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doggoes kitties open thread

Open thread for personal stuff, like if there’s a cat always sitting on you

BFFs, or cat tyranny in action?

By request, a long overdue open thread for personal stuff! No trolls.

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kupo
kupo
5 years ago

Update on May Day protests: Proud Boys are also planning a counter-protest, so maybe coworkers were right.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

Dracarys doesn’t always sit on me because the dog’s constant presence in the living room makes her nervous. But she does flop onto my chest, putting and frequently drooling every night at bedtime. If I am on my side she will sit next to me and stare until I roll over and provide room for her to lie on me.

Yes, my cat has trained me to roll over like a damn dog.

opposablethumbs
opposablethumbs
5 years ago

@Scanisaurus, I really like the cartoon! It has to contain a lot of text because, well, there’s a lot to say – but you’ve made every word count and said it all concisely and clearly – and humorously too.

More visually savvy/graphics-designery people than I might have useful things to say about the colours and font – which I personally like, but I don’t know what kinds of colouring and lettering are clearest/easiest on the eyes for the most possible people, since it’s so important to take in all the content.

Really nice work! 🙂

Ooglyboggles
Ooglyboggles
5 years ago

I aced my exams in good news.

In bad news my doggo wants to do anything other than cuddle with me 🙁

Scanisaurus
Scanisaurus
5 years ago

@Rabid Rabbit
So glad you liked it!

Yeah, Downfall does fail the test with a very small margin, but I do still think it’s a great movie for all it’s worth, and I do appreciate that it never felt gratuitous in any of the things it depicted.

I suppose there’s also an implied rape threat at the end, but it remains implied and nothing happens. And honestly, in the context of what the Soviet army did in Germany at the end of WW2, that’s downright miraculous.

However, I wouldn’t call the fact that it was only implied and didn’t escalate was a miracle, for while millions of women* did suffer sexual violence in the war and it was common, it was’t inevitable and both German and Russian sources alike tell that for most of the time, the Soviet soldiers wouldn’t dare to attack civilians in the direct presence of an superior officer. So it would have been a very lucky break for sure, but not strange enough that I’d call it a miracle.

*and many men, but that’s never treated as something necessary to address

@Lurker LXVII of the Chattering Class
Thanks! I haven’t seen Hacksaw Ridge myself, but I’ve heard it’s good and might give it a watch. Plenty of other war movies that I liked, like the 1972 The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Unbroken, Dunkirk or the 1981 Das Boot, all also fail the test due to lack of female characters, or in case of The Dawns Here Are Quiet, a gratuitous nude scene, but are still great movies.

Similar to the Bechdel test, one can say that it’s not a problem when individual films fail the test, but it is a problem when almost none pass it.
@Cyborgette
That’s funny, I’d just shared the very same article on Reddit today!
@opposablethumbs
Thank you! As for the color choice, I’ll admit I used a color palette generator to get some color combos I liked, but I’m glad you liked it too!

Anyways, I’m so glad you all liked my comic, and I do hope you’ll want to save it or share it around in media discussions, I haven’t really dared share it myself anywhere else where I’m worried I could get nasty replies in my inbox myself, but I’m very happy that you all here liked it!

Rabid Rabbit
Rabid Rabbit
5 years ago

@Scanisaurus:

Yeah, there’s nothing gratuitous in Downfall. Even the bare breasts, which in a world of high collars and very buttoned-down women, where Eva Braun’s slightly low-cut gown and her dancing the swing were the most daring things, are a shocking signal of just how far things have gone in terms of dancing on the edge of destruction. Actually, it seems toned down from the actual reports.

As for the sexual violence… fair point, though Berlin after the surrender seems to have been a bit different, at least according to Anthony Beevor’s The Fall of Berlin 1945:

CW: wartime sexual violence

The worst mistake of the German military authorities had been their refusal to destroy alcohol stocks in the path of the Red Army’s advance. This decision was based on the idea that a drunken enemy could not fight. Tragically for the female population, however, it was exactly what the Red Army soldiers seemed to need to give them courage to rape as well as to celebrate the end of such a terrible war… Women soon learned to disappear during the “hunting hours” of the evening… Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning, when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before… Berliners remember that, because all the windows had been blown in, you could hear the screams every night.

By this stage Soviet soldiers treated German women much more as sexual spoils of war than as substitutes for the Wehrmacht on which to vent their rage… The soldiers concerned appear to have felt that they were satisfying a sexual need after all their time at the front. In this most soldier rapists did not demonstrate gratuitous violence, provided the woman did not resist. [There is] a difference between the incoherent violence in East Prussia and the notion of carnal booty in Berlin… As the Red Army example shows, the practice of collective rape can even become a form of bonding process.

a wide rage of anecdotal evidence indicates that Red Army officers who were Jewish went out of their way to protect German women and girls. Yet it would appear that the majority of officers and soldiers turned a blind eye to Stalin’s order [to treat civilians better]… Many think that the Red Army was given two weeks to plunder and rape in Berlin before discipline was exerted, but it was not nearly so simple as that. On 3 August, three months after the surrender, Zhukov had to issue even tougher regulations…

Of course, there may actually have been fewer rapes than expected because of the Russian propaganda machine insisting that “German intelligence left a great number of women in Berlin infected with venereal diseases with the purpose of infecting Red Army officers.”

Beevor is a bit of a gender essentialist in discussing this, and completely ignores male victims, but all this to say that while “miracle” might be too strong a word, it’s still a stroke of luck that Traudl escapes that.

As to whether this means that Downfall actually minimizes the horrors of the European war’s endgame by avoiding the subject, I couldn’t say — though given how seriously the filmmakers treat everything, it was probably a good decision on their part, as giving it the attention it deserves would have upset the balance of the film, and not giving it that attention would have made its appearance gratuitous in a way that would definitely make the film flunk your test.

(The reactions of the German men, incidentally, are a perfect case study in fragile masculinity.)

Weatherwax
Weatherwax
5 years ago

Lovely to hear everyone’s good news and cat cuddling.

I had a lovely day. I spent it with my sister-in-law and six month old nephew. He was delightful, and I’ve never had a chance before to hang out just with her, so it was good to get to know her a little better.

Scanisaurus
Scanisaurus
5 years ago

@Rabid Rabbit
Like I’ve said, I’m not denying that it was very common and happened to millions of women, just pointing out that it did not happen to every woman. To quote the author Göran Rosenberg, who’s mother survived the Holocaust and was liberated by the Red Army but had a major take pity on her and her sister and protect them from abuse by Soviet soldiers; why he helps them is unclear. But not really more unclear than why there are people acting human under inhuman circumstances.

I don’t think the movie minimizes the horrors of war in any way and I hope everyone here can agree that such a heavy subject shouldn’t ever be casually included just for the sake of it and Downfall‘s approach was probably best for the movie, but I do think it’s worth pondering why so many filmmakers think it’s a necessary aspect of war to go into detail about when it happens to women, but when it comes to sexual violence against men, there is virtually no movies addressing it and even in history books and documentaries the authors seem to deliberately avoid bringing the topic up, and and in one of the few examples that actually does bring it up, it’s literally reduced to one single sentence that only raises more questions than it answers due to how fast it’s glossed over whilst the author go into great detail of the abuse the women suffered, and a big reason for making the comic was that I wanted to question and highlight this double standard.

It’s also worth noting that the movie is based on the experiences of Traudl Junge, and told from her perspective and what she experienced, so it would have been unwise to add something like that when it didn’t happen to her in reality.

As for the nudity, though you’re right that it was brief and not voyeuristic, one could still play the devil’s advocate and ask why they chose to illustrate the debauchery with a topless woman and not a man caught with his pants down or similar.

Rabid Rabbit
Rabid Rabbit
5 years ago

This might be too on topic for an open thread, but all the same, some good news from Kansas re: abortion rights.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/us/2019/05/01/kansas-senate-overrides-governors-abortion-reversal-veto.html

I mean, it could be better news, but at least they failed to override the veto.

Hippodameia
Hippodameia
5 years ago

My neighbors had a glorious, friendly tuxedo cat who very much enjoyed being himself. He tried to sneak into our house* once by pretending to be our cat – luckily it didn’t work, as our dogs would not have been welcoming.

Does anyone here have experience with Cushing’s Syndrome/Disease?

*This was thirty-plus years ago. Any cat I’d have these days would be indoors only.

Weatherwax
Weatherwax
5 years ago

@Hippodameia

In the UK, there was a documentary about cats relatively recently (by which I mean in the last 5 years; I’m getting old). One thing they did was put GPS collars on a bunch of cats in 3 different environments (urban, village – so semi-rural, and farm cats).

One of the experiences that stuck with me was an urban household of 4 cats. 3 of them spent all day out & about and all night on owners’ bed. No. 4 spent all his time, except for breakfast & dinner, at the neighbour’s. Luckily the neighbour was an elderly gent with no pets who loved having a cat come sit on his lap. But I was slightly frustrated with the owners, who didn’t seem to have noticed that one of their cats was deeply unhappy in their home. Maybe better to take the food to the neighbour’s house and be pleased both cat & neighbour were content.

I guess I’m asking whether you need to flag up the cat behaviour with the owners, because s/he may not be happy. But it’s a difficult subject to address.

Teabug
Teabug
5 years ago

Growing up, I had a tortoise shell cat named Bitey, so named because if you neglected to pet her for half a second, she’d nip your fingers or more preferably, your toes. I think she may have been an erotomanic – she followed me everywhere and could never get enough attention. No matter how quickly you could shut your bedroom door, she’d manage to get in. She also had a foot fetish – or maybe her kibble didn’t have the daily recommended amount of toe jam in it. Those bargain brands, you know, but she never complained, just found a way to make it work. Either way, she’d thoroughly clean between your toes while you slept. Alas, Bitey. Bedtime just isn’t the same without you.

(A)utonomous Escapist
(A)utonomous Escapist
5 years ago

Had a rough few days. Been very busy with organizing for a 1. May event on the international workers day. Then today, while I was working our event, the attendant demonstration was first of all protested by self-described Anti-Antifa, foreseeably forged in an alliance of market-fundametalists and ethnonationalists. This was willingly facilitated by the cops, who followed this up by brutally attacking a totally peaceful demo, indiscriminately beating, brutalizing and arresting comrades, and continuously terrorizing our event.

I am full of anger for my brutalized friends, rage against the machine, and love for my friends, comrades and lovers.

Hippodameia
Hippodameia
5 years ago

Weatherwax,

This was 1983(ish) so Frango the Cat and his people aren’t around any more. I don’t think Frango was unhappy – it was more that he was the feline equivalent of a Labrador and had a “I’m going to be friends with you today!” attitude. I’d guess that he was attempting to expand his domain when he tried to sneak into my house. 🙂

Nequam
Nequam
5 years ago

Today is my 22nd wedding anniversary, but as it seemed like it was a long day of mail delivery for my husband we’ll probably have our fancy dinner on the weekend.

Rabid Rabbit
Rabid Rabbit
5 years ago

@Scanisaurus

Probably because while Junge’s memoirs do mention couples getting it on, she doesn’t mention whether the men were naked or just had their zips down, but she specifies that “The women had discarded all modesty and were freely exposing their private parts.” So there’s documentary evidence…

But yeah, if they’d added something like that to Junge’s experience, it wouldn’t just have been a violation of your test rules, it would have been an egregious one.

One book that doesn’t shy away from the question of sexual violence against men is Timothy Findley’s WW1 novel The Wars, though in that case (spoilers) it’s among soldiers on the same side. Unsurprisingly, his publishers tried to convince him to cut the rape scene. I studied the novel in undergrad, and looking back, it’s fascinating to remember how much the other guys in the class wanted to skip over discussing that part because of how much it disturbed them, and how they thought it was gratuitous and needlessly shocking and too graphic. But then, it was meant to be: Findley thought the scene was an essential metaphor for what the elites had done to a whole generation of young men in letting the war happen. (This was a while ago, so I have to admit it didn’t occur to me to point out that women have to read rape scenes quite often, so it was only fair that we should have to for a change.)

Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meanie
Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meanie
5 years ago

For those who haven’t heard of this trick yet – if you type ‘Thanos’ into Google, you will get a result that shows a tiny Infinity Gauntlet on it. Click on that icon, and half of your results will disappear. Click on it again, and they come back. Fun trick.

And the next time you go to the movies, try to arrive early enough to catch the Noovie segment* of commercials, movie, and TV promos. Currently they’re running a Pixi phone commercial that uses footage from the climactic battle of the first Avengers movie, but showing it from the perspective of the civilians. It’s a hoot to watch. (“Great. Just great. Another alien invasion.”) I’d link to it, but my GoogleFu failed to find it for me. 🙁

*I do not know if Noovie shows the same segments before all movies regardless of genre, or if they adjust their segments to reflect the (presumed) tastes of whoever they think will be watching the main movie. Or if they’re only showing that commercial in front of the MCU movies instead of showing it in front of Shazam or Breakthrough too.

Fabe
Fabe
5 years ago

@Scanisaurus

Do you have a regular or even semi-regular web comic? because I would totally read it if you do

epitome of incomprehensibility

End-of-term is a busy season; this week would’ve been calmer, but I have a choir concert this Saturday and one of my colleagues is leaving.

I do have a short vacation Sunday-Thursday – I’ll be in Nova Scotia for my brother’s graduation. My parents are leaving Friday; I’m catching a plane Sunday. Environmentally speaking, I feel guilty for flying such a short way (I’m in Montreal), but my concert’s on Saturday night and that’s the only way to get there in time.

@Victorious Parasol – that’s great news!

@Viscaria – Happy birthday in advance! I also get anxious about getting older + not getting enough things done, but I liked being 30 more than 29. Maybe I don’t like prime numbers? I mean, I’ll be 31 in June and 31 just feels meh 😛

@Scanisaurus – Yay, comic!! I second Fabe! 😀 Also I laughed at the “privates” joke. (Despite my age, I am a child.) The one thing I’d suggest is not putting a speech bubble in front of a face [ETA: 2nd-last panel] – maybe move the speaker so her profile’s at the side of the panel – but the design itself is awesome.

About my reply in the other thread – you were talking about historical war stories specifically, so my mention of sci-fi was pretty off topic. Sorry about that!

Shadowplay
5 years ago

Sadly, there isn’t a cat currently sitting on me. Two are upstairs, snoring on my partner. Zampas is sitting in his usual place on the arm of my chair, waiting his chance to try to sneak into my robe pocket.

Sounds odd, but he spent most of the first few weeks of his life in either my robe pocket or a hoodie kangaroo pocket – we found him when he were less than 2 days old (mother were a feral that the foxes got and his brother and sister didn’t survive)and he needed the warmth and company.

He doesn’t fit. Hasn’t fit since he were about a month old. Doesn’t stop him from trying every single night though. He’s an idiot – but he’s my idiot.

contrapangloss
5 years ago

Design report is done! Maybe not A+ material, but done. Hopefully a solid B+ paper.

My senior design group generated 59 pages of figures, technical drawings, force testing, appendices, requirements, specifications, and two whole pages of “so these things could have been better if we’d considered ——“

A lot of our problems were a shoestring budget paired with inexperience, and we learned a heck of a lot about what totally doesn’t work, and what totally does.

One last (much shorter, probably 10 pages max) design report to complete, and one final exam, and I’ll be a legit engineer.

Lainy
Lainy
5 years ago

You guys wanna know how I’m going to die. Finals week is the answer. Dig a hole in the back yard and throw my freckled ass into it.

Moggie
Moggie
5 years ago

@Shadowplay, sounds like you ought to sew a huge pocket onto your robe.

Moon_custafer
Moon_custafer
5 years ago

Last year a neighbour’s cat snuck into the hall and meowed outside our door to be let in (he could probably smell our cats, who were non-plussed about the situation.) He had no collar, but was obviously not a feral (sleek, didn’t mind being picked up, also we live on the 23rd floor), and I had to go around knocking on doors to find out where he’d come from.

Shadowplay
5 years ago

@Moggie

He’d agree! I don’t think any stitching of mine would hold him though – he’s a rather large cat. 🙂