Many of us have seen those classic wildlife documentaries of wolves or lions working in packs to chase down their prey.
But snakes?
A new study has revealed that Cuban boas coordinate bat hunts in the sinkhole caves of Cuba’s Desembarco del Granma National Park.
It was already known that the reptiles hang from the ceiling at the cave entrance and catch Jamaican fruit bats that roost inside.
But Vladimir Dinets, a psychologist from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, found that snakes position their bodies close together, closing off the bats’ flight path and resulting in more successful captures. (Also see “Watch Snakes Grab Cave Bats From Mid-air.”)
“They just block the entire opening, so there’s nowhere to go,” says Dinets, whose paper, published recently in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition, is the first scientifically documented observation of coordinated hunting among snakes.
@Doug Mataconis:
I think even some of the people who read it religiously are beginning to figure that out. What amuses me is that anyone would regard it as a “news” source.
The police murdered another black man in a suburb of Minneapolis yesterday. You’d think they’d learn: the cops are on trial in this state for the murder of George Floyd, so you’d think the word would come down to not shoot anyone for a traffic violation, at least until everyone calms down and we can get back to mindless obedience to the status quo, but no. Daunte Wright was stopped for something trivial, and it ended up with him dead in the street.
Since the beginning of 2020, over 500 white people have been killed by the cops compared to fewer than 300 black people. Yet there hasn’t been a single protest against the white killings. The protesters choose only the black victims to be outraged about. Ask yourself why.
@CatOnADoor
I’m still asking myself how a grown man doesn’t know anything about proportions.
I’m currently reading The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe by Dr. Steven Novella. I’ve been following his blog, Neurologica, for some years now. He goes into great detail regarding logical fallacies, biases, perception, memory, heuristics, etc.
But then the question becomes how come large numbers of people don’t know anything about proportions.
It’s also useful to note the numbers alone tell very little. For example, under what circumstances did these police killings occur, and were circumstances the same for the two groups in question. Not to mention how are these groups defined and by whom.
@Teve: I don’t know where Matt Walsh is going with that, but for my part, I think we could stand to look into those 500 killings of white people too. I mean, I think black men have it worse, but authoritarians gonna do their thing when they get the chance.
One of the things that pushed me leftward was Kent State. Those were white people killed but they were “hippies”. You know, people that place high value on things like “peace” and “love”. They are gonna tee off on people who are Other, and there’s a variety of things that can put you in that category, blackness being very high on the list, of course.
If you’re among the billions of people using Chrome, then you need to stop—especially if you use Google’s browser on an Apple device. Stark new data disclosures and Chrome’s “creepy” new tracking technology should serve as a serious warning that it’s time to switch.
@Flat Earth Luddite: it’s the rank dishonesty that is the big problem here. They tell users that the built-in controls can prevent third-parties from tracking them around the internet, then quietly tell their customers who pay serious cash for such tracking, ‘Don’t worry, we have a way a fingerprinting users that is 60-70% as good.’
I’ve been struggling with this all year.
Path A: Abandon Google entirely, use my ProtonMail account, Proton VPN, DuckDuckGo, Safari with tracking disabled, AppleMaps, and an iPhone when the new models come out in September. Enjoy the social cachet of being a Blue Bubble. Go as invisible as possible.
Path B: Realize the 20 years of data Google has already collected on me is impossible to thwart, keep using Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, enjoy the convenience of full integration, enjoy vastly better Speech-to-text than Apple’s frustratingly shitty offering, and just accept the modern reality that third-party data brokers know me better than I do, and pay $350 for a Pixel instead of $900 for an iphone.
@Teve: This is your decision, and I won’t quibble with however you decide it. For me, though, tracking only creates minor nuisances, and some amusement. For instance, the internet loves to show me banner ads trying to sell me the exact thing I just bought. Of course, I already bought it, I ain’t gonna buy a second one. So it kind of gives me the sense of “yeah, they are tracking me, but they aren’t that competent”.
Now, I have wished for a way to say, “That ad irritates the crap out of me, and it is of value to no one to show it to me, can we just move on?” Of course, I will never get that, because that means less money for the people selling ad space. If their clients want to pay to show ads to people who hate them, well, they’ll take the money. I don’t know, maybe if I were in their shoes, I would too.
@Jay L Gischer: i read once that ads-after-purchase was a scam. FB tells advertisers ‘x # of users bought your product within 3 days of seeing your ad! Without telling them the timing is backwards. It boosts their ad/purchase correlation metrics.
@Jay L Gischer: I don’t like tracking because Silicon Valley puts dystopian scenarios within reach.
“Mr. Tory, we’re sorry about your emergency gallstone surgery, but due to available data it’s clear you were an alcoholic in your 30’s and therefore your gallbladder issues are likely a preexisting condition and not covered by your policy. Kthxbai!”
I must say I was kind of disturbed by the “if Major is biting them, they must be bad people” narrative that was growing up around that issue. Expecting to be able to do your job without getting attacked by a dog is a reasonable workplace safety expectation, and the “you must have done something to deserve it” response reminds me a lot of how harassment victims get treated when they try reporting it.
I don’t think it’s even a partisan thing, it came across more as a “dog people” thing. I love dogs myself, but there’s a lot of people who haven’t taken the time to properly socialize their pets and then want to blame the targets of aggressive behavior for it.
@Teve: Like I said before, I’m not going to quibble with your choices. Also, your nightmare kidney stone scenario has a thread of validity to it, for sure.
That said, I feel your stance is kind of like old King Canute commanding the tide to cease coming in. We can’t stop this from happening. I think it’s best to focus on preventing the damage it could cause. If we had universal health care, where everything is paid for, your scenario is a non–issue. For instance.
A sizeable portion of “dog people” seem to basically believe their pets are supernatural evil detectors, so if they react badly to someone, that must mean the someone is secretly evil. There’s also another sizeable portion that think a dog aggressively asserting dominance qualifies as a sign of affection.
Memo to self: never edit a comment, just leave the typo. Luddite edits drop out of thread never to be seen again. Just like my comments with links, alas.
@Stormy Dragon: I didn’t see much of that, but I’m a dog person and most of what I saw was far more in line with what responsible owners would say, which was basically “those dogs are under stress and Shepherds are a protective breed–he needs training and/or should be restricted to as little interaction with others as possible.”
Some dogs are good at identifying “bad people” but most of what they identify are scents that indicate higher levels of stress. If a dog is around someone who doesn’t like dogs, they can generally *sense* that, but that doesn’t mean they will necessarily bite.
This happened randomly to several posts that I edited a month or so ago. I did not have any trouble editing (when EDIT was available) before that and it has not reoccurred. I have done nothing differently all along.
No problem with links as long as 3 is the limit per comment.
I use Safari 12.1.2 (12607.3.10).
This is just an anecdote and I doubt it will be of any help to you.
I had a chocolate lab mix who was perfectly friendly to people who came to visit, and tended to ignore anyone she passed on the street. Early one night, I was walking her when she suddenly stopped, then placed herself at a right angle to my legs, lowered her head, and began growling. She was staring at a middle-aged man, perfectly innocuous-looking, who was about fifty feet ahead and coming toward me. He heard the growling and crossed the street.
This was a dog who ignored everyone outside the house. Whatever it was about this guy, she really didn’t like him.
At first, when I saw this quote on OTB I thought Sidney Powell was talking about Trump, seriously…then when I read she was referring to Biden all I could do was smile, chuckle a little bit, and shake my head, the projection is strong with the MAGA crowd.
Also, it is amazing how the MAGA crowd does not care about the debasement they put themselves through on a daily basis by cozying up to Trump. Trump calls many members of Congress all sorts of nasty names and they almost literally say Thank You Sir! May I have another (insult)!
I guess the MAGA folks rationalize Trump’s insults the same way someone would if they were being roasted as something they consider a badge of honor (being “roasted” by Trump). Of course, the very guy doing the roasting is the same person who turned this country upside down because he could not handle some (for the most part) gentle barbs being thrown his way.
The reality is that if McConnell reacted to Trump’s insults (the guy even had his wife dissed by Trump) the way Trump does to invectives hurled at him then McConnell would make it his life’s mission to make Trump’s life a living hell for the next 20 years.
Sigh, instead McConnell just lets it roll off his back and will go back to begging for votes from the MAGA crowd, that the GOP is so cowed by this crowd is just beyond sad.
@inhumans99:
Oh, the house and senate Republicans are definitely cowed by Trump’s supporters, except perhaps for the ten senators who voted to impeach him and a handful of house members such as Kinzinger.
There are two things one must never do to a dog, aside from anything cruel which goes without saying, to avoid provoking an aggressive response.
One is never to bother them while they’re eating from their dish, especially not taking the food away from the dog or taking the dog away from the food (for small dogs).
The other is not to tease the dog by doing things that clearly bother them. This varies a lot, but scaring the dog, blowing in their faces, pulling their fur or tail, grabbing their paws, etc. are common.
The second thing may elicit a warning growl before a bite. Smaller dogs may retreat rather than bite, but don’t count on it.
Since the beginning of 2020, over 500 white people have been killed by the cops compared to fewer than 300 black people. Yet there hasn’t been a single protest against the white killings. The protesters choose only the black victims to be outraged about. Ask yourself why.
The kindest interpretation is that this is an example of innumeracy and that Walsh doesn’t understand the concept of disparities (i.e. ratio comparisons based on population sizes).
Unfortunately, the further I get into the criminal legal system reform space, the more I am coming to believe that some people are more than happy to sacrifice excess members of their own racial group in order to maintain white supremacy.
Oh, he only intended to tase him for some random traffic violation. Okay! That makes a WHOLE WORLD of difference. Carry on.
Because tasing a car makes so much more sense.
But hey, we folks working on reform cannot possible understand what it means to be a police officer or something, and therefore there’s no good argument for allowing the community to have some oversight of the people who police them.
I mean this is totally a new issue of course, it’s not like it goes back to Plato or anything.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: the officer is a she and while I choose not to watch video like that, a lawyer friend has watched the video and says it’s clear to her that the officer thought she grabbed her taser. Obviously it’s not going to bring the man back to life, but it looks less like murder and more like negligent homicide or something like that.
One is never to bother them while they’re eating from their dish, especially not taking the food away from the dog or taking the dog away from the food (for small dogs).
When we first got our pup (she was 6 months old) she was very food-protective. Since this can lead to bites, our trainer recommended that we address it. We hand-fed her for a week, basically pouring her food into her bowl and then she ate the kibble when we handed it to her. She stopped growling–now, she might slow down if we’re nearby, but I can reach into her bowl and take food from it and she doesn’t do anything. (I always give it back.)
Provoking an aggressive response can vary from dog to dog. I’ve mentioned before that the only time my dogs have snapped at others is when they had perceived me to be under threat (in both cases, someone unknown to the dog appeared to be approaching me). My guess is there’s a similar dynamic at play for Major, who, unfortunately is in a combo residence/office building where there are frequently new faces.
@Sleeping Dog: The headline is “ Major, one of Biden’s dogs, will be sent away for training after biting incidents” and the text is paywalled, so we don’t really know who is biting who here.
Major could be being sent away for his own protection. Man-Bites-Dog stories and all that.
One is never to bother them while they’re eating from their dish, especially not taking the food away from the dog or taking the dog away from the food (for small dogs).
Part of your duty as an owner is to train your dog that if a human takes their food, they don’t snap at them. If you just let them think that’s okay, you’re putting their life at risk if someday a child that doesn’t know better tries to take something from them and next thing you know you’re being forced to put the dog down because it attacked a child.
Much like Jen’s story, I remember growing up my parents spending time training each of our dogs that they can’t snap if someone takes their food.
There is more evidence that Acosta and Stelter are red Chinese spies than there is proving that Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist, which of course he isn’t. People with inferior intelligence always resort to name calling because they lack facts for their argument. Fox is being called on to fire Tucker Carson? By who? The asswipes at CNN? #TuckerCarlson
One is never to bother them while they’re eating from their dish, especially not taking the food away from the dog or taking the dog away from the food (for small dogs).
I’ve never owned a dog, but Gary Larson says the above was the inspiration for this cartoon.
@Kathy:..Smaller dogs may retreat rather than bite, but don’t count on it.
Before I routinely entered back yards to climb telephone poles I was a water meter reader. Both jobs issued me spray repellant. I never had to use it. I made my peace with dogs a long time ago.
There were times when it was clearly not safe to enter a fenced in yard because of a dog of any size. I was never required to do that. If no one was home I left a message on the door to get the dog inside by the next day before I returned.
Cows in a field were no problem. They just followed me around and never once barked.
@Mu Yixiao: and Remove It Permanently and Greasemonkey scripts etc, all stuff I used to run. But this iPad I’m typing on doesn’t permit the same flexibility. 🙁
With out first dog, Fuzz, we never bothered her while she was eating, or gnawing the meat off a bone out in the yard. Same when her daughter, Daisy, came along a few years later.
My third dog, Emm, had a peculiar eating habit. She waited til I got home and followed me to the table, where she begged for scraps. I put her dish with her food right next to my chair. She’d sniff at it, then ignore it and continue begging. I would then give her a few small pieces of meat, but I’d place them in her dish with the rest of her food. She then ate the whole dish.
When she was done, she retreated under the table until I was done. then we went upstairs to my room and played and took a nap.
Knee-jerk critics of Black Lives Matter have miss an important point: that any reforms that decrease the number of black people being killed by the police would decrease the number of non-black being killed by the police.
In semi-private, encrypted chats, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists planned rallies in dozens of cities Sunday to promote their racist movements and spread their ideologies to larger audiences.
Hyped by organizers as events that would make “the whole world tremble,” the rallies ran into a major problem: Hardly anyone showed up.
The “White Lives Matter” rallies, the first major real-world organizing efforts by white supremacists since 2018, were planned on the encrypted app Telegram after many aligned groups were alleged to have taken part in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S Capitol.
The poor showing underscores how the country’s unpopular and disorganized extremist movements have been driven underground by increased scrutiny from the media, law enforcement agencies and far-left activists who infiltrate their private online spaces and disrupt their attempts to communicate and organize.
Yeah, the they “must be bad people” meme is stupid, either people who know nothing about dogs or their partisan frame has moved to demented.
Major is simply doing what the breed has been bred to do, guard and to guard with aggression. Being a house dog, Major quite likely has never been trained to guard, so he’s working on instinct, which in this case is bad. And as a reminder German Shepard’s rank high in frequency of dog bights.
But look at it from Major’s view. He was adopted from the pound several months ago, a stressful period, given up by the prior owner, a very stressful experience. He moved in with the Biden’s at a time when they were pretty much around all the time and few others were around and those that were, were probably the same people everyday. It takes about 6 months for an adopted, adult dog to adapt and accept the adopting family, so just when he is settling in, he’s moved to a new location with hundreds of people coming and going. While he’s living in the family quarters and not seeing all those folks, he certainly smells and hears them, given dogs rely far more on hearing and smell to learn about the world around them. Add to that, staff are going in and out of the family quarters doing their jobs.
I feel for Major, but don’t believe he’ll be a successful WH pup.
I can probably get an appointment in a certain red state, but only a day or two in advance. This makes booking a plane ticket difficult. It would be easier to look for flights first, then get the appointment and book the flight at almost the same time, and pray the price holds.
There are two other factors to consider. One is we’re swamped at work, and I can’t just take off for a day or two. This will persist until around the end of next week. The other is the doctor has me taking an anti inflammatory. I’ve read it’s best to avoid such things before getting the vaccine.
It looks likely, too, my age group in Mexico will begin to receive vaccines by late April. If so, I may just wait. The issue here is I might get a trustworthy vaccine like Pfizer or AstraZeneca, or I may get a Chinese vaccine of uncertain efficacy, or the Russian one (which might be better than the Chinese ones).
I’m unsure what to call someone like Walsh. He’s not exactly a nihilist. He cares about at least one thing, getting popular by sticking it to the libtards.
@Monala: I read this morning that part of the reason they couldn’t rally many people was that so many of the neo-Nazis refused to involve the larger, nationally known groups, certain that they had been infiltrated by the FBI and Deep State and whatnot.
Phase 1c finally started today in my state, so I was finally able to sign up for an appointment. My immediate area has huge waiting lists, but I was able to get an appointment for saturday in the much more Republican county next door for Saturday.
Ironically, today the governor also announced that everyone can sign up for an appointment tomorrow, so after waiting patiently over four months for our turn, all the Phase 1c essential workers literally had one day to sign up before the free for all started!
@Teve: Major is the younger dog. He’s 3, and was taken in by the Bidens as a foster in late 2018, he was born in January of 2018. I don’t think that’s a factor so much as the rapidly changing environments.
Champ is the elderly dog, and is well into DNGAF territory. He’s just happy to have a sunbeam and see Joe.
I’m less concerned about when I get vaccinated, than about the slow pace of vaccination thus far. The numbers suggest around 11 million shots, no clue how many are second doses, for an average of 125,000 shots per day. That will allow us to fully vaccinate the whole population in 2.6 years.
I know it’s hard to vaccinate over 100 million people, and that vaccines are heading first to richer countries. But come on. Chile’s doing better, and so is Brazil (which seems to be on the side of COVID in this matter) . Ok, Chile is a smaller country, but Brazil is much bigger.
Like Descartes, I cannot do much to get more people vaccinated, but I can take care of my own shot(s). So that’s what I’ll do.
The issue with nippers is they think they are making decisions. Major is not as happy a camper as he might be, not being clear on who’s in charge creates a lot of stress in dogs. Happens when dogs are coddled a bit too much and not trained enough. It’s when dogs are absolutely sure of their place in the pack that they are happiest. GSPs require (and love) a firm, fair hand and a ton of socialization. They are a working breed bred to guard, and like most Germans, when left un-checked plot world-domination.
Send the dog to an academy? It’s the human who needs training 99% of the time.
Of my three dogs, Fuzz was the most aggressive. Not on her own initiative, but she had a short temper. She growled often, and snapped the air, but she never bit me or anyone in the family, aside from playful bites when she was a tiny puppy and interested in play. Daisy was meek and very quiet. Fuzz was her alpha, no question. they did eat off the same dish at the same time, but I noticed Daisy never ate from their dish if Fuzz was in the room, unless her mom was also eating.
Emm came years later. She never growled at me, not even once, but she liked to bark at people walking by the house. She sometimes barked at people who came in. Now, the odd thing is she never barked at any of my friends who came to the house, not once. She actually acted very submissive and friendly towards them, and would play with them and allowed them to pet her.
She never bit me, again save when she was a tiny puppy and we were playing. She remained playful her whole life, and tore into her stuffed animals and rubber balls with abandon, but she was careful around people.
They were all small. Fuzz and Daisy were toy poodles. I don’t know what breed Emm was, but she was about the same size as Fuzz and Daisy.
@Teve: I did watch the video. It’s her body cam. There’s an audio track on which she shouts she’s going to tase him. Then the gun comes up, she fires as one round, and immediately screams to the effect of OMG, I shot him. The victim had the car door open, tussling with the other two cops. It looks like the shock of the moment freezes the officers and the victim falls back into the car and drives off.
This does seem to back up that she intended to tase. It may be a case where a body cam exonerates the officer of more serious charges.
Off topic even in an open thread–I just finished watching Season 1 of Resident Alien and was surprised at how much I enjoyed this show. Funny with the right touch of really dark humor and just enough insight to make me think.
Yesterday afternoon:
Last night:
CNN: Gaetz Denied Meeting With Trump
As if the world is not terrifying enough. This came out a couple of years ago but just ran across it.
Snakes Gang Up to Hunt Prey—a First
Sidney Powell called Joe Biden “a demented pervert who can’t tie his shoelaces or know where he is.”
This is screaming headlines on the Gateway Pundit and absolutely nowhere else.
Something odd is happening with Waze. I can’t get it to work figuring out a route when I’m at or near my workplace. It does fine everywhere else.
@CSK:
Gateway Pundit is a den of utter stupidity
@Doug Mataconis:
I think even some of the people who read it religiously are beginning to figure that out. What amuses me is that anyone would regard it as a “news” source.
FTP
Much more at the link.
Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz Real Mad John Boehner Said Those Mean True Things About Them
I’m currently reading The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe by Dr. Steven Novella. I’ve been following his blog, Neurologica, for some years now. He goes into great detail regarding logical fallacies, biases, perception, memory, heuristics, etc.
@Kathy: he has a good podcast too, usually featuring Cara Santa Maria.
@Teve:
Oh, he knows. Ignorance isn’t the source of statements like his.
@Mikey: “stupid, or dishonest?” Is kinda the evergreen, hard-to-answer question w/r/t the right-wingers.
@Mikey:
But then the question becomes how come large numbers of people don’t know anything about proportions.
It’s also useful to note the numbers alone tell very little. For example, under what circumstances did these police killings occur, and were circumstances the same for the two groups in question. Not to mention how are these groups defined and by whom.
@Teve: I don’t know where Matt Walsh is going with that, but for my part, I think we could stand to look into those 500 killings of white people too. I mean, I think black men have it worse, but authoritarians gonna do their thing when they get the chance.
One of the things that pushed me leftward was Kent State. Those were white people killed but they were “hippies”. You know, people that place high value on things like “peace” and “love”. They are gonna tee off on people who are Other, and there’s a variety of things that can put you in that category, blackness being very high on the list, of course.
From Forbes:
Data mining? I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!
@Flat Earth Luddite: it’s the rank dishonesty that is the big problem here. They tell users that the built-in controls can prevent third-parties from tracking them around the internet, then quietly tell their customers who pay serious cash for such tracking, ‘Don’t worry, we have a way a fingerprinting users that is 60-70% as good.’
I’ve been struggling with this all year.
Path A: Abandon Google entirely, use my ProtonMail account, Proton VPN, DuckDuckGo, Safari with tracking disabled, AppleMaps, and an iPhone when the new models come out in September. Enjoy the social cachet of being a Blue Bubble. Go as invisible as possible.
Path B: Realize the 20 years of data Google has already collected on me is impossible to thwart, keep using Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, enjoy the convenience of full integration, enjoy vastly better Speech-to-text than Apple’s frustratingly shitty offering, and just accept the modern reality that third-party data brokers know me better than I do, and pay $350 for a Pixel instead of $900 for an iphone.
Major is going to reform school.
The benefit of being a presidential pup, most dogs with a history of biting get the needle.
@Teve: This is your decision, and I won’t quibble with however you decide it. For me, though, tracking only creates minor nuisances, and some amusement. For instance, the internet loves to show me banner ads trying to sell me the exact thing I just bought. Of course, I already bought it, I ain’t gonna buy a second one. So it kind of gives me the sense of “yeah, they are tracking me, but they aren’t that competent”.
Now, I have wished for a way to say, “That ad irritates the crap out of me, and it is of value to no one to show it to me, can we just move on?” Of course, I will never get that, because that means less money for the people selling ad space. If their clients want to pay to show ads to people who hate them, well, they’ll take the money. I don’t know, maybe if I were in their shoes, I would too.
@Jay L Gischer: i read once that ads-after-purchase was a scam. FB tells advertisers ‘x # of users bought your product within 3 days of seeing your ad! Without telling them the timing is backwards. It boosts their ad/purchase correlation metrics.
@Jay L Gischer: I don’t like tracking because Silicon Valley puts dystopian scenarios within reach.
“Mr. Tory, we’re sorry about your emergency gallstone surgery, but due to available data it’s clear you were an alcoholic in your 30’s and therefore your gallbladder issues are likely a preexisting condition and not covered by your policy. Kthxbai!”
@Sleeping Dog:
I must say I was kind of disturbed by the “if Major is biting them, they must be bad people” narrative that was growing up around that issue. Expecting to be able to do your job without getting attacked by a dog is a reasonable workplace safety expectation, and the “you must have done something to deserve it” response reminds me a lot of how harassment victims get treated when they try reporting it.
@Stormy Dragon: yeah, that resembles the shitty “you get one free sexual harassment per person” attitude some people defended Bill Clinton with.
Our side can be shitty too, it’s just much less frequent.
@Teve:
I don’t think it’s even a partisan thing, it came across more as a “dog people” thing. I love dogs myself, but there’s a lot of people who haven’t taken the time to properly socialize their pets and then want to blame the targets of aggressive behavior for it.
@Teve: Like I said before, I’m not going to quibble with your choices. Also, your nightmare kidney stone scenario has a thread of validity to it, for sure.
That said, I feel your stance is kind of like old King Canute commanding the tide to cease coming in. We can’t stop this from happening. I think it’s best to focus on preventing the damage it could cause. If we had universal health care, where everything is paid for, your scenario is a non–issue. For instance.
@Stormy Dragon:..“you must have done something to deserve it” response…
Disclaimer: I am not a dog guy. I like cats.
Deserve what? Being bitten?
Dogs can bring an indictment, assess guilt and administer corporal punishment?
On what authority?
@Mister Bluster:
A sizeable portion of “dog people” seem to basically believe their pets are supernatural evil detectors, so if they react badly to someone, that must mean the someone is secretly evil. There’s also another sizeable portion that think a dog aggressively asserting dominance qualifies as a sign of affection.
@Teve: Wow! Facebook misrepresenting the data to sell more ads at higher rates. I reeeeeeaaalllllly didn’t see that coming.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: there’s a reason John Gruber refers to FB as a criminal conspiracy.
Memo to self: never edit a comment, just leave the typo. Luddite edits drop out of thread never to be seen again. Just like my comments with links, alas.
@Stormy Dragon: I didn’t see much of that, but I’m a dog person and most of what I saw was far more in line with what responsible owners would say, which was basically “those dogs are under stress and Shepherds are a protective breed–he needs training and/or should be restricted to as little interaction with others as possible.”
Some dogs are good at identifying “bad people” but most of what they identify are scents that indicate higher levels of stress. If a dog is around someone who doesn’t like dogs, they can generally *sense* that, but that doesn’t mean they will necessarily bite.
Glad he’s going to pup boot camp.
@Flat Earth Luddite:..never to be seen again.
This happened randomly to several posts that I edited a month or so ago. I did not have any trouble editing (when EDIT was available) before that and it has not reoccurred. I have done nothing differently all along.
No problem with links as long as 3 is the limit per comment.
I use Safari 12.1.2 (12607.3.10).
This is just an anecdote and I doubt it will be of any help to you.
@Stormy Dragon: @Jen:
I had a chocolate lab mix who was perfectly friendly to people who came to visit, and tended to ignore anyone she passed on the street. Early one night, I was walking her when she suddenly stopped, then placed herself at a right angle to my legs, lowered her head, and began growling. She was staring at a middle-aged man, perfectly innocuous-looking, who was about fifty feet ahead and coming toward me. He heard the growling and crossed the street.
This was a dog who ignored everyone outside the house. Whatever it was about this guy, she really didn’t like him.
@CSK:
At first, when I saw this quote on OTB I thought Sidney Powell was talking about Trump, seriously…then when I read she was referring to Biden all I could do was smile, chuckle a little bit, and shake my head, the projection is strong with the MAGA crowd.
Also, it is amazing how the MAGA crowd does not care about the debasement they put themselves through on a daily basis by cozying up to Trump. Trump calls many members of Congress all sorts of nasty names and they almost literally say Thank You Sir! May I have another (insult)!
I guess the MAGA folks rationalize Trump’s insults the same way someone would if they were being roasted as something they consider a badge of honor (being “roasted” by Trump). Of course, the very guy doing the roasting is the same person who turned this country upside down because he could not handle some (for the most part) gentle barbs being thrown his way.
The reality is that if McConnell reacted to Trump’s insults (the guy even had his wife dissed by Trump) the way Trump does to invectives hurled at him then McConnell would make it his life’s mission to make Trump’s life a living hell for the next 20 years.
Sigh, instead McConnell just lets it roll off his back and will go back to begging for votes from the MAGA crowd, that the GOP is so cowed by this crowd is just beyond sad.
@inhumans99:
Oh, the house and senate Republicans are definitely cowed by Trump’s supporters, except perhaps for the ten senators who voted to impeach him and a handful of house members such as Kinzinger.
@Teve: Oh, he only intended to tase him for some random traffic violation. Okay! That makes a WHOLE WORLD of difference. Carry on.
@Mister Bluster:
There are two things one must never do to a dog, aside from anything cruel which goes without saying, to avoid provoking an aggressive response.
One is never to bother them while they’re eating from their dish, especially not taking the food away from the dog or taking the dog away from the food (for small dogs).
The other is not to tease the dog by doing things that clearly bother them. This varies a lot, but scaring the dog, blowing in their faces, pulling their fur or tail, grabbing their paws, etc. are common.
The second thing may elicit a warning growl before a bite. Smaller dogs may retreat rather than bite, but don’t count on it.
@Teve:
The kindest interpretation is that this is an example of innumeracy and that Walsh doesn’t understand the concept of disparities (i.e. ratio comparisons based on population sizes).
Unfortunately, the further I get into the criminal legal system reform space, the more I am coming to believe that some people are more than happy to sacrifice excess members of their own racial group in order to maintain white supremacy.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Because tasing a car makes so much more sense.
But hey, we folks working on reform cannot possible understand what it means to be a police officer or something, and therefore there’s no good argument for allowing the community to have some oversight of the people who police them.
I mean this is totally a new issue of course, it’s not like it goes back to Plato or anything.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: the officer is a she and while I choose not to watch video like that, a lawyer friend has watched the video and says it’s clear to her that the officer thought she grabbed her taser. Obviously it’s not going to bring the man back to life, but it looks less like murder and more like negligent homicide or something like that.
@Kathy:
When we first got our pup (she was 6 months old) she was very food-protective. Since this can lead to bites, our trainer recommended that we address it. We hand-fed her for a week, basically pouring her food into her bowl and then she ate the kibble when we handed it to her. She stopped growling–now, she might slow down if we’re nearby, but I can reach into her bowl and take food from it and she doesn’t do anything. (I always give it back.)
Provoking an aggressive response can vary from dog to dog. I’ve mentioned before that the only time my dogs have snapped at others is when they had perceived me to be under threat (in both cases, someone unknown to the dog appeared to be approaching me). My guess is there’s a similar dynamic at play for Major, who, unfortunately is in a combo residence/office building where there are frequently new faces.
@Sleeping Dog: The headline is “ Major, one of Biden’s dogs, will be sent away for training after biting incidents” and the text is paywalled, so we don’t really know who is biting who here.
Major could be being sent away for his own protection. Man-Bites-Dog stories and all that.
Anyway, we were promised a cat.
@Kathy:
Part of your duty as an owner is to train your dog that if a human takes their food, they don’t snap at them. If you just let them think that’s okay, you’re putting their life at risk if someday a child that doesn’t know better tries to take something from them and next thing you know you’re being forced to put the dog down because it attacked a child.
Much like Jen’s story, I remember growing up my parents spending time training each of our dogs that they can’t snap if someone takes their food.
From Parler:
Roger, Roger, Roger…
linky
@Teve:
AdBlock Plus, ScriptSafe, and Privacy Badger. If I wanted to go a little further, I’d switch off history and install a user-referrer randomizer.
This post has zero ads, 5 scripts (4 allowed), and one cookie (blocked).
@Kathy:
I’ve never owned a dog, but Gary Larson says the above was the inspiration for this cartoon.
@Kathy:..Smaller dogs may retreat rather than bite, but don’t count on it.
Before I routinely entered back yards to climb telephone poles I was a water meter reader. Both jobs issued me spray repellant. I never had to use it. I made my peace with dogs a long time ago.
There were times when it was clearly not safe to enter a fenced in yard because of a dog of any size. I was never required to do that. If no one was home I left a message on the door to get the dog inside by the next day before I returned.
Cows in a field were no problem. They just followed me around and never once barked.
@Mu Yixiao: and Remove It Permanently and Greasemonkey scripts etc, all stuff I used to run. But this iPad I’m typing on doesn’t permit the same flexibility. 🙁
@Jen:
@Stormy Dragon:
With out first dog, Fuzz, we never bothered her while she was eating, or gnawing the meat off a bone out in the yard. Same when her daughter, Daisy, came along a few years later.
My third dog, Emm, had a peculiar eating habit. She waited til I got home and followed me to the table, where she begged for scraps. I put her dish with her food right next to my chair. She’d sniff at it, then ignore it and continue begging. I would then give her a few small pieces of meat, but I’d place them in her dish with the rest of her food. She then ate the whole dish.
When she was done, she retreated under the table until I was done. then we went upstairs to my room and played and took a nap.
@Teve: here’s the other thing: nothing is stopping white folks from having their own protests about these killings. In fact, there have been at least one protest that I know of for a white victim of police violence: Protesters show support for 13-year-old boy on autism spectrum shot, injured by police
The article notes that some of the protesters were from Black Lives Matter.
And… a quick Google search for “BLM protests for white victims” turns up others, such as this article citing multiple instances where BLM activists protested for white victims.
This article makes an excellent point:
@Kathy:
“Dogs are very mysterious and often do things I don’t understand.”
— Robert B. Parker
link
@Stormy Dragon:
Yeah, the they “must be bad people” meme is stupid, either people who know nothing about dogs or their partisan frame has moved to demented.
Major is simply doing what the breed has been bred to do, guard and to guard with aggression. Being a house dog, Major quite likely has never been trained to guard, so he’s working on instinct, which in this case is bad. And as a reminder German Shepard’s rank high in frequency of dog bights.
But look at it from Major’s view. He was adopted from the pound several months ago, a stressful period, given up by the prior owner, a very stressful experience. He moved in with the Biden’s at a time when they were pretty much around all the time and few others were around and those that were, were probably the same people everyday. It takes about 6 months for an adopted, adult dog to adapt and accept the adopting family, so just when he is settling in, he’s moved to a new location with hundreds of people coming and going. While he’s living in the family quarters and not seeing all those folks, he certainly smells and hears them, given dogs rely far more on hearing and smell to learn about the world around them. Add to that, staff are going in and out of the family quarters doing their jobs.
I feel for Major, but don’t believe he’ll be a successful WH pup.
Update on my vaccination efforts:
I can probably get an appointment in a certain red state, but only a day or two in advance. This makes booking a plane ticket difficult. It would be easier to look for flights first, then get the appointment and book the flight at almost the same time, and pray the price holds.
There are two other factors to consider. One is we’re swamped at work, and I can’t just take off for a day or two. This will persist until around the end of next week. The other is the doctor has me taking an anti inflammatory. I’ve read it’s best to avoid such things before getting the vaccine.
It looks likely, too, my age group in Mexico will begin to receive vaccines by late April. If so, I may just wait. The issue here is I might get a trustworthy vaccine like Pfizer or AstraZeneca, or I may get a Chinese vaccine of uncertain efficacy, or the Russian one (which might be better than the Chinese ones).
In short, it’s a mess.
@Kathy: Good luck! I finally got my vaccine – J&J.
@Monala: very true.
I’m unsure what to call someone like Walsh. He’s not exactly a nihilist. He cares about at least one thing, getting popular by sticking it to the libtards.
@Monala: I read this morning that part of the reason they couldn’t rally many people was that so many of the neo-Nazis refused to involve the larger, nationally known groups, certain that they had been infiltrated by the FBI and Deep State and whatnot.
@Sleeping Dog: and for a German Shepherd, Major is elderly, and inherently less adaptable than a younger dog.
@Teve:
Ironically, Major is the younger dog. Champ, the elderly one, seems to have made the transition much better.
@Kathy:
Phase 1c finally started today in my state, so I was finally able to sign up for an appointment. My immediate area has huge waiting lists, but I was able to get an appointment for saturday in the much more Republican county next door for Saturday.
Ironically, today the governor also announced that everyone can sign up for an appointment tomorrow, so after waiting patiently over four months for our turn, all the Phase 1c essential workers literally had one day to sign up before the free for all started!
@Teve: Major is the younger dog. He’s 3, and was taken in by the Bidens as a foster in late 2018, he was born in January of 2018. I don’t think that’s a factor so much as the rapidly changing environments.
Champ is the elderly dog, and is well into DNGAF territory. He’s just happy to have a sunbeam and see Joe.
@Monala:
@Stormy Dragon:
I’m less concerned about when I get vaccinated, than about the slow pace of vaccination thus far. The numbers suggest around 11 million shots, no clue how many are second doses, for an average of 125,000 shots per day. That will allow us to fully vaccinate the whole population in 2.6 years.
I know it’s hard to vaccinate over 100 million people, and that vaccines are heading first to richer countries. But come on. Chile’s doing better, and so is Brazil (which seems to be on the side of COVID in this matter) . Ok, Chile is a smaller country, but Brazil is much bigger.
Like Descartes, I cannot do much to get more people vaccinated, but I can take care of my own shot(s). So that’s what I’ll do.
The issue with nippers is they think they are making decisions. Major is not as happy a camper as he might be, not being clear on who’s in charge creates a lot of stress in dogs. Happens when dogs are coddled a bit too much and not trained enough. It’s when dogs are absolutely sure of their place in the pack that they are happiest. GSPs require (and love) a firm, fair hand and a ton of socialization. They are a working breed bred to guard, and like most Germans, when left un-checked plot world-domination.
Send the dog to an academy? It’s the human who needs training 99% of the time.
@Jen: ah, I either misremembered or read something that was incorrect, I thought they were 12 and 13. Mibad.
@dazedandconfused:
Vee are not knowink vat you are talkink about. Zere iz no one here but us Poodles, mein Freund.
Of my three dogs, Fuzz was the most aggressive. Not on her own initiative, but she had a short temper. She growled often, and snapped the air, but she never bit me or anyone in the family, aside from playful bites when she was a tiny puppy and interested in play. Daisy was meek and very quiet. Fuzz was her alpha, no question. they did eat off the same dish at the same time, but I noticed Daisy never ate from their dish if Fuzz was in the room, unless her mom was also eating.
Emm came years later. She never growled at me, not even once, but she liked to bark at people walking by the house. She sometimes barked at people who came in. Now, the odd thing is she never barked at any of my friends who came to the house, not once. She actually acted very submissive and friendly towards them, and would play with them and allowed them to pet her.
She never bit me, again save when she was a tiny puppy and we were playing. She remained playful her whole life, and tore into her stuffed animals and rubber balls with abandon, but she was careful around people.
They were all small. Fuzz and Daisy were toy poodles. I don’t know what breed Emm was, but she was about the same size as Fuzz and Daisy.
@Teve: I did watch the video. It’s her body cam. There’s an audio track on which she shouts she’s going to tase him. Then the gun comes up, she fires as one round, and immediately screams to the effect of OMG, I shot him. The victim had the car door open, tussling with the other two cops. It looks like the shock of the moment freezes the officers and the victim falls back into the car and drives off.
This does seem to back up that she intended to tase. It may be a case where a body cam exonerates the officer of more serious charges.
@dazedandconfused:
Unlike cats, who already have world domination.
Off topic even in an open thread–I just finished watching Season 1 of Resident Alien and was surprised at how much I enjoyed this show. Funny with the right touch of really dark humor and just enough insight to make me think.