I think that part of what irks me about AI being used even for "small" stuff like meme graphics (aside from all the larger problems obviously) is like.... the time spent on it was part of the humor. "this is a silly inconsequential joke but I had to stop everything and spend 5 minutes making it" was, at least for me, part of the joke. Someone really took time out of their day to make me look at something silly they took time out of their day to make. Now it's like someone took time out of my day to make me look at something no one even made. Stop wasting my time if you aren't wasting yours too.
like there's only so many times you can say "hey don't say that, that's rude/bigoted/a dogwhistle" before everyone just stops talking to you. nothing changes except you're alone now. ask how i know.
If the trash pickup people stop doing their job for two weeks you'd be throwing a fucking tantrum. Same for the janitors who keep your office spaces and bathrooms clean. (And that's before the various illnesses start to spread all over your city from the build up of pathogens.)
The people responsible keeping our spaces clean (and thus, mostly disease-free) should both be paid more AND thanked more.
a rough timeline of events (from memory, there may be inaccuracies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic
the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal
this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately
somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large
following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor
today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea
the British tabloid press remains, and will always be, fucking evil
Went to google more news about professor Jason Arday, and I swear to God the first two pages of research are rancid propaganda sites smearing the man's reputation, up to and including popular Brazilian news magazine Veja.
This article by professor Kehinde Andrews clarifies more about the story of racist harassment Arday has been suffering since he fucking got a teaching job at Cambridge in the first place, in 2023, as the FIRST Black professor in that fucking stupid institution, who sure is taking it's sweet time defending their worker, despite already fucking checking his work for plagiarism and saying he didn't do it:
Arday's resignation has reignited questions about race and who is truly accepted at the highest levels of British academia
Several of the academics who harassed this man into suicide do not seem to have suffered at all in their academic careers. Actually, Dave Harris, who lost his Emeritus title for his racist behavior back in 2024 (something the news only call "criticizing Critical Race Theory", instead of "sent racist emails to fellow black academics"), was defended by Plymouth University, where he used to work, and fucking got the title back earlier this year.
1. He wasn’t the first Black Professor at Cambridge, but he WAS the youngest X
2. He was ALSO autistic, and nonverbal for the first 11 years of his life X
The rest of the story unfolds pretty much as described. And he was a fucking Sociologist studying racial equity in schools and academia. They publicly bullied a black autistic man to suicide for being imperfect whilst asserting a place for blackness in academia.
When I need to remind myself to put something on the grocery list and I don't have my phone on me, I use the Scrabble tile magnets on the fridge. But sometimes I don't have enough of the right letters and have to get creative.
STORYTIME. Last February, I sold a mug on Etsy. Common occurrence. Great. After it arrived at its new home, I got an email from the woman who bought it. She thanked me for the beautiful piece and remarked that the handle was perfect—she struggles with arthritis and finds many mugs difficult to hold. I was so touched!
Fast forward to six weeks ago—I receive an email from her husband, explaining he broke the mug (lol) and asking if I’d be willing to take on a commission to replace it. He reiterates how she has arthritis but also shares she used to make pottery, herself, but can only really paint, now. I say of course! Come to find out, he wants a WHOLE SET of mugs to replace the broken one. Even better! I end up making the whole set twice (I wasn’t satisfied with the first attempt), but finally get them packed up and sent off across the country.
I just received the kindest message from the husband, saying “It is not often in today's world that someone does 100% of what they have promised,” thanking me profusely, and sharing that his wife is already happily using the new mugs.
Anyway, I guess the point is that making art is hard. And commissions always cause me a lot of undue stress, but things like this remind me why I love creating and connecting with people. 💙
The FDA has upgraded an egg recall issued last month to “Class I,” its highest risk level, as it warns the public that consuming the products could cause “serious adverse health consequences or death.”
The recall of 1,589,577 dozen white-shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs was initially issued by Midwest Poultry Services in late July, which warned they might be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis.
According to the company, the eggs were produced and distributed from farms in Texas between June 6 and July 3 and have sell-by or best-by dates between July 20 and August 17. The recalled egg cartons have either the code P-1950 or 0840962 and Julian Dates between 157-184.
Recalled eggs were shipped to foodservice and retail customers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
Recalled eggs were available to consumers at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana; Brookshire Grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and other smaller retail and foodservice outlets in these states plus Mississippi and New Mexico.
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico are the currently affected states.
Phew. This one took, uh… a bit longer than expected due to other projects both irl and art-wise, but it’s finally here. The long-awaited domestic animal infographic! Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space to cover every single domestic animal (I’m so sorry, reindeer and koi, my beloveds) but I tried to include as many of the “major ones” as possible.
I made this chart in response to a lot of the misunderstandings I hear concerning domestic animals, so I hope it’s helpful!
Further information I didn’t have any room to add or expand on:
🐈 “Breed” and “species” are not synonyms! Breeds are specific to domesticated animals. A Bengal Tiger is a species of tiger. A Siamese is a breed of domestic cat.
🐀 Different colors are also not what makes a breed. A breed is determined by having genetics that are unique to that breed. So a “bluenose pitbull” is not a different breed from a “rednose pitbull”, but an American Pitbull Terrier is a different breed from an American Bully! Animals that have been domesticated for longer tend to have more seperate breeds as these differing genetics have had time to develop.
🐕 It takes hundreds of generations for an animal to become domesticated. While the “domesticated fox experiment” had interesting results, there were not enough generations involved for the foxes to become truly domesticated and their differences from wild foxes were more due to epigenetics (heritable traits that do not change the DNA sequence but rather activate or deactivate parts of it; owed to the specific circumstances of its parents’ behavior and environment.)
🐎 Wild animals that are raised in human care are not domesticated, but they can be considered “tamed.” This means that they still have all their wild instincts, but are less inclined to attack or be frightened of humans. A wild animal that lives in the wild but near human settlements and is less afraid of humans is considered “habituated.” Tamed and habituated animals are not any less dangerous than wild animals, and should still be treated with the same respect. Foxes, otters, raccoons, servals, caracals, bush babies, opossums, owls, monkeys, alligators, and other wild animals can be tamed or habituated, but they have not undergone hundreds of generations of domestication, so they are not domesticated animals.
🐄 Also, as seen above, these animals have all been domesticated for a reason, be it food, transport, pest control, or otherwise, at a time when less practical options existed. There is no benefit to domesticating other species in the modern day, so if you’ve got a hankering for keeping a wild animal as a pet, instead try to find the domestic equivalent of that wild animal! There are several dog breeds that look and behave like wolves or foxes, pigeons and chickens can make great pet birds and have hundreds of colorful fancy breeds, rats can be just as intelligent and social as a small monkey (and less expensive and dangerous to boot,) and ferrets are pretty darn close to minks and otters! There’s no need to keep a wolf in a house when our ancestors have already spent 20,000+ years to make them house-compatible.
🐖 This was stated in the infographic, but I feel like I must again reiterate that domestic animals do not belong in the wild, and often become invasive when feral. Their genetics have been specifically altered in such a way that they depend on humans for optimal health. We are their habitat. This is why you only really see feral pigeons in cities, and feral cats around settlements. They are specifically adapted to live with humans, so they stay even when unwanted. However, this does not mean they should live in a way that doesn’t put their health and comfort as a top priority! If we are their world, it is our duty to make it as good as possible. Please research any pet you get before bringing them home!
I am once again stating that the last part of the infograph was NOT an “adopt don’t shop” message and I assumed I clearly said “do not support unethical breeders,” as in breeders who breed more for aesthetics than health.
I did not mean for it to sound like I was calling all breeders unethical. It’s saying that if you truly want a breed with unethical traits, then it is better to adopt it than to encourage more breeding of that trait (though you could also buy from a breeder who is specifically avoiding those traits.) I’m sorry this point was not clear enough.
Also, I have been answering questions and adding a lot of clarification in the comments and reblogs here, but I’d like to address some of the points that keep coming up:
🔴 A “blood sport” is any sport or entertainment that involves intense fighting, bloodshed, and/or risk of death. There is a list of bloodsports on the Wikipedia page here. (I would highly recommend not looking too far into the animal-related ones as they are very upsetting. The 17th-18th century Europeans were barbaric.) A blood sport does not always entail “making animals fight each other.” See for example bullfighting, which involves a human fighting a bull. The bloodsport listed under fancy rats alludes to “rat-baiting” which involved throwing a bunch of rats in a pit for a terrier to kill, and taking bets on how long it took the dog to kill all the rats. This is not necessarily what they were domesticated for, but this was what led to fancy rats eventually being domesticated. The prettiest, nicest rats were spared from the pit, dressed in ribbons, and became pets.
🐓 I somehow forgot to add “bloodsport” under chickens, as well as “livestock guarding, companionship” under African/Chinese Geese. This was a lot of information to keep track of at once. :T Some breeds of chickens were definitely bred specifically for cockfighting, and African and Chinese Geese also make good guard animals.
🐄 While only some of the animals here have “companionship” listed under “bred for,” all of them could technically be kept for companionship. Those are just the species which have been specifically bred to be pets in the past or currently. While sheep can make good pets, there are no breeds that are specifically bred for that purpose, that I am aware of.
🍑 Asses were named before “ass” became a slang term for buttocks. In fact, the slang term was originally “arse,” a separate word from the animal, but the r was dropped in the 1860s. Etymology is interesting like that, and it’s unfortunate these beautiful endangered equids have to live at the whims of our ever changing vocabulary. Let’s not hold human language against them, eh?
🦎 There are certainly gray areas as to what makes a good pet and what doesn’t, especially when it comes to reptiles and invertebrates. In general, domestic species will always make better pets as they are specifically adapted to live with us and more resources are available for their care. Some reptiles, like corn snakes and bearded dragons, have adapted well to being bred in human care, and are easily tamed. But whether there are domestic non-avian reptiles is a point of contention. There are certainly many being bred in captivity for their colors and markings, but that does not make a species domesticated. Species that do exceedingly well in captivity, are not being captured from the wild to bolster the pet trade, and don’t have specialized diets or at least don’t have diets that are hard to replicate and make easily accessible to pet owners, are usually fine to keep as pets. (I myself have a corn snake, sand boa, crested gecko, and tarantulas.) It’s definitely a case by case basis. But you’re not gonna have as hard a time figuring out the ethics of keeping a particular pet if it’s a species that’s fully domesticated.
🐍 Oh yeah, and my examples at the end of the infograph were meant to be examples of unethical breeding and not examples of unethical breeds, but I unfortunately wasn’t clear about that. Spider is a morph of ball python, not a breed. There are no breeds of non-avian reptile, merely morphs which are aesthetic colors and/or patterns.
🐫 There are three species of camel alive today: the Domestic Dromedary, the Domestic Bactrian, and the Wild Bactrian. However, both wild ancestors of the Domestic Dromedary and the Domestic Bactrian are extinct. The Wild Bactrian was originally thought to be the ancestor of the Domestic Bactrian, but genetic studies have shown that these species diverged before humans were even a Thing. So, yes, there are still wild camels, but the Wild Bactrians are critically endangered and pretty rare. Most “wild” populations of camel today are actually feral.
🇲🇽 I was also a little confused about axolotls while researching this. The Aztecs did not domesticate them as far as I could find; they just hunted them. Scientists took them to France for scientific research and due to their high capacity for breeding and hybridization with tiger salamanders their gene pool is now quite different from that of wild axolotls. I listed “meat” in their “bred for” section because I found that they were raised for food in Japan, but apparently it is just this one specific restaurant in Osaka that serves them.
🐴 Like Wild and Domestic bactrian camels, Domestic Horses and Przewalski’s Horses diverged long before the domestication of the horse. There were apparently some attempts to domesticate Przewalski’s Horses in history, possibly resulting in the Botai horses, but the living population has never been domesticated, according to the most recent studies.
🐈 Cats are fully domesticated. They are very different from African Wildcats. They are not semi-domesticated or semi-wild, and they should not be allowed to roam outdoors unsupervised both for their own health and safety and the health of the environment.
At this point I've seen like three unconnected pieces of American media set in a superficially idyllic small town with a big fuckoff lake that functions as a liminal boundary between the Known and the Unknown and in which a major character attempts suicide by drowning, and now I'm wondering if the Liminal Death Lake is just a thing American small towns have.
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