#free cultural work

[stimpunks]

Stimpunks.org: A Knowledge Commons at the Edges

Stimpunks.org: A Knowledge Commons at the Edges

Remix like a punk Create open source communities instead of walled gardens of intellectual property rights – to create a global knowledge commons and to maximise collective intelligence.Replacing Control With Ecologies of Care | Autistic Collaboration Our Glossary, Field Guide, Library, Pillars, Gallery, and Courses steadily expand in depth and breadth. We’re building a knowledge commons and a…

[uncanny-tranny]

Periodic reminder from your friendly neighbourhood gymbro: The work you put in will come back. If you modify your workouts, the reward will still come to you.

So do knee pushups (no, we're not calling them "girl pushups"). Do weight machines. Put the resistance or weight low on machines.

The reward of fitness still benefits you because fitness is not a punishment. It should never be used or seen as a punishment for existing. Fitness is just... part of existence for many of us. However your fitness looks is fine. Don't let the broader fitness culture tell you that you need to do things their way. You'll be fine with what you're doing. If you stop needing modifications as you start doing more intense workouts, great! But if you never stop using modifications, then that's fine because fitness isn't a punishment or admittance of failure.

[coolerdracula]

my last reblog about ASL made me wonder about Palestinian Sign Language. I don't have much time to delve into it right now, but I did find a lengthy 2020 journal article about PSL, written by Mahmoud A. M. Abdel-Fattaha and Khalil M. I. Alawnah for the International Journal of Innovation, Creativity, and Change. here is a direct link to read it.

[bonefall]

Warrior Bites: Dietary Needs

[ID: A fish carcass, bird carcass, and mouse carcass on a stone slab.]

Are you wondering how much prey a Clan needs a day? What they should eat to stay healthy? Why food processing is useful at all? All the answers to these questions and more, contained within a general guide to dietary needs for your Warrior Cats!

As an obligate carnivore, a cat's entire diet revolves around processing meat. More specifically, the ideal diet should be 55% protein, 45% fats, about 1% to 3% carbs, with the remainder being various micro-nutrients. You can expect the average 10-pound warrior to need 350 calories per day, about 3.5 mice on average.

I've also included a section talking about obesity, which dives into how canon's depiction of it is both harmful fatphobia and wouldn't make sense from a cat perspective. It also discusses obesity in realistic cats; and how you're free to choose the realism on that aspect.

Below the cut;

Caloric Intake

Nutrition

Food Processing

On Obesity

Caloric Intake

The general rule for how much a cat needs to eat is that an active, non-neutered tom will need about 35 calories per pound of their own body weight, per day, just to remain the weight they are.

That means that the average warrior, assuming they are 10 pounds, will need 350 calories a day.

Kittens, pregnant and nursing cats, and large warriors will need to eat more than average. Neutered cats, elders, and clerics/medcats will eat less. There are calculators online for determining how much an individual will need, but you can estimate how much an entire Clan will need just by taking 350 and multiplying it by population!

Assuming the average population is about 30 cats, that's 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a day! To put that in perspective, that many calories would feed 7 large humans. If you felt like fighting a group of angry cats to steal their day's worth of mice, I mean.

Generally speaking, land prey will have a caloric value around 5 calories per gram. Aquatic prey is significantly lower, around 4 calories per gram. Birds will be just below 6 calories per gram. To find out how many cats a piece of prey will feed, or how many pieces a cat will need that day, take the category and multiply by the prey's weight in grams.

So for example, the average house mouse is 20 grams and it is land prey, meaning its caloric value is around 100 calories! A warrior will need 3 and a half mice a day to stay healthy, and a Clan will need 105 mice daily to support 30 cats.

105 mice may seem like a lot, but remember that a wild rabbit is 1,800 grams on average which means 9,000 calories. 2 big pieces of prey will feed the whole Clan, with leftovers.

Those estimates include every part of the animal. Cats eat organs, small bones, and even skin. Skeletal muscle, or "fillets" in reference to fish, is so low in calories that it's typically somewhere between 1 kcal to 1.5 kcal per gram. That's what you're buying in the supermarket; but wild animals don't usually cut their food into choice strips.

(unless you're writing a clan that does food processing of course!)

QUICK FACTS

Average warrior will need 35 calories per pound of weight

10 pound warrior needs 350 calories a day

350 x 30 cats = 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a single day

Birds provide the most calories per gram, land prey the middlemost, and aquatic prey the least.

Calculate calories in prey by taking the weight, converting to grams, and multiply by 4, 5, or 6 depending on broad category.

If you're having trouble feeding a Clan on small animals, look at bigger prey like rabbits and trout.

Muscle fillets are inferior to organ meats and have a much lower caloric value.

Nutrition

Not all food is the same. The more important thing to consider about any particular meal is NOT its calorie count, but its nutritional value. This is especially important to cats because protein is not stored as fat. If the body has no immediate use for it, it's flushed out.

Since cats should not eat more than 3% carbs, ALL of their fat stores will need to come from fat.

The ideal piece of meat would be at least 55% protein and 45% fat. Every individual species will have a different ratio, and more importantly, individual cuts will have a different ratio.

Skeletal muscle has a higher ratio of protein to fat. Organ meat, also sometimes called "offal," will have a more balanced ratio. That said, nearly all meat skews towards protein. PURE fat is very hard to find on the sorts of animals Clan cats hunt, and must be carefully divided, collected, or processed to make sure all warriors are getting proper nutrition.

I'll be going more in-depth with dietary fat at some other time, as this guide is meant to just be an overview! Just know that some Clans will need to eat MORE food to stay healthy because of this.

Cats need more than the "macronutrients" to stay healthy. They can't JUST rely on the juiciest cuts of meat to keep their health intact, they also need several vitamins and minerals to support their body functions, and avoid getting a deficiency.

Here's some of the important micronutrients, where to get them, and what happens they don't get enough;

Vitamin A: Livers, mealworms, eggs This is one of the most important micronutrients in a cat's body, used for practically everything. Without this, their coats will grow dull, and their joints stiff, and they'll start to go night-blind. In a severe state, they'll start to lose the ability to heal skin lacerations and die. Pregnant cats and kittens need more of this than usual, but it IS also possible to get vitamin A poisoning from getting too concentrated of a dose.

Calcium: Bones, eggs With a calcium deficiency, the warrior will feel stiff and sore, and experience painful muscle spasms. Most cats will simply crunch the bones of small prey and never have to worry about this, but if your cats cook or scavenge, they have to be told to NEVER eat the bones of a roasted bird. Because bird bones are hollow and cooking makes them brittle, they can splinter and cause fatal internal bleeding.

Thiamine: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs Called a Fish Seizure because raw carp and raw bream contains thiaminase, which will destroy thiamine in the body. Lack of thiamine will cause neurological issues, such as the aforementioned seizures, general confusion, memory loss, and muscle weakness. This can be counterracted by eating trout, which is so high in thiamine that there's a theory that carp evolved it specifically to eat salmonids better.

Potassium: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs As cats get older, they begin needing a lot more potassium for their bodies. It's a very common micronutrient found in most meat, but elders should get the first bite of special snacks "out of respect" which helps keep their potassium level up. Without it, they become very weak.

i feel like that evil struthiomimus from land before time with how many times i typed eggs

QUICK FACTS

The ideal ratio of a cut of meat is 55% protein 45% fat

Organ meat > Muscle meat

Micronutrients are important

But micronutrients can also cause poisoning if, somehow, they're too concentrated (very hard to come across concentrated micronutrients without the science of chemistry tho. Like if a cat swallowed a vitamin gummy.)

Food Processing

"Food Processing" is when you do something to your food before you eat it. Just a little bit of care is going to go a LONG WAY when it comes to health of the warrior.

Cats that eat raw meat the way canon warriors do are almost guaranteed to get worms. Roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms are all passed through the infected tissue of rodent prey, and in fish, roundworms, tapeworms, and flukes can pass through raw meat.

All parasites do something a little different, but most digestive worms aren't fatal unless the cat is sick or a kitten. However, nearly ALL of them screw around with digestion, making the cat need to eat more just to stay healthy, or causing stomach irritation. Some of them can even pass in milk, infecting a suckler's nursing kits.

The easiest way to reduce this kind of infection is simply to slice the prey open from mouth-to-butt, Tigerstar-style, and hook and lift out the GI tract before eating. There's nothing in that worth eating raw anyway. It can just be discarded, or cleaned out and used to case tiny sausages! But it's only a reduction; there's still a risk of catching worms from raw meat.

There's also always the possibility of getting salmonella poisoning.

Many believe that cats are immune to this, but that's not true! Carnivores just have a shorter GI tract than omnivores and herbivores, so salmonella spends less time in their gut and ergo has less chance of causing an infection. It still happens, ESPECIALLY when cats hunt songbirds.

Nothing can be done about salmonella in raw meat, besides eating it as quickly as possible. It's innate to the bodies of birds and reptiles, and usually found on raw eggs too.

Some animals are small enough to be dried and carried around as rations, such as minnows or grasshoppers. Others could be sliced up into strips, and marinated in spices like valerian or catmint for an extra boost of energy. It could also be worthwhile to cut the pelt off a particularly soft animal, like a mole, to dry and keep as bedding material.

All of the above examples of food processing are possible without fire, but if your cats DO have fire, they will have a DRASTIC increase to the quality of their health.

Such as;

Cooking will almost completely eliminate those foodborne parasites. Their eggs don't survive extreme heat.

No more salmonella poisoning! GONE! Cooking is the only way to eliminate this!

It can increase caloric absorption from anywhere between 20% to 50%. Our example warrior who needed 3.5 mice a day could suddenly need one less mouse; and even a meager 20% drop in how much the entire Clan needs saves 2,400 calories a day. 24 whole mice!

I HAVE TO STRESS HOW BIG THAT IS. You save anywhere from 2/10 to 5/10 successful kills.

Thiaminase is destroyed by cooking, making bream and carp healthier and reducing "fish seizures."

It allows for fats to be processed and stored as tallow, lard, and oil, so it can be added to other dishes to make them both healthier and tastier.

Most food preservation requires fire in some way; by heating, jellying, boiling, etc. The only other two ways to reliably store food is by having access to a ton of salt, which is hard for most non-coastal clans to acquire, or vinegar, which is so acidic it's a notorious cat-repellent.

While cooking can also destroy some micronutrients, its benefits FAR outweigh any potential "strengths" of raw food. Destroying micronutrients is also not always a bad thing; as TOO MANY micronutrients can cause poisoning. Fire-using Clans will be more likely to "seek" micronutrients than non-fire Clans as a result, though they probably won't recognize the science behind a hankering!

QUICK FACTS

Worms. Basically unavoidable if your cat's eating like a canon warrior.

Some parasites can spread through milk.

Slicing and lifting out the GI tract can significantly reduce the chance of catching worms.

Salmonella can only be eliminated with cooking

Cooking will drastically increase the quality of a Clan's health, if your cats are advanced enough to figure out fire.

Warriors need to hunt a LOT less prey, and can store that prey, if they have fire.

Fire-using Clans will intentionally try to put more types of food in their diets and get 'cravings.'

On Obesity

Warrior Cats is not a realistic series. The boundary that any particular writer draws between humans and warrior cats is completely arbitrary. The series itself follows no sense of realistic genetics, regularly shows the cats using herbs that would poison them, and gives the characters human-centric morals like monogamy and paternal involvement.

So when it comes to being fatness in your project, please keep that in mind. You do not need too follow realistic cat weight distribution, if that's not what your project about. That said, let me tell you about humans vs cats in this department!

Humans have a massive diversity of weight distribution, with varied genetic predispositions to gaining and losing weight. The shame, bullying, and medical discrimination that comes with fatphobia is a LOT more harmful than being fat itself, and the causes of the "obesity crisis" are ridiculously more complicated than "ppl r snorking 2 much food".

Realistic cats aren't the same way.

When REAL cats are fat, that's VERY bad. It's a sign they are being fed the wrong things by humans, or live somewhere that they are able to eat what they shouldn't. They just don't have that same diversity in fat distribution that humans do. Because of how adipose tissue secretes certain hormones, feline obesity is like a chronic inflammatory disease which can cause arthritis, bladder stones, hepatic lipidosis, and more.

But with that in mind, fatness should be perceived very differently even in the most realistic settings. In comparison to humans;

It is harder for a wild cat to put on weight. Most of what they're eating is raw protein, actively trying to fill the 45% of daily fat intake they need to stay healthy. Protein isn't stored as fat, it's immediately discarded by the body if there is no use for it. A cat would need to be taking an INSANE amount of prey to start becoming dangerously overweight. Housecats are often fed human food, which has carbohydrates. Low-quality cat food will also use carbs as filler. High carb food is VERY bad for them, since they're only supposed to have 3% carbs at most. This is one of the reasons why it's easy for pet cats to become overweight.

Realistic cats don't look start looking overweight until they are significantly obese. Most of their fat is stored around their ribs and internally, unlike humans with our thick hips and round bellies, and they are covered in a naturally sagging pelt of fur. It's not as obvious with them. Visually, weight will be noticed best from a bird's eye perspective, unlike humans where it's apparent at every angle.

Putting on the fat that CAN be acquired is ridiculously important 3.5 raw, whole mice a day, per cat, are needed to fill their basic dietary requirements. There are going to be days or months especially during winter where they might be below that number, and that stored fat is going to be lifesaving. Bulking up is actually a big deal!

So not only is how canon treats overweight characters full of malice, it's full of lazy malice. It makes no sense from a realistic standpoint for wild cats to develop an association between fatness and greed or laziness. It's important, hard work for them to acquire it!

Though the Clans are notoriously xenophobic and kittypets are more likely to be overweight, it still doesn't make sense from a realistic cat perspective to be fatphobic in the same way as canon. It's more likely they'd see fat housecats as having "unearned" weight given to them by humans, like they're cheating, or they might be disdainful of how much junk food they eat, or pitiable because it's a sign of a bad twoleg... or just "sour grapes" variety jealousy ☕.

Bottom line is that there's a LOT you can do here which is better than canon's vicious bullying. The writers just lifted British cultural disdain for fat people and put it into the books. They simply did not think it through.

So please do what they didn't, and just put a little extra thought into how your project is going to view fatness! Consider if fatphobia is even a theme you need in your text.

As stated, you do not even have to write weight in your cats as being realistic in this way! I encourage you to pick and choose what's most fun and fitting for your own work. I personally give my characters a more human weight distribution, simply because I want to spite canon and be more body-positive. I am a fat people and you can take Bumble's big chunky bod from my cold, dead hands.

You can choose to make your work however you'd like, and now with this guide, you can have an easy reference for what your cats should eat! Thank you, StarClan, for this prey <3

[canisalbus]

The Hawaiian language doesn't attach gender to pronouns, but it does have a complex set of relational pronouns, so you can use a particular pronoun to note for example "all of us (except for that guy)"

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[my-autism-adhd-blog]

ADHD & Hustle Culture

Future ADHD

[msviolacea]

I think the important thing to take away about these videos about Somerton and other YouTubers who plagiarize and make up facts whole cloth is that this is how a lot of people are getting all of their information now - this is how all these weird ridiculous things start spreading across social media, how people end up convinced that the wildest of lies are true, how nuance dies a gruesome death. Whether or not you personally have ever heard of or watched these people is irrelevant. (Yes, you've never heard of these people, you're very smart and unique and superior, good for you, I guess.) The point is to know where this bullshit is coming from so you can better refute it, or better, teach other people how to do their own research and make these videos be the starting point of learning, not the sum total of it.

Related, I'm now watching the toddintheshadows video, and I think I've said "what the FUCK" more times than I have in a short amount of time ever, and I'm not even an hour in. Seriously. What the FUCK.

[yenpondering]

like a day or so late for mermay but I wanted to try redesigning a mermaid I drew back in 2019 and also try my hand at some more designs!

[svsss-fanon-exposed]

About your response re: Gongyi Xiao's name, if the given name is one syllable, how would he be referred casually? I've only just started learning more about how chinese names work, and from what I've been told names should preferably have two syllables. I've seen additives such as A- and -er, but I don't exactly know how they work and don't want to make assumptions.

This obviously doesn't relate to canon facts like this blog intended, so apologies if the question is unwelcome! Hope your day is lovely either way 💕💕

Tbh I'm open to answering as many questions as I can, even if it's not this blog's main intention-- even if I can't answer or don't answer correctly, at least then it's out there before a bunch of eyes that can peer-review!

Whether a given name in Chinese has one or two characters, that can depend a lot on generation. For example, I believe for a long time it was two-character names that were customary, then more recently one-character names, and the current generation has gone back to favoring two-character names again. Sometimes, a given name will have three characters, maybe even four, but I have only heard of this and haven't seen it so it's very uncommon.

Either way, you're hardly ever going to call someone by a single-character name without a modifier. Usually names aren't used without modifiers at all, but it's especially so for single-character names. To call someone by a single-character name with no modifier is not unheard of in literature, but it is very intimate, and also very uncommon-- so I wouldn't suggest using it that way.

Anyway, for Gongyi Xiao in particular, one could very, very informally call him 萧儿Xiao'er/Xiao'r，or 阿萧 A-Xiao. However, this is very familiar and would only be used by people older than him, especially when he is young, or people who are very, very close to him like parents or older siblings and other relatives, or by a romantic partner-- not casually between friends. Both of these are intimate and affectionate, with a "cutesy" sort of feeling, though to my own interpretation Xiao'er is slightly more so than A-Xiao.

For his peers, 公议师兄 Gongyi-shixiong would be standard, even for those peers from other sects as cultivators of the same generation call one another Shixiongdi/Shijiemei even when they are not from the same sect in SV.

As for general close friends, Calling him 公议兄 Gongyi-xiong would be appropriate (with "xiong" here as roughly equivalent of "bro") or perhaps 萧哥 Xiao-ge as something even less formal but not as intimate as Xiao'er/A-Xiao.

So, someone of the same generation could call him inorder of formal to least formal, Gongyi-shixiong > Gongyi-xiong > Xiao-ge, and a partner of his could say A-Xiao or Xiao'er.

[gingermintpepper]

Hi!! I don't know if you remember me, but I'm the person you explained the Castalia thing to a few days ago. I've been following you for a while now, but I just managed to go through your blog well and proper, and I'm here to express both my gratitude for the amount of info and links you've shared (I did NOT know about the hepatoscopy and haruspicy, and I'm about to go down a lengthy rabbit hole) and my horror at once again being given a new hyperfixation (I didn't imagine wanting to read about liver-divination help).

Also, also, are you the author of Exeunt Phoebus Apollo on AO3 because that was the fic that sent me on this greek mythology spree, and it's so good I got obsessed with Apollo, and he's everywhere around me now. Thank you for writing it!

AAAAAA THIS IS SO SWEET?? THANK YOU!! I do remember you and hey man, I'm always happy to help <33

I'm so glad to recruit someone else to my hepatoscopy group because it is a long and storied tradition with many many different types of study and schools of thought dating all the way back to the Sumerians! It's an extremely underrated bit of study when it comes to sketching portraits of divination and prophecy when it comes to adaptations of imaginings of greek myth works - similar to bird augury (which was such a widespread skill that most people had some level of understanding of the basics of what the omens of common birds meant the way people now can look at the clouds over head and know if it'll rain and when approximately that rain'll happen).

It's a great and common misunderstanding that things like prophecy and magic were these fantastic elements that had no tangible features to their practices and while there's nothing wrong with interpreting things as more fantastical for the sake of coolness or aesthetic, I personally think these elements are interesting enough to be worth looking into and portraying!

Also yes, I did write Exeunt 😳I'm very very honoured that you enjoyed my work so much and I'm even more grateful that it could let you see the Apollo in everything 💖 Thank you for reading it!!

[justanotherfanartist]

I think we as a fandom are collectively sleeping on Carolina being raised with Jewish holidays. dude can you imagine her being reintroduced to them once she’s with the reds and blues maybe cus they picked them up as a found-family sort of tradition because of church and they continue them when he’s gone. her getting to relive the sweet nostalgic parts of her childhood with her new family. can you imagine her coming in and seeing all the decorations and food she hasn’t seen in years (this is ofc assuming they didn’t really do holidays on the MOI) screaming and crying do you see it do you see my vision

[glorious-spoon]

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[csuitebitches]

Launching My Free Newsletter!

I’ve been receiving a lot of support from everyone following my blog/ liking my content, which I’m very grateful and appreciative of. Because of your support, I’ve decided to go ahead and launch a free newsletter based on my two articles: On Being Well Read and On Being Well Spoken.

“Uncultured” will be a weekly newsletter, delivered to your email every week.

In it, you will receive 3 short articles on topics that can enrich and cultivate your mind. It will be bite-sized information that will take you not more than 10 minutes or so to read.

The aim is to keep it so simple than even someone who dislikes reading will not mind spending a few minutes of their week reading and learning something new.

Why the name “Uncultured?”

I thought it would be ironic to name a culture newsletter that, instead of a dainty, polished name. In my culture you’ll also hear : “you’re so uncultured!” as a reprimand very often from our older generations, so its a bit of a play on words.

My content will include:

Luxury and travel

Business and start ups (interesting start ups, economics, a little bit of finance and real estate)

History and culture (such as art, wines, architecture, different cultures across the globe)

Summarising academic articles I’ve read in an easier language

What Uncultured is NOT about:

Political statements

Heavy reads

Jargons

Making my readers pay for anything - this will be absolutely free

Uncultured will launch on 8th January, 2023.

You can sign up here: Sign Up!

[razzledazzletrassh]

no major fic updates just yet guys TAKE MY WOY OC I MADE LIKE. April of last year IM PLUGGING SOME INFO ABOUT THIS GUY IN THE TAGS.

I may also redesign her soon or something. Make her more bug-like with some stuff. I can cook guys let me cook !!!

[tautozhone]

can argue to death with me about how age restrictions on youtube are necessary but i will be DAMNED before i say Hinds Hall deserved to be age restricted. average american child on youtube can listen to H*rbu D*rbu (censoring in hopes to avoid algorithm engagement with the song) which is IOF praising genocidal propaganda, and- big fucking shocker- its not age restricted. i’m 100% sure the only reason Hind’s Hall was restricted was to deliberately suppress and avoid the spread of the song.

[jimin-updates]

Set Me Free Part 2 is right there

We are just 150k streams away from re-charting SMFP2! Have you streamed Jimin’s anthem yet today?