I was going to caption this "look at all my terrible wonderful children", but that doesn't work because a) the animals are perfect angels, b) Jaheira is mom, and of course c) Halsin is daddy. Withers can be my son though.
Featuring my bard Tav who is the most nightmare child of all.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times called mask-wearers "the last holdouts". This week, the world's richest people went to great lengths to
In photos of 2023’s World Economic Forum- or Davos as it is commonly called, after the Swiss resort town where it annually occurs- you might not notice the HEPA filters. They’re in the background, unobtrusive and unremarked upon, quietly cleansing the air of viruses and bacteria. You wouldn’t know- not unless you asked- that every attendee was PCR tested before entering the forum, or that in the case of a positive test, access was automatically, electronically, revoked. And if you happened to get a glimpse of the strange blue lights overhead, you could reasonably assume that their glow was simply a modern aesthetic choice, not the calming buzz of cutting edge Far UVC technology- demonstrated to kill microbes in the air.
It’s hard to square this information with the public narrative about COVID, isn’t it? President Biden has called the pandemic “over”. The New York Times recently claimed that “the risk of Covid is similar to that of the flu” in an article about “hold outs” that are annoyingly refusing to accept continual reinfection as their “new normal”. Yet, this week the richest people in the world are taking common sense, easy- but strict- precautions to ensure they don’t catch Covid-19 at Davos.
These common sense, easy precautions include high-quality ventiliation, use of Far UVC-lighting technology, and PCR testing. You’ll also see some masks at Davos, but generally, the testing + air filtration protocol seems to be effective at preventing the kind of super-spreader events most of us are now accustomed to attending.
It seems unlikely to me that a New York Times reporter will follow the super-rich around like David Attenborough on safari, the way one of their employees did when they profiled middle-class maskers last month. I doubt they will write “family members and friends can get a little exasperated by the hyper-concern” about the assembled Prime Ministers, Presidents and CEOs in Switzerland. After all, these are important people. The kind of people who merit high-quality ventilation. The kind of people who deserve accurate tests.
Why is the media so hellbent on portraying simple, scientifically proven measures like high-quality ventilation as ridiculous and unnecessary as hundreds of people continue to die daily here in the US?
Why is the public accepting a “new normal” where we are expected to get infected over and over and over again, at work events with zero precautions, on airplanes with no masks, and at social dinners trying to approximate our 2019 normal?
We deserve better. We deserve to be #DavosSafe as the hashtag going around on twitter puts it. Your children deserve to be treated with the care that world leaders are treating each other. Your family deserves to be protected from the disease which is still- unlike the flu- the third leading cause of death in the US. We don’t deserve to be shoved back into poorly ventilated workplaces while our politicians and press assure us that only crazy people would demand to breathe clean air.
Clean water and clean food are rights we fought for; we have regulatory bodies that ensure we aren’t exposed to pathogens via our water supply nor our food. In 1854, John Snow famously conducted his Broad Street Pump study in London and demonstrated that cholera was water-bourne; however, it took decades for our public policy to catch up with our scientific knowledge.
A public health case study published by the NBCI describes the years that followed:
The first use of chlorine as a disinfectant for water facilities was in 1897 in England. The first use of this method for municipal water facilities in the United States was in Jersey City, New Jersey, and Chicago, Illinois, in 1915. Other cities followed and the use of chlorination as standard treatment for water disinfection rapidly grew. During the 20th century, death rates from waterborne diseases decreased significantly, and although other additional factors contributed to the general improvements in health (such as sanitation, improved quality of life, and nutrition), the improvement of water quality was, without doubt, a major reason.
Forty-three years passed from the initial demonstration that pathogens were being spread via water, and public action and regulation to halt disease.
Can you imagine, in the 1890s, being somebody who argued against cleaning the water?
Can you imagine, in those years of plentiful cholera, calling the people who demanded shit-free water “hold outs”?
One thing COVID realists are accused of is being “doomsayers” and “fearmongers,” so let me share a dose of optimism about the future with you. When we choose- whenever we choose- to get COVID under control, there’s an exciting new world awaiting us. One, not only without constant COVID reinfection, but where our kids can grow up free of colds, flus, RSV, and many other common bugs. And no, contrary to what you may have heard, staying healthy (shockingly enough) is not bad for children!
Once we choose to institute ventilation standards and introduce new technologies like Far UVC lighting- and embrace masking as an easy, kind, and useful tool to control outbreaks- we can bring every nasty airborne pathogen under control the way we did cholera. We didn’t have the science before; now we do. (I mean that quite literally; I can’t recommend enough the linked Wired article cataloguing the long journey to establishing that Covid is, indeed, airborne).
We face a stark choice; down one road, the one with zero infrastructure upgrades, no air quality regulations, and Covid safety only for those who can afford it, you and your family will get Covid this year. You will get Covid next year. You will continue to get Covid over and over and over again, as the health problems - like cardiac damage, viral persistance, and immune system dysfunction- continue to build up. (The billionaires, of course, will not).
Down the other road, we quite simply treat ourselves the way Davos would. We engage with what the science is telling us and we build a safer, better world for our kids. We embrace the lessons this pandemic is teaching us, and let go of things we now know are harming people. We stop clinging desperately to the idea that 2019 will come back if we just get the virus one more time, and we come together to achieve what we’ve been told is impossible: elimination.
The economic elite thrive on our divisiveness and blame casting. They don’t mind that we’re calling each other names, engaging in racial stereotyping, or leaving disabled people to die, so long as we keep their machine running. But we can choose to stop throwing blame at each other, and direct it where it belongs: at the powerful people who’ve left us to suffer, at the politicians who are whipping people into a frenzy over masks instead of over our millions of dead, at the talking heads on TV that work so hard to convince us: you want to get sick. It’s better than being a *weirdo* or a *hold out*.
We needn’t wait 43 years to redirect our energies. France and Belgium have already introduced new air quality standards, and DIY projects to build Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for schools and healthcare settings have popped up around the country. We have the science, we have the technology. All we need now is the political will and the solidarity to truly end the pandemic- the kind of solidarity the super rich always show with one another.
The billionaires at Davos don’t accept continual Covid reinfection. They demand better. It’s time we demand better too.
Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.
So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.
You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.
Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.
Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.
Don’t be fooled. Wool is a sustainable material, one we should make more and better use of.
In my almost-decade of owning sheep, there have been exactly two(2) bad shearers try to start up in the area. Know what happened? The first farm they went to called every other shepherd in the area and said “This guy cut one of my sheep and didn’t think it was a big deal, don’t hire him.” And neither of them ever did business in the area again.
Some farmers are less conscientious than they should be about taking care of their stock, and the occasional tiny nick will happen, but no one is going to hire a shearer who is a) incompetent enough and b) uncaring enough to actually injure the animals to the point of bleeding, let alone the kind of horrors the internet claims.
Also, most breeds of sheep will literally die if they go too long without being sheared. PETA (and let’s face it, most of this anti-wool stuff can be traced back to deliberate misinformation from PETA) doesn’t care if sheep die, they have openly stated that they would prefer every domestic species that can no longer survive without humans go extinct rather than live in “"slavery.”“
Humans and sheep have lived together for over ten thousand years, they’ve been domesticated longer than dogs! Their lives consist of doing whatever the heck they want (for the most part they only want to walk, eat, sleep, play, and make lambs) while being fed and cared for, for the low price of having their hair cut once a year. Why would anyone boycott this natural, biodegradable fiber humans have been using for so long to the benefit of both species, in favor of plastics that are killing the planet??
Also loving the “the sheep will be snuggly warm tonight” like… You shear sheep in the spring, when the weather warms up and they no longer need it, and they grow it back for next winter.
Twee, deliberate mislabelling which appeals to kind-hearted people who know nothing about how the real thing is produced.
On the funnier side, ignorance about anything closer to nature than a supermarket shelf can result in gems like this one:
Regular yogurt for me. Thanks.
(As for ignorance, this post is epic and getting more so every time I see it.)
*****
Back on topic.
Shearing’s not skinning and it’s not painful, unless some guy getting busy with a manscaping clipper means he’s flaying himself alive.
Shearing is an all-over haircut, call it sheepscaping if need be though expect some odd looks, and good shearers - as @ruusverd said, bad shearers earn a bad rep and soon earn no more money - will leave less nicks on an entire sheep than I might inflict on my face if I forget to change my razor-blade.
That’s pretty impressive when dealing with a notoriously dimwit animal that doesn’t understand “now just sit still for a minute” and finds “see that open gate, go through it” a difficult concept. (Going through an unexpected hole in the hedge, however, is something sheep do with great ease and willingness, especially if there’s a soon-to-be-ex herb garden on the far side…)
“All warm and snuggly in their woolly jumpers…” Oh puh-leeze. A jumper is a garment which can be taken off and put on as required. A sheep’s fleece is nothing of the sort. Ireland’s just had a heatwave, so which of these two would have been more comfortable the other day when it was 30°C / 90°F in the shade?
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But look at the blood! goes the outcry about sheep with red stains. Here’s what that “blood” is. Unless the outcriers believe the front half is royal and bleeds blue, it’s just dye.
Why dye? There are various reasons: to show who owns which sheep in a mixed flock of the same breed, or to indicate if one has been dosed with something, or to mark if a ewe has mated with a ram.
The ram wears a harness - AFAIK not black leather with chrome studs, at least not on any farm near here - which holds a dye-pad on his chest. After he’s done his business, the hopefully-preggers ewe will have a patch of that dye on her rump as in the photo.
Different colours let the farmer know which ram’s been busy if there’s more than one, or with one ram, on what day the mating occurred so they can calculate when to expect lambs. That kit suggests rams get one day a week off…
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Besides shearing sheep to stop them overheating, if the weather is rainy rather than sunny they’ll still need sheared to stop them getting waterlogged.
A waterlogged sheep is a top-heavy sheep, and since rainy weather will have made the ground slippery, a top-heavy sheep can all too easily become a sheep on its back - a broad, flat back that won’t roll - unable to get upright.
Sheep internal organs aren’t meant to be upside down and inversion will eventually kill them, if they’re not gutted by a fox first. Crows will have had their eyes long before then.
Forget deceitful propaganda about fake wool, here’s some REAL advice about how to do a sheep a (literal) good turn.
I’ve done it myself, and though she’d already lost one eye - hoodie crows don’t miss a chance - that ewe survived and next spring produced what I was told were two fine lambs. I felt pretty good about that.
I still do.
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This is what shearing really looks like, and that’s not the behaviour of an animal in distress or pain. Baffled, maybe, but any human whose haircut started with a judo throw would be baffled too..
The end result is a 12lb / 5.5kg load of insulation which the sheep no longer has to carry about. How’d you like being stuck inside that lot on a hot day?
The “shearing is cruel” fruitloops rely on deliberate lies, gullibility and lack of knowledge. Be aware.
I will add that rare and vanishing breeds of sheep are often only saved from extinction because shepherds are able to sell their wool. The Livestock Conservancy has a whole program to conserve rare sheep breeds with the slogan “Shave ‘Em To Save ‘Em.”
And fun fact—actual fun fact, not my usual grotesque fun facts!—Beatrix Potter the children’s author was deeply dedicated to preserving an old breed of sheep called the Herdwick, and left four thousand acres to the National Trust on the condition that they continue to be used to graze Herdwicks in perpetuity.
Was thinking today about how money is like a rewind button for life. I didn't have it until a year ago, when I finally graduated from medical residency and my salary tripled overnight; I just never had the kind of money that makes these things possible. But now I do, and I can tell you that I don't fear making a lot of the mistakes that used to terrify me. If I spent 5 bucks on a mascara and hated it, well, tough luck, I either don't wear mascara or I wear that one. I couldn't buy shoes online. What if I have to return them? What if I can't get away from work long enough to return them? So I'd buy them in person, walking around and around the store, hoping I'd figure it out if they were going to pinch or hurt me because I wasn't getting a second shot at that money.
I dyed my hair. I'm bored with it now and trying to get the dye out, and I'm not stressed about it, because worst case scenario, I have the money to buy more bleach and more dye and if I need to I can pay for a stylist to fix it.
I bought shoes online. One pair didn't fit. I just gave them away. Easier than returning and the money means something totally different to me now.
I'm doing things I simply would never have done, could never have done, because I have the money to fix them if I make mistakes at these things that are new to me.
It is beyond inhumane that this is what gets people the ability to make mistakes and come back from them, erase them, fix them, rewind. We need to make life easier for everyone, not minuscule increments better for the already very rich.
I bought this expensive ass yogurt as a gift to myself so that I could make little candles in the tiny terracotta pot it comes in and it turns out it is the best, creamiest, most buttery heavenly delicious yogurt I have ever tasted and I’m now addicted
in retrospect, daniel’s entire storyline is incredibly hilarious because while all the other passengers are stuck in a loop reliving their worst memories, daniel is more or less a walking cheat code and he’s somehow having the worst time out of all of them. he hasn’t slept in 8 days and he’s wet all the time. he has a wife who doesn’t remember him and a dead son. he has to watch his wife fall in love with a handsome brooding sea captain over and over again. his only friends are a virtual version of his son who clearly prefers his mother over him and his son’s pet bug. he gets the absolute shit beat out of him by a background character. he’s done this simulation countless times before and somehow his wife is still always two steps ahead of him. the man’s really out there just barely passing an open-book exam. poor little meow meow indeed.
ok ok rent lowering gunshots aside, new twitter refugees PLEASE for the love of yourself go turn your likes and follows private. yes, that's a thing you can do. check that little mark in your settings and just. feel the weight of constant surveillance slide off of your shoulders. enjoy the anonymity.
Just for the people who have been so conditioned to think otherwise - no, it's not weird or creepy to do this. It's not something you only do if you have something to hide. Most people here do it. You should too. Reject the destruction of privacy sold to you as "honesty and accountability". Keep your private shit private.
Listen. The bottleneck of western esotericism was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Everything after the Golden Dawn was influenced by the Golden Dawn.
But if you wanna discuss the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, you gotta explain the Rosicrucians.
If you wanna talk about the Rosicrucians, you gotta talk about Christian Cabbala.
If you wanna talk about Christian Cabbala, you gotta talk about Jewish Kabbalah.
If you wanna talk about Jewish Kabbalah, you gotta talk about Merkabah Mysticism.
If you wanna talk about Merkabah Mysticism, you gotta talk about Neoplatonism.
If you wanna talk about Neoplatonism, you gotta talk about Neopythagoreanism.
If you wanna talk about Neopythagoreanism, you gotta talk about Pythagoras.
If you wanna talk about Pythagoras, you gotta talk how he banned people from eating beans.
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.”
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
vaporwave
gummygunk
gamechangershow
