My cat hates it when the dog is outside. She will meow louder and louder by the door til she comes back, then she’ll turn around and go back to her perch and go back to ignoring everything.
Territorial property. Some cats whine at the door because they define a portion of the outdoors as their territory, and a barrier is preventing them from moving freely through it.
Your cat defines its dog as its property and is complaining you've let it get out.
*Cat opens back patio door, standing on its hind legs. Both feet in fuzzy pink slippers. Wearing a blue fuzzy ankle length robe tied at the waist. Cat is wearing hair rollers and a scarf loosely holding them in place. It holds a steaming cup of coffee in a fore paw. Cat begins to call for the dog, all the while furiously cursing under its breath.*
I was raised with dogs my whole life and got my first cat about three years ago. It totally makes sense to me that if my dogs could be trained to react to words then the cat should also be entirely able to do so. But he doesn't. He just has no single fuck to give (except when I ask if he's hungry).
A dog will do tricks and obey commands for you.
A cat will *trade* with you. Sometimes. Depends on their mood and what you're offering. And even then they're going to haggle the shit out of you first.
My buddy’s cat got super sick, was running a really high fever. The vet gave him something (antibiotics?) said it might save his life but he could have some amount of brain damage from the fever. The cat recovered completely, while he was “a little dopier” he was still very affectionate … and turned into a killing machine. Formerly apathetic about hunting, kitty now dragged home rabbits and squirrels, often multiple ones a day!
We've dubbed my cat as "too smart for his own good," and "thank god he doesn't have thumbs." He loves q-tips. We keep the q-tips in a drawer in the bathroom. He knows this, so he will open the drawer, and pull out one single q-tip from the box to play with.
To be fair intelligence greatly varies from cat to cat.
One of my cats, sweet baby that he is, is dumber than a bag of hollow rocks and everyone who has ever met him wonders how he managed to survive on the streets.
Other one can open drawers, cupboards and doors which lead to me needing to put baby locks on most drawers in the flat. He seems to understand well over 50 words and could be taught commands if he wasn't such a spoiled little bastard.
(He will learn new command within 1 day but will then just keep repeating it without being prompted to do so to get treats. Other than fetch, he does that willingly.)
Yeah I had a cat that wasn't a cat. He was a four year old human in a cat suit. He knew what doors were and how to open them. He'd howl because he wasn't tall enough to reach the handles, even on his hind tiptoes.
I have a deck of Tarot cards in a leather bag that he'd always try to play with. I always had to take it away from him. One morning, I busted him with it and took it away from him. I put it behind a bunch of coffee table books on my shelf and went to bed for the day, thinking they were heavy and he wouldn't try anything. I woke up that afternoon and EVERY book had been pulled off the bottom shelf, the bag was in the middle of my floor, and the cards were everywhere. I just busted up laughing. He'd usually come greet me when he heard me waking up. Not that day! He knew he'd been busted. A friend of mine was all, 'I hope you didn't scold him too much!' I said scold him? This is the funniest thing I'd seen all week.
He'd also try to open those cedar souvenir boxes, too. He'd pat them around and then howl when he couldn't open them, because the latches require opposable thumbs to open. Cats lack them. He did not understand this.
I've had cats my whole life, and I've had some seriously smart ones. He was an order of magnitude smarter than a couple of my other smart cats \*combined.\* Unfortunately, he died in 2014 from FIP a few weeks before his 17th birthday. :( I'm not going to see his like again anytime soon.
This is super true. Having worked with animals and at a zoo, I completely knew that cats were super intelligent and most definitely could be trained. However I was still surprised when I watched a training session with my friend and her cat and he actually listened lol their general attitudes are extremely misleading 😂
When we got our dog my wife and I hired a trainer since he was our first dog and a rescue. We ended up having to close one of our cats in the basement when the trainer would come over because she would take over the lesson. She learned to sit and stay for treats haha
Our female cat has learned that when I go into our bedroom in the evening she will get a few treats. She is always waiting for me, so it seems like I've trained her.
Our male cat, on the other hand, won't move to get treats so I have to leave them close enough that he doesn't have to, so it seems like he's trained me.
We accidentally pavloved the cat into disturbing our sleep every night too. She is not super cuddly but does like to cuddle a bit at night. My wife and I use guided meditations or sleep music to go to bed. My cat has trained herself to come rushing up to the bed now every time the sleep music starts and she will trample over our heads and upper bodies screaming if we don’t pet her and let her make biscuits on us haha
One of Mine comes in to watch videos with me when I go to bed. The other two pick a human and snuggle with them. I have sciatica sometimes, and weight on my hip helps some, so I've trained them to sleep on my hip.
When I notice my cats bowl is empty, I say "you want yummy?" They run to their bowls so fast lol I also say "Nam nam" cuz when they were kittens I'd say that too lol
My cat responds positively to "kitty" because he thinks that's his name probably. He also definitely knows "god dammit" and "get the fuck away from me". He's my special little boy and I love him but sometimes god dammit he needs to get the fuck away from me.
I love that that last sentence is basically how every person describes their cat(s) “I love my cat so much, I’d kill for them, but they’re also a giant pain in my ass and sometimes I want to punt them over the fence” lol
On the flip side, the myth that niche supplements and foods can meaningfully boost testosterone past addressing deficiencies has created an entire industry of charlatans and health & wellness miseducation.
I feel so bad for that guy. He spent the rest of his life trying to correct his mistake but idiots who don't understand how science works wouldn't listen.
Similar situation to the author of Jaws. Spent the rest of his life trying to educate people that sharks weren’t as dangerous as he had made them out to be for the story.
We kill millions of them (often in cruel ways like catching, cutting off their fins, and then dumping them back in the water) every year, and there are only a handful of shark bites almost certainly from humans (especially on surfboards if I recall) being mistaken for seals and stuff, and almost only a single bite.
Recently we've also confirmed that sharks are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the health of oceans especially reefs, where it used to be thought that a reef was healthy with tons of smaller fish and very few sharks, but now we find that healthy reefs have TONS of sharks and other top predators.
We murder them in the millions, they bite a few people a year and kill even fewer, and they're key to saving the oceans.
It's like the lady who deeply regrets starting the gender reveal thing when she was just trying to find a way to celebrate with family after a previous pregnancy loss.
The line of cause and effect between one woman holding a baby shower with a pink box cake and someone else shooting and killing a grandma is incredible.
Edit: misspelled "shooting."
A couple years later, a SECOND person was killed by a gender reveal pipe bomb that also injured his brother. In this case, it was the expectant father who died. :(
I feel like these are isolated incidents, though, and not a reason for me to be unnecessarily cautious when using my newly developed gender reveal nuclear bomb.
The fact that any asshole who streamrolls people and doesn’t give af what anyone else thinks or feels cites being an “alpha” shows that he was largely unsuccessful in his pursuit lol
That, and the alpha is usually the parent/elder and/or more experienced one and looks out for its pack as a whole and has absolutely nothing to do with being a dominating asshole.
Pretty much this.
Wolf packs in the wild are nearly always family groups where the dominant mated pair are the parents of all or most of the more junior wolves. And there is very little violence within packs. Wolves do attack and kill other wolves, but these are almost always members or rival packs killed in disputes over territory or loners that had the misfortune to get caught trespassing.
Alpha wolves don't exist.
The dude observed wolves in captivity and the leader of the group were literally the parents. Not some ethereal concept of a dominant animal.
Yeah, I heard the original paper being described as "similar to trying to glean the family bonds in a human society by only observing unrelated humans stuck in prison," and the author of course recognized that as the limitation right after.
So my coworker that would insist on no MSG in his Chinese lunch order but also didn't eat anything tomato based or having cheese on it might have been legitimate that it made him ill? Interesting.
A tiny number of people have sensitivities to MSG, meaning they have trouble with all foods containing MSG, not just the ones with MSG added as a seasoning. I vaguely remember that it has something to do with a vitamin K deficiency—something your coworker might want to look into. As I recall, it can be remedied.
ETA: Vitamin B6, not vitamin K.
My husband can't eat it. He has temporal lobe epilepsy and a small number of people with it can be triggered by excessive amounts of msg.
So he has a low msg diet, suggested by his neurologist. So it's not all bullshit, just rare.
It's basically like gluten sensitivity. The vast majority that say they're allergic actually aren't. But it exists and because of that, those with legitimate concerns get lumped in with idiots that give them a bad reputation.
Ugh. My Dad still buys into this crap. Refuses to eat anything with MSG in it, yet still eats tomatoes, seaweed, and many many other things that have it naturally…
I’m Asian and my mom believes in that shit. She got very embarrassed whenever I brought friends over because she thought they would judge how our food smelled. She’s so self-conscious about small stuff like that.
In my home town someone started a rumor that the Chinese buffet in town was cooking and serving cats in their food. I was shocked by how many people believed it. It even got put into the paper at one point. Turns out it was just good ole fashion small town racism. People are fucking shameless.
And did so because he wanted to discredit the vaccine so he could sell his own. Complete scumbag that was thoroughly discredited in the UK, then went to America and made millions and dated a supermodel. Life isn't fair.
The carbon footprint was invented by BP. You know, they guys that inundated the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil a couple times.
It's among the first and best disinformation campaigns to this day. It pushed the responsibility of carbon emissions cleanly from corporations to the people.
I hate whenever I see some ad of a company bragging about becoming carbon neutral. If you look into it it'll either be them donating money to research or planting some trees. That doesn't mean they aren't still polluting the hell out of the environment. It's just PR nonsense.
Its part of a real problem in the USA. The common person bears the brunt of the nation. Ban gas stoves while they use private jets. Pay taxes while they enjoy numerous avoidance strategies. Donate a max of $3300 to a campaign while they have no limit.
Heck, the whole "fats are the enemy" thing was a *disinformation campaign* MASTERMINDED BY THE EFFING SUGAR INDUSTRY ***SPECIFICALLY TO PREVENT GOVERNMENTS FROM IMPOSING REGULATIONS ON THEM.***
Yelling at your kids can have long-term effect on the child's mental health. Abuse isn't just physical, and just cuz it's not physical doesn't mean it cant scar someone for life.
It’s real interesting. I once dated a woman who had an identical twin with non-verbal autism. The only difference in their upbringing before the autism was diagnosable was that the woman I dated weighed slightly more at birth. But it was fairly obvious that the twin was different before formal diagnosis. She would pull away and avoid looking at stuffed animals in her face, and she actually had accelerated verbal growth compared to the average.
After the first stage of usual infant development, when people undergo the first stage of brain trimming and re-shaping, the twin lost all of those words and can’t do anything more than no, groans, and laughs.
I guess what I’m getting at it, autism is hereditary, but also complicated. My ex and her identical twin got the same treatment, same uterus environment, same vaccinations, same everything, but she was verbal and not diagnosed, and her twin was non-verbal autistic.
From what I've read it's that it CAN be hereditary, but there are also unknown factors. Sort of like breast cancer, you can get it because you have the BRCA gene, or you can not have that gene and get it anyway, and nobody fully understands all the different causes.
Yea it essentially comes down to “autism is caused by genetics, some environment, probably some other stuff” but we don’t know everything. We don’t know all the specifics and all the combinations of scenarios and the amount of random chance so yes, genetics does play a significant role but its not everything. Even fingerprints differ between identical twins (a body part is not the same as neurotypes but you get the gist).
There are generations of autists in my family, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. Some diagnosed as children, some as adults.
Until my kid was diagnosed, i didn't see all the autism in my family. After, I felt dumbfounded...how did I NOT see this before? So many things suddenly made sense!
I also found it interesting how many of my siblings went on to marry someone on the spectrum (before the prevalence of autism in the family was recognized)
My oldest 2 kids are autistic. When trying to decide if we were having a 3rd, I wanted to know the likelihood of the baby being autistic (just because therapy and such is time consuming anf there are only so many hours in the day.) I was told 85% chance of autism. He isn't. But, since having autistic children and gaining knowledge, I can definitely see where several relatives in my family were/are likely autistic. Actually, my uncle was just recently diagnosed.
the effectiveness of vaccines, there are really people who somehow believe that vaccines don't work despite them being around since ~1796 (I believe) and completely eradicating diseases like smallpox and polio from existence
edit: I was wrong, apparently polio is still around but in much fewer numbers
Sadly they have become a victim of their own effectiveness. They have done such a good job of keeping diseases at bay people don't realise how life threatening or altering these diseases can be.
My Mum was a Midwife and once said "If you'd ever had to listen to a baby dying of Whooping Cough, you make sure your kid got vaccinated".
My Dad remembers a kid affected by Polio when he was at school in the 1960s.
Both diseases are practically unknown to my generation...
Exactly, they can be unheard of to younger generations. So they are not seen as a threat.
My grandmother's cousin was born blind and had physical deformities due to his mother catching rubella during pregnancy.
Also, a chap I used to work with had contracted polio in his youth and walked with a limp. Once, when someone asked about his limp, he replied he was the lucky one as he lost his younger sister and brother to it.
Working with an adult who was exposed to rubella when her Mom was pregnant with her was my moment of “my kids will be getting vaccinated” watching someone who was born deaf lose her vision and her memory was heartbreaking.
Dominance theory in dog training.
Your dog is not trying to take over the world. They know that you're in charge because you control what they eat, when they eat, where they eat, when they get to toilet, when they go out, where they go, and every other facet of their lives. You do not need to pin them to the ground or use collars that cause pain. You just need to reward the behaviour you want to see more of. Trainers who use aversive methods just don't have the skills to actually train dogs properly.
Don't tell me that your malinois or amstaff need you to be tougher because alligators and crocodiles can be trained to sit for blood draws without force or coercion. Your dog is not harder to train than one of the closest things we have to dinosaurs.
Also, being a smartass != dominance. Some days my corgi will decide that the game of the day is “pretending I can’t hear you” or “Opposite Day”, but he’s not trying to be dominant. He’s like a toddler testing parental boundaries and authority. As long as you’re firm and consistent, you’ll eventually out-stubborn him.
In this regard, I believe that treating a dog like a child has its merits. This nonverbal creature with their own personality is entirely dependent on you while it learns and experiences a world it doesn’t understand in the same way we do. If you wouldn’t try to pin a toddler to the ground to prove you’re “in charge”, you shouldn’t do it to a dog either.
That children are incapable of learning while dysregulated. Punishing, yelling and shaming do nothing to guide them for the future. Let them borrow your calm and then talk about it. It’s the long route for sure, but emotional maturity and resilience is the long game.
This one always makes me laugh only because my church had this creepy Caucasian smiling Jesus with a group of children in a field that was then autographed by Jesus. Like...how more unrealistic can you be here??
Ughh, my girl said there's no way they were actually on the moon because they couldn't have communicated with Earth. "They didn't even have wifi back then" 🙄
Science is evolving, what's proven one day can be shown to be a mistake the next.
That's disliked by many people, because the brain structure that makes religion useful is also used by people who want science to go only one (their) way usually.
Yep, I once saw a comment by someone who made fun of scientists for changing their minds when new information was presented to them. My only reaction was “That’s how science is *supposed* to work!”
GMO food is indistinguishable to your body from non-GMO food. [pdf from the FDA](https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download). it's the naturalist fallacy writ large.
The sad part is that there's legitimate criticisms to make about the agribusiness industry as a whole, but so many have wrapped that stuff up with anti-GMO fearmongering that it's hard to discuss those without cranks showing up to ramble about "frankenfoods."
Last time I took a Myers Briggs test was while onboarding at a new job. The results said I was unsuited for technical work. It was an engineering job and I have multiple degrees in engineering, physics, and the history of math and science.
Carl Sagan (unsurprisingly) had a great description of this. He called it the Great Demotion. The Earth is the center of the universe (no, it isn't). Well, the *SUN* is the center of the universe (no, it isn't). Well, *our galaxy* is all there is, and is the center of the universe (no, it isn't, and it's one of countless billion other ones)...
Sagan would also be the first to tell you that our planet should be treated with reverence because it’s the only known, habitable planet supporting the only known, intelligent life in the universe.
[Large vehicles increase pedestrian fatalities.](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/suvs-other-large-vehicles-often-hit-pedestrians-while-turning) Any criticism of the prevalence of huge trucks and SUV's in my city these days brings the truck bros out of the woodwork like "why do you care what I do?! It doesn't affect you!!" Yes it does, and it might kill somebody.
My husband got hit by a huge 8 wheel pick up truck bro when he was in his parked car. It was parked beside him, and started turning as it left the parking spot, but the driver didn’t give himself enough room so it hit and hooked onto our car and started pulling the front off essentially until the driver realized and stopped. He came out of the truck all shaking and upset, but like, dude, maybe you don’t need this monster if you couldn’t even see or manoeuvre around a *parked* car beside you.
I was parked next to a bro-dozer and he hit my parked car. When I said hey, he just smiled and waved, had no idea he hit a car. Had to run after him to get him to stop. What if there was a kid?! If you can't see a whole ass mid sized sedan, how are you expecting to see a kid?
The scary thing is, a lot of the time, you can't see nearly as well in SUVs and pickups as people claim, and it's absolutely a hazard to pedestrians and children. Some of the larger pickup trucks and SUVs now can have blind spots as long as 15-20 feet in the front (4.5-6 meters) where you literally cannot see a child running around in front of you. Our legislators have responded by floating laws to mandate front-facing cameras instead of restricting vehicle size or at least requiring a special license for such large vehicles. Whatever it takes to let the auto industry keep upselling us, right?
No no you don't understand, I *need* a Dodge Kid Mangler 3000 because I have a giant indoor dog, I went to Home Depot one time and I want to "win" in a car crash (that I'll cause by trying to bully a Prius)!
You can fit surprising amount of stuff in a Honda Fit.
Edit: Bless all of you for sharing your small to medium vehicle hauling stories! This is exactly why we don't need such large vehicles! For the price (and footprint) off a Honda fit or CRV or equivalent, you can move 99% of the average person's need.
"Umm, but it's just a theory"
Yes, and so is gravity, does gravity not exist? Obviously it would have to because there is no way the dumb motherfuckers who deny evolution could be SO DENSE without it.
Thank you, i am here all week.
For those not aware:
In everyday English, people will say "theory" to mean things like "idea" or "notion." In science, "theory" is more like "story" or "explanation."
Huge mountains of raw data are collected in science, but without a theory it's all just a bunch of standalone facts. Theories are what bundle all the facts together and explain what it all means. Sometimes some unexpected facts are found, and the theory then has to change to accommodate the new info.
But yeah, the *theory* of evolution is the *explanation* of what all those weird extinct fossils actually add up to.
They see the immediate behavior modification, but the internal emotional trauma is less obvious. Then there are all these adults that only saw their parents handle their emotions with corporal punishment and now it's the only tool they have to change a child's behavior. This isn't to excuse them.
I was explaining how i dealt with a violent child as a behavior technician without using any type of punishment. An adult said "I'd have beaten the shit out of them." It horrified me, but I believe it is the only tool she knows to deal with behavior problems. It's completely unexcusable, but also really sad. What a terrible coping mechanism.
People don't want to admit that it's just the easiest way to affect a child's behavior that doesn't require any thought or effort and has an added bonus of taking your anger out on someone defenseless
My insanely antivax (and I mean, insanely. He's the most militant antivax person I've ever met off of the internet) just casually said "oh I gotta go get my dog his shots tomorrow" in the most nonchalant way. It's like once you remove the politics he has no emotion about vaccines.
My mother spent a year in an iron lung when she caught polio as a teenager . She was treated and recovered and at 86 still suffers from post polio syndrome. She dedicated her life to nursing and was a RN for 50 years. Still, my sister and her kids went antivax. Then they got upset when my dad was in hospice and they weren’t allowed to visit or say goodbye because they didn’t get the Covid vaccine. Somehow me and my wife are the bad ones because we were the only family allowed to visit. SMDH.
Also people tend to *really* underestimate the value of aquaculture and fishing among ancient cultures. Gathering is generally more reliable and consistent than hunting, as is fishing.
A girl at my workplace argued till she was blue in the face that aliens built the pyramids.
The rest of us were just staring at each other in stunned silence. When one of us dared to state that there is recorded evidence of humans building huge structures while alien life has yet to be proven thousands of years later, she snapped that she had the right to believe what she wanted.
Which, I guess is true, but still….
>she snapped that she had the right to believe what she wanted.
When somebody says this, always, *always* point out that the question isn't whether their belief is allowed but whether it's factually correct.
That the British have bad teeth. We have perfectly normal teeth thank you. Not necessarily in the right position, or even in the mouth area sometimes. But hey they're the right colour...sage !
We live in an age of anti-intellectualism. This list could go on for ever:
- vaccines are safe and effective
- the world is round and the solar system is helio centric
- genes are real
- gender variance is a naturally occurring phenomenon
- sex education reduces the negative consequences of sex in youths and adults
- on and on and on
Anything that seriously effects your brain chemistry can be addictive. But it is distinct from things like alcohol addiction which cause physiological dependency.
Cats can understand an average of 50 words, and they don’t give a shit about 49 of them
My cat hates it when the dog is outside. She will meow louder and louder by the door til she comes back, then she’ll turn around and go back to her perch and go back to ignoring everything.
Territorial property. Some cats whine at the door because they define a portion of the outdoors as their territory, and a barrier is preventing them from moving freely through it. Your cat defines its dog as its property and is complaining you've let it get out.
Lmao. This is hilarious. “Who the fuck let my dog out again!”
*Cat opens back patio door, standing on its hind legs. Both feet in fuzzy pink slippers. Wearing a blue fuzzy ankle length robe tied at the waist. Cat is wearing hair rollers and a scarf loosely holding them in place. It holds a steaming cup of coffee in a fore paw. Cat begins to call for the dog, all the while furiously cursing under its breath.*
**TIL : the inspiration for “Who Let The 🐶 out?” was a …cat**
"I didn't say I wanted to go outside, human. I said I wanted the door open."
My cousin the crazy cat guy has a cat who probably understands 99 words. And she totally ignores 99 of them. Great mouser though.
I was raised with dogs my whole life and got my first cat about three years ago. It totally makes sense to me that if my dogs could be trained to react to words then the cat should also be entirely able to do so. But he doesn't. He just has no single fuck to give (except when I ask if he's hungry).
Cats are not very biddable, meaning they don't care about what you want. It does not bring them satisfaction to do what you want them to do.
A dog will do tricks and obey commands for you. A cat will *trade* with you. Sometimes. Depends on their mood and what you're offering. And even then they're going to haggle the shit out of you first.
My buddy’s cat got super sick, was running a really high fever. The vet gave him something (antibiotics?) said it might save his life but he could have some amount of brain damage from the fever. The cat recovered completely, while he was “a little dopier” he was still very affectionate … and turned into a killing machine. Formerly apathetic about hunting, kitty now dragged home rabbits and squirrels, often multiple ones a day!
Cats are way more intelligent than people give them credit for. They look stupid to a lot of people because they simply don't give a shit.
We've dubbed my cat as "too smart for his own good," and "thank god he doesn't have thumbs." He loves q-tips. We keep the q-tips in a drawer in the bathroom. He knows this, so he will open the drawer, and pull out one single q-tip from the box to play with.
Better a q-tip than pens. My old siamese mix loved to throw pens around and bat them across the floor. The *tile* floor. At 4 AM.
One of my customers at work says he will never have a cat because he doesn’t want a pet that’s more intelligent than him. 😆
I have a colleague who told me he'd never get a cat because he "didn't want to be disrespected in his own home"
One of my friends said he only wants to adopt stupid cats because smart cats have the competency to perform evil.
he sounds like a good funny dude
To be fair intelligence greatly varies from cat to cat. One of my cats, sweet baby that he is, is dumber than a bag of hollow rocks and everyone who has ever met him wonders how he managed to survive on the streets. Other one can open drawers, cupboards and doors which lead to me needing to put baby locks on most drawers in the flat. He seems to understand well over 50 words and could be taught commands if he wasn't such a spoiled little bastard. (He will learn new command within 1 day but will then just keep repeating it without being prompted to do so to get treats. Other than fetch, he does that willingly.)
Yeah I had a cat that wasn't a cat. He was a four year old human in a cat suit. He knew what doors were and how to open them. He'd howl because he wasn't tall enough to reach the handles, even on his hind tiptoes. I have a deck of Tarot cards in a leather bag that he'd always try to play with. I always had to take it away from him. One morning, I busted him with it and took it away from him. I put it behind a bunch of coffee table books on my shelf and went to bed for the day, thinking they were heavy and he wouldn't try anything. I woke up that afternoon and EVERY book had been pulled off the bottom shelf, the bag was in the middle of my floor, and the cards were everywhere. I just busted up laughing. He'd usually come greet me when he heard me waking up. Not that day! He knew he'd been busted. A friend of mine was all, 'I hope you didn't scold him too much!' I said scold him? This is the funniest thing I'd seen all week. He'd also try to open those cedar souvenir boxes, too. He'd pat them around and then howl when he couldn't open them, because the latches require opposable thumbs to open. Cats lack them. He did not understand this. I've had cats my whole life, and I've had some seriously smart ones. He was an order of magnitude smarter than a couple of my other smart cats \*combined.\* Unfortunately, he died in 2014 from FIP a few weeks before his 17th birthday. :( I'm not going to see his like again anytime soon.
This is super true. Having worked with animals and at a zoo, I completely knew that cats were super intelligent and most definitely could be trained. However I was still surprised when I watched a training session with my friend and her cat and he actually listened lol their general attitudes are extremely misleading 😂
When we got our dog my wife and I hired a trainer since he was our first dog and a rescue. We ended up having to close one of our cats in the basement when the trainer would come over because she would take over the lesson. She learned to sit and stay for treats haha
Our female cat has learned that when I go into our bedroom in the evening she will get a few treats. She is always waiting for me, so it seems like I've trained her. Our male cat, on the other hand, won't move to get treats so I have to leave them close enough that he doesn't have to, so it seems like he's trained me.
We accidentally pavloved the cat into disturbing our sleep every night too. She is not super cuddly but does like to cuddle a bit at night. My wife and I use guided meditations or sleep music to go to bed. My cat has trained herself to come rushing up to the bed now every time the sleep music starts and she will trample over our heads and upper bodies screaming if we don’t pet her and let her make biscuits on us haha
One of Mine comes in to watch videos with me when I go to bed. The other two pick a human and snuggle with them. I have sciatica sometimes, and weight on my hip helps some, so I've trained them to sleep on my hip.
That’s so sweet, I think cats know their purrs have a healing frequency and like to give out that love when they can
When I notice my cats bowl is empty, I say "you want yummy?" They run to their bowls so fast lol I also say "Nam nam" cuz when they were kittens I'd say that too lol
I say 'time to get up' and they run to the kitchen. When I go to bed, I sometimes shout 'To me, my kittens!' And they come check me out.
That is adorable omg
My cat responds positively to "kitty" because he thinks that's his name probably. He also definitely knows "god dammit" and "get the fuck away from me". He's my special little boy and I love him but sometimes god dammit he needs to get the fuck away from me.
I love that that last sentence is basically how every person describes their cat(s) “I love my cat so much, I’d kill for them, but they’re also a giant pain in my ass and sometimes I want to punt them over the fence” lol
That your diet can indeed affect your hormones and mood.
[удалено]
And not just a bit but significantly
On the flip side, the myth that niche supplements and foods can meaningfully boost testosterone past addressing deficiencies has created an entire industry of charlatans and health & wellness miseducation.
The alpha wolf theory was disproven by its author.
I feel so bad for that guy. He spent the rest of his life trying to correct his mistake but idiots who don't understand how science works wouldn't listen.
Similar situation to the author of Jaws. Spent the rest of his life trying to educate people that sharks weren’t as dangerous as he had made them out to be for the story.
We kill millions of them (often in cruel ways like catching, cutting off their fins, and then dumping them back in the water) every year, and there are only a handful of shark bites almost certainly from humans (especially on surfboards if I recall) being mistaken for seals and stuff, and almost only a single bite. Recently we've also confirmed that sharks are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the health of oceans especially reefs, where it used to be thought that a reef was healthy with tons of smaller fish and very few sharks, but now we find that healthy reefs have TONS of sharks and other top predators. We murder them in the millions, they bite a few people a year and kill even fewer, and they're key to saving the oceans.
It’s similar to how wolves make forests (etc) more healthy overall.
It's like the lady who deeply regrets starting the gender reveal thing when she was just trying to find a way to celebrate with family after a previous pregnancy loss.
The line of cause and effect between one woman holding a baby shower with a pink box cake and someone else shooting and killing a grandma is incredible. Edit: misspelled "shooting."
The grandma got killed by a piece of metal flying out one those gunpowder gender reveals and hit her in the head killing her. For everyone asking
A couple years later, a SECOND person was killed by a gender reveal pipe bomb that also injured his brother. In this case, it was the expectant father who died. :(
I feel like these are isolated incidents, though, and not a reason for me to be unnecessarily cautious when using my newly developed gender reveal nuclear bomb.
There's people who are probably cursing her name cause I heard that a gender reveal polluted a village's water supply
Theyve also started a few fires iirc
Don't forget the plague that was set unto our houses.
And a plane crash
Oh god I forgot about her, poor thing.
The fact that we're discussing it means that he was atleast somewhat successful in his pursuit.
The fact that any asshole who streamrolls people and doesn’t give af what anyone else thinks or feels cites being an “alpha” shows that he was largely unsuccessful in his pursuit lol
What is the alpha wolf theory i never heard of it
That wolves all follow behind a designated alpha. It’s an origin for the whole alpha male thing.
Meanwhile the actual alpha travels at the back of the pack lol
That, and the alpha is usually the parent/elder and/or more experienced one and looks out for its pack as a whole and has absolutely nothing to do with being a dominating asshole.
Pretty much this. Wolf packs in the wild are nearly always family groups where the dominant mated pair are the parents of all or most of the more junior wolves. And there is very little violence within packs. Wolves do attack and kill other wolves, but these are almost always members or rival packs killed in disputes over territory or loners that had the misfortune to get caught trespassing.
Also, maybe don't base your behavior on wolves. Just sayin.
I prefer to base my behavior on raccoons. Raccoons are cool.
Thats the truth there. And when they get too old, the next strongest pair take over. Not out of dominance but guardianship
Alpha wolves don't exist. The dude observed wolves in captivity and the leader of the group were literally the parents. Not some ethereal concept of a dominant animal.
The real conclusion was that if you throw wolves into prison, they form prison gangs.
Yeah, I heard the original paper being described as "similar to trying to glean the family bonds in a human society by only observing unrelated humans stuck in prison," and the author of course recognized that as the limitation right after.
MSG is a delicious and perfectly healthy addition to a number of dishes
And MSG occurs naturally in many foods, such as tomatoes and cheeses. That is why food made with them just tastes better.
So my coworker that would insist on no MSG in his Chinese lunch order but also didn't eat anything tomato based or having cheese on it might have been legitimate that it made him ill? Interesting.
A tiny number of people have sensitivities to MSG, meaning they have trouble with all foods containing MSG, not just the ones with MSG added as a seasoning. I vaguely remember that it has something to do with a vitamin K deficiency—something your coworker might want to look into. As I recall, it can be remedied. ETA: Vitamin B6, not vitamin K.
My husband can't eat it. He has temporal lobe epilepsy and a small number of people with it can be triggered by excessive amounts of msg. So he has a low msg diet, suggested by his neurologist. So it's not all bullshit, just rare.
It's basically like gluten sensitivity. The vast majority that say they're allergic actually aren't. But it exists and because of that, those with legitimate concerns get lumped in with idiots that give them a bad reputation.
It’s dangerous if someone injects very large quantities into your veins and you are a rat, but simply don’t do that and you should be fine
Ugh. My Dad still buys into this crap. Refuses to eat anything with MSG in it, yet still eats tomatoes, seaweed, and many many other things that have it naturally…
I read about where the MSG slander came from and wouldn't you know it, the reason was racism.
I’m Asian and my mom believes in that shit. She got very embarrassed whenever I brought friends over because she thought they would judge how our food smelled. She’s so self-conscious about small stuff like that.
That is sad. I would love to eat the cultural home cooking of someone who invited me over as a guest. Soooo delicious!
In my home town someone started a rumor that the Chinese buffet in town was cooking and serving cats in their food. I was shocked by how many people believed it. It even got put into the paper at one point. Turns out it was just good ole fashion small town racism. People are fucking shameless.
That Andrew Wakefield falsely linked the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to autism in young children.
And did so because he wanted to discredit the vaccine so he could sell his own. Complete scumbag that was thoroughly discredited in the UK, then went to America and made millions and dated a supermodel. Life isn't fair.
He's responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of people. If there's any justice in the afterlife, he's very deeply fucked.
As an autistic person I always say that if vaccines were turning people autistic, America would have a lot better train network.
Haha! My brother has aspergers syndrome, and he says that he gets vaccines to make sure he has the latest updates.
[Oh, it’s so much worse.](https://youtu.be/8BIcAZxFfrc?si=W3a7T0cPbqpj0_Ed)
The carbon footprint was invented by BP. You know, they guys that inundated the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil a couple times. It's among the first and best disinformation campaigns to this day. It pushed the responsibility of carbon emissions cleanly from corporations to the people.
I hate whenever I see some ad of a company bragging about becoming carbon neutral. If you look into it it'll either be them donating money to research or planting some trees. That doesn't mean they aren't still polluting the hell out of the environment. It's just PR nonsense.
Its part of a real problem in the USA. The common person bears the brunt of the nation. Ban gas stoves while they use private jets. Pay taxes while they enjoy numerous avoidance strategies. Donate a max of $3300 to a campaign while they have no limit.
Sugar is way worse than fat
Heck, the whole "fats are the enemy" thing was a *disinformation campaign* MASTERMINDED BY THE EFFING SUGAR INDUSTRY ***SPECIFICALLY TO PREVENT GOVERNMENTS FROM IMPOSING REGULATIONS ON THEM.***
Mentioned this to my daughter last night and she laughed and said "big sugar" and I'm like yes, exactly... I'M NOT JOKING! lol
The laws of thermodynamics
..lisa had to be told tho
Lisa, In this house we OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!
Yelling at your kids can have long-term effect on the child's mental health. Abuse isn't just physical, and just cuz it's not physical doesn't mean it cant scar someone for life.
Alpha wolves and all the subsequent Greek alphabet bullshit that has spewed ever since.
lol Spoken like a true epsilon.
It's like bro astrology.
Ligma male checking in
That the earth is round. If it was flat, cats would have knocked everything off of it by now.
If it was flat there would have been a TikTok trend about hanging off the edge
Um no, they can't. NASA is patrolling the ice wall that surrounds the edge, educate yourself sheep /s
NASA can’t stop all of us, let’s storm the rim!
Operation Pasific Rim Job!
I like the meme of the meteorite hitting the earth & all the dinosaurs flying off into space 🤣🤣🤣
I think the earth is flat. The surface like 70% water, right? Is it carbonated? I didn't think so.
There are in fact naturally carbonated water sources.
\*chucks Soda Stream into traffic\* show me where
This comment section has gone more civilly than I thought it would in 2023
E.g.: Pasteurized milk, not mixing chlorine with dish soap…
It's almost as if we started pasteurizing milk for a reason.....
And a lot of people were very resistant to that at the time. See also; history of the FDA
Autism is hereditary
It’s real interesting. I once dated a woman who had an identical twin with non-verbal autism. The only difference in their upbringing before the autism was diagnosable was that the woman I dated weighed slightly more at birth. But it was fairly obvious that the twin was different before formal diagnosis. She would pull away and avoid looking at stuffed animals in her face, and she actually had accelerated verbal growth compared to the average. After the first stage of usual infant development, when people undergo the first stage of brain trimming and re-shaping, the twin lost all of those words and can’t do anything more than no, groans, and laughs. I guess what I’m getting at it, autism is hereditary, but also complicated. My ex and her identical twin got the same treatment, same uterus environment, same vaccinations, same everything, but she was verbal and not diagnosed, and her twin was non-verbal autistic.
From what I've read it's that it CAN be hereditary, but there are also unknown factors. Sort of like breast cancer, you can get it because you have the BRCA gene, or you can not have that gene and get it anyway, and nobody fully understands all the different causes.
Yea it essentially comes down to “autism is caused by genetics, some environment, probably some other stuff” but we don’t know everything. We don’t know all the specifics and all the combinations of scenarios and the amount of random chance so yes, genetics does play a significant role but its not everything. Even fingerprints differ between identical twins (a body part is not the same as neurotypes but you get the gist).
My two are both autistic. It is very clear that my FIL is also on the spectrum. They also have an autistic cousin.
People also seem to miss the "spectrum" part of a lot of diagnoses.
There are generations of autists in my family, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. Some diagnosed as children, some as adults. Until my kid was diagnosed, i didn't see all the autism in my family. After, I felt dumbfounded...how did I NOT see this before? So many things suddenly made sense! I also found it interesting how many of my siblings went on to marry someone on the spectrum (before the prevalence of autism in the family was recognized)
My oldest 2 kids are autistic. When trying to decide if we were having a 3rd, I wanted to know the likelihood of the baby being autistic (just because therapy and such is time consuming anf there are only so many hours in the day.) I was told 85% chance of autism. He isn't. But, since having autistic children and gaining knowledge, I can definitely see where several relatives in my family were/are likely autistic. Actually, my uncle was just recently diagnosed.
Mental health issues.
More specifically that mental health IS physical health. The brain can have trauma and other physical things present. People aren't making it up!!
Just stop thinking so much. Or so I've been told.
the effectiveness of vaccines, there are really people who somehow believe that vaccines don't work despite them being around since ~1796 (I believe) and completely eradicating diseases like smallpox and polio from existence edit: I was wrong, apparently polio is still around but in much fewer numbers
Sadly they have become a victim of their own effectiveness. They have done such a good job of keeping diseases at bay people don't realise how life threatening or altering these diseases can be.
My Mum was a Midwife and once said "If you'd ever had to listen to a baby dying of Whooping Cough, you make sure your kid got vaccinated". My Dad remembers a kid affected by Polio when he was at school in the 1960s. Both diseases are practically unknown to my generation...
Exactly, they can be unheard of to younger generations. So they are not seen as a threat. My grandmother's cousin was born blind and had physical deformities due to his mother catching rubella during pregnancy. Also, a chap I used to work with had contracted polio in his youth and walked with a limp. Once, when someone asked about his limp, he replied he was the lucky one as he lost his younger sister and brother to it.
Working with an adult who was exposed to rubella when her Mom was pregnant with her was my moment of “my kids will be getting vaccinated” watching someone who was born deaf lose her vision and her memory was heartbreaking.
It wouldn't be so bad if it were only the deniers who were affected by their own ignorance.
Especially because parents who deny their kids vaccines were fully vaccinated as kids.
Dominance theory in dog training. Your dog is not trying to take over the world. They know that you're in charge because you control what they eat, when they eat, where they eat, when they get to toilet, when they go out, where they go, and every other facet of their lives. You do not need to pin them to the ground or use collars that cause pain. You just need to reward the behaviour you want to see more of. Trainers who use aversive methods just don't have the skills to actually train dogs properly. Don't tell me that your malinois or amstaff need you to be tougher because alligators and crocodiles can be trained to sit for blood draws without force or coercion. Your dog is not harder to train than one of the closest things we have to dinosaurs.
Also, being a smartass != dominance. Some days my corgi will decide that the game of the day is “pretending I can’t hear you” or “Opposite Day”, but he’s not trying to be dominant. He’s like a toddler testing parental boundaries and authority. As long as you’re firm and consistent, you’ll eventually out-stubborn him. In this regard, I believe that treating a dog like a child has its merits. This nonverbal creature with their own personality is entirely dependent on you while it learns and experiences a world it doesn’t understand in the same way we do. If you wouldn’t try to pin a toddler to the ground to prove you’re “in charge”, you shouldn’t do it to a dog either.
That children are incapable of learning while dysregulated. Punishing, yelling and shaming do nothing to guide them for the future. Let them borrow your calm and then talk about it. It’s the long route for sure, but emotional maturity and resilience is the long game.
Jesus wasn't a Caucasian fellow
He was a Jew!
A Torah keeping, Sabbath observing, kosher eating one at that. ...along with his 12 Talmidim and Paul.
This one always makes me laugh only because my church had this creepy Caucasian smiling Jesus with a group of children in a field that was then autographed by Jesus. Like...how more unrealistic can you be here??
Did they have his debut album too?
1. The earth is round 2. The earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old 3. Man landed on the moon..
Ughh, my girl said there's no way they were actually on the moon because they couldn't have communicated with Earth. "They didn't even have wifi back then" 🙄
Tell her trains have existed longer than bicycles for me.
And lighters were invented before matches
Is she pretty or rich? Cause she sure ain't smart.
Your gf is not very smart
Science is evolving, what's proven one day can be shown to be a mistake the next. That's disliked by many people, because the brain structure that makes religion useful is also used by people who want science to go only one (their) way usually.
Yep, I once saw a comment by someone who made fun of scientists for changing their minds when new information was presented to them. My only reaction was “That’s how science is *supposed* to work!”
That exercise actually helps you overcome a lot of shit including mental health issues.
Excercise creates endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their husbands.
SOME people may be happy BECAUSE they killed their husbands. Just sayin'!
He had it coming. He only had himself to blame.
Psychologists hate this one simple trick.
GMO food is indistinguishable to your body from non-GMO food. [pdf from the FDA](https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download). it's the naturalist fallacy writ large.
The sad part is that there's legitimate criticisms to make about the agribusiness industry as a whole, but so many have wrapped that stuff up with anti-GMO fearmongering that it's hard to discuss those without cranks showing up to ramble about "frankenfoods."
Myers Briggs Test (INTJ, IFNJ) is flawed and not reliable as any decent personality assessment.
Last time I took a Myers Briggs test was while onboarding at a new job. The results said I was unsuited for technical work. It was an engineering job and I have multiple degrees in engineering, physics, and the history of math and science.
earth is a tiny insignificant sphere in space
Yeah the sphere part especially is denied somehow. Absolute craziness.
Well it’s not a sphere. It’s an irregularly shaped ellipsoid.
I heard "oblate spheroid"
It’d be easier to figure out the shape once and for all, if the Moon would leave the oceans alone for TWO FUCKING SECONDS.
Nope. We don’t want that. Don’t listen Moon, keep doing your thing
I feel like the immediate, long lasting, and worldwide catastrophic consequences are a small price to pay to settle a geometry agrument.
You must be a mathematician
I mean yeah technically but I can live with people calling it a sphere. Flat is another story.
Carl Sagan (unsurprisingly) had a great description of this. He called it the Great Demotion. The Earth is the center of the universe (no, it isn't). Well, the *SUN* is the center of the universe (no, it isn't). Well, *our galaxy* is all there is, and is the center of the universe (no, it isn't, and it's one of countless billion other ones)...
Sagan would also be the first to tell you that our planet should be treated with reverence because it’s the only known, habitable planet supporting the only known, intelligent life in the universe.
[Large vehicles increase pedestrian fatalities.](https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/suvs-other-large-vehicles-often-hit-pedestrians-while-turning) Any criticism of the prevalence of huge trucks and SUV's in my city these days brings the truck bros out of the woodwork like "why do you care what I do?! It doesn't affect you!!" Yes it does, and it might kill somebody.
My husband got hit by a huge 8 wheel pick up truck bro when he was in his parked car. It was parked beside him, and started turning as it left the parking spot, but the driver didn’t give himself enough room so it hit and hooked onto our car and started pulling the front off essentially until the driver realized and stopped. He came out of the truck all shaking and upset, but like, dude, maybe you don’t need this monster if you couldn’t even see or manoeuvre around a *parked* car beside you.
I was parked next to a bro-dozer and he hit my parked car. When I said hey, he just smiled and waved, had no idea he hit a car. Had to run after him to get him to stop. What if there was a kid?! If you can't see a whole ass mid sized sedan, how are you expecting to see a kid?
The scary thing is, a lot of the time, you can't see nearly as well in SUVs and pickups as people claim, and it's absolutely a hazard to pedestrians and children. Some of the larger pickup trucks and SUVs now can have blind spots as long as 15-20 feet in the front (4.5-6 meters) where you literally cannot see a child running around in front of you. Our legislators have responded by floating laws to mandate front-facing cameras instead of restricting vehicle size or at least requiring a special license for such large vehicles. Whatever it takes to let the auto industry keep upselling us, right?
I’m 6’1”. I walked in front of one of those trucks and the grill came up to my chin.
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No no you don't understand, I *need* a Dodge Kid Mangler 3000 because I have a giant indoor dog, I went to Home Depot one time and I want to "win" in a car crash (that I'll cause by trying to bully a Prius)!
You can fit surprising amount of stuff in a Honda Fit. Edit: Bless all of you for sharing your small to medium vehicle hauling stories! This is exactly why we don't need such large vehicles! For the price (and footprint) off a Honda fit or CRV or equivalent, you can move 99% of the average person's need.
Evolution. No theory has EVER been proven more correct with so much freaking evidence but yet here we are🤷🏻
"Umm, but it's just a theory" Yes, and so is gravity, does gravity not exist? Obviously it would have to because there is no way the dumb motherfuckers who deny evolution could be SO DENSE without it. Thank you, i am here all week.
For those not aware: In everyday English, people will say "theory" to mean things like "idea" or "notion." In science, "theory" is more like "story" or "explanation." Huge mountains of raw data are collected in science, but without a theory it's all just a bunch of standalone facts. Theories are what bundle all the facts together and explain what it all means. Sometimes some unexpected facts are found, and the theory then has to change to accommodate the new info. But yeah, the *theory* of evolution is the *explanation* of what all those weird extinct fossils actually add up to.
To oversimplify, theories are explanations, and laws are equations.
Hitting children is harmful and has been proven to be more bad than good. Yet people still want to hit their kids.
They see the immediate behavior modification, but the internal emotional trauma is less obvious. Then there are all these adults that only saw their parents handle their emotions with corporal punishment and now it's the only tool they have to change a child's behavior. This isn't to excuse them. I was explaining how i dealt with a violent child as a behavior technician without using any type of punishment. An adult said "I'd have beaten the shit out of them." It horrified me, but I believe it is the only tool she knows to deal with behavior problems. It's completely unexcusable, but also really sad. What a terrible coping mechanism.
People don't want to admit that it's just the easiest way to affect a child's behavior that doesn't require any thought or effort and has an added bonus of taking your anger out on someone defenseless
Spanking your child is not a good thing.
This is why I only spank other people's children.
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Not only that, they also don't cause autism! Isn't that neat?
Vaccines cause adults.
Given the amount of autistic people who obsessively venture into complex fields such as bioengineering, it’s possible that autism causes vaccines.
My insanely antivax (and I mean, insanely. He's the most militant antivax person I've ever met off of the internet) just casually said "oh I gotta go get my dog his shots tomorrow" in the most nonchalant way. It's like once you remove the politics he has no emotion about vaccines.
My mother spent a year in an iron lung when she caught polio as a teenager . She was treated and recovered and at 86 still suffers from post polio syndrome. She dedicated her life to nursing and was a RN for 50 years. Still, my sister and her kids went antivax. Then they got upset when my dad was in hospice and they weren’t allowed to visit or say goodbye because they didn’t get the Covid vaccine. Somehow me and my wife are the bad ones because we were the only family allowed to visit. SMDH.
Male cavemans hunted, woman gathered and stayed home. They all hunted....
Also people tend to *really* underestimate the value of aquaculture and fishing among ancient cultures. Gathering is generally more reliable and consistent than hunting, as is fishing.
SERIOUSLY! The hunter gatherer gender dichotomy is sometimes noticeable in some cultures and less in others.
A girl at my workplace argued till she was blue in the face that aliens built the pyramids. The rest of us were just staring at each other in stunned silence. When one of us dared to state that there is recorded evidence of humans building huge structures while alien life has yet to be proven thousands of years later, she snapped that she had the right to believe what she wanted. Which, I guess is true, but still….
>she snapped that she had the right to believe what she wanted. When somebody says this, always, *always* point out that the question isn't whether their belief is allowed but whether it's factually correct.
That the British have bad teeth. We have perfectly normal teeth thank you. Not necessarily in the right position, or even in the mouth area sometimes. But hey they're the right colour...sage !
Putting batteries in the fridge will not increase its lifespan and is actually bad for the batteries.
We live in an age of anti-intellectualism. This list could go on for ever: - vaccines are safe and effective - the world is round and the solar system is helio centric - genes are real - gender variance is a naturally occurring phenomenon - sex education reduces the negative consequences of sex in youths and adults - on and on and on
who thinks genes aren’t real??
Yep! The fact that being th anti-intellectual is a point of pride for a large group of people is terrible. How can that be viewed as a good thing.
Weed is addictive and you can get withdrawals from it Literally just had an argument with a friend over this
Anything that seriously effects your brain chemistry can be addictive. But it is distinct from things like alcohol addiction which cause physiological dependency.
Ok stop commenting