tradishradish

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lonely lesbian love story

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when did we as a society decided that asthma was a nerdy embarrassing thing, as opposed to, like,,,, a genuine chronic illness?

I don’t know how many times I’ve just sat and pushed through an asthma attack because I didn’t want to pull out my inhaler in class. i was already socially ostracized, I was already a ‘nerd’- I didn’t need people seeing my inhaler.

can we talk about this?? why is every representation of asthma I’ve ever seen some nerdy kid in a sweater vest and glasses, using his inhaler as a visual gag? laugh at the nerdy kid, laugh at his potentially dangerous chronic illness.

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This is the best possible thing that could have happened to me

Bonus:

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In the 1950s, America was fairly right-wing overall.  The HUAC was seeing Communists around every corner.  And during this fiscally-conservative era, the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was over 90%.  With so much money pouring into government programs and services like education, our nation enjoyed one of its greatest periods of prosperity and economic growth.

Nowadays, the minimum wage has FAR less buying power than it did in the 1950s or even the 1970s.  80% of Americans are one paycheck away from disaster and do not earn enough money to save anything for a rainy day.  The average worker is laboring for far more hours just to keep a roof over their head and food in their bellies.  Tumblr is full of people in their 20s talking about their knee and back injuries from manual labor that, when I was a girl, tended to happen when people were twice that age.

And Alexandria Occasio-Cortes is proposing a 70% marginal tax rate on earnings after one’s first $10 million.  And somehow, this rate, which is lower than it was in the NINETEEN-FIFTIES, is treated as extreme.  As far too radical to be implemented.  As something that will destroy our nation.

She wants to return us to one of the better aspects of what life was like 70 years ago.  She wants to lower the national debt and fund our education, military, national security, and national parks by implementing a MARGINAL tax rate lower than even what there was in Eisenhower’s day.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t wanting to return a policy to what we had in an earlier time the definition of being conservative?

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IT’S NAME IS FLOP

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Cat discovers oranges and discovers that he doesn’t like them. (via nevermndthealbatross)

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Straight Men just Be Like That sometimes

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The Lego Movie (2014), dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

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If you are ever looking for furniture you’ve got to go to an antique store. Now when I say antique store, I don’t mean the boutique downtown that will charge you $700 for a lamp. I mean the trashy place up the street on a big lot with tables and chairs piled up for miles outside. The kind that stretches 75 miles back in a cold room with no descernable path through it. You will find the best, sturdiest, and coolest shit for amazing prices. If it’s in the middle of nowhere it’s even better because you can haggle.

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honestly like i get the poly(nesian) vs poly(amorous) thing, and n(on)b(lack) vs n(on)b(inary), and i’ll change to polyam or ply or enby if asked to avoid confusion, but i also need yall to know that like…its okay for one abbreviation to have multiple meanings. theres only 26 letters and we can reuse some of them, no one is “stealing” anything.

Animal Crossing did not attack Air Conditioners.

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I think that the most damning thing about The Rise of Skywalker, in regards to shipping, is that no one seems happy. Relyos are pissed that they killed Kylo off, Rey/anyone-else fans are pissed that Reylo is technically canon, there’s apparently no other romantic relationships intact by the end–why is media so hellbent on removing romance lately, as far as I can tell?

Game of Thrones ends with exactly two relationships still viable (Edmure/Rosalin and Gilly/Sam). The few fandom ships are broken apart except for Jon/Tormund. Endgame ends with Peggy/Steve and a few other relationships, but kills off a bunch of other relationships. That’s not even including the fandom ships that can’t happen now that the participants are dead. So many films and shows recently end with everyone alone.

And that’s not even getting into when family and friends split up. I suppose all of this is a response to the bleakness of our current lives, but giving into that despair is just sad. There’s nothing wrong with angst or bittersweet endings; still, where are the big blockbuster series that end with mostly everyone alive and happy? When do I get a beautiful, fluffy ending to counterbalance all of the depressing “life sucks and then you die” nihilism?

I just miss when I could reasonably hope for a happy ending. I’m not asking for all media to be sunshine and rainbows, but media doesn’t have to be constant rain and storms either. There has to be a healthy balance somewhere.

Thank God for fanfiction, I guess.

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Help, my girlfriend calls Red Dead Redemption “Redededemption” and also insists that that’s the name of the main character

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When you think about it, it’s not that unreasonable that people would become more relaxed around Geralt because of Jaskier. This big ass dude with two scary swords whose profession it is to slay beasts that could tear apart whole villages in seconds is being followed around by a twink with a lute like a lost baby duck. He talks Geralt’s ear off, sings songs about him, and Geralt lets him. 

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For anyone who might be writing fic in order to raise money/donations for a cause, please remember not to mention that anywhere on AO3. It is against the Terms of Service to charge money for fic, even if that money is not going to you, personally. Please don’t mention commissions or donations or fundraising or patreon or kofi etc etc in a fic or on your profile. ❤

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Let’s take a moment to talk Shit.

You can tell a lot about the health of a pet by its poop.

Changes in its color or consistency are among the first warning signs that a pet may not be feeling well.

In birds, you will usually see changes in poop long before the changes in behavior that indicate illness, like irritability or lethargy.

When most people think of pigeon poop, This is what usually comes to mind:

Nasty white streaks

Or splatters

Or gross colored splats

Any place feral pigeons frequent.

But this is what poop from a healthy, well fed pigeon looks like:

A small, compact ball of the indigestible fiber left over from the hulls of the seeds they eat whole, with a tiny white cap of urate.

You can see the consistency from the others underneath it, where nesting straw has been mashed into them as Pippin has come and gone and arranged, and rearranged individual blades.

A reliably well fed and hydrated pigeon will usually leave stools that keep their round shape on impact with a texture slightly softer than well worked playdoh.

Pigeon poop can be sloppy after a big drink of water following a 6-12 hour period of having gone with out. 

The bowel movement after their first drink of water in the morning, for example, may make a sloppy mess, but in a healthy, well fed pigeon, the solid part will still be brown, and there will be more water than the white urate.

Look at this third picture again:

That wet mess of solids on mostly urate, with a mucus-y shine and slimy texture, is indicative of a heavy gut load of intestinal parasites. 

Not just most ferals, but most racing, performing, and exhibition pigeons (since there are often housed out doors) are infested with the nematode Capillaria, the round worm Strongyloides, or the protozoan Coccidia.

While usually sub-clinical, an active infection of Salmonella will turn the poop a distinctive sulfur yellow to lime green.

But poop is only pure white, 

Like those streaks and splatters most people associate with feral pigeons, when the birds have not had access to solid food in 12 hours or more.

Nearly all feral pigeons perpetually teeter on the brink of starvation, and it shows in their poop.

They are strict granivores, meaning that they can only digest seeds: the embryonic tissue of plants.

With cities being so carefully landscaped, often with the only plant life available being in the form of flower beds and trees, with grasses only in public parks and mowed too short to bloom and seed, the food they can actually digest is mighty hard for the average feral pigeon to find.

Barn ferals tend to be much more healthy for access to seed and animal feed.

But spilled garbage and the hand outs of the people that like them enough to feed them are literally all the food city ferals have access to.

Most of that is bread.

And while bread is made from grain, milling that grain and baking it into bread breaks it down, making it easier for a HUMAN to digest, but HARDER for a pigeon.

They like the taste of it, and eating some as an occasional treat won’t do a pet bird any harm, but that’s the VAST bulk of the food feral pigeons have access to.

It would be like a humans having to wander for miles every day to find food, but only being able to find potato chips, snack cakes, and the occasional slim jim.

That human would not have a long, or healthy life.

Now imagine that person ALSO had two different kinds of lice, mosquitos, and a parasitic fly sucking their blood from the outside, a painful cheesy growth in their throat that could block off their trachea or esophagus if it goes untreated long enough, two species of worms eating the nutrients they manage to find before their intestinal lining gets the chance to absorb it, and a protozoan eating their intestinal lining, with no hope of getting any of those things treated.

And you have a pretty accurate representation of what it’s like to be a feral pigeon living “free”.

I am all for wild animals living free in the environment for which they were adapted.

But pigeons are not wild life, and they were not adapted to cities.

ESPECIALLY not on the continent of North America.

The pigeons that were brought here as military messengers, meat, and entertainment had been domesticated for thousands of years already.

When homers were no longer faster and more reliable messengers than phone lines or radio waves, they were no longer profitable to keep, pigeons were released. This was common practice in the places they came from.

But in Europe, Africa, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, where Rock Doves are native, there WAS natural habitat for the exclusively cliff nesting birds to relocate to, as well as open lofts that would welcome the boon of free livestock. 

But there is nothing like their actual habitat: A high cliff near the sea, between desert and grass land, in north America. 

So, as lofts shut down and were (as they still are to this day by racers) habitually destroyed to discourage the birds no one would buy from returning, there was nowhere for the unwanted birds to go EXCEPT the tall, concrete buildings, and the metal structure under bridges and billboards.

The problem of feral pigeon mess, from the structural damage caused by the pure uric acid they excrete on an empty stomach to their potential as vectors for zoonotic disease is one of our own making.

That’s why I don’t re-abandon feral pigeons that come into rehab by releasing them.

I get them medical care. Heal their wounds, treat their infections, clean out their parasites…

And then I treat them like any good shelter would treat a stray dog:

I evaluate their temperament, and find them a permanent home where they can be well cared for and as happy as possible.

I fiercely love pigeons. 

And for the same reason that seeing mangy, thin stray dogs roam the street treated an invasive pest species; ignored at best and chased off or exterminated at worst, would horrify and haunt the average american…

My goals are to make hoards of feral pigeons a thing of the ignorant past by encouraging the development of shelters for them like we have for dogs, cats, parrots, and other exotic pets.

Wildlife, like Mourning Doves, should absolutely be returned to the wild if at all possible.

Urban wildlife, like raccoons, are natives that have willingly ventured into cities and found them a welcoming, supportive environment, for which that animal happened to be naturally well suited.

Invasive wildlife, like Collared Doves, happen to be well adapted to the new environment into which they were released. T hey can be a danger to natives, so culling is preferred over release in the event that they can’t be penned. But still being wild animals, being caged stresses them severely.

Pigeons fit NONE of these categories.

They are not wildlife.

They did not “invade” cities.

They were abandoned there the minute they ceased to be profitable, they had no where else to go, and we treat the mess like it’s their fault.

We have done pigeons a terrible disservice by having entirely forgotten that they are domestic livestock.

And any one that calls a pigeon in north America a “wind animal that should be free” perpetuates and encourages that abandonment of responsibility.

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