I don’t get this too much, but I get this occasionally, so I’d like to explain that although I may not always appear autistic, there’s a lot going on in my head
All the “neurotypical” behaviours I do, I often have to remind myself to act a certain way. For example, if someone asks me how I am. I have to remind myself to say, “I’m good”, or “I’m good, and you?”, and if I’m caught off-guard, I’ll be pretty much non-verbal as I had no time to prepare
If I don’t seem to struggle in a conversation, it’s generally because I’m running it like a script in my mind
Sometimes, although I don’t like to do it, I feel like I have to restrain myself from stimming, because it’s seen as “weird” or “odd”
And sometimes, things might just not “look autistic” to you because you may not have an accurate idea of what autism is. Autism is often portrayed stereotypically in the media, and people may notice autistic traits, but may not immediately realise that it’s autism
[Give me… Give me the bread! Give me the bread, stupid! Give it back! Give me the bread! The bread! Give it to me! Borya, what are you doing? Give me the bread! Borya, give me the bread! For fuck’s sake, Borya! Give me the bread, please! Give me the bread! Just take a bite if you want to! Borya! Calm down and give me the bread… Borya!.. Borya! Borya, give me the bread! Give! Me! The bread! Borya, what are you doing, Borya, give me the bread! Borya, for fuck’s sake! Give it back! How long are you going to hang like this? This is just ridiculous! Give it back… You asshole! Bastard…]
The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.
Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.
So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.
Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.
You gotta love that the Brehons were even thinking of the crazy cat ladies.
question, and feel free to answer with real info or total bullshit (i like both): why was this an issue of concern for lawmakers? like, were there disputes over cat names? what problem was this seeking to solve?
I’m going off memory and this is going to sound like BS, but it’s not, I went to school for this, lol.
Cat’s were an important part of keeping a house in the medieval era. Rats, mice and roaches were known to be disease carriers and keeping a good hunting cat was believed to be a good ward against those animals and their diseases. (Of course, with the exception of plague, this is true.)
But not all cats are created equal, same as now, some were content to just sit around and mooch off the milk. (Don’t feed your cat cows milk, we know better now.)
Medieval Irish cat law, or
“
Catshlechta
“ Was a means of solving the lazy cat problem. How do you determine what a cat is worth? By it’s merit of course. How do you know what it’s merits are? By it’s name.
So a good hunting cat would be given a name that reflected what its positive traits were regarding it’s job. (Everything was work back then, even for cats.) In example…
“Meone” meant “Mighty roar” and it was considered to be able to scare beasts away (both pests and supernatural creatures.) It was worth 2 cows.
“Cruipne” or “Mighty paw” was a thrice proven mouser, and worth three ounces of coinage. usually assigned to protect areas of wealth like grain stores or cattle housings.
“Breone” or “Fireside cat” was good at both hunting and purring (I.E affection.) and was worth 3 whole cows.
“Baircne” a female cat (Owned by a woman usually) said to be good at protecting ships and women. It was worth whatever you could get a woman’s husband would pay for it.
Cats were usually kept in the same housing as the cows and were looked after by whomever fed said cows, hence the relation to cow costs.
Also, gender mattered. Male cats were noted to be far more lazy, and were worth about half of whatever a female cat was. (Don’t ask me how they sexed the cats, they didn’t leave us that detail.)
There’s also a set of laws for dogs called “Conshlechta”
.
Okay how are those names pronounced though
And what would a lazy, dumb cat be called because I might need to change my cat’s nickname
With the usual caveat that we don’t actually know how medieval languages were pronounced, and that this is a reconstructed pronunciation based on historical linguistics:
Meone: /’meo:ne/ meh-OH-neh, with stress on the meh.
Cruipne /’crubne/ CRUB-neh.
Breone /’breo:ne/ breh-OH-neh, stress on breh.
Baircne /’bar’gne/ BAR-ug-neh, with the ‘ug’ syllable much shorter than the other two syllables.
I’m a little afraid of the rest of the commentary on this but if you’re going to use Kevin Murray’s work you may as well link to it since it’s freely available online.
Alba, an albino orangutan, snacks on a watermelon at the orangutan rehabilitation centre in central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The conservation group wants to create a 12-acre forest island for the world’s only known albino orangutan after rescuing it from villagers five months ago. Alba can’t be returned to the wild because of health issues related to her albinism. Photograph: AP
We teach kids to fear animals like rats, snakes, spiders, etc. that are harmless 99% of the time but do we ever warn them about the real danger
WHY DOES IT HAVE TEETH ON ITS TONGUE
I am a gooseologist and I can tell you that geese live on a healthy diet of children’s souls which can only be properly chewed with unholy tongue teeth
“It’s apparently chronic pain awareness month, and I just have to put some stuff out there…
…Please stop advocating for policies that aim to reduce opioid addiction. Because while it’s a noble concept to want to help those in the thick of an opioid addiction, there’s some things you should know:
1. The policies that end up getting put in place are often ones that prevent chronic pain patients from accessing opiates for their pain. The uncomfortable truth is, for some of us patients, opiates are the only meds that consistently provide relief for our pain. And what ends up happening when you make it harder to access opiates isn’t really that drug addicts stop finding sources for their additions, it’s that chronic pain patients have to fight 1,000 times harder to get care. They are also often accused of “drug-seeking behavior” and thus left in pain *and* stigmatized.
2. When you *do* make it harder to access opioids, and more and more chronic pain patients are denied care, this actually makes the opioid epidemic *worse*. By denying pain patients care in doctors offices, this can inadvertently push them to seek drugs on the street, which means they might end up getting what they *think* is, say, Norco, or Percocet, but it’s neither. It can also push them to use drugs like heroin simply because it’s the only thing they can access to manage their pain.
The risks of this are exponential. When a pain patient seeks care outside of a medical environment, they risk addiction, overdose, and death. If we simply allowed doctors to treat pain, no holds barred, pain patients would be far more likely to adhere to a pain plan, and stay safe.
3. Be honest with yourself– do you actually care about addicts or do you just want to make it harder for them to get opiates? Because as far as I’m concerned, policies like the above do nothing for addicts or pain patients. Addictions thrive in secrecy. If we decriminalize or legalize all drugs, the secrecy element is suddenly unnecessary. In turn, there will be less risk or shame perceived by addicts to seek care for their addictions.
It’s also important we do not rush the process of detoxing addicts. The chemical dependency of a given addiction should *always* be given precedent and due concern above the learned behavioral elements. Also, 12-step programs work for some, but definitely not most. Alternatives should be offered.
4. Finally, and I stress this– many addicts are also chronic pain patients. We do neither population justice when we refuse to treat their pain. I deem it far more reckless to deny addicts *and/or* pain patients care than to openly acknowledge that may be a concern for them, but prescribe them meds under your supervision and care. That way, the risks can be effectively managed, along with the pain.
Just please stop restricting care for those who need it.“
there’s also kind of a reverse curb-cutter effect, where restrictions on opiates make non-opioid pain meds harder to get too. i use nsaids for my chronic pain, not opiates, but my anti-inflammatories involve far more hoop-jumping than they ought, because the whole medical culture is set on giving people the absolute minimum pain relief they can live with and making even that humiliating and complicated to obtain.
and yes, i’ve been tempted to misuse opiates when i wasn’t able to get enough pain relief through official channels. i suppose you could say i have actually done so, if you count saving up the stuff they gave me after dental surgery so i’d have something to take on the nights when six ibuprofen and a heating pad weren’t enough to let me sleep.
you think you won’t, and then you spend long enough in pain and you do it anyway. if the government had a way to give people osteoarthritis they’d use it in guantanamo. it’d break anyone.
There was a little girl in church, about 5, and her parents obviously let her get dressed herself that day because she came waddling in with the puffiest coat on in the summer in North Carolina. She comes and sits in the pew in front of us. 15 minutes into mass she turns around and hands my husand an orange. Her parents are mortified.
“Savannah not again!” They sold! (Again kills me)
They appologize and she turns back around. A few moments later she goes to hand me an orange but her parents grab it from her before she can.
Savannah is determined. She reaches her tiny fists into her puffy coat and pulls out two more ornages. She begins to distribute them. Her parents are now beat red and in shock.
This small child proceeds to laugh a laugh I can only call manical (in a Catholic church) unzip the inner line of her coat and releases what had to have been 20-30 of those little kid oranges into the pews.
WE EAT Savannah yells cackeling
The priest can no longer contain his glee
The entire church is dying with laughter
She felt like Jesus on the moutian with the baskets of fish that day I’m sure.
I want Nazis to be wiped from the face of the planet earth
Nazis are a filthy evil worthless CANCER upon the human species and they need to be wiped from existence.
i bet Chad thought he was making some deep, philosophical point, when in actuality he just compared black people that want to not be killed to people whose entire goal is genocide
Chad probably has the words “Neo Liberal” running through him like a stick of rock
“U guys we have to CO-EXIST with the Nazi terrorist cult that wants to wipe minorities out in gas chambers
We musn’t fight hate with hate , being against extremists who want to commit genocide makes YOU the bad guy”
It’s pretty clear that the people who suggest “co-existing” with Nazis forget that the last thing they want to do is co-exist.
<3 ALDO RAINE HAS THE RIGHT IDEA ABOUT HOW YOU DEAL WITH NAZIS <3
To the man in the car across the street - I saw everything. I saw how you parallel parked like a decent human being, nice and snug with the car in front of you, realizing he had a “no parking” zone in front of him, and thus plenty of room to pull out forward. Little did you know that the man that would pull up behind you wouldn’t give you the same courtesy, pulling up within a half inch of your rear bumper, effectively trapping you between two cars.
I saw your look of frustration as you came back out to your car and realized the situation. And then, your look of resigned determination as you entered your vehicle. The red of your brake lights released and you gently bumped backwards into the offending car. A slight pull forward, careful enough not to tap the innocents in front of you. Another reverse and satisfying bump to the luxury car behind you. Your shitty 90’s Cavalier didn’t care. Another slow ease forward. And then, totally unnecessarily, one more hearty bump to the douchebag mobile before you head off into the night.
1944 - Snowball the cat tries to take over a machine gun in Normandy so she can shoot some Nazis herself.
Blessed post. Good kitty
i want someone to read that headline in an old timey reporter voice
Okay fun fact: cats were actively deployed to trenches and ships to help deal with rodent infestations in both world wars, and they had the curb cutter effect of keeping the men’s spirits high.
One cat, Simon, was given the rank “Able Seacat Simon” after dutifully killing rats and mice that were destroying the HMS Amethyst’s food supplies. The ship had come under fire during the Chinese civil war and many of its crewmen had died. The cat had been gravely injured, too, but he picked out the shrapnel himself – seriously – and went straight to killing the rodents that were overrunning the ship. He unfortunately passed from his injuries two weeks before he was scheduled to receive the Dickin Medal. To this day, he is the only cat to receive this award.
Here’s another WW1 trenchcat, who would have been ratter, mouser, companion and gas warning - not AFAIK by dying, like a canary, but since cats reacted to the smell of gas long before it was strong enough for humans to notice, the troops had a bit more time to get their masks on, and the cats went into gasproof boxes.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of No Man’s Land…
Meet Percy, mascot of HMLS (D20) “Daphne” with Lt Drader. Both survived the War, and Percy retired to live out his peacetime life in the Drader family home.
(Here’s a video clip; given how noisy, hot and smelly early tanks were, Percy seems remarkably unfazed.)
A US Army tank cat, Mustard of the 321st, with a Renault FT light tank and its driver Sgt Postal…
A Royal Artillery kitten (the battery mascot)…
Pincher of HMS Vindex on what looks like a Sopwith Pup scout…
Togo, ship’s cat of HMS Dreadnought (though I’ve also seen “HMS Irresistible”)…
Ship’s cat of HMS Queen Elizabeth atop 15″ main battery…
And speaking of big ships and big guns…
“Make nice all you like, Human. I despise you. I wanted a billet on a battleship, not this tinpot destroyer…” (Ching, of HMAS Swan.)
Oh! OH! I love cats, so much, and I love ship’s cats because it’s just such an adorable (but actually practical) idea! This is a good and wholesome post with much wonderful additions but I had to bring up my favourite;
Unsinkable Sam (aka Oskar)
So its 1941 and Sam is chilling out on his shiny new ship, a massive German battleship called Bismarck. If you recognise that name, or even just that this is a German ship in 1941, you know that is not a great place to be head of mousing.
May 1941, Bismarck conducts her one and only raiding mission, in the process destroying HMS Hood, a beloved and iconic cornerstone of the British Navy. The British make sinking the Bismarck A Major Priority, its part revenge, part propaganda, part morale drive. On the 27th of May they achieve their goal - Bismarck is lost, with a huge loss of life.
Of a crew of more than 2200, only 119 survived; 118 men and Sam/Oskar. The British destroyer HMS Cossack, which had been part of the convoy that sank his last ship, picked up survivors and found the cat clinging to a wooden board in the middle of the ocean. On his new ship he was given the nickname Oscar, which was often written as Oskar (he was German after all).
So Oskar does what he does best and starts mousing for HMS Cossack - a boys gotta eat, and this War thing was no business of his. He’s popular with the crew and stays with them for the next few months as they run convoys across the Mediterranean and Atlantic. All is well.
On the 24th of October they’re running a convoy from Gibraltar to the UK when HMS Cossack is attacked and hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat. This blows about a third of the ship to hell and kills 159 of the crew. Oskar survives, of course, and with the remaining crew is taken aboard HMS Legion, which attempts to tow what’s left of the Cossack back to Gibraltar - it sinks, so Oskar (and the others) head back to The Rock.
Someone obviously notices that Oskar is just Not Drowning so they rename him Unsinkable Sam at the Gibraltar shore establishment. Whoever this is, they apparantly don’t notice that surely this cat deserves an honourable discharge and retirement far away from The Sea That Wants To Kill It, because Sam is promptly reassigned. Now Chief Mouser on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, Sam is probably already preparing for the worst.
Ark Royal, incidentally, was another veteran from the skirmish with Bismarck and played an important part in the sinking of Sam’s first ship. He probably wasn’t that surprised, then, when on 14th November 1941 HMS Ark Royal was torpedoed and began to sink. Sam was found clinging to a plank in the water and was described as “angry but quite unharmed”. Survivors were picked up by HMS Lightning and the same HMS Legion Sam had travelled back to Gibraltar on. Neither ship would survive the war.
Having presumably realised by now that Sam and ships did not tend to work out well, our Hero was sent back to Gibraltar where he was stationed at the offices of the Governor of Gibraltar. At some point he was released from active service and ended up retiring to Belfast, living out his days in a home for retired sailors. He lived another ten years after WW2 ended, making him at the very least 15 years old when he died - a decent age for any cat in the mid 20th Century, but an amazing span for a serving Sailor Cat who saw so much action. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds a portrait of Sam, called Oscar, the Bismarck’s Cat.
(I wanted to attach a picture, but I’m on tumblr mobile so obviously that is impossible)
Thanks to the unexpected update to tumblr mobile, I can add the picture! This is is the painting of Oskar that hangs in the National Maritime Museum;
