#disclaimer i am NOT an expert

[picnokinesis]

hello taka,

I respect you very highly as a cherished mutual of mine. I’m on anon because I can’t trust people not to misconstrue me and paint me as something I’m not. I just want to express concern over your reblog of South Africa—people conflate the situation with them and with Israel in dangerous ways. the key difference is that the Hamas-run government’s mission is to kill all Jews and Israelis. This includes the Muslims and Christians living in Israel. They are not synonymous situations, because there has never been a precedent for what’s happening now. it is naive to think that there would be no risk to the Israeli citizens, because there is a genuine threat to all of their lives. I just wanted to share this with you because it is very painful to see misinformation like this being spread, and how it misrepresents the situation. You don’t have to respond to this; I am sympathetic to why you shared it. I am only sending this ask because I see that you care and I don’t want you to be misled.

Hi there!!

I actually really appreciate this ask, because it made me go and have a conversation with a good friend of mine who studies international conflict and relations, and has a much greater understanding of this sort of thing than I do. Which is gonna be the basis of my response here, but I just wanna clarify that I'm by no means an expert on any of this, or how this sort of situation can be resolved.

I think I get where you're coming from here! And actually, I fundamentally agree with you on a lot of things - you're right, there is a tendency right now for people to draw parallels between these other historical/current situations, which can lead to over-generalisation which isn't really helpful, as some things are a lot more complicated and less clear cut than others. And, also, every situation is unique. You're right - the solution to apartheid in South Africa, and the situation in Boliva are not the same as what's happening with Israel and Palestine. So saying these situations are exactly the same isn't helpful.

However - I do think you missed the point of that post. Or, at least, the point how I interpreted it. For example, I don't think that post was at all calling for a Hamas-led government - in fact, I don't think it mentioned Hamas at all? My initial reaction to your ask, I'll admit, was frustration, because it seems that every time people try and talk about what's happening in Gaza, people bring up Hamas, and whilst I know why, it comes back to the whole thing of like, if you're spending so much time explaining that, no, you don't agree with Hamas and you think the Oct 7th attack was wrong, then you are not talking about the bigger problem, which is that nothing that Hamas did could ever justify what the Israeli government is doing right now, or has been doing since 1948. I know that's not at all what you were saying, but it is really frustrating. I think you're right, I don't think there should be a Hamas-led government (thought, to be frank, it's not really my place to say who should or shouldn't be in charge). I don't know what the government of a free Palestine (presumably combined with Israel) would look like - and I know that building a democracy is very difficult and also dangerous. But we have to hope that it's possible to achieve something that would actually work, right? We have to believe that there can be a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live together, equally, and without fear, and without prejudice, for either side (and I personally think the risk is much greater for Palestinians not being treated equally, but at the same time I recognise what you are saying too). The fact is that historically, a multicultural Israel/Palestine has existed (albeit, Israel as the country state that we know it today didn't necessarily, but you get what I mean) - and so I think that post is a lot less about 'these situations are all the same and should be treated the exact same way, with the same solutions'. If it is about that, then I don't think it's correct. I think it's a lot more about solidarity, and the idea there have been all sorts of awful situations before, and that afterwards, when varying solutions were achieved, people were able to live side by side with each other. That it is possible.

That said though, I definitely didn't have all these thoughts in mind when reblogging that post - I just thought yeah I really agree with this! and reblogged it. So, I'll be honest, I didn't know or understand all of what you said here - so I'm really glad that it prompted me to go and talk to my friend and start looking more into things and learning more, which is never a bad thing. Because you're right, this is complicated. And it isn't black and white.

There isn't an easy solution to what's going on. And I'm not here to provide that solution anyway. But - I guess I come at this from a Disaster Management perspective, which makes sense since I studied that. And in Disaster Management, there's a thing very imaginatively named 'the Disaster Management Cycle', and basically it goes from prevention, preparation and mitigation > DISASTER > response, recovery, development, building back to a new normal where things are better, and cycle back into that initial prevention for future disasters. And so, when I'm thinking of response, I'm also thinking of what needs to come next - what comes after the ceasefire? What comes after the aid, the immediate relief? We've got to think about recovery and development, and what that new normal would look like. And I think, whilst I now see that making comparison the way that post did can cause harm in it's own way, I think that the core of it was that we want to work for a future in Palestine and Israel where there is no displacement of anyone, where people can return and have freedom of movement, where people are equal. And, sure, that isn't going to happen tomorrow, and it's not going to happen next week - because it takes time and it's extremely difficult. And I probably am naive - but we have to have hope, right? We've got to have something to aim for. We (or, rather, someone) has got to be able to sit down and say this is what we want a free Palestine to actually look like, and there will be things that are practical and things that will be idealistic, and things that will be a bit of both, but regardless...we gotta start somewhere.

And, of course, the worst part of this whole situation is that we're not there yet. We're not even in response. We're still in the disaster stage. And I think that is what we've got to be talking about the most at the moment because the situation is getting worse and worse, and I can go on about long term solutions all I like, but there are things that need to be done right now. And, unfortunately, neither you nor I have the power to snap our fingers and do that - but we do have the power to be as annoying as possible to the people who do. So, my friend - I have no idea which country you're in, but if you're in the UK or the USA or any country that's failed to back a ceasefire or has cut funding to UNRWA, and you haven't been annoying to your local official/rep/mp about it yet - give them hell. And then, when we're in the recovery stage, we can start talking about who should be in charge and making sure no one else ever gets killed or loses everything over all of this.

[wombywoo]

retro 🪖

[moon-pepper]

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that understanding history is necessary to prevent the worst parts of it from repeating, so I spend a lot of my free time trying to learn about things like colonialism, slavery, genocide -- and it worries me to no end to see how much the majority of people don't seem to understand even about events everyone is familiar with. I used to be baffled that anyone could genuinely believe slavery was "just how things were back then", but it makes sense when you realize that most history lessons only deal with what the people in power decided to do; public outrage about a particular action only matters in the historical context if that outrage led to actual mass revolution. Even before we get to the layers of whitewashing and propaganda constantly applied to history, there's an innate bias toward treating major political movements as though they just appear and disappear entirely at random. Which leads me to wonder...

Do fellow gentiles realize that the Nazis weren't new?

What I mean is that most coverage I see of the Nazi ascension to power in Germany presents them as this new, fringe group that came to power out of nowhere through solely violent means. Sometimes there will be explicit mention of the fact that antisemitism was extremely prevalent throughout Germany (occasionally even the rest of Europe!) prior to Hitler's political campaign, but oftentimes it seems implicit that mass antisemitism in Germany began when the NSDAP first formed. Even when the prior existence of antisemitism is brought up, the Nazis are portrayed as a new, unique evil; they did things that no democratic society would ever dream of doing, things that could only be achieved by either completely hiding them from the public or by threatening anyone who spoke against them. "Nazi" is simultaneously an easy epithet for any excessively cruel or restrictive person and a label that is far too severe to seriously apply to anyone because the Nazis were so evil in a way that nobody else was that nobody is truly deserving of comparison.

The thing is, though, that the policies put into place by the Nazi government in order to enable their genocidal end goal weren't original. Even setting aside the fact that they're often viewed as the inventors of genocide despite Hitler openly admitting that he got the idea from the treatment of Indigenous peoples by the U.S.A. (highly recommend watching this BadEmpanada video to learn about that), very few of the Nazis' beliefs or actions were original to the Nazis. The conspiratorial, racially-puristic ideas that the Nazis touted were derived from contemporary conservative thinkers all across the West, and many of the antisemitic legal policies they implemented as part of their Final Solution were practices that had been standard throughout Europe for centuries prior.

The infamous yellow-star badges used to identify Jewish citizens? Those were first devised and enforced the region (by both Christian and Muslim rulers) at least as early as the 800s; it was 1215 when Pope Innocent III declared that all Jewish and Muslim people living in Catholic lands should be required to wear identifying clothing with the explicit goal of segregating them from Christians. The Nazi ghettos to which Jewish citizens were forcibly relocated were inspired by ghettos which had existed to segregate and isolate Jewish populations for centuries; the only real difference is that these new ghettos were just preludes to concentration camps rather than being meant for long-term habitation. Just about every part of Western society had some form of restriction (mandated or voluntary) banning Jewish people from occupying certain jobs or limiting their presence in universities going back centuries before the Nazis existed. There were more than 350 years where Jewish people were not legally permitted to live in England.

The reason I bring all of this up is because, even among people who are conscious of Europe's widespread antisemitism prior to the rise of Nazism, there's a strong notion that the Nazis were so detestable because they came out of nowhere; that they completely defied the norms of the day and took their antisemitism to a level that even the deeply antisemitic societies of past Europe never would have.

In reality, the Nazis weren't much of an escalation -- they were a return. Legal segregation, expulsion, and even slaughter of Jewish people really only began to end when the Enlightenment came and public sentiment in the West began to favor secular government. The first country to abolish legal restrictions on Jewish people was Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Russia maintained its restrictions on Jewish citizens' rights up until it also saw revolution in 1917. The idea that Jewish people were responsible for all of society's ills and needed to be subjugated and exterminated was not a new idea that took hold of Germany due to its economic suffering after World War 1; it was a very old, very popular idea that most of Europe had only just begun to abandon and which was brought back in full force the moment it became politically convenient.

Consider how this compares to present-day politics. Jewish Germans were only granted equal rights in 1871 -- Adolf Hitler's father and mother were 34 and 11 years old, respectively -- and when the Nazi Party formed only 49 years later, the majority of adult Germans would have grown up in or been raised by parents who grew up in a world before religious desegregation. The Nazi Party's promise to the German public was not to introduce a newly bigoted society, but to bring back the bigotry they had grown up with and ensure that it would never leave again; they succeeded by using Germany's post-war suffering to "prove" their society was declining and blaming that decline on a recent major societal change, thereby convincing Christian Germans who were still deeply antisemitic that you see? we let the Jews have rights and not even fifty years later everything is awful. Many Germans did not need to be lied to or forced into supporting the Nazis because, to them, the Nazis were just fighting to revive the "Good Old Days" of their youths.

As a political party, the Nazis were functionally identical to all of the modern-day pundits eagerly proclaiming that racial equality and LGBT equality and religious diversity and welfare policies are destroying the country. Any period of significant economic downturn, any large cultural shift, any major catastrophe no matter the cause is automatically the decline of Western Society to them -- and the blame for that decline is always placed on the most relevant pro-equality social movements. What makes the Nazis unique is not their goals or the beliefs that fueled them; what makes the Nazis unique is that they're the latest and largest example of a group like them gaining power and then rapidly losing that power, which makes them simultaneously martyr idols for subsequent fascists and sacrificial vessels through which liberals can pretend the world's evils were expunged.

Any major shift in favor of granting rights to the oppressed inevitably stirs up a proportional conservative backlash with the effort of reversing course -- not just by revoking those new rights, but by making the previous inequality worse so that it becomes harder to undo again. If we care about ensuring an equitable future, it is vital to understand that the fight for that future does not end with a law being passed. It ends only when equality for all is so well-established as a social norm that there is no way to benefit from pushing for its destruction. Do not get complacent.

[shoutsofmybones]

constant calls of "Jesus was a Palestinian" among progressive Christians despite the historical inaccuracy of the claim (Palestine did not exist in the 1st century CE) brings up many questions. Do we actually need to say Jesus was Palestinian in order to do something about their plight? Why insist on Jesus being Palestinian as somehow a prerequisite for Christians giving a damn about genocide? Can an inaccurate claim about Jesus's nationality be demonstrably useful for the Palestinian cause? Is it actually necessary to identify a nationality with Jesus in order for us to care about them?

[fmab]

Hi can I ask what’s a necron (irt your recent post)? idk what ur talking about but I want to be included 😅

omg yess i am always glad to talk about necrons 🫶 they are immortal alien skeleton robots from warhammer 40k! They werent always robots- its complicated, but the Extremely abridged TLDR of it is that back in the day, as flesh and blood they lived really horrible shitty short lives prone to cancer and early death due to their very fucked up sun. Their king made a Very Bad Deal with some ancient star gods for immortality of all his people. Unfortunately they had their souls stripped away in the process and very few of them retained their memories and personhood. They do rebel against these star gods, but afterward, at this point the damage is done, and they all go hibernate in these giant ancient tomb worlds for 60 million years to sleep it off. (the great sleep caused Other unforseen issues like further memory and function decay but thats another topic)

i rlly enjoy necrons because despite it all there are some really really unique characters out there.. Being immortal for that long with a finite number of peers means all sorts of interesting relationships and problems arise. Despite being soulless alien robots they have a lot of depth and many of the books and short stories humanize them and emphasize that love and hope can still persist even in the most bleak circumstances (Severed and Twice Dead King for example).

I also think theyre neat because they all suffer from turbo dysphoria about not having bodies of flesh anymore and will literally go mad if they focus on that fact for too long. Exploring the psychological impacts of losing their bodies & going from living extremely short lived lives to Literally Living Forever and carrying all their baggage with them through that is. interesting <3

[housebutch]

the difference between feminine straight women and femmes is that the femme lesbian performance of femininity is closer to that of a drag queen than it is to the femininity of a straight woman. hope this helps

[morethanonepage]

Do you have any opinions on modern day John's music tastes? I'm usually annoyed when they don't update them from the original time period. Like, sex pistols? Rly?

lmfao I actually think it makes sense, at his core John is a white english boy, ofc he'd be into the 'classics' of a genre* (and the Sex Pistols/Ramones era really IS the start of the punk genre) before being willing to explore anything more modern/of his own time period. like i would also believe him as a music snob who prefers vinyl to CD/digital music (i'm more 🙄 on him using the ipod in the Constantine show, for instance, but I also think it's implied Chas maybe have both brought and put it together for him).

of course i think comics hellblazer canon is that he's into the pistols' bc he was at that classic 1976 show in Manchester (I may have just made this up, it may just be *my* headcanon), modern john's backstory would probably be that he was a pretentious little weirdo rebelling against what would've been the most in opposition to pop music in the early 90s, got into local punk music, and then went looking for whatever ~the classics were. like i think he'd likely be a fan of local music/more modern punk as well but being a baseline Pistols' fanboy makes sense to me.

*also have to point out the most obnoxious show!john thing which is when he complains about reggae music when it's so closely tied to the history of punk. like, specifically with Johnny Rotten even. Bizarre writing choice imo, either the writers of the show didn't know that or they did and were making a real statement about John's white englishman blindspots of not knowing/respecting POC history & influence on stuff he likes [which is also supported by him being such a snob about the folk magic in the infamous mexico city episodes of the show, and the "magpie of magic" comment from Papa Midnite.] given his background i don't think it's shocking that john constantine is terrible re: intersectionality but it's worth remembering as one of his flaws (though: i think he's actually better about it in the comics).

[grunklestanofficial]

And also Sally, let’s talk about Sally in this update. I am staring heavily at @friendlyfrankenstein for the decision to make her costume an archetype in the Commedia dell'arte, and the potential foreshadowing that comes from her choice in character. Delving into information on what role Pedrolino typically plays in a performance, they’re a stock character of a lower class servant- though the sources I’m reading seem like they have some conflicting idea on the behavior connected to it? Typically they tend to be the butt of the joke in things (though they personally never seem to lose any sense of personal dignity from it- something that parallels with Sally’s performances not going to plan due to Neighborhood Shenanigan) but they could also be considered the “go-between” for the other characters and someone whose actions help to keep the plot moving. Again, Sally’s scary story establishes in lore that the Neighbors don’t  go outside at night, and think there might be a monster also fitting into that story role.

But despite the comic relief it also seems like Pedrolino can play clever roles within the stories as well, like in terms of setting up zany plots to help get lovers together or to fuck with people. Another aspect of Pedrolino is that they're romantically devoted to the character Columbina- which I would maybe parallel with Poppy, more for Colmbina's aspect as the straight man than her flirtatious and bold behavior. So possibly all of this might mean is maybe Sally is going to be the one that gets Neighbors noticing that the things around them are getting kind of funky? And possibly she might be the main vessel that Playfellows Workshop uses to insist that Frank and Julie are Very Straight based on the lovers thing. But y'know I think it also implies a general theme around Sally's character, where she feels that she has an important role to play, but in the greater meta-textual context is more of a joke.

[multi-lefaiye]

my spicy hot take regarding AI chatbots lying to people is that, no, the chatbot isn't lying. chatgpt is not lying. it's not capable of making the conscious decision to lie to you. that doesn't mean it's providing factual information, though, because that's not what it's meant to do (despite how it's being marketed and portrayed). chatgpt is a language learning model simply predicting what responses are most probable based on established parameters.

it's not lying, it's providing the most statistically likely output based on its training data. and that includes making shit up.

[ephemeral-antiquities]

In regards to the general headcanon that Vincent Sinclair communicates through sign language….

Here’s my idea, everyone…

Obviously, we know that Vincent is not deaf, he is hearing. The only chance I could think is if his hearing was somehow affected in the surgery separating him from Bo, which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility but still.

Though, that does not make it entirely irrational for him to communicate through ASL. However, there lies one problem in this headcanon, allow me to explain.

Sign language is more than simply hand gestures, and a lot of signs involve facial expressions. As my teachers always used to say about expressions, “if it doesn’t feel weird, you’re doing it wrong”. ASL relies on facial expression to indicate tone (among many other things) and expression is just as much a part of the sign as hand movement. A vast majority of the time, Vincent’s face is covered so his expression is not easily visible, and there’s the elephant in the room. Basically, to sign without visible expressions is.. not easy to put it simply, if not downright impossible.

I do believe that Vincent would communicate through sign though, at least partially. Without a doubt I believe a vast majority of his communication with others would be non-verbal. The method through which he would communicate I think would vary vastly depending on context and target audience. Signing to Bo and Lester is very plausible, in my opinion, or those he is comfortable enough to remove his mask around, but to others you may very well get a notepad or some other form of non-verbal communication.

But I also believe he would speak. It would be rare, though, as I imagine it would be physically painful for him, not to mention downright tiring (I get it). One or two sentences is the most (on a good day) you would get out of him, verbally. I have little information on this but I would imagine it’s not out of the realm of possibility that in the aforementioned surgery his vocal chords could have been somehow damaged, nevermind the scarring it left behind which could interfere severely with his ability to communicate verbally. Babies are small, after all.

I’m going off on a tangent now, though, so allow me to summarize and wrap things up.

Yes, I believe Vincent Sinclair 100% communicates, primarily, through non-verbal forms. Yes, I believe that part of that includes the usage of sign language in certain cases. But yes, I believe he will speak when absolutely necessary (in urgent situations, or when Bo isn’t listening or doesn’t care to pay attention to his signing) and it always catches Bo and Lester off guard. The two would be in the middle of a conversation, and out of nowhere they hear this scratchy, trembling voice (from severe lack of use + damage) from just out of their line of sight. I think they would never get used to Vincent’s voice, because it’s such a rarity and when it is heard it stops you in your tracks and makes your hair stand on end, just for a moment.

On a final note, while I do believe he speaks on occasion and communicates through different non-verbal means, I believe Trudy would have taught him sign first when she realized that speaking was more or less out of the equation. English is his spoken language, but in terms of communication, I believe sign would be the language of his heart.

🤟

[clairenatural]

Please do tell

ok so baseline is that the wagner group is a private military group linked closely (until now) to the russian state/putin himself, which was widely understood (again, until now) to essentially just be an arm of the russian military deployed to deny state culpability in various military interventions. like Russia will be like "oh we're not involved in [insert country or conflict here]" but then Wagner pops up there and we're all like okay yeah sure lmao

they rose to prominence in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine but have since been used by Russia to expand Russian influence and military presence across the world. basically they provide various regimes with military support/join civil conflicts on the side Russia wants to win to overall promote Russian presence, sphere of influence, etc.

What this coup means for Ukraine and the current war we have yet to see, wagner is NOT like. good. like they're a private miltary they're fascist and have killed many many civilians and committed many human rights abuses. so wagner taking control would not be good at all. but my understanding is that there's a very high chance this insurrection (not really a coup as they aren't technically state military) will fail, and if/when it does, that could be good news for Ukraine as they've been fighting as a major part of Russian forces in Ukraine and if they pull out it would destabilize Russia's attack. And it looks like Wagner is currently pulling out of Ukraine to head towards Moscow - and they're so closely linked to Russia's official forces that some people think other Russian military forces might just kinda follow them in confusion and/or just have nobody to command them without Wagner being there

(edit to clarify that I'm not saying here that I want Putin to remain in power, rather that we shouldn't be cheering for Wagner as any sort of "good guys." I do think any sort of destabilization of Putin is a good thing and that's exactly what's happening)

However I'm also concerned about what's gonna happen in the rest of the world - Wagner has been increasing their presence across Africa recently (since ~2017) which has widely been understood as a part of Russian foreign policy to increase their footprint/influence in the region (aka exploit the countries they operate in for natural resources), and they've also been known to operate in Syria and Venezuea. So if Wagner/Prigozhin (the leader) have broken from the Putin regime, will they still be carrying out Russian interests abroad? Whose Russian interests? will they just carry on as a mercenary group to hire unattached to a political regime? What damage will it have to Russia (or at least Putin's Russia)'s global influence if a major arm of their foreign policy/diplomacy strategy has broken from the government? etc etc

[losticaruss]

comparing the stats of l&co to shadow and bone (the most recent book-to-show adaptation that i can recall) it's genuinely amazing that l&co has the EXACT SAME rating as shadow and bone- literally the only thing that's up for debate is if l&co will stay in the top 10 for the next week or so.

BUT all this to say- lockwood & co has gotten basically the same reaction as the shadow and bone adaptation, which is even more impressive considering the size of the fan base prior to the release. if things stay the way the are now (keep rewatching the show people!) there is a pretty high chance that itll be renewed

[absolute-lithops-emotion]

reading a bunch of articles on phonics and whole word reading and listening to old vi hart videos in the background and realizing that if there's an equivalent to phonics for math, i don't think we get taught it

[anglerflsh]

re: your poetry post, can you give some pointers as to where to learn the rhyming patterns in poetry and the like? i only ever see poetry from the ideas/feelings perspective, but ive never learned the logic and structure behind it lol

I've learned most of it from my literature and grammar classes, it's taught in our school since elementary, so I wouldn't know of any books or manuals that talk specifially about it - but I can give you a rundown of how I do it, anon, if it counts for anything lol

Prefacing that this will be starting from italian poetica because that's what I know best: any poem, but specifically the pre-futurism/1910s ones (A Lot) will have some kind of structure aside from just the ryming scheme; The structure I am most familiar with is accentual-sillabic, so for example any single verso will have its stressed syllable in a fixed potision and occasionally a set number of sillables (eg. an endecasillablic metre means a stress on the tenth syllable, usually penultimate, equally to 11 total syllables), but there are also only accentual, or only sillabic verses, common in French poetry (?), all of which count as types of qualitative metre - as well as quantitative metre, which was more widley used in Latin and Greek poetry and which rather based itself on patterns of syllable weight (something that I know little about tbh; I think it's based on the lenght of pronunciation of the actual syllable).

this, of course, goes without even mentioning free-verse structure and less well-known ones.

Going back to the rhyming scheme, that also comes into play with structure in the sense that ... there are just a lot of them to pick from. The classic is the repeated AABB one, where each verse will rhyme with the one underneath (''kissing rhyme'' in italian), or the alterning ABAB, the crossed ABBA, the 'chained' or third rhyme ABA BCB CDC used for terzine, and plenty more! That's not all the ways to classify rhymes of course: you have plain rhyme between words accented on the penultimate syllable, cut rhyme between words accented on the last, sdrucciola with accents on the third-to-last, bisdrucciola on the fourth-to-last... etc etc

Then, of course, come the classifications in stanza lenghts! Groups of three verses are a terzina, well known for being Dante's favourite number (joke inserted to lighten this infodump), groups of four a quatrina, etc -

and depending on the number of single groups and on the type of verses in them, you have further classification as canzone, ode, madrigale, carme, filastrocca, ballata, sonetto... the latter for example is made of fourteen endecasyllabic verses grouped in two quartine, one in the beginning and one in the end, in crossed or alternate rhyme, and two terzine with any kind of rhyme structre.

this of course doesn't touch on the inner things and games of poem structure like the falling rhyme, spaces in between groups, enjambement, alliteration, allegorical figures, anafore, onomatopee, and all that fun stuff! Essentially when you see a poem look for the number of syllables in each verse, where the stressed syllable falls, how the rhymes are put, how many verses are in each stanza and strofa...

[youllallriseintheink]

What’s one advice theses scps will give you? 049, 096, 457, 106, 6118 and 035

049, the plague doctor: The plague doctor could advise you on a number of things. An obvious one is home remedies, since he's learned medicine from many cultures.

“Lichen tea can reduce the symptoms of any disease that causes inflammation. It's not a cure, but it's a comfort.”

SCP 096, the Shy Guy: There isn’t a whole lot that 096 could advise you on. One thing he’d tell you, though, is to appreciate what you have, such as companionship and life’s simple pleasures- both the things that have kept him going and things he wishes he had.

“No matter how bleak life gets, count your blessings. There are always blessings, no matter who you are.”

SCP 457, the burning man: He could give you very specific advice on starting and managing fires, what materials to use for heat or smoke reduction, etc.

“The best fuel I’ve ever had was a forest of oaks and birch trees. Birches burn for a long time, and oaks catch very easily.”

SCP 106, the old man: The old man could advice you on how to scare and inflict pain on others. If you’re looking for something a little more wholesome, his experience in the military could help him to know how to survive a difficult period in life.

“Whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Nothing is when the demons creep in.”

SCP 6118, the alien being: SCP 6118 is incredible with tools and especially guns despite not being of earth. He could teach you to build or operate almost anything.

“…And that’s how you pilot a helicopter.”

SCP 035, the possessive mask: he could teach you all the subtle signs that someone is lying or of subtle emotion.

“If you’re trying to catch someone in a lie, watch their eyebrows and their level of eye contact. Any change in their normal behaviour could be a sign of lying.”

[highlycaffeinatedmudi]

Hi! Would you be able to share some information about Mudis? I’ve been looking into the breed and they are so beautiful and intense ! I’d love to know more about their temperament and how they behave in household environments.

Hi! I will preface this by saying Kávé is my first Mudi and I’ve met very few other Mudi in my lifetime. However, below are my experiences with him!

He is without a doubt the weirdest dog I’ve ever met. Love him, but by God is he strange. He grabs things with his hands. (Yes hands. Referring to him as “pawing” something or “using his paws” doesn’t do justice to what he does). He uses his hands like a little raccoon. Anything new, he will literally try to grab it out of my hand. Then he might use his mouth to bite at it like a normal dog. He behaves more like some sort of Creature than a dog. His nickname is Weasel for a good reason.

While Mudi are a herding breed, they also have a lot of spitz and terrier influence. People mistakenly think they’ll be like a smaller Border collie, always at your whim to do your bidding. No. If there is food involved, Kávé will likely do as I ask but he may also say “Screw you” and do whatever he likes. I am a professional dog trainer and I kid you not when he was 6months old I wondered what I had gotten myself into and said I’d not get another Mudi every again. He can be A LOT. And I DO NOT recommend them for a first time dog owner. He would terrorize an average family lol 😂 Now I don’t say that to “gatekeep” I’m just being honest. They’re not a super easy breed for most people. However, I’ve come to really love him and his challenges and I’m starting to think I might eventually get another one (once Kávé is WAY out of adolescence mind you).

As far as being in the house, he’s gotten much better about being able to just be out in the house and settle. For awhile, he mostly spent time in his huge expen when he wasn’t exercising or training because otherwise he was constantly getting into things and terrorizing me by trying to do WWE wrestling moves on me while I tried to just lay on the couch. For awhile, he needed TONS of outdoor time before he could even settle down. But now, as I said, he has gotten better about it as he’s matured. We actually took an hour nap together on the couch today!

Reactivity is something that is in the breed. Kávé loathes men and can be reluctant about women if they are strangers. However, if he knows you, he becomes an absolute puddle and loves attention. His reactivity is something I am working on, but I never expect him to be 100% comfortable with a stranger coming up to touch him which is why I won’t be pursuing conformation with him. We’ll instead stick to sports such as FastCAT and Dock diving where there is minimal judge or other people interaction. There are other Mudi out there (like his sire and brother) who ADORE all people. So it really does depend on the dog.

All in all Mudi are fascinating creatures and if you have any other questions, feel free to message me. I am by no means an expert but I’ve come to love the breed and don’t mind sharing my experiences.