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Today I met 6 irish draught horses. One was a FOAL already taller than me!! Another put her head on her shoulder and I swear to god her head was the size of my torso. I have been around horses but these ones were so crazy large. I am not a short person but I was DWARFED. Also according to Wikipedia they have a caste system? And then there's the Irish Draught Sport Horse?? Quoth my partner "like you can have a sport version of a car?" Anyway. I thought you'd like to know. Any Killie thoughts on the Irish draught horse? I have gained a new perspective on how horses are so large and that little jock is SMALL

OH HO HO you lucky beast!! I’m so glad you told me this. Seriously, thank you.

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Omg the Irish Draught. Typical horse breed story: Ireland, as usual, produces some of the best Bone, in horses, on planet Earth. Bone that is prized around the world. Bone that is snatched up by the sheikhs and emperors of the world to play genetics-based gacha games with. You can build almost any muscle you like on an athlete, but a horse athlete does better when they start with a good skeleton to hang it on, and for thousands of years Ireland has excelled in the production of certain high-value traits. Good Bone.

Ireland typically completely drops the ball on doing anything with this insane production of a prime resource, making a vague face, and saying “it’s what we call a horse” and when asked for specifics may stare at you like you’re stupid and eventually admit, “a big horse.”

Thus leaving Americans to sneak in like vultures, snatching the Good Bone, taking it seriously, and shouting “this is a BRAND now.”

THE IRISH DRAUGHT!!! Beautiful, practical, marvellous bone! A fine coldblood - that’s a heavy European “draft” type, the butch kind of horse, as opposed to the greyhound desert horses that are “hot blooded.”

Mixing the hotblooded Arab lines with European native breeds - including the Irish Hobby - produced the strong bone and pared-down athleticism of the Thoroughbred. The studbooks were then closed, and Thoroughbreds today may only be descended from registered Thoroughbreds. They are athletic, energetic, greyhound horses - the fastest domestic animals, a feat of bioengineering, a direct challenge to God.

But they’re a bit breakable and mad, being stripped down so ferociously over generations to the essentials of running. In the relentless push for producing Speed, breeding loses the focus on things like Good Bone, a Kind Eye, Cross-Country Stamina, and Strong Constitution. It’s like a game that maxes out the “sprint” stat for speedruns, and produces a player character that’s perfect at speedruns, but if you want to sit down for a tabletop roleplaying game with friends, instantly breaks their ankle and bursts into flames. Can you keep the sprinty style and good characteristics, but still have someone that can play other sports and games?

So if you personally want a tough and sporty horse, boiling with athletic ability, but sane and strong and sober - you cross the Thoroughbred with a - well, with a steady, consistent coldblood. Ideally, one who has been honed over generations to be a friendly, clever tractor. A big, kind masterpiece of a different sort entirely; something of pure and powerful practicality. something that patches the deficiencies of the Thoroughbred character, something with fabulous Bone. Ideally something that isn’t too inbred itself; something powerful, practical, but not a total tank; some sturdy bastard that’s been kicking around, quietly doing a job, for centuries. Good bone - but not the weighty grandeur of the Shire or Ardennes - we want a bit of secret fire, something that will hunt. Something that will kick over the traces and jump, over wild country.

Hey, what do you know - there’s the Irish Draught.

Crossing the Thoroughbred with the Irish Draught produces the Irish Sport Horse. This is an athlete that doesn’t just sprint. Fast, flexible, steady and clever, with Thoroughbred bred-to-be-an-athlete combined with Irish Draught’s legendary constitution, you see the Irish Sport in the Olympics, taking gold medals. They do very well as a practical all-rounder. Hence the name: the Irish Sport.

But here’s where the tricky part comes in. Irish horse people never codified the Irish Draught “properly.” So the Irish Sport often has infusions of other native breeds… as does any creature described casually as an Irish Draught. If you ask the native owners they just say What The Fuck Do You Mean: It’s A Big Horse. But then, if you’re an eager American who genotypes your Irish Sport, you might come back with… CONNEMARA PONY?! And when you inquire, the breeders tend to say things like “well, you see, we look at them with our eyes; and then if it’s a big one, it’s a Draught, and if it’s a small one, it’s a Pony. What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Americans say, “is the total lack of branding.”

so Americans have been leading the cause. The ship has sailed to rebrand the Irish Sport as “thoroughbred + purebred registered Irish Draught ONLY.” The Irish Sport is a bit of a mix.

But the Irish DRAUGHT Sport Horse is when you take a “purebred” Irish Draught - insert joke about how you find one of these, but it’s the top tier of the “caste system” - and cross it to a Thoroughbred, and get a PEDIGREE. That is what Americans people are trying to do with the concept Irish Draught Sport Horse.

…. But literally everyone calls them Irish Sports anyway. LOL.

And the Irish Draught, despite not being used so much for its intended purposes any more, remains important and influential partly because of its ability to produce athletes.

At any rate, yes, FUCK, Killie is tiny!!

He’s short by any standard, and this is just what jockeys are like, but occasionally it does look a bit wild. Here you go, you little sod. Here’s a MONSTER. Ride it with your terrifyingly athletic thighs and the power of your MIND.

Killie loves a good Irish Draught, though they’re not in his sphere of work. His horrid English mother breeds and keeps Irish Sports for foxhunting. (One of them in his childhood was named Wellington, and this was very slightly political and nasty of Helena.)

He doesn’t get to do much cross-country but there’s a lot to be said for a willing Irish Sport, and if asked to choose a horse for his own pleasure, (after being paralysed by the concept), he wouldn’t pick any other breed.

I’m so glad you shared this with me. Thank you.

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off 2 sleep

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"the doctor was completely colourblind for his first two incarnations" is hilarious for many reasons but at least partly because it implies the third doctor just woke up one day suddenly able to see in colour and immediately decided to start dressing like a gay parrot

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this atypically colored house finch exhibits light plumage due to a genetic mutation known as leucism, where there is a reduced amount of melanin. as melanin is linked to strength of feathers, birds with leucism or albinism may suffer from weak or brittle feathers, but rarely have significant health defects linked to the condition. however, their lifespans are often shorter due to increased visibility to predators.

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there's an extremely niche plot in romance fiction wherein our invariably heterosexual leads fall in love after a night of passion leads to an unplanned pregnancy and they're now bound together by an impending child. I cast no judgment on anyone who enjoys this, but since I'm an evil gay and this is my personal nightmare scenario I want to see a zany romance novel premised on the opposite resolution: a couple falls in love while on a whirlwind roadtrip to obtain a legal abortion

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btw being excessively nonconfrontational is NOT a positive trait. it does not mean u are “too nice” or just too kind to hurt people, it means u have a problem communicating and you need to work on it.

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Pay attention to the particulars of Mastercard's responses, because this a textbook example of how to create plausible deniability.

"Mastercard has not barred any legal transaction" is, technically, a true statement – because Mastercard is not the one processing the transactions in the first place. Mastercard does not deal directly with any merchant, and in fact typically refuses to communicate with merchants at all; there's always a payment processing service sitting in between Mastercard and the merchant, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or any of dozens of other service providers.

Consequently, there are two layers of service agreements in place: the agreement between Mastercard and the payment processing service, and the agreement between the payment processing service and the merchant. That second layer of service agreements, between the payment processing service and the merchant, is where all of these content restrictions are being imposed. Mastercard can thus truthfully claim that they aren't barring legal transactions.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already spotted the issue: if the content restrictions are being imposed upon the merchants by individual payment processing services and not by Mastercard, why do all of those payment processing services seem to have exactly the same content restrictions?

That's where the critical sleight of hand comes in: while Mastercard's own terms of service do not require payment processing services to bar transactions of particular types, their ToS does require payment processors to bar transactions which could be damaging to the Mastercard brand. What constitutes damage to the Mastercard brand is not defined; it means whatever Mastercard wants it to mean. The payment processing services are thus in a position where they can be held in breach of Mastercard's terms of service for basically any reason, which gives them a strong incentive not to test any boundaries.

And that's why Mastercard can truthfully say they have never barred any legal transaction: they're never the ones doing the blocking. The layer of payment processing services that sits between Mastercard and the merchants are enforcing those content restrictions, based on a series of unwritten handshake agreements between the payment processors and Mastercard regarding what does and does not constitute acceptable content – and because the particulars of those handshake agreements aren't in writing, Mastercard can assert that their terms of service do not compel payment processing services to bar any legal transaction and technically be telling the truth.

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Can we include darebee.com with ao3 and wikipedia on our list of really good nonprofits with excellent services that we stan?

It's a free, no sign-up, no ads fitness resource created by professionals who view this as activism (fitness should be accessible to everyone), and it's very thoughtful and thorough.

Features I really like:

- all instructions for workout routines are diagrammed on single pages with a clean, easy to read layout

- there's 30 or 60 day programs you can follow if you, like me, don't know what to do. they take you through a rotation of workouts so you're working different muscle groups on different day for a specific purpose

- there's so much variety and there's a filter so you can find the level and your goals and type of workout you wanna do

- you don't need any equipment

- some of the programs are RPGs or adventure stories! How's that for motivation. There's also badges and achievements or something but I haven't looked that closely at how that works yet

- they're nerds. they name workouts after D&D classes. There's a Lannistrr workout, a batcave workout, a witcher workout

- I've only scratched the surface

I'm doing this really easy one to start out

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Random question - is saying "may their memory be a blessing," cultural appropriation? I like it, but don't want to overstep.

PS thank you very much for answering my questions about Judaism, please let me know if you'd like me to stop asking.

Speaking only for myself, no, it's not, as long as you're saying it about a Jewish person. In fact, it is highly preferable to say only this about a Jewish person who has died. "Rest In Peace" ascribes a view of what happens after death to us which isn't ours.

But that's only me and ofc two Jews, three opinions.

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🫵 STOP! you are doomscrolling. tell me your favorite animal instead

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beach bod babeyy

heavily inspired by @chio-chan2's latest drawing!

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tbh my hot take is that a lot of people are obnoxiously weird about feet and its usually not the people that have foot fetishes

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as humiliating as it is to repost myself from a light-mode-user's reddit screenshot, i cannot allow this year's zenquish to go uncelebrated.

celebrate my favorite holiday with me, my friends.

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you gave me your heart, now I'm here for your soul

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I don't watch Star Trek, but I love lighting and want this on my blog