dude it's just politics, it doesn't matter. all it does is shape every single aspect of the society you live in from the second you are born until forever
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@jenc-17
dude it's just politics, it doesn't matter. all it does is shape every single aspect of the society you live in from the second you are born until forever

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EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) dir. Daniels
not to be all "these two words will change your life" or whatever, but I promise you, programming in "good catch!" as your response to people correcting you/pointing out errors or whatever removes so much friction from interactions, and comes with a delightful happy meal toy of "not hating yourself so much for making mistakes"
âyou donât like the proliferation of terms like Unalive outside of TikTok because you realize that youâre aging out of youth culture and it makes you uncomfortable!â
no I donât like it because thereâs something INCREDIBLY dystopian about being forced to soften terms for basic parts of the human experience like death and sex (and even more so terms for oppressed minorities- call me a âle-dollar sign-bianâ and I will bite you) purely because advertisers and corporations demand it
The idea that young people are getting used to not being able to speak in public about sex, queerness etc without talking around censors, and see this as normal and not a problem, scares me tbh.
The fact that people are so comfortable with being censored that they Voluntarily censor themselves on words and topics that arenât even being limited is a terrifying sign
I hate to be like the âTHIS IS JUST LIKE 1984â guy but. there was literally a thing in that book where you had to say âdouble plus ungoodâ instead of âbadâ because you werenât supposed to talk about bad things. if you told me ten years ago that âunaliveâ was a word that George Orwell had coined for Newspeak I would have believed you.

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okay so I'm curious now:
which one would be more dangerous when encountered in the wild: a sun bear, a polar bear, a grizzly, a spectacled bear, or a black bear?
THE POLAR BEAR, FULL STOP.
all of the other bears on that list may very well attack you with fatal results if they decide you're a threat or an interloper, but the polar bear is the one that WANTS to eat you, and if you're not careful, WILL eat you.
prey is scarce in the arctic and polar bears are big animals, so they've evolved to be long-distance stalking predators that will NEVER turn down a warm meaty meal, weird opposable thumbs or no!
if you see a polar bear in the arctic, even if you're with a group, take extra care the next few days to make sure that it's REALLY gone and not just following you at a distance to learn your habits and ambush you when you least expect it!
more than one arctic researcher didn't change up their routine often enough and opened the station door for their smoke break only to find a polar bear waiting for them patiently on the other side, at which point they were dragged off onto the ice and never seen again.
I would say it's a grizzly fate, but that pun would be simply unbearable.
I once attended a talk by a wildlife cinematographer who has done significant work in the arctic and a major part of the safety briefing is "This is your rifle. If you step outdoors, EVEN TO GO TO THE OUTHOUSE, you take your rifle." And when he asked why he was told that it was because otherwise he was Polar Bear bait.
This is funny because one of the bears with the most attacks on humans (perhaps even the most dangerous bear, depending on who you ask*) isn't even on the list mentioned by the original ask.
It's the sloth bear.
Sloth bears are not the biggest bears. They primarily eat ants and termites. They do not see us as food. Hardly a contender for most dangerous bear, right?
First of all, sloth bears evolved alongside tigers and leopards and the saber-toothed cat Megantereon. And they still are routinely hunted by tigers. As a result, they've adapted to fight back as aggressively as possible, and in fact are aggressive towards all large mammals (Servheen et al., 1999). In addition, their long, curved claws, adapted for tearing into anthills and termite mounds, prevent them from climbing trees to escape, and their snuffly rooting behavior means they often don't notice tigers until they're too close to make a run for it (Sharp et al., 2024).
When faced with a threat like a tiger, sloth bears rear up and charge, slashing away with their claws. In a study on 43 filmed encounters, 86% of the time this scared the tiger off. 9% of the time the tiger won and killed the bear anyway (Sharp et al., 2024). Humans are notably squishier than tigers.
The sloth bear defense in action. From Sharp et al. (2024).
And second, sloth bears live in a historically densely populated area with rural communities dependent on the forest and farming. So the heightened chance of running into an (unarmed) human, coupled with their hair-trigger aggressiveness, makes them far more likely to go on the offensive and maul intruders. Most attacks involve the bear charging rapidly into the human before they even knew what happened.
I was following two of my companions and saw a black form lying at the foot of a clump bushes, about 10 m from me. I called out to my companions. Before I knew it, the impact of the charging bear knocked me off my feet. It happened so fast, I didnât see the bear coming⌠just dust, flying leaves, and the screams and roars of the bear. (Ratnayeke et al., 2014, p. 476)
In one region in Chhattisgarh, 137 attacks (of which 11 deaths) were recorded over a 2-year period (1998-200) alone (Ratnayeke et al., 2014). In Sri Lanka only rogue elephants are more feared than sloth bears (Servheen et al., 1999). But of course, those numbers pale in comparison to the sloth bears killed in retaliation or harvested for their gallbladders.
Yes, polar bears are top predators and yes they do see us as prey, and you should absolutely be as careful around them as any other unpredictable large animal. But their remote habitat means they rarely have the chance to do so, and the few people they do encounter are - as you can tell from the above posts - well-armed and expecting trouble. A 20-year study in Canada, for instance, recorded 6 human deaths and 14 injuries; conversely, 251 polar bears were shot and killed in self-defense (Floyd, 1999). And while they can kill and eat people, they have been described as "largely indifferent to humans and often demonstrate behavior that is more curious than aggressive" (Floyd, 1999, p. 79). A much larger study of verifiable recorded attacks, covering the polar bear's entire range (Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, US) and spanning 1870 to 2014, found 20 deaths and 63 injuries caused by polar bears during that time. Despite their reputation, polar bears were found to have a 24% fatality rate (20 of 84 deaths), compared to a 42% fatality rate for black bears. And 88% of polar bear attacks were predatory compared to 87% of black bear attacks (grizzly bear attacks tended to be defensive, females with cubs and so on) (Wilder et al., 2017). In conclusion, "to date polar bears have been no more likely to actively hunt and kill people than black bears" (Wilder et al., p. 9).
This thing is as predatory as a polar bear. Despite being less capable of inflicting damage than grizzly and polar bears, and far easier to scare off, black bears usually attack with intent to devour. Chalk that one up for this humble ursine.
*Wikipedia says the sloth bear is the bear that has attacked the most people... but the source they cite states plainly that that distinction goes to the brown bear.
References
Bargali, H. S., Akhtar, N., & Chauhan, N. P. S. (2005). Characteristics of sloth bear attacks and human casualties in North Bilaspur Forest Division, Chhattisgarh, India. Ursus, 16(2), 263-267.
Floyd, T. (1999) Bear-inflicted human injury and fatality. Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 10(2), 75-87.
Ratnayeke, S., Van Manen, F. T., Pieris, R., & Pragash, V. S. (2014). Challenges of large carnivore conservation: sloth bear attacks in Sri Lanka. Human Ecology, 42(3), 467-479.
Servheen, C., Herrero, S., & Peyton, B. eds. (1999) Bears: Status survey and conservation action plan. IUCN/SSC Bear Specialist Group.
Sharp, T. R., Garshelis, D. L., & Larson, W. (2024) A most aggressive bear: Safari videos document sloth bear defense against tiger predation. Ecology and Evolution, 14(7), 1-22.
Wilder, J. M., Vongraven, D., Atwood, T., Hansen, B., Jessen, A., Kochnev, A., York, G., Vallender, R., Hedman, D., & Gibbons, M. (2017). Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 41(3), 537â547.
So maybe just try to stay away from bears in general
the scrupulous APA citation:
Just to clarify in Wilder et al. (2017), 88% of fatal polar bear attacks are predatory compared to 87% of fatal black bear attacks.
Wilder et al. also notes that fatalities are only 24% of polar bear attacks compared 42% of black bear attacks. Unfortunately, this assertion is completely incorrect because Wilder et al.'s source for the black bear figure is a study in Alberta between 1960 and 1998 which assesses what percentage of attacks resulting in serious injury or death (i.e. a subset all black bear attacks) were in fact fatal (5 of 12 "serious" attacks in Alberta during that time were fatal) (Herrero & Higgins, 2003). The actual percentage of fatalities in black bear attacks is minute. While no large-scale study I've seen has looked at rate of fatality in black bear attacks, for some perspective we can look at a few different studies: there are 63 known black bear fatalities in the US from 1900-2009, a period of 109 years (Higgins & Herrero, 2011). In contrast, in one 20 year period (1960-1980), 500 people were nonfatally injured by black bears, most of which were food conditioned (Herrero & Fleck, 1990). In contrast to these numbers, Wilder et al.'s report of 24% polar bear attack fatality is actually quite highânot to mention their propensity to attack people in groups and in towns/settlements, unlike other bears (Wilder et al., 2017).
The majority of black bear attacks are non-fatal and non-predatory, and there literally millions of human-black bear interactions every year that do not result in an attack. Only around 15% of hundreds of nonfatal black bear attacks are predatory (Scharhag et al., 2021). Saying black bears usually attack "with intent to devour" would be unfair even based on Wilder et al.'s incorrect claims. All bears should be treated with cautiousness and respect, but black bears only rarely pose a danger to humans.
Herrero, S., & Fleck, S. (1990). Injury to People Inflicted by Black, Grizzly or Polar Bears: Recent Trends and New Insights. Bears: Their Biology and Management, 8, 25â32. https://doi.org/10.2307/3872900
Herrero, S., & Higgins, A. (2003). Human Injuries Inflicted by Bears in Alberta: 1960-98. Ursus, 14(1), 44â54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3872956
Herrero, S., Higgins, A., Cardoza, J.E., Hajduk, L.I. and Smith, T.S. (2011), Fatal attacks by American black bear on people: 1900â2009. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 75: 596-603. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.72
Scharhag, J. M., Sartini, C., Crimmins, S. M., Hygnstrom, S. E., & Stetz, J. B. (2021). Characteristics of non-fatal attacks by black bears: conterminous United States, 2000â2017. Human-Wildlife Interactions, 15(1), 191â202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27316259
Wilder, J.M., Vongraven, D., Atwood, T., Hansen, B., Jessen, A., Kochnev, A., York, G., Vallender, R., Hedman, D. and Gibbons, M. (2017), Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate. Wildl. Soc. Bull., 41: 537-547. https://doi.org/10.1002/wsb.783
A HAMMERHEAD????
I attended a campfire presentation by a park ranger who described Osprey as "both the pickiest and least picky eaters of all time."
They're the pickiest because they only eat things they can catch by plunging into at least six feet of water feet-first and are as close to their maximum carrying capacity as possible, to maximize calories-per-trip.
They're the Least Picky because so long as something fits those parameters, Osprey will go for it.
The ranger then showed us an extensive slide show of the local osprey in flight with their catches, which included: trout, carp, snakes, bass, eels, small sharks, ducks, surprisingly large catfish, a nerf football, muskrats, a summer sausage that fell off a boat, sneakers, a fish previously thought to be extinct in the area, a Barbie Doll, and another osprey.
Pigeon Comic 44 - Under Pressure
Stay cooâ, pigeon army.
This feels very ⌠timely
@quickdraw-exposure
Like how the corgi keeps checking back to make sure he still has horsy

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truly from the bottom of my heart i hate the level of enshittification etsy has reached because it's still the best place to buy patterns for my hobby and every time i go scrolling through endless ai-generated bullshit to finally dig up a human-designed pattern i like, i'm hit with a deluge of 'popular!! 563 people are looking at this right now!! it's in 134632 baskets!! you must buy immediately!!!' it's a pdf file. it's a fucking pdf file. do you get off on trying to give people fomo over a fucking pdf file. fuck off. get diarrhea forever.
and that's not even touching the ai-generated patterns with hundreds of 5-star bot reviews that are stupidly easy to spot if you know what to look for. but most beginners don't know what to look for, so they're straight-up scammed into buying based on a nice picture. then their 'hey, i made this and it looks nothing like advertised' comments get buried under hundreds of 5-star bot reviews, and this is how someone who might have otherwise discovered an interesting and fulfilling hobby drops it, thinking the pattern's fine, everyone else likes it, so it's on them for not being good enough. it pisses me off so much, you have no idea.
anyway, here's some shops selling amigurumi (crochet soft toys) patterns fully created by crafters. i've either bought and made patterns from them or saved them for later, meaning i already checked that they aren't ai-generated. i might make a post later on how to spot ai-generated amigurumi patterns, but i wanted to give these a shout-out. go buy from them if you can, it's cool stuff and an interesting skill to learn.
straw animals design (etsy store) plushies and accessories, including some knitted patterns. beginner friendly!
green frog crochet (website store). mostly doll patterns, very pretty and totally worth the time and effort. they also sell full kits for some of the patterns, that include all supplies except for crochet hooks and fiberfill. also, youtube channel with tutorials.
moonlight crochet (etsy store). mostly doll patterns, lots of clothes you can adapt to dolls of similar sizes
yan schenkel (website store for individual patterns) has several books out that i really love. it took a bit of digging to figure out if this online store selling the pdf versions is legit and i found that the publisher sells directly through them. there are three pattern books (1, 2, 3) with animal plushies.
natura crochet (website store) has colorful animal and holiday themed patterns, plus two books of aquatic themed patterns. same publisher/seller as above.
hanichan (website store) has a distinct and minimalist style that i think is very beginner friendly. there are also useful general tutorials for amigurumi.
aquariwool crochet (etsy store). a lot of colorful and fun animal patterns. i haven't bought anything from them yet but i have a few saved and honestly just looking through the patterns makes me happy.
make me roar (website store). one of the more unique styles i've seen out there, especially these.
jo handmade design (etsy store). both plushies and more realistic toys, the patterns are very well written and illustrated.
whenever possible i linked to a store outside etsy, but not all pattern creators have one, so it's 100% worth checking them out and supporting them despite the absolute tar pit they operate in. also whatever creative hobby you're curious about, don't let an ai-generated picture discourage you from trying it. you are a god capable of summoning something out of nothing and generative ai is a pathetic little string of mathematical operations with ideas above its station.
I AM GOING TO SCREAM AND SCREAM AND SCREAM to the heavens until everyone knows about the Etsy competitor goimagine!!!
Shop Handmade | Shop Local | Shop with Purpose
The founder of GoImagine refuses to go public or sell the platform: NO SHARE HOLDERS TO APPEASE!!
They have a STRICT vetting process for sellers: NO BOTS, NO AI, NO DROP SHIPPING, HAND MADE CRAFTS ONLY!!
You can narrow down stores you're shopping from by STATE! EASILY SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES!!
2% of every sale transaction is donated to charity!!!
This is baked into the platform. Right now they're partnered with four different charities to fight childhood hunger, provide relief childcare for families dealing with domestic violence, end childhood homelessness, and fund art accessablity. HELPING KIDS!!!!
I have a shop there that I will be stocking soon! If you're a creator, their basic ship front is FREE and you get 12 listing slots! The next size up is only $5 a month and you get 200 listings, and the topn you're at $15 gives you 1,000 product listings and a whole ass customizable store front website. That's cheaper than anything else on the market rn.
Current downsides that will not remain downsides: they're only available in the USA but they're planning on expanding into Canada soon. And they've been mostly focused on growing their seller side, so not a lot of buyers know about them yet. But!!! That why I tell everyone I can! Shop with them! List your products with them! Use a platform that has a dedicated mission for community good and is there to support sustainable creator markets, not create endless bloated corporate growth!!!!
And dump Etsy yesterday.
I haven't talked enough about Two Husbands, One Wife. Because really, what do you say about perfection? It feels like any words I offer cannot do it justice.
I pretty much hold my breath every episode and pray to the show gods that they don't ruin the absolutely beautiful thing they've created.
And so far...as of episode 7...they haven't.
Because every episode has built on the idea that it really takes all THREE of them to make this relationship work. The framing reinforces this with frequent triangle shots (and even triangle dialogue). There must be a connection between all points, and no point is more important than the other. Every person is essential.
Because while Takuzo may be the "responsible" one, he's rigid in his ways.
And while Mia is the realist who easily speaks her mind and expresses what she wants, it can make her very focused on herself.
They already tried it with just the two of them. It didn't work.
And Mia and Shinpei have already tried it with just the two of them too. It doesn't work.
Because they struggle with managing responsibility on their own.
They are willing to do the work, but they need someone to guide them with structure and remind them the laundry exists. I feel that.
And although Shinpei is a free spirit who really brings "joy" to everything he does...
With just Mia, he still feels a bit insecure and not quite good enough.
And with a younger boyfriend that has so many fans, Mia can sometimes feels insecure too.
As the men have developed and taken their relationship further.
Takuzo is able to affirm Shinpei and give him the words he needs to hear.
And Shinpei's earnest and sweet nature is able to break through Takuzo's walls to help him see that his rigidity can have consequences.
His infectious energy pushes Takuzo to go places he wouldn't otherwise and encourages him to try new things.
But both men recognize that they NEED Mia.
She holds them together.
Because she's the one who can express words and speak her mind easily.
Who will make the first move when things get difficult.
And push them to make the necessary decisions.
Because they're a throuple. And no (good) relationship exists without all three of them.
Bonus: There's food symbolism (even more than I mention here). Be still my beating heart.
Mia is gyoza.
Takuzo is curry.
And it's best when the chef (Shinpei) serves both.
I think teens need to be able to go to trusted adults and say âI saw something in a porn video that freaked me out and now Iâm worried Iâll have to do it tooâ and then the adult can say âitâs ok to be nervous about sex, but remember that you donât have to do ANYTHING you donât want to do, ever, no exceptionsâ and this should be an ongoing conversation to remind young people that sexual desire isnât monolithic and they are not uniquely weird, cowardly, or undesirable for expressing their feelings, and they deserve sexual partners who prioritize consent & autonomy always
Thatâs normalising teens watching porn tho
it is statistically normal for teens to watch porn. what we do now is about trying to reduce harm and support safer sexual practices/habits, not attempting to promote abstinence. we already know abstinence-only doesn't work.
Deploying unit
(via)
trauma therapy has been swell

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I think the solution to kids on the Internet is to have specific, kid friendly spaces on the Internet. Kids wouldn't come across "adult content" on YouTube if barbie dot com still had flash games and this is a hill I will die on.
That was truly the golden age of cross stitch. We need a more modern version of slipcovers for bricks.
Yeah kinda hard to throw a brick at yourself so second greatest nemesis it is.