#human stupidity

[best-chaotic-neutral]

If you ever feel stupid, just remember that someone up in corporate got paid money to re-organize the hair care section of my store by fucking hair color.

Not brand, not alphabetically, no, by fucking color

As if the section wasn’t already confusing enough as it is.

[balkanradfem]

I haven't been posting lately because I've been overwhelmed with depression and medical issues, but this morning something sad happened that I want to share.

It's a year without fruit again, which is pretty harsh on me since I rely on foraged fruit a lot, but I figured I would just collect as many berries as possible and make jams and that would have to be enough. So this morning, I went to collect blackberries, I found a new spot, pretty far away but I could get there by bike. When I collected them all, I realized I still don't have quite enough for even a single jar of jam, and I went to my usual spot, where I've been just a few days ago, figuring I could get more.

And when I got there, I found that the entire huge blackberry plant has been leveled with the ground. I didn't understand what I was seeing, I collected a basket of blackberries there just 3 days ago. How could it all be gone? It was not just cut, but there was no leftovers either, the earth was black, there was not one leaf to be seen. It was like someone both cut and burned the entire thing. But that huge blackberry has been there for as long as I've lived here, and I assume, decades before that. I don't understand. In a year without fruit. You destroy the only local source of produce?

It doesn't make sense to me. It's been happening more and more as the climate changes. Instead of preserving the local sources of food as absolutely priceless and irreplaceable, people are leveling everything with the ground.

It was a huge blow for me, I'm feeling heavy with sadness. I don't want to share a city with people who destroy everything good about it.

[suncem-okupana]

Microplastics in our blood... There's no going back from here.

[gemsofgreece]

Reading a youtube comment saying "Every Christian was a Catholic before a German divided Christianity" made me approximately 228% more Orthodox in milliseconds

[madame-helen]

[laestoica]

Venía a desahogarme sobre la estupidez humana pero recordé que estoica.

[cleverthylacine]

thylacines made good pets?? ;_; they do look like they'd feel soft and glossy to the touch. I'm obsessed with tassie devils, myself, but I'm resigned that they may go extinct before I can travel far enough to see them. I wish I could pet one.

They were obviously not domesticated to the level of having domestication syndrome features (not that I'm sure a marsupial animal *would*), but there are historical records of Tasmanians who kept them as pets, including both white settlers and indigenous people.

Thylacines were somewhat prone to capture myopathy (a stress reaction that causes some animals to die if trapped/captured) and sometimes died after capture, but many did not. If the animals were treated kindly they would generally respond well to attempts to tame them, and this was even more true of orphaned baby thylacines that were raised by humans. There are several stories of people who tamed thylacines very shortly after capture. One such thylacine was let go when she went into season and became restless, and she later introduced her pups to the man she had lived with.

Indigenous people were recorded as having kept them. One indigenous informant stated that they called them "stripey dogs" when they spoke English.

One of my favourite stories was of a white settler family had a large house and kept their thylacine on an extremely long chain in the front so that she could act as a sort of watchdog. This thylacine would watch over the children playing and did not react violently to them even if she was accidentally hit by a ball (she knew that this was an accident) and would give warning of anyone approaching.

The likely reason that thylacines did not become popular household companions was the hate campaign that sprung up around them, stating that they were sheep killers. Once that got to be a big issue and bounties were offered for killing them, people who were taming and raising the animals frequently found them killed, and they gave up on it.

Many of these stories are in Robert Paddle's book, which is an academic study but is extremely readable.

Buy The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

[fieriframes]

[Now, the chef was knocking out killer combos in the kitchen and working on the American Dream, and never underestimate the power of human stupidity with a whole new place. This is Athens Family Restaurant and Bellevue Diner.]