[Something Witty] @zial-shade - Tumblr Blog

I like when fic length/book length/movie length is its own punchline

characters: Ah, I'm so glad that's all over now :). But luckily that's done and dealt with and we can all resume our normal lives now :)

fic length: Chapter 9 out of 48

Odysseus: Thank you for the concern, but brother, I can assure you Our journey is almost done.

Song 11 of 40

wildehacked

things in fic I'm used to people kind of faking their way through writing about:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

what french toast is

knowtherealcost

Smoking as a teen can permanently stunt your lungs. #FailByCigs

justonemango

I want the hot furry wolf bad boy to raw me

deadsiteletsfite

you stop that.

beep-beepster

beardedmrbean

supreme-leader-stoat

This is a free website

tlaquetzqui

We pay in other ways.

annkhr

shetanshadowwolf

@headspace-hotel this gave me you vibes (re: transplanting plants from the cracks)

headspace-hotel

Awwwwwwh this is so cute

orteil42

being a bandwidth-conscious web game dev means i basically restrict myself to pre-CD-ROM standards in terms of asset sizes. the other day i had to justify to myself a background image weighing in at a hefty 40kb

orteil42

extremely sweet replies on this but i have to mention how much this approaches an actual compulsion for me. it even affects how other games make me feel. i boot up some big studio game with full video cutscenes and every line of dialogue voiced and think about the gigabytes of game data churning through my laptop god knows how many times per second and get a little nauseous. they had games like that in the late 90s mind you

orteil42

exposure therapy: i will make the first terabyte video game

n1-adora-fan

Never change Brennan

animentality

furryprovocateur

they should allow you to report posts for being gauche or passé

girlswater

glassfrogforest

vet-and-wild

you know the obsession with keeping cats indoors is a purely American view of the world? Most Europeans let their cats outdoors without any problems. Many Europeans even think it's cruel to keep them indoors all the time

No, it’s not. European cats aren’t magically smarter and less environmentally impactful than American cats, it’s just more socially acceptable to let them roam. Do you not have cars in Europe? Foxes? Raptors? Stray dogs? Rat poison? Parasites? Diseases? What about the Croydon Cat Killer in England, where the dismemberment of over 400 cats was being investigated, and it turned out that foxes were mutilating the bodies of cats that were killed by cars? Suddenly it’s all ok because it was only horrific death via automobile, instead of decapitation like they suspected? Totally acceptable to outdoor cat owners, who cares if your cat gets hit by a car and dies on the side of the road? There is real concern for the hybridization of wildcats in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but sure, it’s just a US problem. How about how outdoor cats are effectively reducing the protective area of a national park in Poland? How about the increased incidence of lungworms and GI parasites in European free roaming cats? How about this small study from Denmark where 90% of free roaming cats tested positive for GI parasites on necropsy (and the risk was higher in rural areas). Not Europe, but for the sake of completeness, free roaming cats kill ~377 MILLION birds per year in Australia, and 61 million of those kills are thought to be from owned cats. You can also talk to @drferox about how problematic outdoor cats are in Australia. Free roaming cats are bad for the environment, and are put in unnecessary danger. Why don’t you provide enrichment for your cat instead of letting them run around unsupervised where they will kill native wildlife and get sick or injured or die (or all of the above). Other resources from @catsindoors about the impact of domestic cats around the world. Snagged a lot of these links from their blog.

prettyprettypretty-good-deactiv

Humans would also be safer and the environment protected if we all just stayed indoors. No passing of parasites, bacteria, or viruses. No harm to other species. No cross breeding either (if that bothers you). Do you want to stay indoors?

vet-and-wild

I generally try to ignore responses like this, but I want to address this because I see this ridiculous argument a lot.

The reason that this comparison is inaccurate is because humans have the ability to use reason and make logical choices, but cats don’t. Humans see a car coming and wait until the street is clear to cross. Cats don’t. Humans know not to eat strange food on the ground. Cats don’t. Humans can look up which plants are toxic and avoid them. Cats can’t. Humans don’t eat raw rabbits and rodents that may carry disease. Cats do. Humans who hunt follow laws that prevent them from killing endangered species (besides shitty poachers). Cats don’t.

A far more accurate comparison would be a cat and a toddler. They lack the ability to recognize danger and don’t have the ability to reason that an adult does. I’m sure a toddler would have a great time roaming around the neighborhood, but no one is going to argue in favor of that. People can understand that doing that is irresponsible and dangerous. But no sane person is going to lock their toddler inside and provide them with nothing to do; no one is saying we should do that for cats either. Play with them. Provide cat trees. Rotate their toys. Give them puzzle feeders. And if you want them to go outside you can leash train them. Or build a catio. The options aren’t let them roam vs. never provide them with entertainment. If it is unbearable to entertain and care for a cat that is kept indoors, you probably shouldn’t own a cat.

Would you let your dog roam? Or your bird? How about your rabbit? I’m sure all of these animals would have a great time running (or flying) around the neighborhood, but we generally recognize that this is a bad idea. It’s no different for cats. We are caretakers for our animals, so it is up to us to use our big brains to make logical choices about what they should or shouldn’t do. We have the ability to understand the risks associated with free roaming. Cats don’t. We can weigh risks and benefits before making a decision. Cats can’t.

tldr: Humans have the ability to make logical decisions to keep themselves safe but cats do not.

scienceshenanigans

Outdoor cats are also more or less an invasive species. They are such good hunters, they are capable of permanently changing an ecosystem by killing native prey animals.

Protect your kitty and local biodiversity–keep them inside!

r33naytealeaves

I just wanted to tack on that, there is no “more or less”, cats are an invasive species. Domesticated animals are invasive species and allowing them to interact with the local environment without monitoring will harm the local biodiversity. Cats especially. Domestic cats have a very high success rate for hunting. Historically, they have lead to multiple extinctions of animals because people brought cats along as pest control and pets.

roseate-felidae

I’m very pro indoor only cat. But sadly, this is not common in the UK, most people free roam their cats despite the dangers.

I’ve seen two cats who were roadkill, multiple poisoned rats that make easy prey, gardens full of poisonous (to cats) plants, and a cat at the vet who survived his arm being mauled by a fox through a catio. Yet people still do it. I’m in a small village, no idea how much worse in a bigger place it would be.

It is entirely cultural. Sadly, it also means people don’t tend to play with their pets and let them free roam as their only enrichment. So they baulk at how “bored” a cat would be indoors. Forgetting it’s not just kittens who need playtime. You are seen as a “weirdo” for harness/lead training a cat here, which I don’t agree with obviously.

Most rescues will not let you adopt a cat if you do not let it be indoor-outdoor. They will even check up on your garden to see it’s safety (like a cat can’t jump a fence lol). Charities do this, too.

I still keep my cat indoors only. My step mum thought I was being cruel until I explained to her the dangers of a cat outside.

I wish attitudes would change here. Please keep your cat indoors!

robotslenderman

It’s not even a fucking Yank thing. Here in Australia we do have people with outdoor cats, but most people see them as irresponsible wankers. People actively letting their cats outside are shrinking to the point that I saw an anti-missing poster outside of my doctor’s surgery one day telling people to stop calling them when their cat is outside, meaning that there’s now a lot of people who see an outdoor cat and assume it’s lost by default instead of the other way around.

Across the pond in New Zealand ONE SINGLE CAT drove an entire species to extinction. There are still arseholes over there but they’re generally even stricter than we are here in Oz.

Also it’s fucking weird that people say it’s understandable that we do it because of our ecosystem. Do Europeans not have ecosystems? Or are you just subscribing to the colonialist idea that your ecosystem is a boring default and only “exotic” ecosystems should be preserved?

storybookprincess

so back when my little brother was in high school, my mom went as a chaperone for their senior year field trip to an amusement park. which, you know, brave move to volunteer to supervise a bunch of high school seniors let loose in a wonderland of rollercoasters and sugar

my brother and his friends in this field trip group were truly great kids. but they were not above run of the mill teenage boy shenanigans. it’s the end of senior year, you and all your buddies are at the amusement park, you’re naturally going to want to act like a complete moron

there was one kid in the group who was especially prone to goofing around. committed to the bit, some may say. my mom knew that if nonsense was going to break out, he’d likely be at the center of it

so she goes up to this kid at the very start of the trip and says “hey, i’m kinda worried about this chaperoning thing. this might be a lot to ask, but can you help me keep an eye on everyone? you wouldn’t have to do anything big, just be an extra set of eyes for me.”

friends, this kid proceeded to run their field trip group like the fucking us marines. everyone is at the meet up spots at the designated time. everyone waits in line for the rides like a bunch of boy scouts. the second the horseplay gets too out of hand, this kid is getting it back under control

it’s incredible how differently people act based on the expectations you set. instead of going to this kid and saying “hey, i know you’re trouble, so i’ve got my eye on you,” my mom went “hey, i know you have influence in your peer group, so i think you can help me.”

treat someone like a problem, they’ll act like a problem. but give people a chance to help, make them feel important, and they usually rise far above the occasion. it was a stroke of genius that i’m honestly still in awe of

lezbianz

being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse

freakinflipflop

Being a stem major who's friends with humanities majors is ALSO funny bc you ask what's goin on with them and they're like "oh yeah my day's pretty good! I only have to read 50 pages for this one class today and half a book for another one. It's much better than last week where I read three books and wrote a 10 page paper about their overlapping motifs for one class while also researching a niche period of time that our library doesn't have any resources on. How's it been for you?" and you're like "oh I have a lil packet of fun math puzzles due tomorrow." and they look at you like you're carrying the weight of the universe on your back

tesria

This is your reminder that just because something falls within the skillset you've practiced, so you can do it and you don't find it particularly hard or stressful relative to other things, it doesn't mean it isn't actually hard work you should be proud of yourself for accomplishing!

3amfanfiction

this applies to writing and art, too

marlynnofmany

"Oh, I just have to write another 1,000 words to be on track with the book I'm writing, then do some minor adjustments on the one I'm editing. Make sure the cool character's accent is consistent, add in a bit of foreshadowing to the important conversation, and change the first description of the villain to match the later ones. Simple stuff. ...Wait, you have to draw how many pictures? In full color??"