bread is a fine treat for chickens. it will not cause any health problems to chickens if fed in moderation.
however, bread can cause nutritional deficiencies/angel-wing deformity if fed in large quantities to
waterfowl like ducks and geese. wild ducks shouldn’t be fed bread. with pet ducks a piece of bread every once and awhile is NOT going to hurt them.
bread is not some scary dangerous thing for birds. its not the most nutritious thing, but its not dangerous.
It’s kind of like if there was a wild pack of children living in a popular playground where almost daily random people would bring them skittles so much so that the children stopped hunting and scavenging and started subsiding purely on skittles that would be bad for them.
But that doesn’t mean skittles will poison your own children
believe me when I say I get the frustration of people who say they’re gluten free ordering things that contain gluten and not caring, but I will always always always assume someone who orders gluten free is being deadly serious. if I’m wrong, the worst thing I’ve done is wasted a bit of my time; if I assume they aren’t serious and they are, then I’ve increased a stranger’s risk of colon cancer
“I bet they’re not even allergic to nuts!”
oh gee would i rather have the petty joy of proving a stranger ‘wrong’ or risk sending somebody into fucking anaphylaxis? it’s not hard folks
You should also do this for folks who say they’re vegan– egg and dairy allergies are some of the most common allergies and if you have both like me, the easiest way to find food to eat is look for stuff labeled vegan. Don’t be a shithead and slip eggs or dairy into something vegan (looking at you, baristas who think it’s hilarious to put regular cream instead of almond milk because you think almond milk is “pretentious”) because you never know if there’s a significant health reason behind being vegan. Also you shouldn’t do it anyway because you should like, actually respect people’s ability to choose what foods they eat, but yeah. Don’t lie about what you’re putting in food. I’ve had too many allergic reactions because of this.
also even if someone is vegan and DOESN’T have an allergy to dairy/eggs etc still DONT “TRICK” THEM INTO EATING MEAT OR DAIRY. If you haven’t eaten these things in a long time your body does not know how to process it anymore and will get very very VERY sick if you suddenly like eat beef or cheese. I’m talking hours on the toilet, or puking, etc. Just fucking respect people’s food choices also literally what does it matter to you.
I know how “introvert culture” is pretty popular on this site but there’s a lot of misconceptions
Introverts get drained from being with other people and recharge their “social battery” by being alone
Extroverts charge their “social battery” being around other people
It has nothing to do with how shy/outgoing you are. You can be an outgoing introvert who loves parties but ultimately needs to recharge at home before going out again. You can be a shy extrovert who gets their energy from 1-2 close friends.
If u think ur an introvert bc you can’t go outside/have panic attacks/cannot answer the phone you could have an anxiety disorder and
Gentleness is not weak, it is very strong. When you hold an infant, you must be gentle but you must also be firm. You cannot be weak or you will drop and harm the baby.
Gentleness is focused. When we are absent-minded or inattentive, we can be hurtful and damaging. It takes presence and awareness to be gentle.
At the same time, gentleness allows us to be relaxed and humorous, authentic without tension and contrivance.
Practice your gentleness.
Be gentle towards yourself. Be gentle towards nature. Be gentle towards other people.
One of the most useful bits of advice I ever got for online interactions was, Always assume the other person means well.
Tone is hard to read in text sometimes, and if you are wrong and the other person is trying to be an asshole, do not worry. They’ll be sure to clarify that for you.
Just as a PSA, I’ve never reblogged that “your mom will die” post. I’ve seen it half a dozen time so or more and I’ve ignored it every time. My mom’s doing great.
You’re safe. I’ve done the test for you. You can safely ignore it. It is a failed curse. It doesn’t work.
Lmao they really took that chance tho
No, I didn’t. In my mind it wasn’t a chance.
But for some people, it would feel like one. There are people for whom posts like that cause great distress. Not because they think those posts actually work, but because those posts prey on anxiety disorders by exploiting the way anxious brains function. It’s an inherently cruel thing to do and I do not blame anyone who is unwilling to take the ‘chance,’ because regardless of whether or not they genuinely believe their mom will be affected, the emotional distress caused by having seen and not reblogged the post is not worth it.
I do not suffer from this particular brand of anxiety. But I do have anxiety about other, equally unlikely things. So I can empathize with people for whom these types of chain posts cause genuine distress, and I can recognize how needlessly cruel the posts themselves are–particularly because people who DO reblog them often do so at the expense of followers, or at the risk of getting rude comments about how ‘gullible’ they are, or even angry remarks from other anxiety sufferers who start blaming the victim instead of blaming the person who created the damn post in the first place.
My point in creating this post was simply to attempt to ease the anxiety of those who are negatively impacted by those types of chain posts. It has nothing to do with whether or not I actually believe that ignoring that post puts my mom in danger. I don’t. If I’d had even a modicum of doubt about that, I wouldn’t have taken the chance.
But hopefully a few fellow anxiety sufferers now have ammunition against the part of their brains that torments them with that whispered “but what if…?” every time they see the post (or others like it).
idk what introvert needs to hear this but please check yourself when ur saying stuf like “staying in your room all weekend by yourself watching netflix is much better than going out and being social” because speaking from experience it’s very easy to confuse being introverted and isolating yourself to cope with anxiety and depression please reach out to your friends and make an effort to live your life and say yes to things, there’s no harm in enjoying your own company but please try to avoid shutting yourself away because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re better alone it’s seriously a recipe for loneliness and will really fuck with your self worth
Most of the time they’re just happy to get on with their business around humans. Sometimes they get a little too curious, usually after a minute they’ll realise you’re not food or a good place to sit, but if they bother you then it’s best to just move away.
Remember they sting to defend themselves or their nest, and from their point of view humans are gigantic, unpredictable and potentially very dangerous creatures.
It’s understandable if you’re scared of them, but please don’t say they’re evil!
since its summer and getting hot: dont shave ur huskies/any double coated dog
Wait how come?
its because theyre double coated and if you shave them that coat will never grow in correctly again. it will permanently mess up their ability to thermoregulate bc they dont have their different fur layers to insulate them or use for sun protection. heres a link going into a little more detail why
Shaving your husky can actually raise the chances of it suffering from heat stroke! The best thing to do in summer months is to comb out the undercoat that’s already shedding on its own using a rake. It looks like this:
This takes time. If you don’t have time to maintain their coat, don’t get a husky. On a side note, the Furminator grooming tool seems popular, but can cause damage to the coat if overused or used improperly. Do your research before using it.
I hated shaving double coated dogs when I was a groomer. It’s really not good for them, unless there is a medical reason to remove the hair in the first place. If you want a double coated dog they need to be brushed daily in hotter months, at the very least every other day. Spending 10-15 mins brushing them will go a long way to cutting down the shedding, and making them more comfortable while they’re blowing their coat.
The furminator is a pretty good tool, but like @end0skeletal it can cause damage. It is basically a 40 blade (surgical) that someone stuck on a handle. Brushing too long and too hard will damage skin and cause brush burn. If you plan on using one, you’ll need to lift up the coat to check the skin every so often to make sure the brush isn’t causing damage.
I preferred a tool called a coat king for dogs like huskeys. They look like little rakes, and are great at pulling out hair while being gentler than the furminator.
Another great brush is a rubber curry brush. My favorite was the zoom groom. I use this on my friend’s Shiba and get a ton of hair off of her in minutes. And because it is rubber you can use it a lot longer than the metal brushes.
Unpopular opinion, maybe, but the narrative of “Here’s what you can do as an individual to fight climate change” isn’t useless.
It has its place, and that’s mainly in the mental health realm. I’m a super anxious person. I get depressed easily. Articles talking about little steps I can take to reduce my carbon footprint give me tangible ways I can contribute to the solution, and help give me a sense of control over the whole mess, however illusionary it may be.
The framing of the narrative is the problem, not the narrative itself; guilt-tripping people never works. Pointing out “if you’re feeling scared, here’s some steps you can take to be part of the process” is way, WAY better. And the more steps you include, the more myriad ways you can take some ownership of the process and go “I am NOT powerless you motherfuck,” the better. Not everyone can take all of the listed steps and that’s COMPLETELY understandable. You gotta take care of you, first. But the more we list, the more accessible ways we come up with to give climate change the finger in our everyday lives, and to refuse to let the fear win.
By all means, go after the corporations. They’re the big fuckers here and I am totally on board with that. But if you’re feeling helpless and hopeless? Maybe take a look at one of those “how can I help” articles and pick a few little things to implement.
It’s all about taking care of your mental health!
Also, if you’re creative, you can make a big impact.
Here are some things I’ve done:
I periodically drop by home depot and other box stores, and if I see a big sale on LED lights I buy a ton of them. I have installed LED’s at dozens of people’s homes, probably saving collectively thousands of dollars. I also approached my apartment complex and replaced incandescent bulbs both in their office and their laundry room with LED’s…the laundry room lights are on nearly 24/7 and it’s a big space, and this has probably saved them around $300 annually for something that cost me around $20. And now the apartment complex really appreciates this so they’ve been very accomodating when I ask for things like doing non-essential improvements or upgrades in my apartment.
There is a wild area behind my apartment complex and it’s part owned by the complex and part owned by the city. A large area of it was completely overgrown with invasive plants. I pulled a lot of them out and added a lot of seeds of locally native plants, and the plant growth now is MUCH more lush…there is much more biomass and also much more biodiversity. Some trees have sprung up that are now 9 feet tall and growing raipdly during the growing season. This stuff is all gonna sequester a lot of carbon. I also have planted previously barren areas of mulch flower beds densely with native flowers. These also sequester carbon and also contribute to biodiversity. The habitat created by all this work will also help insects and other species that are having their ranges altered by climate change, to adapt, by giving them more habitat.
I chose to live in a place where I don’t need to use my car very much. I went from driving my car around 10,000 miles a year to driving it under 5,000 miles a year. This has saved me a ton of money (not just gas, but also maintenance, tolls, parking, and much lower insurance) and also improved my quality of life.
I make periodic posts and videos about the things I’m doing, and I talk to friends. I also talk to businesses and mention energy-efficient things in reviews of businesses I write on Yelp. For example, if I notice a restaurant uses LED lighting I note that in the review and say I appreciate it, or the same for supermarkets like ALDI that make greater use of enclosed refridgerator cases.
I and my brother continually pressed my parents until they did an energy audit of their home. We got them to buy a new furnace, add some insulation, fix some areas where air was leaking out, and get heat-insulating shades on some rooms with drafty windows, and we also tweaked the baseboard system. The house is now much more pleasant and even in temperature, and we’ve saved them thousands of dollars in heating costs that were associated with unnecessary fossil fuel use.
You may have different things you can do, but the point is, you can do big, substantial things. It’s not just personal choices, you can offer to help other people. You can research things, get good at doing certain things, and then share that knowledge with others.
You can save people money, hundreds or thousands of dollars. And people will appreciate that, like my apartment complex really likes me as a tenant and I see it in how they treat me, they’ve let me do A LOT of things that I asked like having a garden and planting things in vacant flower beds and upgrading things in my unit. And my parents really appreciate the work my brother and I did in the house and the things we convinced them to do cause they’re saving a ton of money already and the house is more comfy.
You might think up completely different things from these that I haven’t even thought of!
I think what’s especially helpful to keep in mind, which the second comment sorta implies, is that it’s not just solely about fixing the big underlying causes of climate change. Climate change harms people and the environment, and you can probably do more to fix that harm than you can to stop it.
So even if planting more wildflowers doesn’t stop climate change, it means that the individual animals in your area have more places to eat and hide. You might be able to help people stay warm or stay cool as seasons change. That tangible change is so reassuring, so healing, and might help you feel empowered to do harder, scarier things. Even if you cannot stop climate change, it is a wondrous feeling to know that there are lizards in your garden where last year there were none. That’s an entire lizard living in the world that might not have been without you.
Anything you can do as an individual to mitigate the damage from climate change and environmental abuse good and worthwhile, and you should do it because you are making a tangible impact.
It’s a tiny tangible impact.
But “tiny” is still a quantifiable amount. It’s not zero.
No doubt you’ve heard the parable of the starfish:
A young child was walking along the seashore, when she noticed hundreds of starfish that had washed up along the beach with the incoming tide.
Knowing they would soon dry out in the hot sun and die, she quickly started picking them up and throwing them back into the sea. One by one, the starfish were returned to safety.
“What are you doing?” asked a nearby fisherman.
“I’m saving the starfish,” the girl replied proudly. “If they don’t make it back into the water, they will die.”
The fisherman, shaking his head, looked at the girl and said, “You can’t possibly save all these starfish … there are so many you can’t even count them! What difference can you possibly make?”
The girl looked down at the sand, picked up another starfish, and tossed it into the ocean. “It made a difference to that one!”
Go on. Make a difference to that one. Do what you can.
It’s both/and, not either/or. Yes, we absolutely do need to hold governments, corporations and other huge systems accountable for their environmental devastations. But we also can make differences as individuals, especially locally. I am working with a wildlife refuge to remove invasive plant species so we can make more room for native ones, which helps create an oasis of habitat in an increasingly human-dominated world. Those little patches of habitat, even gardens and yards that are planted with natives, can be the difference between a species surviving or going locally extinct. And the more individual populations there are, the more genetic diversity survives.
Of course, we also have to have to preserve wildlife corridors and migration routes on a larger scale, and we’re working on that, too. But the micro and macro are both needed. Everything is needed right now. It’s too crucial a time.
ifesbob 