Catcard's Blogging Time

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wideopenspaces.com/rock-stacking-natural-graffitti-ecological-impact/amp/

BUT

If you see one of these rock piles on an established trail, do NOT for the love of god kick it over. In places where a trail forks or moves over features like talus fields, trail crews sometimes build cairns to mark the trail where spray painted blazes can't be used or would be easily missed (e.g. on rocks that commonly become wet, painted blazes are harder to see).

There are multiple takeaways here:

1) Making cairns yourself is BAD. Don't do it.

2) Cairns are not ever properly used in rivers.

3) If you see a cairn on a trail, LEAVE IT. If it does need to be removed, the trail crews working for the National Forest Service/NPS/AMC/whatever or Rangers will remove it when they do trail work.

If you only ever read one post of mine, please make it this one. YESTERDAY my mom and I were hiking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness of New Hampshire, and on the trail we hiked there was a fork with half marked by a cairn so hikers knew to go the right way to pick up the blazed trail. If someone had removed that we probably would have been fine because there was an old logging road on the other side eventually leading to the road going through the notch, but elsewhere that could have killed us. It's very easy to get lost in wilderness, and no matter how prepared or experienced you are it can prove fatal.

TL;DR, please note this statement by the National Park Service.

(I am aware this statement specifically is from NPS, but this goes for your National Forests, State Forests, etc as well.)

Photo tax:

Me:

x’D 

:l

Okay, so. Analogy time! Persuasion is like giving someone directions for a trip. You must start with finding out where they are now.

Why is it that they aren’t listening to logic and facts? People normally listen to logic and facts. If they don’t, there’s a reason for it. It might well be an emotional thing rather than a logical one, but it’s absolutely there.

When people accuse me of “not listening to logic and facts”, I’m pretty sure they’re wrong, but I do get that accusation a lot. I get it from people who are angry and upset that I’m not accepting their positions. But often, they haven’t actually presented any kind of reason for me to do so, they’ve just yelled a lot about how important it is.

My experience has been that most people who endorse ideas reasonably close to fascist ideas is that they’re doing it because they are afraid. Of what? Well, that varies. But with the Nazis and Nazi-punchers, for the most part, both sides are justifiably afraid that the people on the other side want them injured or dead. (In fact, the belief systems are basically parallel; you could write a single book with a few blank fields to play Mad Libs with, and it would describe both of them.) But there’s precursors. Violent nationalism and unfocused racism are mostly rooted in fear of violence and economic insecurity. Both of these are things actively promoted by politicians because they make people compliant and easier to control, up to a point. And not just one “side” of the political spectrum. US Republicans and Democrats both encourage fear and tend to advocate policies that increase economic insecurity in the people they are offering to “help”, so those people will feel reliant on them. Perhaps more importantly, they actively encourage people to fear economic insecurity more than it actually exists.

But the biggest and most fundamental thing that will make people refuse to listen to you is stunningly obvious and stunningly easy to address: It’s that they don’t think you’re listening to them. You’re not treating them like a person who matters, why should they treat you like one?

When I was doing MMOs more, I used to talk people down from transphobia. I had about a 50-70% success rate in single conversations. Obviously, everyone had already tried bombarding them with logic and facts. So I’d ask them about their feelings on the issue, and acknowledge that it could feel pretty weird being asked to call someone “she” when you can tell they’re “really a guy”. And I’d talk with them about how it’s sorta rough how you have these instincts about how gender works, because obviously our species has instincts, and then people expect you to just override those instincts and say things that feel wrong and go against your instincts. And they’d agree with that. And then I’d talk about how the instincts sometimes get sorta wired up funny, and that’s what “trans” means, that someone’s got the *instincts* for a body type they didn’t end up with. And they’d say “I never thought about it like that”. And they might not suddenly become sensitive or supportive, but you know what? They stopped advocating violence and picking fights. Because someone had actually fucking listened to them. The key here is that 90% of the conversation is me listening to them, not me telling them things I think.