A baby fennec fox named Milo and a baby skunk named Flower are growing up together as the best of adorable friends. The animals are being raised to be educational ambassadors with Amazing Animal Ambassadors, a licensed Massachusetts-based teaching organization.
Amazing Animal Ambassadors connects our world with an audience of any age. Have us in your classroom, summer camp, town library, resort or even right in your house for a birthday party or other function! The hour long presentation brings multiple exotic animals and one of a kind props to you in a demonstration that informs and thrills and includes amazing spontaneity.
It seems that Milo and Flower love to be together, even if they are doing different things at the same time.
Also, I'd actually be fine with restrictions on abortion, if those restrictions weren't always accompanied by restrictions on access to birth control. If you want to prevent abortion because you believe it's morally wrong because you're killing a person, why on earth would you insist that the person be there to be killed in the first place?
Because we disagree. I am not going to convince you, you are not going to convince me. I also have no problem with you believing the way you do. The problem I have is when that belief (which is an opinion, because no one will ever be able to factually say when an embryo becomes a person) is used to control other people’s lives. Beliefs are for controlling our own lives, not the lives of others.
the “poor person who refuses handouts” is a classist microaggression, it tells poor kids that the worst possible thing they could do is accept help and that poor people who do get help are “lesser” (because anyone who does get help is always portrayed as screwing the system somehow, ie. “welfare queen”), as well as emphasizing to people that your pride is more important than your continued survival or general well-being.
I had the epiphany that the whole “It is better to give than to receive” thing goes along with that, with an added side of superiority (”I give, not receive, so that’s better.”)
In 2k15 America, Black people now have to proactively and publicly declare for the record that we, like anyone else, would neither lynch ourselves nor commit suicide while in police custody.
This is (apparently) necessary now because if we are caught being human and - even once - state that we were even momentarily sad or depressed, that single statement alone can and will be used against us by corporate media and the police to blame us for our own murders…at the hands of the police.
(to hear all of these Black women’s voices and to watch their full videos, please go to the tumblr
or twitter of youth activist/organizer, millennialau. see full videos here)
Imagine a wall full of circular holes, that circles can keep walking in and out of with no difficulty.
Now imagine that the triangles manage to get the resources together, after years of not being able to fit through the circle’s holes, to drill a single triangle space into the wall.
Now imagine that the circle — who previously supported the triangle’s efforts because they are well-rounded (har) and value equality — comes along and sees the construction project. But instead of being happy, they get angry.
“Well, I won’t be able to fit through your hole!!!!” the circle cries.
“I helped you get the drill!!!!” the circle shrieks.
“Make it fit me too!!!!” the circle demands.
The triangles, barely holding it together enough to get a triangle hole together, stare at the circle in confusion.
“You have all the holes you need,” the triangles explain. “This is for us. You don’t need to fit through our hole, too.”
“YOU’RE BEING UNEQUAL AND HURTING MY FEELINGS!” the circle wails. “I DON’T SUPPORT YOUR HOLE IF IT DOESN’T FIT ME TOO. GIVE ME MY DRILL BACK.”
“It’s not your drill, it’s our drill. You helped us get it, because you said you cared.”
“I ONLY CARED WHEN I THOUGHT YOU’D MAKE A HOLE EVERYONE COULD FIT THROUGH. YOU’RE PERPETUATING INEQUALITY!!!”
“Why is it up to us, the small group that has never been able to fit through the wall at all, to make a hole everyone can use? Why isn’t it up to you, the people who have been able to cross back and forth at will for years? We just want to see the other side; why are you yelling at us?”
“I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN A CIRCLE, OMG. I’VE HAD TO WORK HARD ALL MY LIFE TOO. YOU’RE JUST BEING BIGOTED AGAINST ME BECAUSE OF SOMETHING I CAN’T CONTROL, JUST LIKE EVERYONE IS AGAINST YOU.”
“You are interfering with our project and asking us to comfort you while we’re trying to make progress. Please leave.”
“I’m going to tell everyone about this,” the circle warns. “Nobody will support you now.”
“Apparently nobody ever did,” the triangles sigh, getting back to work.
I know I should be grown up and read the whole article, but I'm just gonna smile at "broke Bitcoin," and move on with my morning.
Turns out, going after someone’s Bitcoin transactions is much easier than you might think. After all, as the saying goes, once you’re pwned, you’re pwned.
After Hacking Team, the Italian spyware vendor, was hacked earlier this month, and 400GB of its internal data was released, Ars reviewed many internal e-mails from the company. These documents clearly illustrate how simply Hacking Team's "Money Module" worked, and they provide a small glimpse into which customers were particularly interested in it.
In general, the Italian spyware company sold (and hopes to continue to sell) software that allowed targets to be surreptitiously surveilled as they used computers or smartphones, and its clientele included law enforcement agencies worldwide. Back in January 2014, Hacking Team internally announced a new feature as part of its version 9.2 upgrade to its Remote Control System suite, and the new iteration would include a way to "track cryptocurrencies, such as BitCoin [sic], and all the related information."
I've practically made a side-career out of rewriting the FM, to help out people I work with. With "twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph ... explaining what each one was." https://youtu.be/m57gzA2JCcM
“Have you noticed that the more frequently a particular open source community tells you to RTFM, the worse the FM is likely to be? I’ve been contemplating this for years, and have concluded that this is because patience and empathy are the basis of good documentation, much as they are the basis for being a decent person.”
But what often gets lost in these conversations is that the most common shared trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital—family money, an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to financial stability. While it seems that entrepreneurs tend to have an admirable penchant for risk, it’s usually that access to money which allows them to take risks.
And this is a key advantage: When basic needs are met, it’s easier to be creative; when you know you have a safety net, you are more willing to take risks. “Many other researchers have replicated the finding that entrepreneurship is more about cash than dash,” University of Warwick professor Andrew Oswald tells Quartz. “Genes probably matter, as in most things in life, but not much.”
University of California, Berkeley economists Ross Levine and Rona Rubenstein analyzed the shared traits of entrepreneurs in a 2013 paper, and found that most were white, male, and highly educated. “If one does not have money in the form of a family with money, the chances of becoming an entrepreneur drop quite a bit,” Levine tells Quartz.
New research out this week from the National Bureau of Economic Research (paywall) looked at risk-taking in the stock market and found that environmental factors (not genetic) most influenced behavior, pointing to the fact that risk tolerance is conditioned over time (dispelling the myth of an elusive “entrepreneurship gene“).
Resilience is undoubtably a necessary trait for success; many notable entrepreneurs experienced success only after leading failed ventures. But the barrier to entry is very high.
For creative professions, starting a new venture is the ultimate privilege. Many startup founders do not take a salary for some time. The average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that more than 80% of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings and friends and family.
“Following your dreams is dangerous,” a 31-year-old woman who runs in social entrepreneurship circles in New York, and asked not to be named, told Quartz. “This whole bulk of the population is being seduced into thinking that they can just go out and pursue their dream anytime, but it’s not true.”
So while yes, there’s certainly a lot of hard work that goes into building something, there’s also a lot of privilege involved—a factor that is often underestimated.
A new article reports the findings from a longitudinal study that followed 667 women who had early- and later-term abortions for three years after their procedure. Dr. Corinne Rocca and her colleagues asked women if they felt that the abortion was the “right decision” at one week and approximately every six months thereafter.
This is your image of the week:
Percent of women reporting that abortion was the right decision over three years:
Over 99% of the women said that the abortion was the right decision at every time point. The line that looks like the upper barrier of the graph? That’s the data.
Overall, measures of negative emotions were relatively low — an average score of under 4 on a 16-point scale at one week and declining to about 2 at three years — and were higher for women who had a more difficult time deciding whether to get an abortion or who subsequently had planned pregnancies. Whether the abortion occurred in the first trimester or near the legal limit did not correlate with emotional response.
In contrast, women reported twice as many positive emotions at one week. Over time, positive feelings about the abortion declined along with negative ones, suggesting that the experience became less emotionally charged overall with distance from the procedure.
There are many reasons why one should never visit an ATM at night, not least of all being that the ATM is a sole source of light and will be covered with giant flying horrifying bugs that will somehow know which buttons you need to press and hover over them menacingly or also try to land on your body or face
Also it’s illegal to set the ATM on fire when this happens.
1. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to set the ATM on fire at all times 2. setting the ATM on fire would just make it even brighter therefore attracting MORE bugs and making the problem even WORSE
The seamstress did not look up from her work, her violet gaze focused on the needle in her hand.
“This world is not made for heroes,” she spoke with an aged tone, “nor villains. And few on either side seem understand that. Which is a shame.”
Her black, serpentine tongue licked a silvery thread, wetting it. “But those who do are far… far… more effective in their respective goals.”
So poised and prepped, the thread slid through the eye of the needle cleanly.
“Yes.” One syllable, dragged out. “Perfect.” Two, spoken crisply.
The seamstresses’ expression was the neutral, balancing point between the natural world cleansing, or being utterly corrupted by, an oily pollutant. She studied the thread a moment longer before beginning her task.
“Creators and destroyers. This is where there is power.”
Two of the biggest events so far this year were the release of Mad Max: Fury Road and a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What happens when you put those together, and throw in a lot of original trilogy stuff too? One of the coolest mashup videos we’ve seen in a long time.
if straight people gotta change pronouns when they’re singing covers so they don’t sound gay, then asexual singers have every right to replace any and all pronouns with “chicken nuggets”
No no no. This is so problematic because chicken nuggets has a different number of syllables, and it’s going to throw the whole song off. You have to pick a one syllable word. Like bears.
Ok, so please don’t take this the wrong way, anon, because I don’t mean to single you out at all and this isn’t directed particularly at you, it’s more of a PSA because this has been kind of weighing on me lately.
I think it’s great that many of you see my birds and want a feather friend for yourself. That’s awesome that more people are giving birds a chance. The bird fandom could always use more members. But, I feel there’s a side to this conversation that we haven’t been totally having. So, there’s a few things I need to say.
You guys get to see the cute side of bird keeping on my blog. I don’t show you everything. If you’re interested in bringing home a bird, you need to know that everything. Because bringing home even a small bird is a commitment. You need to realize what you’re getting into before you do it.
You guys see me post pictures and gifs, but what you don’t see is me scrubbing bird poop off of everything, dealing with broken blood feathers, toenail clipping, wing clipping, first aid, getting bit, struggling to give medicine, and so on and so on.
People wanting cockatiels in particular concerns me because of how long they can live. Pepper is TWENTY. That’s older than many of you here. Are you ready to care for a creature for potentially twenty years or more? Are you ready for poop, screaming, and biting? For twenty years? Where will you be in twenty years? Can you be sure that your cockatiel will be with you?
Same concerns apply to budgies and finches. I show you guys pictures of the finches in a slinky, but what you don’t see is how I struggled to get the social dynamics right for them in the cage. How I had to research and find solutions as to why one of my finches was getting picked on so bad that he was missing a bunch of feathers from his neck. I posted on forums, I bought books, I searched, and I read. It took money, experimenting, and dedication to get my finch cage right and my little Jamie finch is still recovering from the plucking the others did to him.
You guys see cute pictures of the budgies, but you don’t see me getting sprayed in the face with droplets of blood as I try to take care of a broken blood feather on a scared and struggling bird.
You also have to worry about diet. Even if you don’t see signs now, you could later. You guys see Pepper whistling, but you don’t see how I agonized over his fatty liver disease. When I got Pepper, I was four, and not only that, all the information that’s so readily available now just wasn’t there. As a result, Pepper had a pretty poor diet most of his life, and now I work to reverse the consequences. It’s been a struggle to get him to eat right, and often he won’t. I have medicine I give him that he hates and it’s difficult to give to him as he tries to get away.
You have to be ready to provide everything they need to be healthy or they will suffer, even if it’s later down the line. Just because your bird seems fine on a seed diet now, doesn’t mean it will be fine forever. Are you ready to make sure your bird has fresh fruits and veggies? Are you ready to cook and prepare food for your bird?
I love keeping birds, and it’s something I will always do, but it takes a particular kind of person to do it with care the way the birds deserve, and sometimes I don’t even do all I should. I’m still very much so learning. This is a commitment that is very different from a cat or a dog. Birds are a lot of work, and they are a lot of work for many years. You need to be sure you’re ready for that.
If you’ve done all the research, asked all your questions, and you know you are ready to give a bird a good forever home, then I support you in your decision to bring home a bird. PLEASE consider adoption when doing so. People applaud those who rescue cats and dogs, but many don’t know this is an option for birds. Use petfinder.com. Look for shelters. Call around. There is an incredible number of birds in need of a good home. If you are prepared, you could be a needy bird’s shot at a happy life and home. Their second chance when they wouldn’t have had that otherwise.
So I’m happy that my birds inspire you guys. That’s great. I just want to be sure they are inspiring you in the right way. It would kill me if I became part of the problem in the epidemic of birds being rehomed or given up because people saw my blog, and then got a bird when they weren’t prepared.
So I’ll get off my soapbox now. All I ask is that my followers consider this information and do their homework before deciding they want any bird.
