Wolves React To Gamekeeper Who Had Been Away On Maternity Leave
“WHERE’S YOUR PUPPY! WE WANNA SEE YOUR PUPPY! DID YOU JUST HAVE THE ONE? DO YOU HAVE THEM WITH YOU? ARE THERE PHOTOS?”
I’m not a hundred percent positive but I’m pretty sure this is the wild life center where I visited wolves.
And the safety briefing included the question “So if you’re pregnant, do you want to know or not?”
Turns out there had been a bit of an awkward situation once where the keepers had casually mentioned a woman’s pregnancy in a group, and she herself didn’t even know yet. Turns out the wolves are excellent at telling if you’re pregnant and the keepers can tell based on their body language. They get all odd and careful around pregnancy. (Even wolves knows that you have to take care of pregnant people.)
So they definitely knew she was pregnant.
And if I remember my BBC documentaries right, a wolf will leave the pack to give birth and introduce the cubs to the pack once she feels ready for it. And maternity leave is flexible but often around 6 months so they’re going “YOU WERE GONE FOREVER! WE WERE SO WORRIED! WHERE ARE THE CUBS?? WE HAVE TO GREET THE CUBS!!“
Also the two on her back are fighting over who gets to greet her first. Giving and receiving attention is a commodity that goes by hierarchy and if you don’t accept that there will be scuffles.. The wolf lying down next to her isn’t chill about her coming back, it’s just submissive to the other wolves and waiting for it’s turn to show excitement.
Now I can see why we domesticated these adorable jerks.
THIS is how you do it. this is how break down a people. like the beginning. strip them of their language, along with everything else that makes them who they are.
and then they are yours.
😞
White colonizers are evil
people in america think afrikaans IS the native language
but it’s actually mostly dutch and a little german. that’s why my translator friend picked it up in only a year from his native language, german.
then again, a lot of americans think africa is a country, not a continent, so
For anyone wondering what we mean by “decolonizing” ourselves, this is it. It’s the effort of undoing centuries of beating our own cultures out of us.
Learning our ancestral languages, cultures, and traditions is an important but very difficult thing for us to be able to do.
Your players are faced with an ancient Sumerian curse! However, since the early ancient Sumerian language was only used for recording tax debts, it turns out to actually be an ancient Sumerian bill.
and therefore they need to get hold of some ancient Sumerian coinage and bring it to the ruins of the ancient Sumerian tax office, because the Sumerians had a pleasingly direct way of preventing tax evasion, namely horrifying curses.
well I don’t have any coin but I have these copper ingots, lovely copper ingots, from a very reputable merchant, never heard a word said against him, very thorough with his paperwork, anyway they’re guaranteed pure copper and proper weight, so can I pay my tax with those?
I just want everyone to take a step back for a second and really think about how we’re using the most powerful knowledge tool in history to make jokes about a specific dude who lived almost 4000 years ago.
it’s fuckin wonderful, is what it is.
Ea-nasir has been dead for 4700 fraudy fraudy years.
Shit maybe I’m attending class full time and don’t have a job
And have you literally ever met an academic scientist that wasn’t strapped for cash lmao my astrophysics professor wasn’t even able to afford his own house until he was 41
And SHIT maybe people have student debt?? Or medical issues??
It’s a wild concept, I know. Take your time.
Anon, scientists that don’t sell their souls to a corporation or work in a field capitalism can’t make money out of live from grant to grant.
Grants fund a project for a fixed sum of money for a fixed length of time, and in health and biology at least (my field), there’s about a 14-18% chance of getting one in Australia from the major funding bodies.
These blessed souls then use the grant to buy all tools and expendables for the project, after handing aside some to their institution to pay their rent, electricity, etc. They also pay their own salary from it (fixed amount allocated, they don’t choose it). If there’s anything left over they can then hire staff. If they can’t afford it, shit son, you either have to do it alone, or more likely take on students, as they’re cheap.
So the remaining 82+% scientist fight for jobs created by a small minority and either wind up having to take lower paid jobs than our pay grade, or fight over a small pool of teaching jobs, or work at a cafe or something with a PhD and crushing despair at years of life wasted, or are unemployed.
I was very lucky this year. I got a year’s work this year. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing next year. My contract wasn’t renewed and I’ve been very sick. Unlike Americans, I don’t have to worry about medical bills, but am only recovering now after the post-grant results job hiring is almost over. Could you imagine how bad it would have been if I also had debt?
There’s people who will be on year to year contracts until their 40s, or permanently. Only 1 in 10 academics at universities ever get tenure. If you’re good at getting funding money it’s more like 3-5 years of employment at a time, and if you’re actually vital to your institution, or beloved by all, everyone in your lab will rifle through their pockets and funding to cobble together a salary for you to work for their various projects (20% of your salary and workload is from project A, 30%, project B, and that’s all we can afford so we hate to tell you this but you’re now part time) on a bad year. Assuming they have the money and you aren’t too expensive. People can get laid off for after working at a place for a decade through no fault of their own, and everyone is heartbroken because that person did nothing wrong, nor did anyone else.
So yeah. Starving and broke scientists are a fucking thing. We are some of the most highly educated people in society but have some of the worst job security. Leave Kaijuno the fuck alone. Science is a fucking hard career.
This pretty much sums it up. Only science “rock stars” make bank. The rest of us live our entire lives like college students. We don’t do what we do for the money, because there isn’t any. We do it because we want to help the world. We do it because we want to help build a future we won’t get to see. We do it for the sake of learning. 9 times out of 10, to quote Hamilton, it’s planting seeds in a garden we’ll never get to see.
not to be harry potter on main but i honestly think the fantastic beasts series would have been so much more interesting if it was just about the beasts. i don’t give a fuck about grindelwald, just give me a movie about an eccentric wizard travelling the world looking for magical animals and teaching us the power of friendship
newt’s character should have been like the crocodile hunter but in a wizard hat send tweet
i dont care about any of this 1920s magic drama i just want newt scamander to cheerfully inform us how bad it hurts to get stung by various wizard animals
Following up to this post, here’s a fantastic look at Victorian “fancy dress balls”–they were all the rage at the time, but really picked up in the later half of the century where the focus was more on self-expression than hiding oneself, as was the case at 18th-century masquerades (Phantom hearkens back to this earlier tradition, but the idea of a masquerade hiding one’s true identity also works perfectly for its theatrical setting).
Hereare some wackier costumes from fancy dress balls. I’m in love with this one:
And look! A bee!
Here’s a fashion plate with some costume ideas from across the centuries (and of course, we wouldn’t be in the Victorian era if there weren’t a bit of tone-deaf cultural appropriation with the Native American costume.):
It was actually common for women to wear shorter skirts at these balls so they could show off their fabulous boots (as you see above, and as is the case with Christine’s stage version of the Star Princess dress):
Depending on your host, masks of all kinds were welcome, so you were free to be as unsettlingly disturbing as you wanted while you lounged by the punch bowl and made rabbit eyes at the eligible young heiress whose hand in marriage comes with fifty thousand pounds a year and a lifetime of resentment because women’s rights didn’t exist yet:
Suppose you can’t make it to the most fashionable balls London or Paris this season. If it’s 1883 and you are Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and happen to have $6 million of disposable income at your fingertips, why not throw your own fancy dress ball for New York City’s elite (and spend millions on champagne alone)? And why don’t you one-up every single one of your guests by dressing as that most wondrous of new inventions, Edison’s electric light? I defy the Rockefellers to steal your spotlight when the spotlight in question could very easily electrocute them.
Like flowers? Of course you do. Like spring? Oh, my God, do you ever. Like pretending you’re but a mere shepherdess, giggling and flouncing away from the advances of the blacksmith’s apprentice? GOOD LORD, YES. Like the 18th century? HELL YES, OH MAN, GIMME THAT ROCOCO SPRING FLOWER EXPLOSION:
BUT WAIT! You’re not gonna let that Rococo Spring Flower Explosion HARLOT flounce away with your suitor, are you? HELL NO, YOU ARE NOT. Which is why you are prepared to send her running dressed as a GORGEOUS FREAKING BUTTERFLY:
But where would a butterfly be without a lovely flower upon which to perch? Enter your secret lesbian lover, the Rose:
Or, if you’re uncomfortable with NOT being the center of attention every waking moment, you could just pull the equivalent of one-upping the bride at a wedding by wearing white and come dressed as the DAMN SUN:
But maybe you’re more of the goth persuasion. Might I suggest a tasteful sorceress?
A dainty Batman ensemble to match your wife’s delicate moth angel gown?
Vampire mistress of the night, perhaps?
Actually, bat motifs were an extremely popular costume option, not just in the 19th century, but also at 18th century balls:
But if it’s 1880 and you want to carry on grandma’s bat tradition, this might be a more modern take on a pocket-sized blood-sucking demon:
Or this:
You are so thrilled to attend the costume ball like the goth nightmare you are, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm:
Here is a tastefully acceptable take on Satan. Might I sample your punch, Mrs. Higgenbottom, before I make away with your soul?
“Oh, Ella!”
“Yes, Constance?”
“Oh, I do so love your seagull gown.”
“Oh, why thank you, my dear friend!”
“But I’ve not the slightest idea what I shall wear to the ball!”
“Why, Constance, it is a simple matter of identifying something near and dear to your heart and then adapting it into a suitable costume. I, for example, find solace in the sea, particularly in the birds of the sea, and most particularly when they nose-dive into and defecate upon the boat, shrieking like banshees in heat. Hence, the seagulls adorning my gown. What do you like the very most, Constance?”
“MOTHER-EFFING LOBSTERS.”
Or, maybe you’re just a shameless ho and don’t give a brass farthing about showing your ankles, your calves, your thighs, or your hoo-ha at the Embassy Ball, in which case, blaze it:
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