Tag: important

Biologists Respond to ‘Science Denialism’ Regarding Outdoor Cat Control

zoologicallyobsessed:

According to researchers, coordinated critics have mounted a “misinformation campaign designed to purposefully fabricate doubt regarding the harmful impacts of outdoor cats and stymie policies that would remove outdoor cats from the landscape.”

The conflict stems from a groundbreaking study published in 2013 by scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That study evaluated the combined impact of the tens of millions of outdoor cats in the United States. The authors found that roaming outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year and are the leading source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds in the country. Similar results have since been confirmed in Canada and Australia.

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To those of you still in denial about how bad outdoor cats are to wildlife not just in your own countries but globally here’s the cold hard scientific facts stating that you are apart of a movement of uneducated critics spreading misinformation. 

Here’s the link to the open-source scientific artificial as well:

Biologists Respond to ‘Science Denialism’ Regarding Outdoor Cat Control

aeiryka-v01:

i’m so tired of people justifying cultural appropriation by saying things like “Actual Chinese People ™ from mainland china don’t care that this non-chinese person is wearing a cheongsam!” and acting like this is evidence that cultural appropriation is just an issue made up by Oversensitive Special Snowflakes

like… ok… sure, of course mainland chinese people would care less about who wears cheongsam. but you’re kind of missing the whole point. most of the poc i’ve seen who are upset about cultural appropriation aren’t mainlanders. they’re fckn diaspora. 

nobody in mainland china is going to judge you if you wear a cheongsam to a formal event. but let’s pretend you’re the asian chick in your mostly-white school in the US, and your mom pushes you to wear a cheongsam to prom. you’re probably going to get the “oh of course the asian girl wears her asian dress to prom” reaction from the people around you. so you fight your mom about the cheongsam, because you want to fit in with Everyone Else. you don’t want to be the Chinky Girl in the Chinky Dress. 

your beautiful cheongsam sits in your closet, until one day, a stray clothes hanger snags on the lace overlay and shreds your dress and you throw it out.

and then a few years later, you see some white girl wearing the dress your mom wanted you to wear, but you were too ashamed to wear because you didn’t want to be a stereotype.

and that’s the frickin difference. mainlanders don’t experience the same things as people who are diaspora. they’re not gonna have the same perspective. there are no societal repercussions stopping them from expressing themselves culturally. their experiences ARE NOT THE SAME. stop using the opinions of people living in China to invalidate the experiences of Chinese Americans. thanks

bogleech:

God you can practically hear some people licking their lips at the first excuse they can find to say that “illegal immigrants broke a law by definition and are therefore ALREADY ALL KRRRRIMMMMINNNUHHHLLLSSS!!!”

They’re fucking HORNY for this pedantic bullshit maneuver yet they sure don’t characterize themselves as “criminals” if they ever got a parking ticket or downloaded an mp3.

And the simple act of entering our country does no more inherent harm than either of those things, nor has any evidence ever demonstrated that undocumented immigrants are especially likely to break any more serious laws. Just the opposite, in fact.

garrettauthor:

roughkiss:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

Do not just assume that the Democrats are going to win…the only way we can GUARANTEE that the Democrats make gains in these midterms is for people to go out and vote

Whatever the polls say, get out there and vote democrat, whereever you are

Do not just assume that they’ll “Definitely win” and so it doesn’t matter if you go out and vote or not

Listen, staying home is what got us here. We can’t afford to assume anything. Get your ass out there!

Unless you live in Oregon where you vote BY staying home because we all get mail in ballots sent to us in the mail hahaha see how this joke worked OH MY FUCKING LORD PLEASE VOTE VOTE VOTE JEEBUS

Source: justanothergreyface

So You’re A Gentile Who’s Realized We Have A Problem: Now What?

prismatic-bell:

Tumblr likes to spin its wheels and spend time yelling at each other, so here’s a nice comprehensive guide. Five Things You Can Do Now That You Know We Were Serious About The Antisemitism:

1) Accept that if you’re in this to be an ally, you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. We’re traditionally very wary of outsiders in our spaces because when we welcome them, well … this happens. In fact, if you want to convert to Judaism, you traditionally get rejected three times, just to make sure you’re serious and not shitting with us. Expect wariness. Expect to get your feelings hurt, because a lot of us are very raw right now. Stick with us anyway–once we know you’re not just bandwagoning us, you’re going to end up with a lot of friends who are relying on you. Nobody said allyship was easy.

2) Learn about Judaism. Note that I DO NOT MEAN LEARNING WITH INTENTION TO CONVERT. We don’t proselytize and it would be against Torah for me to even suggest it. What I mean here is, you can’t call bullshit if you don’t know what we’re about. Some good basic resources are The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch; My Jewish Learning; and for a strict Orthodox standpoint, Chabad. You’ll find that some things in these sources contradict each other. That’s pretty par for the course in Judaism; we don’t have a single dogma or point of view.

3) Consider calling a local synagogue and asking if they have volunteer work for a gentile ally. Introduce yourself, explain (briefly) what got your attention, and offer your services–to stand outside during services, to walk folks to and from shul (this is particularly important in Orthodox communities, where driving on Shabbat is forbidden), hell, to help stuff envelopes for whatever vigil or service they may be holding in memoriam. Anything will help.

4) You may wish to make a donation to a local synagogue or Jewish charity. I strongly recommend the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which is a Jewish charity focused on combating antisemitism. Jews traditionally give monetary gifts in sums of $18, which corresponds to the numeric value of the word “chai,” or “life.” The last time this happened I made a post about this tradition and got accused of being a Nazi because of the whole 1-8 A-H thing, so let’s just nip that right in the bud: yes, we know. It’s a horrible coincidence. We’re not giving up a few-thousand-year-old tradition because of some dipshit with a bad moustache. If you can’t afford $18, consider moving the decimal over and donating in multiples of 18, like $3.60. Your meaning will still be perfectly clear, and anything helps. If you wish to make a donation in memory/in honor (which many synagogues appreciate), I suggest either choosing the name of one of the shooting victims–giving tzedakah, or charity, in their names is considered a great mitzvah and a blessing to their families–or using the phrase “am Yisrael chai.” It means “Israel lives.” Although the country in the MENA region is called Israel, this is not what the phrase refers to–the traditional patriarch of Judaism was named Jacob, and renamed as Israel following a wrestling match with a messenger of G-d. To say “am Yisrael chai” is to say his people, that is, the Jewish people, live.

And on that note …

5) In the coming days and weeks, you’re going to see a lot of people making this about Israel or Zionism. Please tell them to shut the fuck up. Israel, Zionism, and Jews are three completely different, albeit related, things. To wit: Israel is a geopolitical country situated on the site of our ancestral homeland and currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a safe homeland; and Jews are a group of people spread across six continents and most countries who are united by a common group of ancestors from the Levant (the part of the world now occupied by the geopolitical entity known as Israel). Saying the victims of this shooting had anything to do with the political situation in Israel would be like saying I, personally, am responsible for Vladimir Putin because I have a Russian ancestor. I speak exactly two words of Russian, have never been to Russia, have no family left living there (and haven’t for four generations), but I’m totally responsible for Russia. You see how ridiculous that sounds? The same applies to Jews and Israel. Please, please, PLEASE do not conflate this event with Israeli politics. I’m not saying Israeli politics aren’t a topic worth discussing–I’m saying this is not a discussion they belong in. Don’t let the powers that be (or the alt-right sleaze that sucks the dicks of the powers that be) distract from the topic at hand, which is “out of control guns meet out of control xenophobia and antisemitism,” by throwing OMG ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND GLOBALISM into the mix.

And finally: yes, gentiles, this is okay for you to reblog. In fact I encourage it. And I will answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, if they’re asked in good faith. Please just follow the most basic tenet of Judaism, which is: don’t be a dick.

If you’re ready to stand and help, now is the time.