I just finished an absolutely MASSIVE update of my firmness chart!!
Tons of new shops added, and lots of updates to existing entries.
As usual, if you see anything missing or incorrect, let me know and I'll fix it right away!
Check it out here: https://t.co/OdRgRcN7C4
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Japanese researchers just moved a cat kidney disease drug toward regulatory approval, after 25 years of work.
Chronic kidney disease is one of the biggest killers of cats.
This is an injectable treatment built around a protein called AIM, discovered by Dr. Toru Miyazaki.
If it reaches the market, the lead researcher says cats could live close to 30 years, double the current average of around 15.
Hang in there, old cats.
The USDA has kept raccoon rabies out of the central United States for over 30 years by air-dropping fish-flavored ravioli from helicopters.
Each one is a small packet coated in fishmeal with an oral rabies vaccine inside. Raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and skunks find them by smell, bite through, and swallow.
Many animals that consume the bait develop immunity, helping build a protective barrier across populations.
The bait is generally considered safe for pets and tested in many non-target species.
The USDA's Wildlife Services has been running this since 1995. Without the bait program, raccoon rabies very likely would have spread much further west.
A federal program you've probably never heard of is protecting your pets and your kids by feeding wild animals ravioli from a helicopter.
you should tag who tops and who bottoms or if they switch not because you need to but out of courtesy. ao3 is built on tagging and archiving, why wouldn't you want other people to be able to find your fic more easily. or avoid it if it isn't for them
Mi hija dejó de contarme cómo le fue en el día.
Tiene 16.
Yo 42.
Antes llegaba y hablaba sin parar.
Historias del colegio.
Amigos.
Problemas.
Yo escuchaba… a medias.
Nunca la ignoré del todo.
Nunca la rechacé.
Nunca le dije que no me importaba.
Pero siempre estaba ocupado.
—Ajá.
—Qué bien.
—Luego me cuentas.
Eso era suficiente.
Eso creía.
Hace unas semanas noté el cambio.
Llegaba.
Saludaba.
Se encerraba en su cuarto.
—¿Cómo te fue? —pregunté un día.
—Bien —respondió.
Corto.
Seco.
Intenté otra vez al día siguiente.
—¿Y tus amigas?
—Todo normal.
No había más.
Una noche pasé por su puerta.
Estaba riéndose.
Pero no conmigo.
Hablaba por teléfono.
—Te cuento… —decía entre risas.
Me quedé quieto afuera.
Escuchando.
Todo lo que antes me contaba a mí…
se lo estaba contando a alguien más.
Sentí algo incómodo.
Como si llegara tarde a mi propio lugar.
Al día siguiente intenté hablarle.
—Oye, ya casi no hablamos.
Se encogió de hombros.
—Es que estás ocupado.
Quise defenderme.
—Trabajo mucho por ti.
Asintió.
—Lo sé.
Silencio.
Luego dijo algo que no esperaba.
—Por eso ya no te interrumpo.
Esa frase me dejó sin palabras.
No era rebeldía.
No era distancia por enojo.
Era adaptación.
Había aprendido a no buscarme.
Esa noche me senté solo en la sala.
Recordé todas las veces que dijo “papá, escúchame”.
Y yo respondí “luego”.
Ese “luego” ya no existía.
Mientras miraba el techo entendí algo que nadie te dice:
Los hijos no dejan de hablarte de un día para otro.
Lo hacen poco a poco… cada vez que sienten que no es el momento.
Y cuando finalmente se acostumbran al silencio…
recuperar su confianza ya no es tan fácil como decir “ahora sí te escucho”.
Blaming hungry birds for taking fish and doing nothing whilst mega factory ships take more fish in a minute than these birds would take in an entire year
Rescued kittens enjoying their meal in the home I rented for them.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t pay this month’s $200 rent because the Patreon funds went to the vet and to buying supplies such as food, litter, multiple bedding sets, and cleaning products.
Any help would mean a lot🙏
Every pest in your garden already has a natural predator. The missing piece is the flower that brings that predator in and keeps it there.
Plant all nine of these and stagger the bloom times. You'll have a recruiter flower open every week of the season — and a predator on patrol every week of the season.
What each one does:
Dill and fennel both draw lacewings and hoverflies with their flat yellow umbels. A single lacewing larva eats 200+ aphids. A hoverfly larva can consume 400+ overnight. Let them bolt — the flowers are the point, not the herb.
Yarrow holds ladybugs on-site. Its flat-topped flower heads give them easy landing access and nectar that keeps them resident in your yard instead of drifting to the neighbor's. One ladybug eats 5,000 aphids over its lifetime.
Sweet alyssum recruits minute pirate bugs — tiny predators that specialize in thrips and spider mites, two pests almost impossible to knock back with sprays.
Cosmos funds your hornworm defense. Its open blooms attract parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside hornworm caterpillars and consume them from within.
Sunflowers become hunting platforms for assassin bugs. These ambush predators grab caterpillars, beetles, and leafhoppers with raptorial forelegs. One plant turns into a kill zone.
Cilantro and marigold work the soil and the air. Ground beetles shelter under bolted cilantro by day and hunt slug eggs and cutworms at night. Tachinid flies drawn to marigold blooms parasitize squash bugs, stink bugs, and Japanese beetles.
Buckwheat fills the gaps. It blooms in four to six weeks from seed and produces dense nectar for beneficial wasps targeting cabbage worms and corn borers. Succession-sow every three weeks through the season.
The garden that feeds predators doesn't need to fight pests — it just needs to stay in bloom.
Same water. Same tank.
But the one on the right has oysters.
A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day.
Oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay once filtered the entire Bay, 19 trillion gallons, in under a week.
Today, with less than 1% of the original oyster population remaining, it takes over a year.
We ate them. We dredged their reefs. We dumped nitrogen into their water until the algae blooms choked what was left.
And now we build billion dollar water treatment plants to do what oysters did for free.
The Billion Oyster Project is working to restore oyster reefs in New York Harbor.
Restored reefs in Maryland's Harris Creek can now filter the entire creek in under 10 days and remove nitrogen equivalent to 20,000 bags of fertilizer every year.
Nature had this figured out. We just have to restore the oysters and get out of the way.
why is there actually, legitimately, discourse around reading speed right now “8 hours to read a book is slow” “you should be able to read a book in 3-5 hours”
bro we are in a literacy CRISIS, i do not care how fast or slow you read a book, just pick one up and read it
“But women sexualise themselves”… no, men sexualise our existence.
There’s a fetish for the schoolgirl, the teacher, the secretary, the nurse, the nun, the “innocent” girl, the “experienced” woman, the boss, the assistant, the submissive, the dominant, the “barely legal,” the mother, the babysitter, the neighbour, the coworker every version of us gets turned into something sexual.
Covered? There’s a fetish. Modest? There’s a fetish. Uncovered? There’s a fetish. Even discomfort, even vulnerability is sexualised.
The same woman will be sexualised and then shamed for it in the next breath. That contradiction isn’t ours to carry.
Saying women sexualise themselves is just a way to dodge accountability because no matter what we do, you were already going to sexualise us anyway.
In honour of Ao3 moving out of beta I think we need to remind everyone that ao3 was founded to fight censorship. Literally made as an Archive for fan works because every other site would delete “problematic” works or cave to outside pressures
If you don’t like that, leave.
UPDATES 💔💔😭😭
We have failed to raise any donation for this helpless cat,We are facing financial issues since we have Many sick cats and Pluto,let's give this cat a second chance in life even without legs 😭,.