#see what works

[wyrddogs]

I wish I didn't feel like a garbage trainer all the time. It makes it hard to track my progress with the puppy. (Is he actually doing good or am I deluding myself? Is he actually improving or is he going to be like this his entire life?)

I'm basically doing two fake-canicross walks per day (when we're not doing offleash walks) to get him tired. The rule is he can pull as much and as hard as he likes as long as it is in the direction I tell him to pull. No lunging, backflips, barking, etc. Since I want to bikejor with him later I very much do not want to discourage pulling, and we can work on directionals and pulling into pressure now.

Zaku has extremely high prey drive and is extremely critter-y. According to his breeder, both parents have extremely high prey drive and do not critter at all. I've been teaching him that he can be as excited as he wants about critters as long as he translates that into pulling in the direction I tell him to. I learned this technique when training Bindi for bikejoring. If he tries to stop/stalk, I increase the pressure on the leash, and he automatically pulls into it, and I praise.

I've noticed that he's started to keep an ear slightly turned towards me even when he's in critter mode. If he tries to dart sideways I can go "ah-ah!" and he'll correct himself. He's allowed to pull as much or as little as he wants, and after a few good hard pulls, sometimes he'll see a squirrel, get tall, think about how hard he's going to have to work, and then look away/sniff the ground to calm himself down. He's just started doing that this week. He's also started offering a lot of LLW and walks quietly next to me. (I'm training LLW completely separately on his flat collar.)

Yesterday I started asking for recall/sit/down when we have passed a critter but he's still in prey mode. Once he's gotten the adrenaline rush out of the way he is super amendable to obedience training. Offers eye contact and snappy sits. Still needs to be lured into a down but he'll kick his hip over and settle. I also get a really lovely head-snap recall. He also will check in with me and ask for body rubs. This morning we did sit/down pushups a few feet from a squirrel that was begging me for food. It was behind Zaku so he couldn't see it, but he knew it was there because I'd recalled him off it. He's not ready to offer any engagement when he has eyes on a critter but I think that offering engagement when he knows it's there and can hear it is a big improvement from even last week.

After his second walk of the day and he's good and tired, I do LLW training. Yesterday we walked around a tree with squirrels and he was very amendable to yielding to leash pressure (on his flat collar) for cheese. Today I took him to a grocery store and walked back and forth in front of the entrance around people and shopping carts and he was fantastic.

I'm basically making shit up and modifying the reactivity training I did with Bindi. Using the pull-into-pressure technique was unbelievably successful with getting her to tolerate scary sounds. Once she burned through the adrenaline she was able to self-soothe and offer me engagement and take food, even if the scary sound repeated. There's an FDSA seminar on drive that I'm signed up for, which I'm looking forward to. Zaku is the driviest dog that I have personally worked with, so I'm feeling a bit out of my depth.

[fly-chicken]

A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

[12neonlit-stage]

you're allowed to discuss and work together, reblog for a higher sample size or something

You have 1 week, good luck!

[karda]

i miss science class bro. we dont put things under microscopes as much as we should

[keymintt]

more public art! these fellas were printed on vinyl for the sides of a traffic cabinet

[trans-androgyne]

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

[hinamie]

10 years later

[noodles-and-tea]

Last part whoo!!!

PART 1 / PART 2 / PART 3 / PART 4

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Also increasingly aware that a LOT of people "manage" getting through the 40+ hour work week by sleeping less than is healthy and relying on stimulants like coffee and energy drinks to keep them going.

For people who are unwilling or unable to do this...work really does just dominate your life. Like we really should not have to rely on unhealthy practices just to have a social life or keep on top of housework or whatever.

I know I post about this a lot but I'm so TIRED all the time and it's just so depressing that this is how we're expected to spend the one life we have.

[krysmcscience]

I have some questions about karaoke night, Alex Hirsch. Very Important Questions. Which I will happily scream at a poor hapless baby triangle who can have no answers for me, and possibly also does not have object permanence yet.

Follow-up that is I guess suggestive, but let's be real here, Bill's a fucking triangle:

Dude slipped right into his birthday suit, lmao

this is so stupid :D

Anyway, I don't care what anyone says, this brilliant individual knows what's up - Bill is absolutely way more of a monsterfucker than Ford could or ever will be, full stop.

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[grinchwrapsupreme]

Saw a post about helping people that used the analogy of "if you see someone fall off a cruiseship and theres a life preserver ring on the wall next to you do you walk away or do you throw them the life preserver? Of course you throw them the life preserver." And i dont want to add to or tag the post with any sort of correction because its literally not the point at all but i am desperate to say that the first thing they teach you when you work on a cruise ship is that if someone falls overboard you Do Not Look Away

If theres a life preserver nearby but you have to turn your back to get it, tough luck. If theres someone nearby who can't hear you but you could run and get them, absolutely not. You see someone go overboard you point at them and never ever let them out of your sight because looking away even once could mean losing them forever, so you just have to trust that someone will hear you scream for help but you cant for any reason look away

And maybe that adds to the life preserver metaphor somehow but mostly i just need you to know if you spot someone in the water you point at them and you watch them close and you scream for help

[queenoftheantz]

Sudoku on the train home

He is like. Really good at it.

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

...I got fiddlestan brainworms

hehehe funny spongebob reference

[pokeberry5]

practice portraits

[xxplastic-cubexx]

obligatory beach divorce doodling

bonus rough cover redraw of x-men #41 (1995) But Beach Divorce below cut