laugh hard at the absurdly evil

24/ the profile pic is Edward Gorey

[noknowshame]

can he be in a normal situation for like 5 minutes

[noknowshame]

[charlesoberonn]

Reverse Piano Man

[annabelle--cane]

stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation with the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.

[nchntd]

In the club

[thegenderal]

even before i lived in a place with a massive population of feral cats decimating the wildlife i had read the studies and knew the data said that TNR did not work and we need to be trapping and euthanizing feral cats but now that i’ve lived in a place where there are an enormous number of feral cats it’s like, inconceivable to me that anyone supports TNR, not just for the health of the world but for the sake of the fucking cats

[thegenderal]

nobody will even acknowledge it not even in most conservation circles. We have a solution to a massive, massive problem that is more humane, cheaper, easier, takes less time, prevents animal suffering, and saves valuable members of our disappearing ecosystem. And nobody is even willing to theoretically acknowledge that it exists outside of a few very small circles.

[thegenderal]

it works. It works. It is better for the cats. It’s better for the cats. Living in a place where you cannot drive 10 minutes without seeing a new roadkill cat almost every single day really makes you think about how much suffering could have been prevented if we just dealt with the problem we have created. It’s not a pleasant way to go, being hit by a car. Or being ripped apart by a predator, or eating a poison, or starving to death, of dying of an infection, or an illness, or any of the hundred thousand ways an animal in the wild passes without human intervention. Euthanasia is simply falling asleep. It is fucking wild to me that saying you think we should take responsibility for our mistakes and ensure that cats fall asleep peacefully instead of capturing them and then hurling them back out into the world SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to die in agony makes people treat you like a fucking serial killer.

[thegenderal]

And if you don’t care about cats dying in agony do you care about the world around you? There’s a species of bird we only know ever existed because someone’s cat brought home our only example. That’s horrific. We’ve lost so much biodiversity because we simply won’t listen to the research, which again, has proven that TNR is not effective.

[thegenderal]

a peaceful death is not the worst thing that could happen to an animal.

[thegenderal]

@cathartidae sources for ya!

Sources:

https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW468 “How Effective and Humane Is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) for Feral Cats?” 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6523511/ “A Case of Letting the Cat out of The Bag—Why Trap-Neuter-Return Is Not an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat (Felis catus) Management” (also has a thousand references attached that are handy)

Not a reference so much as the human society actively admitting that TNR does nothing to decrease population, actively contributes to harming wildlife, and doesn’t actually help the cats in any way, just reduces some of the nuisance behavior that people complain about: https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/real-impacts-trap-neuter-return

Unscientific from here on out as i don’t feel like trying to find the studies i read in like January of last year:

https://hahf.org/awake/the-trouble-with-trap-vaccinate-neuter-return/ “The Trouble With Trap-Neuter-Re (Abandon!) from the hillsborough animal health foundation, articles also link to studies

https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Evidence-Against-TNR.pdf from the american bird conservancy, has scientific articles quoted. 

[thegenderal]

Even More Sources on TNR being non-viable and ways that cats are impacting the world from birds to *hawai’i’s monk seals*

Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. (2022, October 26). Indoor cats vs. outdoor cats. Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota. https://aercmn.com/indoor-cats-vs-outdoor-cats/

Campbell, V. (2017, January 25). The Obituary of the Stephens Island Wren. All About Birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-obituary-of-the-stephens-island-wren/

Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/neuter/release methods ineffective in controlling domestic cat “colonies” on public lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23(3).

Coe, S. T., Elmore, J. A., Elizondo, E. C., & Loss, S. R. (2021). Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program. Wildlife Biology, 2021(1). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00799

del Hoyo, J., Collar, N., Kirwan, G. M., & Sharpe, C. J. (2022, October 25). Guadalupe storm-petrel (Hydrobates Macrodactylus), version 1.2. Birds of the World. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/guspet/cur/introduction

Dickman, C. R., & Newsome, T. M. (2015). Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 173, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.021

Edge. (2019, June 19). Guadalupe storm-petrel. EDGE of Existence. https://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/guadalupe-storm-petrel/

Galbreath, R., & Brown, D. (2004). The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis, 51(4).

Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. (2025). Feral cats. Feral Cats. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/#:~:text=Feral%20cats%20on%20islands%20have,kill%20approximately%202.4%20billion%20birds.

Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380

McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLOS ONE, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133915

Medina, F. M., Bonnaud, E., Vidal, E., Tershy, B. R., Zavaleta, E. S., Josh Donlan, C., Keitt, B. S., Corre, M., Horwath, S. V., & Nogales, M. (2011). A global review of the impacts of invasive cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates. Global Change Biology, 17(11), 3503–3510. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x

National Research Council. (1992, January 1). Scientific Bases for the Preservation of the Hawaiian Crow. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235935/

NOAA. (2024, August 29). Toxoplasmosis and its effects on Hawaiʻi Marine Wildlife. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacific-islands/endangered-species-conservation/toxoplasmosis-and-its-effects-hawaii-marine

Read, J. L., Dickman, C. R., Boardman, W. S., & Lepczyk, C. A. (2020). Reply to Wolf et al.: Why trap-neuter-return (TNR) is not an ethical solution for Stray Cat Management. Animals, 10(9), 1525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091525

Reed, L. (2022). The effects of free-roaming cats on native wildlife populations. Wildlife Rehabilitation Bulletin, 40(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.53607/wrb.v40.250

Salano, E. (2024, October 5). Eliciting the effect free roaming cats have on Native Hawaiian wildlife using stable isotope analysis. UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_etds/103/ 

Steele, J. H., Thorpe, S. A., & Turekian, K. K. (2009). Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Academic Press. 

science says it’s long past time to stop prolonging the suffering of feral cats, for the sake of the people, the native wildlife, and the goddamn cats themselves.

[boundless-ennui]

I was at a friend's house to check on carcasses I had macerating in his yard. A little grey cat ran up to me, yelling her head off in friendliness and wanting nothing more than to be pet. I had nothing to give her but let my friend know he should catch her since she was so friendly. I am ashamed to admit I didn't give her much thought beyond that, finishing my work and giving her a last pet before going home.

My friend told me how he'd seen her before but she always vanished before he could catch her. He works far too many hours and is always tired so he couldn't prioritize catching this cat.

Three months pass with no sign of her. I go back with my partner to check on carcasses and this same little grey cat appears. This time, however, a tooth has been snapped off and her tongue is so badly cut that she can't keep it in her mouth. She was thin and dirty and screaming to please be given some food.

This time I couldn't look away. I asked my friend's girlfriend if I could borrow a cat carrier. She loaned me one and a tin of wet food that the grey cat willingly followed into the carrier. She didn't care at all about being put into the carrier - all she wanted was a hand on her. She'd arch up against the top just so my hand would rest on her back for a moment.

We drove through rush hour traffic to the only shelter still open. We knew we couldn't keep her and I couldn't stand the thought of putting her back out on the streets to die slowly.

The shelter couldn't take her. Her ear was clipped so she was a "community cat" and outside their ability to help. They tried desperately to offer alternatives to me as I cried over her carrier, knowing I couldn't take her home but also that if I didn't I couldn't live with the thought of her back on the streets.

I made a Hail Mary call to a local friend who is very connected in our city. They didn't have my number saved but answered all the same to hear me sobbing about a cat I'd found and to please help me find a place for her. Please. If I don't find something then she'll be alone on the streets again to die.

My friend came through. I could keep the cat in their garage overnight and in the morning my friend would be back in the city and could find someone to help the cat.

The shelter folk gave me a crate and some food - their hands were tied but they didn't want to leave me with nothing. They were good people doing the best they could in their own system. Community cats were ones they weren't allowed to "waste" resources on. Ostensibly they'd been dealt with and their fate decided. There was nothing the shelter folks were allowed to do for them.

I took the cat to my friend's garage. She was settled into a crate on towels, happy as a clam to be warm and safe. This was a cat made to be loved and to love, as she immediately began trying to groom one of my friend's roommates. He stayed in the garage with her, giving her food and water and in exchange having no say on whether she was in his lap or not. She was always in his lap.

Nobby Nobbs (so named for the only other character known to man that is as scrungly as she is) was then formally adopted by my friend. Her tongue has healed, her fur remains scrungly, and she's every bit the rabid love bug I suspected her to be when she came to me yelling to be pet.

She's a TNR cat. Someone thought they were doing her a kindness in that and if nothing else she didn't add kittens to the world but that doesn't negate the pain she suffered before I found her - the broken teeth, the lacerated tongue, the ulcerated cheeks, the flea-bald patchiness of her coat.

I say this as someone who adores this cat and has the privilege to see her loved and cherished: I wish she'd never had to suffer what she did. I wish people were alright making the harder call that leads to less misery on the side of the cats.

TNR is a polite fiction, nothing more. Just so the humans can pretend they've done right by the same cats they're letting loose to die miserably somewhere else. As long as the humans don't see it it's fine.

The shelter folks told me she's a community cat and that I could take her home and release her by my house. Then I could feed her myself and keep up with her and know where she was! I could still keep her, after a fashion.

I am not proud of how I snarled back that I would never exchange a quick death for a slow one. I would be giving her a different funeral plot, not giving her a life. Even near me she'd be just as vulnerable to the innumerable predators that find cats quite delicious, let alone cars and poisons and the other cruelties humans practice on stray cats.

She's the second stray cat I've met that when I held them the cat melted in my arms, purring and so desperately wanting to be loved. The first cat I was able to trap and take to a local shelter only to find when I called to check on him a day later that his health had been so terrible, so beyond help, that he'd been put down. All the love in that tiny body lost because the people I lived beside didn't care enough to trap the cats they had.

My partner was asleep. I woke her up to crawl into her arms and sob, my heart breaking for the stupidity of the humans who hadn't cared enough to grant this poor little cat the chance to be either an indoor cat, loved and cared for, or to grant him a quick death long before I met him. I've other stories of the cats they kept around, essentially feeding the poor souls to the predatory birds and wandering dogs that frequented our area.

TNR doesn't work. It is a lie humans tell ourselves so we can pretend we haven't failed these animals on a massive scale. Cats are invasive and cause massive harm in their turn. It is humanity who needs to deal with this crisis, this horror we've made, and I pray one day we look it square in the face and vow to make it right.

[thegenderal]

sorry

[feminismandmedia]

LPT: Don't throw your junk mail away. Use it to to help the USPS instead!

Next time you get a credit card offer in the mail, or a junk piece of mail that includes a prepaid envelope or postcard, don't throw it away! Send the envelope back with a blank sheet of paper inside, or don't fill the postcard out, but still send it back. The company that sent it to you had to pay the USPS for postage on each one they get back. This is a way to support the USPS by doing very little, and sticking it to the annoying companies that want all of your money.

[daniel-oneiroi]

In the 90s we would send companies “hate mail” by stuffing prepaid envelopes with things like ‘blanks’ (flat heavy metal pieces), a roofing shingle) and layers of other competitors’ mail or junk news. This is because the company would have to pay more upon recieving the junk mail. It eats into them. It actually somewhat reduced our junk mail returnables, I think.  Send that mail y’all. 

[barrebard]

Except please don't do this to nonprofits!!

If you do this when you get a donation request or something from a nonprofit, you'll be forcing small organizations with very little overhead to deal with the incoming mail and paying for the postage.

Credit card companies? YES. Personal loan offers? ABSOLUTELY. The chain store you've never shopped at who bought your info from a competitor? BY ALL MEANS.

But don't do this to your local "Friends of the Library" fundraiser or homeless outreach program or anything like that. You'll be draining their limited resources that would be better used elsewhere.

[dragonsrequiem]

Feel free to do it to groups like Salvation Army, PETA, or Susan Komen cuz fuck them.

[thehonorablereverendfish]

Hey y'all. I was talking to a retired postmaster about this.

She was 100 percent for this, bit please PLEASE do not use metal pieces or roof tiles. It can jam the sorting machines and cost the office millions to replace it.

Cardstock? Other papers? Fine. They are flexible. They go through the machine without issue.

So go ahead, send the junk mail, but limit it to paper.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Waldinneres (In the Forest), 1933 painting by Hans Emmenegger

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Thank you @nuka-rockit I was actually going to ask if anyone spoke German and if that translation, which came from Wikipedia, was any sort of accurate. Fascinating. Titles are so important.

[ot3]

conservatives and fascists are obviously whom i would consider to be a more pressing political enemy but on a personal level the centrists are honestly more repellent to me on just an irrational gut level. i think having zero interest in anything other than maintaining the status quo because it has not inconvenienced you too much is pathetic, but what's worth is how many of them consider this complete disinterest in how the world around them should operate to be a more Mature and Enlightened perspective than those pesky heated people on ~both sides~ who just can't get get over caring about petty squabbles like "who counts as a full person" and "who deserves food, shelter, and water". absolutely repugnant.

[ot3]

like its not as if i Respect right wingers for being Committed To Their Principles because their principles are uhhhh evil but i sure as fuck Disrespect centrists for having none

[oswednesday]

one time at a funeral i panicked and said the first drink i could think of and the bartender made me the pina colada With all the fixings all the trims all the bells and whistles i didnt even ask imagine youre at a funeral and the person besides you is drinking a pina colada with whip cream as tall as the drink with a cherry and an umbrella, thats what happened to me

[teaboot]

I would immediately suspect you to be the whimsical assassin who killed them

[anarchistmemedistro]

[mckitterick]

hmmmm...

[daphnevermeer]

This Venn diagram comes across my dash very frequently and while I agree with the sentiment it just... it pisses me off so much. So many of these are nonsensical. What do you mean Lord of the Flies is a cross between The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World, and 1984? That makes no sense whatsoever. The society in Gattaca is obsessed with knowledge and educational attainment, it is the opposite of Fahrenheit 451. Did whoever make this even read/watch any of these. I am this close to reading everything in the chart that I haven't yet (Animal Farm, Logan's Run, and A Clockwork Orange) just so I can be pissed off even more.

[daphnevermeer]

@mckitterick I did a thing

[daphnevermeer]

With thanks to helpful people over on Threads. Come on guys, lets fill those Pure Illegible system, Distraction+Illegible system, and Distraction+Surveillance/control cells.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You know as an American born in the late 90s I’ve watched my country blow up foreigners on tv supposedly in the interest of national security since I was a toddler but quite frankly we live on a natural fortress of a continent with friendly nations to our north and south and have been attacked on our own soil literally two times in the past hundred years and we have military bases on every inhabited continent on earth. It’s never made sense to do these things for “national security”. It never will make sense unless you value the shareholders of weapons companies over the lives of children. And apparently a concerning amount of people do.

[lanfan]

Hey yall I just wanted to come on here and bring some attention to what’s happening at the detention center (really a concentration camp) Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. There is a hunger strike going on right now to protest the abhorrent conditions within the camp (allegations of torture, maggots and other bugs in the food, etc) and protests happening outside the camp. ICE is not allowing any politicians to come in (as is their right) to see the conditions of the camp. I would urge yall to do your own research, but if you want videos of some people who are actually there, here are some tik tok accounts you can go follow: @ bethanyquilter/ @ whoiskingtrivv/ @ Status Coup News/ @ L.A. TACO

And here is a video explaining what’s going on in more detail than I provided.

With everything else going on in the world, it can be hard to keep up with stuff going on at home, but ICE is still out here terrorizing innocent people. We must keep our eyes on them, and keep fighting.

Feel free to add more sources or info to this post, should you have any.

[tsscat]

I found this linktree here that has a master list of ways to help the detainees inside Delaney Hall: https://linktr.ee/SupportOurFamilies

SupportOurFamilies | Linktree

Please support immigrant families by donating to the GoFundMe's below and purchasing supplies via Amazon Wishlist to support detainee visito

I have heard that protestors outside need medical supplies, but I can’t find the best way to provide that if you are not nearby.

[thebleeding-heart]

their needs are changing rapidly, they mostly need Sudecon wipes and gas masks, last I heard, but the only way is to bring them directly there. for the most part they are asking people to join them there and hold the line, if possible. next best thing is to donate and call NJ reps to demand an end to the detention and torture!

[beemovieerotica]

dystopia

[the-breadgirl]

???

[oneheadtoanother]

[baraphalloplastyclinic]

I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?

Don't become a housewife.

[ladyfoxfire]

And if you do become a housewife, take steps to protect yourself. Make sure you’re legally married, for starters; stay-at-home girlfriends have very little legal recourse to claim their partner’s assets in a breakup. Make sure your name is on the house deed/rental agreement, and have your car in your name, even if your spouse is paying for it. Have your spouse transfer money every month into an account solely in your name, so you can buy yourself things without needing permission, but also so you can save up to leave if needed.

If your spouse fights you on any of this, then don’t quit your job. The tradwife to poverty pipeline is real, and so is financial abuse.

[dressedupliketheking]

also, many women/people experience controlling behaviour and domestic violence from their partner for the first time during pregnancy. don’t risk thinking “he’s just stressed, it’ll get better when the baby comes” because it won’t. neither you and your child will ever be safe with that man. get out as early and safely as you can

[asexual-amanita]

As summer is approaching, I’d like to remind everyone that you are not entitled to ask someone to cover up their scars, self inflicted or not. I don’t care if they’re big, I don’t care if they’re noticeable, or purple, or all over their body, or what. You can’t police people’s bodies.

[asexual-amanita]

This also goes for my friends with feeding tubes, ostomy bags, central lines and urinary catheters. People are allowed exist in bodies that stray from the expected norm.

[dailymanners]

Do not ever be rude or condescending to someone who asks "obvious" questions, no matter how obvious or silly you think the question is.

For one, in some cultures asking an obvious question is just a polite way of acknowledging the situation. So for example, if you just put your jacket on and start clocking out, a co-worker asking "oh, you done for the day and heading out now?" doesn't deserve you sneering at them like an idiot, scoffing, and saying "uh duh, just like I do every day at this time" when it's likely they knew the answer, but were just asking as a polite way of acknowledging the situation.

But even if they were genuinely unsure that you're leaving even though it seems obvious to you from context clues, so what? What does being rude and condescending to them achieve? Maybe they couldn't sleep last night so they're really out of it today, maybe they're dissociating, maybe they're about to pass out from low blood sugar, maybe some other employees sometimes put on their jacket and only clock out briefly but come back.

There's all sorts of reasons they could be confused about whether or not you're leaving, but intentionally making them feel bad achieves nothing except, well, making them feel bad. Either way, they're not hurting you or anyone by asking a "stupid" question, so there's no point in being rude about it. If you still want to make them feel bad about themselves for looking "stupid" when they weren't hurting anyone, that is the mindset of bullies and abusers.

[dailymanners]

Thank you everyone who is pointing out in the notes that this is usually an attempt to connect with someone and/or strike up a conversation. Because honestly in my experience 9 times out of 10 when someone asks an "obvious" question that's what they're trying to do. If someone walks into the kitchen and asks "oh are you cooking?" while you're standing over the stove holding a spatula, they probably already know the answer, but they're just trying to start a conversation with you and connect to you.

All the more reason it's sad and hurtful when these attempts are met with sneering and being treated like an idiot.

[depsidase]

[hotvampireadjacent]

I’ve been trying to share this since I found out. They are moving onto harassing people in Memphis.

Memphis is “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Here’s why you may not know that.

Community members face retaliation for trying to spread the word out, a lawsuit alleges.

Everyone was lovely in getting the word out about Chicago and Minnesota. I want to spread that awareness for folk in tennessee.