Everything below is posted with liberty and credit to Jemima Harrison and the PDE blog, with the sole purpose for this information to spread as far as possible.
• soon to be 10 years since Pedigree Dogs Exposed
• five years since The Advisory Council on the Welfare Issues of Dog
Breeding highlighted the issues linked to head conformation in
brachycephalic breeds
• 18 months since the publication of research (funded by the kennel
club) spelling out the link between stenosis (pinched nostrils) and
respiratory issues, especially in French Bulldogs
• a year since a veterinary petition demanding urgent reform for flat-faced dogs
• almost a year since the Kennel Club set up the Brachcycephalic Breeds Working Group in response to that petition
.. and of course I have highlighted the issue of pinched nostrils endlessly here on this blog.
Endlessly.
And yet… the picture at the top is one the Kennel Club has used as the
ideal depiction of the French Bulldog in its new edition (2017) of its Illustrated Breed Standards.
And it isn’t a one-off. Here’s the one the KC has used for the Boston Terrier standard.
The Bulldog.
And the Pug.
Dogs are as near-as-damn-it obligate nose breathers. And even if they
can supplement by mouth-breathing when they are awake, they are unable
to do so when they are asleep, meaning thousands of these dogs live
lives of interrupted sleep as they have to wake up in order to not
asphyxiate.
Study after study has shown that these dogs pay the price for not being
able to pull in a decent lungful of air and that starts with the
nostrils.
These pictures are all the proof you need that the Kennel Club is not
taking this issue seriously; that at its very core the KC is paying
nothing more than lip-service to the demands for reform by the
veterinary profession and animal welfare campaigners.
At one of the first meetings of the Brachycephalic Breeds Working Group,
then KC Chairman Steve Dean expressly said that he didn’t want
“changing the breed standards” to be at the top of everyone’s list of
actions that could be taken.
And indeed, it hasn’t been.
There have been some new measures. The KC continues to fund brachy research. There is also now a brachy learning resource
available on the KC website, the promise of better education of judges
and a breed club commitment to educate better about the importance of
keeping brachycephalics slim. There are also now health schemes for the
Bulldog, French Bulldog and the Pug which do test for respiratory
issues.
All this is welcome. But, bottom line, the Kennel Club continues to bat
for the breeders who do not want the basic phenotype to change because
it’s the breeders that pay their wages.
Of course the simplest, quickest remedy is to give these dogs
back some muzzle – to help not just with breathing issues, but to help
protect their eyes from trauma and to give their teeth some room in
their overcrowded mouths (a Pug here compared to an Australian
Shepherd).
The problem is that breeders are wedded to flat faces, particularly in
Pugs and Bulldogs. They talk about the perfect “layback” – which
essentially means that the nose should not interrupt the line between
the forehead and tip of the dog’s chin.
In fact, there’s a new book out on the Pug head (yours for only $159)
which reminds everyone that the word Pug comes from the latin for
“fist” and that this is the shape the Pug’s head should be in profile –
i.e. totally flat.
Here’s a reminder from a top UK show breeder of what the Bulldog’s head should look like.
As you can see, a protruding nose or a less severe underbite is considered a fault.
There was a big review of breed standards following Pedigree Dogs Exposed
but it was mostly to add vague qualifiers such as, in the Pug standard,
"relatively" short rather than just short when describing the length
of the muzzle. This gives the breeders way too much wiggle room. We
need proper metrics – a defined minimum skull/head/muzzle ratio and we
need to find more profound ways to change their minds about what
constitutes their breed in their eyes.
Large open nostrils are a requirement in brachy breed standards, but
this is widely ignored because other points of the breed are considered
more important. There would be outrage if a Frenchie with one lop ear
or a Bulldog with a liver-coloured nose won in the show-ring, but dogs
with slits for nostrils continue to be made up to champions.
Meanwhile, on my CRUFFA group,
whenever you post a picture of more moderate examples of the breed,
current of historical, the breeders heap scorn. A few days ago, one
breeder insisted that the dog featured in this famous painting of a Pug
by Carl Reichert, dating from the late 19th century, was a crossbreed.
Same for these ones. Mongrels, the lot of them.
She admitted that the eye-white showing was undesirable but preferred the look of this Crufts dog.
Today, this was posted on a public Facebook page by one French Bulldog
breeder in response to a plea by vets for more moderate dogs.
(My bolding below)
To those who say you cannot rebuild Rome in a day I say… rubbish. There are already more moderate versions of these breeds out there being
bred by breeders more interested in health than the current fashion.
For more than 10 years, I have called for moderation and hoped it would
come from the breeders. But I now know it won’t. If we want anything
more than a wee bit of tweaking round the edges, then we need to demand
it.
It is time to get tough. These dogs suffer – not all of them all the time but too many of them too often.
Brachycephalics live a third less long than non-brachy dogs. Fifty per
cent have significant airway disease. Almost all struggle to cool
themselves. Most Bulldogs still can’t mate or give birth naturally. Pugs
have 19 times the risk of developing corneal ulcers. All suffer from
very low genetic diversity. And so on.
Today, Bulldogs, French Bulldogs and Pugs make up one in five of the
dogs registered with the Kennel Club – up from one in 50 in 2005.
Yesterday, a new petitionwas launched asking for a ban on brachycephalics. Over 20k people signed it in the first 24 hrs.
Have we reached a tipping point? With your help.
I haven’t been able to blog much recently because I am busy finishing
off a television series for BBC2. But I have taken time out to write
this because the new breed standard pictures made me so angry.
So please… Although it’s moderation I want, not a ban, sign the petition. Make your feelings known to the Kennel Club (see here). Complain if brands or media use generic pictures of brachycephalics to sell their wares.
Vets: thank you so much for all that you are now doing, but please keep the pressure on.
And, of course, to everyone out there – please don’t buy that puppy.
It is not safe to buy a Pug, Bulldog or French Bulldog. Not safe for them and not safe for your wallet.
Seriously people. This deserves 6000 notes. It’s not even my text, so it’s not like I’m attention-fishing.
“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?” – Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Humans often fear what they don’t understand and to most, snakes are a mystery. Snakes rely on crypsis so even when traversing through their world, we rarely see them. This void of direct knowledge is filled by myth and media, which portray snakes as cold-blooded killers and focus on how deadly and dangerous they are. It’s no surprise then that snakes provoke one of the most common phobias, even in the United States where we lack truly deadly serpents.
Though threatened by many of the same issues that affect other wildlife, including habitat loss, climate change, and disease, negative attitudes may be the biggest barrier to snake conservation because it often impedes efforts to address other threats.
For example, public outcry based on fear and misinformation recently halted a scientifically-sound conservation plan for timber rattlesnakes. A similar project at the same location was embraced by the community; but that project involved releasing eagles. Rattlesnakes are no less iconic or important to the ecosystem than eagles. In fact, they may help reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which affects tens of thousands of people in the United States each year, by reducing the number of rodents that harbor this disease. But facts often play second fiddle to emotions where snakes are concerned.
Snakes are important components of biodiversity, serving as both predators and prey in nearly every ecosystem on earth. Some of the most feared and hated snakes (vipers, a group which includes rattlesnakes) may be the most effective predators on fluctuating prey populations. Unlike most predators, vipers are not territorial; they often share dens to escape freezing winter temperatures and select hunting sites where others have been successful. They live in greater densities than mammal and bird predators, as much as 100-1000 times denser than their mammalian competitors. Infrequent reproductive events (most give birth only once every two to three years) and their ability to fast make them resilient to prey population crashes. So they can have a greater impact on their prey, including those that can spread disease to humans, than their mammalian or avian counterparts.
But snakes are worth saving not because of what they can do for us, but because of who they are.
Adrian, a pregnant Arizona black rattlesnake guards one of her nestmates’ newborns. Photographed by Melissa Amarello.
Snakes, specifically rattlesnakes, share many behaviors with us, behaviors that we value. They have friends. They take care of their kids and their friends’ kids too. Within a community of Arizona black rattlesnakes, individuals do not associate randomly; they have friends (pairs of rattlesnakes observed together more often expected by chance) and individuals they appear to avoid. Mother rattlesnakes keep newborns from straying too far from the nest during the first few days of their lives, only gradually letting them explore farther as they approach time to leave the nest at 10-14 days old. They also defend their young from threats such as squirrels, who harass and may even kill newborns. But mothers aren’t the only ones caring for newborn rattlesnakes — still-pregnant females sharing the communal nest and even visiting males and juveniles assist with parental duties. Yet these gentle, caring parents are subjected to some of the most horrible treatment of any animal.
Each year, tens of thousands of rattlesnakes are taken from the wild to be displayed and slaughtered for entertainment and profit at rattlesnake roundups, which occur throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Alabama. Promoted as folksy, family-friendly fun, these events foster disrespect for native wildlife and the natural world, and are a gross example of wildlife management based on fear, rather than science. Professional hunters, not bound by ‘bag’ or ‘take’ limits, remove snakes from their native habitats and are awarded with cash prizes for bringing in the most and biggest snakes. Most snakes are caught by pouring gasoline into their winter dens, which pollutes surrounding land and water and may impact up to 350 other wildlife species. Rattlesnake roundups depend on the public’s misconception of snakes as dangerous pests that we cannot safely tolerate near our homes. No aspect of these events is sustainable, educational, or necessary.
If promoters and attendees of rattlesnake roundups knew what snakes are really like, would these events continue — who wants to kill a mom or someone’s friend?
World Snake Day is an opportunity to celebrate snakes and raise awareness about their conservation.
It’s no surprise then that snakes provoke one of the most common phobias, even in the United States where we lack truly deadly serpents. – This statement bothered me, especially where OP goes on to talk about rattlesnakes. There are multiple varieties of rattlesnakes in the US, and they’re all deadly. They may not be as dangerous as certain snakes from Asia or Australia, but they’re still deadly. We also have cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins, which are also highly dangerous, deadly and pervasive in the wetter part of the southern US, where rattlesnakes prefer the dryer western US – though I believe they can be found in the east as well.
However, just because they’re deadly doesn’t mean they should all die. But by saying that they aren’t “truly deadly”… it implies a lack of respect. Rattlesnakes and cottonmouths deserve respect because they can kill you. And there are deaths by both types of snake every year.
“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”
Things I didn’t know
“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”
You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.
I just learned that some websites use cookies to adjust prices. That is, if you visit a certain website a lot the price will increase.
You can tell if that’s the case by checking the same web page on a different browser if you have a different number of stored cookies for that site. I checked something on Chegg and it was $14.95 on Chrome, $19.95 on Firefox, and $16.95 on Safari.
The fix? Clear your cookies for that website.
Reblog, save a wallet.
Plane tickets almost always do this!
PLANE TICKETS DO THIS ALL THE DAMN TIME
When you’re looking for plane tickets and waiting for prices to drop, ALWAYS clear your cookies beforehand and switch between browsers. A friend of mine was looking for a flight and getting prices that were the CHEAPEST at $800-1000, I sent her a link for a round trip that was like $495, and it read as $900 on her computer because she had been hounding the airline site.
alternatively: avoid all this headache by using incognito when shopping for plane tickets, text books, etc
Hotel rooms are notorious for this, as well. Just like, go on incognito mode to look at these sites, saves u a lot of time & hassle.
While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.
When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here – there are too many.
Being published badly is worse than being never published.
It can destroy your career and your dreams.
The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.
But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.
This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.
Just to let you know, PublishAmerica changed their name to America Star Books.
HEAD’S UP, WRITER TYPES: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PSA!
Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.
Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories. When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research. Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever. Knowing more is never going to hurt.
Omg!!! Thanks for the warning! Writers— reblog!
I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe!
Reblogging again for the links. Also check pred-ed.com and the Absolute Write forum. Then google Publisher’s name + scam and see what comes up. Do NOT use the BBB ratings, they are wholly unsuitable for rating publishers and regularly give A ratings to well-known publishing scams. You can also read my own post on publishing scams, have a link on the left of my blog ( can’t link here, I’m on mobile, sorry).
Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.
(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)
Be vigilant, fellow writers!
If you choose to self publish then HAVE A PLAN and think things through.
And hire an editor. Please, for the love of all that is holy, hire an editor. It’s expensive, but you will get a better book out, a better reputation…
If you’re going to publish electronically, make sure you also get someone who can LAY AN EBOOK OUT PROPERLY.
I have spent money on Kindle books, many of them reprints of older works, whose formatting is so messed up as to render them unreadable.
I actually recommend using the Smashwords Style Guide even if you don’t use Smashwords.
It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.
If you can’t stand dealing with the meticulous detail, then by all means hire somebody, but most people can learn to format an ebook correctly and once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about an hour tops.
Because the redirects aren’t working for me, I’m going to assume others might have trouble with these links, so for those who need it the URL for the website to Writer Beware is:
These are not publishers’ guilds, notice; you sometimes see scammers trying to defend themselves against Writer Beware exposes by claiming that they’re “small press” or “indie” and Big Publishing is somehow out to get them – but all of those guilds are run by and for writers, to help support them and represent them in the field. It is the closest writers have to having unions, and there’s no direct competition between them (you could literally be an in any of those guilds are the same time as each other, in addition to others, and I believe a number of authors are).
Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)
Additionally, for SF and fantasy writers, the SFWA’s own list of qualifying markets that one can be published in as a prerequisite to be able to get into their guild (remember, it IS a profession-based guild), is a great guide to normal markets for those genres that have standard contracts that aren’t abusive or scammy, and their guidelines include some of the industry-standard minimums for “per word” etc rates, so even if some new magazine market isn’t on their list, you can tell if it’s suspiciously far outside the usual per-word or whatnot standards. (It’s likely the guidelines for Mystery Writers of America etc also would be useful in that vein)
Even if you’re unpublished or don’t want to join their guild, they’re a wonderful group and resource, and I highly recommend their site and Writer Beware in particular!
The other sites mentioned above, such as “Preditors and Editors” should be still valid if you Google them, and are often rec’d by Writer Beware, but Writer Beware is the one I’m most familiar with. 🙂
Also, you should never have to pay an agent or anyone a “reading fee”! DO NOT PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK!!! Run away from so-called agents that charge a reading fee! They are considered unethical in their own industry!
Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.
With California wildfires still burning, the
2018 fire season continues to leave its mark on the state’s landscape.
Together, the Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire (as seen above) have burned more than
248,000 acres (1003 square kilometers, or 387 square miles).
Burn scars are what wildfire leaves behind.
With no vegetation to hold the land in place, many burned locations are
susceptible to landslides and mudslides, especially in areas with steep slopes.
Fighting fires on these slopes is more difficult, too — once a slope’s
steepness exceeds 30 percent, firefighting with bulldozers or trucks becomes
dangerous, and emergency response teams must fight the fires on foot.
For the past two weeks, our scientists have
been working every day producing maps and damage assessments that can help
agency fire managers understand the active wildfire and plan for recovery. By
deploying research aircraft carrying instruments, like the Uninhabited Aerial
Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), scientists can identify burned areas
at risk of mudslides in advance of winter rains expected in the area.
Learn more about how we’re mobilizing to aid California fire response here.
apparently stan lee finally died of shitty old bitch disease and i better not see anyone acting like he was anything more than a sack of shit who sexually harassed multiple women and injected racism into marvel comics for decades
just cuz he died doesnt make him suddenly deserving of respect
Hey I cant defend the second bit but the bit about sexual harassment were proven false and in fact they were investigated for allegations of elder abuse against stan lee
You don’t have to defend the second bit. Stan Lee said he’d be fine if Spider Man was originally Black, Hispanic, Indian, or anything. He just didn’t want an already established character to change their identity. He said if you want a character that’s different, just make a different character, which is exactly what happened.
Tumblr is just being Tumblr again.
To Paraphrase, Stan Lee DIDN’T harass anyone, and had an understandable reasoning behind his thinking, and it also left room for the Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen storylines, which is awesome
Peter Parker never had to be the only Spider.
And elder abuse is just ugly.
I honestly feel sick seeing people come out of the woodworks to shit on an icon of popular culture like this on the day he died.
tl;dr Stan Lee was a good person and OP is a misinforming asshole
Sigh, look I get the urge to demonize and hate every straight white male that comes your way. But, honestly it takes 5 minutes to Google the shit you’re spewing friend.
Stan Lee never said he didn’t want a diverse or gay Spiderman. What he did say was that Peter Parker was an established character and that he saw no reason to change PETER PARKER. He went on to say that he would even write a gay and diverse Spiderman as an entirely new character. So fuck off with that shit.
Furthermore the allegations against Stan Lee for sexual misconduct were thoroughly investigated, and it was found that the women who made these allegations were abusing him. A vulnerable 90 year old man with ALZHEIMER’S. Can you imagine not remembering doing the thing a person is accusing you of? Have you been around people with Alzheimer’s? I took care of my grandmother who had advanced Alzheimer’s. She once slapped me clean across the face because she thought I was an intruder and had no memory of it.
Come on, now. Google is your friend. Stop spewing bullshit, please.
Reblogging the correct version because I’ve been confused for a while, so I hope this helps other people too!!
Everyone going shopping on Black Friday, be aware of three things:
The retail workers are working 12 hours shifts. We are threatened with losing our jobs if we don’t show up unless we’re dying in the hospital. I had an assistant manager show up with fucking strep because he would’ve been fired otherwise. Yes, he did infect 7 and hospitalize 2 coworkers; who knows how many members of the public he infected.
The stores have, maybe, 5 of that special cheap thing you’re after. Corporate does this on purpose, and stores are not allowed to order enough. The prices aren’t even that much lower. They lie about how expensive something is to fool you into thinking you’re getting a discount. You aren’t.
Most of the workers you will come across will be new hires for the sole purpose of being bodies for about three months before they’re fired. They actually don’t know anything because they’ve been working there for maybe two weeks, and have had no real training. I was once hired at Staples a week before Black Friday and expected to know how to deal with phones, coupons, the online ordering site, and AS400 after five 6-hour shifts. This is the kind of person you will likely be dealing with at Black Friday.
Do me and my retail family a favor and don’t shop Black Friday. Any company that needs a sale day like Black Friday to get their sales out of the red doesn’t deserve to be in business.
This also goes for anyone that works shipment too. We’re suddenly expected to stay as late as they want you to even if they know you don’t have a car and rely on a ride to get you to and from work and know you can’t stay late. Shipment workers will suddenly start getting berated for not getting things done and it is by far the most stressful time to be a shipment worker for any store. Especially when they throw in new hires that don’t know how to process things and are expected to work at the same pace as the people that have worked there for a while.
Retail is shit around the holidays, especially Black Friday
ok fellow millenials, it’s time to kill black friday
A fact about my life: I have a lot of weird little tidbits, but for one that I found out recently… Apparently I figured out how to make lasagne on my own. Apparently, at some time before I was twelve, I decided I was going to make one and it baffled my grandma, because she didn’t know how to make lasagne. (It must have turned out alright, or else I would have heard about it. xD)
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