I haven’t seen anybody talking about it yet, but this flu season is off to a bad start and experts are concerned it’s going to get worse. If you have any insurance at all, flu shots are free at places like CVS, Walgreens, and Target, and at a low-cost out of pocket. They are absolutely worth getting, even at limited effectiveness, to prevent contraction and/or limit severity of illness. If it is at all possible for you, it’s a good idea to get your flu shot ASAP.
Dutch “Cuddly Owl” finally caught on video. This bird has been cuddling the citizens of this town for a while. It likes to land and stomp on people’s heads.
I love owls but I’m pretty sure that bird’s feet could carve your brain out of your fucking skull and this is unsettling to watch.
It most certainly could and likely would.
I looked into this, and this is likely the same bird that has been attacking residents relentlessly enough that they have taken to carrying umbrellas around to defend themselves.
My other theories on this behavior were that it was perhaps an imprint or suffering from a neurological issue, but it seems it may just be incredibly territorial.
Regardless of the specifics, the bird is NOT trying to be cuddly. It is not approaching the humans with friendliness. It was being territorial, and this is an incredibly dangerous thing since eagle owls are such large raptors.
OP. I beg of you. PLEASE do not romanticize this bird’s behavior!! What it’s doing is incredibly dangerous because it’s talons are strong enough to crush bone. It’s smaller, American cousin the great horned owl has one of the strongest grips ever measured on a bird, do you really expect this one to have less dangerous feet? This isn’t a cute little parrot or chicken or duck, this is a bird that can take down hares larger than itself routinely while hunting with no trouble.
It’s not cute that an apex predator that can fly without making a sound has taken to dive bombing people’s heads. The people can get seriously injured, or the bird can. There’s not typically a happy ending to stories like this.
You wouldn’t think it was cute if a lion was jumping on people. Don’t try to pass this off as cute either.
Like ok?? But how useful is this “PLEASE OP dont romaticize apex predators landing on your head!!” psa in the big picture of what can actually happen to people on a daily basis. Tumblr why?
i don’t usually enter discourse but this is something very close to my heart
this isn’t a matter of what can happen to people on a daily basis. absolutely, this isn’t a huge issue in the grander scheme of things, i can’t fault that, but that comment was made with the understanding that it’s concerning because of those among us who have a real romanticisation and fixation with owls. the comment above yours was designed to explain how this is not natural behaviour, and is instructing people not to anthropomorphize them. tumblr is FULL of those kinds of people!!
those of us who point things like this out do so on the basis of deterring people who are not prepared to care for or handle birds of prey from getting their hands on them. luckily, in the US, owls are pretty well protected and there’s all kinds of hoops and tests you have to go through to even get near to an owl outside of a heavily controlled display or show, but other countries like the UK are not as lucky, and anyone can get their hands on anything so long as they can find someone to sell a bird to them. and yes, it is prevalent and there are breeders out there who will just hand out their birds without vetting who takes them. the standard of husbndry in general for birds of prey in the UK is shocking, and at times it very often seems like those who do it well are the outliers. i know this from first hand accounts and countless insatnces shared among us as a community of falconers and keepers, which i would actually love to share just for the general purpose of showing people the positions that some ‘falconers’ put their birds into, but they are unfortunately lost deep in various facebook groups.
the romanticisation of owls is a huge huge problem with concerns for animal welfare, mainly due to cultural influences. harry potter is basically the main culprit here in the context of owls. yes, jk rowling has urged her fans to not do this, but i have seen this epidemic the article discusses first hand.
when mass media presents keeping a highly specialised animal such as an owl in a certain light, without showing the care and time that goes into working with them, you get big, big problems, such as the simply shocking husbandry and handling i’ve had the misfortune to witness. i’ve seen larger eagle owls in small cages, and/or cat carriers. i’ve seen barn owls tethered on the same perches, all shapes and sizes of owls passed around people to pet and harass, owls in close contact with dogs and cats that endager them…all kinds of things which wouldn’t shock someone outside of tose in the know. why? ROMANTICISATION AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE.
to quote another falconer’s post on here, ‘…If you own an exotic animal, for any reason (be it falconry, whatever), what you post reflects on the species of animal (that you work with)’. that means that you have a role as an educator to not spread anthropormorphised misinformation to the public, such as saying that an owl is ‘cuddly’, in order to maintain good standards of care and respect for the natural world and those birds in captivity.
there is already a strong misconception, among the internet particularly, that owls enjoy human contact, likely stemming from how people see dogs and cats are friendly. they extrapolate and then decide that a predator must be the same. that is how people get hurt. a pet dog or cat might be ‘cuddly’. a wild predator is definitely not. as an educator, your job is to provide information and should there be any interaction with your animal between the animal and the general public, it needs to be conducted in a way THAT DOES NOT PUT THE PUBLIC AT RISK. why? common sense. if you have a dog that doesn’t do well with being touched due to personality or a turbulent past, you wouldn’t let someone pet it and get bitten or otherwise maimed. presenting this gif to people and then claiming it’s all happy and cuddly not only puts people in danger, but it furthers this romanticisation people have, which furthers people buying owls and not taking care of them because they aren’t what they saw online, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
so yeah. unless this bird as been imprinted, what this owl is doing isn’t natural behaviour and shouldn’t be presented as anything else but that.
that aside, the point of highlighting these things is not to tell EVERYONE what the problem is. this post has far too much traction and has been crossposted to several other places by now. the point is telling a small selection of people so that the information diffuses out through those few, to reach a wider audience to make larger changes to attitudes over a longer period of time.
Ultimate security as Harry is the only one capable of opening it.
Myrtle proudly spending her time acting as a guard/lookout.
Later, Harry diligently teaching Ron, Hermione, and a few choice others, like Neville, how to mimic parseltongue so that they can open it too.
Muggleborns experiencing vicious satisfaction that they’re using this chamber as a place of education and defense, reclaiming the very space Slytherin built to rid the school of their presence.
Hermione methodically dismantling the basilisk’s corpse, covertly selling the priceless ingredients to potion masters, using the funds to continue their work – buying books and battle robes and new wands for those who can’t afford it.
(Hermione saving a portion of those ingredients for her own research, straightening in triumph when she learns what basilisk venom does to horcruxes, knowing she has vials of it hidden up in her room).
Harry reverently adding the Chamber of Secrets to the Marauder’s Map, proudly continuing his family’s work and reveling in the difference they’re making.
These students – these kids – choosing to train in a dark, horrifying place that was never meant for them. Learning spells amongst shadows, growing stronger in inches of murky water, the smell of a decomposing corpse in their noses, memories of all that had happened here haunting them. They know this is what war is really like and it helps to push them forward.
Updating this because people have brought up some REALLY GREAT plot-holes and I like trying to flesh out my AUs soooooooo…
Ginny is the one who suggests using the Chamber. Of course she is. Harry isn’t the type to think of that, but for Ginny… for Ginny the Chamber still haunts her dreams, too often, and she’s furious that a part of the castle is restricted to her – a part of her home that she wants to avoid. She suggests the Chamber, partly for the DA’s benefit, mostly for her own.
Visibility is a concern – what if someone sees them going into the girl’s restroom? They think it’s a serious issue until Ron starts laughing. No one comes near that bathroom anymore, he says. Not ever. It was barely an issue while brewing a month long polyjuice potion, Ron and Harry popping in and out to add ingredients or to stir. Now though? Now that Myrtle has stepped up her game (shrieking, flooding the room if someone unwanted comes near), now that Hogwarts is infused with rumors that Harry fought a basilisk rightin there, now that the nearby corridor still has a bloody, horrifying message that even the professors haven’t been able to erase*… well, students avoid the area like the plague.
Even if they didn’t, the House Elves help them out. Dobby did, after all, suggest the Room of Requirement before Ginny brought up the Chamber. Who better than the workers who see but are not seen to help the DA keep watch?
The castle helps too. By now it knows Harry and desperately wants to protect its students. More than once Umbridge follows a DA member, only to find the staircase moving unexpectedly, taking her in another direction entirely. Sometimes there’s even a door directly beside the lavatory – appearing out of nowhere – that students can slip inside if they feel the need…
Getting out is the other concern. At first they think to bring brooms or levitate one another out… but that’s just not practical. Then, one of the Hufflepuffs asks the obvious and yet oddly illusive question: how did Salazar get out? They start a search and by the end of the day they’ve found at least four hidden exits.
One exit leads out into the Forbidden Forest, a space that’s not nearly as terrifying as it once was. Harry speaks quietly to Firenze and secures the help of the centaurs for when they need safe passage late at night. One day they encounter a group of acromantulas… and Harry learns of Hagrid’s strict new rule – friends of Hagrid are never food, no matter how easy the prey. The students don’t realize it, but they’re slowly gaining allies. Those in the forest begin to take notice of the children who walk both bravely and respectfully through their trees.
(And one day when they’re too tired to walk back, a familiar blue car pulls up and throws open its doors. Ron cheers like a maniac. Ginny laughs and threatens to tell their dad).
Though the exists are great, it’s Hermione who realizes the Chamber’s true benefit – it lies outside of Hogwart’s apparition zone. How can it not? Godric, Helga, and Rowena didn’t know of its existence when they first made the wards. So now the DA can go with ease, they just can’t pop in from anywhere else in the castle. Which is, admittedly, perfect. Apparition lessons begin in earnest.
(And during the Battle of Hogwarts, DA members take Slytherin students by the hand – those who wouldn’t, couldn’t, fight their own families. They take them down to the Chamber and tell them to apparate out. Leave while you still can. Keep safe).
Harry realizing that parseltongue is easily imitated and coming up with an actual password that has to be spoken, one linked to a spell too. It helps that the snakes around the entrance are semi-sentient and are loyal to their new master. They know who’s meant to go down there and who’s not.
Neville joking one day that they should be learning how to use swords, considering that’s how the original battle down here was won. Harry takes it seriously. Not the swords bit, but using physical/muggle fighting techniques on wizards who are too reliant on their magic. They begin reading up on hand-to-hand combat and knives.
Harry needing to test their progress and getting a really stupid idea… but honestly, those often work out in his favor. So one sunny, Saturday morning – when everyone else is lounging outside – Harry sneaks the DA into the third floor corridor. Fluffy is gone, as is the mirror, but the rest remains, no doubt left in case Dumbledore ever had to guard something else precious. Hermione, Ron, and Harry spend the day supervising, teaching their peers how to react under pressure, think through situations, and rely on one another’s skills.
And then one day things get weird (because they always do with Harry) when he realizes that the miniature chamber the basilisk was kept in is the only part of their hideout they’d yet to explore. See, given their rarity, it’s unsurprising that wizardkind knows so little about basilisks – not that they reproduce asexually or that only a parseltongue can hatch the egg. So when Harry crawls into the chamber, and finds a strange egg-like object nestled there, that begins pulsing a soft green color in his presence, and when he basically says, “What the hell…?” out loud, and when it comes out in parseltongue because he is surrounded by snake things…well, let’s just say a few minutes later Harry crawls back out, very sheepish, a baby basilisk cooing around his neck. He laughs pretty shakily and mutters something about finding their mascot.
(And they name the beast – because of course they do – and Hermione invents a soft device to cover its eyes and feeding it is an absolute horror… but they do grow to love their ‘mascot.’ And during the Battle – when Harry is off in the forest and Hogwarts is losing badly – no one is more surprised than the Death Eaters when Ron and Hermione come tearing out of the school riding a goddamn fully grown basilisk. Hermione rips off the cover on its eyes and sets to work).
“Soon it will be
too late to shift course away from our
failing trajectory, and time is running
out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day
lives and in our governing
institutions, that Earth with all its life
is our only home.”
Reconstruction of bust of Roman emperor Caracalla.
Looks Middle Eastern/ African maybe even Greek. Interesting post.
His father, the emperor Septimius Severus, was North African (the first African emperor of Rome!), and his mother, Julia Domna, was Syrian, from a wealthy priestly family
#rome was a multiethnic empire
#there was literally an emperor named philip the arab
A reminder that turning in assignments for partial credit is better than not turning them in at all. It is. Even if you think you’ve done a bad job and are ashamed of your work, or it’s way overdue, you take whatever you can get. Partial credit dramatically improves your grade over a zero, and I’m always astounded by how often even the smartest kids don’t really comprehend that. 60% is worlds better than 0%. Even 10% is going to help you. Letter grades are misleading and are not created equal. “F"s are mathematically valuable. Turn that late assignment in.
Aye real shit bruh I understand why people hundreds of years ago always claimed they’ve seen demons or have folk tales about mythological creatures because if I seen some shit like this
Before biology/science came along I’d be like “yeah mane that’s a gotdamn demon”
I knew the basics before I got it, but I had no clue…
* The blood wouldn’t necessarily be red. When I first got my period, I spent a few min looking at my underwear wondering how I shit myself. I didn’t know the blood could look brown, or be thick.
* That tampons weren’t a good idea yet. I was 10 or 11 when I got my first period and physically smaller than an adult woman. My first attempt at inserting a tampon was very painful and unsuccessful. I wouldn’t use them until I was around 14 or so.
* That when you use pads the blood can get on your bottom and I’d have to occasionally clean off the toilet seat after using it.
* That getting your first period DOES NOT mean you’re fully developed and fully able to bear children. I could have technically gotten pregnant at that age, but I was still a child and pregnancy would have put my life in danger because I was still physically immature.
* That it wouldn’t be regular for another few years.
* That very painful cramping is NOT NORMAL once you reach your 20s and is cause for concern.
* That the blood and tissue you pass can look chunky or stringy and not like blood from a cut.
* That stress can halt your period for months BUT
* That doesn’t mean you can’t get pregnant
Feel free to add your own
Relatable
-passing blood clots is completely normal
-that your period may straight up skip a month when you first get it
-and then it’ll happen twice in the same month
-getting your period does NOT automatically make you a woman
Painful cramping isn’t normal in your 20’s? That’s a little concerning, mine have been getting exponentially worse
It is NOT normal.
I can 100% guarantee you have endometriosis, PCOS, or another hormone problem. If your doctor says it’s normal, DEMAND a second opinion.
Thinking that it’s normal is how people end up infertile or dead. It’s why so many women under 40 these days are having an almost impossible time either conceiving or preventing conception. Because no one teaches anyone that it’s the sign of trouble that can very seriously hurt you.
Anyone who has severe cramps, heavy bleeding, or irregular periods after about 19 years old should seek medical advice. None of those are normal.
If you have skin tags, a hard time losing weight, migraines related to your period, depression that is amplified when menstruating, severe mood swings, sleep disturbances that get worse with menstruation, or any other significant health problem that started with puberty and is worse when hormones are fluctuating you need to be checked.
None of the things that people relate to women on their periods is actually an example of a healthy woman. It’s an example of people who need one form of treatment or another.
Do NOT go to a general doctor. Find a women’s health center. Obgyn doctors. ASK SPECIFICALLY FOR A FEMALE DOCTOR. (Also helps with creating a demand for female doctors, win-win)
And if the doctor you do see tried to write you off as “nothing” or “its normal”? Politely insist for another doctor. People forget: you are paying them for a service. If you believe the doctor is not taking you or your problems seriously, ASK FOR ANOTHER DOCTOR. Specifically, “Do you have another doctor on staff who is more experienced with female health”. It is WELL within your right to change doctors as you see fit – you owe no loyalty to one specific doctor if they aren’t meeting your needs.
most of my followers are male but this is good info for you to learn and share with your lady friends/girlfriends who may not have been taught this stuff.
Additional tips for folks who may be experiencing some of these symptoms:
If a doctor’s only suggestion is just to “lose weight”, find another doctor. If that’s not an option, at least ask “what other treatment would you recommend if I were thin?” and push for that. Even if you can lose weight safely, it won’t happen overnight. (And if you have certain disorders, it may be difficult to lose weight at all.)
If a doctor’s suggestion is just “birth control”, you try that for a few months and it doesn’t help, let them know and ask if there’s another type you can try. There are multiple formulations of birth control, and not all mixes are for everyone. ALSO:
Ask if there is other bloodwork you should consider (and other endocrine issues to rule out)
Above all else: if a doctor won’t work with you to manage symptoms that are disrupting your life, FIND ANOTHER DOCTOR
One thing I have personally experienced is that because so much research has historically been done on cis male bodies, doctors do not always know how diseases interact with a woman’s period. Also, because we stuff “women’s health” into a separate OBGYN box, doctors may also treat your menstrual cycle in a vacuum. The monthly hormone cycle does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with (and is interacted upon) by other parts of the body.
Similarly, there are mental health symptoms which are exacerbated by (or even caused by) endocrine/reproductive dysfunction. Before I had treatment for my particular issue, I alternately experienced violent mood swings and “fogs” that caused me to have difficulty learning and communicating. Turned out it was endocrine dysfunction. Within two weeks of receiving proper treatment, those mental illness symptoms vanished. It also cleared up the problems I’d been having with menstruation, which had not responded well to any form of birth control. My OBGYN had been trying to solve the wrong problem.
Focus on your symptoms and the quality of life you want.
You deserve care.
GREAT stuff^^^
There’s (stupid) historical reasons why most M.D.s and Family Doctors are poorly educated on women’s health. It’s a fact though. SO!
It’s important to take your health and wellbeing into your own hands. YOU are the expert on your own body- it’s yours- you’ve lived with it your whole life!
“The monthly hormone cycle does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with (and is interacted upon) by other parts of the body.”
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