Smith-Blackmore

Idiot Savant.Wabi Sabi.Scholar of Integration.Polymath.Ambivert DVM ~ PSM-FS ~CEO @VetInvestigator Former: Visiting Fellow @AnimalLawHLS, VP @ARLBostonRescue

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Josh Balk @joshbalk]

BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Marshall (KS) — the former Senate sponsor of the "Save Our Bacon" Act — has had a change of heart. This is the most significant moment yet in the campaign to stop SOB. Credit where it's due: it takes integrity to evolve on an issue. Kansas farmers and animals are better for it. The momentum against SOB continues to grow.

[Elliot Swartz @elliotswartz]

Screwworm does not affect #cultivatedmeat.

Another argument for cultivated meat to provide a more resilient and stable meat supply chain.

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

Wassup?

[riⓋer Haoshoku Haki @Haoshoku]

Food free of animal cruelty is slowly being normalised. We're making progress.

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

Precision fermentation is making strides towards producing animal based proteins without slaughter.

[CellAgri @cellagritech]

.@bondpetfoods receives FDA No-Objection Letter for its precision-fermented Lamb Protein Yeast, developed with Hill's Pet Nutrition — the first PF-derived animal protein to complete FDA GRAS review for pet food. #precisionfermentation #cellag
https://t.co/PsfiLBd6xT

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

@via_lila_m @NiallHarbison Muscle weakness from low protein levels, no doubt

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

I’m Generation Jones, and this reads true

[Supersonic Redhead🛫 @Supersonic_Red]

There’s a generation a lot of people forget exists. We were born at the tail end of the Boomers, but we are not culturally the same as people born in the 40s and early 50s. We are Generation Jones.

And honestly, it explains a lot.

We grew up in a world that still felt fundamentally analog, but we were young enough to be dragged headfirst into the digital revolution. We are the bridge generation between rotary phones and smartphones, between slide rules and AI, between Walter Cronkite and algorithm driven media.

We remember when there were only a few television channels and the entire country watched the same thing at the same time. We also adapted to the internet, email, forums, social media, streaming and now artificial intelligence. We lived before and after the technological singularity hit everyday life.

That is not a small thing.

People born in the 40s came of age in a post World War II America that was still industrial, deeply hierarchical and institutionally stable. Their formative years were shaped by the Cold War, Vietnam, the civil rights era and a society where information moved slowly.

Generation Jones came later. We inherited the aftermath of all of that.

We were the kids who watched Watergate destroy blind trust in government. We watched manufacturing begin to collapse. We saw divorce rates explode. We were the first truly latchkey generation in massive numbers. We learned independence early because many of us had to.

We grew up with one foot in old America and one foot in whatever this new thing was becoming.

We played outside until the streetlights came on but we also learned DOS commands. We learned cursive and keyboarding. We had card catalogs and Google searches. We went from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s to streaming in one lifetime.

We remember maps. We remember memorizing phone numbers. We remember life before GPS and before every human interaction became filtered through a screen.

And because of that, I think Generation Jones developed a very unique perspective. We are adaptable because we had no choice but to adapt. We learned technology as adults instead of being born into it. We remember a slower world but were forced to survive in a rapidly accelerating one.

That creates a very different mindset than either older Boomers or younger Gen X and Millennials.

A lot of us also reject the caricature people now associate with “Boomers.” We were not buying houses for the cost of a sandwich in 1965. The interest rate on my first house was over 14% and that was after buying down a point. Many of us got hit by recessions, outsourcing, pension collapses and economic instability just like younger generations did. We watched promises evaporate in real time.

We understand older generations because we were raised by them. We understand younger generations because we had to evolve alongside them.

That’s why the Jones generation often feels culturally homeless. We are rarely discussed, rarely defined and usually lumped into categories that don’t actually fit us.

But we exist.

We are the human transition point between the industrial age and the digital age.

And frankly, there will probably never be another generation quite like us again.

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

@richardsiken Love is truth seeking

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

Kept humble today by a rejection from the @IowaReview. I now have patches on both elbows of my poet’s cardigan. 😏

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

A family of pigs in a summer meadow

[Earth @earthcurated]

Today is World Donkey Day.

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

The great thing about vet med is that you never run out of firsts. Today was my first time seeing a cat brought to the clinic in a Build-a-Bear box. 🧸😹🧸

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

Call your Senators.

[Josh Balk @joshbalk]

The pork industry lost with voters. Lost at the Supreme Court. So they turned to Congress—and got the "Save Our Bacon" Act buried in the House Farm Bill. It's the biggest rollback of animal welfare protections in U.S. history. A thread. 🧵

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

What a massive backslide this farm bill represents for animal welfare. Back to producing horse meat in the US? Overriding state laws that ban abhorrent farming practices like gestation crates? Contact your Senators and express your opposition.

[Lewis Bollard @Lewis_Bollard]

Tucked inside the farm bill the House passed Thursday is a provision that would likely gut state bans on the sale of horse meat from Texas to Illinois.

The Save Our Bacon Act is meant to wipe out state bans on the sale of pork from crated pigs.

But its text is much broader. It bars states from regulating the sale of all meat from "covered livestock" based on how it was produced elsewhere.

Horses raised for slaughter fit the bill's definition of "covered livestock". So its plain text would force states to allow horse meat sales, invalidating bans like Texas's -- on the books since 1949.

I doubt the reps who voted for the farm bill knew it would do this. But they knew it would wipe out state crate bans. And they didn't care enough to ask what else would go with them.

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

You & me both, Paul!

[Paul Shapiro @PaulHShapiro]

This story says @tacobell has plans to test @BeyondMeat on the menu.

If true, I’m about to become a platinum member of Taco Bell’s rewards program.

🌱🌮💪🏻

[Paul Bronks @SlenderSherbet]

When they call your name in a work meeting and you weren't listening.

[Elliot Swartz @elliotswartz]

Cultivated meat for dogs and cats will go on sale for the first time in Singapore across 12 different SKUs, with inclusion rates up to 70%

It's the second cultivated pet food product to be sold globally:

https://t.co/1dUaC0klMg

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

The male peacock spider performs one of the most complex courtship displays in the animal kingdom

[Smith-Blackmore @MarthaSmithDVM]

@mtracey Gotta stay chill with it 😅