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report and block. i'd also appreciate it if you shared this post, bc that blog was JUST created and was already tagging a LOT of people, and i know not everyone has the scam-sensing instinct, even if this might seem obvious to some.
Mom had that, too. (She had a lot of different things wrong with her. On her death certificate, under the “contributing factors” section, it was consolidated under the title “connective tissue disease overlap syndrome”, which is a fancy medical term for people who have a lot of different chronic conditions that affect the connective tissues in some way, especially if at least some of them are autoimmune in nature. And by the way, blood counts as a connective tissue.)
if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"
No, but Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has signed a new law that protects LGBTQ+ youth from conversion therapy!
"Conversion Therapy is harmful, can traumatise kids, and is a scam to waste people's hard-earned money. This new law provides Coloradans who have been subject to this dehumanising treatment with the tools to heal and move on to live strong, healthy and authentic lives.”
It is not nearly common enough knowledge that most Native tribes in the U.S. don't actually own all of the land within their reservation. There are millions of acres of reservation land that tribes don't legally own and they have no control over how that land is used. Like, there are a lot of different concepts tied in with the land back movement, but a major one is literally just getting reservation land back into tribal ownership.
joining the war on kids reading any book they want on the side of kids reading any book they want. simply you will be fine. it's even good to be confronted with things you don't understand and even find upsetting, uncomfortable and difficult. it's a surprise tool that will help you later.
literally ok so not a funny story but kind of funny? when I was nine I encountered rape in a book and I was like hey mom what’s this mean and she explained it and I was like oh. gross. and then like two weeks later a girl on the bus abruptly disclosed her csa and we were all like ????? what ???? but I was like wait hang on there’s a word for that ☝️🤓 and explained what it meant and that it was illegal and that you could talk to a teacher or my mom if it had happened to you and everyone was like ohhhhh I see I see and very somberly comforted the girl (she was safe she was removed from her home and living with my neighbor at the time so it wasn’t Urgent)
Spread the word! This is super messed up! I hope she wins the lawsuit. The water in your sink should be CLEAR. This woman should be considered a HEROINE. Instead, she got ARRESTED. So let’s ALL speak up about this issue! They can’t get all of us.
I wish all Black girls a clear shot at this world. I wish all Black girls a full belly. I wish all Black girls a respite from their many troubles. I wish all Black girls nothing but grace, prosperity, and ease. Black girls I am hoping for your continued safety and success every single day.
yeah u freaks up north look and sound exactly like this when u pretend that us southern queers are perfectly complicit in our own eradication - for the heinous crime of not living in a liberal population center.
If anything, queer people in the south (as well as other marginalized people in the south, such as Black and Brown people, disabled people, etc.) need MORE help because of where they live.
An exercise in empathy for my fellow northerners: imagine that it was you. Imagine that, every day, you live in an area where you have to see posters put up calling for your death. Imagine your very existence being declared a problem on every other billboard. Imagine having to have a mental map in your head about which neighbors are and are not plotting to kill you, or which streets you can or can’t safely walk down, or which stores you can and can’t shop at. Imagine having to hide huge parts of yourself from the world so you can stay alive. Imagine that you and your friends and family are constantly in danger. Imagine that, maybe you live in a safe neighborhood, but it’s small and not very politically powerful, so the people in charge of things treat you like you don’t matter. Imagine having the people in charge of where you live enact laws that discriminate against you, all the time. Imagine there’s no escape. Imagine that home is a battlefield for you. Imagine that you’re in this type of situation and you also have no money. These are the realities for too many people. They need help.
Did you know babies have arm bones that are barely stronger than a pencil? So please be careful with babies’ arms. Don’t be mean to babies. Be gentle. They just got here and they’re very tiny and fragile.
To Have As Much Compassion For the Coyote As the Rabbit
Spring is here, and all throughout my social media are posts by people panicking about coyotes. It’s not uncommon for these native canines to be more visible this time of year since they have dens full of hungry pups to feed and protect. You might see them on the hunt for mice and other rodents, or you could be quietly but firmly escorted away from a den site. There’s a chance you’ll even see a coyote toting a nice, fat rabbit home to her pups.
That last one tends to upset some folks. I’ve seen people say they’ve deliberately scared away predatory animals to cause them to drop their prey, or in some cases even physically wrestled the prey away. Sure, that may make you feel like some sort of hero for saving the rabbit. But why does the rabbit deserve to live while the coyote’s pups slowly starve to death? Why should a Cooper’s hawk not be allowed to eat the house finch it just plucked from a convenient bird feeder? Who says we are right to get in the way of a garter snake capturing a tree frog? And what if the rabbit you liberated has internal injuries that slowly kill it anyway once it runs away from you in fright?
Read under the cut to find out how many self-described "nature lovers" only really love part of nature.
Many of us have a Disneyfied approach to nature. We have a great deal of sympathy for herbivores* like Bambi and Thumper, and we give Flower the striped skunk a free pass since most of what he eats is insects. We might get annoyed when Bambi starts to browse on the vegetables and rose bushes, but we don’t react with the sort of wailing dismay that we do when a mountain lion takes out one of Bambi’s herd members.
And yet an American robin tugging earthworms out of the ground and swallowing them alive is no different from a bobcat pouncing on the robin. Both are examples of one animal preying upon another, a perfectly normal part of the cycles of nature for 800 million years. Without carnivores (and insectivores and omnivores), herbivores would quickly overpopulate, depleting plant communities to ecologically disastrous states, and crash life as we know it. Life is all about inhabiting niches, and carnivores fill their evolutionary roles quite effectively.
Many people who claim they “love nature” only love the herbivorous, gentle, fuzzy parts of it, and refuse to examine or change their revulsion of or violence toward the rest. That’s a big problem. The elements of nature they consider to be “ugly” or gross” are no less important than the “pretty” or “adorable” ones. And systematically removing the “bad” animals can have a detrimental effect on the entire ecosystem. The benighted person who kills every snake they see is only going to cause an increase in rodent populations, which of course raises the likelihood of diseases, crop damage, and gnawed electrical wires in the attic.
Moreover, when we try to apply the limitations of human ideals of morality to the rest of nature, we ignore the concept of existence value: that all beings are important simply because they are here with us in this amazing, vibrant world we share. What are we implying when we say that the coyote pup is less deserving of life than the rabbit?
We have interfered with nature way too much as it is, in much larger ways than this. Yet it is a simple act to allow these individual interactions between species play out as they naturally would without feeling that we have to step in and play moral referee. Our arrogance at thinking that nature exists for us and our priorities is how we found ourselves in our current ecological predicament. The least we can do is be hands-off in our local food web. Consider it good practice for having healthier boundaries toward nature, rather than constantly centering ourselves in every decisions we make regarding other living beings.
Finally, practice having some compassion for the coyote busily trying to feed her young–and herself. She can’t run to the grocery store and get a package of industrially farmed beef to make burgers for the kids. Her entire life is a constant race against death, whether from starvation, disease, extreme heat or cold, and of course the interference of humans. Imagine the relief she must feel when she successfully manages to catch something bigger than a mouse–do you think we’re the only ones whose reward centers in our brains light up at a job well done? Think of how excited your dog gets when he manages to catch the ball–that’s not only a trait of domesticated animals.
Have some compassion for the coyote pups eagerly awaiting their next meal and their parents' warmth. Photo by John Harrison, CCA-SA-3.0-Unported
Give and take, life and death, nutrients and energy endlessly cycling through body after body after body of animal, plant, fungus, bacteria–that is the grand dance in which the coyote and the rabbit play their parts. Appreciate this eons-old round without feeling the need to alter the tempo, and be glad that tonight the coyote pups will sleep contentedly with full stomachs.
*For the record, many “herbivores” will opportunistically eat meat, live or dead, for the nutrients. Bambi and his buddies are quite happy to pluck a perfectly healthy baby bird or two out of a nest as a snack, and will chew on carrion now and then, too.
Did you enjoy this post? Consider preordering my book The Everyday Naturalist, taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, or checking out my other articles! You can even buy me a coffee here!
"dolphins are completely evil" I actually don't think we should assign human morality to animals with no concept of law or civilisation with an intelligence roughly equating to that of a toddler
"Dolphins are evil" is just a reactionary backlash to years of earnestly believing dolphins were all benevolence and rescuing sailors only to find out they can be dangerous and violent like any other large wild animal.
"Sharks are nice" is a similar phenomenon in the opposite direction. Pop culture portrays sharks as malevolant killing machines who crave human flesh, so when people realize they're just animals who don't attack people any more than other predators, they overcompensate into thinking you can just swim with great whites with no danger.
The reality, of course, is that both dolphins and sharks are large wild animals who should be approached with caution and respect if at all. It's probably best for you and the animal to admire them from a safe distance.
yes to all of the above but also consider
from the perspective of other animals we are likewise large wild animals that should be avoided.
don't take it personally if you don't get disney moments, just let animals do their thing and remember that humanity has wiped out over 70% of the world's vertebrates since the 70s
*please just respect animals okay*
Rare triple combo where everyone sucks: above you can see a mother who uses A PADLOCK to lock his son into this tent bed thing every night because he's autistic, in the first comment you can see the "parents of autistic people are sooo brave it must be horrible to exist around a disabled person 🥺" archetype, and then there's the third asshole
