Easter is nearly upon us, and having seen a few posters reminding people that bunnies are not toys, I thought it would be good to compile some bunny welfare facts that you may not know.
1) You cannot keep rabbits alone.
I’ll be honest, until speaking to @philovesophist, who works as a vet with a special interest in rabbits, I did not know how few people are actually aware of this. You cannot just have one solitary rabbit. They get lonely, and believe it or not, your companionship is not enough for them.
2) It is incredibly important you spay a female rabbit you don’t intend to let reproduce.
Rabbits are very fertile. An un-spayed, fertile, female has about an 80% chance of developing uterine or ovarian cancer. Your female hasn’t developed it, you say? You’re the lucky 20% and that’s not an excuse. In addition to the myriad of health problems, a female rabbit that is fertile but isn’t being impregnated can turn into a rabbit from hell, showing violent and aggressive behavior. It is also important that they do not get a partial spay. They need everything removed.
While males do not carry the same risks as a female, studies have shown that neutering them increases life expectancy.
3) Rabbits are considered “exotics” and not just any vet is able to treat a rabbit.
While rabbits may seem like common pets to you, just like cats and dogs, from a veterinary point of view, they are considered exotics. Treating them requires special equipment and special training; equipment not every vet has and training not every vet gets. You absolutely need to check out vets in your area and see which are able to handle your rabbits’ needs.
4) Carrots are not the only thing you should feed your rabbit, and you should never feed them pellets.
Pellets are a high risk food for rabbits, leading to a myriad of problems, including obesity, dental disease, soft stool, periodic refusal to eat, heart and liver disease, calcification of blood vessels, and bladder and kidney stones.
So what does your rabbit need? Loads of fresh hay, and grass. Did you know your rabbit needs no less than 3 different types of greens every day? Acceptable greens include but are not limited to: broccoli, dandelions (both the flower and the leaves), celery, leaf lettuce, brussel sprouts, water cress, and kale.
5) Those tiny cages they sell in pet shops are nowhere near adequate to their needs.
Because rabbits are not supposed to be kept alone, and most cages are designed for singular rabbits, the sizes are far too small for rabbits. The bare minimum of what a rabbit should have is 6 times their size when they are completely stretched out. That’s per rabbit, and again, that’s the bare minimum. Good animal welfare is going above the bare minimum.
In addition they should ideally have plenty of time spent outside on the fresh grass. It’s a great way for them to take in a part of the greens they need for the day and get exercise. A small dog play pen or baby crate is a great way to keep them enclosed with adequate space.
6) Rabbits live more than just a couple years and are every bit as much a long term commitment as a dog or cat.
A rabbit kept in optimal conditions can live 8-12 years! They last through Easter and they are living, breathing animals that require love and care and work just like any other pet.
Before acquiring rabbits, please do the necessary research. They are not a novelty item.
Yesterday, in the course of one day, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a nondiscrimination bill that bans discrimination based on “biological sex,” but specifically leaves out sexual orientation and gender identity. The governor signed it into law last night.
The law also prohibits transgender people from using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, takes away nondiscrimination protections from veterans, and blocks the minimum wage from being raised.
“This bill essentially repeals 50 years of non-discrimination efforts and gives lawmakers in Raleigh unprecedented control over our city and local governments,” Senate Democratic Leader Dan Blue said in a statement. “North Carolina Republicans want to pass what would potentially be the single most discriminatory act in the country. This is a direct affront to equality, civil rights, and local autonomy.”
The single most discriminatory act in the country. And it just passed unbelievably quickly because of the hateful rhetoric that says LGBT people – particularly transgender people – are predatory and do not deserve equal rights. This was a failure, North Carolina. When you go to the polls in a few months, remember how these politicians treated us.
As some of you may know, I live in North Carolina. This bill is a travesty. It not only denies protection by the state, it legally strips away all local laws created to protect and assist LGBT (particularly trans) citizens. If you follow me on twitter, I made it very clear how unacceptable this is to me.
North Carolina voted Barack Obama into office and elected a female governor and senator from the democratic party eight years ago and since then the Republican party has gerrymandered districts, passed a law requiring state id’s to vote, and passed every anti LGBT bill that’s come across their desks.
It’s time to fight back. If you are not a bigot, you have eight months to get your state id and voter registration sorted out, because no single person who voted for this bill should be allowed to keep their seat.
Let me make a few things very clear:
If you do not vote in this election in North Carolina, you are implicated in the ruining of the lives of LGBT people. You are a party to the discrimination against and assaults on trans people in NC. You are the one holding the gun.
And if you decide not to show up at the election because you are unhappy with the democratic presidential candidate that the DNC chooses, you are guilty of bigotry and hypocrisy. I know there are some of you out there that are very salty that it looks like Hillary is going to win and I’m no huge Hillary fan, but if you’ve been telling every person you meet about how Bernie Sanders supports the LGBT community and you don’t show up to support the LGBT community, you a hypocrite.
A Google Chrome extension that you can press when you think something may be triggering to another person out there. It’s a crowd-sourced thing, so the more people use it, the more it will be able to warn us 30 seconds in advance so we can decide if we want to keep watching. Brilliant.
This isn’t captioning related, but it definitely falls under the banner of ‘Access for All’
buddy cop movie with hayley atwell and idris elba as unlikely partners and dwayne the rock johnson as the bakery owner who witnesses a violent crime in the alley behind his shop and has to be protected
#what do you mean you don’t know how to punch? you’re jacked dude! #hey making dough isn’t easy! these are the result of grating carrots for carrot cake!
(via captainofalltheships)
As i’ve said before when I saw this post:
buddy cop movie with hayley atwell and idris elba as unlikely partners and dwayne the rock johnson AND Vin Diesel as the bakery owners who witnesses a violent crime in the alley behind hisTHEIR shop and have to be protected
I’m on board.
What if Vin Diesel is actually a local tattoo artist who comes into the bakery everyday and is always very quiet and frowning and sometimes muttering to himself and for the first half of the film they lowkey think he might know something about the baddies but it turns out that he’s SUPER INTO the Rock and then Hayley is like whut and Idris ends up having to dispense dating advice so there’s like a subplot of Idris trying to get them together while Hayley focuses solely on the criminals.
girls dont want you to be nice to them because they’re girls they want you to be nice to them because they’re human beings and you should be nice to everyone wtf is wrong with you
In the USA, it’s 100x cheaper to take an Uber to the hospital instead of an ambulance.
I don’t know if this is true or.. Like, having to pay for an ambulance that is taking you to the hospital? That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of distopian world is that?
It costs thousands of dollars to ride in an ambulance
In America some people with chronic health conditions like epilepsy literally have to wear medical IDs that say “don’t call an ambulance/911”. Some well-meaning person calling an ambulance for you will turn into a thousand (or couple thousand) dollars that YOU are on the hook for, even though you didn’t make the call. So, PSA: if you see someone having a seizure, look for a medical ID! You should only call an ambulance if: the person is elderly, pregnant, or the seizure lasts more than 4 minutes. Otherwise, wait for the seizure to pass, then ask the person if they want an ambulance when they regain consciousness.
wtf
However, just CALLING an ambulance is free.
If you’re in a situation where the severity of a situation is unknown, uncertain, or difficult to discern, it won’t cost anybody anything to call a paramedic and have them check.
YES THANK YOU. I know this is like the third time I’ve reblogged this, but this is pertinent: riding in an ambulance can cost you an arm and a leg, but calling an ambulance is free and you always have the right to send them packing without you inside.
In the USA, it’s 100x cheaper to take an Uber to the hospital instead of an ambulance.
I don’t know if this is true or.. Like, having to pay for an ambulance that is taking you to the hospital? That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of distopian world is that?
It costs thousands of dollars to ride in an ambulance
In America some people with chronic health conditions like epilepsy literally have to wear medical IDs that say “don’t call an ambulance/911”. Some well-meaning person calling an ambulance for you will turn into a thousand (or couple thousand) dollars that YOU are on the hook for, even though you didn’t make the call. So, PSA: if you see someone having a seizure, look for a medical ID! You should only call an ambulance if: the person is elderly, pregnant, or the seizure lasts more than 4 minutes. Otherwise, wait for the seizure to pass, then ask the person if they want an ambulance when they regain consciousness.
wtf
And people are against health care reform.
Hell I’m gonna just call an uber now whenever shit hits the fan
It depends where you are and if your ambulance agency is public or private. My fire department which runs EMS doesn’t charge the individual for rides. It’s funded by the tax payers of my town. 95% of us are volunteers, myself included.
I remember working a job on my FD ambulance with a patient freaking out because she needed to go to the ER and didn’t have the money to pay for the ambulance ride. One of the medics assured her that we don’t charge, we’re a service to the community. Just like you don’t have to pay for firemen to come put out a fire.
Now we also have private ambulances which mostly do non-emergent medical transports between facilities. Hospital discharges to nursing homes and things like that. Those get pricy a few thousand per ride depending on the mileage. We have to get signatures from our patients basically giving our company permission to bill their insurance for the ride. The fucked up part is that a ride from the hospital to a nursing home less than one mile away racks up close to a grand.
TL:DR public ambulances don’t charge, they do it through taxes. Privates do because it’s all about money. FDs and Vollys do it because we love it and for the love of god please call an ambulance if your friend passes out from drinking too much because they are actively dying.
^^ Yes thanks, particularly that last bit. Better broke and alive than dead.
Ok so we all know that the answer to “Where did Captain America learn to
steal a car?” is “Nazi Germany” but I think the more pressing question
here is when the fuck did this complete maniac get a driver’s license
Because ok, Mighty Mouse 1.0 is too poor to own a car, too short to
reach the pedals, has vision problems, and is a goddamn New Yorker in the motherfucking 1930s, why on earth would he ever have learned to drive?
So this little bastard can’t even tell the gas from the brakes, he gets
all beefified, he goes on tour with the USO. Unless one of the showgirls
coached him through stalling out a car all over some Hollywood back
lot, he still can’t drive. He goes to Europe. At some point, some genius
looks at him and thinks “this strapping specimen of American hunkhood
obviously knows his way around a vehicle, let’s give him a motorcycle,”
and Steve “no parachute” Rogers is like “how hard could this be?” and
promptly wraps himself around approximately eight trees at the same time.
So then he’s kickin’ ass, fightin’ Hydra, and it’s just months of Bucky being like
“give me the goddamn keys, Steven,” and Dum Dum and Morita endlessly
encouraging his fucking insane Fury Road bullshit, like the Howling Commandos just use “grenade” as code for “Rogers” when they’re reporting
why yet another truck has been destroyed beyond recognition. Yes, sir, another grenade, I agree, sir, it’s very odd that we keep losing vehicles in the same way, that’s the third this month alone
So then he’s in the future and SHIELD is sorting his shit out, and
they’re not going to force Captain goddamn America to wait in line at
the DMV, they’re all in complete awe in him and they’ve seen the old
reels of him on his bike, so when they issue him his driver’s license without any type of road test
they go ahead and give him a motorcycle license too
and steve is like …neat.
Ok so then Bucky is back, shit is settled down, everyone’s heading
somewhere and Steve gets in the driver’s seat and Buck’s like WHOA WHOA
WHOA are you people out of your goddamn minds?! Why is Steve driving, is
this some kind of mission, are we heading into a combat zone, is the
plan for the vehicle to get blown up?? GIVE ME THE GODDAMN KEYS STEVEN
And Sam is all “what are you talking about, Steve’s a great driver, I saw him jump his bike over a car once”
And Buck is all “yes but have you seen him use a turn signal?”
And Steve’s like, “Listen, we never needed to ‘signal’ our ‘turns’ in Nazi Germany.”
1.) It’s not hard to figure out what to do, there are plenty of resources.
People say you have to get it right, do your research, but … what else are you supposed to research? It’s not like people with more pigment in their skin have completely different personalities than those with less, any more than any individual. It’s frustrating when I can’t even figure out what the heck people are talking about.
Bam. Research step one done for you.
2.) Writing characters of color/minorities is a good thing.
I don’t like the notion that fantasy authors are under some kind of obligation to present ethnically diverse worlds. I’m English, and a fair sized part of English history consists of unwashed beardy white people in mead halls. If I’m inspired by my own history and cultural heritage, then that’s what I’m damn well going to write about. I’m not writing about some other culture just to appease the people who think there aren’t enough black characters in fantasy, or whatever. You want it, you write it. Nothing to do with me.
You’re wrong.
3.) Your all White Fantasy Land Didn’t Exist in Real Life:
…the rather medieval one has more diversity than real medieval Germany probably had […] In a world with medieval means of transport, it just doesn’t seem natural to me to mix dark-skinned people with blue-eyed blondes in one setting. I just try to give the people a colour that fits the place where they live.
You mean like the people from Africa and the Middle east who began to take over Southern Spain, as well as the Jews who were pretty well spread out throughout Europe, the Middle Easterners they would have met on the Crusades, and the incoming Mongol Hordes who spread to the very edges of Eastern Europe before the empire finally collapsed? Don’t forget that Turkey is right there, and the silk road would have gone from Song Dynasty China, through India, and ended in Turkey before moving further westwards into places like Germany. Also the attempts at the Franco-Mongol alliance would have been pretty interesting. (That’s about the 13th century - arguably smack dab in Middle Ages Europe and definite contact between France/Christian Europe and the Mongolian Empire.)
Unless you’re writing everything in the far reaches of Denmark or something, historically speaking, I call bullshit on people who have societies that are only all white ever, because it’s just inaccurate. Consider the relative closeness of Northern Africa to Spain, or Turkey to the rest of Europe, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, Slavery existing in Europe, including England, the slave trade, imperialism, Pax Mongolica, The Silk Road, Jewish Diaspora, the Islamic Empire vs The Holy Roman Empire, Egypt, Algeria, China’s sailing across the world, The Maruyan/Gupta Empires of India, tea trades, Columbus sailing in hopes of finding China, etc, etc, etc.
4.) I mean I just don’t believe you anymore. It’s unrealistic. Seriously guys.
You’d think I’d just denied the holocaust or something. Get a grip. All I said was that I’m going to write about my own cultural experience and anyone who thinks I should do otherwise for the sake of political correctness can bugger off.
This isn’t even about being PC this is just not being wrong about everything.
The marker squeaks as I drag it across the board. My students are poised behind me, pencils and papers ready. They have a simple assignment: write down as many words as they can think of that describes who they are. While they write, I write. Tit for tat. Lead by example. I begin my list:
Teacher
Woman
White
Appalachian
Poor
Educated
I pause and look around the room. My students now get the idea and have started to write their own lists. I take a deep breath and keep going.
Feminist
Liberal
Fat
Depressed
Atheist
A few students go ‘huh’ at the last one, but then go back to writing. I see a few of them jot down Christian on their list. One student writes down Muslim. Another student writes down something, then erases it and replaces it with a question mark.
One more beat and I raise the marker again. In a steady hand, I finish my list.
Queer
I look at the word on the board, black standing out against white, and carefully erase the smudge I made of the ‘Q’ and rewrite it. I’m wasting time, but I am about to discover something heavy, weighty about my students. When I turn around, I will see who trusts me and who now doesn’t. I place the cap back on the marker, count a beat of five in my head, and turn around. The students now have a clear view of the board.
I see one student in the back smile, grin wide and teeth showing, before ducking their head back down to their list. We’ve shared a secret, something between the two of us, a mental handshake. I see you there, we both say without words. I focus on their grin instead of the student now looking at me in disgust.
In the USA, it’s 100x cheaper to take an Uber to the hospital instead of an ambulance.
I don’t know if this is true or.. Like, having to pay for an ambulance that is taking you to the hospital? That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of distopian world is that?
It costs thousands of dollars to ride in an ambulance
In America some people with chronic health conditions like epilepsy literally have to wear medical IDs that say “don’t call an ambulance/911”. Some well-meaning person calling an ambulance for you will turn into a thousand (or couple thousand) dollars that YOU are on the hook for, even though you didn’t make the call. So, PSA: if you see someone having a seizure, look for a medical ID! You should only call an ambulance if: the person is elderly, pregnant, or the seizure lasts more than 4 minutes. Otherwise, wait for the seizure to pass, then ask the person if they want an ambulance when they regain consciousness.
wtf
And people are against health care reform.
Hell I’m gonna just call an uber now whenever shit hits the fan
honestly one of my favorite things to do is find evidence of historical figures possibly being queer and then shove it in the face of homophobic historians bc i’m a petty bisexual ass. like look buddy if you’ve even read sappho’s poetry once you’ll see that she definitely liked women and hey even plato claimed that achilles was doin the diddle with a dude. alexander the great? more like alexander the gay cause he and hephaestion were def making out. sorry i don’t make the rules, your historical fave is gay
I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING SO LONG FOR THIS POST OH MY GOD!!!
I wonder what happens when you wear 8 of these at once…
we’ve reached the ultimatum
IT’S BACK ON MY DASH AND IT BECAME BETTER
I see this post every couple of months and it never ceases to make me laugh like a fucking dolphin
I’m laughing because this is just the tumblr version of that Bug bunny short where the hat truck crashes and Fudd and Bugs’ personality keeps changing based on the hat they are wearing.
at work we have a family of three huskies who come in for daycare and everyone calls them “the mafia” it makes me so happy because occasionally out of nowhere someone over the radios will say “we’re sending in the mafia” and then three huskies barrel their way inside and usually slip and fall on the tile ajfjajg
the white one is zephyr but everyone calls him the godfather and his sisters follow him around everywhere and they’re a tiny gang which i love
Getting friends in to musicals is hard because when they ask what it’s about you have to be like “15 year olds having sex” or “a plant from outer space that takes over the world” or “teenagers killing people for fun” or “Alexander Hamilton”
“7 minorities deal with crushing poverty and the looming specter of death by being a dick to their landlord”
“Sesame Street, but like… for adults”
“This one time in the 1830s a bunch of college students decided to fight the entire French government and…it didn’t go very well.”
“Argentinian gold digger teaches her country the joys of fascism.”
“Disfigured guy in the friendzone thinks his student owes him a relationship for teaching her how to sing.”
I legitimately think a good portion of the posts here are meant as humor, but the text receiver mistakes it as a serious thing. I don't think guys actually do this seriously. Right?
A couple weeks ago The Mary Sue announced they weren’t going to cover “Game of Thrones” any more after yet another female character being brutally raped. The thread is still being invaded by trolls periodically, and there are more than 12,000 comments on the article, which is a site record and probably an internet record. (12K comments because a single website said “We’re not going to recap or promote this show any more.” Baffling.)
Tons of trolls have thrown out the “but THINGS WERE JUST LIKE THAT BACK THEN!” argument ad nauseum. Which is total bullshit, of course. Now with the season finale of “Outlander” (which, spoiler, also included rape) the trolls are coming back.
I just want to ask, why is it whenever producers/directors/writers want to demonstrate “gritty historic realism” it’s ALWAYS RAPE? It’s always sexual violence toward women/girls.
You know what would be gritty historic realism? Dysentery. GoT has battles and armies marching all over the place. You want to show “what things were like back then”? Why aren’t we seeing 500 guys by the side of a road puking and shitting their guts out from drinking contaminated water while the rest of the army straggles along trying to keep going? Or a village getting wiped out by cholera? Or typhus, polio or plague epidemics?
You want to show what it was like back then for women? Show a woman dying of sepsis from an infection she caught while giving birth. Show a woman coping with ruptured ovarian cysts with nobody know what it is. Breast cancer that the audience will recognize immediately but the characters think is some mark of the devil or some shit.
But no, it’s always rape. And we all know why that is. Because these douchecanoes that do this, though they’ll deny it, think rape is sexy. Because they can’t make a modern set story where women get raped in every god damned episode without being called monsters. So they use “but but historical realism!” to cover their sexism (see “Mad Men”) and misogyny. Then they tell us “That’s just how it was back then!” with the clear implication “Shut the fuck up bitch, because that could be you and you should be thanking me that it’s not.”
Can we propose a rule for “realistic” historical fiction/fantasy? Twelve graphic cases of dysentery for every one graphic rape?
^^ I like this idea.
You know, they could deny that they find rape sexy, and they might even believe their own denials. But the point is that they clearly don’t think of rape as something distasteful enough and disgusting enough to omit.
And you know what, I’m not even gonna insist on the dysentery. Just this: if you’re going to include rape on the basis of historical accuracy, none of your female characters are allowed to have shaved legs or armpits. And all of your characters have to have terrible teeth – yellowed and worn and crooked, because nobody’s getting braces or regular visits to the dentist – with at least a few teeth blackened or missing for every character over the age of thirty.
Of course, if your reaction to blackened teeth and hairy armpits is “ugh, no, sure it might be historically accurate but it’s gross, nobody’s going to want to watch that" and you don’t have the exact same reaction to rape, you might want to think about why that is.
Not to mention that some of the societies portrayed, or inspiring similar fantasy settings, actually had STRONGER protections against and consequences for rape than the ones we live in today.
Accounts from Vikings’ contemporaries recount a lot of raiding, but not a single case of rape. Viking law didn’t treat rape as a property crime, and the penalty for it was outlawry, which was essentially a death sentence. Medieval English law prescribed that rapists be castrated and blinded. And the sagas contain vanishingly few references to rape (and violence against women is usually followed with comeuppance–often death–for the perpetrator).
TL;DR: History wasn’t one giant rape-fest, and in fact, members of the cultures high fantasy is usually based on may have actually been more disapproving of rape than we are today (imagine trying to pass a bill making rape a capital offense today!).
These writers include rape because they like writing about rape, not because history dictates it.
brief quibble: poor people in pre-industrial societies had much better teeth than poor people today, because they didn’t eat or drink refined sugars, only fruit sugars and the occasional bit of honey. european peasants would have crooked teeth, by hollywood standards, but by and large white and healthy teeth, even into old age. peasant girls would have had very nice smiles.
and very hairy armpits.
While we’re at it, can we expand this rule to every “gritty”, “realistic” fiction thing? Because post-apocalyptic fiction does this exact nonsense too.
“ohhh would you look at that, my pawns found jesus and now they’re all bishops”
“so i realize it looks like i’m putting a thimble on the board but actually my rooks have been using their downtime to build another rook, one that’s better, stronger, faster—”
“hey welcome back. while you left to get a snack, those six pieces you’d captured slipped their guards, tunneled to safety and emerged right in the middle of your royal palace.”
“oof, looks like you’ve got my king cornered…maybe this is a good time to mention that shortly before we started playing, my pawns and knights revolted and instituted a representative democracy. feel free to kill the puppet ruler that was the one remaining vestige of our tyranny, you cringing servant of the crown. vive la revolution!”
people will accept you saying the word they in the singular form up until they know you’re talking about someone who’s trans or nb or intersex. Like the number of times I’ve said they to my parents that I’m hanging out with someone and refer to them as them (I basically use it for most cases now) with them not raising an eye is incredible and I thought that they’d just accepted it.
But nah, I’m going out with my translady friend and I call them they and THAT’S when the jokes and the purposeful misunderstanding come in.
And I’ve seen this in dozens of other cases. So let’s be honest: opposition to they/them pronouns has shit to do with grammar. It’s entirely about policing people’s pronouns.
When I explain cultural misappropriation to children, I use the example of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
It’s effective because especially for children, who don’t have enough historical context to understand much of the concept, you can still fully grasp the idea.
There was nothing wrong with Jack seeing the beauty and differences in Christmas town, it’s when he tried to take what is unique about Christmas town away from those it originally belonged to without understanding the full context of Christmas things is when everything went wrong.
When Jack tries to get the folk of Halloween town to make Christmas gifts for children, etc., children understand that the Halloween town folk do not have the full context for the objects they are making, and they are able to see that the direct repercussions and consequences are very harmful.
what i like about this is the implication that if jack had taken the time to understand christmas town, bringing christmas to halloween town would not have been harmful. that’s how it works, folks. cultural sharing is GOOD, it’s only misappropriation when it’s done in ignorance and disrespect.
So it’s not just accidentally removing things form their context; he has intentionally disregard the meaning of the rituals he purports to be recreating, making them more fun for the recreaters but not like what the rituals are supposed to be and without the related significance.
This is the best way to conceptualize the wrong way to share culture I have ever seen and I think I finally get where people are coming from when they talk about “cultural appropriation.”
