns out the Navaho (Navajo) also use chiengora & are quite significant culturally.

The Dogs That Grew Wool and the People Who Love Them | Hakai Magazine

Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest bred little, fluffy white dogs that provided for them, both materially and spiritually.

It'd be great for pastoralists too, especially if there's a portable version of the above alongside dogs.

Don’t Kill Wolves - Just Keep Them Away

You’re operating a farm or ranch. What do you do when wolves are killing your livestock or pet dogs? Trap them and shoot them, right? That’s what farmers and ranchers — and government agencies — have been doing for decades.

Now there are new, nonlethal alternatives. Even better, these solutions are more permanent than lethal methods. Kill a wolf, and there’s another wolf behind him, eager to attack. Keep a wolf away, and the rest of his pack will stay away too. They may even help keep other packs away.

“We don’t believe that hunting wolves on a broad scale necessarily will help mitigate livestock depredation,” says Brian Roell, wildlife biologist and wolf specialist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

“It’s not the wolf population that’s the reason for an increase in livestock depredation,” Roell says. “It is the pack of wolves at a much smaller scale. So, if you have a hunt and you don’t affect the wolves that are the ones causing the problem, you won’t change the depredation.”

The goals of Michigan’s wolf plan include minimizing conflicts with livestock and pets and looking after the state’s wolves in ways that are “science-based and socially responsible,” he adds.

A Michigan project

Brett Huntzinger is applying more effective, nonlethal techniques to prevent wolf depredation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And it’s working. Prior to Huntzinger’s project, most of the farms had wolf depredation issues. In FY2022, there were no confirmed depredations due to large predators.

Huntzinger is a federal Wildlife Service employee who earned a master’s degree doing wolf research with Professor Emeritus Rolf Peterson at Michigan Technological University. During 2022, he worked with 10 farmers who are raising approximately 900 livestock. He helped them install fencing, fladry — which is temporary fencing with flapping flags attached–lights, sound devices, and multi-strand electric fencing around carcass burial sites and in predator travel routes near livestock.

When he installs radios to use sound to keep wolves away, he tells his kids: “I’m setting up all-night cow disco parties.”

Every farm he has worked with presents unique challenges. “I tell my kids that sometimes it’s like the crime/murder investigation shows on TV, and we are the detectives, Huntzinger says. “You never know what you will find.”

Huntzinger uses trail cameras to monitor predators’ travel routes. “I often find there are more predators around than people think,” he says.  

Rolf Peterson, his former teacher and ongoing advisor, has high praise for Huntzinger. “Brett is extremely good at this, and he’s devoted to solving problems that wolves might pose,” says Peterson.  “He is the type of person who can easily relate to farmers and landowners, as he lives on a farm himself and has several horses.  He also has very extensive field experience from his MS thesis work at Michigan Tech, when he tracked wolves for hundreds of miles on skis to find out what they were killing in winter.”

According to Huntzinger, nonlethal wolf depredation prevention techniques are not only effective in the short run. They can have an unexpected long term benefit: turning predators themselves into livestock guards. “If you can teach a resident wolf pack to not attack livestock, they will defend that area against other wolves and predators,” Huntzinger says. “In a way, the resident packs act like guard animals for the farms inside their territory. The trick is to use the nonlethal methods to keep the individuals in the wolf pack from starting to attack livestock.” 

In 2022 Congress increased the Wildlife Service’s funding for depredation prevention to $2.5 million, up from $1.38 million in FY2020 and 2021. Michigan’s funding doubled from $60,000 in FY2021 to $120,600 in FY2022. With this additional funding, Wildlife Services in Michigan was able to stock many types of nonlethal equipment available for loan, including 1,800 yards of electrified fladry, fencing supplies, posts and solar fence chargers. The agency can also provide 100 solar-charged flashing LED lights and other types of motion- activated flood lights and alarms, as well as three solar-powered radios with deep cell batteries for use as an audio predator deterrent.

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This can help save the wildlife in the long run. Keep them indoors if possible, but give them orange accessories either way

If only one could open such a service outside of UB & into rural areas.

CBC

B.C. teen starts 'Free Blockbuster' community film library on sidewalk | CBC News

With only one remaining Blockbuster store left in the world, wandering carpeted aisles picking out the perfect movie and snack is an activit

With only one remaining Blockbuster store left in the world, wandering carpeted aisles picking out the perfect movie and snack is an activity of the past for most.

But one Langley, B.C., teen hopes to bring back part of the experience.

Grade 12 student Matthew Reed started a "Free Blockbuster" in his neighborhood of Walnut Grove, in the Township of Langley about 45 kilometres east of Vancouver, as part of a school project.

"It's sort of like going to an actual Blockbuster store but it's on the curbside and it doesn't cost anything," said Reed.

A metal cabinet spray-painted blue and decorated with decals, Free Blockbuster is stocked with over a hundred DVDs and VHS tapes, microwavable popcorn, and free membership cards.

Reed's project is part of the FreeBlockbuster.org movement, which started in the U.S. and has since spread to Canada, with two branches in Alberta and now one in B.C.

In an era where many feel like they have to pay for multiple subscription services to watch a handful of movies, the Free Blockbuster movement aims to provide free entertainment. [...]

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