It’s labor day here in the US, which is basically a day to relax. So I thought I’d share some videos of perhaps the most relaxed animal in the world: the mighty capybara!
Let’s start with a nice swim:
Having a soak in a barrel:
Remember the capybaras I wrote about a few days ago, the ones who basically reclaimed the territory taken from them by the inhabitants of a fancy new gated community in Buenos Aires? Well, here they are just hanging out.
And if that’s not enough for you, capybara-wise, here’s an entire hour of capybara fun. (The music kind of sucks though.)
So chill, these really remarkably large rodents.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOJgIHqxUrw
It’s not Labor Day without songs celebrating the workers.
Since it’s Labor Day, an unusual viewpoint on cancel culture: https://inthesetimes.com/article/cancel-culture-due-process-unions-the-atlantic
I was just coming here to ask if anyone had more news of los carpinchos and their reclamation project.
The people and capybaras seem to be getting along all right in that park. Capys are chill, just eating grass and staying off the paths.
The one in the barrel is Maru-worthy. If it fits, it sits.
Best.ROUS.Ever.
In other good news, Richard Spencer is completely broke.
Elsewhere, in poor-taste-but-oddly-addictive-schadenfreude, the Herman Cain awards are being collected at an astonishing rate.
@Simon: I can only take that HCA subreddit in small doses. Mostly because the screen caps of the “winners” have such hateful content.
Regarding Herr Crying Nazi: Good. I’m sure defending himself will work out fine.
@Vicki P
It’s not Labor Day at all, that’s May 1, but:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWfnO7fhQM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RHyGpFncovU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IcS_sjbJNDI
And here’s Geoff Castellucci’s rendition of a song from the days when country music wasn’t a right-wing commercial jingle:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/06/the-internet-is-a-collective-hallucination/619320/
This is an article about ‘link rot’ on the inter webs, where information gets lost and ceases to be accessible. It has massive implications, especially for the legal system, as reference articles and judgements disappear. So much of our knowledge and history is now on the web, and no longer kept in hard copy – this article did freak me out!
There are no capybaras in it, FYI
@ full metal ox
Wow; if his voice was any deeper you’d need sonar to appreciate it. Great rendition though.
That’s such a real classic US labo(u)r vibe. Like those b&w dustbowl photographs or Of Mice and Men.
In reciprocation, I offer this very English take on the job market.
@Full metal ox
I can’t see the video for some reason. Which song is it?
@Dalillama:
The song is “Sixteen Tons”; Castellucci has multiplied himself into a quartet and accompanies himself with the percussive clangor of mining tools.
@Alan Robertshaw
A piece of modern art, that song. It’s the atmosphere of a job centre distilled to it’s purest essence.
“Suck on a roll up, pull yer jeans up, FUCK OFF”
@ Full Metal Ox
Now I can see it. Strange. Anyway, I take issue with his stage name; I have a lower voice than that, sure. I much prefer Paul Robeson’s version:
https://youtu.be/niClWAnP_14
Speaking of Robeson:
https://youtu.be/n8Kxq9uFDes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xAVIL7AoAt0
Damn, that man had an amazing voice
Since I initially posted this on the wrong thread, here it goes:
As for the carpinchos… sadly a few of them have been shot, becasue assholes gonna ass >:-( still, they seem to have been isolated incidents… which is a tiny bit less worse, I guess?
The major of Mar del Plata, a seaside district around 400 kms away from Nordelta, has offered to “welcome” the carpinchos to s town that has its own carpincho population.
I suppose it’s not the worst possible outcome, but still very much unfair.
@Alan Robertshaw:
If you’d be good enough to enlighten this ignorant Yank: what are the numbers they’re reciting at the beginning?
@ full metal ox
Don’t worry; it was a mystery to us over here too!
But as the man himself explains; he used to have a job in a cold store. Every hour he and a co worker would have to check the chickens being delivered by lorry. They had to stick a thermometer into the top and middle of the pallet. If the chickens were over 22’C they had to be sent back.
So he wrote the song whilst he was doing that.
RRG. An old high school friend of mine, who I reconnected with on social media, has an autistic kid. And he’s a good guy who is trying his best (for example, he genuinely wants to prevent as many abortions as possible, so he votes for candidates that support policies that actually reduce abortion rates instead of the “pro-life” candidates that oppose those policies).
He’s considering Applied Behavioral Analysis, which is treated as the “gold standard” in therapy for autistic kids but is, quite simply, gay conversion therapy but with a search-replace for austistic kids. They were both created by the same guy, who described his autistic charges as “not people in the psychological sense.”
Having not experienced ABA myself (I was not diagnosed until adulthood), I directed him to a site dedicated to exposing the truth about ABA. And he’s pretty resistant. It seems he has an issue with being lectured about autism by actually autistic people, in a combination of “I, a neurotypical parent, know my child’s condition better than people who share it” and the “but if you are functional enough to explain why ABA is bad, you aren’t ‘autistic enough’ to speak for all autistics” and HOO BOY have I been patient and holding my tongue over these attitudes. (He’s been trying to shake off Autism Speaks’ propaganda, but it goes deep.)
And he’s trying to reject even reading the sight because the front page “contains false informatioon” because it talks about the “aversion therapy” (aka torture) which ABA’s practioners swear they don’t do any more, no sir, so really there can’t be anything at all wrong with ABA even though the base concept is to train autistic kids into masking because it makes the people who matter more comfortable.
Advice?
@Allandrel
There is unfortunately no legal recourse against filth like that due to the law largely treating children as property of their parents. He’s fixated in his bigotry and won’t listen to reason, nothing will answer but remove the unfortunate child from his custody, and as noted above there’s no framework for that in the US. There’s not much in the way of extralegal recourse either, and if there were the commenting rules would prohibit discussion of it.
My cat is sick again. This is the 3rd time in about a years time she’s had this infection. It’s clearly bacterial because antibiotics get rid of the symptoms pretty much right away, but last time she was sick the vet was stumped because it’s not common for an illness to go away for a few months and come back.
I’m not asking for medical advice, per se unless someone is actually a vet, but if someone has an idea of what could be going on, let me know so I can broach it with the vet when I bring her in.
She’s got a swollen lymph node in her throat. Just on one side. It was biopsied last time she was sick and everything was normal.
Reduced appetite, but it may be due to congestion making the food less appealing than lack of hunger because she’s willing to eat the wet food but only a small amount of kibble. Usually she is a voracious eater of either wet or dry food.
She’s drinking water and using the bathroom normally.
Coughing, sneezing and eye discharge on the side with the swollen lymph node. No nasal discharge that I can see.
Lethargy. She’s not really grooming and sleeping and hiding more than normal.
Maybe a slight fever, but it’s hard to tell because cats are always warm to the touch anyway.
This sound familiar to anyone? She’s an indoor cat, with no contact with other cats. She does however spend a lot of time in the basement and sometimes there are mice down there. I haven’t seen evidence of mice lately, but in the past, she has caught them in her mouth and brought them upstairs to play with. I don’t think she eats them though.
If the cat is suddenly getting bacterial infections she did not used to get, there are two possible causes: a change in the environment or a change in the cat.
A change in the environment could be exposing the cat repeatedly to bacteria she didn’t used to come into contact with. You said mice sometimes appear in your basement: how are they getting in? Installing a mesh across it (if it’s a hole that needs to be there, such as a sewer pipe) or plugging it (otherwise) might keep them out. Tough, metal, so it will stand up to rodent teeth gnawing at it, else the mice will eat a hole through it to get back in eventually.
A change in the cat would be more troubling as it’s less likely you can fix it. It could be behavioral changes that lead to pathogen exposures that didn’t used to happen — new sleeping spot that happens to also be a cool, damp area with bacterial growth, say — but it could be an ailing immune system, due either to age or undiagnosed underlying illness such as FIV. Has she been tested for FIV, or for immune function in general?
If it’s behavioral, then blocking her access to the problem area would be a solution, if of course you can identify the source of the exposures. Or cleaning the area in a way that obliterates the bacteria and prevents their return.
@ WWTH
It’s a long shot, and I only mention this because I’m involved in some related cases, but there’s been an upsurge in feline pancytopenia in the last year. Some of the symptoms you describe for your poor kitty (and I send her my best wishes) sound similar. Like I say, might be totally off base. But a link here for more details…
https://www.myfamilyvets.co.uk/pancytopenia-in-cats
@Weirwood, sympathies for your cat worries! So there’s definitely no tooth issues happening?
If her saliva tastes bad, she’s not going to want to put it on her fur, will she tolerate you wiping her face and her body with a warm damp washcloth? Will she let you brush her? If she will, that’s a psychological help for her as well as a practical one. Although she is an indoor cat, the mice are free-ranging, so it isn’t impossible that she is exposed to poisoned mice periodically, or ones that have been in grass sprayed with weed killer etc.
There is food you can get from the vet that is very strongly flavoured and scented, that it is used for cats who won’t eat after head injuries, anaesthetics etc, it is a temporary thing for short term use. I remember one of my cats had it for a day or so, to kickstart his eating when he had been ill. (It worked well.) Does her breath smell bad? Any stinky spots on her bedding? I am thinking there of an abscess obviously, from a mouse bite or damaged tooth. I once had a cat who somehow got an abscess on the roof of her mouth so there was nothing externally obvious in the beginning to explain her symptoms and her teeth looked fine, and she was swallowing the pus as it developed. First time I have ever written that repulsive phrase!
Heads up, folks: Archive.today—which a lot of people use to bypass paywalls and preserve incriminating evidence—and its various alternate locations are down. Is a DDoS underway?
@WWTH
So sorry to hear that your cat is not feeling well. Best wishes for a quick recovery.