#Respectful Behavior

[humming-fly]

I love how Gerald was trying to keep Shadow from spoiling anything about the future meanwhile literally everything Shadow says and does around Maria is the biggest death flag ever

[trendynewsnow]

Respectful Tourism in Japan: Essential Etiquette for Visitors

Respectful Tourism in Japan: A Guide for Visitors Recent incidents involving foreign tourists in Japan have sparked frustration among local residents. A tourist from the United States was arrested for defacing the iconic Meiji Jingu shrine with graffiti, while a British individual is connected to a theft amounting to 13 million yen (€80,000). Additionally, a Chilean visitor was filmed performing…

[legacykidsacademy]

When guiding preschoolers, positive discipline techniques can make a world of difference in shaping behavior while fostering self-confidence and respect. Encouraging cooperation and empathy can be easier with these proven strategies, especially in settings like an early learning academy in Texas, where nurturing a supportive environment is key.

[familythings]

Kim Kardashian's Parenting Contract: A Modern Approach

Kim Kardashian has taken an innovative approach to parenting, blending her business-savvy mindset with her role as a mother. Recently, the reality TV icon and entrepreneur made headlines after her son, Saint West 8 y.o., signed a formal contract that sets clear boundaries and expectations in their household. The Contract: A Blueprint for Discipline According to sources close to the…

[polymerclay]

Worrisome Jenny

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I got some sleep (not nearly enough but I digress) and I just want to say, to continue the posting from last night, that a lot of Westerners genuinely see the Latin alphabet as the default and don't even realize it, thinking of the alphabet as being the "true" writing system while everything else (Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc) is an outlier. It's to the point where they see any writing system that they can't IMMEDIATELY recognize and they assume that it has to be fictional, alien, nonsense because some part of them genuinely does not even consider that their idea of what language looks and sounds like is very much limited.

You can even see this in how a lot of native English speakers treat diacritics used in other languages that use the Latin alphabet or are transliterated; the idea that Ä or Ø are pronounced differently from A or O doesn't even cross a lot of people's minds. Those aren't real letters, they're just silly symbols for use in emoticons or for an aesthetic.

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

Love that the new Good Omens Kiss Revelation ™️ basically boils down to “Yeah we had a whole scene choreographed but David and Michael just immediately started making out and wouldn’t stop so we deleted two takes out of embarrassment”

[delinquentkru]

i think a lot of the tension between langdon and santos comes from their motivations being different, even for behaviors that seem very similar on the surface. for example, they both want to be the best for all of the obvious reasons but, for langdon, i think it’s also because his self-worth is tied to his ability (“if i am not the best then i am less valuable to others and if i’m not valuable, why would anyone want me?”). for santos, though, it’s a self-preservation tactic in a lot of ways (“if i am not the best, i am showing weakness and am more vulnerable to being harmed again.”).

that kind of core difference makes it soooooo difficult for them to interact without triggering each other in an environment where langdon is the authority figure. like they get off on the wrong foot almost immediately because, in langdon’s mind, santos is constantly challenging his competence for no good reason and, in santos’ mind, langdon is trying to control her for no good reason. and it just continues to spiral from there lmao.

but i’m hopeful that we’ll see some growth in understanding between the two of them in s2 or s3 because i think they could learn a lot from one another once they’re able to get past the initial friction. fingers crossed!

[bonefall]

[ID: Ask from @storiesandsquirrels, transcribed in alt text]

also: link to Cow Lore

There's one major misconception here I've gotta correct before answering earnestly; Holsteins do need Super Duper Food. This is one of their major problems as a breed, you need to give them high quality feed for high quantity, low quality milk.

But! That said! These are valid questions that deserve real responses. In spite of the quick correction, I actually want to answer them as you phrased them because I think it would be more illuminating. I'm going to try and summarize them as I go along;

Question 1: "Why wouldn't we want to use The Most Efficient Cow?"

The simplest answer is disease. My ""prediction"" came true, and bird flu has mutated to spread extremely easily through the infected udders of Holsteins. No one has died of bovine-contracted HPAI yet, but with Brainworm Bobby and his love of raw milk in charge of the CDC...

well. my last prediction was prophetic. let's hope this one's not.

Minmaxing a breed for one specific purpose always means intensive inbreeding. Like I mentioned, 9 million Holsteins are genetically equivalent to 60 individuals. A more genetically diverse population is one that will be better at preventing disease outbreaks, and reducing their severity when they do.

And what even is the Most Efficient Milk Cow? If you're only selecting for pure milk production to drive down its cost, you get a breed of cattle that lacks every other important trait that would make it good livestock;

They get sick more often, due to inbreeding depression and lack of physical fitness, requiring more antibiotics and veterinary care.

They are bad parents who will need more human intervention to birth and raise calves

They won't be good grazers, meaning they need a specific food grown for them, increasing how much "functional" land is actually dedicated to cattle husbandry.

Their carcass won't yield as much meat, so more cattle have to be raised and slaughtered to meet demand.

Their bodies will burn out much quicker than a healthier animal, meaning you need to replace your livestock more often.

When it comes to living beings, "efficiency" is "fragility." It's not a stable system to begin with.

Even with the pure logic aside, just, step back here and look at the situation with a heart. We'd be making unhealthy, short-lived animals lacking critical instincts to lead good social lives. AND we probably haven't even fixed the "less land" problem, just shifted the land off-site.

For what? For more milk? We have SO MUCH milk we don't even know what to do with it!

Question 2: "Isn't an overabundance of cheap milk a good thing?"

no.

Under the infinite genius of Capitalism, thousands of gallons of milk just gets poured into the sewer daily because there's too much of it. Transporting it to a processor would cost more than it's worth, sometimes the processors turn milk away because they don't want to overproduce products, and even the US government can't subsidize every last drop; it still has 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in various caves and warehouses across the country.

The price of milk cannot get any lower because it's already being sold below the cost it takes to produce it, and yet, we're still here literally pouring it down the drain.

[photo from bill ulrich who photographed a farmer dumping milk back during the pandemic. this isn't even a recent photo. this happens every time there's a milk surplus. im using this photo because i like the farmer's cunty little pose. look at him. "just ain't right"core.]

And milk being dumped into the sewer is more than just wasteful. It's a biohazard.

Milk doesn't stop rotting when it's dumped. If you live downstream of a milkhouse, improper milk disposal reeks.

It's full of nutrients, too, which causes diatoms, cyanobacteria, and other types of algae to go into overdrive-- causing a Harmful Algal Bloom event in the water, or HAB.

HABs are horrific. There's HUNDREDS of different types. They can suck up oxygen and create "dead zones" which kills all aquatic life, they can poison the water supply for an entire town, and some can even cause toxic fumes that make it hard to breathe on land.

Now, listen, I don't want to scare you into never dumping out rotten milk or anything! It's that on an industrial scale, it's REALLY REALLY bad if a farm overproduces milk-- especially crummy milk that can't be made into decent cheese or other dairy products.

In fact, if we did produce milk on a smaller scale, it would be better for everyone! Unless you're a Milk Guzzling Fiend like I am, you probably wouldn't need to buy a whole gallon at a time. In countries like Italy, it's sold fresh and in smaller containers, and you're just expected to pick it up as you need it.

This is why milkmen used to exist, and still do in places that are cool; they'd deliver your supply fresh from the creamery. Less waste, less stress! The "subscription model" is actually sooooooooooo much better for milk production, since it helps to stagger out those "surges and drops" of demand that leads to milk dumps.

Question 3: "If the cow eats less, doesn't that mean less land for pasture, which is a good thing?"

There's a lot to unpack within this sentiment. It's actually based on a couple of common assumptions on a few levels, which are incorrect in fascinating ways. Challenging this means opening up your worldview on how complex keeping livestock actually is!

I'll start with the simpler part;

You could cut fresh pasture out of the equation entirely and shove a cow into a concrete pen with a food box-- but are you counting the land growing the fodder?

When you grow corn the way that we do on industrial farms in the US, it's unbelievably destructive. Unending oceans of monoculture. Fogged with pesticide, pumped full of fertilizer which causes HABs like dumped milk does, sprayed with thousands of gallons of wasted water.

When you look at this image, I need you to understand you are looking at a dead zone. Like a suburban lawn, just because it's green doesn't mean it's good. Nothing grows here but corn and pests of corn, which gets poisoned and dies without returning any of that energy to the ecosystem.

This is usually what is being given to "grain-fed cattle," either when they're sent to a feedlot to hit their slaughter weight, or when they're lactating so they need the extra nutrition. It's also so nasty it's inedible to human beings.

Now, a lot of cattle farmers will just supplement their cow's diet, doing a mix of pasture feeding (much cheaper) and grain feeding (quicker gains). But the facts on this are clear; pasture-kept cattle result in LESS emissions and need LESS total space than cows in confinement.

In fact, there were a LOT of benefits!

Overall gas emissions from the cows dropped by 8%

Ammonia pollution was down by 30%

Not needing to run farm equipment for fodder planting and harvest reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 10%

Rotated crop fields didn't sequester carbon; but the newly converted perennial grasslands store as much as 3,400 pounds per acre.

The outside cows did produce less milk volume, but the milk they did produce was higher quality. So, looking at all the benefits here, it's clear that pasture is actually something that should be embraced for ecological reasons, not rejected.

In FACT, it should be EMPHASIZED. Because, this is the mind-blowing part,

Pasture can ALSO be an ecosystem.

In fact, I'm a Warrior Cats guy who once did a deep dive on moorlands just so I could write WindClan better. There are entire biomes that only exist because of grazing, and British lowland heath is one of them!

Keeping cattle in a sustainable, ecologically sound way is going to look different depending on where in the world you're doing it. So many earnest, good-willed people have bought into the lie that humans are a problem, and that everything "associated" with us becomes a barren wasteland as if we are tainted. YOU are not the problem! The problem is, and always has been, exploitation. Unsustainable relationships with the land we're part of.

Indigenous people in Europe, Asia, and Africa have been keeping cattle for thousands of years. In North America, cattle can be used to maintain ecosystems that have been badly affected by the colonial eradication of the American Bison. In South America, Brazil specifically has been making incredible advances with highly efficient integrated crop-livestock-forestry farming.

Generally, pastures here in the US are not as intensely managed as an equivalent crop field. Some people fertilize them, or water them mid-summer, but absolutely not to the same extent as industrial corn farms. Cattle are typically rotated between pastures, allowing each to re-grow before they come back to graze again.

Obviously, yes, overgrazing can be an issue. Not every open space should be converted into a pasture, and the destruction of other environments to turn into cow land is a problem. But that is an issue of bad land stewardship, not the mere practice of keeping livestock.

Bottom line, though? Cattle who can graze and survive outside are better for the environment than cattle that can't.

...but hey, you know what Holsteins happen to be really bad at?

EVERYTHING. GRAZING.

They are notoriously terrible grazers. They can't do megan THEEEEE thing that cows are known for. Fragile frames, a lack of fat to keep them warm outside, increased demand for food, distaste for any rough forage, horrible mothering instincts, the list goes on. Holsteins are a NIGHTMARE to try and keep outside all year round compared to other breeds.

(especially heritage breeds, like the Milking Devon, Florida Cracker, or Texas Longhorn. Between these three, you'd be totally covered in 80% of American climates.)

I've already explained why it's not actually very good or important that we minmax milk volume, but even if that was actually something we should value, there are so many downsides that they would absolutely not be the dominant cow breed in a truly "efficient" system.

"Less cows means less cow food and cow land" is sound logic, but Holsteins are not the right cow for that job.

Question 4: "How could this be done in a way that doesn't increase cost of living?"

I'm not sure how to answer this question, simply because I'm not Bonestar, Leader of AmericaClan. Wish I was. I would rule tyrannically.

It's worth noting that Brazil is the second largest producer of beef in the entire world, AND the number one largest exporter of it, AND only puts 30% of its land to total agricultural use. The USA dedicates over 50%. And also Brazil is net reducing its amount of agricultural land while increasing output.

It seems clear to me that the USA actually has a massive food waste and resource distribution problem, to the point where the price we pay for stuff is actually wildly disconnected from the actual value of the goods and labor.

I think the way that us Americans tend to frame our conversations on these topics as "growth" vs "cuts" instead of asking how to minimize waste by making existing systems more efficient prevents us from solving problems. We're also just... really culturally resistant to the idea of anything being more "expensive," even if it ends up costing us a lot more money in waste or mismanagement later.

Penny wise and dollar foolish ass country.

Question 5: "What can we personally do about this?"

I mean, I wasn't making a call to action in Cow Lore, I was just explaining to one of my regulars why I don't like Holsteins LMAO. Since you're asking though...

I don't think we can change the wider trend in the dairy industry without actual government intervention and regulation, though, and that's very unlikely in the current political environment. they just sent random dudes to Ausalvador-Birkenau and when the Supreme Court said "bring this specific person back" they said "nuh uh." fellas I don't think we're getting better dairy regulations in the foreseeable future.

So I think the most productive thing to do is focusing on supporting small farms and heritage breeds. Get involved in your community garden or heritage society if you have one.

Not only is that generally a very rewarding thing, but it will be helpful to you in case The Situation Gets Worse. Knowing your neighbors and having real human connection is your best defense against economic recession.

Supporting the locals is always a great thing to do, which can be as simple as going to farmer's markets. You don't need to buy fancy food every day to make an impact on your community-- it can be a treat sometimes!

You could also subscribe to the Livestock Conservancy's free newsletter, where they talk about the work they're doing and upcoming events. If you're a knitter, crocheter, or any other kind of fiber artist, you could even join in on a challenge they're running where you make items out of rare wool for prizes!

Should you end up liking the work they do, you can become a member for 4$ a month, or go to one of their educational events.

Even just talking about the problem can do a lot! Did you know the Highland Cow was actually critically endangered in the USA within the past 10 years? It was the work of the Livestock Conservancy, plus a surge in their popularity, that helped to bring their numbers up. Word of mouth is a powerful thing.

All that said, remember, you can't solve every problem. It's a big world and there's a lot of them. Being made aware of an issue doesn't mean you have to drop what you were previously doing-- just care a lot about something that you want to improve, and let that guide you.

[ouroborosreilig]

dunmeshi roadtrip au

[innerchildabortionclinic]

ok well I have used mental health terminology to defend shitty behavior before--my coworker complained i'm angry towards him a lot and I said I had a personality disorder when in reality he just gets on my nerves. however the difference is I did this knowing it was wrong and don't pretend it's progressive. anyway he was way less upset with the explanation that i'm simply insane so overall i'd say it was a positive form of manipulation

[haveihitanerve]

I would like to remind everyone that when Katniss was depressed- both times- it is Haymitch who is in charge of her.

Haymitch who finds her hiding spots and fishes her out.

Haymitch who ensures she takes her meds and bathes and eats and goes to bed at least some of the time.

When Katniss wanders around after Prim’s death, the guards debate calling Haymitch to come and deal with her, and Katniss is mostly uncooperative unless Haymitch is the one ordering her around.

(Suzanne doesn't say it in these books- but I get very strong Ripred/Gregor “Can you follow orders?” “I always end up following his.” vibes from this whole interaction.)

But it was Haymitch who followed her home to twelve, Haymitch who pulled her out of her depression and I’m almost 90% certain that Haymitch was the one to go get Greasy Sea and have her take care of Katniss when his presence clearly wasn't helping and he figured he wasn't the best influence on her. 

Haymitch took on the role of her guardian and father figure when he had no need to. Not her mother, not Gale, not even Effie or Coin or Plutarch or anyone else who claims to care for Katniss, or at least should care about Katniss and her health- the way Haymitch never has- except when he admitted he picked her to help in the arena because he thought she could win. 

[deoidesign]

Ray of sunshine

(pre-launch page for their comic)

[hamofjustice]

a funny/sad thing about people who go on tirades about how penny pokemon sv is an awful selfish violent criminal who should be arrested instead of being reached out to and helped, and how they feel insane that anyone likes her is... she absolutely already feels that way about herself and they didn't notice

she spends the whole game doing what she can to protect her friends from being blamed for anything, calling herself a massive idiot under the guise of being someone else, turning herself in voluntarily, wanting to be given more punishment. it weirds her out that her friends and the school directors and chairwoman keep showing her mercy and seeing the good in her and what she was trying to do instead of throwing her in the trash she thinks she belongs in

[talk-nerdy-to-me-thyla]

i love how most celebrities are kind of uncomfortable or embarrassed with racy fan art of themselves (understandable), meanwhile taika waititi is like i need at least one more season of ofmd so i can get so much free porn of me

[the-raindeer-king]

People on twitter are talking about how the new Sleep Token song made them cry, but I'm not sad. I'm fucking angry. I'm so mad that they had to write something like this because certain people in the fanbase couldn't fucking respect the band.

Like when I first got into Sleep Token, it was during the time period where people were figuring out who they were and leaking their identities, and the band had wiped their social medias, and there was speculation that the band might just quit.

AND PEOPLE STILL COULDN'T FUCKING REPSECT THEIR DESIRE TO STAY ANNONYMOUS! PEOPLE STILL BE NAME DROPPING THEM IN COMMENTS AND STUFF

And it feels horribly ironic (in the worst way) that the disrespectful fans ruined the song's release, and the song is directly about how they're ruining Vessel's (the man) dream.

Like he just wants to share his talent and his music and his art with us. Can y'all please just respect that he doesn't want us to know who he really is? Just appreciate the music and the story. Fuck.