TOO MUCH ART NOT ENOUGH SPACEEEEE

I used to work in the kennel at a vet clinic. One day one of the vet techs came into the kennel in a tearing hurry, handed me two cat carriers, and said, "Find a cage for these two. Don't know how long, but you can put them together." And then she left.

This was not how that was supposed to happen. I had no cage cards--no names, no feeding instructions, no health information--they weren't on the schedule, and techs didn't usually intake boarders. Medical cases had a separate kennel, so a tech shouldn't be bringing me an animal in during office visit hours. But I had a cage in the cat room, so I tucked them in--two adult females, very friendly, apparently healthy.

Half an hour later the tech came back--with cage cards--and said, "It's okay, they're staying overnight and going home tomorrow." She slumped against the kennel wall and told the cats' story.

They had been brought to the clinic to be euthanized, to die.

These healthy, friendly, beloved cats had been brought in to be killed, because a woman's doctor, her obstetrician, had told her that they had killed her unborn baby. He told her if she ever wanted a child she had to get rid of the cats. He told her they should be euthanized before they killed any other woman's unborn child.

He said, with no evidence, that they had toxoplasmosis. He said that toxoplasmosis caused her miscarriage.

The woman was distraught. She had just lost her baby, she was dealing with the hormonal changes of the pregnancy loss, and now she had to euthanize her beloved cats. Fortunately no vet I've ever worked for will euthanize healthy animals brought in by a sobbing client without asking why!

The vet spent almost an hour talking to the woman, educating her on toxoplasmosis, telling her all the reasons her doctor was wrong.

Not all cats have toxoplasmosis, and even when they do they only shed the oocytes in their feces--they're only infectious--for the first few weeks. Most cats are infected as kittens and are no longer infectious as adults. According to Wikipedia, "Numerous studies have shown living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondii infection,[61][63][64] though living with several kittens has some significance.[65]"

Most people get toxoplasmosis from raw vegetables, especially salad greens that grow close to the soil and are hard to clean. Raw or rare meat, raw seafood, and unpasteurized milk are also a risk.

Toxoplasmosis can be a soil-borne disease from feces in the soil. Gardening is a greater risk than cat cohabitation.

Toxoplasmosis infection is dangerous to the fetus in pregnancy, yes, causing birth defects and miscarriages. But only the first time the person is infected. If this this woman had lost her first pregnancy to toxoplasmosis--and the vet said it really didn't fit the symptoms--she would be at low risk in a subsequent pregnancy.

So basically the vet told the woman that 1) her miscarriage probably wasn't toxoplasmosis, 2) even if it was, she probably didn't get it from her cats, 3) even if her cats had given her toxoplasmosis, they weren't infectious anymore.

The woman kept her cats and got a new obstetrician.

Because the risks are never 0% and most people want to know what they can do to reduce risks. And we have to balance reducing risks with the impact on the life of the pregnant person.

But I'm always surprised to hear other clinicians giving misguided advice like "get rid of your cats because of toxoplasmosis".

Nobody should be giving this kind of advice.

Miscarriages are common. Like, possibly more than 1 in 4 pregnancies common. The majority of early miscarriages are due to severe chromosomal abnormalities in the foetus that mean the pregnancy just cannot develop into a living baby. It's absolutely heartbreaking, but there is usually nothing that can be done to prevent the majority of miscarriages and far too many couples blame themselves or think they have done something wrong.

It doesn't sound like they had any proof (such as testing) that toxoplasmosis caused the miscarriage. And it is perfectly possible to avoid toxoplasmosis and have a healthy pregnancy whilst living with cats or kittens.

russia commits genocide in Ukraine

russians steal Ukrainian children, illegally adopt them to raise them as russians and abuse them

russian culture is persecution of those who don't comply, stealing children and drafting Ukrainians into military to fight their own people.

Article in question: https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

Aang: back in my day it was called weed city

Sokka: I’m… pretty sure it wasn’t

so often i've seen big-ass Stupid Bullshit News about Stupid Bullshit become absolutely nothing after like 3 days. i'm so fucking tired of it because it means that nothing changes, since we've forgotten what we need to change.

now amazon is getting sued. awesome! this is the first time i've heard of it. the suit was filed presumably somewhere between a few hours and a day ago, so that's understandable.

is this really, really going to be covered after, i dunno, three days? i honestly don't reckon so. amazon has enough money and probably apathy to make this not as much of an important lawsuit as it should - and maybe could - be.

i would love to be reminded every day for weeks and then months that amazon is being sued for operating an illegal monopoly. i want to read every joke, hear every update, see every move that's made until this shit is wrapped up. i don't just want to operate on hope and, inversely, a lack of faith on this one.

“We cannot wait any longer. The water resources, it’s precious. It’s irreplaceable. It’s pure. There is no substitute for pure water. And our lives depend upon it.”

x. Hawai’i Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernest Lau

an excerpt from the article:

“The military has offered all service members and civilian employees living near the base the opportunity to get alternative housing, and Converse said they are now covering the cost of hotel rooms for more than 700 people. Converse did not have a timeline for getting drinkable water back to the affected homes. ‘It will involve a series of flushes of not just the water distribution main, but of every home,’ he explained. The Navy added it has seen concerns from people in the affected neighborhoods who were exposed to the contaminated water and reported symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches and skin-related concerns. The Navy isolated the Red Hill well last Sunday and sent samples out for testing Monday, it said.”

while this incident is getting an unsurprising but still infuriating lack of coverage, it should be noted that the tone of all major media coverage is exactly like this: the emphasis for concern is placed entirely on the military&their families, who are receiving help, while the locals have their physical responses to literal poisoning noted.

Hawai’i has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, &nā kānaka māoli have been being told to ration our water for both the military industrial complex&the tourism industry for decades as it is. due to the devastation of our land, the cost of living in the islands is astronomical as it is; food, &now water, is priced to accommodate needing everything shipped across an ocean to the most isolated&heavily populated island on the planet. native Hawaiians already starve in our homeland— currently, they’re being poisoned by our water, one of the only things we have left to call ours after having our resources stolen&continuously depleted.

while the lack of coverage is unsurprising as the military does their best to cover up the hundreds of millions of gallons of petrol they leaked into one of the largest aquifers in the state, the lack of outrage in 2021 is completely untenable— this is not the first fuel leak the Navy has dealt with in Hawai’i. this isn’t even the first fuel leak or containment issue they’ve dealt with this year. more excerpts from the article above:

“Another incident in May [2021] involved the release of more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel from a pipeline inside the storage facility, according to the Navy.”

“In October [2021], the Hawaii Department of Health cited the Navy for violations related to operation and maintenance of the facility, records show. The fines and violations resulted from a routine inspection from September 28, 2020, through October 9, 2020, according to the health department.

the United States military, with a specific emphasis on their Navy, has done damage to our ‘āina that words cannot express, &damage to our people that nothing short of the return of our lands&waters will ever begin to absolve. this fuel leak— hundreds of thousands of gallons of it into one of the biggest aquifers on O’ahu— follows a minimum of eight years of the Board of Water Supply insisting this specific fuel containment set up at Red Hill needed to be either removed or double-walled. this is willful negligence, &the way that they have chosen to handle the fallout by exclusively focusing on those living on their base&in their military housing speaks volumes.

from Sierra Club of Hawai’i:

[ID1: a minimalist grey stone is cracked on a black background above tan sand&blue water. in white above the stone reads: “Shut Down Red Hill”. below this, written in black over the blue portion of the image, reads: “To Protect Our Water. To Protect The People.” /ID1]

[ID2: tan headline reads: “The Latest Update”. below this reads, “Governor Ige and the Department of Health have ordered the Navy to defuel the tanks at Red Hill. While we wish it didn’t take family and pets being poisoned to get Hawai’i’s leaders finally on board with shutting down Red Hill, this is a strong and much needed shift in action that should have happened years ago. The governor and department of health have legal authority to protect us from the Red Hill fuel tanks. But the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, plans to treat this lawful order as a ‘request’. And now, the Navy is requesting a contested case hearing to delay having to comply with the order.” /ID2]

[ID3: tan headline reads: “What You Can Do”. below this reads: “We need to make sure the Navy does not defy the law while contaminating our water and poisoning thousands of people. Here are 3 things you can do: 1. Write a letter to the secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin III (Del Toro’s boss) demanding that the Navy comply with the emergency order and immediately shut down Red Hill to protect O’ahu’s water and public health. 2. Make some noise on Twitter! Tweet at Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@secdef) 3. Repost this on your Instagram and Facebook and tag Obama who was raised on Red Hill water and appointed Sec. Austin @barackobama, &a “Hawai’i celebrity” you want to see stand with us on this issue.” /ID3]

the Sierra Club has been working for decades to help with environmental restoration&protection, &is currently integral to keeping the news flowing about what’s happening at Red Hill:

Ola i ka wai a ka ʻōpua.

There is life in the water from the clouds.

Ka lepo ke kumu wai, e huaʻi ana ka lepo kai.

When the source of water is dirty, the dirt is carried to the sea.

[ID1: orange slide from Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Breaking News: Water samples from the Red Hill shaft contained diesel levels 350 TIMES the safe drinking limit" /ID1]

today, a die-in&sign-waving event was held on O'ahu by the O'ahu Water Protectors, demanding that the Red Hill fuel tanks be shut down. today the result of water testing was finally released to the public: diesel levels 350 times the safe drinking limit. any level of diesel in drinking water is poison. on an island, in the middle of an ocean of undrinkable water, this level of contamination can&will mean a death sentence for people if it is not addressed. to be specific: if bottled water becomes a requirement for the island of O'ahu, people-- largely homeless people, many of whom are nā kānaka māoli, homeless in their own homeland-- will die for lack of being able to afford it, &that is before people start dying of the effects of the literal poison that has been in their water. and, as of now, the Secretary of the Navy&all Navy leaders stationed on Hawai'i have yet to agree to the demands of both the public&the Hawai'i state government, insisting that the tanks be defueled&shut down.

the current call to action:

[ID2: slide from Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Write to the Secretary of Defense Demanding The Navy Shut Down Red Hill" /ID2]

[ID3: caption by Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Hawai'i's local Navy leaders have failed us. And so has the Secretary of the Navy. His apology doesn't bring back clean water. His apology doesn't ensure our water will be safe in the future. The only way we can move forward from this crisis is to shut down the tanks. We need you, your friends and your fam to write to the Secretary of Defense (Del Toro's boss) and demand the Navy comply with the emergency order and shut down the Red Hill tanks. There is no other option. There is no time left. We need action now." /ID3]

[ID4: screenshot from the Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "*Mail your notes by Wednesday, December 14th, 2021. We are aiming to collectively flood their mailboxes so it's better for us all to mail our letters around the same time. *Mailing Address: Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, 1000 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC 20301-1000" /ID4]

ola i ka wai--

photos from the die-in that happened on December 10th (via @oahuwaterprotectors on IG), &the dedication of the ko'a by Ka'ohewai at the front of the Navy's command headquarters (via @kanaeokana on IG). the ko'a will be left to sanctify the area for the purposes of prayer to nā akua for the purification of the 'āina&wai of Red Hill until the Navy does what's right&defuels their tanks.

currently, the contaminated aquifer has been shut down. this aquifer, which provides 20% of all fresh water on O'ahu, may never reopen. the Navy, as of now, has refused to defuel their tanks, despite the demands of both the public&the state government. the call to action is still to write to the Secretary of Defense&demand the removal of the Red Hill tanks.

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

Here’s her YouTube channel with the recreated hair-styles

And the research she did got published in the Journal of Roman Studies (which is a big deal in the Classics world) “even though” she doesn’t have at least a Masters degree in the field.

[To give reference to the gate keeping in this field, she was, I think, only the second or so person without a PhD to be published in the history of the Journal]

This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this.

It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much.

Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. It’s not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.

Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. It’s not that hard. In a lot of cases, if there’s neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you don’t do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you won’t be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.

Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And we’re learning how to do it better every day.

Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. They’re doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but it’s perfectly doable. We know this because we’ve done it.

Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! There’s a lot of people working on this, both on “how to remove plastic from the ocean” and “how to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.” And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.

So if you’re crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe … don’t be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things we’ve broken. The issue is political, not practical.

On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (What’s the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.

In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that people–even conservatives–are starting to talk about “job opportunities in new green fields” and switching the conversation so that it’s not “rainforest vs. jobs” makes political action a lot more possible. And no, it’s not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.