grouchy and an idiot

It is now Halloween

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.

Trump will say something like "You know the Hispanics actually punch kittens, it's what they do."

And the news will be like "TRUMP SAID HISPANIC PEOPLE PUNCH KITTENS" for three weeks.

And while they're doing that the Republicans in Congress have quietly deleted healthcare.

And this gets another wrinkle in it when you take into account indie artists using third party manufacturers to, get this, order shit in bulk for cheap using their design without doing the work of Making it. Like redbubble shirts and youtuber plushies and shit. Yknow ...

Don't forget: even if something can be made with machinery -- and not everything can be (i.e. crochet) -- someone is still operating it. Fiber arts especially are more, like... someone using a sewing machine, than a robot just doing that on its own. This is why the term "handmade" can be tricky; a lot of mass produced things are made by hand, just someone else's anonymously for a few cents an hour

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

Later, when I was in college and/or in the real world and I didn't know a word or couldn't remember or didn't have the words for a concept, I would I automatically do what I always did, what had become normalised: I would talk around it, which is what my teacher always called it. I even had one of my professors compliment me on getting what I needed that way, and she said that she'd never had another student do that and how helpful it was for her to be able to help me. I know that when I encountered others in my job with whom I had to speak in Spanish, and I couldn't communicate with them in the "proper" way, I could still get what I needed, or they needed, and there was always a sense of delight that even though my grammar was far from perfect, and I didn't always use the right words, that we all accomplished what we were there for. Most people don't care if you get it "right." They just want to be able to communicate effectively. (Can't speak for the French, though. 😉)

You don't have to be perfect to perform.

The thing here isn't so much the youth, it's that the person had the bravery to not only pick up a new thing, but to show people their current skills on the new thing they picked up!

Little girl was part of a county fair agro-educational program where they raise an animal for a few months and at the end it’s slaughtered. Supposed to teach them about the economics of farming and stuff.

But the little girl loved her goat so much she was crying on the day her goat was supposed to be taken away, so her mom sent the county fair people an email saying “I’ll pay for the goat and any expenses. We’ve had several deaths in the family in the past year, I don’t wanna take away one more thing my little girl loves.” Technically the goat had already been sold at auction, so the mom was on the hook for about $1000, only about $70 of which would have been profit for the county fair.

The county fair people were irate and got law enforcement involved, over this “breach of contract”. They literally got a fucking judge to sign a search warrant, authorizing them to go to this little girl’s house and search every room and every cabinet or box “large enough to contain a small goat”. The sheriff’s deputies seized the goat, and whoever they gave it to immediately slaughtered it, though they were supposed to wait until some kind of agreement had been worked out.

They broke multiple laws in order to “teach” a little girl the “lesson” that “everybody has to follow the rules”.

My dudes, I cannot emphasize enough that the little girl's emotional attachment to the goat is in fact the least of the issues with this story. The main issue in this story is the fact that a bunch of cops broke multiple laws, including the unlawful entry to the property the goat was being held, the unlawful seizure and destruction of said goat, and the unlawful use of a criminal search warrant in a civil dispute case, just to start with.

The little girl owned the goat. At no point in the proceedings - and indeed at no point in the proceedings in the course of the normal auction-purchase-slaughter of a livestock animal in this program - did the fair own the goat. At no point in the proceedings did the person who successfully bid on the goat actually own it - he had made the winning bid to purchase rights to the meat. He hadn't even done that yet! The goat legally and incontrovertibly belonged to the little girl. The very worst that should have happened in this story is a brief property ownership dispute in a civil court.

The fair CEO decided to unlawfully force the auction of the goat, and, when the girl's mother began to dispute her actions, to make a false claim of theft, with precisely ZERO legal basis, calling the cops on an already emotionally fragile child, and then had the temerity to be angry with the child's mother because the story was making them look bad on social media.

GIRL WINS $300,000

Canvassers for Elon Musk‘s America PAC say that they were flown to Michigan and told they had to meet unattainable quotas or risk paying for their own accommodations and travel home. Then they were unceremoniously fired after some of them spoke to the press.

The workers — many of whom are Black — told Wired that Blitz Canvassing, a subcontractor for Musk’s PAC, had them sign non-disclosure agreements and transported them to Michigan neighborhoods in the back of a U-Haul without seats or seatbelts. After Wired ran an initial story about their working conditions, the magazine reported that the subcontractor fired more than a dozen canvassers, leaving some without full compensation or transportation home.

One door-knocker told the magazine they did not know what they were signing up for. “I knew nothing of the job, or much of the job description, other than going door to door and asking the voters who are they voting for,” the unidentified worker said. “Then, after I signed over an NDA, is when I found out we are for Republicans and with Trump.”

they planted berries, root vegetables, leafy greens, herbs, all sorts. they label each plant and the sign said "free to take, leave some for others to enjoy!"

and people did. they took a bit, but left some for others.

it also fed the homeless people living around there.

bearing in mind this is a tourist town, so i half expected to see the plants gone. but nope, there's always some left.

I was talking to someone about planting food and fruit trees in public spaces and they were like “Why so everyone can steal the food?”