Tag: replies

calicovirus replied to your post:
calicovirus replied to your post: PSA: DO NOT FEED…
yeah for me it’s just interesting because I usually hear abt this issue from rescue people (either public or private). So as someone who spends a lot of time advocating for responsible pet ownership (& owns a pedigreed cat with little guilt), it’s interesting to see what Bird People think. Interestingly my friend who works for a city humane society has come down on the kill side the longer she spends in rescue. But on the other hand she does have an enviro sci degree lol!

Ohhh man you should read some articles on the Audubon Society website if you want the inside scoop on what birders think of feral cats and outdoor cat owners. It’s… not flattering. 

I’m not surprised that your friend has come to that conclusion, frankly. Just looking at the sheer numbers in the scientific literature about feral cat populations, it’s hard to imagine anyone environmentally conscious working in rescue for long without realizing just how sisyphean the task is. 

calicovirus replied to your post: PSA: DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE

Thanks for sharing! I personally have a lot of doubts about the long-term efficacy of TNR – it’s worked in one single case I know of (Scarborough Bluffs colony) BUT only because the people monitoring the colony removed all “tame” cats and caught/adopted out all new dumps. Like that’s the big issue for me, is that assuming somehow every single cat is neutered…it still encourages people to dump kittens, thereby bringing new, intact cats into the colony.
I have my issues with no-kill rescue that are similar… if we’re not artificially reducing the population by removing diseased (FIV+, FIP+, FLV+) animals, or extremely poorly tempered animals, we’re contributing to the general state of overpopulation. I know too many people who have like five “basement cats” who are essentially housebound ferals, but they won’t do those cats the kindness of putting them out of their misery. It’s a really complicated issue for sure! 
it also doesn’t help that like 90% of people in rescue, especially private rescue, are basically hoarders and/or mostly unhinged. >_<

No problem! I was hesitant to address feral cats in the original post, because people get so emotional and sentimental about it, but it is a related issue and does need to be said. And yeah, absolutely! That’s a whole ‘nother aspect to the problem, for sure. (people who just dump their pets ought to be arrested, I swear to god.) As far as no-kill rescue for ferals goes, as well-intentioned as they are, often end up actively contributing to the problem and making it harder to find homes for the healthy and well-tempered animals. My old roommates have had TWO feral success stories, both of whom are now friendly and generally excellent house pets, but they are definitely the exceptions, not the rule. (and ugh, animal hoarders. now there’s a whole OTHER issue.)

calicovirus replied to your post: ohhhhh god now I am just VIBRATING with…

oh man I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you angry, I was genuinely curious. If it makes you feel better, if anyone says the phrase “Japanese knotweed” around my father he starts hissing, because of all the ridiculous invasive species our yard is infested with, it’s Japanese knotweed that haunts his nightmares

It’s not you, don’t worry! I just… get this way about invasive species. It’s a hot-button issue for me, mostly because the average person doesn’t take it very seriously. (And pfff, well my father had his own wetland restoration business for years, and you should hear him get going about purple loosestrife or phragmites.) 

wait wait wait yikes, what’s that about deer and corn? I’ve never heard that! (not arguing, just wanting to know more! because omg so many places sell corn as Deer Feed. So many. So much yikes.)

Yup! I knew it was nutritionally bad for them and irresponsibly created ridiculous population booms that spread disease, but until I did a little research last night I didn’t know about the whole ‘sudden corn-induced death’ thing either. The basic run-down is:

Deer (and elk, and other ruminants) stomachs microbiomes adapt to the scarcity (and change of type) in winter feed, and this change happens gradually, over a season. A sudden source of corn is a shock to the system, and can cause rumen acidosis, which that link from the PA game commission will tell you about better than I can. It doesn’t happen in 100% of cases, and really only occurs when people start feeding partway through winter. If you continuously feed from late fall through spring, it won’t happen, because the deer’s microbiomes will just never change over into ‘winter mode.’

…but I don’t recommend doing that, either. please don’t feed the deer. 

PSA: DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE

calicovirus:

goddamnshinyrock:

after seeing people feeding bread to ducks, geese, and squirrels on campus several times last week and having to bottle up my nearly uncontrollable urge to publicly lecture strangers for what they probably think is harmless fun, I feel compelled make a public service announcement: DO NOT FEED WILD ANIMALS, for the following excellent reasons:

It’s bad for the ANIMALS:

  • people food is unhealthy for animals and for their surroundings. It’s not nutritionally balanced, and uneaten food can become rotten and contaminate the food/water supply. To pick just two of many many examples: too much bread can cause a fatal nutrient deficiency in ducks, and certainly makes waterways algae- and disease-ridden, and feeding deer corn in the winter actually kills them outright.
  • Once the human food supply disappears, animals accustomed to (or worse, raised on) human food may be unable to hunt or forage for themselves again, or the incorrect food may have damaged/altered their intestinal microbiome to the extent that they cannot properly digest their natural diet. 
  • It habituates animals to humans, meaning it changes their natural behavioral patterns and causes them to become comfortable with seeing people as a food source instead of a threat. Animals that lose their fear of humans and seek us out as food sources are more likely to get hit by cars, killed by dogs or cats, or entangled in (and injured by) our trash. 
  • you can fuck up natural selection with artificial abundance, by keeping alive individuals that would not have otherwise survived to reproduce (and thus negatively influencing the gene pool), creating population booms larger than can be supported by the natural environment, and thus contributing to the spread of disease (see item 3 in this delightful ‘Feeding Deer: Just Say No’ pdf put out by the government of Indiana) by concentrating large numbers in small spaces.
  • another bad thing about habituation? in many species, it will lead to aggression. And when those aggressive animals are species which may pose (or be perceived as posing) an actual threat to humans, they will generally be euthanized by animal control or park rangers for the sake of public safety. Even (especially) if they’ve just been ‘cute’ in viral videos, like this unfortunate elk. 

And it’s ALSO bad for PEOPLE (and our pets):

In case anyone is wondering? ‘feeding animals’ includes both intentional handouts AND unsecured outdoor trash (or coolers). Get a lid on your compost bins and trash cans, folks! 

…And for anyone going “but Mica you hypocrite, YOU have a birdfeeder!” if you keep ‘em clean, inaccessible to mammals, stocked with nutritionally-appropriate seed, and separated from each other, birdfeeders are actually a nice exception to the rule. So for anyone with an uncontrollable urge to feed a wild animal: getting a birdfeeder and watching from a distance is your guilt-free answer. Happy birding!

question that I don’t know if you have the answer to: where do feral cats fall on this? Toronto has a large feral cat population/”problem” and I know that they can be very destructive to bird populations, which is an issue around the Great Lake because we’re a migration stop. A lot of rescues here work on trap-neuter-release rather than trap-and-kill or trap-and-adopt-out because it’s considered more efficient and more humane, but many of these populations (non-reproducing though a lot of them are) survive off human handouts. But at the same time a lot of feral cat feeders happily, if accidentally, feed raccoons, possums, and minks.

ohhhhhh boy. Okay! So! because of the human emotional attachment to cats, this is a hugely sensitive topic, and will be a long response, and I have to preface by saying that my PERSONAL stance on this issue is probably going to be a #unpopular opinion, but I am coming at this as a birder and as a conservationist who was taught as a wee child that invasive species were Public Enemy Number One. THAT BEING SAID:

DON’T FEED FERAL CATS. 

  • All those reasons up above about artificial population booms and spreading disease? Those apply to cats as well! But on top of THAT, they are ecologically destructive and fast-breeding and they are entirely our (humans’) fault. No, I don’t care how cute they are, they are Bad News for birds and other small wildlife.
  • How bad? This bad, says a 2013 study: “We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually” Which, the study estimates, is more than building or car collisions, poisoning, hunting, or any other directly human-caused bird deaths, COMBINED. 
  • So I’m coming down hard on the side of ‘trap-and-kill’, and that’s with no regrets. We created this mess, now we need to stop being squeamish and deal with it effectively. 
  • I WISH trap-neuter-release programs ACTUALLY WORKED, and if they did I’d be the first to champion them, but no TNR program that I’ve heard of has had the funding/manpower to actually put any significant dent in a feral population. This Audubon Society article puts it well, and links some scientific studies for those who need primary sources: 
  • “TNR has been shown to be ineffective at reducing feral cat populations, feeding cats does not eliminate their instinctive hunting behavior, and even when cats do not directly kill wildlife, their mere presence has been shown to reduce nesting success of birds”
  • You know how your house cat, no matter how well fed, will still kill any mice/birds/spiders/etc that it comes across? FERAL CATS DO TOO. All people who feed them are doing is making it possible for them to have EVEN MORE YOUNG that will kill EVEN MORE WILDLIFE while AT THE SAME TIME growing fat on the free handouts, and spreading fleas and disease. 
  • If you WANT to trap-neuter-adopt some feral cats, be my guest! I’ve done it (personally, with my own hands and not a trap, even. and that kitten turned out to be a delightful boy and I love him very much), but there will NEVER be enough willing homes for all these animals, and the older ones are unlikely to adjust well to being housecats. 

emptymanuscript:

goddamnshinyrock:

relistening to the HP audiobooks has raised another Burning Question:

SO the students write a lot of research papers, but iirc JKR never mentions citations. is there a standard wizarding citation style? do they use in-text, footnotes, or endnotes? I’d imagine in-text is most practical given you’re writing on a scroll, but endnotes could work too, I guess. 

(this is an important worldbuilding question that is, in my opinion, absolutely essential to developing any fantasy or scifi universe.)

Well someone else in the chain mentioned that kids don’t use citations in UK schools until what would be the 4th year in Hogwarts. So there may be that.

But looking at how the society of the wizarding world works, I’d expect that they don’t cite at all because the wizarding world seems to, in general, appreciate being backwards. There are a few wizards who are clearly into knowledge but given that Snape knows that a logic problem is completely capable of significantly slowing down or even stopping a Death Eater, they seem to be in the minority. 

Also remember that Tom Riddle mentions that a Horcrux is mentioned in a book he’s reading. But Slughorn never asks if Riddle checked the sources. It’s very advanced (and yes very dark) magic but it mentions it without further reading or direction. 

And while they are able to find Nicholas Flamel, there’s not a direct line of connection and citation between what Dumbledore does and Flamel does. 

Finally, note that no one notices the inconsistencies in Lockheart’s stories. As if there is no contradictory information. Which makes the most sense if there is no way of tracking information from place to place other than doing what Lockheart himself did, following word of mouth and live interviews.

The real power the teachers seem to have is their expanse of reading. While that’s true in our world as well, it often seems like that is the only way to knowledge in the wizarding world, you have to have encountered it and remember it. Which is definitely suggestive that citation is not a custom in their world.

Also, given how traditionalist and anti-muggle the wizarding world is, with no need for science really, they may simply not have gotten around to it. From what I can find out with a quick perusal of the history, while citation existed in religious scholastics since the twelfth century, it didn’t get into the law until about the 1700′s with legal citations between cases. And then it wasn’t until the 1800′s when it made it into the sciences and humanities. Wizards are also a vastly smaller population of much longer lived individuals. Citation is really to help unconnected people make the connections. If you expect to know everybody, at least by family, in your nation, who will also have probably read all the books you have read – why bother with citations? 

I already responded to that comment over here, but to address the rest of this reply (which is way more in-depth thought than my facetious little post deserves, wow!), in brief: 

D Y S T O P I A.

copperfire replied to your post: relistening to the HP audiobooks has raised…

Also, do they ever learn to write a paper even without citations? They never seem to take an English class! No wonder they have such problems writing their essays, no-one ever teaches them how, they just seem to get thrown in at the deep end!

yeah! I feel like a lot of HP meta deals with their lack of english (and math) classes though, so I didn’t want to get into THAT whole Thing. 

blackbournen replied to your post: calicovirus replied to your post: …

some schools just do… all exams, all the time, and no essays, or essays with bibliographies but not actually citing each statement. at least this is what I’ve gathered from how bad some people in my uni classes have been at understanding the basic concept.

but how is that preparing them for academic life??? arghh. (honestly professors who encounter this should like. write up an angry form letter about this and then ask each of these kids who their teachers were so they can go straight to the source.)

1mpulsefromavernalwood replied to your post: avelera replied to your post: …

I’m working against my will with APA and I’m disturbed by it

:(((( my sympathies

kaxen replied to your post: is this whole thing because one of my professors…

I HATE MLA AND THEY TOLD ME IT WAS FOR COLLEGE AND I NEVER USED IT IN COLLEGE.

They told me that in high school too! …I mean I guess people who study english or linguistics use it??? I used it for my one required english class and then all the rest of my classes in undergrad used chicago style (which I love. footnotes! glorious footnotes!!!). 

this-beautiful-fiction replied to your post:
relistening to the HP audiobooks has raised…

Answer: until about Year 10/11 or 6th form (so 4th year and up at Hogwarts) kids in UK schools don’t really do citations. If they do, it’s usually just a list of sources at the end (for them, a list of textbooks) that they’ve used, and reference in their writing to any direct quotations they’ve used. So basically, no professional citations until they’re preparing for NEWTs in their last two years. Citation style – probably not standardised, because Hogwarts – just name, title and maybe date.

yeah, in US schools citations aren’t like. A Thing until midway through high school, but kids younger than that aren’t typically writing actual research papers with sources other than the course textbook(s) anyway. 

But as far as style goes, my main question would be where??? endnote? in-text? footnote? And if it’s not standardized, what happens when they graduate and like. go work for the ministry (because that seems to be something you do right out of Hogwarts, without a higher degree) and have to submit reports on… idk… trade relations with sweden or w/e, but every government employee cites various sources differently because there is no standardization and then no one can compare data sources in any useful way and oh god I’m getting upset just picturing this mess.