It has always amused me that the tourists to the US that I’ve spoken to are often very excited to see raccoons, and disappointed if they don’t see them before they leave....
Oh no, i got to see them. This was a decade ago, and I was told even then that there used to be many more. I was happy to see any at all though, I had only ever seen them in movies and they almost seemed mythical. They are pretty magical, it's very sad to hear they're almost gone.
I was excited to see squirrels, lightning bugs and a racoon in the US.
When people come to Australia they obviously want to see kangaroos, koalas and platypus and quokka. Koalas are very rare to see in the wild, and a visit to a zoo will score you a sleeping ball on a branch. Kangaroos are frequently roadkill if you go outside the city. Quokka require a long trip to a really remote location. You'll also almost never see a platypus, even the ones at the zoo you might catch a water ripple at best.
But if you're headed to Sydney city, guaranteed you'll spot the almighty and much maligned "bin chicken", our Australian white ibis. Often not quite white from the bins. At night they serenade you with their collective honking from their tree, which can be easily spotted by the masses of white poop underneath. And you'll see fruit bats in the evening. Hopefully not the daytime corpses hanging from electrical cables while they slowly rot, but that's not altogether unlikely either, unfortunately.
The bin chickens are my kin, I'm in the small minority here who appreciate them.
And yeah, the flying foxes are a surprise for most foreigners. They're also pretty big and often fly low at dusk, so they can be slightly startling too, even though they're just adorable fuzzy harmless nectar drinkers. It's a pity they screech too, it might be easier to reassure non-locals that they're not dangerous.
People are also often surprised to see all the other Sydney city wildlife and how much of it there is, especially rainbow lorrikeets. Everyone loves the lorrikeets, but people from the northern hemisphere are especially awestruck when they see them. It's understandably almost a little surreal to have such brightly colored parrots hanging out in the middle of a city, if you're someone who comes from a city that is just pigeons and sparrows.
If you want to see a croc, just go walking near the shallow water of the top half of the country's coast. You won't see the croc for long, and it will be the last thing you ever see, but it will be up close and very personal.
Seriously though, you don't go to see salt water crocodiles in the wild or even go near any body of water on the northern coast. If you can see one with the naked eye in the wild, you're already too close. They're extremely fast, extremely aggressive, and the males get up to 6m / 20ft long and 1000kg / 2200lb. They are very much a zoo only thing.
Seeing a chipmunk was the same for me. And goddamn are they cute, I had no idea they were so small and precious. Alvin and the chipmunks are monstrosities by comparison.
Exactly, and yet the question is never "is agriculture a long-term threat to humanity?". It's always the people with medical issues who are acceptable first choices as society's sacrificial MacGuffin, long before we question any technology that benefits the person who is "just asking questions".
It's like we didn't already do Social Darwinism the first time. Super frustrating.
As has medicine and most other technologies. And yet... the question is never asked about the long term threats posed by people who aren't personally hunting and tracking and foraging.
If you wanted to emphasise the challenges he dealt with, adjectives for his physical appearance were not a good choice. The challenges he would have dealt with may have included chronic pain, limited mobility and discrimination. You could even have said he suffered from kyphosis. But words which have been frequently intended to be derogatory don't do much to create a sense of empathy.
could be applied to anyone.
And it's nice to see disability being normalised, even if that wasn't your intent.
I never want to hear anyone say again that "nobody calls someone a 'cripple' anymore". Perhaps consider this somewhat less grotesque alternate phrasing: "Steinmetz was a person who experienced significant and debilitating disability".
natural selection does not choose whats best overall, just those that can reproduce.
That's not only an incorrect understanding of natural selection, i'd add that Steinmetz chose not to reproduce. If he hadn't been the topic of your next sentence, I wouldn't have felt the need to emphasise his personal agency. Or his existence as a person
Even if we ignored the entire history of the word cripple, it still would be remarkable to not consider hunchback or dwarf as physical descriptions. Given that your next question references video games and then we fall down Godwin's slippery slope, I'm not convinced you're honestly engaging with the concept of connotation.
the words only have deragatory meaning to those who have decided they are such.
Yes, and when the people who have to live with the consequences of discrimination tell you that you're speaking in the same way as those who have discriminated against them, it's worth considering. Even momentarily.
Have a great day, I'm going to go be a cripple elsewhere now. Nah, just kidding, it will still be my couch. Just not this thread.
And miss out on the reminder that my existence is precarious and dependent on the good-will of the able-bodied? Nah, that's head-in-sand stuff. I prefer to remind everyone of what this line of questioning has led to in the past and the human consequences of discussing the rights of a group of people in the abstract.
Oh cool, it's time to find out how much of a burden on humanity I am and whether I should have been left to die. Just hypothetically of course, I wouldn't want anyone to misunderstand. I always enjoy this question with my morning coffee.
A song evaded me for maybe 5 or 6 years once. I ended up having this same conversation about evasive songs with someone and did my best at an impression, because it's instrumental.
It's nice to know we have looped back to the point in history where we casually consider which people should have agency over their reproductive rights. Oh wait, no it's not nice at all, but somehow still totally acceptable and commonplace.
I just wonder if it actually did get worse or it just seems like that because as an adult you have a lot more on your plate than you did when you were a kid/teen
Covid amplified mine hard-core and was the reason i sought diagnosis. I've heard others have experienced similar but I have no idea if this is a widespread thing, and it will be years before research attempts to check. It makes sense though, given the serotonin changes and the way neurotransmitters interact and regulate one another
It starts before birth. Low socio-economic status affects the health of pregnant people, which in turn has consequences for foetal development. Stress is a big trigger for various latent congenital issues, and that's one reason climate change is going to result in increased rates of disease.
Anyone got any recommendations or warnings about specific hdd / ssd / storage brands or models at the moment? Thinking about buying another drive instead of being smart and cleaning up my files. I've been pretty happy with Samsung but I've heard they had a clunker of a drive with high failure rates lately. HDD, SSD and I think I...
I've always considered doing a raid array but the cheapness of remote servers these days makes it feel like overkill combined with being expensive and centralized. I just have an external enclosure and a mess of duplicate files across smaller outdated drives at the moment. It's not ideal, but that's ADHD for you.
Yep, got a Samsung evo 870 in there, still going strong for like a decade. The HGST spinner I have is also pretty longlived. Weren't they bought out by WD though? I feel like I remember hearing that the quality has declined severely.
Having said that, I do also have a WD .... black? In there that has also lasted. I will check out gold though, and the mx500
backblaze drive failure report
Excellent, this is what I was hoping to find again but i couldn't remember the name. I also assumed it would be paywalled after all these years... if I could even get google to deliver the link.
Not just a defense witness, a former federal prosecutor. A judge had to tell a former federal prosecutor “And then if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes.” like he was a pouty teenager.
In your country, what "common" animals are tourists most excited to see?
It has always amused me that the tourists to the US that I’ve spoken to are often very excited to see raccoons, and disappointed if they don’t see them before they leave....
A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection?
OK, I hope my question doesn’t get misunderstood, I can see how that could happen....
What is a song you wanted to find again for a long time, but it gave you no clear clue about how to search for it?
I would also be curious to hear how you eventually found it again!...
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 26 May 2024
Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!...
Anyone else feel like their ADHD was always there but got progressively worse as an adult?
I just wonder if it actually did get worse or it just seems like that because as an adult you have a lot more on your plate than you did when you were a kid/teen
Shredding at the feeder. (Northern Cardinal) (lemmy.world)
I made a quarter pipe for my bird feeder....
Dutton threatens to pull Australia from [international] criminal court (www.aap.com.au)
Mr Dutton says the Albanese government should pressure the court “to make sure that they reverse this terrible decision”....
Wealth inequality starts at birth. Lawmakers debate whether child savings accounts can help, the 401Kids Savings Act (www.cnbc.com)
Aurora Australis turned it up tonight (slrpnk.net)
Thinking about buying more storage. Warn me of the lemons!
Anyone got any recommendations or warnings about specific hdd / ssd / storage brands or models at the moment? Thinking about buying another drive instead of being smart and cleaning up my files. I've been pretty happy with Samsung but I've heard they had a clunker of a drive with high failure rates lately. HDD, SSD and I think I...
Judge admonishes defense witness for his behavior after prosecution rests in Trump hush money trial (apnews.com)