Why Movies About College are Actually Full of Shit.
This is very important because my brother and I grew up thinking college was like this. Like we would live out a beer commercial.
And when I got to college and it DIDN’T happen, it stressed me out. I thought I was doing something wrong again. I had, apparently, messed up high school according to the media, and now college?! The supposed best time of my life?! It created a big depression, and living far from home made it worse as I had no friends or family I could immediately talk to. It took a long time for me to understand that movies and commercials and shows that portray college like that is complete and utter bullshit.
Also, a reminder:
Most Americans don’t have college degrees. Of the ones who do, tons of them don’t finish in four years.
Lots of people go to community colleges.
Lots of people live at their parents’ house while in school.
The TV and movie stereotype of college–even just the “everyone goes to college and lives in a dorm” thing–only a tiny minority of Americans actually live that out.
Female figurine from the Hohle Fels cave near Stuttgart, about 35,000 years old. Interpreted as a pornographic pin-up.
“The Earliest Pornography” says Science Now, describing the 35,000 year old ivory figurine that’s been dug up in a cave near Stuttgart. The tiny statuette is of a female with exaggerated breasts and vulva. According to Paul Mellars, one of the archaeologist twits who commented on the find for Nature, this makes the figurine “pornographic.” Nature is even titling its article, “Prehistoric Pin Up.” It’s the Venus of Willendorf double standard all over again. Ancient figures of naked pregnant women are interpreted by smirking male archaeologists as pornography, while equally sexualized images of men are assumed to depict gods or shamans. Or even hunters or warriors. Funny, huh?
Consider: phallic images from the Paleolithic are at least 28,000 years old. Neolithic cultures all over the world seemed to have a thing for sculptures with enormous erect phalluses. Ancient civilizations were awash in images of male genitalia, from the Indian lingam to the Egyptian benben to the Greek herm. The Romans even painted phalluses on their doors and wore phallic charms around their necks.
Ithyphallic figure from Lascaux, about 17,000 years old. Interpreted as a shaman.
But nobody ever interprets this ancient phallic imagery as pornography. Instead, it’s understood to indicate reverence for male sexual potency. No one, for example, has ever suggested that the Lascaux cave dude was a pin-up; he’s assumed to be a shaman. The ithyphallic figurines from the Neolithic — and there are many — are interpreted as gods. And everyone knows that the phalluses of ancient India and Egypt and Greece and Rome represented awesome divine powers of fertility and protection. Yet an ancient figurine of a nude woman — a life-giving woman, with her vulva ready to bring forth a new human being, and her milk-filled breasts ready to nourish that being — is interpreted as pornography. Just something for a man to whack off to. It’s not as if there’s no other context in which to interpret the figure. After all, the European Paleolithic is chock full of pregnant-looking female statuettes that are quite similar to this one. By the time we get to the Neolithic, the naked pregnant female is enthroned with lions at her feet, and it’s clear that people are worshipping some kind of female god.
Yet in the Science Now article, the archaeologist who found the figurine is talking about pornographic pin-ups: “I showed it to a male colleague, and his response was, ‘Nothing’s changed in 40,000 years.’” That sentence needs to be bronzed and hung up on a plaque somewhere, because you couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of the classic fallacy of reading the present into the past. The archaeologist assumes the artist who created the figurine was male; why? He assumes the motive was lust; why? Because that’s all he knows. To his mind, the image of a naked woman with big breasts and exposed vulva can only mean one thing: porn! Porn made by men, for men! And so he assumes, without questioning his assumptions, that the image must have meant the same thing 35,000 years ago. No other mental categories for “naked woman” are available to him. His mind is a closed box. This has been the central flaw of anthropology for as long there’s been anthropology. And even before: the English invaders of North America thought the Iroquois chiefs had concubines who accompanied them everywhere, because they had no other mental categories to account for well-dressed, important-looking women sitting in a council house. It’s the same fallacy that bedevils archaeologists who dig up male skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that the society was male dominant (because powerful people wear jewelry!), and at another site dig up female skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that this society, too, was male dominant (because women have to dress up as sex objects and trophy wives!). Male dominance is all they can imagine. And so no matter what they dig up, they interpret it to fit their mental model. It’s the fallacy that also drives evolutionary psychology, the central premise of which is that human beings in the African Pleistocene had exactly the same values, beliefs, prejudices, power struggles, goals, and needs as the middle-class white professors and students in a graduate psychology lab in modern-day Santa Barbara, California. And that these same factors are universal and unchanged and true for all time.
Hohle Fels phallus, about 28,000 years old. Interpreted as a symbolic object and …flint knapper. Yes.
That’s not science; it’s circular, self-serving propaganda. This little figurine from Hohle Fels, for example, is going to be used as “proof” that pornography is ancient and natural. I guarantee it. Having been interpreted by pornsick male archaeologists as pornography because that’s all they know, the statuette will now be trotted out by every every psycho and male supremacist on the planet as “proof” that pornography is eternal, that male dominance is how it’s supposed to be, and that feminists are crazy so shut the fuck up. Look for it in Steven Pinker’s next book. ***
P.S. My own completely speculative guess on the figurine is that it might be connected to childbirth rituals. Notice the engraved marks and slashes; that’s a motif that continues for thousands of years on these little female figurines. No one knows what they mean, but they meant something. They’re not just random cut marks. Someone put a great deal of work into this sculpture. Given that childbirth was incredibly risky for Paleolithic women, they must have prayed their hearts out for help and protection in that time. I can imagine an elder female shaman or artist carving this potent little figure, and propping it up somewhere as a focus for those prayers.
On the other hand, it is possible that it has nothing to do with childbearing or sexual behavior at all. The breasts and vulva may simply indicate who the figure is: the female god. Think of how Christ is always depicted with a beard, which is a male sexual characteristic, even though Christ isn’t about male sexuality. The beard is just a marker. Or, given the figurine’s exaggerated breasts, it may have something to do with sustenance: milk, food, nourishment.
The notion that some dude carved this thing to whack off to — when he was surrounded by women who probably weren’t wearing much in the way of clothes anyway — is laughable.
#reclusiveleftist #women’s history #porn #white men are stupid
There was a post doing the rounds on tumblr a while back that I wish I could find, but most of it seemed to be taken from this study by LeRoy McDermott, Comparing Modern Bodies with Prehistoric Artifacts.
When looked at from above, as a woman observes herself, the breasts of PKG-style figurines assume the natural proportions of the average modern woman of childbearing age. For example, the dimensions of the breasts of the off-illustrated Venus of Willendorf are comparable to those of a 26-year-old mother-to-be with a 34C bust (see fig. 5). When foreshortened from above, even the apparent hypertrophic dimensions of the Venus of Lespugue and the best-preserved figurine from Dolní Vestonice enter into a reasonably normal, albeit buxom, range.
McDermott goes on to theorise that the reason most of these hyper-female statues are missing a head and hands is that the head, obviously, can’t be viewed by the sculptor without access to a reflection of some kind. As the hands are in a constant state of motion making the figurine, it would also be difficult to have a fixed reference to work from.
The whole thing reminds me of that oft-quoted Sandi Toksvig article:
When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. “My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.”
It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions? How often had I sped past them as I learned of male achievement and men’s place in the history books?
Working (loosely) in an archeological field for this past year has made me realise how much is taken for granted about ancient culture and to what degree we patch up the remnants of the past with modern values and notions of gender and sexuality. On a daily basis I’m asked – when in character – who my husband is, whether I’m a cook, why I’m holding a spear and carry a dagger and slingshot as part of my kit. These notions of a woman’s place are so ingrained that the children on school trips to the hill fort frequently can’t believe it when I tell them our Chieftain is a woman. Even if the only Iron Age Briton they can name is Boudica, they have a hard time getting their head around it.
I know I’ve reblogged this before, but I just can’t help myself. It’s way too cool.
I actually made a post about that got some traction like…years ago that basically said the same thing about the statues being self portraits. This is one of the most frustrating things about studying anthropology: so much of the canon is white and male. And I promise, I PROMISE that the field is changing. There are so many women in anthro now, and a concerted attempt to engage with indigenous communities, and a real effort to attract the broadest range of ethnicities that we can. I met with the rest of the people in my bioarch masters program the other day and there was ONE guy. It is changing. But having to read all of these old white guys just droning on when you know they’re wrong for not even considering the other half of the population is…frustrating.
That’s why in my head canon gobeckli tepe was a red light district and the animals symbolize the locations of different sexual acts. I’m probably wrong, but they DID find a bunch of phalluses buried there.
“Captain Marvel should smile more” “she looks so serious all the time” “she should smile more” “she’ll look better with a smile”
BRIE LARSON SNAPPED
My God, did some clueless asshole actually say that?
This is hilarious
ok but you don’t even know – the original twitter thread this comes from is FUCKIN WILD
So some rando dude put Brie Larson’s picture into Facetune to make her smile, because apparently she’s not making enough boners happy, and he wanted to “fix her”. this lady has just had it up to HERE with shitty dudes saying this bullshit, so she took Thanos’ creepy-ass grin and photoshopped it onto a bunch of pictures
One of my favorites is when a religious converter type comes up to me when I’m sitting around. Because they usually have a cold open like “The Lord has called me to you” replying with “Indeed He Has My Child, for He is Pleased With Your Work, and wishes you to know that you are known to Him”. Throw inflections into the wrong points in words, but do it with a very calming presence. After all, you’re the SMS from the afterlife, you’re merely the vessel of the vassal, and nothing scuttles their plans faster than trying to have to process that this very calmly spoken person who InflEcts their words JuiSSSSt quite not riGHt is acknowleding them in an uncomforting way.
Once they leave, watch them until something blocks the line of site, and then move like lightning to not be there when they glance back.
(This is why there are probably some really good rumours in Adelaide about me)
I remember this guy once who tried to dare me (the nerd of the group) to do something or another to prove my “manliness”. I calmly replied “How cute of you to think I´m human…” and kept walking. He stared at me in confusion and when I was several meters away I heard him say “yeah…good point.”
I have absolutely done this. I also call people “mammal”. Mostly I’ve done this one online, but it still throws people.
I’ve also been at protests opposite fundie nutjobs who told me I was going to Hell, and the look on their face is always priceless when I respond with “I know” or “I sure hope so” or something similar, which I’ve done a few times.
Once at a protest I spent about 20-30 minutes explaining Oberon Zell Ravenheart’s “Other People” argument (that the Bible explicitly states that Cain met people who weren’t related to Eve and Hell and salvation don’t apply to their descendants) to the pastor’s daughter and she was so shook she went home early and never came to that particular annual event again.
And in conversation with friends (whether they know I’m dragonkin or not) I routinely refer to “humans” as “they” and don’t include myself. I think most of them have gotten used to it.
So it’s Flu Season again, and this recipe for Tea To Fix What Ails You was given to me by a Christian friend, and I’ve taken to calling it JESUS TEA due to it’s miraculous properties. Even though it, technically, contains no tea. This tea is as caffinie-free as anything processed in a US plant can get, but be sure to check the provenance and all ingredients in case of allergies.
You will Need:
A Bigass Pot, becuase this is something you make in large quantities
working stovetop
those lil cloth sachets you use for wassail/empty teabags/those lil reuseable loose-leaf tea steepers.
Recipe:
about a quart of water
1 cup apple cider
about half a lemon’s worth of juice
a shitwhack of honey- try to get as local as possible and generally the less-processed the better if you want to build a resistance to local allergens. If you have allergy concerns or don’t like the taste of honey, go ahead and use more processed stuff/another sweetener instead.
three tablespoons/three bags chamomile tea
three tablespoons/three bags rooibos tea
teaspoon crushed cloves
1 cinnamon stick (more if you like it spicier)
¼ tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cayenne or white pepper
Bring water to a simmer in the pot. Add the chamomile, rooibos and spices to steep about 4-5 minutes or longer if you like tea-flavored tar which given you have the flu you probably do. Add Cider, Lemon Juice and Honey until dissolved. Drink all of this in the course of an hour to stay hydrated, make more pots as needed or until you pass out.
FOR MAXIMUM EFFECTIVENESS: gargle warm salt water first for as long as you can, it’ll break up the mucus in your throat and soothe the soreness.
This stuff is hecking delicious, and my dad claims it cured his cold. I’ve taken to drinking it just because it tastes good! Thank you for sharing! 😀 I also found that you can freeze this stuff in convenient single serving sizes, ready to be heated in the microwave when you don’t have enough spoons to make it fresh. Granted fresh is usually best for most food and drinks, but it’s still good.
I also calculated a single serving version, which I’m putting here in case anyone wants to make it that way:
1 cup hot water
¼ cup apple cider (or more, I prefer 1/3 cup)
1 tbsp honey (or more, to taste)
a dash of lemon juice
½ tsp spice mixture
1 ½ tbsp tea mixture
Mix the spices together in one container, and mix the two kinds of tea together in another. Measure out of these the above amounts. (Don’t try to store the two things together, the spices will sink to the bottom and you won’t get the right measurements.)
Use a tea infuser/tea bag/cheesecloth/whatever to keep the herb bits from floating off into your drink. Steep for the usual 4-5 minutes, then add the cider, honey, and lemon.
Side note: ground cloves is cheaper for me so I use ½ tsp of
that instead of 1 of whole. I also like cinnamon a lot so I use ¼ tsp
ground cinnamon instead of a stick (also sticks are really expensive here). If you use a stick, break it into
little pieces. The downside of ground cinnamon is that it
kind of congeals if you don’t stir it periodically, so keep a spoon
handy as you drink.
Since people have been asking for this (I guess the flu/common cold is going around agian), have it again, NOW WITH SINGLE SERVING SIZE, THANK YOU @snowfox102 for doing the math for me!
Is it possible to substitute the chamomile for something else?
Pretty much any herbal tea but mint will work? Rose hip’s good, or you can just double the rooibos. You can even put in black or green tea. I don’t becuase those both have caffiene and I want to be awake as little as possible when I’m sick.
What the absolute fuck is a shitwack of honey?
Once tea tarts cooling down* start adding honey. Keep adding honey. Your significant other or parents will notice and ask “Isn’t that enough honey?” “No.” You rasp, throat raw. “I need the magic bug juice too heal me.” “I think we should check your fever again.” they say. “When I’m fucking done.” You rasp, sounding like gollum with a four-packs-a-day habit. Eventually, there will be enough.
that, is a “Shitwhack”
*boiling honey gets rid of 90% of it’s goodness, so let the tea cool down to drinking temp before adding honey.
Just here to remind you to get your flu shot. And tea is not a substitution for antivirals if you do get the flu.
You are completely right! Jesus Tea will only help soothe your suffering, not prevent infection. Also Influenza is hella dangerous and DOES kill people, so get vaccinated for your safety and the safety of your immunocompromised friends!
The menthol in mint tastes REALLY weird with the other ingredients, that’s all. Like drinking OJ after brushing your teeth.
Some other repeat questions:
-If you don’t hvae acess to Cider, regular Apple Juice works just fine, just check the nutritional information to make sure it’s the 100% DV vitamin C stuff, we want you you feel better ASAP. If you like OJ, that can work too.
-Honey is in here specifically for it’s antibacterial and allergy-reliveing properties, and fruit-based honey substitutes will NOT give you the same benefits.
-If you can’t do honey for whatever reason, sub in your favorite non-sugar sweetener because Sugar/fructose/sucrose/agave will mess with the ability fo your throat cells to retain/release water and make your throat feel WAAAAAAY worse. Aspartame, Saccharin and Stevia won’t aggravate you throat much.
-If you can’t have chamomile, pretty much any Herbal Tea or Tisane will work, as will green tea. The exception is anything that contains St. John’s Wort, which interacts dangerously with pseudoephedrine andacetaminophen, whic are in basically every cold medication available without a perscription in the US.
-If you don’t want roobois, any dark and spicy kind of tea will work- rose hip, most black teas, etc.
-I tend to reccomend against anythign that has caffine becuase being concious with the flu is awful and you need to sleep as much as possible.
-If you don’t like any of the spices, feel free to sub them for something else! The point of those is to add a bit of heat/pepperiness to the tea to help unclog sinuses. If you’re a heat fiend like some of my friends, you can put sriracha in there if you want.
-THE SALT RINSE BEFOREHAND IS KEY. gargling with lukewarm saltwater or using a saline rinse will flush out congestion and help the Jesus Tea work it’s magic more effectively.
To Reiterate: Jesus Tea will only make you feel slightly less miserable and it not a substitute for medical care. Get vaccinated early and often, and if you develop a high fever or other medically worrisome symptoms, get to a healthcare professional ASAP.
I’m rebloging this solely for the measurements. A shitwhack of honey
It’s that time of Year again! Reblogging this long version with additonal NoteS:
Where I come from in the US, “Apple Cider” referes to the cloudy brown JUICE you can get in the fall, and is most reccomended because it tends to have the most Vitamin C and Trace minerals. Don’t drink alcohol while you are sick- your liver is already working overtime and alcohol can interact dangerously with cold meds.
GET VACCINATED ASAP!!! PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS!!!
If you are sick for more than 7 days or develop a fever over 100 degrees, please see a doctor immediately. Influenza is still a very dangerous virus.
No, seriously, look around you next time you’re in a building and count the number of things that are shiny even thiugh they do not need to be shiny.
Humans are naturally attracted to any thing that shines, shimmers or glitters— I mean for fucks sake, we invented glitter. There are people right now who work in glitter factories and so whose sole job is to make shiny things for people to put nonshiny things so as to make them shiny.
We paint our nails and faces with glittery varnishes and shimmery powders. We use gloss on our lips to make them shinier. We shine our shoes to make ourselves look smart. We have been known to start fucking wars over who owns the bits of land with the shiny rocks in. Genocides have been commited and kingdoms toppled because one group had a lot of shiny metals and the other group wanted those shiny metals.
Why, then, do we all like shiny things so much?
Well, scientists now think that it’s probably because we evolved in a desert. If you’re living in a desert, then you’re going to need to be constantly be on the lookout for water, and water shines in the sun. So the best way to survive in a desert environment is to just chase after everything that shines because it might be water.
So now imagine how weird this would all be to a species who didn’t evolve in a desert.
Imagine aliens just being baffled by the human habit of wearing certain rocks— or even just pieces of glass or plastic cut to look like those rocks— just because we like the way they catch the light. Imagine aliens who come from worlds where there are a lot of shiny rocks bringing them back for their human friends to see and watching, puzzled, as said human friends start wearing the rocks around their necks, wrists, fingers or even (weirdly) stuck through special holes they make in their ears.
“Thank you so much! These are beautiful!”
“I literally just scooped up some of the gravel from the spaceport— how are you so amazed?”
Imagine caves on alien planets full of crystals and gems becoming huge tourist attractions for humans, and the aliens not understanding why because, on their planet, pretty much the only people who go to the caves are school groups and geologists. The caves are boring— why do the humans keep taking photos of a load of old rocks?
We complain that Magpies are obsessed with shiny things and keep stealing our shiny things but that just shows how crazy we are about protecting our shiny things
Also imagine that some alien species that really likes, I dunno, textures or really subtle striations or something, going apeshit over our gravel and shit
I’d like to go just one year without having to do some sort of major unexpected appliance/house repair work. Just one year.
It’s like the house knew we were coming up for winter and was like “I know, time to kill an appliance”.
It’s the house’s desperate attempt to scare you off. It just eventually goes “My gods, I try and I try.. Why are you still here?? I even timed it with the weather.. Come on, move so I can stop being a house and go back to the nether realms!!”
“What is wrong with this family. I put tampons in the walls, ants pouring out the electrical sockets, exploding furnace in the dead of winter, dead ac in the middle of summer, window unit ac falls out the window into the basement, clogged all the drains. Twice. I know, a classic, dead mice in the vents! They’ll never get rid of the smell! Every time they turn on the dryer…ventless dryers you say. Me dammit.”
I’m not big on the “malevolent haunted house” school of thought, but dang, if your experiences aren’t a strong testimony to make me reconsider.
Who designed this place, the vengeful ghost of B.S. Johnson, the Disc’s most famous architect?
The only thing this house is haunted by is the poor decisions of the previous owner leading up to all this shit. The rest is just the surreal nightmare of home ownership, which really, why are we not taught as young people, how to do things like fish a mouse out of the dryer lint trap at 10pm on a Monday night while suffering from a case of the screaming heebiejeebies.
Why was “home sciences” only ever how to bake a Victoria sponge and sew a drawstring bag. Where was “how to plan a meal schedule”, “how to live on a budget”, “making calls to pest control like an adult despite your overwhelming social anxiety”.
4 years of that class, 4 mandatory years. I was failed by the system.
4 years?? That is a preposterously long time for what sounds like it should be an elective.
In all honesty, home sciences should be a mandatory provided it does things more useful than “how to bake a cake”.
Stuff like “how to actually cook” would be extremely useful, and “how to operate a washing machine and maintain it”, along with stuff like how to balance a budget and just generally prepare you for adult life.
Like I know algebra is important and all that, but I had to take 6 years of that class (still failed, never did get high school maths qualification) and then got shoved out into the world with no idea how to balance a cheque book.
Like I can probably solve for x but that’s not going to fly at the bank.
Yes! How to survive on your own should be a thing.
It isn’t something that everyone is taught at home, so why not make it a class?
So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us.
Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs.
Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.
We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).
My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.
It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.
I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is
ALL OF THIS
And also pigeon poop was a very valuable fertilizer before we had other options, people would hire guards to stop thieves from stealing their flock’s poop.
#LovePigeonsAgain2016
Late night, reblogging, so bear with me here…
Thank you for posting much of my thoughts over the past year and a half! I am known by many as “that guy who keeps the raptors”. Yes this is true, I do keep and handle raptors for educational purposes, but what many fail to realize is, I am fascinated with pigeons. My interest with birds began with the obvious, the raptors, corvids, and parrots. Then I discovered pigeons. These wonderful little birds with big attitudes and the incredible ability to thrive among people.
The organization I work with got its first pigeon a little over a year ago. She was a rescue with nowhere else to go. I was quickly drawn to her character and attitude about life.
We rarely handled her, but we did spend time with her.
She grew attached to our volunteers very quickly because their were no other birds she could socialize with in our facility.
We never intended to train her for educational programs. It was a job reserved for our raptors. It was our pigeon who decided she would be a part of what we were doing. One day, when we entered her enclosure to change water and food, she decided to fly to my hand and perch like our raptors do.
No training, no treats, just the reward of being with us.
What we hadn’t noticed for the couple months prior was her watching us. This brilliant little bird had been watching us every day as we trained and worked with our raptors. Finally she decided she didn’t want to be left out any longer. She made her place on our hands.
This occurred several times before we finally put her on a glove and brought her into the public. Needless to say, she was right at home. She fluffed up and preened the entire evening while people gawked and asked us why we had a pigeon on one glove and a hawk on another.
Since then, we’ve added 5 more rescued pigeons to our growing flock. And our pigeon (Tybalt) has become a mainstay ambassador for our programs. Each of our pigeons are incredibly fun to watch and interact with. Pigeons simply don’t get enough love. They are marvelous creatures incredibly suited to life alongside people both physically and mentally.
Raptors my have been my introduction into birds, but pigeons opened my eyes to a new appreciation for them and the fascinating world of bird cognition.
NOT ONLY are pigeons very amazing, worth our respect, and INTERESTING (did you read any of that stuff above?), but they are beautiful too!
Not chickens, but I feel compelled to spread this gospel.
hmmm. this is making me rethink my new york pigeon hate
and, AND, haven’t you ever wondered why city pigeons come in a magnificent rainbow of unusual colors?
Most wild animals all look alike within a species, with TINY, RARE individual variations in terms of rare color morphs, unusually big or small animals, different facial markings and other subtleties. But there is no evolutionary benefit to having species where everyone looks slightly different, and in fact, it’s beneficial for species to be similar and consistent, with a distinctive aesthetic. Especially if you’re trying to blend into the environment – a black wolf is all very well, but it looks positively silly in the summer tundra, where its grey/brown/brindley cousins blend in. A white deer has a great aesthetic – and a very short lifespan in the forest. Distinctive Protagonist looks are rare in the wild, simply because natural selection usually comes down heavily on them.
To humans, most wild animals are visually indistinguishable from each other.
As a result, most wild animals are like
“Oh it’s obvious – you can tell the twins apart because Kara has a big nose.”
Wild animals usually have a pretty consistent aesthetic within their species. It’s important to them!
SO WHAT IS GOING ON WITH PIGEONS?
Look, in one small picture you’ve got a red color morph in the center, several melanistic dark morphs, a few solid black birds, a few variations on the wildtype wing pattern, a PIEBALD, a piebald copper color morph…
Like, there are LAYERS UPON LAYERS of pigeon diversity in most flocks you see. Pure white ones with black wingtips. Solid brown ones with pink iridescent patches. Pale pinkish pigeons.
WHY IS THAT? When other wild animals consider “being slightly fluffier than my brother” to be dangerously distinctive in most circumstances?
BECAUSE CITY PIGEONS AREN’T TRULY WILD.
MANY OF THEM (POSSIBLY MOST OR ALL) ARE FERAL MIXES.
THEY WERE ONCE BELOVED PETS, SPECIAL MESSENGERS, EXQUISITE SHOW-WINNERS, AND PRIZED LIVESTOCK.
THEIR PRETTY COLORS WERE DELIBERATELY INTRODUCED BY HUMANS.
AND NOW THEIR HUMANS DON’T LOVE THEM ANY MORE.
See, pigeon fanciers bred (and still breed!) a huge array of pigeons. And the resulting swarms of released/discarded/escaped/phased out “fancy” pigeons stayed around humans. What else were they going to do? They interbred with wildtype pigeons.
Lots of the pigeons you see in public are feral. They’re not wild animals. They’re citizen animals. They’re genetically engineered. And now that’s what “city” pigeons are.
These “wild” horses are all different colors because they’re actually feral. Mustangs in the American West are the descendants of imported European horses – they’re an invasive domestic species that colonized an ecological niche, but they are domestic animals. Their distinctive patterns were deliberately bred by humans. A few generations of running around on the prairie isn’t going to erase that and turn them back into wildtypes. If you catch an adult mustang and train it for a short period, you can ride it and have it do tricks and make it love you. It’s a domestic animal. You can’t really do that with an adult zebra.
No matter how many generations these dogs stay on the street and interbreed with one another, they won’t turn back into wolves. They can’t. They’re deliberately genetically engineered. If you catch one (even after generations of rough living, even as an adult) you can make it stare at your face, care about your body language, and love you.
City pigeons? Well, you don’t have to like them, but they’re in the same boat. They’re tamed animals, bred on purpose, living in a human community. Their very bodies are marked with their former ownership and allegiance; they cannot really return to what they once were; if you caught one, you could make it love you (in a limited pigeon-y way.) They have gone to “the wild,” but not very far from us, and they’d be happy to come back.
So next time you see a flock of city pigeons, spare a moment to note their diversity. The wing patterns. The pied, mottled and brindled. The color types.
All of it was once meant to please you.
I am now on Team Pigeon. Thank you.
Aww, the pigeon discourse has come home to my dash again! Like a homing pigeon.
Videogames:you can choose from twenty different eyelashes!!!! oh but you can’t be fat
Yeah, whine about how you can’t have a fat character that can scale walls, or sprint. Please whine more.
you’re so right kiddo….. games are very realistic……. like the parts where you die and then come back again? classic realism.
but we can’t have fat people in videogames because fat people are the real fantasy creatures and not like… the dragons. and of course, every thin person can scale a wall. sure sure.
Y’know what, here’s something that’s been pissing me off for a while.
Fat? Easy to gain. So so easy. Our bodies want to keep fat around, because we’re designed not to starve.
Dropping fat? NOT so easy. When people talk about “losing fat,” what they’re saying is “I need to override millions of years of genetics to convince my body I’m not dying and it doesn’t need this carefully-stored fuel.” Dieting? Your body thinks it’s starving. Work out like crazy? Your body thinks it’s in a situation where it needs to bring the hammer down on the regular, and that means you need more fuel – speaking just for myself, I want to eat the world after I lift. That shit doesn’t melt away, even if you’ve been training like a motherfucking monster for months and eating right, because the body wants to keep it.
So yeah, the “eat less move more” doctrine can fuck itself right in the face.
There are very, very active fat people, fat people who are experts at every sport and physical activity you can imagine. But because fat rests on top of the muscle, you don’t know when we’re jacked. Oh, sure, sometimes you can get a idea, if a person is WILDLY active, like for a fucking living. Here’s Samoa Joe, the NXT pro wrestling champion who was literally dethroned last night:
Yeah, you can see there’s a lot of power there.
But a lot of times you can’t. Here’s Vince Wilfork, two-time Superbowl tackling champion:
And here’s Holley Mangold, 2012 superheavyweight division Olympian:
These are people who fight (and flip, and do all kinds of crazy shit in Joe’s case), and run, and lift for a living.
And they’re not unusual, as much as you’d like to think so. The world is full of fat powerhouses, of fat runners, of fat Crossfitters, and they’re just as good at doing the thing as their smaller counterparts.
So realism? Fuck off. The only reason we don’t have fat game characters is because society is fatphobic as fuck.
Also? Saints Row lets you be fat, *and hot,* so don’t even come at me with “nobody wants that.”
“fat people can’t climb though”
(Exhibit A: Fezzik carrying 3 people up a cliff)
“yeah but that’s fictional!”
and video games aren’t?
Apparently weight weighs differently if it’s fat instead of, like, eight different machine guns and a rocket launcher?
Video games let you carry all sorts of shit, they can let you carry your own body.
(This got better) -V
I love whenever people are like “ugh, fat people can’t climb a wall”.
Cool story, quick question: can you?
Because plenty of people aren’t into climbing. Being skinny isn’t what allows people to climb. Training is.
