SUNCHILD ☼

there is an extremely slim chance you will be able to deploy the pepper spray/taser/gun in a way that does not harm you at all. pepper spray blows back, guns miss, tasers slip. there is a much much larger chance things go poorly and you end up getting hurt worse than originally intended because now your assailant is pissed and more heavily armed.

im not talking out my ass here, i'm a case manager at a homeless shelter for addicts. we have a lot of violent behavior. none of our staff carry any sort of weapons. we are trained to de-escalate or remove ourselves from the situation. i have worked there over two years without being harmed despite intervening in many fights and having weapons pulled on me.

guns do not make you safe

more people carrying weapons makes more violence

it's an illusion. it's a mental game. a weapon is a safety blanket that will sooner kill you than stop someone else from doing so.

Like I have a legit trigger based in children screaming. That is a PTSD thing from years of abuse when I was a child. So I can't hardly deal with children in public but guess what!!! That's a personal problem! I deal with that by not going at times when kids are there! Or by putting in headphones!

But demanding the world become more hostile to children than it already is is just the peak of fucking entitlement.

"Oh but my wonderful anniversary dinner shouldn't be ruined by the sound of a baby screaming"

Go to a restaurant that doesn't allow children. They do exist! They tend to be more expensive but they exist! Or! Or! Better yet! Don't eat out! Rent out somewhere for the night and cook your own damn food!

"I shouldn't have to listen to a baby screaming on a plane"

That baby is far more uncomfortable than you are. It's literally in pain because of pressure changes in the cabin. Parents hate it too! There is no good answer for this so suck it up! Get noise canceling headphones and listen to a podcast or a book or music.

Children are human beings. They're not annoying pets that people happen to create. They have a right to be in public, to exist just like anyone else.

He realized his dogs have an unusual skill. Now he uses them to help save turtles.

By Cathy Free

John Rucker was a high school English teacher in North Carolina when he stumbled upon something interesting: Whenever he took his two dogs hiking, they would run into the tall grass and bring him back box turtles. Like a gift, his Boykin spaniels would gently lay them at his feet, unharmed.

He mentioned it to a few people, and soon, biology teachers from the University of North Carolina started reaching out to him and asking whether he would take their students out so they could put transmitters on the turtles to study them.

Several years later, the outings were so successful, Rucker was fielding calls from wildlife veterinarians and zoologists who were studying turtle populations.

“Because turtles aren’t easily detected in the wild by the human eye, I could see that I was on to something,” said Rucker, now 73.

Now, two decades later, Rucker’s spaniels are a highly in-demand, specialized team trained to sniff out box turtles by following their urine trails.

The dogs — Yogi, Ruger, Jenny Wren, Lazarus, Scamp, Skeeter and Rooster — travel across the country with Rucker helping to track turtle populations and identify threats and diseases.

From ancient to abstract, this one sure got around.