Talk to Me about Things n' Stuff

- You think sexual thoughts about the person out of nowhere

- You feel aroused upon seeing the person outside of a sexual setting

- You find yourself wondering what the person is like in bed and what their genitals look like 

- You want to have sex with that person because your body is screaming for sex with that one person in particular.

- Seriously though if you’re already horny and that person is there you will feel all hot and sexually aroused and might drool a bit and fantasies of doing X-rated things to that person will fly through your mind and your body will literally be screaming for that person to take you or for you to take that person. Even just thinking about that person while horny can do this to you.

- TMI but if you get off while fantasizing about you having sex with that person, the orgasms can be absolutely mind-blowing and may even give you leg cramps.

- You really do “just know.”

You might not be sexually attracted to that person if…

- You make a conscious effort to fantasize about sex with that person, mainly to see if you actually want to

- You feel aroused during a sexual situation, but that arousal has more to do with the activities instead of the specific person. Alternatively, you just don’t feel aroused at all.

- You feel aroused at random, but it’s directed towards no one

- You want to have sex with that person because you want to make them happy or are just horny and want to get off with a partner or want babies or want money or literally any other reason aside from your body screaming for sex with that one person in particular.

- TMI but if you try to get off while fantasizing about you having sex with that person, you may get bored and start thinking of other things. Or, you may start fantasizing about that person doing sexual things that don’t involve you in which case aegosexual might be worth looking into.

- You just don’t know.

If the “you might be sexually attracted” list boggles your mind, you are possibly asexual.

If the “you might not be sexually attracted” list boggles your mind, you are possibly not asexual.

If you can relate to the “might not be sexually attracted” list, but also feel like you’ve experienced some of the things on the “might be sexually attracted” list, it may be worth checking out some acespec identities.

Seeds For Tomorrow

Why are dogs dogs?

The long question is “given the extreme diversity of morphology in dogs, with many subsets of ‘dogs’ bearing no visual resemblance to each other, how am I able to intuit that they belong to the ‘dog’ set just by looking?”

The reason that this is a Good Big Question is because we are broadly used to categorising Things as related based on resemblances. Then everyone realized about genes and evolution and so on, and so now we have Fun Facts like “elephants are ACTUALLY closely related to rock hyraxes!! Even though they look nothing alike!!”

These Fun Facts are appealing because they’re not intuitive. So why is dog-sorting intuitive?

Well, because if you eliminate all the other possibilities, most dogs are dogs.

To process Things - whether animals, words, situations or experiences - our brains categorise the most important things about them, and then compare these to our memory banks. If we’ve experienced the same thing before - whether first-hand or through a story - then we know what’s happening, and we proceed accordingly.

If the New Thing is completely New, then the brain pings up a bunch of question marks, shunts into a different track, counts up all the Similar Traits, and assigns it a provisional category based on its similarity to other Things. We then experience the Thing, exploring it further, and gaining new knowledge. Our brain then categorises the New Thing based on the knowledge and traits. That is how humans experience the universe. We do our best, and we generally do it well.

This is the basis of stereotyping. It underlies some of our worst behaviours (racism), some of our most challenging problems (trauma), helps us survive (stories) and sharing the ability with things that don’t have it leads to some of our most whimsical creations (artificial intelligence.)

In fact, one reason that humans are so wonderfully successful is that we can effectively gain knowledge from experiences without having experienced them personally! You don’t have to eat all the berries to find the poisonous ones. You can just remember stories and descriptions of berries, and compare those to the ones you’ve just discovered. You can benefit from memories that aren’t your own!

On the other hand, if you had a terribly traumatic experience involving, say, an eagle, then your brain will try to protect you in every way possible from a similar experience. If you collect too many traumatic experiences with eagles, then your brain will not enjoy eagle-shaped New Things. In fact, if New Things match up to too many eagle-like categories, such as

* pointy * Specific!! Squawking noise!! * The hot Glare of the Yellow Eye * Patriotism?!? * CLAWS VERY BAD VERY BAD

Then the brain may shunt the train of thought back into trauma, and the person will actually experience the New Thing as trauma. Even if the New Thing was something apparently unrelated, like being generally pointy, or having a hot glare. (This is an overly simplistic explanation of how triggers work, but it’s the one most accessible to people.)

So the answer rests in how we categorise dogs, and what “dog” means to humans. Human brains associate dogs with universal categories, such as

* four legs * Meat Eater * Soft friend * Doggo-ness???? * Walkies * An Snout, * BORK BORK

Anything we have previously experienced and learned as A Dog gets added to the memory bank. Sometimes it brings new categories along with it. So a lifetime’s experience results in excellent dog-intuition.

And anything we experience with, say, a 90% match is officially a Dog.

Brains are super-good at eliminating things, too. So while the concept of physical doggo-ness is pretty nebulous, and has to include greyhounds and Pekingese and mastiffs, we know that even if an animal LOOKS like a bear, if the other categories don’t match up in context (bears are not usually soft friends, they don’t Bork Bork, they don’t have long tails to wag) then it is statistically more likely to be a Doggo. If it occupies a dog-shaped space then it is usually a dog.

So if you see someone dragging a fluffy whatnot along on a string, you will go,

* Mop?? (Unlikely - seems to be self-propelled.) * Alien? (Unlikely - no real alien ever experienced.) * Threat? (Vastly unlikely in context.) * Rabbit? (No. Rabbits hop, and this appears to scurry.) (Brains are very keen on categorising movement patterns. This is why lurching zombies and bad CGI are so uncomfortable to experience, brains just go “INCORRECT!! That is WRONG!” Without consciously knowing why. Anyway, very few animals move like domestic dogs!) * Very fluffy cat? (Maybe - but not quite. Shares many characteristics, though!) * Eldritch horror? (No, it is obviously a soft friend of unknown type) * Robotic toy? (Unlikely - too complex and convincing.) * alert: amusing animal detected!!! This is a good animal!! This is pleasing!! It may be appropriate to laugh at this animal, because we have just realized that it is probably a … * DOG!!!! Soft friend, alive, walks on leash. It had a low doggo-ness quotient! and a confusing Snout, but it is NOT those other Known Things, and it occupies a dog-shaped space! * Hahahaha!!! It is extra funny and appealing, because it made us guess!!!! We love playing that game. * Best doggo. * PING! NEW CATEGORIES ADDED TO “Doggo” set: mopness, floof, confusing Snout.

I love this!

The organic definition of a Species is a group of organisms that can interbreed and have fertile young. Odd as it may be, dogs can all interbreed, although some pairings (chihuahua/Great Dane) might boggle the imagination, dogs mate and have dog kids. This is how new breeds are made.

This does have a problem in that the borders are fuzzier than you may think, because Dogs can breed with wolves. This gets even more complex since wolves can breed with coyotes, and although I have never seen a dog/coyote mix, there is actually one group of thought that they may all be one species.

One opinion is that dogs should be considered a subspecies of wolves, Canis lupus familiaris.

how do we see a pug and then a husky and understand that both are dogs?

Which I rephrased it as:

given the extreme diversity of morphology in dogs, with many subsets of ‘dogs’ bearing no visual resemblance to each other, how am I able to intuit that they belong to the ‘dog’ set just by looking?

Or, as you rephrased it: “this may be a good way for us to recognize a dog if you meet one in the street”

Yes

Yes it is

Unfortunately you have answered the question “what is a dog” (which wasn’t asked) by describing “some characteristics of dogs” and concluding “dogs are a species of dogs.” That was never a question in this post, and it is not the answer to this question either, and you’re not quite correct about what a “species” is. But I am endlessly happy to talk about this at GREAT LENGTH. because your understanding of a species COULD BE BETTER. And by the end of this LONG POST it damn well will be. We are now going back to class.

Press J to skip it on your dash.

The answer to the question “what makes a species a species?” is not, as you put it, “well you see actually, a species is a species.”

A species is actually defined as a bundle of particular characteristics, which include what it can make babies with - but which remain a distinctive identity regardless of what that organism can fuck.

We don’t know how blurred the sexual/reproductive boundaries between the different types of prehistoric beasts were, on account of how you can’t intuit that from a single gatdamn fossil, but we sit down and give ‘em their own binomial names anyway, because we define species based on specific characters.

The reason we use the concept of “species” to begin with is because we need it to communicate; we know that domestic horses and wild zebras are necessarily distinctive, and we intuit that even though they can interbreed and produce occasionally viable offspring, they are not the same animal, and each has a discrete identity. Part of this is because technically they might breed, but they wouldn’t normally. (Nor would wolves and coyotes.) Another part is that they fulfill different niches and exhibit different natural behaviors. And still another part is physical characterisics; the adaptations of a zebra to its environment are unique, and it’s reasonable that they should contribute to the overall definition of “zebra.” Thus, if you were describing “a specific species of zebra” you reach for the traits that are distinctive - “A specific population of zebras, sharing characteristic appearance/behavior/territory/social structure/genetic quirk” - not a list of everything that they could conceivably fuck, and not an argument that two distinctive species of zebras are actually both horses. Animals within a species have more in common with each other than animals that don’t. Given all of the blurring that occurs around issues of reproduction, this is a fundamental part of the definition of a species.

Thus, stating that the complete and entire definition of a species as “animals that can breed” is itself extremely problematic, and shied away from by anyone who’s ever stood on the other side of the lecture podium.

Here’s what you say instead, when you’re an official adult scientist:

A species is a defined population of living organisms with a group of distinctive characteristics, which include the ability to exchange genes to produce fertile offspring that share those characteristics. Individuals within the same species have more in common with each other than they do with individuals outside of the species.

If you don’t hit every single one of those points in your definition, then you’re not going to get the right answer.

The better answer to the question “What is a dog” is actually more like:

“A domestic canine, Canis familiaris, is a terrestrial carnivore selectively bred over generations from a common ancestor shared with the modern gray wolf (Canis lupus) to suit specific human needs. The domestic dog exhibits extreme morphological diversity and has been bred for a large array of behaviors and characteristics, from herding other animals to providing medical aid. While dogs can breed with other canids and produce viable offspring, the domestic dog has distinctive characteristics, including a delayed period of childhood compared to wolves, increased attention and understanding of human nonverbal cues, increased ability to coexist with low aggression in close quarters with other species, and the ability to live on pet food made largely out of grain, which wolves can’t do, and which is pretty bloody weird if you think about it.”

That way, you’ve covered your goddamn ass. Because otherwise some perky undergraduate is going to put their hand up and ask “but what about wild coydogs?” And now you can answer, “Coydogs in wild settings, despite having domestic dog ancestry and being capable of breeding with other canids, are not considered domestic dogs because they do not share enough key characteristics with domestic dogs.”

“What about coydogs in domestic settings? Or my Aunt Maud’s wolfdog?”

“If a wild canid/domestic canid crossbreed meets enough criteria for domestic dogs, it would be considered a domestic dog. Your Aunt Maud’s wolfdog was in all probability just a husky with weird eyebrows anyway, but if it ate kibble, was allowed around children, and was completely emotionally fulfilled by living with humans in a house, it did not share the traits of wolves.”

“But what about black wolves?” will come a question from a reasonably well-informed kid at the back. “Black wolves are only black because of domestic dog ancestry. Does that make them dogs?”

“If they fulfill the role and function - the niche - of wolves, then we call them wolves,” I say with utter serenity.

“But what about infertile dogs that can’t breed with anything?”

“If they share the characteristics of domestic dogs, they remain dogs,” I reply, “Regardless of what would happen if they theoretically fucked a wolf.”

“What about beings that reproduce asexually, or without having sex?” asks a smart and clever student.

“Excellent question,” I say. “Aren’t you glad that our nice big definition of a species includes those awkward outliers too? Otherwise there’d be no point in having the word, now would there? We will note, though, that organisms such as bacteria are not usually defined by species, but by strain - a different word - since bacteria divide asexually and live everywhere at all times with no real regional differences, so ‘species’ no longer means much when you zoom in that far. After all, ‘species’ is only meant to be a useful concept for humans to sort animals with; it isn’t actually engraved in the genetic code anywhere, like a serial number that actually means something.”

The predictable hand goes up: “What if, like, dogs keep evolving? Like in the future, if people all evolve to live underwater and so do our pets?”

I answer first, “That would be weird,” in the traditional looking-over-the-tops-of-your-glasses flat affect; then I continue, “The current understanding of dogs is ‘terrestrial carnivore,’ so if they became fully adapted as aquatic carnivores I suppose we could call them their own species - a seadog descended from terrestrial dogs; or simply still call it a dog and expand the definition of dogness, like how we speak of ‘dialing’ a number even though phones no longer have physical dials. Both are legitimate; species boundaries are constantly being re-evaluated and redrawn, based on scientists learning new information about the species.  Because the definition of a species is simply not limited to what it makes babies with.”

I pause, feeling like it would be irresponsible not to add a personal safety announcement here. “Also, do NOT presume to BEGIN to have this conversation with birdwatchers or Bird People. For your own safety, if you ever meet an ornithologist in a dark alley, forget COMPLETELY about this idea that the concept of a species is based even REMOTELY on “producing viable offspring.” The subtleties of different bird species can be characterized based on minor variations in song. People have meetings about this, at which they throw chairs. DON’T GET INVOLVED.”

“What’s the point then?” says a petulant student. “Like, if we all know what a dog is.”

And I reply, “Exactly! We invented language to communicate, and we impose it upon the natural world, drawing distinct and arbitrary boundaries in order to communicate, despite the natural world being a teeming, nebulous, essentially un-quantifiable n-dimensional hypervolume that resists such boundaries; Nature abhors a vacuum, and loves a grey area, but humans prefer to articulate abstract concepts using concrete language forms, even if doing so is fundamentally inaccurate.”

“But what if a Chihuahua fucked a wolf AND THEN-”

“RING SPECIES,” I bellow suddenly, interrupting a discussion that always degenerates into someone’s contorted furry/wolfkin/OC fantasies, by forcibly moving to the next slide: “ARE SAID TO OCCUR WHERE A POPULATION RINGING A GEOGRAPHIC OBSTACLE, SUCH AS THE SEAGULL POPULATIONS AROUND THE NORTH POLE, CAN BREED WITH THE POPULATIONS ON EITHER SIDE OF THEM BUT NOT WITH POPULATIONS ACROSS THE CIRCLE. EVERY DISTINCT POPULATION IS USUALLY CONSIDERED A SEPARATE SPECIES, AND -”

In conclusion, there is no shame in being wrong, but see how much easier it is to teach others, once you lay the groundwork for being correct?

Here’s another, one of my favorite dance videos online. Trendlyon Veal and Robert Royston are both West Coast Swing dancers, so there’s no crossover appeal, but look at them. LOOK AT THEM GO.

Hello hello 👋

I need your help 🙏

My cars transmission went out and it will cost too much to fix. I need to finance a new car and suffer the high interest rate so I can get to and from work.

Any amount donated will go into the down payment 🙏

Heres my links before the explanations..

Cashapp: $TheRealDragonPrince

Venmo: @StrangesPrince

Paypal: [email protected]

.......

Our goals for financial help...

-a new phone. ($500 or higher most likely..) because ours is close to its little phone grave

-food we can eat, easily consume/make for our severe eating disorder.

-our medication and hormones.

-memory cards, so we can try to help fix our phone..

-a new birth certificate and forms of identification, since ours were stolen. So

-our spotify and pics art, both very important coping mechanisms.

-a place to live in arizona

Ill try to make our story as short as possible..

Our dad wanted to get rid of two of our cats...he was giving them to a shelter. I didnt want my cats to be hurt. So i asked if my partner could take him and i found an organization to help me with tobys travel.

An hour before we were supposed to leave for our flight, my classically evil step mother kicked us out of my dads house. She said we were no longer welcome to come back. We nearly ended it all right then. I ended up fleeing across the country in 5 different airports, and blowing all of the savings i worked so hard for..just to survive, and save the life of my cat.

I ended up not being able to stay with my partner, for family reasons. I ended up in a shelter in a city over an hour away from them. When i told An old friend, they immediately paid for a flight to go stay with their parents.

With my old home in arizona, i was abused, horribly, mentally and emotionally for six years. We tried to commit several times and could barely function. The lgbt phobia, deadnaming, and the wrong pronouns every day for years was slowly killing us. The screaming, and degrading from my stepmother. The nasty names. Tearing me down and making me feel like shit everytime i tried to be better. Refusing to take me to the doctor when i desperately needed help. Threatning to hurt me and drag me out of the room by our hair if we didnt wash the dishes fast enough. Kicking boxes at me and screaming at me when i was trying to clean the house..

My job was my only family and safe haven away from home. I was a fantastic manager with a bright future in the company And i.no.. now..i no longer have that.

I am thousands of miles away from the city that is my home. The only job and work family i have. The franchise where i am now..was horrible and abusive. I..i now have no money of my own. And no way to make it. Ive looked for a job for months now. Nobody wants me. Im legally homeless with no source of income. My birth certificate, legal and medical paperwork, and my cats paperwork was all stolen with my 1k ipad.

We have lost everything. Every single comfort. We can no longer afford to pay for spotify, music and the sleeping meditations help us cope with reality and fall asleep. We struggle with a horrible eating disorder, and can no longer afford tasty, or easy to eat foods, or healthy foods that we can actually eat. Our phone is starting to die, barely being able to charge; and no memory space. We have no way to play genshin anymore, one of our biggest comforts. Flightrising shut down all of our accounts thinking we were one user sharing between multiple accounts. It had become a huge crutch and comfort for us. Weve tried playing genshin on our phones but our tb memory drive was stolen too.

Every single coping mechanism and comfort weve had has been stolen from us. Gone. We cant..we cant even feed ourselves properly anymore. We cant buy our own medication or hormones. We cant even afford therapy or help. We cant even get foodstamps or assistance because we dont have enough forms of id, and you have to be a resident and have proof of residency in our current state to get help.. we also just found out, our sweet old baby, our little angel, has died. She was put down, with no warning to us. We just..we keep losing everything. Our lives have been sucked down into a giant void of loss, depression, and hopelessness.

We cant get a new phone without money. Our phone is the only thing we have left and if it breaks i..i dont know..what id do. Weve worked out a deal with tmobile but its several hundred dollars.

We cant buy our meds, food, or anything related to our comfort and coping methods. We keep getting hit with more and more loss. We have no hope left. We have no more options... we are wasting away in a house that is not our home. We are seperated from our cats. I am seriously worried about my system. Weve gotten so hopeless and depressed that im terrified alters are going to start dying by su**ide. Several already have. Multiples have gone dormant.

We are desperately trying to find a place to live in phoenix, our true home. But we have nowhere to go. We cant find any transitional housing programs or lgbt centers that have open spots. Or that we qualify for. I dont know what to do anymore. At this point we need hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to fix our life. I dont know what else to try anymore...

-percy/jasper/acheron-

Cashapp; $TheRealDragonPrince

Leuciris fimbriaria