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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
talesfromtreatment

average-monster asked:

Could you define ARA for me? I take from context that they’re opposed to euthanasia, but the only animal related google return was for a shelter in Portugal. Didn’t seem like a match.

talesfromtreatment answered:

ARA stands for ‘animal rights activists.’ These people massively anthropomorphize animals and project their own fear of death onto them. They don’t think animals should be killed by humans, be it for quality of life or for food. They insist that no human-provided death can be humane, that it is murder unless the animal is actively dying… and sometimes not even then. Think PETA. Think farm sanctuaries with things like: pigs with no feet, sheep and goats that need their flock/herd for their mental health but are paralyzed, calves with severe limb deformities that mean they can’t stand that these places insist on putting in wheelchairs, as if that will work when they weigh over a thousand pounds at adulthood.

They are all about the 'feel good’ rather than what is actually best for the animal.

iheartvmt

Generally ARAs are against euthanasia, but some (PETA, which is unfortunately headquartered in my state, comes to mind) go to the other extreme and believe that just existing as a domesticated animal is so inhumane, even healthy adoptable domestic animals should be put down. It's been a while, but I remember when it was revealed they were stealing dogs out of people's yards to euthanize them, and that their shelter had like a 90+% kill rate (much higher than the local municipal shelters). 😞

pack-yr-romantic-mind

literally neither of these claims about PETA are true. i hate that i keep defending them because it's not like i subscribe to their project, but you people have uncritically swallowed smear campaigns spread by the meat and fur industries.

1) obviously PETA isn't anti-euthanasia. the most common smears about them, spread by the Center for Consumer Freedom, is that "PETA kills animals," that is, that their shelters aren't no-kill and they employ humane euthanasia, which is true. I assure you the people accusing them of this aren't radical animal rights sickos.

2) PETA isn't anti-pet ownership. you can go on their website and read their position on this. and obviously they don't kidnap and kill other peoples' pets like use your brain cells. how would that even work. They accidentally killed a pet dog once because the property owner lied and told them it was a stray and they were hit with a major lawsuit for it.

talesfromtreatment

https://arr.vdacs.virginia.gov/PublicReports/ViewReport?SysFacNo=157&Calendar_Year=2022

This is PETA’s own information about their shelter, which is not an open-intake shelter (open-intake means the shelter must accept all the animals that come in through the door for surrender, this is typical of city-run shelters) (the open-intake shelter in the same city has a far better live release rate)

  • They took in 2,884 animals last year
  • They adopted out 78.
  • The transferred out 663 to other shelters.
  • They still had 11 animals in care at the end of the year.
  • They euthanised 2,130 of the animals they took in.
  • That is a euthanasia rate of 74%.

The open-intake shelters in that state have a euthanasia rate of roughly 15%.
The limited-intake shelters have a rate of 6%.
Peta is a limited-intake shelter with a euthanasia rate of 74%.

PETA is definitely not in the ‘no euthanasia ever’ camp of ARA, but they are also definitely NOT helping animals in any way, shape, or form. They are firmly in the ‘no animals should interact with humans’ camp.

Don’t fucking try to defend PETA to a vet tech at a shelter.

bitegore
fullhalalalchemist

URGENT: Congress about to pass a mass censorship and surveillance bill under the guise of "protecting children"

May 13 2023

The Senate has been in a "do something!" mode regarding children's online safety. They're using this as an excuse to push for widespread internet censorship and surveillance. I already spoke about the EARN IT Act, which has a slimmer chance of passing with widespread opposition and a few senators saying they won't vote for it. The real threat is actually KOSA (s.1409), the Kid's Online Safety Act. It does two primary things:

First, KOSA pressures platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This means instructing platforms to censor. We saw how these filters impacted websites firsthand with tumblr in 2018, with not only blocking all adult content but also sfw queer content such as suicide hotlines, art archives, wiping out entire blogs because they had queer fandom related posts, etc. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups. KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. And who gets to decide what is and isn't harmful for minors? Oh don't worry, just every single state attorney general and the FTC, which is appointed by the president. You know, the same attorney generals that just banned gender-affirming healthcare under the guise that it "ruins mental health" of minors. This is why the Heritage Foundation was one of the first to sponsor the bill because they can use it to censor trans content, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is it's co-author.

Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by forcing websites to use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Yup, that's right. Now every single person who wants to access the internet has to upload their govt ID online to third party apps that get hacked all the time. You queer in a red state? You undocumented? You an activist? Have fun getting all your online activity and metadata attached to your govt ID.  

Over 90+ human and LGBT rights groups agree that KOSA is dangerous and updates to the 2023 version won’t and can’t address the big problems with the bill. This bill has MASSIVE bipartisan support, and the authors Blumenthal and Blackburn (yes, that Blumenthal that's pushing the EARN IT Act, and who also sponsored the RESTRICT Act and SOPA/PIPA if you remember) are using the tragedy of mothers who lost their kids to online harassment and young adults who've been traumatized online to lobby for it, and got Dove the company to use a bunch of influencers to push for this under the guise it prevents eating disorders...I wish I was lying. There are already 30 co-sponsors.

HOW TO FIGHT KOSA

  1. CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & THE COMMERCE COMMITTEE

This is a link to the Senate Commerce Committee phone numbers and a call script to read off of. (202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline

Opposition is getting drowned, and these upcoming weeks will be heavy for lobbying and they're using young people to do it. We NEED to show these senators that young people are actually opposed to this and don't want it.

2. Sign these petitions

  1. Open Letter Against KOSA
  2. Petition 1
  3. Petition 2
  4. Petition 3
  5. Petition 4
  6. Resistbot: Text PHJDYH to 50409

3. Spread the word.

The opposition is getting absolutely drowned online. Dove has nearly 100k signatures to push for KOSA. Influencers on tiktok are pushing for this without ever having read the bill. Fucking Lizzo is sponsoring it. If you have twitter, reddit, tiktok, are in any community, SPREAD THE WORD, PLEASE.

Here is a linktree with all the above petitions for easy shargin: Link to linktree

whydotheycallmedarren
animate-mush

Let's talk about Language

Jonathan Harker is an Englishman from Exeter. As such he speaks (Devon-accented) English.

He has mentioned a couple of times now that he also speaks German, but not very well. He calls it a "smattering" but it's enough to get him through Hungary, which is famously diglossic. He does not speak Hungarian. When he gets into Romania the language barrier becomes more profound because not only does he not understand any Romanian, the locals don't have a whole lot of German either. When he talks to the innkeeper's wife they're both using a common language neither speaks well.

You've all heard me go on about this but I am going to say it again: I'm obsessed with the fact that in earlier drafts when the Count was located in Austria he specifically requested a solicitor who did not speak German. He's not supposed to be able to communicate with the locals. He's supposed to be wholly dependent on Dracula, who as we've seen in the finished version is arranging all his travel and writing him little letters and such to help him navigate his way there.

[Aside: is Dracula speaking German to the coachman? Because Jonathan is able to understand their conversation, which he wouldn't if it were in Romanian. It makes sense because the coachman refers to him as the English Herr. But if so Dracula must be doing so specifically for Jonathan's benefit - otherwise he would be using his own language.]

But! At some point Jonathan acquired a polyglot dictionary! This is another great character moment. Like his research at the British Museum, it means he is aware of his deficiencies (not speaking the local language) and taken steps to correct them. Dracula wants him isolated, but Jonathan wants to know things and talk to people. He asked questions of the waiters in Budapest. He asked questions of the innkepers in Bistritz (who suddenly forgot how to speak German). He can't ask questions of the townsfolk or other passengers on the coach because he doesn't speak their language, but he's trying to understand anyway by means of the resources he does have - the polyglot dictionary. Communication is key and he's trying to make it happen.

A second aside: people have pointed out that he misspells (and mistranslates) ördög. Other people have pointed out that he's remarkably good at looking up words in a language he doesn't speak just on sound. (To harken means to listen and pay attention - his name means Listener, so maybe he's just preternaturally good at that). But he's writing his diary in shorthand, which may not have an obvious way of rendering the diacritics (he leaves them off of mămăligă as well) so that's an extra layer of translation. And he's relying on his little dictionary, but that dictionary may not be reliable, in the same way that despite all his research he was not able to find Castle Dracula on any map. (Maybe it's like Rokovoko - too real for maps).

We laugh a lot at "I must ask the Count about these superstitions," but here's the thing: the Count speaks English. No one else on this trip is able to communicate with Jonathan in his own language (or in theirs!) even if they wanted to (which they often don't, since vampires are Scary). And this is by design!

And Dracula speaks excellent English. Better than Jonathan's German. And he wants to get better at it (which is totally reasonable). But there's this huge linguistic power imbalance here, in spite of which Jonathan still manages to arrive better prepared and better informed than he is supposed to.

By the time Dracula arrives in England, will he be speaking with a Devon accent?

maribel-bat
homunculus-argument

I never get tired of the thing where fantasy books name something by just calling it a word but capitalising it. Like oh shit, that person is a Wielder. The supernatural ability to see beyond matter called the Sight. Forces of Light and Darkness. The prohibited art of Knowing. A place simply known as The Blight. Awesome and horrible forces. The Force. You know something's getting bat shit wild when Fantasy Capitalisation comes into the picture. As in capitalising the letters, not the unholy act of seizing fantasy itself in order to churn profit off of it.

That is the work of evil creatures, like The Mouse.

whydotheycallmedarren
chickenkeeping

whats the best way to trim the crest+beard of a silkie? this lady can barely see with all that floof! 

chickenkeeping

apparently some people use little headbands to keep the fluff out of their eyes

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lord-kitschener

80s chickens

yemenitehole

yo im late but when i first got my polish frizzle bantams years ago from their breeder their crests were up to keep them out of the mud (because they’re show birds) and the result was amazing

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chef hats/make-up brush hair

chickenkeeping

i love them thank you for the advice

draconym

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chickenkeeping

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

clickthefrog

I had to Google what frizzles looked like normally and

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