Really cool graphic broadly explaining how we've selectively bred dogs over millenia for different jobs. Drives like herding and guarding prey animals may seem counterintuitive to the dogs' nature but these actions are in fact rooted in ancestral hunting instincts, we've just "muted" down the rest of the hunt sequence resulting in a kill (but even well bred dogs need training!). This is also why crossing dogs belonging to different job types should be carefully thought out, if your breeding goals are a calm nonworking companion animal the last thing you want is to breed is a royal flush of this predatory sequence.
My very cool partner has been working on a site called webcomicweb to try to help collect comics and help people find them, spurred on by hiveworks dying* and randomwebcomic's domain expiring.
more info under the cut, but it is a voluntary webcomics directory and we'd love to have you check it out to add comics or read comics if you are interested!
*more complicated than that so look it up if this affects you ok
----
We're both millennials who grew up with the birth of the webcomic format, spawned from passionate strangers making things out of the human need to make art and stories and connect. When you stumbled from comic to comic through webrings and link pages before the internet got so small and so centralized and before comics became a business model for middlemen who have never cared about them.
webcomicweb can't promise any of the things a big, corporate product can promise because it's run by one person and hosted on neocities as a passion project with a $5 domain. we're not planning on making this a business and we don't know how long it'll last! but at least! we give a shit! my partner's going to keep paying for this and keep updating this directory for at least as long as our own comic is running (estimating 8 years at least at this rate lmao) so if this sounds appealing to you: bookmark the site, send us your links, tell your friends, whatever!
some features I wanna highlight bc I like them:
default randomized comic order - Zani specifically did not want to have the list end up with a bias based on time or alphabet. every time you refresh it re-shuffles so everyone gets seen!
filterable ratings from Everyone to Explicit
comics can ONLY be submitted by comic owners, so if you don't want to be listed you will not ever be dragged in by mass link scrapers or w/e!!
no monetization - this is literally JUST a directory for serving and displaying links to comics. because we like comics. because we want more people to read cool things and we want to read more cool things.
There's categories for paused, scrapped, and finished comics as well as ongoing! it's hard to get people to look at old things you've made in this feed-based world!!! but there's still so many people who wanna see it!!
anyway yeah that's my pitch!!! neither me nor zani benefits from this in any way other than the fact that we get to read and share comics! that is literally the whole goal! They've also been sending out emails asking people if they want in, but anyway they are so cool and handsome check out their site
It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.
It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.
I think people want to help the environment in small but tangible ways, which is hard right now because of.. well... because of The Horrors. And being able to say 'wow! I helped this creature cross a dam' makes you feel good.
I also think that most people can relate to a small, helpless creature trying to get from one place to another and there's a FUCKIN WALL in the way.
But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.
Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:
Foldit (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
Bioblitz, an event where citizens identify as many species in an area within a period of time
Species Watch (animal species)
BOINCâs Compute for Science
Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects
Label trees in aerial photos
Count cells in fossils and modern leaves
Digitize Atmospheric Data
Count penguins
US-based Citizen Science Database
eBird (bird identification)
Merlin (bird identification by sound)
iNaturalist (nature identification)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Senators are going to vote on whether or not we should continue to send aid to Israel on Wednesday, November 13th. Call them, bombard their phone lines with calls. Every fucking day. We have a chance of doing something about this.
While you are at it, please share @zinaanqar âs campaign (link here)
The date for the vote is coming up! US citizens, please contact your senators and ask them to cosponsor joint resolutions 111-116! More info in link above.
Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)
Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.
In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.
We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.
There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).
So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?
I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.
**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **
We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.
You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.
At the national level, please support:
The Nature Conservancy
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)
National Audubon Society
Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)
These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!
THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.
Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...
At the regional level:
These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.
PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS
DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)
PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)
UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)
NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')
WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)
INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)
LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.
INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)
HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)
OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)
A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.
At the state and local level:
You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!
Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!
Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!
Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society
Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.
Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding
Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)
Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted
MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.
On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:
Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center
Pollinator Pathway
Audubon Native Plant Finder
Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)
National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)
Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)
MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)
Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)
Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)
Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)
There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.
Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).
In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.
Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.
A 2nd trump presidency will basically be one of the last nails in our coffins, as the US, one of the biggest polluters, is going to be no longer have no qualms over fucking over the entire planet.
I get people's immediate priority isn't this, so they aren't talking about it, it's their rights and livelyhoods, it is totally understandable.
But talking to one of my professors today really showed me that the scientific community really is panicking and the planet is on its knees.
HOWEVER,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, we cannot lose hope, bc climate doomrism is as bad as climate denial
Take this time, while these issues are fresh on our minds, to educate yourself. Get involved. Share news with others. Call out misinformation. Do everything you can, while we still can.
if you're feeling powerless right nowâand god knows I amâhere's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted
life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters
Please, spread this for those who might need it right now
U.S. suicide hotline: call or text 988 (available 24 hours)
U.S. trans lifeline: (877) 565-8860 (when you call, youâll speak to a trans/nonbinary peer operator. full anonymity and confidentiality)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) â provides 24/7 confidential support and referrals for individuals and families facing mental health and substance use disorders, including panic attacks and anxiety.
LGBT National Help Center: (888) 843-4564
Trevor Project: Call (866) 488-7386, text START to 678-678, or chat online.
Take care of yourself and each other. Please stay safe âĄ
it's important to note that there are 5 types of fire extinguishers & each must be used exclusively for the class of fire they're designed for - using the wrong extinguisher can be dangerous. here's a helpful diagram:
& you might think they look intimidating, but it's very easy to use a fire extinguisher:
pull the safety pin (usually yellow) out of the handle.
aim the hose at the base of the fire.
squeeze the handle to discharge.
do consider acquiring a fire blanket for your kitchen, too! they're (generally) more affordable than extinguishers & again, easy to use: you simply take the blanket out of its case, hold it by the tabs & place it carefully over the flames.
Fire extinguishers can also have letter categorization instead, where they're labeled as A (dry fuels like fabric, paper, wood, etc), B (flammable liquids, like grease and gasoline), C (electrical fires), D (flammable metals, usually only in labs), or K (large kitchen fires, usually only in industrial and commercial kitchens).
Multipurpose fire extinguishers can have multiple labels and are safe to use for all types of fires covered under those categories; I have a dry chemical A-B-C extinguisher so I can use it for any small fire aside from flammable metals. If you have multiple fire extinguishers in your home, you may have a B-C one for your kitchen.
Technically speaking, that's what a multipurpose ABC extinguisher is for. It covers pretty much any fire that is likely to occur in your home. Some people just have more specialized extinguishers for a lot of reasons (price, availability, whatbwas already in their home, etc) or multiple extinguishers that are better suited to specific things.
Having more than one extinguisher in your home can be really helpful regardless in case a fire actually makes one of them inaccessible, like cutting your access to the room it's in, and having one in the kitchen specifically for kitchen fires can make a huge difference when you don't have to run across the house to put out a growing fire.
I hope this helps anyone who's trying to design their oc using a wheelchair, it's not a complete guide but I tried my best! deffo do more research if you're writing them as a character
While the giant bill was fake, it represented a very real accomplishment. The group raised more than $17,000, which purchased more than $1.6 million in medical debt owed by Philadelphians, according to their nonprofit partner RIP Medical Debt.
The fact that this can be done at all shows how utterly bullshit the entire system is. There was literally no reason for that medical debt to exist in the first place.
Let's say you owe a private hospital ten thousand dollars, but you have very few assets, so they're pretty sure they're never getting any of that back. There's ninety nine other people who also each owe the hospital ten thousand dollars. (It doesn't have to be a hospital; any debt can be sold this way.) The hospital has shit to do and the low chances of you paying them mean it's an unnecessary drain on their time and resources to hound you all for it. But they can get *some* money, by selling your debt to a third party.
Let's say the sell each ten thousand dollar debt for ten dollars (I'm making all these numbers up for simplicity). So a third party gives the hospital one thousand dollars, and now all hundred of you owe that third party ten thousand instead! You're in the clear with the hospital, you owe it to these guys now! And their job is to hound and harrass you for the money you owe. If one of you pays up more than a thousand dollars, you've covered their initial investment. These guys are gambling on the likelihood that enough of you can pay your debts that you make it worth the time they spend tracking you and harrassing you.
Or, instead of trying to get the money out of you, they can just... decide you don't owe them. Why not? They own the debt. They can fork out a thousand bucks, buy a million in debt, and forgive it. That's what these guys did. (This is also a favourite move of John Oliver; if you ever see headlines about John Oliver forgiving debt, this is what he's doing). A small payment can take a massive weight off the shoulders of a lot of struggling people.
Again, I made up the numbers to simplify the math. But this is how the process works.
thing is, the debt companies *hate* this, because it means that it gives hope to people saddled with unimaginable debt that someone will come along and buy that debt and cancel it. So more people don't pay their debts, and they lose money. Debt buying companies do their *damnedest* to keep people like these philadelphhians and john oliver from doing exactly this.
you can do this too! Follow OP's link to https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ and donate whatever you can. For every $1 you donate, they buy $100 of debt and cancel it. I donate $10 each month just to get that amazing email that says I've been personally responsible for cancelling $1000 of medical debt - it's genuinely the best $10 I spend each month đ
Library of Congress - historical posters and photos
NASA - you guessed it
Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie
Even Adobe has some free images
There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone elseâs work and pass it off as our own.Â
Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3
They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.
Are you constantly wanting to do A Thing but never know how to do The Thing?
Does figuring out where to start a task and knowing what steps need to be taken to complete the task stress you out?
Lemme introduce you to...
goblin.tools
For example, you want to clean your oven.
You simply go to the website and in the "Add new item" box, you type "clean the oven". You can then also use the lil chillies next to the plus to change the level of breaking-down you'd like. Next, hit the magic wand-looking button to break it down!
You can check off items as you go, and further break things down if desired!
It works on large tasks such as planning a cross-country trip, writing a book or going on vacation and smaller tasks such as cleaning an oven.
There's also tools for task time estimation, meal-prep that takes into account dietary constraints, equipment and such, and a braindump compiler.
It's available as an IOS/Android app for less than a dollar, or a free web app. I can't hype this up enough, the developers deserve so much love for this.
