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The union busting firms are scared

I think an important skill to develop is traveling alone. Or just doing things alone.

I often go to events or conventions in neighboring cities (neighboring in a canadian way, meaning 3+ hours of travel) and most of the time I do it alone. I take the car, bus, train, with my clothes and my books and my art and my cpap machine and always a book that I won't read, and I do the Event, sometimes I see friends, meet colleagues.

But there are many hours where I find myself in a new city, and I learned to make myself visit new places, go to cafés with a notebook or sketchbook, visit museums, get a pint in interesting pubs, eat yummy food at cool restaurants, visit the tourists traps. Take selfies and send them to mom.

And at night, I go back to the hotel room and I make myself a cup of tea (because I brought teabags from home), watch local tv, try to read the book.

Work made me travel to Ottawa, so yesterday I saw a friend but after I ate delicious fish and chips at an irish pub, today I went to a gaming pub and beat a childhood videogame for the first time, tomorrow I'll be flying in a WW2 biplane.

If I had to wait for the stars to align and for someone to do things with me, I wouldn't do anything.

So I guess as long as I can grab my little suitcase, my backpack and my cpap machine, I'll keep going to places. Qui m'aime, me suive.

reblog to give warm bread to your mutuals

Still in awe of how well the D&D movie mimicked the feeling of D&D without doing anything as tediously literal as a "sitting around the table" framing device. The way some characters have names that sound like names a DM improvised on the spot, the sudden appearance and disappearance of a overpowered DM NPC for a single dungeon, the way they used the fact that characters can plausibly just mess up for no clear reason to escalate action scenes...that was cinema

I think it's a common misconception that domesticating animals is somewhat like enslaving them. It really is more of a symbiotic relationship. No wild animal would have willingly put up with early humans if they didn't get something out of it. Wolves wouldn't have stayed with us and become dogs if they weren't getting food and safety out of it. Many large herbivores that are now domesticated could and would have easily trampled their early human captors or broken their enclosures open if they didn't have a reason to stay. Sometimes individual animals still do if we don't give them what they need.

The animals that have stayed with us for thousands of years have evolved to cooperate with us better. Dogs have additional facial muscles around their eyes that wolves lack in order to mimic human facial expressions. Sheep grow their wool perpetually while their wild counterparts don't because a bigger fleece means they're more likely to be allowed to breed and be kept around. Domestic dairy cows produce much more milk than wild bovine species and domestic hens lay more eggs. Do you know how energy costly producing eggs or milk is for an animal? It's pretty intense! They wouldn't be able to do that if we hadn't given them the food and safety from predators and the elements to.

And we really need to show these animals respect and gratitude for what they give us by taking excellent care of them. They gave up a lot to be with us, often including the means to take care of themselves in the wild. That's a huge reason why I'm not against using animal products, but I hate factory farming. They are still living, breathing creatures with needs and feelings. They deserve a comfortable life and, when the time comes, a humane death.

Lolo the Pallas's cat at the Novosibirsk Zoo is proudly showing off her seven fluffy cubs, and letting us watch them be kittens as well!!!!!!!!

fresh, clean no-terf version for reblogs!

Your mom and aunts aren’t on tumblr.  Please warn them about this as well. 

“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.

this made me cry so now i need everyone to see it

Im not autistic about cars or makes or models but I AM autistic about crumple points and field of vision and blindspots and conflict points. do you understand. urban design, anti car dependency/anti car centric infrastructure, and so cars themselves are part of that interest. because car design is urban design. cybertrucks SUCK as cars and also dont function well in infrastructure thats designed to care about people. there are good cars and vehicles that are designed good and fit well with good urban design

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As someone who works with social history for a living, I feel like I’m the aggressive opposite of an anti-vaxxer

I fucking LOVE vaccines, friends. Give me the science stab. I’m so ready. it’s a beautiful day to not die of a Bajillion and one diseases that carried off like half the population before they had even reached age 10, and a significant portion before they made it to old age, 150 years ago

I go to the old cemetery. I see the vast numbers of infant and child and young adult graves. And then I go to my doctor and get injected with Potion of Fuck That Noise. This is beautiful and miraculous and I do not remotely understand how some people can reject it – not just for themselves, but for their children

'She is so old': One-eyed wolf in Yellowstone defies odds by having 10th litter of pups in 11 years

By Patrick Pester, published June 3, 2024

Wolf 907F recently gave birth to her 10th litter of pups, which researchers say is likely a Yellowstone National Park record.

Wolf 907F walking past a trail camera in Yellowstone National Park. (Image credit: Yellowstone Wolf and Cougar Project)

The alpha female of a Yellowstone gray-wolf pack has defied the odds by having a 10th litter of pups at the age of 11.

The one-eyed wolf elder, named Wolf 907F, gave birth to her latest litter last month, the Cowboy State Daily reported. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) have an average life span of three to four years, so it's rare for them to reach 11, let alone have pups at that age.

Wolf 907F has given birth to pups every year for a decade straight since she became sexually mature, which Kira Cassidy, a research associate at the Yellowstone Wolf Project, said is likely a record for the wolves of Yellowstone National Park.

At age 11, Yellowstone’s Wolf 907F has lived more than twice a wild wolf’s average life expectancy. In this photo from April, she was pregnant with a litter of pups that she’s since given birth to. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

"Every day, I expect that she might die just because she is so elderly, but I've been thinking that for the last few years, and she keeps going," Cassidy told Live Science.

Cassidy has calculated that only about 1 in 250 wolves in Yellowstone make it to their 11th birthday, with just six recorded examples since wolves were reintroduced to the park in 1995. The oldest of all of these great elders lived to 12.5 years, according to the National Park Service.

Wolf 907F lies in the snow in Yellowstone in 2015. (Image credit: Kira Cassidy/NPS)

Wolf 907F is the oldest wolf to have lived her whole life in the park's Northern Range, where there is more prey but also more competition from other wolves. Wolves rarely die of old age in the wild, and in Yellowstone National Park, the biggest threat is other wolves.

"In a protected place like Yellowstone, their number-one cause of death is when two packs fight with each other," Cassidy said. "That accounts for about half of the mortality."

One of Yellowstone's oldest wolves, Wolf 907F is pictured here with her pack last year. She's the gray collared wolf on the lower left. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

Wolf 907F is the alpha female of the Junction Butte pack, which has between 10 and 35 members at any given time. Cassidy noted that this is a large pack — the average wolf pack size is about 12 individuals — and that reduces the risk of being killed in territorial fights. Wolf 907F's experience also gives her pack an edge.

"Packs that have elderly wolves are much more successful in those pack-versus-pack conflicts because of the accumulated knowledge and the experience that they bring to that really stressful situation," Cassidy said.

Wolf 907F has likely boosted her pack's survival chances outside of battle, too. Cassidy noted that the Junction Butte pack rarely leaves Yellowstone's border and that Wolf 907F is "savvy" when it comes to things like crossing roads and avoiding humans.

Wolf 907F, Yellowstone's aging matriarch at 11 years old, only has one eye. She's the fourth wolf to pass by this trail cam. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

What makes Wolf 907F even more impressive is that she does all of this with only one functioning eye. Researchers aren't sure what happened, but her left eye has been small and sunken since before she turned 4. "You would never know [when] watching her," Cassidy said.

Like other elders, Wolf 907F takes a back seat in hunts now that she's older, and she spends most of her day hanging around with the pack's pups. Cassidy and her colleagues have counted three pups in her current litter, which is smaller than the average litter size of four to five but not surprising. A 2012 study of Yellowstone wolves published in the Journal of Animal Ecology found that litter size declines with age.

"The fact that 907 is still having pups is amazing, and her litter being small is expected given that she is so old," Cassidy said.

A few of Wolf 907F's offspring now lead packs of their own, but most of her pups never reach adulthood due to the perilous nature of being a wolf. However, Wolf 907F and the others in the park don't seem to live like death is on their mind.

"They are happy to be with their family going from day to day," Cassidy said. "Even if they have injuries or are missing an eye or something really stressful is going on in their life, they move through that stress and go back to seemingly really enjoying their life."

At age 11, Yellowstone's Wolf 907F - the gray wolf in the center of this photo from 2020- has lived more than double the typical lifespan of wolves in the wild. (Courtesy Yellowstone Wildlife Project)

As I had my own experiences with Rabies Shots, I'll pipe up for the hell of it. Way back in the late 90's, I was on High School and there was a mother racoon who yearly had her litter in the tree outside my window. I was, of course, incredibly empathetic to animals, Special Nature Bond Unique Child, or so I fancied, and would chirble and trill to them as they grew up. Much to my parent's annoyance, I would sneak out to the tiny side yard and dump a handful of dog kibble on the flat roof of the tool shed once the young were old enough to follow their mom around. One day a youngling got excited for the free meal and grabbed for the cup, scratching the side of my ring fingers. I froze.

This was before everything was just an internet search away. I had read Old Yeller. I /knew/ the raccoon family didn't have rabies. I lived beside them. It hadn't been a malicious attack. It was my own fault for acclimating them to treats. But...

Mom had a background in nursing and elder care, and there were many medical encyclopedias in the house. I went inside, washed the scratch about twelve times, and then looked up Rabies in one of the books. I spent the rest of the night sweating bullets before finally tearfully breaking down in the morning and anxiously confessing my fears. (Honestly I was more worried someone might hurt the baby raccoon... But also didn't want to die if it could be helped.)

Bewildered mum took me to the doctor. Bewildered doctor was sure it was fine but better safe than sorry. First stage multi shot - one in each butt cheek, and one at site of injury (my finger). The syringe was about the size of an adult's middle finger. My own teenage finger was smaller. I'm a wimp for needles and wasn't looking until I heard the doctor Hrm, and say "I think that's about all I can get in..." So naturally I glanced at my what he was doing. The injection had swollen and stretched the skin of my finger to about double its width. It was equal parts fascinating and horrifying. And then I threw up from the anxiety of it all.

Back the next several weeks for follow up injections, at which point I was cautioned that "because this was an accident, (Canadian provincial health care) would cover the cost of the injections. But if I wanted to -maintain- my immunity, I would need to pay out of pocket.

I'm sorry, what?

Oh yah. Rabies vaccinations aren't like measles or hepatitis. This isn't a one and done, go lick all the bats you can find deal.

This is a "if you don't keep it up, you lose the protection, and if you get bit or scratched again, we're gonna be annoyed".

And then ten seconds of introspection was like "oh, right, pets have to get it yearly...".

So, (unless things have changed, always fact check, my story may be outdated) yah, after all that anxiety and panic and fear and hassle, I still can't safely hug wild animals. Rabies is no joke.

sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really. 

Happy International Wolf Day to my fellow wolves!

At work, I mused out loud near a college placement student "we really need to non gender plugs..." and he informed me the schools are teaching "Pin" and "Socket" as Gender Neutral Plug Pronouns. Perfectly reasonable and terms already in use : Stage Pin, Bulb Socket, very sensible. I delight in correcting the older technicians, they're learning, slowly.

Happy Pride Month to everyone who gets this joke, laughed at it, or isn’t a homophobic or transphobic etc asshole.

Happy Pride Everyone.

Stay Gay.