#For a safety violation

[ihazyourkitty]

Why John Hargrove is full of it p.1

Multiple people have expressed interest in the detailed Blackfish rebuttal I am working on. The plan is to put it in video essay format on Youtube. This not only has the potential to reach a larger audience, but it also gives me more creative/expressive flexibility that would otherwise be difficult to get across in just written text.

This project will not be completed for quite some time, as there are a lot of things to cover. However, I did want to provide a short glimpse into some things I've uncovered thus far.

You see, I plan on not only refuting the movie itself, but also covering the consequences of Blackfish, and major figures like Naomi Rose, Ingrid Visser, etc. So as part of this project, I am listening to the eBook version of John Hargrove's Beneath the Surface for the second time. It's..... so.... much..... fun.....

*sigh* Warning, there's a long rant ahead. TL;DR John Hargrove comes off as very full of himself in this book, and it's annoying.

______

Now, on a purely emotional, literary level I guess, the book is certainly very gripping. It's difficult to put down, even when you know that much of what is alleged therein is utter bullcrap. However, I don't think this is just because the whole "little-guy turns against evil corporation" trope makes for good storytelling across the board. I think it's also because, unlike Mark Simmons' Killing Keiko, or Hazel McBride's I Still Believe, John Hargrove's Beneath the Surface has the luxury of both professional editing, and a co-author (Howard Chia-Eoan).

To be clear, I'm not saying this as dig against Hazel McBride or Mark Simmons. I bring this up merely to illustrate the stark contrast here. As far as I know, their works were self published, or at least lacking the same polish and publicity from big name publishers, or sensationalist documentaries.

However, this contrast wouldn't be so noteworthy to me were it not for these two things I'm increasingly noticing in this reread of Beneath the Surface:

It is never clearly stated which parts were written by Hargrove, and which were ghost written by Chia-Eoan... but the amount of contradictions and shoehorned information in here gives me some serious suspicions.

John Hargrove... seems incredibly full of himself!

I don't have the time to elaborate on #1 right now, so we'll just talk about #2 today. John Hargrove is almost never in the wrong. He is always painted as the hero, the true advocate for these animals. You don't hear much about the other trainers he worked with or learned from. Mostly, it's just about him. He bemoans the allegedly poor conditions SeaWorld's animals are kept in, while simultaneously boasting about all his accomplishments with them. He speaks of differing perspectives between him and some of the other trainers, but seldom elaborates on what exactly those differences were. Instead, he usually just frames it in a sanctimonious "me vs. them" way.

The closest he gets to admitting any mistakes he had to learn from is when he recounted an aggressive incident with Freya at Marineland Antibes, and even then.... the whole reason why that incident (allegedly) happened was because Hargrove overestimated his training/waterworks abilities with a whale he didn't have a relationship with. His admission of that mistake is then overshadowed by the rather self-righteous tone he frames the resolution with. All the success was about him. You don't hear anything about how he worked with the other trainers there, what they brought to the table, and certainly not the stronger, lasting relationships they had with Freya. It's not that he had to mention them by name, but he didn't even mention them at all!

To be fair, this interpretation is partly subjective on my part. Still, as someone who is personally working in animal husbandry right now (albeit not with marine mammals), the gaping holes in this narrative raises some red flags.

Here's some free advice to anyone interested in working in the zoo/aquarium industry: I have been told by multiple hiring managers that they don't want someone who "just wants to work with the animals, and not deal with people." That's not how this works. You still have to work with people in some form or another.

It doesn't matter which animals you are working with. When you're on an animal husbandry/training team, you gotta ask for/provide help, seek/give feedback, communicate with other departments, etc. Complaints, conflict and disagreements will inevitably happen, but you gotta be mature about it.

And yes, in that process... you are going to make mistakes, and you're going to have to own up to them! It's part of how you learn. You're also going to inevitably work with people who don't see things the same way.

The people who can't do this tend to not only get stuck in their own way, but are more likely to start resenting coworkers and/or management whenever disagreements happen. They'll constantly complain about how other people do things, but then can't/won't take constructive feedback themselves. It's worse when it's someone with more experience under their belt because of the massive ego. Let me be clear: this kind of mindset does not help your animals! It only creates a toxic work environment that's resistant to change!

DO. NOT. BE. THIS. PERSON!!!!

No, this does not mean you can't vent frustrations. No this does not mean that you can't take pride in your work. It means that you gotta be able to swallow your pride, and not alienate other people.

So, what does all that have to do with the contrast mentioned earlier?

Like Hargrove, McBride details her career journey, but doesn't just paint it all in glamour. She talks about her setbacks, how she grew, things she learned from other people, the internships she did, the grunt work she was willing to do, etc.

Killing Keiko has less to do with the details of Mark Simmons' career path, but he does give credit to other people where it is due, even at times towards those he fundamentally disagreed with. I can remember one part where he explicitly admitted that he made a mistake too, and tellingly, it was in an instance where he played the "I've been doing this for years" card. In the very next sentence he admitted it was the wrong thing to say in that situation, and highlighted the perspective he was missing in that moment.

These things are conspicuously absent in Beneath the Surface. I don't remember anything of the sort that stood out when I first read the book, and thus far it's certainly not there in my second time around. The first third of the book is dedicated to how he dreamed of becoming a trainer as a kid, and the path he took to get there. Most of this path, though, is painted in glamor, when the reality is.... the path to getting into animal husbandry isn't particularly glamorous. Not only do you have go to college, but you also have to settle for various unpaid internships or volunteer gigs, and then apply for multiple jobs only to get several no's before it works out (to say nothing of how underpaid zookeepers/aquarists/trainers are).

Hargrove, on the other hand, kept pestering lead marine mammal trainers at SeaWorld since he was a kid, practiced his swimming/diving abilities, and started his degree in psychology. Then, as luck would have it, an apprentice trainer position opened up at SW San Antonio, and when he got the job, he jubilantly quit college. Not much is said about what kind of volunteer work he did before that. I think he did some stuff with marine mammal rescue in Texas, but I'll have to go back and reread to be sure... in any event, I wish I'd heard more about the experience he got besides swimming and pestering the SW animal training department.

And like.... great, he got the job, but it seemed more by luck than by the sweat of his brow. Then he balked that he was put in the SeaLion Stadium, and/or that he had to spend a lot of time washing dishes and spotting before even being allowed to work directly with a whale, which like..... yeah? I don't know what you were expecting dude.

(Btw, this part isn't just me being nit-picky, Duncan Versteegh from ML Antibes corroborates Hargrove's resistance to doing grunt work like cleaning)

Whenever mentioning people at SW who didn't want to work at Shamu Stadium, Hargrove couldn't understand how anyone wouldn't want that.... because heaven forbid other people have different preferences? To be fair, from what I've heard of SW work culture in general, Shamu Stadium is kind of painted as the glamorous A-team, but DANG does Hargrove really lean into that attitude!

Later on, he detailed some of the conflicts he had with SW's entertainment department. At one point his manager explicitly told him he needed learn to get along better with other departments. And like... yeah... yeah you do!

Look, I'm not interested in doing blanket apologia for SeaWorld. I'm sure Hargrove was in the right more than once when he'd argue with people, but I'm also not convinced that the whole of the entertainment department, management, et al., were just a bunch of unfeeling jerks who didn't care about the animals.

This part actually ground my gears quite a bit. Before I became an aquarist, I was an educator, and sometimes I would overhear certain husbandry staff gossip about us in a really patronizing way whenever there were miscommunications. Not that they never had valid reasons to complain, they did, but to be treated like you're just a dumb educator/guest services person is not pleasant, and certainly not professional. I don't know how common this is at other places, but I bring this up to illustrate the importance of being able to work with other departments, especially in the face of disagreements or miscommunication.

That Beneath the Surface paints Hargrove's inability to do this as a virtue rather than as the character flaw that it is... well.... it's um... it's a choice. And it's telling.

Again, some of this interpretation is subjective on my part. Ultimately, none of us can know for sure what is in someone else's heart. Hargrove does seem to sincerely care about the animals, despite the narcissism. However, the vast majority of people who are going to be reading his book are not people who have spent much if any time working in the zoo industry, and thus may not pick up on some of these things. I'm not the only one to point these things out either.

So even if one is against keeping orcas in captivity, I think being aware of the egos behind figures like Hargrove is important. When you get to the end of his book, you would think that all his former colleagues are, at best, just timid little clogs in a corporate machine, brainwashed to do as SW says. This is just not true. These people are dedicated to their animals, and have worked very hard to get where they are at. Some have gone on to get their masters, or PhD's, provide expertise to other facilities, or take part in rescues, etc., and they did it without chasing clout.

SW Corporate should absolutely treat their employees better, but their treatment of them pales in comparison to how people like Hargrove basically erase their accomplishments altogether. In this way, he tries to have it both ways... his time at SW proves how much of an expert he is, you know, because he was a senior trainer with two decades of experience after all! Oh, but when someone else from the field speaks up to refute what he says, nope.... their accomplishments don't matter, they're just brainwashed. If that doesn't scream "massive ego", then I don't know what does.

I'm only halfway through the book on this second round, so there is a chance I'll come back to correct some things here. I do encourage people to try to read this book themselves and come to their own conclusions. You don't have to buy it either, check your local library (it's how I got a hold of this eBook).

[theraedar]

joyride 🛵💨💙

[kensatou]

the most rancid man alive

[brainmuncher]

Go in Danny. Nothing bad will happen Danny. You definitely won't die. :)

Today's warmup sketch was an experiment in perspective. Decided to try out drawing the Fenton's lab. I might clean this up and make it an actual drawing someday but here's the sketch for now.

(Unofficial thanks to @daily-dose-of-danno for the screenshots that I used for reference. They were really helpful :> )

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

*glances at all the your boyfriend posts on my dash* im calling protective services

[anobjectshowguy]

I hope people in the OSC (and other fandoms in general) who are ok with or neutral about Kosa realize that not only will we lose a bunch of platforms that allow us to interact with each other (Tumblr, discord, Ao3, Wattpad, Twitter, YouTube, etc) but will also get rid of at least 80-95% of our fandom.

The OSC consists mostly of people between 13-17 who (if Kosa goes through the Senate and Houses of Representatives and gets passed as a law) will most likely no longer have access to YouTube and other social platforms which actively kills almost all the people who read and watch Object Shows!

By visiting and sharing animated shows like II or BFDI those creators make money which gives them the means to keep making their shows and paying their animators, voice actors, writers and so much more. This bill will actively get rid of most of the people who watch these shows which will cause a large loss in support and revenue for these creators and will most likely mean the end for any smaller object show.

Object show comics rely on people sharing them around in fandom spaces since they’re not animated and put on YouTube like animated object shows are. By losing these spaces and the people who support their content these creators will no longer be able to reach a large audience and get the support they need to continue their comics. This means that we will lose a lot of the comics that the OSC has!

Most of the content you see in the OSC is made by minors, which this bill will actively destroy and thus kill this fandom and many others!

So I am begging of you OSC and other communities, Please please please sign petitions, tell your senators and representatives that you don’t want this bill to pass, and tell anyone that you can reach about how this Bill is a violation of privacy and minors' rights! Re-blog anything you see with helpful information about what Kosa is and keep talking about it! We need to tell people about it so that this doesn’t go through the Senate. Remember, the final day is February 26, we don’t have that long!!!

Here’s some helpful resources:

 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/you-can-help-stop-these-bad-internet-bills

[evorathesylvurr]

I am writing the funniest script to a video essay ever. This is the first draft and it’s a 1 am ramble.

[entomolog-t]

G/t July : Thief 

Mark is not a fan of dirty lil feral tromping around in his food. Its unhygienic. 

---

I love the idea of a human who can’t stand borrowing. Not because they care about stolen crumbs, or the invasion of their privacy, but just because the idea of someone handling their food is gross.

Do you let your human friends grab food off your plate with their bare hands? Would you eat food that they stepped on? 

No. Of course not. Because its UNHYGENIC. 

Also bonus points if anyone spies the lil reference. 

[tytactical]

You have to be fucking kidding me

[tired-fandom-ndn]

Kim Kitsuragi really is king of minding his own fucking business huh. Harry will be like "I think this is illegal" and Kim's response is just "who cares" like yeah babe you're right, who fucking cares. I love him.

[thistransient]

紅樹林站附近 // near Hongshulin Station

[leiamcgonagall]

Overheard at robotics build session part five:

“It’s the iphone of military takeovers.”

“I love bearings that crunch, the sign of truly healthy bearings.”

“They’re crayons, you delinquents.”

“Safety isn’t as important as the wall of shame.”

“Here you go, if it’s a carcinogen do it outside.”

“A long time ago in the galaxy far far away that is robotics 2013…”

“What do you want from me, you foul creature?!!! I’m in hell!!! Hey, what do you put in for sine theta here?”

“I don’t know how it works, therefore it doesn’t exist.”

“Is that a reference to the hit natural sleep schedule, fuck you industrialization?”

“Worst case scenario only one of us dies. There’s not enough electricity in the world. I don’t fear electricity, electricity fears me. That’s why I’ve never been shocked more than three times in a day.”

“I went to the ER for stomach pains and left with a half a cast on my arm.”

On today’s agenda: how many safety violations can my team commit in one sitting

(Additional quote insanity)

[radio-show]

I love trigun fanart and fanfiction that portray Wolfwood as looking at all the crazy and the weird stuff and the alien nonsense or even just the artists trying to make the twins attractive or whatnot and Wolfwood just being the most normal person there. Just like "i aint paid enough for this."

[spider-mancan]

but like peter getting fucked by some random guy at a club because he is just fucking so fed up with waiting for tony to see him as an adult, he's giving up, but when tony sees Peter after he somehow just Knows there's cum dripping down Peter's thighs

queue tony shoving peter up against the wall because he's so jealous he's seeing red, tugging peter's pants down to check the damage, shoving his fingers inside with the feral urge to clean peter out

it's only when peter's knees give out that tony realizes he's finger fucking peter within an inch of his life. not intentional. but once he realizes what he's doing, he...well. speaking of feral.

they're both totally dressed and peter is covered in glitter and smells like amaretto sour and he's so fucking open when tony fumbles to get his dick out and just fucking slides in like an animal, some stranger's cum dribbling out around his cock, smearing over peter's taint

tony uses peter's underwear like reins, hiking them up into a french cut so he can pull peter back on to his dick and the sound is CRIMINAL it's a squelch and peter's moans and peter banging his head against the wall be he knows this is a mistake but it's so fucking good

and tony pushes peter's face into the wall and presses in close and asks peter -- angry and snarling -- if he's a whore, if that's what he wants to be, and if that's the case tony will turn him into one, anything for peter, anything for you kid

its meant to be mocking but peter cums in his pants so hard his vision goes white andh is moans choke out and tony still has his hand on the back of peter's neck like he's a dog to master

but tony keeps going because there's still cum in peter's ass and that's just too bad, tony's going to have to flood it out

he comes hard, and he's merciless in fucking peter through it. peter is sagging against the wall and tony doesn't pull out, presses closer, moves his hips so peter feels his soft cock inside and Knows

when tony pulls out cum drips onto the floor and tony pulls peter's underwear back up with a snap of the waistband, carefully rights peter's pants and reaches around, still panting in peter's ear, to delicately tuck peter's cock away and do up his belt buckle

peter's underwear is full of cum -- the stranger's, and two loads that are all peter. now tony's slides out of him slow and languid. peter ACHES. fuck. he has to livewithout this feeling. he CANT live without this feeling. dirty and wanted and full and empty.

peter's underwear is full of cum -- the stranger's, and two loads that are all peter. now tony's slides out of him slow and languid. peter ACHES. fuck. he has to livewithout this feeling. he CANT live without this feeling. dirty and wanted and full and empty.

and tony just gives peter a gentle pat on the ass and directs him towards peter's room. "you smell like sex." and peter thinks that probably means "you smell like me" but tony is still a little too feral to put the pieces together

blah blah blah peter is freaking out but there's a plug in his nightstand and when he goes to tony's room tony is sitting on the bed with his head in his hands and he looks at peter with those wilds eyes and peter just holds out the toy and says "i want to keep it"

because fuck you he's drunk and horny and in love, and tony doesn't need to make a whore out of him be peter is already kind of a whore, and he drops his pants and his underwear so tony can see the bruises and glitter on his knees, and he steps out. and he crawls onto the bed.

he presents his ass because tony's ferality is contagious, and tony strokes a hand up the back of peters thigh with fucking Reverence, rubs cum into peter's taint w his thumb until peter's cock is twitching, presses butterfly kisses to peters back while pushing in the plug

peter thinks tony would probably turn a blind eye to peter just falling asleep here in tony's bed, but he gets up. he picks up his pants and his briefs, hangs the cumsoaked underwear on tony's door knob before shutting the door behind him.

peter wakes up smelling like tony but the real question is whether tony is still going to love it.

[goodfish-bowl]

You know, sometimes I wonder if the rest of Amity knew what the Fentons had done. If they knew about the portal at all.

Sure, Jack and Maddie are always raving on and on about ghosts, showing off the craziest inventions you’ve ever seen, and being a general menace, but they’re quacks, just the town weirdos, right? They make funny laser guns that don’t actually hurt people too bad and those Goop cannons. The biggest threat is their armored tank of an RV. But actual ghosts, no way.

It also wasn’t like Danny or even Jazz had the social connections to spread gossip about their parents inventions around. Danny had explicitly and reluctantly told Sam and Tucker about the portal, they didn’t know what was actually going on in the basement until they’re were watching their friend get fried crispy inside of it. Neither wants their parents newest, craziest invention to become the local gossip. So, it’s safe to say most of Amity doesn’t know what goes on in the Fenton Basement until it breaches containment.

But then, all of a sudden, they’re are actual ghosts running around the town, and the Drs. Fenton are full of mad-scientist glee about it. Not shocked or disheartened, but glad and malicious. There are attacks and destruction in the wake of the ghosts arrival all from all sides of the conflict.

Wonder if anyone actually knew it was the Fenton Parents who brought the dead to Amity Park, more intentionally than not.

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

the first time you go to bufos classroom and the second time