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roma★
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

tannertan36
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
art blog(derogatory)
Keni
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
DEAR READER

Kiana Khansmith
Claire Keane
NASA
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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trying on a metaphor
Today's Document

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

izzy's playlists!
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
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@coldcoffeeruse
“What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction.
… It is as if some establishments, including our own, wanted a crisis and used their control of information to achieve one. And still it continues. As of tomorrow, in a symbolic moment never to be forgotten, users of trains and buses will be compelled to wear muzzles or forbidden to travel.
The legal basis for this is highly doubtful. The medical basis for it is more doubtful still. These muzzles have been described as being as much use against a microscopic virus as a chain-link fence would be against mosquitoes.
… I am fairly sure these measures, like the house arrest and sunbathing bans which came before, have another purpose. They accustom us to being told what to do. Stand there. Wait there. Don’t use cash. Don’t cross that line. They permanently change the relationship between the individual and the state.
… As soon as this lockdown began I could see most of this coming. It was clearly a revolution. And as the long weeks dragged by, something else became clear. The actual time it was taking was important.
During these long dreamy weeks we have bit by bit forgotten who we were before, how we lived, what we thought, what we expected of life. I believe that forces hostile to our country, its history and nature, have seen this as an opportunity. Probably incredulous to begin with, they realised the British people really had gone soft, accepting absurd and humiliating diktats, believing the most ridiculous claims.
They also noticed that formerly great institutions and forces – the church, Parliament, the police, the armed services, much of Fleet Street, the universities – submitted to it without so much as a sigh. So did what remained of our great industrial and commercial companies.
There was, on top of this, an increasingly feverish atmosphere. Deprived of normal routines and circles of friendship, many people became strained and suggestible.
They were discontented but not allowed to protest against the thing which was oppressing them, the shutdown, since from every quarter they were told it was justified. Almost any spark could have ignited this rich mixture.
As it happens, it was the death in Minneapolis, a city most British people will never even see, of George Floyd. Seeing the surging crowds, the rioting and the looting in the USA, the British radical Left grew jealous.
They imported the protest, converted it into outrage against some mouldering statues, and set the streets alight.
… They have already helped to make it very hard for traditional, normal, Christian conservative and patriotic opinions to be expressed at all. By using social media as a form of discipline, they have made everyone – including the Left-wing multimillionaire author J.K. Rowling – fear them.
Anyone, as she learned last week, can now be ‘cancelled’ – the new radicals’ chilling word for the obliteration they like to visit on their victims. She has been pursued for saying the wrong thing about the transgender issue. In fact, there is no right thing. I have known for years it was futile to try to respond with fairness and reason to the new orthodoxy.
However carefully and generously I might argue, I would still be denounced for thought crime. You cannot be right, nor can you know if you are right. That is a large part of the trick.
No actual debate can take place in these conditions. And where there is no debate there is no freedom.
…Now, when Sir Keir Starmer (another one of those who dallied with a Trotskyist sect in the 1980s) kneels in supplication to the new orthodoxy, who wants to tell me he is a ‘moderate’?
People thought this frothing, intolerant Leftism did not matter or was a minor issue on the edge of our society. But in fact it was the first wave of a new orthodoxy which will shortly be dominating all our lives. And it is the Covid frenzy which has made its final triumph much closer.
…For the past few weeks have also demonstrated that all the pillars of British freedom and civilisation are hollow and rotten, and that we are ripe for a sweeping cultural revolution as devastating as the one Lenin and Dzerzhinsky launched in Petrograd in 1917.
Except that this time there will be no need to storm the Winter Palace, seize the railway station or the telephone exchange or the barracks. The Left are already in control of every lever of power and influence, from the schools the Tories are too weak to reopen to the police, the Civil Service, the courts and the BBC.
It is regime change. Do not worry too much about the statues which are now coming down. They mean surprisingly little. Worry more about the ones they are soon going to be putting up, and what they will represent. Perhaps our grandchildren will find the courage to pull them down.”
everyone: public schools are underfunded, teachers are overworked and classes are understaffed, let’s not get started on curricula and on the violence in schools.
someone: so we’ve been thinking about homeschooling-
everyone: :oooo do you hate your kids? if they don’t attend public school they will literally die.
i literally cannot stop thinking about this video it’s ruining my life
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used tear gas a total of 126 times between 2012 and 2018.
As the Trump administration continues to face widespread backlash over its use of tear gas against Central American asylum seekers at the southern border on Sunday, data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has shone a light on just how common the use of tear gas and pepper spray at the border really is.
In a statement sent to Newsweek on Tuesday, the CBP said its personnel have been using tear gas, or 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS), since 2010, deploying the substance a total of 126 times since fiscal year 2012. Under President Donald Trump, CBP’s use of the substance has hit a seven-year record high, with the agency deploying the substance a total of 29 times in fiscal year 2018, which ended on September 30, 2018, according to the agency’s data.
However, the data also showed that the substance was deployed nearly the same number of times in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 under former President Barack Obama, with CBP using the substance 26 times in fiscal year 2012 and 27 times in fiscal year 2013. CBP’s use of tear gas appeared to decline in the following years, with 15 uses in fiscal year 2014, eight in fiscal year 2015 and even fewer in fiscal year 2016, with three recorded instances.
As Trump took office, the numbers began to rise again in fiscal year 2017, climbing to 18 deployments of tear gas, before reaching fiscal year 2018’s record high of 29 uses. CBP also noted in its statement that in addition to using tear gas, the agency also “regularly uses” Pava Capsaicin, or pepper spray. In terms of pepper spray use, deployments appeared to soar under the Obama administration, with CBP personnel using the substance 95 times in fiscal year 2012, a number that climbed to 151 in 2013, before dropping to 109 in fiscal year 2014.
Instances of pepper spray use appeared to drop significantly in fiscal year 2015, declining to 30 instances of use, before rising to 49 instances in fiscal year 2016 and 56 in fiscal year 2017, which would have seen some overlap between Obama and Trump’s presidencies. In fiscal year 2018, CBP said there were 43 recorded instances of pepper spray use under Trump. CBP has not immediately responded to a request for records outlining why tear gas and pepper spray were used in instances recorded since fiscal year 2012.
In a statement emailed to Newsweek, CBP spokeswoman Stephanie Malin said that more than 1,000 individuals who were part of the “so-called caravan” “attempted to cross illegally into the U.S. by breaching section of the fence and using vehicle lanes in and near the San Ysidro Port of Entry” on Sunday. “The group ignored law enforcement agencies in Mexico and assaulted U.S. Federal Officers and Agents assigned to respond to the situation in San Diego,” Malin said.
The CBP spokesperson said that “in response to the assaults and to defuse this dangerous situation, trained CBP personnel employed less-lethal devices to stop the actions of assaultive individuals attempting to break into the U.S.“ Malin said that CBP had been “preparing for weeks” for situations like the one that unfolded at the border on Sunday.
“We have seen the use of violence by members of this so-called caravan who have attacked law enforcement personnel in Guatemala, Mexico and now the U.S.,” the CBP spokesperson said. She said that the agency “takes Sunday’s employment of use-of-force very seriously,” adding that the agency “reviews and evaluates all uses of force incidents to ensure compliance with policy.“
While CBP has said that some asylum seekers threw projectiles at Border Patrol agents, striking some personnel, the faction that rushed the border on Sunday represented a small group of the thousands of asylum seekers currently waiting in Mexican border town Tijuana to make their asylum claims at the U.S. border.
In a statement released by the Mexican government on Monday, Mexico’s interior ministry reported through the National Institute of Migration that 98 people were slated to be deported to their home countries in connection with “violent” behavior at the U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, thousands of others face weeks, if not months of waiting in Tijuana to make their asylum claims in the U.S., with the San Ysidro Port of Entry only seeing around 100 claims or fewer processed each day.
Your fave would never.
golden eagle having a relaxing time
This is the world’s largest flying Engine of Murder marveling at the fact that it can actually have its tummy rubbed.
I feel like this is the next step up on “loose your fingers” roulette from petting a kittie’s tummy, but just below belly rubs for say a lion.
Can someone who knows birds better than I do tell me whether this eagle is as happy as it looks? Because I want it to be happy. It looks so happy. Bewildered by having a friend, but so happy.
Just popping on this thread to confirm: yes, the eagle is happy about the belly rubs. Golden eagles make this sound when receiving allopreening and similar affectionate and soothing treatment from their parents and mates. It’s the “I am safe and well fed, and somebody familiar is taking good care of me” sound. Angry raptors and wounded raptors make some pretty dramatic hisses and shrieks; frightened raptors go dead silent and try to hide if they can, or fluff up big and get loud and in-your-face if hiding isn’t an option. They can easily sever a finger or break the bones of a human hand or wrist, and even with a very thick leather falconer’s gauntlet, I’ve known falconers to leave a mews (hawk house) with graphic punctures THROUGH the gauntlet into the meat of their hands and arms, just from buteos and kestrels way smaller than this eagle. A pissed off hawk will make damn sure you don’t try twice whatever you pulled that pissed her off, even if she’s been human-imprinted.
If you’re ever unsure about an animal’s level of okayness with something that’s happening, there are three spot-check questions you can ask, to common-sense your way through it:
1. Is the animal capable of defending itself or making a threatening or fearful display, or otherwise giving protest, and if so, is it using this ability? (e.g. dog snarling or biting, swan hissing, horse kicking or biting) 2. Does the animal experience an incentive-based relationship with the human? (i.e. does the animal have a reason, in the animal’s frame of reference, for being near this human? e.g. dog sharing companionship / food / shelter, hawk receiving good quality abundant food and shelter and medical care from a falconer)
3. Is the animal a domesticated species, with at least a full century of consistent species cohabitation with humans? (Domesticated animals frequently are conditioned from birth or by selective breeding to be unbothered by human actions that upset their feral nearest relatives.)
In this situation, YES the eagle can self-defend, YES the eagle has incentive to cooperate with and trust the human handler, and NO the eagle is not a domesticated species, meaning we can expect a high level of reactivity to distress, compared to domestic animals: if the eagle was distressed, it would be pretty visible and apparent to the viewer. These aren’t a universally applicable metric, but they’re a good start for mammal and bird interactions.
Pair that with the knowledge that eagles reserve those chirps for calm environments, and you can be pretty secure and comfy in the knowledge that the big honkin’ birb is happy and cozy.
Also, to anybody wondering, falconers are almost single-handedly responsible for the recovery from near-extinction of several raptor species, including and especially peregrine falcons. Most hawks only live with the falconer for a year, and most of that year is spent getting the bird in ideal condition for survival and success as a wild breeding adult. Falconers are extensively trained and dedicated wildlife conservationists, pretty much by definition, especially in the continental USA, and they make up an unspeakably important part of the overall conservation of predatory bird species. Predatory birds are an important part of every ecosystem they inhabit. Just like apiarists and their bees, the relationship between falconer and hawk is one of great benefit to the animal and the ecosystem, in exchange for a huge amount of time, effort, expense, and education on the part of the human, for very little personal benefit to that one human. It’s definitely not exploitation of the bird, and most hawks working with falconers are hawks who absolutely would not have reached adulthood without human help: the sick, the injured, and the “runts” of the nest who don’t receive adequate resources from their own parents. These are, by and large, wonderful people who are in love with the natural world and putting a lifetime of knowledge and sheer exhausting work into conserving it and its winged wonders.
reblogged for excellent info, I’m so glad that big gorgeous birb really is as happy as it looks!
Today’s bit of positive activism: A reminder that, although the world may contain many bad and awful things, it also contains an enormous winged predator clucking happily as a human gives it a belly rub.
can’t help falling in love on a kalimba
If we held 1 minute of silence for every victim of the Holocaust then we would be silent for eleven and a half years.
“Horse Play”
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself | D.H. Lawrence
Print Shop: here
Horses r too powerful why must we as humans stare into the face of death only to ask it for a piggyback ride
I love the end when Johnny says, “Well if I feel like my song is sung, I don’t care if it’s short. And I feel like my song is sung” 💚