#The New Yorker Article

[alleycatallies]

Alley Cat Allies Exposes Misrepresentation of TNR in The New Yorker

Alley Cat Allies is compelled to address the shockingly biased and dangerously misinformed portrayal of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), community cats, and the people who protect them in the piece ‘How the ‘No Kill” Movement Betrays Its Name’ published in The New Yorker.

The “article,” which should be labeled an opinion piece, uses debunked and antiquated studies to advocate for lethal control of cats outdoors, all while desperately downplaying the only humane and effective approach—Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR)—and condescending to or downright insulting the people who do the real legwork to benefit cats and communities.

Writer Jonathan Franzen purports various cynical, imagined reasons why our movement calls unowned cats who live outdoors “community cats.” We’re here to clear the air: Community cats, who live and thrive in their natural outdoor homes among us, are called such to acknowledge their thousands of years of history as members of our communities.

Community cats are bonded to their outdoor homes and to their feline families, and they are not generally candidates for adoption. TNR acknowledges their nature, their biology, and their inherent value as beings deserving of respect and protection by allowing these cats to continue their lives in familiar surroundings while ensuring their population stabilizes.

TNR is the ONLY evidence-based, humane, and effective approach to cats outdoors. Spaying or neutering means fewer kittens born outdoors and the reduction of behaviors associated with mating—which are what people point to as “nuisance” behaviors. Additionally, vaccinations provided during TNR improve the cats’ health and address community health concerns—though it’s critical to note that cats are extremely unlikely to spread rabies, toxoplasmosis, or any other diseases. The success of community TNR programs is studied and documented.

TNR is also the primary way community cats with other medical issues receive the care they need— despite Franzen hammering in the idea that all cats are suffering outdoors (there’s a sinister motive for this, as we’ll describe later), community cats are generally healthy and in good condition and live long and fulfilling lives as pet cats.

Developing objective, science-first best practices aimed at humane care for animals, building peaceful communities, and protecting all species should be the top priority in our modern world. That is why Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) has become mainstream practice. Beyond saving cats’ lives, TNR is sound public policy that reduces calls to animal control, reduces the number of cats entering shelters, and reduces taxpayer expense, all while meeting the demands of the public for effective, meaningful, AND lifesaving action for cats in their communities.

Franzen writes about TNR as under-resourced in far too many communities. The logical solution would be for local governments to devote more resources to TNR to improve its reach and efficacy rather than continue to waste money on ineffective lethal schemes. Franzen’s conclusion, though, is that lack of resources means TNR will never work. He believes cats should be killed—and his portrayal of cats as constantly suffering outdoors is meant to justify lethal schemes.

TNR opponents’ proposed “alternatives” to TNR come down to rounding up and killing cats over and over and over again. However, trapping cats and “euthanizing” them in shelters is not some untested idea; it was the status quo for decades and failed miserably due to the Vacuum Effect—a phenomenon in which other cats move in to take advantage of the resources that sustained the colony that was removed. In fact, TNR rose from a history of futile, cruel catch-and-kill cycles because communities recognized the need for change and that compassionate and humane approaches worked.

Franzen, like many in the anti-TNR crowd, cites the same piece of debunked junk “science” that keeps coming back to haunt us within so-called “factual” articles. That “science” is an exercise in Olympic gymnast-level contortion to fit the findings of older studies into a pre-determined conclusion that cats are a major threat to birds and other wildlife species.

Cats have an important place in ecosystems, and whenever they are removed in large numbers, the consequences are dire—not just for the cats but for local wildlife. The reality is cats are not a major threat to wildlife species, endangered or otherwise, and the “science” that claims such is heavily flawed and funded by fringe interests and biased parties. As we have seen time and time again, catch and kill leads to nothing but an endless cycle of expensive and morally bankrupt slaughter that does not benefit cats, community, or wildlife.

But, on a positive note, the reality is also that we can protect both cats and wildlife. The interests are not mutually exclusive. By advocating for stronger TNR programs backed by local governments AND policies that curb human-led activities that are the true threats to wildlife—like habitat destruction and pollution—we improve the lives of cats, wildlife, and us all.

Like all worthwhile goals, communitywide effort is the key to humane and effective programs and policies. Rather than condescending and stereotyping cat caregivers, as Franzen does repeatedly in his article, Alley Cat Allies supports them with humane education on best practices for TNR and community cat care. Rather than give community leaders an excuse to give up on humane programs and utilize taxpayer dollars on an endless cycle of killing cats, we push them to work WITH members of their communities and allot funds to what their people believe in—which overwhelmingly is non-lethal approaches.

It’s time for communities, local governments, and media outlets like The New Yorker to stop wasting words, space, money, and time on calls to backtrack to the dark ages of killing cats and kittens endlessly. TNR is the only way forward.

Content source: https://www.alleycat.org/alley-cat-allies-exposes-misrepresentation-of-tnr-in-the-new-yorker/

[mysharona1987]

What a sad and infuriating story this is. This woman was let down on every single level.

[punisheddonjuan]

Another Chotiner interview, another official makes an idiot of himself and lets on far more than he should have. I honestly don't know how Chotiner manages to do this again and again, have these people just not read any of his previous interviews? It's not like his questions are particularly pointed. I suppose he simply gives people enough rope.

What I’ve been struck by in the last few months is the willingness of the Biden Administration to be humiliated by the Israelis. And I’m not talking about this in a moral or ethical sense. Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, takes a trip to Tel Aviv and the Israelis embarrass him by announcing land seizures in the West Bank during the visit. Stuff like this has happened multiple times. Or Netanyahu, responding to Biden saying he “has a red line” around Rafah, defies him publicly and even says he has his own “red line.” I’m surprised the Administration doesn’t have a little bit more pride. I keep thinking, even if they don’t want to change the policy, they must be having some sort of human reaction to— Oh, I’m sure that’s right. When Bill Clinton emerges from his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, in June of 1996, Clinton explodes: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” James Baker banned Netanyahu from the State Department when he was deputy foreign minister. This is part of what I call the system, the structure of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Someone might say, “Why is the most powerful country in human history essentially taking orders from a country that relies on it for aid? What exactly is going on here?” I’ve been looking at the U.S.-Israeli relationship for decades. I left the government in 2003, during the second Bush Administration. I’d been in government since Jimmy Carter. There was a time when someone could say with a straight face that the three ingredients that made the relationship were a high coincidence of values, a high coincidence of interest, and a strong base of domestic support. During the past fifteen to twenty years, many of which are under Benjamin Netanyahu’s purview as Prime Minister, the value affinity, the perception that Israel shares common values with us, is under more stress. No President I ever worked for sought a major conflict or confrontation with Israeli Prime Ministers. They sought to manage rather than to confront. The practical reality is that if you want to get anything done, even if it involves tensions and pressure, you have to find a way to work with, rather than against, the Israeli government. My analysis has now been tested six months into the worst Israeli-Palestinian crisis that we’ve ever experienced. I just worry about a situation where we throw up our hands and say, “Well, the United States, the most powerful country on earth, has no choice but to keep arming a country that’s starving people.” But, Isaac, look, just between you and me— It’s an interview, but sure. The question is: why? I’ve offered you the best explanation based on literally twenty-seven years of watching and participating in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. I can’t explain it. I think your question is a really good one.

[...]

You’re saying you have no investment in one analysis or another. I could be wrong, but when I was listening to you talk, and you discussed the horrors of October 7th, I sensed an emotion in your voice that I haven’t heard at any other time in this conversation. I don’t want to criticize that, but I do wonder if the people who make policy in America don’t have that same emotion when it comes to Palestinian lives. Do you think that’s fair? I think it’s fair to say, yes, that America and Americans have a pro-Israeli sensibility. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Clinton wrote in his memoir that he loved Yitzhak Rabin as he loved no man, rarely loved any other man, which is extraordinary. I watched Clinton grieve in the wake of Rabin’s murder. And when Biden gave the speech on October 10th, you watched the tears well up in his eyes. He talked about the black hole of loss. He’s conflated the tragedies in his own personal life with what Israelis felt on that day. Yes, that’s very moving, but there is another kind of loss going on now which he apparently can’t conflate with his own experience. Oh, if you’re asking me: Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t, nor does he convey it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

Christ.

[archerygun]

Been headcannoning Lars as a Londoner because this is the city where it’s socially unacceptable to exist in the direction of a stranger and I think that fits him very well.

So he’s going to DESPISE the Subway. I’ve heard from people that live there that people make a fair bit of noise on it and actually make eye contact and such, sometimes people even play music on there.

I cannot imagine anything more opposed to the London tubes. They literally ran an ad campaign when I was a kid that basically said “Do not play music without headphones in a crowded tube carriage because not everyone wants to listen to your shitty music, Ethan.” Making eye contact? Unheard of. Forbidden. If you don’t have a phone or a book or a friend to occupy yourself with, you stare at the ads or the floor. That’s just the rules.

I think the first time a stranger makes eye contact with Lars he’s going to feel like living up to the stereotype and stabbing someone.

[yepthatsacowalright]

“When I asked Phoebe Bridgers about the band's reputation for giving voice to a certain strain of middle-aged male angst, she said, ‘Something middle-aged men and teen-age girls have in common is the act of finding yourself, and being kind of self-conscious. Maybe some beliefs that vou've held on to for a long time are finally being shed. The teen-age girl in me is obsessed with The National, and feels very spoken to and seen by them, maybe for the exact same reasons that they speak to middle-aged men.”

- The Sad Dads of the National

[handmedownpocketpussy]

If y'all haven't read this article on the Titan you should here's some hilights:

I cannot imagine going anywhere near this wreck of an exposition and I'm just a lowley marine engineer of surface vessels-- the hubris of an aeronautical engineer to assume he could ignore the laws of materials science is astounding

I'm so glad he's dead and the sub is gone but what a tragedy to kill four other people with him

[thebusylilbee]

i was today years old when I learned that the tacos I've been eating in France my whole life are specifically "french tacos" ??? I thought there were just several types of mexican tacos ??? turns out the original tacos were customized by french maghrebis from Vaulx-en-Velin and it took off and the french ones are their own thing now

[weneedtotalkaboutcate]

Cate photographed by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker.

[wutheringheights78]

and what's so wrong with that

[llatimeria]

🫠

[heavenlyyshecomes]

Fav website to read interesting articles ? ✨

longreads, the atavist, lithub, the paris review, real life, lapham's quaterly, aeon, noema, blood knife, orion, harper's, emergence, nautilus and granta !

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Soaking Dishes in the Sink

Your ability to make life more difficult is unmatchable. If an easy solution is available—and I mean a mind-numbingly obvious one—you decide that maybe the fix can’t be so simple and that you’d better let things marinate for a few days, at which point, yes, they’ve now become the nasty thing that you imagined, seeped in a rancid cesspool of indecision and procrastination (and, literally, rotting food). By the time you get ready to take any form of action, someone has come along and done the cleanup for you, which is what you wanted all along.

Letting Unopened Mail Pile Up

Typically, you are one of those people who doesn’t check voice messages because they make you anxious. You have an extreme fear of the unknown and are marginally equipped to navigate adult life. Like the Soaker, you avoid making decisions, but, rather than acknowledge problems and put off solving them, you delay identifying the issues altogether until you have no choice—because, well, you’ve run out of places to eat your breakfast. Besides, if a bill is mailed and no one is there to open it, does it even exist?

Leaving Kitchen Cabinets Open

You’re made up of equal parts courage and fear. You’re brave enough to start any old task that pops into your overactive mind but too afraid to finish one godforsaken project. You balk at the notion that if one door closes, another one opens, because, afraid of making the wrong decision and missing opportunities, you leave them all ajar. Your life is dominated by what-ifs, and you’ll likely never learn to take definitive action—at least not until you crack the top of your skull on a cabinet-door edge.

Leaving One Bite or Sip

Greedy glutton? No. Self-absorbed free spirit? No doubt. You leave a spoonful of banana pudding in the bowl and a swig of orange juice in the bottle because you’re too busy with your own life to think about anyone else’s. You’re fun as hell to be around because you live for the moment, but, when faced with the unfortunate consequences of your actions, you claim, “It’s not my problem,” when in fact you, my friend, are everybody’s problem.

“Mopping” with Your Foot and a Clorox Wipe

You���re a visionary who lives by the maxim “There’s got to be a better way.” And that way is yours. Your unbridled and unfounded confidence helps you discover new paths, even if they turn out to be ones that others have abandoned with good reason. To your credit, you’re willing to risk physical harm executing your creative yet lazy strategies, because there’s nothing a $12.99 plastic pole can do that your God-given right leg can’t do better, notwithstanding a soggy sock and that cramp in your hamstring.

Keeping Leftovers in the Fridge Past the Point of Viability

Let’s not mince moldy garlic—you’ve got severe abandonment issues, which cause you to hold onto every damn thing. A perpetual people pleaser, you fear tossing something that may have potential because, well, it will all be good if you just wait awhile and add a little Lawry’s. It’s not. Lesson almost learned.

By Nicole Rose Whitaker :: February 16, 2022

[sherdnerd]

Absolutely fascinating hearing people from LA talk about highways. Not tne people into urbanism or whatever, just regular folks. Because they talk about them like people from cities like New York talk about subway lines.

"The area is served by the 5 and the 2"

"You can get there on the 2 or the 5"

One of these sentences is about the Subway in the Bronx. The other is about highways Glendale, California.

Honestly I think that's a good way of pitching transit to cities like LA, as freeways for people.

[9w1ft]

[loveandthings11]

This might be insane, but Roman points out that Kendall is wearing Tom Ford shoes in the trailer, and Kendall also famously wore Tom Ford shoes when he was running to the vote of no confidence in season 1 (when Jeremy broke his foot). AND he wore a Tom Ford suit at the press conference. This is Kendall's take-Logan-down designer.

[yepthatsacowalright]

The way the issue of The New Yorker I’m reading has an article about human reproduction/fertility that says,

“Research into women’s health has been historically underfunded. Most of our contraceptives and fertility treatments were developed in the last century; there has been little innovation since the nineteen-eighties.”

followed by an article a few pages later about Taco Bell that says,

“Frito-Lay, which supplies the chain with taco shells, runs a research complex outside of Dallas that’s staffed by hundreds of chemists, psychologists, and technicians, who perform millions of dollars’ worth of research a year examining the crunch, mouthfeel, and aroma of each of its snack products. A forty-thousand-dollar steel device that mimics a chewing mouth tests such factors as the perfect breaking point of a chip. (People apparently like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.)”

makes me wish to throw it all into the sea. 🙃