if you set off a rube goldberg type death trap to kill someone, if it's a long enough machine, it ceases to become your fault if somebody dies at the end. that's how I've gotten away with it all these years, and why I'm still going to heaven.
AMERICANS!!! DO NOT DO THIS TO FLOCK 'SECURITY' CAMERAS. REPOST AND SPREAD THE WORD
do not get IR blocking fabric or thick wool to cover your nose and mouth
do not get IR blocking sunglasses since facial recognition has moved up to targeting and identifying the upper face
do not avoid having your phone or any bluetooth devices around these cameras as they can detect and track those signals
do not buy cheap green lasers 1 milliwatt or above from etsy or walmart or amazon (i will not try and find a link if you ask)
do not use them to fry those fuckers from a distance damage the delicate inner sensors by pointing the beam in the lenses
AND unless you want to cost Flock more money in repairs, do not buy a small circle saw or a reciprocating saw and cut down the pole
OR do not climb said poles, spray paint on the solar panels, cover the lens with paint or a sticker, then use bolt cutters to sever the wires
when doing all these things, DO NOT avoid using latex gloves as fingerprints can leak through
DO NOT USE DEFLOCK TO FIND FLOCK SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS NEAR YOU
remember, flock is for YOUR safety :) even though crime rates have not gone down since they were implemented, they're being abused to track down exes and s/os, and many face pools or houses or schools or gymnasiums! Where there are no liscence plates to be found!
DO NOT DO THESE THINGS and enjoy a life under surveillance!
enjoy living in the country where 87,000 of these cameras were used to track down a woman who got an abortion!
enjoy living in the country where there's no consequences for a flock exec to watch a inside of a gymnastics place without their knowledge!
Remember, this is their American Dream.
EDIT: 53 cities have cancelled contracts with flock and are now turning to Axon, in which 🎺 invested 1-5 million dollars earlier this year.
THE ABOVE IMAGE IS AI GENERATED AND HAS MISINFORMATION!!
there is a link to actual factual information in the MANY comments calling this out: https://steady.page/en/naturematchcuts/posts/28951404-a41f-4215-ab89-bc35dbc41233
I'm putting it in the main body (as many have already done) because none of y'all read the comments, apparently and I'm very tired of seeing this.
And the person who wrote that article on Steady got A LOT WRONG. Like, a LOT, a lot.
First, let's address the suction claim, as that's the one I see most people pushing back on despite it being a documented scientific fact that's been the focus of several studies over the past couple of decades. This research article discusses it:
Response mechanisms of snails to the pulling force and its potential application in vacuum suction
"The flexible body increases work consumption by stretching and deformation during pulling, and a cavity with negative pressure differential can exist at the interface to help resist the pulling."
"Negative pressure differential" = suction. That's what suction is. The snail's slime is a critical part of maintaining this suction, which I think is very cool! It makes sense, too - have you ever tried to stick a dry suction cup to a dry window? Wetting the suction cup first helps it adhere.
This TechBriefs article talks about it as well and explains how it works in layman's terms: https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/50807-snail-inspired-soft-suction-climbing-robots
"Snails can stably slide across a surface with only a single high-payload sucker, offering an efficient adhesive locomotion mechanism for next-generation climbing robots. The critical factor for snails’ sliding suction behavior is mucus secretion, which reduces friction and enhances suction."
So, we know snails DO use suction, in direct contradiction of what this person claims ("walking snails don’t produce a vacuum, they are no suction pads"). They did absolutely no research on this. I will additionally note that the snail's weight would be a safety issue in lifting larger species, but even in smaller ones, the suction force that holds the snail to its substrate is very strong for the snail. Trying to break its suction through upward tugging requires you to use an amount of force that risks harming the snail - its size and weight have nothing to do with this part. The force needed to break suction is proportionate to the snail. This means pulling is dangerous for giant African land snails and tiny little garden snails alike!
Now let's talk about injury. That one's a little more difficult, because even though there's a lot out there about snail injuries that's aimed at people with pet snails (this website's page on snail mantles offers a brief description of mantle tears and mantle collapse, with photos; this one goes a bit more in-depth), it is technically anecdotal. I haven't been able to find veterinary resources for snails yet. But it's true that the mantle is what connects the snail's body to its shell, and based on these sources, it is also true that the mantle can be torn, that it can collapse, and that mantle collapse can easily be fatal, so the infographic - although oversimplified - gets all of that right.
And as far as good sources go, this website offers a post from last summer discussing this very topic, and its authors went so far as to include an expert opinion:
Whether in forums or on social media, it’s often said that you should never pick up snails by their shells. The animals are so firmly attached to the ground that pulling on the shell can injure internal organs, as noted by the online gardening magazine “24Garten.de.” Unfortunately, there is little valid information to support this claim. PETBOOK therefore asked a snail expert whether you should indeed never pick up snails by their shells.
Can You Pick Up Snails by Their Shells?
The short answer: Only with caution. And never abruptly. Walter Wimmer, snail expert and head of the “Regional Nature Conservation” division at the Lower Saxony State Agency for Water Management, Coastal, and Nature Conservation, warns: “If you pull too hard on their shell, it can indeed cause injuries to the snail’s soft body due to overstretching of sensitive structures.”
The reason: Snails adhere particularly firmly to the ground with their muscular foot through slime secretions. Simply pulling them up by the shell risks not only startling and stressing the animal but also causing real physical damage—especially to the so-called mantle, which connects the shell to the body. In the worst case, this can lead to death.
(emphasis added.)
The same website goes on to describe ways to pick up snails that are less risky - including the shell-tapping method (Wimmer cautions us to be careful to tap in a way that doesn't damage the shell). It's true that snails brush against things all the time, but passively bumping into something with only the weight of your tiny body is not the same physical sensation as a larger external force poking at you!
Finally, let's look at direction. Whether or not you set snails down in the direction they were heading won't matter. It's more important to place it somewhere dark and damp. But direction IS important for some larger animals that occasionally need to be relocated for safety, so I can understand offering that as advice simply as "best practice" for when you need to move something a short distance. And even though a snail has no plan for where it's going, it is leaving the place where it was for a reason - too dry, too bright, no food; a snail is a simple creature but these are survival factors it can evaluate - so I do think moving the snail away from where it's leaving is still a good idea.
At the end of the day, a snail is a soft and delicate animal attached quite firmly to its hard shell above and the hard ground beneath, and lifting the shell as though it were a handle attached to the snail, rather than part of the snail's sensitive body, simply is not safe. Guiding the snail onto a leaf or twig is safest if you have time, but tapping on the shell is a good way to encourage the snail to break suction so you can lift the animal safely.
.
I'm going to scream about that "debunking" article for a minute under this Keep Reading because this is like the third time i've had to post this essay and I need to scream lmao.
Here's what the person on Steady says:
"The mantle is more inside the shell, snails don’t walk on their mantle. And they don’t break their foot." The infographic is pretty clearly pointing to the mantle stretching uncomfortably; it never says they walk on their mantle. It does connect the body to the shell, as the infographic shows. As for the breaking of the foot, if you click on the injury sources I linked above, you'll see at least one photo that looks surprisingly similar to the torn foot. It can happen.
"Walking snails don’t produce a vacuum, they are no suction pads." This author, once again, did no research on this at all. NONE. They made an assumption and looked at the Wikipedia article on gastropods (not even snails!!!!!!!), didn't see anything contradicting them, and took that as confirmation of their bias.
"If you take a snail quickly and with sensible fingers, it will automatically detach from the floor and move naturally. The bigger danger is that a human’s grip is too strong and breaks the shell. Touch the soft part out of the shell shortly and they will retract very quickly!" Do not pull quickly. The snail will likely detach from its substrate pretty quickly - the infographic DOESN'T SAY OTHERWISE - but please wait for it to do so.
"The organs of a snail (Wikipedia illu, mostly inside the shell) and their mantle are only hurt by raw violence destroying the shell, e.g., bird attacks or humans’ shoes." Fucking excuse me? I promise, you can hurt or kill a snail without ever damaging the shell. I promise. If Jack, a human, is wearing sticky shoes to climb his beanstalk, and the fabled giant grabs him by the wrists and yanks upwards, what the fuck do you think will happen to Jack's spine? To his shoulders? His hips? Yes, the snail's organs are mostly inside the shell (the infographic (once again) doesn't say otherwise), but that has nothing to do with the squishy bits frequently outside the shell that can be stepped on or stretched to the point of harm.
"The right side claims: 1. Touching the shell gently will 2. cause the snail to retract very slowly." WHERE????? Where does it say this??? Screenshot it and show it to me. I'll fucking wait.
(...Yeah, that's right, it doesn't say that. It instructs YOU to LIFT slowly. Probably because if you lift quickly, you risk pulling the shell away from the soft body of the snail within before it's finished releasing.)
"You wanted to know why I’m so furious? You see, how much time and energy I spent only to fact-check and tell the facts instead of just composing a fascinating article about snails." THIS PERSON DID NOT FACT-CHECK. They glanced at the Wikipedia article on gastropods, and then wrote an article explaining what they already thought was true.
For anyone who's made it this far, PLEASE remember to look for more than one source when "debunking" something. Please remember to do your own research. Please remember that while AI can be incorrect (I hate AI too!! I hate that I have to defend this thing!!), that doesn't mean it's always incorrect. I know it's tempting to see "this is AI" and go "oh it must be wrong!" but you need to resist that urge. Save the post to your drafts to investigate it when you have time before you reblog - otherwise, you risk spreading additional misinformation.
ID / TL;DW: young Black man explains the history of voodoo dolls: they originated in England, where Black people where prohibited from learning to read or write, to help witches keep track of what ailed their patients. Eg., person goes to witch and laments headache, they treat their headache and make a small doll (called "poppet"), trying to represent them as good as possible, stick a needle in its head and put it up a shelf. When they return next week, the witch takes their poppet and asks about their headache. If it's gone, they remove the needle, otherwise they know they have to treat a rather persistent headache.
"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?
This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.
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