#canada-us-mexico

[masgwi]

I don't understand how political debates don't turn into fist fights more often.

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Red-tailed Hawk

Photo: Kent Ross

"This is the most widespread and familiar large hawk in North America, bulky and broad-winged, designed for effortless soaring. An inhabitant of open country, it is commonly seen perched on roadside poles or sailing over fields and woods. Although adults usually can be recognized by the trademark reddish-brown tail, the rest of their plumage can be quite variable, especially west of the Mississippi: Western Red-tails can range from blackish to rufous-brown to nearly white."

- Audubon Field Guide

[the-final-sif]

There's a post from someone outside of the US about how people in the US don't put their country down and just put down their state and something about US people being US centric, and part of it has always kind of bothered me because I think that people outside of the US don't really understand how states work for us or why people think their state should be enough. Some of it is being US centric for sure, but I honestly don't think that's the main reason.

It's because the US is a bunch of countries in a trench coat. I've compared it before to the EU, and I really do think that's accurate. It's literally a union of states. Each state has it's own government and laws and we have the federal government too but day to day a lot more of your life comes down to the state laws. Your driver's license, license plate, wage and a lot of employment protect (and enforcement), vast majority of court experiences, etc all go through the state. Moving to different states can mean being subject to wildly different laws, tax rates/methods, and forms of discrimination (ie florida trying to ban queer people while other states are explicitly adding protections for them).

Like, you'll notice that streamers often tend to be clustered in certain states in the US, and a lot of that has to do with certain states not having an income tax. Depending on what state they're registered in, companies can be subject to wildly different laws. Hence why Delaware is so popular for businesses. Bankruptcy law works differently in every state.

Lawyers are licensed to practice by state, and while they can move to different states, it's difficult and depending on their area of law they may be totally out of their field. Even small states like Delaware have totally different laws from a place 15 minutes to the left like New Jersey.

The largest single state by population is California which has nearly 40 million people. That is more than the entire population of Canada. It's roughly on par with Poland. Give or take a million people.

Ohio has about 11 million people, about 1 million more than Sweden. Florida has 22 million, over double Greece's population. New York and Romania both come out to about 19 million each.

Our smallest state by population, Wyoming, which has about 500k people, still has about 200k more people than Iceland.

Fucking Russia literally does not have half the population of the US. It sits at 144 million while we're at 333 million.

To give a sense of landmass/scale, France is the largest EU state by landmass with 630k square km. Texas alone is 695k. Alaska is 1.7 million square km. The US in total is 11.3 million square km. The entire EU has 4.2 million square km.

The US is 1) fucking huge and 2) so much less cohesive than a lot of non-Americans assume.

So why would someone from the US just put down their state? For the same reason that most people from the EU don't write down "Germany in the EU". Your state is where you're actually from, the USA is the weird umbrella you live under.

[miraclemaya]

i do think like your average north american doesn't like think of xenophobia as like a bad thing or like real. like okay so you're average person thinks they think racism is bad right? like they are still gonna say or do something racist a varying amount but like to them racism is a bad thing (and also a distant thing). but like i feel like it's like xenophobia isn't thought of as a real thing which is insane after like decades of screaming about how immigrants are ruining everything.

[mapsontheweb]

No religion/Irreligion in Canada, USA, and Mexico

by mexidominicarican8

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - November 1-7

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles on Patreon!

1. Climate Initiatives Fare Well Across the Country Despite National Political Climate

“[California voters approved] a $10 billion bond measure to boost climate resilience across [the] state[…. Hawai’i] voters cast their ballots in favor of establishing the [climate] resiliency fund, with money for the project coming from existing property tax revenue.“

2. ‘You have to disguise your human form’: how sea eagles are being returned to Severn estuary after 150 years

“[… To avoid imprinting,] the handlers will wear long robes and feed the young eagles chopped rabbit and other meat with bird hand-puppets. […] Williams hopes that restoring eagles to the top of the food chain in the estuary will create a more balanced, thriving ecosystem.”

3. 10 states voted on pro-abortion referendums. 7 of them passed

“New York voters overwhelmingly approved the Equal Rights Amendment, adding [… among other characteristics] gender expression, pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes to anti-discrimination laws. […] In deep-red Missouri and Montana, voters also enshrined abortions protections in their state constitutions.”

4. Giant rats could soon fight illegal wildlife trade by sniffing out elephant tusk and rhino horn

“”Our study shows that we can train African giant pouched rats to detect illegally trafficked wildlife, even when it has been concealed among other substances[.…] They can easily access tight spaces like cargo in packed shipping containers or be lifted up high to screen the ventilation systems of sealed containers,” Szott explained.”

5. Sarah McBride wins Delaware U.S. House seat, becoming the first out trans member of Congress

“McBride spearheaded Delaware’s legislation to ban the “gay and trans panic” defense as a state senator [… and] helped to pass paid family and medical leave, gun safety measures, and protections for reproductive rights.”

6. Critically endangered Sumatran elephant calf born in Indonesia

“Indonesian officials hailed the births and said they showed conservation efforts were essential to prevent the protected species from extinction. […] Sumatran elephants are on the brink of extinction with only about 2,400-2,800 left in the world, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.”

7. Sin City is Going Green

“[Hotels there] have conserved 16 billion gallons of water since 2007, thanks to […] replacing grass with desert-friendly landscaping, installing water-efficient taps across all properties, and reusing water at aquariums and in the Bellagio Fountain.”

8. Gray squirrel control: Study shows promise for effective contraceptive delivery system

“[… T]he feeders have a very high level of species-specificity. […] The bait and monitoring system developed and tested in the study demonstrated that […] “spring was the only season tested where female squirrels were more likely to visit bait feeders than males. Spring coincides with a peak in squirrel breeding and is therefore a good time to deliver a contraceptive."”

9. Returning Grazing Land to Native Forests Would Yield Big Climate Benefits

“[… S]trategically regrowing forests on land where cattle currently graze […] while intensifying production elsewhere could drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, with little hit to global protein production, a new study shows.”

10. Interior Department Strengthens Conservation of American Bison Through New Agreement with Canada and Mexico

“Approximately 31,000 bison are currently being stewarded by the United States, Canada and Mexico with the goal of conserving the species and their role in the function of native grassland systems, as well as their place in Indigenous culture.”

October 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[tatersgonnatate]

My partner and I are VERY SERIOUSLY looking into immigrating, either into Canada or Mexico (both are driveable, Canada is closer to where we live y si hablo español) do i have ANYONE reading this who lives in EITHER location that can tell me anything? You have NOOOOO IDEA how much I'd appreciate it 🥹🥹🥹🥹

[bonefall]

the "strange place" could be a private wildlife collector? i know the buying and selling of wild animals as pets can be pretty bad in the uk (or at least it is w/ birds of prey? that's abt what i know)

OH that's a good idea, that's going to be one of my top choices for if I DO end up needing to change the "twoleg den" in the upcoming super edition. Private wildlife collectors are a HUGE problem because the laws on simply owning exotic animals (as long as they're not covered by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act) are suuuuper lax in the UK, and the Zoo Licensing Act only applies if you accept general admission.

(and even then, specifically, you can take admission a limited amount of times a year. James Wellington's Animal Welfare Nightmare Extravaganza, beloved winter tradition, £25 each, kiddies of edible height get in free)

Birds in particular are a huuuge issue because there's big oversights in the laws surrounding the keeping of birds of prey. You don't actually need a license to own any birds except ostriches and cassowaries, or one of the five destructive invasive birds. Your pet eagle just needs to be registered so they know you didn't snatch it from the wild. Licenses will only apply if you're breeding, selling, or using it for falconry.

Maybe I could even tie this hypothetical antagonist guy to Sharptooth/One Eye/The God of Summer's previous human incarnation, on some off-chance the series ends up using this villain again. That could be kinda neat.

[safije]

People in Latin America: Spanish, Mayan, Quecha, Zapotec, African, Lebanese, Germans, Italians, Japanese etc.

What the rest of the world imagines Latinos to be: Mediterranean or Mestizo (Half Mesoamerican + Spanish) looking.

[existennialmemes]

Don't forget to smash your clocks tonight!

Abandon the Concept of Time!

✨🕒 Be Free 🕘✨

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: American Redstart

Photo: Doug Greenberg

"Warblers in general are often called 'the butterflies of the bird world,' but the Redstart may live up to that nickname more than any other species. This beautiful warbler flits about very actively in the trees, usually holding its wings and tail partly spread, as if to show off their patches of color. At times it feeds more like a flycatcher than a typical warbler, hovering among the foliage and often flying out to grab insects in mid-air."

- Audubon Field Guide

[fatehbaz]

[D]omesticated attack dogs [...] hunted those who defied the profitable Caribbean sugar regimes and North America’s later Cotton Kingdom, [...] enforced plantation regimens [...], and closed off fugitive landscapes with acute adaptability to the varied [...] terrains of sugar, cotton, coffee or tobacco plantations that they patrolled. [...] [I]n the Age of Revolutions the Cuban bloodhound spread across imperial boundaries to protect white power and suppress black ambitions in Haiti and Jamaica. [...] [Then] dog violence in the Caribbean spurred planters in the American South to import and breed slave dogs [...].

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Spanish landowners often used dogs to execute indigenous labourers simply for disobedience. [...] Bartolomé de las Casas [...] documented attacks against Taino populations, telling of Spaniards who ‘hunted them with their hounds [...]. These dogs shed much human blood’. Many later abolitionists made comparisons with these brutal [Spanish] precedents to criticize canine violence against slaves on these same Caribbean islands. [...] Spanish officials in Santo Domingo were licensing packs of dogs to comb the forests for [...] fugitives [...]. Dogs in Panama, for instance, tracked, attacked, captured and publicly executed maroons. [...] In the 1650s [...] [o]ne [English] observer noted, ‘There is nothing in [Barbados] so useful as … Liam Hounds, to find out these Thieves’. The term ‘liam’ likely came from the French limier, meaning ‘bloodhound’. [...] In 1659 English planters in Jamaica ‘procured some blood-hounds, and hunted these blacks like wild-beasts’ [...]. By the mid eighteenth century, French planters in Martinique were also relying upon dogs to hunt fugitive slaves. [...] In French Saint-Domingue [Haiti] dogs were used against the maroon Macandal [...] and he was burned alive in 1758. [...]

Although slave hounds existed throughout the Caribbean, it was common knowledge that Cuba bred and trained the best attack dogs, and when insurrections began to challenge plantocratic interests across the Americas, two rival empires, Britain and France, begged Spain to sell these notorious Cuban bloodhounds to suppress black ambitions and protect shared white power. [...] [I]n the 1790s and early 1800s [...] [i]n the Age of Revolutions a new canine breed gained widespread popularity in suppressing black populations across the Caribbean and eventually North America. Slave hounds were usually descended from more typical mastiffs or bloodhounds [...].

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Spanish and Cuban slave hunters not only bred the Cuban bloodhound, but were midwives to an era of international anti-black co-ordination as the breed’s reputation spread rapidly among enslavers during the seven decades between the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 and the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. [...]

Despite the legends of Spanish cruelty, British officials bought Cuban bloodhounds when unrest erupted in Jamaica in 1795 after learning that Spanish officials in Cuba had recently sent dogs to hunt runaways and the indigenous Miskitos in Central America. [...] The island’s governor, Balcarres, later wrote that ‘Soon after the maroon rebellion broke out’ he had sent representatives ‘to Cuba in order to procure a number of large dogs of the bloodhound breed which are used to hunt down runaway negroes’ [...]. In 1803, during the final independence struggle of the Haitian Revolution, Cuban breeders again sold hundreds of hounds to the French to aid their fight against the black revolutionaries. [...] In 1819 Henri Christophe, a later leader of Haiti, told Tsar Alexander that hounds were a hallmark of French cruelty. [...]

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The most extensively documented deployment of slave hounds [...] occurred in the antebellum American South and built upon Caribbean foundations. [...] The use of dogs increased during that decade [1830s], especially with the Second Seminole War in Florida (1835–42). The first recorded sale of Cuban dogs into the United States came with this conflict, when the US military apparently purchased three such dogs for $151.72 each [...]. [F]ierce bloodhounds reputed to be from Cuba appeared in the Mississippi valley as early as 1841 [...].

The importation of these dogs changed the business of slave catching in the region, as their deployment and reputation grew rapidly throughout the 1840s and, as in Cuba, specialized dog handlers became professionalized. Newspapers advertised slave hunters who claimed to possess the ‘Finest dogs for catching negroes’ [...]. [S]lave hunting intensified [from the 1840s until the Civil War] [...]. Indeed, tactics in the American South closely mirrored those of their Cuban predecessors as local slave catchers became suppliers of biopower indispensable to slavery’s profitability. [...] [P]rice [...] was left largely to the discretion of slave hunters, who, ‘Charging by the day and mile [...] could earn what was for them a sizeable amount - ten to fifty dollars [...]'. William Craft added that the ‘business’ of slave catching was ‘openly carried on, assisted by advertisements’. [...] The Louisiana slave owner [B.B.] portrayed his own pursuits as if he were hunting wild game [...]. The relationship between trackers and slaves became intricately systematized [...]. The short-lived republic of Texas (1836–46) even enacted specific compensation and laws for slave trackers, provisions that persisted after annexation by the United States.

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All text above by: Tyler D. Parry and Charlton W. Yingling. "Slave Hounds and Abolition in the Americas". Past & Present, Volume 246, Issue 1, February 2020, pages 69-108. Published February 2020. At: doi dot org/10.1093/pastj/gtz020. February 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[mapsontheweb]

Timeline of same-sex marriage legalization across Canada, USA and Mexico, 2003-2022.

by u/die_a_third_death

[iconictrucks]

Chevy Truck Sales - Shop For pickup

RENT - 850$

SALES-27000$

Used 2012 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LS - Specs & Features ; V8 · Flex-fuel (FFV) · 302 hp @ 5,600 rpm · 305 lb-ft @ 4,600 rpm

[unhetalia]

the last hc on england pt2 sounds like a good plot about ukus getting together (if they were friends at the time)

It would be such a fun little fic - they're definitely not together when it happens, but I don't think it's what gets them together.

I like to imagine Alfred being torn between having to be a responsible adult and also finding it totally awesome when Arthur lays into like six guys all at once, so maybe he's saying:

"Why are you only cool when you're drunk, hahahah! Also, don't even try blaming me about the fact you got banned from another bar when you're sober and boring again - I was already a hero going out of my way to take your drunk ass home, how was I supposed to know you were gonna randomly punch that guy? You're pretty fast when you wanna be - not that you're faster than me, of course! I was just distracted by how much your breath smelled like whiskey. Should I sign you up for like, AA or something? Because I don't think it's healthy to be getting this drunk! But I guess all you old people do that a lot - Prussia and Russia and Francis and Spain are just as bad as you are, and —"

Then Arthur would cut him off, sounding sober and serious, but actually totally shitfaced. He'd say, "It's my job to protect you from degenerates who try to - to - steal your virtue! Of course I had to challenge that man! In fact, back in the old days I would have had the right to kill him for trying to lay a hand on you!"

"Um, I think you have me mixed up with some kind of Victorian maiden or Canada or something. I could've totally handled that guy if I wanted to. And don't talk about murder so casually, it's weird. You eat scones and drink tea. Leave that shit to cooler and more fucked up Nations."