I don’t tend to agree with any simple hashtag/blanket statements in topics regarding animal welfare.

I disagree with the premise of shaming people for where they got their dog from. Because it doesn’t actually help the dog or put backyard breeders and puppy farms out of business.

It can also make well meaning people adopt a dog they were not ready for, thinking that they’re doing the Right Thing by adopting from a shelter but being matched poorly or taken advantage of by an irresponsible rescue.

Good, responsible breeders will always have a policy of taking back a puppy or dog so that the dog they bred doesn’t end up in a shelter.

Genetics plays a massive role in dog behaviour- we have genetically selected for specific traits over thousands of years to ensure that. Yet there was this bizarre movement that came up in the early 2010’s that, in response to breed specific legislation, the message of “it’s all in how you raise them” got pushed and suddenly people decided genetics didn’t matter and it was all about training.

Nature-nurture debates always ends with the same answer: it’s both. And if you want the best chance of getting predictable behaviour in a dog to fit a specific role - whether that’s a working dog, sports or just a good pet, a good breeder who is health testing and breeding good dogs is your best bet.

A rescue will be less likely to be as predictable. That doesn’t mean the dog is immediately going to have lots of issues and be aggressive - but your expectations need to be far more tempered and reasonable.

Getting a rescue can be absolutely amazing - my rescue greyhound is a joy and I’d never change a thing. But there were certain expectations I had to lower for him. He wasn’t overly cuddly to start, very little food drive (he had to learn how to eat food on walks), he had some resource guarding issues, he’s extremely environment focused so it can be difficult to do off leash work with him and he wasn’t very interested in doing lots of training or sports. We’ve worked through a lot of that together and I’m a better dog guardian for it.

But when I got Myx, who was initially a puppy the breeder kept but then decided to find a home for, it was so different. She loves to train all the time, she loves sports, she snuggles in bed with me. All my needs were met and they both give each other confidence in different areas.

I’ve had clients take on rescues in a very well meaning way but are disappointed when the dog is far too anxious to be the cafe dog of their dreams and they have to lower their expectations. It might be a goal they can work towards over time but it’s going to be an ongoing process and needs patience.

In contrast, a friend of mine is doing puppy raising for an assistance dog program. She had this 14 week old puppy already settling on a mat in the middle of a busy cafe, relaxed and resting - with hardly any training at all.

That’s genetics - training only gets you so far.

I don’t want to discourage people from rescue either - but picking the right rescue who will match you with the right dog and provide transition support is just as important as finding a responsible breeder.

You shouldn’t bring a rescue dog into your home because you felt pressured or guilty or have some sort of moral obligation. You should bring a rescue dog into your home because you found the right match and you are able to provide for that dog’s needs. Some dogs transition just fine with no issues, others need more support. As does a puppy from a breeder, mind you.

Anyway, adopt don’t shop does very little to stop the source of the problem (puppy mills, whoops litters, backyard breeders, shitty landlords and no pets policies for rentals) - it doesn’t stop shelters and rescues filling up and can lead to well meaning people adopting a rescue they were not prepared for.

If you want to “shop” you have the responsibility to source a puppy from a responsible registered breeder who is ensuring the longevity, health and behavioural soundness of the breed.

If you want to “adopt”, ensure you are going through a rescue who is matching you to the right dog. Any rescue that lets you go in and pick a dog without any sort of matching criteria and/or home visit is a red flag. And if you do want to adopt, do it because you have the capacity to have a rescue dog and not just because it sounds nice. Make sure you have the resources to get help or have the skills required to do any sort of behaviour rehabilitation work.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t rescue dogs that immediately transition into home life with no issues, but you shouldn’t immediately be expecting that because not every dog is quite so resilient.

The two ethical choices for getting a dog are A) responsible rescue/shelter, or B) responsible breeder.

Good rescues/shelters clean up the mistakes made by unethical breeders and careless owners. If you're looking for a household pet, and especially if you want to bring one home soon, looking into rescues is a great option. A good rescue will have workers/volunteers who can tell you a lot about the dogs in their care, and can match you with an individual dog whose needs and personality are a good fit: no guesswork of the "this is what this breed is usually like" variety.

A responsible breeder is breeding dogs for a reason: sports, showing, work, improving the breed, something other than, "This breed is cute/popular and will sell well." They're matching carefully-selected dogs with the hope of producing offspring with specific traits--and for avoiding known health problems with the breed.

They're producing small numbers of litters--3 litters, total, is a reasonable number to breed from a given female dog, over her childbearing years; maybe 4 or even 5 at the outside, if she has an easy time of it and gets an early start. (A responsible breeder is not going to start her dogs having litters as soon as they physically can; first of all, it isn't good for them, and secondly, she's not going to make the decision that their genes should be passed on, until she's seen them succeed in the activity that they're being bred for.)

A responsible breeder with a large kennel (and circumstances that allow her to make this her full-time occupation) may have a litter almost every year, but usually it will be a lot less often than that. She'll often have people lined up before the mating even takes place, who are interested in a puppy--especially for whatever fraction of the litter come out as show/sport/working prospects, but likely also for the "pet quality" puppies, too. (No matter how carefully you plan a match, some puppies will get a bigger helping of the desired traits than others.)

Depending on how the litter turns out, once they're born and big enough to start assessing, she might have one or three available to "pet homes," which will be screened just as carefully as the "show homes" (or agility homes, or working homes, or whatever it is).

TL:DR, if somebody is advertising an entire litter on Facebook Marketplace or w/e, they are, by definition, not a responsible breeder. They could be a perfectly decent person who ended up with an "oops" litter, for entirely understandable and sympathetic reasons, but you probably don't want to be encouraging that behavior by giving them money for their oops. If you want an "oops" puppy, getting one from a rescue is how you know that your adoption fee isn't going to result in your puppy's mama getting bred again as soon as she's able.

(My late dog, Sophie, was breeding stock at a puppy mill, who was dumped when she had some kind of trouble with her last litter. The shelter was able to nurse her back to health, and I think I was able to give her a great life for the few years she had with me, but she had a lot of issues, physical and mental.

“So... We got the exploding diarrhea. Here's my advice for anyone who doesn't have it yet:

It's going to take a minute for the government to pin down where this is coming from, and then issue a recall, because the FDA has been gutted. But, I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt : this is coming from Taylor Farms produce, and you will see them recalled.

You'll want to avoid all Taylor Farms produce in the grocery store. They supply McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, about any fast food place you can think of.

Raspberries, watermelons, cilantro, and the veggies you're hearing about are not causing this many people to get sick. It's the shredded lettuce, specifically, that's the problem. But, you'll want to stay away from every type of produce this company puts out, because one strand of shredded lettuce is all it takes to contaminate bushels.

Taylor Farms is the source. Taco Bell proactively pulled their produce from their restaurants. You're going to see other fast food places doing this, and probably will see that before the government names a source. The FDA knows this, but they can't come out and tell us all until there's proof, which takes resources and research, which takes manpower, but the FDA has been cut by about 20-30%

During the Biden term, onions at McDonald's had ecoli. We knew this because DNA testing was done quickly and they were able to narrow it down to one place that caused the outbreak. And, it was traced back to Taylor Farms. This isn't going to be solved as quickly though.

When you get this, make a virtual appointment to your PCP - a "same day sick" appointment. Tell them someone in your family just tested for this and was positive and was prescribed Bactrim. If you go in person, they're probably going to make you poop in a cup and wait until results come back to prescribe.

You'll know when you get this. Trust me on all of this.

You'll want to stay hydrated because this parasite damages the lining of the small intestine. Your small intestine, in turn, secretes more water into the gut, and less nutrients and liquid are able to remain in the body. So no matter how much you shit, you're going to want to drink. A day of this leads to dehydration if you don't increase your fluid intake, and a few days will land you in the hospital.

If you have headaches, weakness, muscle cramps, dizziness, or an increase heart rate - hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Go to the ER for fluids if you can't drink enough.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Brought to you by America's 250 birthday celebrations, workforce reduction in the FDA and CDC, and viewers like you.

Please feel free to share this.

And, MAGA - don't blow up the comment section. I argued with y'all on COVID bc I was afraid y'all would die, but I really don't care if you get explosive diarrhea.

However, per CNN and numerous other news outlets, as of Thursday afternoon, the outbreak has been at least partially traced to lettuce supplied to Taco Bell from Taylor Farms, in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Other states and/or businesses could have received the same contaminated lettuce, or there could be multiple simultaneous outbreaks with different sources: currently, it's not clear.

It is sweet, as the name suggests, though not very, and it tastes like a slightly herbal (bitter) hay, heavy with pollen. Like a meadow at the end of a summer day when the earth starts giving back the heat? I didn’t taste vanilla, especially. Basically how it smells, with a slightly astringent edge.

Granted, they probably put more sugar in when they make lemonade from it.

"If (I judge that) there is any non-negligible probability that you will brutalize me, the right to self defense justifies me in using whatever means are available to brutalize you first, so that you don't do that."

But since that was what most people were there for, the instructor talked about defending your home. He said - and remember, this was a guy who worked at a gun store - that the current thinking among experts was that you should never go wandering around your house in the dark with a gun. Far too many bad things can happen.

What you do instead is that you designate a room in your house as a safe room. It might be your bedroom, or the bedroom of your youngest kid, or whatever. If that room doesn't have a lock on the door, install one. If you really want to go all-out, install a security door.

Then, if you wake up in the night and hear a suspicious noise, you quickly gather everyone into that room and lock the door. You can make this a family drill that you practice regularly, like you should be practicing evacuating in case of a fire and other emergencies.

Once you're in the room with the door locked, you can call 911 if it seems warranted. If you do have a gun, you can cover the door.

The advantages of this approach are:

If, as is most likely, the noise was your cat, or your teenager sneaking in after curfew, or your neighbor who came home drunk and mistook your house for his, then you will feel embarrassed instead of making a tragic mistake.

If it actually is someone breaking in, then it is very likely that they're just going to grab your TV or whatever and leave, in which case you and your family have stayed safe and you call your insurance agent in the morning.

In the extremely unlikely event that they are intruders who really do mean to harm you and start trying to break down the door, then you are in a much stronger tactical position then moving around your house in the dark. And your self-defense case, if it comes to that, will be on much stronger legal footing.

All the episodes of Galavant are on the Internet Archive!

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

When the detail that the writer was a trans woman (and a specific one people knew) had filtered into common knowledge, the consensus of the vocal detractors was that she had done Nazi actions equivalent to being a Nazi that hurt every trans woman, and it was their responsibility to terrorize her. When she ended up suicidal and swore off writing, that was viewed as a great victory against an enemy of trans women. (Not dissimilar from people harassing Jewish actress Aya Cash for portraying a Nazi on The Boys.)

Also, people like to single out N.K. Jemisin for participating, but she was pretty much doing what people expect of an ally: following the leading voices of the relevant minority, repeating their messages, and using her social capital to boost theirs. The problem was the trans women leading the mob. I find the presence of trans woman author Alexandra Erin more objectionable because she was run off Tumblr for being into vore and bondage and because she liked a post from a black submissive woman showing off a collar, which was framed as her wanting to enslave black people, so you would think she'd be sympathetic to a trans woman author stigmatized for being into edgy humor. Instead, she likened the story to firing randomly in the air and hoping only bad people would be hurt, when it should be clear innocents would likely be hurt, making the whole endeavor harmful. (Like being open about liking controversial fetishes on Tumblr?)

Edgy humor sets off mainstream leftists like Daleks sighting an enemy.

Like, how many times can we see a marginalized creator get torn to bloody shreds by other marginalized people and well intended “Allies” who never actually looked at the evidence themselves and just went off what “the affected group” was saying? The queer experience is subjective as hell, and I can’t imagine any other marginalized experience is different. Maybe we should stop mob harassing people for making something without looking at the thing ourselves.

Because there was little biographical information available about its author, the debate hinged on one question: Who was Isabel Fall? And that question ate her alive. When she emerged from the hospital a few weeks later, the world had moved on, but she was still scarred by what had happened. She decided on something drastic: She would no longer be Isabel Fall. As a trans woman early in transition, Fall had the option of retreating to the relative safety of her legal, masculine identity. That’s what she did, staying out of the limelight and growing ever more frustrated by what had happened to her. She bristles when I ask her in an email if she’s stopped transitioning, but it’s the only phrase I can think of to describe how the situation appears. Isabel Fall was on a path to becoming herself, and then she wasn’t — and all because she published a short story. And then her life fell apart.

...

After she checked out of the hospital, Isabel Fall ceased to be Isabel Fall. “I had a few other stories in the works on similar themes, and I withdrew them; that is the most concrete thing I can say that I stopped doing,” Fall says. “More abstractly, more emotionally, I have stopped trying to believe I am a woman or to work towards womanness. If other people want to put markings on my gender-sphere and decide what I am, fine, let them. It’s not worth fighting.”

That makes me so fucking angry every time I think about it that I want to spit or cry.

I have not been the subject of the level of intense, sudden, overwhelming attention that she has; I have been the target of a lower-volume, sustained campaign, and there is a reason that I call it "the acid fire hose." That shit will strip the fucking flesh from your bones.

So yeah. Of course indie authors flinch.