The “Log Off” protest is in response to the recent NSFW ban announced by Tumblr. The ban flags all content the filtering system detects as NSFW, reducing visibility to the community. The system has proven time and time again that is inefficient, oftentimes flagging SFW material as NSFW.
This SFW material includes art, memes and so on. This ban directly hurts the community and will not solve the actual problems at hand due to the poor flagging system. Because of this, the entire community will suffer.
So to respond, I propose that every user on Tumblr logs off of Tumblr for 24 hours on December 17th at 12 am EST.
Times are listed above depending on timezone!
This post responds to some very common questions about the protest. So make sure to read it over!
There are legal names, there are birth names, there are nicknames, and there are preferred names… but the name with the most mystical power is not one of those.
No, if you want to have power over someone, it’s not about knowing their True Name. That’s pedestrian. True power is knowing about the first embarrassing alternative name they tried out for a while before deciding that it didn’t fit. The people who know that name have the power of fuckor on their sides.
My aunt’s cat is very shy and hides when there are guests in her house. She semi-trusts my parents and will at least be in the same room as them. Tonight, my dad made some progress:
turns people into cowboys or samurais depending on which place you’re in
That explains why cowboy movies and samurai movies are so similar.
Cowboys are Alolan form Samurai
So in Japan it’s called Kirinomitake while in Texas it’s called either Texas Star (because after releasing spores it’s unfolded into a star shape) or the Devil’s Cigar because it starts out as a long oblong mushroom but then it unfolds with an ominous hissing noise and releases a big smoky black cloud of spores.
It only grows in these two places, and people did genetic testing and a bunch of math to determine that the two populations started diverging from each other nineteen million goddamn years ago, so it’s not possible for humanity to have moved it from one place to the other. They’re at the same latitude, but 11,000 fucking kilometers apart not to mention the goddamn ocean in the way.
“this is only another illustration of the unusual and unpredictable distribution of many species of the fungi. It would be difficult indeed to account for it, and we merely accept the facts as they are.”
So apparently it’s pretty common in the mycological world to find some bullshit that can’t be explained and would probably drive men mad to look at too closely, and just sort of shrug and move on with your day.
The species is also the only example of its genus.
Your daily reminder that anyone who devotes their life to studying fungi is not to be trifled with because their brain is full of things humanity was never supposed to notice.
And I want all the pokemon in it. We have the technology. We can do this.
I want larger levels with branching tracks that you can plan ahead of time or switches you can hit by throwing apples or goading pokemon residents to do something to increase the replay value of the levels. Imagine choosing to either go up into the canopy or stay on the ground in a rainforest level, seeing the same environment different ways. A canopy filled with birds and plants, the ground filled with bugs and paras.
I want social pokemon engaging in natural behavior, including mature evolutions interacting with juveniles or territorial displays.
I want to have day and night versions for those levels, with different encounters. Maybe paths that can only be unlocked at night to play through again during the day. Perhaps they change with seasons, so Sawsbuck can be seen in all their glory, or with the phases of the moon influencing the presence of clefairy or ghost pokemon.
(And I really want to see a gengar arise from a clefable shadow)
An abandoned village, because there’s no humans in the Pokemon Snap island, where suburban pokemon like meowth furfrou still make their home and a damn Mr Mime that keeps trying to photobomb your shots.
A tropical beach where shoreline Pokemon can be coaxed up into the sand. Sandygast that can be coaxed to reveal themselves with food or likely prey, exeggcute rolling around between coconuts for camouflage and a suspiciously large palm tree that awakens with the pokeflute to reveal it’s really an aloan exeggutor.
An underwater level with schools of magicarp swimming instead of always just flopping around. Gyarados swimming over the top of you. Spooky kelp forests with a shipwreck where dhelmise, tentacruel, skrelp and dragalge lurk. Colorful reefs with frillish, horsea, clamperl, shellos and others flit around. The open water where Wailords and Lapras breach the surface and you can hear them sing.
I want an eeveelution in every level. And a ditto to find.
And I want a special level that can be unlocked by unearthing Fossils, one just populated by Pokemon of the past: all the fossil pokemon you’ve unlocked, and maybe some relicanth for good measure.
Everything below is posted with liberty and credit to Jemima Harrison and the PDE blog, with the sole purpose for this information to spread as far as possible.
• soon to be 10 years since Pedigree Dogs Exposed
• five years since The Advisory Council on the Welfare Issues of Dog
Breeding highlighted the issues linked to head conformation in
brachycephalic breeds
• 18 months since the publication of research (funded by the kennel
club) spelling out the link between stenosis (pinched nostrils) and
respiratory issues, especially in French Bulldogs
• a year since a veterinary petition demanding urgent reform for flat-faced dogs
• almost a year since the Kennel Club set up the Brachcycephalic Breeds Working Group in response to that petition
.. and of course I have highlighted the issue of pinched nostrils endlessly here on this blog.
Endlessly.
And yet… the picture at the top is one the Kennel Club has used as the
ideal depiction of the French Bulldog in its new edition (2017) of its Illustrated Breed Standards.
And it isn’t a one-off. Here’s the one the KC has used for the Boston Terrier standard.
The Bulldog.
And the Pug.
Dogs are as near-as-damn-it obligate nose breathers. And even if they
can supplement by mouth-breathing when they are awake, they are unable
to do so when they are asleep, meaning thousands of these dogs live
lives of interrupted sleep as they have to wake up in order to not
asphyxiate.
Study after study has shown that these dogs pay the price for not being
able to pull in a decent lungful of air and that starts with the
nostrils.
These pictures are all the proof you need that the Kennel Club is not
taking this issue seriously; that at its very core the KC is paying
nothing more than lip-service to the demands for reform by the
veterinary profession and animal welfare campaigners.
At one of the first meetings of the Brachycephalic Breeds Working Group,
then KC Chairman Steve Dean expressly said that he didn’t want
“changing the breed standards” to be at the top of everyone’s list of
actions that could be taken.
And indeed, it hasn’t been.
There have been some new measures. The KC continues to fund brachy research. There is also now a brachy learning resource
available on the KC website, the promise of better education of judges
and a breed club commitment to educate better about the importance of
keeping brachycephalics slim. There are also now health schemes for the
Bulldog, French Bulldog and the Pug which do test for respiratory
issues.
All this is welcome. But, bottom line, the Kennel Club continues to bat
for the breeders who do not want the basic phenotype to change because
it’s the breeders that pay their wages.
Of course the simplest, quickest remedy is to give these dogs
back some muzzle – to help not just with breathing issues, but to help
protect their eyes from trauma and to give their teeth some room in
their overcrowded mouths (a Pug here compared to an Australian
Shepherd).
The problem is that breeders are wedded to flat faces, particularly in
Pugs and Bulldogs. They talk about the perfect “layback” – which
essentially means that the nose should not interrupt the line between
the forehead and tip of the dog’s chin.
In fact, there’s a new book out on the Pug head (yours for only $159)
which reminds everyone that the word Pug comes from the latin for
“fist” and that this is the shape the Pug’s head should be in profile –
i.e. totally flat.
Here’s a reminder from a top UK show breeder of what the Bulldog’s head should look like.
As you can see, a protruding nose or a less severe underbite is considered a fault.
There was a big review of breed standards following Pedigree Dogs Exposed
but it was mostly to add vague qualifiers such as, in the Pug standard,
"relatively" short rather than just short when describing the length
of the muzzle. This gives the breeders way too much wiggle room. We
need proper metrics – a defined minimum skull/head/muzzle ratio and we
need to find more profound ways to change their minds about what
constitutes their breed in their eyes.
Large open nostrils are a requirement in brachy breed standards, but
this is widely ignored because other points of the breed are considered
more important. There would be outrage if a Frenchie with one lop ear
or a Bulldog with a liver-coloured nose won in the show-ring, but dogs
with slits for nostrils continue to be made up to champions.
Meanwhile, on my CRUFFA group,
whenever you post a picture of more moderate examples of the breed,
current of historical, the breeders heap scorn. A few days ago, one
breeder insisted that the dog featured in this famous painting of a Pug
by Carl Reichert, dating from the late 19th century, was a crossbreed.
Same for these ones. Mongrels, the lot of them.
She admitted that the eye-white showing was undesirable but preferred the look of this Crufts dog.
Today, this was posted on a public Facebook page by one French Bulldog
breeder in response to a plea by vets for more moderate dogs.
(My bolding below)
To those who say you cannot rebuild Rome in a day I say… rubbish. There are already more moderate versions of these breeds out there being
bred by breeders more interested in health than the current fashion.
For more than 10 years, I have called for moderation and hoped it would
come from the breeders. But I now know it won’t. If we want anything
more than a wee bit of tweaking round the edges, then we need to demand
it.
It is time to get tough. These dogs suffer – not all of them all the time but too many of them too often.
Brachycephalics live a third less long than non-brachy dogs. Fifty per
cent have significant airway disease. Almost all struggle to cool
themselves. Most Bulldogs still can’t mate or give birth naturally. Pugs
have 19 times the risk of developing corneal ulcers. All suffer from
very low genetic diversity. And so on.
Today, Bulldogs, French Bulldogs and Pugs make up one in five of the
dogs registered with the Kennel Club – up from one in 50 in 2005.
Yesterday, a new petitionwas launched asking for a ban on brachycephalics. Over 20k people signed it in the first 24 hrs.
Have we reached a tipping point? With your help.
I haven’t been able to blog much recently because I am busy finishing
off a television series for BBC2. But I have taken time out to write
this because the new breed standard pictures made me so angry.
So please… Although it’s moderation I want, not a ban, sign the petition. Make your feelings known to the Kennel Club (see here). Complain if brands or media use generic pictures of brachycephalics to sell their wares.
Vets: thank you so much for all that you are now doing, but please keep the pressure on.
And, of course, to everyone out there – please don’t buy that puppy.
It is not safe to buy a Pug, Bulldog or French Bulldog. Not safe for them and not safe for your wallet.
Seriously people. This deserves 6000 notes. It’s not even my text, so it’s not like I’m attention-fishing.
As vets, I know we don’t like to offend clients who very clearly love their brachycephalic pets, but vetlings, don’t you dare call this normal. I’ve had owners say, oh he always snorts, isn’t that normal?
They do it all the time, but it’s not normal and we can’t continue to facilitate that mindset. Stertorous breathing (that obnoxious snoring while awake) is NOT normal and it’s important to let owners know that this conformation can result in serious health problems.
We have to change the minds of the people paying money for these pets from breeders who wouldn’t see a bad evolutionary strategy if it bit them in the ass. As long as breeders are making money on these dogs, they won’t change.
Tumblr also has this unfortunate tendency to simplify and think the job is done, when it is actually getting worse. It goes “Okay brachycephalic dogs like pugs are a problem. I understand. Breeding longer muzzles like Retromops are the solution! I don’t have to think about this any more.”
And I’m glad the message is getting through, but it’s not getting to the right places.
I get asked about retromops every time this discussion comes up. I have never seen a retromop or a brachy breed deliberately bred to have a longer muzzle in vet practice, not in all the years I’ve been working. I see people with their newly purchased pug/boston/frenchie about twice a week, with faces as horrifically flat at those above.
“The breeder said they were healthy dogs!” The breeder was talking out of their butthole and walked away with thousands of your dollars.
People buying these dogs just want ‘the look’. The people breeding these dogs ‘to standard’ also want ‘the look’. But it comes to the detriment of the dogs themselves.
Even the RSPCA and the AVA running a joint ‘Love is Blind’ campaign reached nobody. It made no difference.
I hate to say it, but after all these years of voluntary self regulation, maybe we do need to legislate a minimum muzzle to skull ratio. Because what is happening now just isn’t working. Just look at the developing ‘American Burmese’ ‘breed’.
A real Burmese cat above. An American Burmese cat below.
This brachycephalic trend is spreading out of dogs and into other species. And new pet owners have no idea that it’s an issue in any way, because they trust the people selling them these animals. And its not working.
JahLoveAngel 