Some people threw white paint on it a few years back.
They want to be a victim so bad.
Fun Fact: That’s a statue of the fist which Joe Louis used to knock out Max Schmeling, Hitler’s favored heavyweight boxer in 1938. Schmeling won the 1st bout by knockout in round twelve, but Joe Louis came back in the follow-up match and laid him the fuck out in the 1st round.
Fun Fact: Schmeling was hated by the Nazis for losing to a black man and for having a Jewish manager, and he hated them right back, stating in 1975 that he was glad he’d lost the fight because the thought of the Nazis using him for propaganda purposes sickened him. He also personally saved the lives of two Jewish children and later became lifelong friends with Joe Louis.
So maybe don’t refer to him as “Hitler’s favored heavyweight boxer”…
Thank you for this additional info!
Reblogging this for the added facts and so people know that Schmeling wasn’t a Nazi or Nazi collaborator and was in fact a good man
Imagine hating Nazis so much that when you get beaten up your response is “Good, now they can’t use me as a role model.”
i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”
no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.
you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.
people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.
the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.
the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.
when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.
and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.
a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.
people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true – half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.
as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?
Because I have gotten a lot of anti-rural life jokes thrown at me. Most people don’t know I’m from a rural area, because I currently live in a big ass concrete city, so like… The concept of rural is super obscure. I told someone where I live, and they thought I meant some place with some farms, so they were like “ugh, rednecks, that must be awful.” Fuck off, because I come from a place with real farms & rural land, and just cause you think we work at a super progressive place, and because you think “rural” folks are all Trump-humpin’ far religious right, LGBT-hatin’, POC hatin’ folks, that’s your problem.
So the place I grew up in? Yes, it tends to vote Republican, but in the current primary? There are folks runnin’ for Republican that very specifically want to support things what we need: there’s a major development that the city side of the state wants to produce, which means it would royally fuck over the rural side–it would destroy environmental reserves, especially, which is what we all survive off of in the rural areas. The Democratic side is literally the “bad” guy in the race. Destroying the natural resources of the area would be terrible for everyone–if you only care about POC, yes, it would screw them over too. Because we all live off the land.
A lot of the redneck types require the land, because remember: it’s cheaper to buy a box of bullets than it is to buy meat for the year. That’s how most folks I know who are poor survive… And this is why I struggle in the city. I’m used to thinking “If I need to, I could always trust the forest & river.” If I need food, it’s there. It’s in the land; I can plant it, or I can hunt, fish, and forage. If I need something, I could… Make it. Because materials… They exist. Somewhere, out there. But the city? I have to fucking buy berries? So I don’t eat them too much. I need wood? I have to fucking buy it, what the hell??? I need leather? I have to buy it; I can’t just ask a friend to barter for it (or maybe pay ‘em, but the leather out here is more pricey). Especially as an artist, this astounds & disgusts me in some way. You can barter, too. I helped out a friend on their family cow farm; they gave me meat & a skull. You can weave and whittle. There’s a sort of backup.
But the city is harsh and expensive. We can’t maintain a garden here. I can’t trust the land to provide. Even suburbia suffers that. So the poorer you are, the less you can live in a city. And its not like it’s all happy & fun in the rural areas. Poverty is shit. But to me, I feel a little safer. Sometimes you barter… (At least its pretty; the city isn’t very peaceful or beautiful.)
And yea??? There are queer folks in rural areas. And a lot of the ones I know find it horrifying, the idea of leaving. I went back early this year & chatted to one woman I know, who is a lesbian, and she was… Sort of disgusted at the idea of leaving and of the hatred that city folk have of rural areas, especially through an LGBT lens. There’s a major communicative disconnect, because what works for LGBT rights in the city doesn’t work for the rural areas, and this ends up drowning out the rural folks’ voices. Which is especially dangerous, because they may not be great support for the issues of rural LGBT folks. This stereotyping or hate of rednecks/hillbillies/rurality is damaging the people ya’ll claim to say you’re trying to help.
You know what really pisses me off about that “it’s all in how you raise them” mindset though? It makes good owners feel like fucking shit.
I’ve owned Diego since he was four months. I did everything with him, socialized the hell out of him, he loved other dogs when he was young. We went to training classes, etc.
And then one day when he was about eight months old he jumped a dog. He no longer tolerated strange dogs.
And I felt like fucking hell. I believed that “it’s all how you raise them” shit. Here I am doing my best with this dog, and he turns out like this! I seriously considered rehoming him.
It took a lot for me to get out of that stupid mindset. I took him to behaviorists and trainers who all pretty much said the same thing – that’s his personality.
I don’t know where I’m going with this post. It just ticks me off.
This was my biggest downfall with Daedra. Daedra was aggressive from day one. He was a shit. I remember before he turned 2, I called up a local trainer, and I was pretty straightforward: “He tries to kill other dogs. Can we still be in a class?” She let us, and guess what. It was hard. People gave me looks. My aggressive dog wanted to take out dogs twice his size. We were given lots of space.
We went to class, it didn’t get better. I got help from other trainers. I did a lot of punishment based shit with him. I did stuff that hurt me – my dog lost trust in me, still wanted to kill other dogs. I didn’t know what to do, because clearly, somehow, I was fucking up because it is “how you raise them” and border collies are SO well known for being “dog friendly.” Clearly, the issue was me.
I stopped doing anything public with him. He was a time bomb, he had bitten me once when he was like.. four? I should have gotten stitches – I was SO certain he was going to be taken from me and put down, I didn’t go. Still have scars now. I couldn’t trust him, he didn’t trust me, so I stopped everything with him. My sport dog became just a pet, I turned to Vivec, and it stayed like that for a few years.
When he turned 6, I found out a trainer I had been following on Livejournal lived in the same town I had moved to. I went to her, one on ones, for two fucking years. Daedra got a bit better. I got better. I mentored under her. Still some aversives, but nothing harsh. I went to another trainer. We trained for agility. We competed.
He still wanted to kill other dogs. He just loved me more and I was hell of a lot more likely to be careful with him. I got to where I’d defend him, block off dogs, tell people to back off with their “friendly dogs.” My dog isn’t. Mine will try to kill your dog. Give us space.
And in the end, you know what I learned? It’s genetic. I talked to someone else that had a sibling of his and she had aggression issues as well – not to Dae’s extent, but her dog did. She knows someone else with a sibling.. same thing. While Dae is definitely an aggressive dog, there’s more going on with him than “just” aggression. It’s clear something is wrong in his head, but still – it isn’t “how he was raised,” it’s the fact I obtained a dog that just happened to be a lot on the aggressive side of the scale. It isn’t something I’d do again, as now in his old age, Daedra is a LOT to handle, but it just goes to prove sometimes dogs are aggressive and that’s okay.
I still can never understand how people can believe dogs can be bred to have herding instinct (which is modified prey drive) or be from hunting lines but not believe they can be bred to be aggressive.
I always think of this the other way around with Mango.
She’s a rottweiler, so a breed prone to being aggressive. And she was neglected as a pup, when I got her she was skinny, half bald with mange and jumpy if you moved to fast around her head. And she was the wriggliest, friendlisest pup you could ever imagine (if a little shy, which she still is). If it were all in how you raise them, she’d be a mess.
She’s been home about 3 days in this picture:
All she wants to do is play. She wasn’t raised well, I can’t take any credit for her there, it’s just her.
This.
*pulls out a large scattered pile of handwritten notes stuffed into various textbooks and notepads*
LET’S HAVE A TALK ABOUT SOME MOTHERFUCKING REACTION RANGES, KIDS.
A reaction range (or range of reaction) is the intersection of nature and nurture in terms of traits which are variable, complex, and (in some way) quantitative. Things like wariness and intellect are not ‘quantitative’ in the same way that jelly beans in a jar are but they are called so in this instance with the understanding that ‘qualitative’ means things like, spotted or drop earred. With quality you either are or your aren’t. With quantity there is a possibility to be more or less of a trait. (Please hold comments on how dogs can be more spotted or less spotted, etc… This is how these things are defined in this setting, just bear with me)
So, with this in mind, friendliness, or it’s converse, aggression, are both defined as quantitative traits. You can be more friendly or less friendly, more aggressive or less aggressive. It is a spectrum. In a simplified imagining of this you have one side which is an imaginary dog who never knew a stranger, absolutely loves everyone and everything and would never snap or growl under any circumstances, on the other sides is another, equally imaginary dog who is aggressive towards everything and everyone, knows no ally and never has accepted a kind hand in its life.
These are extremes. In the grey area in the middle lies every dog you have likely ever met in your whole life and every dog you are likely to meet ever. These are also specific. The spectrum for dog-agression is not the same as human-agression, not the same as prey-drive, and in real life is often separated between sexes and sizes and personalities of other dogs. (ie; same-sex-dog-aggression, larger-dog-aggression)
This is where the nature comes in. Each dog (and creature) is born with a set range of possible outcomes for these quantifiable traits, in this case dog-friendliness (we will ignore the narrower categories for now and try to put them in this simpler umbrella). If we set this spectra on a scale of 1-150, higher numbers being friendlier dogs, then a sample dog, must fall on this number scale.
So, we have a litter of puppies and pick one at random, we name him Tom. Tom is a Shepherd mix who we know, though our all-powerful hypothetical powers) is born with a reaction range from about 80-111. As he matures Tom can land anywhere on this spectrum of friendliness from 80-111.
This is where nurture comes in. If we clone Tom twice and give Tom1 to a deprived home with no training and almost no socialization and that will abuse him, Tom2 to an average home that is well-meaning and offers some training and socialization and treats him pretty well otherwise, and then we give Tom3 to an enriched home, a dog expert who trains him well, socializes him from the first day, and loves on him as often is appropriate, each Tom will grow up to fall on different parts of the reaction range. Tom1 ends up on the lower end of the spectrum, around 83, Tom2 is mid-range, around 92, and Tom3 is on the high end of the spectrum, around 108. The more enriched environments give the best possible outcomes.
Now we introduce another dog, Miguel, a hearty little Lab mix who was recently rescued from an abusive home. We know that Miguel has a friendliness range from 97-125, higher than Tom. So, we compare him to the three Toms. (pretend this is friendliness not IQ)
Miguel is more friendly than the equally deprived Tom, and just as friendly as the average Tom, despite having a poorer quality of life. If given to a home which is patient with him, Miguel may have a chance of rising higher on his scale and, one day, may be even friendlier than the enriched Tom.
But, you may ask, can Tom ever be as friendly as an enriched Miguel that is at the tom of his reaction range? No. The absolute answer is no. Each dog is born with their own innate range, woven into their very core by the wonders of genetics. You can make a dog as high on it’s range as it can go- but it can never go higher. Tom will never be able to be as friendly as Miguel, but the Tom raised in the enriched home will be much friendlier than the Miguel who was raised by the deprived home and received no help, too little help, or help too late.
How does this influence how we look at our own dogs?
The reaction range warns us to all heed the over-arching themes within each breed type– they exist for a reason. Chows were bred to guard and will be more wary of strangers, Hounds were bred to track and will follow their noses, and fighting breeds were bred to be dog aggressive and will be more likely to not get along well with others. You may have the most dog friendly, well bred and trained Cane Corso in the world, but realize that it will never be as friendly and amiable as most any decently bred Golden raised to it’s full potential, and getting it there will involve your hard work and diligence.
But it sets that breed is not always destiny. The lines a dog comes from are important too and there are poorly bred Lab can be born with a lower than expected reaction range & visa versa. Other times neurological issues, hormone imbalances, or psychopathology, along with other possible issues do play a role.
It also encourages us to train the dog that we have- not the dog we wish we had. If you have an aggressive and reactive dog but wish to play flyball… you are going to have to think realistically. If you can’t even walk on the opposite side of the street as another dog without having to pull all the stops to keep your dog under the control of it’s training (leave it!! watch me! watch me! good boy! sit. good boy! watch me!) and keep it from snarling and lunging- then congrats, you have taken your reactive dog and made the best of it’s genetics by bringing it to the top of it’s reaction range. BUT you would be making a mistake to try and get this dog to do more than it can, or at least to try after getting strong feedback that it would be unfruitful to try again.
It does not make you a failure of a owner or trainer that your dog can not do the things that the dogs of others can. Read that again.
It does not make you a failure of a owner or trainer that your dog can not do the things that the dogs of others can. If anything it makes you a wonderful owner and trainer to recognize what your dog is capable of and strive to bring it to the best of it’s ability without pushing it to an impossible goal.
So, do your research when choosing a breed, talk to the shelter or breeder extensively, gauge what your dog is capable of, and accept the roof of possibility when you hit it. Every dog is unique. Your dog is your dog and no one else’s- all you are expected to do is make it the best dog it can be with the genetic code it was born with.
Your dog is special, remember that. *closes notes*
Ferguson is not the only town in America where this will hold true. Let people dig a little deeper across the USA, and you’ll find more towns doing the exact same thing.
In the city of Ferguson, nearly everyone is a wanted criminal.
That may seem like hyperbole, but it is a literal fact. In Ferguson — a city with a population of 21,000 — 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police.
That statistic should be truly shocking. Yet in the wake of the Department of Justice’s withering report
on the city’s policing practices, it has gone almost entirely
unmentioned. News reports and analysis have focused on the racism discovered in departmental emails, and the gangsterish financial “shakedown” methods
deployed against African Americans. In doing so, they have missed the
full picture of Ferguson’s operation, which reveals a totalizing police
regime beyond any of Kafka’s ghastliest nightmares.
The Department of Justice’s 102-page report is a rich source of
damning facts about the Ferguson criminal justice system. But tucked
halfway in and passed over quickly is a truly revelatory set of figures:
the arrest warrant data for the Ferguson Municipal Court.
It turns out that nearly everyone in the city is wanted for
something. Even internal police department communications found the
number of arrest warrants to be “staggering”. By December of 2014, “over
16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued by
the court.” The report makes clear that this refers to individual
people, rather than cases, so people with many cases are not being
counted multiple times. (Though clearly some of these cannot be Ferguson
residents, since the number represents more than the entire adult
population and Ferguson policing applies to visitors as well.) However,
if we do look at the number of cases, the portrait is even starker. In
2013, 32,975 offenses had associated warrants, so that there were 1.5 offenses for every city resident.
That means that the city of Ferguson quite literally has more crimes than people.
To give some context as to how truly extreme this is, a comparison
may be useful. In 2014, the Boston Municipal Court System, for a city of
645,000 people, issued about 2,300 criminal warrants. The Ferguson Municipal Court issued 9,000, for a population 1/30th the size of Boston’s.
This complete penetration of policing into everyday life establishes a
world of unceasing terror and violence. When everyone is a criminal by
default, police are handed an extraordinary amount of discretionary
power. “Discretion” may sound like an innocuous or even positive policy,
but its effect is to make every single person’s freedom dependent on
the mercy of individual officers. There are no more laws, there are only
police. The “rule of law,” by which people are supposed to be treated
equally according to a consistent set of principles, becomes the “rule
of personal whim.”
And this is precisely what occurs in Ferguson. As others have noted,
the Ferguson courts appear to work as an orchestrated racket to extract
money from the poor. The thousands upon thousands of warrants that are
issued, according to the DOJ, are “not to protect public safety but
rather to facilitate fine collection.” Residents are routinely charged
with minor administrative infractions. Most of the arrest warrants stem
from traffic violations, but nearly every conceivable human behavior is
criminalized. An offense can be found anywhere, including citations for
“Manner of Walking in Roadway,” “High Grass and Weeds,” and 14 kinds of
parking violation. The dystopian absurdity reaches its apotheosis in the
deliciously Orwellian transgression “failure to obey.” (Obey what?
Simply to obey.) In fact, even if one does obey to the letter, solutions
can be found. After Henry Davis was brutally beaten by four Ferguson officers, he found himself charged with “destruction of official property” for bleeding on their uniforms.
None of this is even to mention the blinding levels of racism, which
remain the central fact of police interactions in Ferguson and
nationwide. The overwhelming force of this violent and exploitative
policing system is directed at the African American population. In 2013, 92 percent of Ferguson’s arrest warrants were issued against African Americans, and black Fergusonians were 68 percent less likely
than others to have their court cases dismissed. The racism is so
blatant and comprehensive that the DOJ concluded that “Ferguson law
enforcement practices are directly shaped and perpetuated by racial
bias.” Considering the qualified and colorless language typically
deployed in government documents, this is an astonishingly forceful
statement.
Ferguson’s racism has been central to the media coverage of the
release of the DOJ report. But in a certain way, by focusing entirely on
disparate racial impacts without examining the sheer scale of the
brutal state juggernaut, one misses crucial facts. MSNBC listed as the
DOJ’s number one
“most shocking” finding the fact that “at least one municipal employee
thought electing a black president was laughable.” But the existence of
racist views in the department is not the most shocking fact, not by a
country mile. Rather, endemic racism in policing comes standard.
However, that racism occurs in the wider context of an ever-enlarging
interlocking system of administrative bureaucracy and police violence.
The other pitfall in analyzing the Ferguson report is to see it as
being about Ferguson. There are 19,492 municipal governments in America,
and the chances that Ferguson happens to be the worst are extremely
slim. In fact, there is strong evidence that in the world of better funded, more militarized, more technologically advanced
police departments, Ferguson is simply a high-profile case study. While
the Ferguson nightmare may dwarf the problems in cities like Boston,
American policing is so out-of-control that Ferguson-style practices can
occur on at least some level in almost every department.
It’s hard to believe, but the Ferguson police department’s massive
deliberate racism only represents one of its problems. The DOJ report
shows not just a racist criminal justice system, but one in which the
very act of being alive has been made a crime, and in which nearly
everybody is wanted by the law at every moment of every day.
CORRECTION: This post has been updated after
publication to clarify that all outstanding warrants in Ferguson may not
apply to Ferguson residents.
They also have a blog…. with generic parenting-related topics
most of these articles are posted multiple times with different titles
These posts seem suspiciously too competent for the usual phrasing on this website, and are from the pespective of parents. careful googling reveals that they’re actually from a mommy blog, here , whose content was just wholesale stolen.
…..okay
on another note, they have a character page with… this guy
…… i hate it
anyways, at the bottom of the page, there’s a link to the hosting company they use.
They’re a 3d animation company in India pretending to be a media/web hosting company for a youtube channel based in the UAE? ?? what is happening??? also btw they’re hiring!
This website also has a privacy policy page
An note.
The website also has the same layout as the first website… but with a buuunch of broken links.
….except for these, which all link to the main website instead of their profile. okay
In conclusion: What the fuck ?
So, I’ve been dealing with these videos for years now at work, and the simple answer is that they’re ad revenue generators.
Make enough of them that are similar enough and pass kid-safe standards (which they all do because they’re brightly colored and nonviolent, two of the major standards), and you can get the YouTube autoplay algorithm to put your videos on basically infinitely, until someone actually changes the channel. The next recommended video, based on content and audience similarity, will just be another one of your “lullaby educational kids song 3 hours” monstrosities, indefinitely.
A kid, babysitter, or exhausted parent clicks on one of them. It plays. Ads appear every 7 minutes (the maximum amount before additional screening for spam kicks in). The kid wanders off without turning off the console or computer, just the screen. Now you get ad revenue every 7 minutes until that machine turns off or gets used again, probably overnight or maybe even a full day, because every next autoplay is another of your videos. And every video that plays further locks in the autoplay.
Channels set up these nested shell companies so their channel can become verified as an official business channel, which automatically reduces the amount of screening you undergo, too.
They tend to be based in India because there’s a sufficiently skilled talent base and resource base to produce the hundreds of hours of just distinct enough visuals. In many cases, titles are generated algorithmically based on what pulled the most revenue the week before and to search terms for the last few days. Videos are then created to match the algorithmic titles, hence the bizarre combinations of topics.
This helps get these videos to the top of search results for popular kids searches, increasing the chance that the infinite recommendation loop gets started by the largest possible number of people.
I admit, if you haven’t been wading through this shitshow professionally for a few years, it probably looks pretty creepy.
But it’s not a cult or a conspiracy.
It’s just capitalism.
Capitalism is really a huge, creepy, cultish conspiracy, though. The instinct to say what the fuck is right on the…money.
Sometimes it helps me to know that people are still going out into the world and doing neat things. Having fun. Enjoying the company of loved ones.
So I have a small request. Which might be a little sappy.
If something cool happened in your life recently maybe you can tell me about it.
A funny moment. A great achievement. A neat photo you took. A work of art you completed. A joyous occasion. A goofy pet doing a goofy thing. A humorous joke in a show you like.
It can be a big life-changing event or just a tiny moment that made you smile.
If you are willing and have the time and energy, I’d love to hear about it.
And maybe if there are folks out there who are having a hard time, it might help them to live vicariously too.
So I’m on vacation in Alberta with a friend, who’s only been to Alberta once before. It’s sort of a trade-off: she took me to her hometown last summer and showed me all the great things about Michigan, and now we’re touring southern Alberta so I can do the same.
For years and years and years, I really hated this place. I jettisoned myself out of the province when I turned 18 and went as far away as I could, but that was over ten years ago. And I was nervous, really, really nervous, because some of my trips back to visit family or see friends in the past haven’t gone great.
But it’s actually been amazing, and I am falling in love with Alberta all over again.
We didn’t plan this, but we ended up visiting Calgary on the day of their Pride Parade. Part of the reason I left Alberta was because it didn’t seem like there was anyone queer here. None that I had access to, anyway, but my family kept me behind a pretty tight door in a very deep closet. And I found myself in Calgary on Sunday morning, riding the train, sitting across from an entire car full of people decked out in rainbows, in trans flags, wearing ace and aro colours, laughing and joking about the parade and the floats and how happy they all were. Things I could never have done. Things I know a lot of people here probably still can’t, too, but still: I thought I’d die before I ever saw that here. I moved across Canada to get out because it seemed like the thing people like me had to do. The people on the train were teenagers, mostly, people the age I was when I realized I had to go, and I almost started crying right there.
For the first time in a long time I felt like I might able to come home. It’s like I am falling in love with this place all over again, and letting myself miss it and love it in a way I felt like I could never let myself do before.
The parade was amazing, too, and there were very good pride doggos:
There was also a very early panda breakfast at the zoo, where you go and get stuffed on buffet food and then get to hang out with the pandas before the zoo opens. The pandas are also stuffing themselves in the meantime. We learned a lot about panda poop, since most of what they do is eat and poop and sleep, and poop in their sleep.
Nom.
Also, finally, there was the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum, which… I think merits its own post in a follow-up. (Edit: here it is.)
I had so many amazing stories added to this vicarious living post.
Some were replies. Some were reblogs. Some were messages. I wish I could share them all because I found myself smiling as I read them yesterday. And, yes, I read ALL of them. I encourage everyone to look through the notes and read a few as well.
I’m sorry that I can’t respond to each of you. But I do want to say thank you for participating. It meant a lot to me.
I am reblogging scowlowl’s post above because I thought maybe it could help and inspire others going through similar experiences. Sometimes being able to relate and knowing you aren’t alone can be a huge benefit. Plus, it’s just a lovely story with cute pride doggos.
Perhaps I’ll do this once a month as a way of checking in on all of you lovely folks. So be mindful of your happy things.
Also, when pandas are not eating sleeping pooping sleeping pooping eating… they are climbing on things they shouldn’t and then falling off said things.
Thankfully they are great fallers and just try to pretend it never happened.
it’s hilarious to me when people call historical fashions that men hated oppressive
like in BuzzFeed’s Women Wear Hoop Skirts For A Day While Being Exaggeratedly Bad At Doing Everything In Them video, one woman comments that she’s being “oppressed by the patriarchy.” if you’ve read anything Victorian man ever said about hoop skirts, you know that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the truth
thing is, hoop skirts evolved as liberating garment for women. before them, to achieve roughly conical skirt fullness, they had to wear many layers of petticoats (some stiffened with horsehair braid or other kinds of cord). the cage crinoline made their outfits instantly lighter and easier to move in
it also enabled skirts to get waaaaay bigger. and, as you see in the late 1860s, 1870s, and mid-late 1880s, to take on even less natural shapes. we jokingly call bustles fake butts, but trust me- nobody saw them that way. it was just skirts doing weird, exciting Skirt Things that women had tons of fun with
men, obviously, loathed the whole affair
(1864)
(1850s. gods, if only crinolines were huge enough to keep men from getting too close)
(no date given, but also, this is 100% impossible)
(also undated, but the ruffles make me think 1850s)
it was also something that women of all social classes- maids and society ladies, enslaved women and free women of color -all wore at one point or another. interesting bit of unexpected equalization there
and when bustles came in, guess what? men hated those, too
(1880s)
(probably also 1880s? the ladies are being compared to beetles and snails. in case that was unclear)
(1870s, I think? the bustle itself looks early 1870s but the tight fit of the actual gown looks later)
hoops and bustles weren’t tools of the patriarchy. they were items 1 and 2 on the 19th century’s “Fashion Trends Women Love That Men Hate” lists, with bonus built-in personal space enforcement
Gonna add something as someone who’s worn a lot of period stuff for theatre:
The reason you suck at doing things in a hoop skirt is because you’re not used to doing things in a hoop skirt.
The first time I got in a Colonial-aristocracy dress I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The construction didn’t actually allow me to raise my arms all the way over my head (yes, that’s period-accurate). We had one dresser to every two women, because the only things we could put on ourselves were our tights, shifts, and first crinoline. Someone else had to lace our corsets, slip on our extra crinolines, hold our arms to balance us while a second person actually put the dresses on us like we were dolls, and do up our shoes–which we could not put on ourselves because we needed to be able to balance when the dress went on. My entire costume was almost 40 pounds (I should mention here that many of the dresses were made entirely of upholstery fabric), and I actually did not have the biggest dress in the show.
We wore our costumes for two weeks of rehearsal, which is quite a lot in university theatre. The first night we were all in dress, most of the ladies went propless because we were holding up our skirts to try and get a feel for both balance and where our feet were in comparison to where it looked like they should be. I actually fell off the stage.
By opening night? We were square-dancing in the damn things. We had one scene where our leading man needed to whistle, but he didn’t know how and I was the only one in the cast loud enough to be heard whistling from under the stage, so I was also commando-crawling underneath him at full speed trying to match his stage position–while still in the dress. And petticoats. And corset. Someone took my shoes off for that scene so I could use my toes to propel myself and I laid on a sheet so I wouldn’t get the dress dirty, but that was it–I was going full Solid Snake in a space about 18″ high, wearing a dress that covered me from collarbones to floor and weighed as much as a five-year-old child. And it worked beautifully.
These women knew how to wear these clothes. It’s a lot less “restrictive” when it’s old hat.
I have worn hoop skirts a lot, especially in summer. I still wear hoop skirts if I’m going to be at an event where I will probably be under stage lights. (For example, Vampire Ball.)
I can ride public transportation while wearing them. I can take a taxi while wearing them. I can go on rides at Disneyland while wearing them. Because I’ve practiced wearing them and twisting the rigid-but-flexible skirt bones so I can sit on them and not buffet other people with my skirts.
Hoop skirts are awesome.
Hoop skirts are a fucking godsend in summer. Nothing’s touching your legs. It’s like wearing a big box underneath whic you’re naked, temperature wise.
Did this with a bustle rather than a hoop skirt, but was quite comfortable running around in said bustle, shirt, full corset, gloves, and overskirt in 117 degrees for a con. It was far more comfortable than the more modern dress i wore the next day.
Writer Note: this is fascinating research information not restricted to just the Victorian era under discussion. Though it’s stating the obvious, the obvious often needs to be stated: when seemingly-awkward garments like crinolines and hoop-skirts (or ruffs, or houppelandes, or etc.) were everyday wear, the wearers knew how to move in them because of practice.
For instance, how not to clear a table with a gesture while wearing sleeves like these…
Fashionable footwear has been weird for centuries.
Think of chopines, pattens, poulaines,
non-fetishy-y high heels, or platform boots worn with bell-bottom jeans so long and wide
that without the platforms
they trailed along the ground. The 1970s is called “the decade that style forgot” for good reason.
Elton John’s stage platforms aren’t as exaggerated as you think…
And then there are the doeskin breeches claimed in some fiction as fitting so tightly the
inside had to be soaped to get them on, going commando was compulsory, and the wearer couldn’t sit
down.
You’d certainly believe it from portraits like this one, “Hunter in a Landscape with his Dogs”, said to be General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas the novelist, with legs apparently clad in just a thick coat of paint. (X-skin breeches would seem more suitable for hunting, but these may represent cotton “inexpressibles” which really did fit like that.)
Like the supposed problems with crinolines etc., not true. Research and reconstruction has shown that doe / buck / sheepskin
breeches have natural stretch and recovery; a common comparison is to
old, well-worn jeans. Of course the artist also wanted to show that his subject “had a good leg” (look up “artificial calves” and be amused) and wasn’t letting realism get in the way of doing so.
This is a bit more like it.
Nowadays “deportment” seems to have an aura of outdated snobbishness – upper-class debutantes learning to curtsey, or walk with books balanced on their heads – but ”porte” in French means “carry”
and the old meaning of deportment was “how to carry yourself”; how to move properly, without inconveniencing yourself or others.
Various historical-costume books point out that “moving properly” in some periods – memory suggests the court of Louis XIV at Versailles was one – meant a sequence of artificial, prescribed gestures, partly enforced by the clothing and partly by court protocol. IIRC one description was of “movements as precisely delineated as the steps of a formal dance”, and getting them wrong resulted in social mockery.
Elizabethan men were taught, as part of their deportment, how to move while wearing the long rapiers of the period; that hand-on-hilt stance in portraits isn’t drama, it’s control.
Once familiar with the length of the sword, they know exactly what shifting the hilt one way or another will do to the rest of it – and the people, furniture and crockery behind them – without needing to look. IIRC the technique is still taught to actors today.
Crinolines, bustles, bloomers, breeches, inexpressibles and all the rest were clothing; after reading about peculiar but oh-so-stylish ways of standing and moving like the “Grecian bend” and “Alexandra limp”, the Kink’s satirical 1960s hit “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” isn’t just a song any more…
:->
Even better than the version I posted before.
I would note that I have a RenFaire style corset and I have run significant distances, sword fought, and danced in various styles without any discomfort. The only thing I can’t do is bend over. It actually forces you to pick things off the ground safely. It’s not wasp waist tight, partly because I have abs and don’t compress like that (which might be part of the wasp waist thing. Being able to do that said you didn’t have abs…and thus didn’t work for a living, which has often been a thing with women’s fashion).
This is all really interesting and new to me! And I have thought of deportment as a snobbish thing all my life, but now I’m wondering if early lessons in it would have been a good thing for clumsy and oblivious folks like me.
Somebody should…I wonder if I can convince some cosplayers to do a panel about this. Both for authenticity and because some of them need to learn what happens to their sword when they turn around quickly…
This is Arwen, she’s a Husky/Kelpie mix and a little Asshole:
“I wonder if she can jump?” my dad asks the first five minutes we have her. She perks up at the word, and clears a six-foot fence form sitting on the ground. “Oh.” Says dad. “Shit.”
Later that night she got up on the counter and ate three pounds of corned beef in roughtly 68 seconds but this was considered part of the learning curve of having a new dog.
I wake up at 4 AM to the sound of the toilet being flushed repeatedly in the hall bathroom, and assume plumbing is now posessed by angry and wasteful ghosts. I get up to disconnet it and find her in the Bathroom, standing to flush the bowl, then shoving her head in to drink the running water. I’m not totally awake, so I stand there like an idiot trying to understand this, and my sister gets up to see what the noise is, sees the same thing and also stands there. Fiance notices my absence and does the same. Mom eventually wakes up and finds us standing around like very confused zombies and almost joins the parade of baffled zombies before shreiking “THE WATER BILL!” We got her a circulating water bowl after that.
My parent’s don’t have AC, but they haveone of those “fridge on top, pull-out-freezer below” fridges. Last summer, we were remarking that we might need to shave her so she didn’t get heatstroke, to which she looked up and made a disgusted noise at us. …Then got up, used the dishrag to pull open the freezer and climbed on top of the frozen vegetables, stretching out and sighing contentedly. “Arwen,” Mom began, but was interrupted by a loud ‘WHAAAaaaaarrr?” from Arwen. “Ok you can stay there for now but we’re getting you a kiddie pool so you have to get out when we get back. Don’t eat anything.” She ate a bag of frozen green beans and farted for three days straight.
Took her walking along the lake with the long lead so she could sniff things to her hearts content. She went about shoving her head in the undergrowth, usually coming up with her head covered in leaves and pollen.
Except for the bush where she came back out with a 7-foot Bull Snake wrapping itself around her ehad and neck, trying it’s best to strangle her before she can eat it. She immediately ran back to me, the parts of her face not occupied with the snake arranged in a gleeful expression of “Look! I found Snacks!”
I screamed, not immediately regognizing that it wasn’t a rattler, and fell, splitting my knee on a rock. The screaming made her let go of the snake, but I still had to grab her and wrestle the snake off her because it lacked the sense to just scuttle away. I finaly got it lose from her (Despite her best effort to continue trying to eat it and turned around to fling it off the trail-
-And directly into the face of one of my 90-year-old neighbors who’d come out to see what the screaming and profanity was, making her collapse.
I’m pretty sure being told “I accidentally threw a snake at my neighbor.” was the highlight of that EMT’s day. Dottie was unharmed but she still doesn’t speak to me.
One day, we left her in a Harness and overhead tether in the (at the time) unfanced back yard so she could enjoy some relatively free-range outdoors time. I walked by the window not a minute later to find her completely GONE, and race out to the yard to find her. It took me a good heart-pounding five minutes to realize the overhead tether was goign UP into the ancient silver maple and realized that 1. Arwen can apparently do something really weird with her shoulders where they pop out sideways, allowing her to bear-hug the tree and 2. climb a good 40 feet into the three to fight 3. A porcupine, which i didn’t even know LIVED out here.
Fortunately, Porcupines weigh considerably less than Awen and she couldn’t get a good enough foothold to get all the way up to it, but I still had to climb up there and lower her down, barking dog profanities at the porcupine the whole way.
My parents recently acquired a mechanized recliner which has been instumental inmom’s hip surgery recovery. Execpt that Awen Also likes lounging on the furniture, and is more than capable of hitting a large, elder-friendly button with her paw. So now when she gets back from a walk or the dog park she makes a beeline for the living room, get in the recliner and pushes the button until it’s flat and stretches out in it.
My parents didn’t have a problem with this because she gets out of the chair when they ask her (Mom even tells her “Go get my chair ready” in winter because she does a good job pre-warming it), until last winter when Arwen taught my dog Charlie, another devoted couch animal how to do this.
One afternoon there was a tremendous outburst fo barkign and snarling from the living room and we rished in to find both dogs in the recliner, Charlie on the fully-reclined back and Arwen on the elevated seat and foot rest, bellowing at eachother for control of the recliner, thier movments having pitched it back to it’s two hind feet, the device swaying to and fro like a leather covered boat upon the high seas, a furry mutiny on board. Neither dog was willing to yeild the plush throne, nor to listen to the humans yelling at them to knock it the hell off, until Arwen tackled the usurper, kocking him off and managing to cantaleiver the recliner clean over, flipping it into the hall, both dogs and all humand miraculously unharmed.
She still doesn’t let him sit in it.
I love her so much.
(If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Tip Jar or Paypal to get Arwen (and Charlie!) nice treats)
Evening reblog with an additional Shenanigan I just remembered:
One of the regulars at the dog park was an unfixed basset hound with an obnoxiously indifferent owner. “Brad” shows up pretty much to smoke weed and let “Bojangles” harass the other dogs, in spite of regular complaints about Bo starting fights and trying to mount every dog, leg, and toddler in sight.
One evening, Bo was particularly interested in Arwen, aggressively following her, nipping her heels and trying to mount her, even after her usual wolverine-like Snap’n’Snarl, which has tended to discourage unwanted suitors before. Brad was Too Damn High to notice, as usual, but mom knew that if Arwen actually bit Bo, Arwen would be the one in trouble and was trying to call her when Bo made yet another attempt and Arwen finally had it.
Instead of rightfully tearing his face off, Arwen instead did what Mom described as “A Judo-style front-flip” that pulled Bo clean off the ground and threw him on his back, Arwen landing on her feet like a cat. Bo’s stubby little legs didn’t allow him to right himself before Arwen jumped on him, front paws slamming into his saggy basset balls, squatted over his face, and peed on him.
“ARWEN NO!!” howled my mother as nearly everyone else present laughed, but having made her point, Arwen daintily got off Bo, and trotted to the gate, ready to go home. Bo yelped but got up and skulked away, only moderately bruised, cowering under the bench by Brad, who finally noticed something might be amiss.
Mom remembers hearing “Dude, why is my dog all wet?” right as they were leaving. Apparently nobody told him what happened, becuase Brad still brings Bo to the park, but Bo has much better manners now.
I read this whole thing to my mom and upon reading the end part she was like “OH MY GOD! Our dog Lady once flipped another dog and I didn’t know it was a thing dogs could do!!”
So there’s that.
Update: Arwen was at the vet’s office for a check-up and daycare, and decided partway through the afternoon that the other two kelpies were annoying her, but she didn’t want to go inside to be kenneled for a nap, so she instead…
…ninja’d her way onto the vet’s roof despite there being three people in the yard watching the dogs and no clear way up there. She had a pleasant hour of watching the vet staff try to figure out how she did that and how they were going to get her down before mom came to pick her up.
“Arwen, get your furry butt down here!”
At which point Arwen obidently got down by jumping into a nearby tree that’s technically inside a neighboring house’s yard, shimmied down that like a bear, then walked out of their side yard and back around the block to come sit at Mom’s feet, putting her paws up like she expected a treat.
That tree is not accessible from the daycare yard. We still have no idea how she got up there.
Shine on you beautiful bitch.
This just gets better and better every time i see it
I…
I have fostered doggos for a good majority of my life and my brain simply cannot process half of the bullshit in this post…
1. She’s a mix of two extremely smart breeds 2. She’s a mix of two extremely energetic breeds 3. The inmates trained her to do lots of “Extracirriculars” like veritcal leaps, how to climb chain-link fence, agility courses, physical-comedy type tricks becuase they finished teaching her the regular Service Dog Cirriculum and wanted to keep working with her. 4. Due to said Extrcirriculars, she doesn’t have any fear of heights, strangers, animals, or the nonsense of other dogs.
She does do the Professional Service Animal thing when we put her vest on, but then she’s working and has things to do like teaching social skills to people or being a living stress ball to someone having a bad time, so all that brains, energy and training can be put towards a productive end, but if she hasn’t got an active job, Shenanigans Ensue.
I love everything about this omg
Update:
She ate a four inch hole in the carpet because someone dropped a pork chop there. She’s completely fine, it all passed without so much as an upset stomach on her part.
-also ate the garden hose because we weren’t spraying her with it.
-conned one of the guys that installed the AC out of his sandwich by pretending to bark at something on the other side of the house, and doubling back when he came to investigate.
-is back on the therapy circuit helping kids in a summer school program get better at reading by having them read books to her. Her favorite student right now is a boy from Venezuela who is still learning English who gives her a big hug every morning. She doesn’t normally like hugs but she puts a paw on his back to hug him back.
As a medical professional and a medically complicated human this is very important to me
That’s not wrong.
The tone of both comments is what causes poor doctor-patient relationships. Don’t underestimate how much education a doctor has. This doesn’t simply stop with medical school. It continues during residency and fellowship. For good doctors, this continues during practice. Good doctors stay up to date with medical guidelines and the changes that occur over time. Good doctors will research any condition their patient has with which they’re unfamiliar. Good doctors will listen to their patients and gently correct errors and misconceptions. Unfortunately, not all doctors are good doctors.
On the other hand, I’ve learned tons from my patients. Things that no book will ever teach me. As a patient, you deserve to be treated respectfully. Most doctors do their best to listen to their patients. No one puts in the time and effort required to be a physician with the goal of being a shit doctor. Of course, it happens. Doctors are humans and are just as flawed as everyone else. That’s the exception rather than the rule. Please respect the fact that we have a better filter for information than you do, regardless of how long you’ve had an illness. When patients request a specific test that I know is not indicated, I ask WHY. When a patient thinks they have an illness that that subjective and objective data do not support, I ask WHY. What are they concerned about? What is their fear? This is the question that needs to be addressed. That information generally allows me to either come up with a different, more appropriate test or list the reasons why their fear isn’t likely to be a reality. It’s all a two-way street that requires respect from all parties involved. Don’t go to a doctor who doesn’t respect you. Don’t go to a doctor who makes you uncomfortable. Don’t go to a doctor who is overly dismissive of your concerns. These are all red flags that you’re dealing with an asshole who just happens to be a doctor.
I mean, if you’ve got a choice in what doctor you go to, that’s great. I guess I’ve consistently had shit doctors because it wasn’t until… oh, 2010 or so that I had one that would listen to a goddamn word out of my mouth. And then that one retired.
You know why people have an antagonistic reaction to doctors? Because many of them have twenty or thirty years of their questions, concerns, and sometimes even symptoms being outright ignored.
Me at 14: So my periods are leaving me in so much pain I’m throwing up all day.
Doctor: They’ll get better when you have kids.
Me at 16: So I’m getting these crippling headaches.
Doctor: Maybe you should try taking some Tylenol. *writes down the symptoms I gave him COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN I SAID THEY WERE* (found that out years later)
Same year, different doctor: So take these I guess. *gives me pain meds that were so strong they affected my pulse, no follow-up*
*insert long gap of just not going to the doctor*
Me at 32: So along with these other symptoms that add up to GERD, if I go too long without eating it makes me sick.
Gastro Doc: Yeah it’s GERD. I want to check for Barret’s esophagus. (this bit I agreed with) Now here’s the advice I give every single GERD patient no matter what, including the bit about not eating for several hours before bed.
Me: Uhhh, if I go too long without eating it makes me really sick.
Gastro doc: Don’t eat before bed.
And then I look for a camera to stare into like the Office.
If someone is antagonistic towards doctors, if someone is aggressive with their own care, if someone outright tells the doctor to their face that they’re wrong… it’s because of a long history of THIS SHIT. It isn’t a rare doctor that ignores you, it’s a rare doctor that doesn’t. They may not go into the medical field to be bad doctors, but they might not have gone into it to do more than get their years in so they can retire, or so Mom and Dad can brag about the doctor in the family, or for the power trip.
So don’t try to tell me that my doctor has my best interests in mind, because historically that’s been rare. That doctor is going to have to prove it, and I am going to be suspicious at first. And this is just me! I’ve got a few weird body things, but overall I’m pretty functional. The periods got better when I was no longer underweight (which I had to figure out for myself), I worked out a routine for my headaches (which my one Really Good doc gave me an idea for the source of the problem, the rest I figured out on my own), my stomach is largely under control (which I had to figure out for myself), and the only thing that’s really acting up right now are my feet (which I am figuring out for myself). The only thing I really go to the doctor for are antibiotics (when I can’t argue any longer that I don’t need them) and my psych meds (which I ALSO FIGURED OUT FOR MYSELF).
So no, I don’t have a lot of patience with doctors pulling the “Well I went to medical school” card. If that makes you so much better than me, why did I have to figure shit out without you?
I’m getting real fucking tired of seeing doctors reply to posts like these being like “oh but it’s hard for doctors too!”
Honestly, shut the fuck up. SHUT UP SO MUCH. Because, guess what? There is a MASSIVE power difference between the doctor and the patient. Somehow, all this power ends up with the doctor.
While patients obviously shouldn’t treat doctors like shit, I have no patience for this idea that I, as a patient, should kowtow to my doctor. I, the patient, am paying you, the doctor. You are giving ME a service, not vice versa. I should not have to FIGHT you while I’M PAYING YOU in order to be treated LIKE A HUMAN BEING.
I have absolutely no patience for this type of bullshit from doctors. Fuck off.
Edit: also, doctors don’t always go into the profession to “help people.” This is a misnomer. Many go into the profession because of the prestige, money, or the desire for control over people. That combined with how much control they actually DO have over patients make it a wise move to be, at the very least, cautious with a doctor until proven otherwise.
I’ll stop viewing doctors in an adversarial light when the entire industry gets its shit together and treats patients like people. Not gonna hold my breath.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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