shadowoflightt

[shadowoflightt]

The white male style of debate is to antagonize you until you snap. Then they win by default, because they make up their own rules in which being upset automatically invalidates your argument. The key is also to argue about things that they have no stake and experience in, so they dont snap first. Of course in the event that they do snap first, its of course passion, not anger…

White people are like little kids who make up new rules and obnoxious powers to keep themselves from losing….

At the end of it all, they are happy that you are so civil and can debate things rationally and clearly without getting upset. Everyone shakes hands and thanks everyone for being able to discuss “conflicting” viewpoints. Because after all everyone needs to hear the opposing side to truly be sophisticated. Even if you’ve heard that side all your life and it completely devalues you as a human being.

What i hear is that the mark of civilization to white people is being dehumanized and taking it like a champ. 

They also have little to no concept of power dynamics in these ‘sophisticated” discussions.

[shadowoflightt]

The essence of veganism is something aspirational. I truly respect vegans because half the time, they’re trying to live up to a standard that’s higher than most people are willing to deal with.

The application of it however, is half filled by ignorance.

Like, this thread is great. Nobody is making fun of vegans, I suspect everybody here so far really respect them, but man the ignorance they sometimes display is like.. why… lol

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

[shadowoflightt]

[shadowoflightt]

Edited to be less confusing.

Why should rescued pigeons and doves not be released back into the wild? And why do they need to be handled in the rescues and humans should imprint on them unlike other birds? I’m writing a paper on rescued pigeons and doves if you’re wondering XD

ramseyringnecks answered: First and foremost because they are not wild animals.

They are the children of lost and abandoned domestic pets. Mostly performance breeds like homers, rollers, tumblers, tipplers and sky cutters, with the occasional escaped or abandoned fancy mixed in.

What would your reaction be to a person taking a young dog they found in an alley or parking lot, worming it, bringing it back from emaciation or disease, maybe treating a broken bone or car injury, and then taking it right back and releasing it into the wild once they got it healthy?

Would you object?

Why?

Really. List all the reasons. Because I guarantee that all of them except rabies apply to pigeons.

Never seen a healthy stray dog? I can guarantee you that you’ve never seen a healthy stray pigeon either. The streaked white poo you always see on buildings or sidewalks under pigeon roosts? Its an indicator of starvation. Healthy poo is brown, round, and solid with a small white urate. White poo is pure uric acid, with little to no food matter, whick is why it does the structural damage it does.

The cute poofball pose? They are cold, and most are hunched up in the universal posture of “I don’t feel so good…” Being malnourished and usually heavily parisitized makes it hard to keep enough muscle mass to thermoregulate.

On mobile, I can’t see the question anymore once I start to answer it, so if I missed anything, I’ll reblog with more detail.

Ok. Looks like I have missed a few things.

Rescues and imprinting.

So, alluding to dogs again because pigeons have been domesticated AT LEAST as long and as completely as Dogs.

Imagine if, after all of the time Humanity has spent with Dogs, training them to work with us as partners, companions, therapy, and service animals; Society suddenly fell out of love with dogs and abandoned them completely, except for races and shows, where any non feral puppies born that could not be expected to win or produce winners were immediately killed.

That is exactly what happened to pigeons.

50 years ago.

Really. Just fifty years.

And dogs, who are still VERY much societally beloved as companions and in rolls of service, need rescues.

Because people refuse to spay and neuter their house pets, and more puppies are born than there are homes for, there is a stray population of unwanted dogs that breed uncontrolled.

And the reason feral dogs don’t have NEARLY the population of feral pigeons? SO many people respond SO fast to the sight of a lost, sick puppy or dog!

It’s just an automatic knee-jerk reaction for most people to at least network on behalf of a stray dog to get it somewhere safe and either reunite it with its owner, or find it a permanent home.

After all, we KNOW dogs are pets! If a dog is wandering unattended, something must be wrong, and it is automatically assumed to need help, no matter how healthy it looks at first glance.

Now, imagine if NO one EVER did that for ANY stray dog, over a period of 50 years, and now you know why there is such an overwhelming number of feral pigeons.

You may find the occasional purebred in a shelter, but I can pretty much guarantee that was a pet 9 times out of 10, whose owner either died or suffered some misfortune and had no other option. (Mill busts aside.)

Like I said in a previous ask, when animals are bred on purpose, there has to *be* a purpose. There must be a goal AND a plan for EVERY single litter.

If you boil it down, THAT is what separates an Ethical breeder from a Mill.

Ethical breeders have a SPECIFIC goal for a litter and have preparations set up for the rest of the pups. Space to house them long term, resources set aside for food and medical care, time set aside to train and socialize them, and a fee and screening process set up to make the best possible match between a pup and a family, and a return policy in case things don’t work out, in order to ensure that there is the least possible likelihood of any of those puppies winding up abandoned.

Pigeons, because of the smear campaign against them 50 years ago (http://www.audubon.org/…/the-origins-our-misguided-hatred-p…) no longer have the overwhelming public support with which Dogs are almost universally blessed.

Pigeons are either purebred show birds, purebred performers, or feral.

There are SO few pigeons blessed to be house companions.

Humanity has largely forgotten that they ARE domesticated.

There are SO few places even willing to look at them.

Wildlife rehabs are up to their eyes in DOMESTICATED birds that really should be in pet shelters. If pigeons were not constantly mistaken for wild animals, imagine how much funding and resources could be freed up for genuinely native wildlife!

While ADULT feral pigeons can survive release back “into the wild”, babies ALL almost immediately die upon release.

Pigeons are very human like in just HOW socially complex they are. Babies have to be TAUGHT how to pigeon!

Not just where and how to forage, but how to respect the spaces of older flock mates so that they can make and defend their own space with in the flock.

With out that knowledge, which humans are just not equipped to teach, baby pigeons will never be accepted into a flock.

Pigeon flocks are extended families. Strangers are competitors for limited resources and can only join a flock by marrying in.

Alone, they can’t survive. Feral flocks depend on cooperation to eat, drink, gather nest materials, and avoid predation. With no one to watch their back, a single pidge is under constant stress trying to feed itself and keep watch for predators at the same time. It steadily weakens, and dies of disease if it manages not to get eaten first.

Because of this, I make absolutely NO attempt to release any baby pigeons I get through wildlife rehab.

It would literally be dumping a stray puppy back into the alley or on the road side.

They ARE domestic pets. It is a fact.

And they deserve to be treated like it.

So the few shelters there are that accept them make it their life’s mission to remind humanity that PIGEONS ARE ABANDONED SKY PUPPIES!

OF COURSE THEY CAN BE GREAT COMPANIONS!

THAT IS WHAT THEY HAVE *ALWAYS* BEEN!

Now, let’s touch on imprinting.

The difference between pigeons and exotic birds isn’t that it’s ok to imprint pigeons, but not exotics.

It’s that pigeons do not NEED to be imprinted in order to be safely tractable.

Parrots are not domesticated. The tame ones are imprinted. They *have* to think of humans as parents and potential mates, or they will see us as predators and can inflict potentially crippling injuries in self defense.

Pigeons are genuinely domesticated, and have been since the dawn of written history. They are *hatched* already tame and do not have to be stolen and bottle fed to be safe to handle or capable of bonding as a companion to a person. Like puppies, pigeon babies only need to be socialized as they grow up in order to bond easily to people.

Oh!

Sorry.

I missed what you were actually asking in regards to imprinting!

You asked why baby pigeons in shelters NEED to be handled!

It’s because pigeons are intensely social. Babies and hens are VERY touch oriented, to the extent that they suffer touch starvation the way human toddlers do.

Baby Pigeons grow up in a cuddle puddle, constantly snuggled and verbally soothed by both parents until they wean.

They usually don’t even leave the flock after weaning. They become part of it, like a village made up of a huge, extended family; Nesting next door to or across the way from their parents and siblings, rather than going off on their own to claim an entirely separate territory.

Mater of fact, young birds ONLY have to leave and start a new flock when the one they hatched in grows too large for local resources to support.

Wild animals in rehab need to be handled as little as possible to avoid imprinting, so that they are not hindered in their survival upon release.

Pigeons are NOT wild animals. They are not even native to anywhere but Turkey and neighboring parts of the middle east. They are domesticated pets. Imprinting avoidance should not apply to them.

[shadowoflightt]

Start from where you are.

Start from what you can genuinely believe.

Just 1 small step towards what you want makes all the difference here.

You know what? I used to think other people saying this is just contrived platitudes, but here we go:

I know you can do it. Hang in there.

I’m so f*cking tired too. Let’s take it 1 tired step at a time then.

The whole self love thing is good and all but some people can’t fathom being loved. They can’t imagine there being anything good about them. So they can’t simply just stop doing unhealthy things, there’s a process.

[shadowoflightt]

It might seem that way, but if you stop and think about it for awhile, it's quite simple, and one doesn't even have to be good at math to understand this.

As long as you have a formula or algorithm, it can never truly be random, because they are basically sets of rules.

That's why in computers, random number generators use the time as the seed to 'randomly' generate numbers, because you're unlikely to ever have that same string numbers again as time goes forward.

In real life, there is more ‘noise’, factors that are outside of specific rules. If there’s world is perfect, you could technically predict how the lava in each of the lava lamps move.

But, that is incredibly impractical, because you’d need to know every single factor in every part of the room (temperature, change of temps, conductivity of the materials, etc etc etc).

So, effectively, the lava lamps are already pretty random because of the different factors even in the same area, then all these imperfections adds to that randomness.

Even then, there would be a general pattern. If you were to really gather movement data of the lava lamps across a long time period, you could technically predict, with a reasonable amount of accuracy, how it would move.

Won't be as predictable as a formula/algorithm, but because the long term patterns would be similar (similar climate, similar working hours of people moving in and out, similar changes in temps and light etc), the resulting prediction would be reasonably accurate.

(This is the true strength of modern "AI" btw, because it's technically a pattern recognition system, designed to predict outcomes based on what it's fed. Fantastic tool for research.)

That's why the visitors and events are encouraged. You add more noise into the data with people moving around, which create chaos even in the long range data.

Whoever thought of this truly understood the task, and thought of a simple, cheap and effective way to create this randomness, in really cool way to boot.

Sorry I'm ranting but it's one of things where so many little things come together beautifully and like *chef's kiss*

What’s encrypting your internet surfing? An algorithm created by a supercomputer? Well, if the site you’re visiting is encrypted by the cyber security firm Cloudflare, your activity may be protected by a wall of lava lamps.

Cloudflare covers websites for Uber, OKCupid, & FitBit, for instance. The wall of  lamps in the San Francisco headquarters generates a random code. Over 100  lamps, in a variety of colors, and their patterns deter hackers from accessing data.  

As the lava lamps bubble and swirl, a video camera on the ceiling monitors their unpredictable changes and connects the footage to a computer, which converts the randomness into a virtually unhackable code.

Codes created by machines have relatively predictable patterns, so it’s possible for hackers to guess their algorithms, posing a security risk. Lava lamps, add to the equation the sheer randomness of the physical world, making it nearly impossible for hackers to break through.

You might think that this would be kept secret, but it’s not. Simply go in and ask to see the lava lamp display. By allowing people to affect the video footage, human movement, static, and changes in lighting from the windows work together to make the random code even harder to predict.

So, by standing in front of the display, you add an additional variable to the code, making it even harder to hack. Isn’t that interesting? 

via atlasobscura.com

[shadowoflightt]

The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))

[shadowoflightt]

the cool thing about having an idiot alt right supporting brother is when he gets mad over dumb shit my sister and i go “It’s concerning how such a small thing triggers such a strong reaction from you.” in the family groupchat and he’ll see the word “trigger” in relation to him and go fucking nuclear

the downside about having such a dipshit brother is literally every thing else about him

[shadowoflightt]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[shadowoflightt]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I FOUND IT GUYS I SPENT HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS VIDEO AND ITS HERE

[shadowoflightt]

When you learned of the god of war, you thought he’d be tall and muscular and angry. When you were about to meet him, you braced yourself for the worst.

You weren’t quite expecting the short, scrawny, shy kid you ended up getting instead.

[shadowoflightt]

Anyway, if you read marriage certificates from church records, a full 85% of first marriages for young women were around 18-19 years old. The rest skewed higher, into the early twenties, with only a few being below that age and only one in a thousand was younger than 16. 

The age of puberty has declined over the centuries as girls get better nutrition, as well, so throughout the middle ages the age at which a girl could expect her first period was around 16, where modern girls often get it much younger. 

The idea that women in earlier ages were married and mothers in their early teens is a myth. Marriages of children were usually only between noble families, and made for political reasons, or creepy old bastards who wanted a child-wife and could get away with it because they were rich and powerful. They often would point to the fact that the Roman elite did the same thing as justification. The Romans, of course, would point to the Greeks doing the same thing as justification, the Greeks pointed at the Assyrians, and so on back through the ages. 

It was considered disgusting by normal people then and still is. 

This myth is still brought out and touted by sick fuckers. Know it for what it is; a falsehood. 

[shadowoflightt]

The way that most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880’s, compels me.

[shadowoflightt]

[shadowoflightt]

*releases pack of dads into home depot* go……be free

[shadowoflightt]

[shadowoflightt]

As someone who’s reported alt-right harassment and rhetoric on various social media sites and been told “there’s nothing here that violates our TOS,” seeing what RPGnet is doing is a welcome breath of fresh air.

Please, more social media sites need to do this.