furries
Hello.
I don’t understand the furry thing. If anyone wants to explain it that would be cool.
I’ve gone to lgbtq+ bars and sometimes 1 or two people will have leather dog masks on. I don’t understand it though. Is it a sub/Dom thing? I’m kinda new to to the LGBTQ+ culture.
I don’t think those are necessarily related.
Furries are just people who like animal mascot type characters and made a whole subculture around that.
basically, its a subculture of people who like anthropomorphic (i.e. humanized) animal characters, like zootopia, for one fairly recent mainstream example. some furries do dress up in costumes, but the leather dog masks are a somewhat unrelated bdsm thing, though there’s probably some significant overlap in the groups.
The dog mask people are generally not furries. They’re called pups, and you’re actually right that pup play is a BDSM thing. The whole acting like a dog thing is more for dehumanization than anything else.
Furries are people who enjoy anthropomorphic animals for… well, a variety of reasons. Fursuits are extremely uncommon because they’re expensive as fuck, difficult to clean, easily damaged, etc. Most furries just come up with fursonas (generally online animal personas) and make art.
I know more about this than I otherwise would because I have friends who are pups and others who are furries.
While I agree and have no problem with furries, I think the issue is people seeing, what a lot of people in their own community see as linked to a sexual kink, being brought out into public spaces.
“Sexual attraction to furry characters is a polarizing issue. In one survey with 4,300 furry respondents, 37% answered that sexual attraction is important in their furry activities, 38% were ambivalent, and 24% answered that it has little or nothing to do with their furry activities.”
“Another survey at a furry convention in 2013 found that 96.3% of male furry respondents reported viewing furry pornography, compared with 78.3% of female; males estimated 50.9% of all furry art they view is pornographic, compared with 30.7% of females.”
So like clearly there is a large sexual component to the fandom, and I think it weirds people out and makes people uncomfortable when they see these people wearing their fur suits out in public. Which again to be clear is not something the entire community does or even tolerates, but there’s enough people who do so that it’s become part of the cultural zeitgeist.
But it’s also just the fact that it’s so far from normal vanilla experiences. Everyday people think role playing sexually is already adventurous and out there. Now add big animal suits that are typically associated with mascots for entertaining children and I think anyone can see why everyday people think it’s weird.
honestly that argument just feels like recycled homophobia to me. and just because something is weird doesn’t mean it should be hated.
It’s like you glossed over my entire comment and only read the last word…
They’ve still a way to go though as well. I remember when FA banned porn of child-looking characters half the website quit, ironically leaving known groomers who were flagrantly breaking the rule and getting away with it. The alternative sites aren’t much better, with some outright dying on the hill of allowing toddlercon. I dipped because I was insanely uncomfortable with how much of a grooming culture there was and as fun as it was to crash&burn the 40th discord server with admins doing that shit, it was stunting my development into a functioning adult.
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Optical discs (blu-rays, DVDs, cds, etc…). I hate that I have to justify buying one or having a collection.
How dare you store media on a reflective plate?!
Nickelback. I mean they’re not good but they’re not really bad either, just a complete nonevent. They don’t deserve the hate they get, they don’t really deserve anything
Oh, boy, they most certainly deserve the hate. This article sums it up pretty well: https://www.grunge.com/51980/nickelback-became-hated-band-music-industry/
Breeders who responsibly create a hybrid breed for sporting or companion purposes. Doesn’t matter if all applicable health testing is done and every puppy has a home in advance before it’s even born, people seem to immediately think backyard breeder if a dog isn’t purebred.
The man who created Labradoodles regrets his actions
Can we find the pug guy? Theres someone responsible for some animal suffering
How come?
Because Labradoodles wound up very cute but inherited all the bad traits from both breeds and almost none of the good. Just a bundle of nerves and health issues, or so Ive heard/read
I think this applies to every breeder, regardless if they do pure breeds or trendy mutts.
I’d rather mix breeds gain popularity than pure breeds
Pit-bulls. Most of their bad reputation comes from organizations that campaign against their very existence and people will quote pit-bull bite statistics with the same lack of irony as a white nationalist quoting FBI crime statistics about people of color.
Everyone knows the FBI is in the pocket of big-chihuahua.
How many owners are morons that wanted cool mean dog though. I’ve known dog owners that get those breeds specifically and they have no understanding of how to treat a dog. Like they’ll get a working dog and an cage it all day then wonder why it’s aggressive. I’d like to know the difference. Because too many people get dogs for looks and don’t actually give a fuck a about the dogs soul.
Sorry if I come off aggressive, I just talk like that… I’m genuinely curious about this.
Sure but then the problem is moron owners, not the dog or it’s breed. Those morons could be just as cruel to a German Shepherd, Boxer, Rottweiler, Presa Canario, Bullmastiff, etc. Nature vs Nurture I guess.
How many owners are morons that wanted cool mean dog though.
This is sort of my point. A pit bull that’s socialized, well trained, and cared for is generally very safe to be around. A pit bull that has the opposite kind of life? Well, what kinda dog wouldn’t be an asshole under those circumstances?
I don’t hate the breed or agree with breed bans but both my niece and my friend’s daughter were badly bitten by pits and they do make me nervous.
I’m this way with German Shepherd s . I live dogs, Ive had big dogs, I met plenty of friendly Sheperds, but both my mom and I have been bite by 3 different ones (over our lifetimes). Now I am on edge around them.
The one in my neighbourhood jumps all over me. I am also a bit on edge, although most of it seems to be goofiness.
I worked as an insurance agent. In the states I had my P&C licenses in, we were legally required to base rates on data. i.e statistically how much the company paid out in claims given certain factors. One of the things we based rates on was the breeds of dog people owned. Pitbulls and certain other dog breeds do not just have a bad reputation because people irrationally fear/hate them, they actually do pose a greater risk. Just like teenagers by and large, aren’t as safe drivers. It isn’t “fair” in that the dog didn’t choose to be the breed it is and some of them really are good dogs but statistically, averaged over the whole, they are more of a risk than other dog breeds are.
One of the things we based rates on was the breeds of dog people owned. Pitbulls and certain other dog breeds do not just have a bad reputation because people irrationally fear/hate them, they actually do pose a greater risk.
This is a classic example of someone observing a statistical correlation between specific factors and using that to assert a direct causal relationship between them. It implies that an insurance agency is able to 1) accurately identify every single breed of dog in every single insurance related incident (which is definitely not the case, because I doubt every insurance company is doing genetic testing on every single dog it comes across) and 2) tie a causal relationship between dog breed and incident. If I were going by typical insurance metrics, and to borrow from your analogy of “teenagers as unsafe drivers,” you would also assume that red Camarros, something more expensive to insure than your more conservative sedan, were statistically more dangerous than, say, a white Civic, as if they were what caused their drivers to get into car accidents, as opposed to young, reckless people interested in a fast sports car to simply go out and buy one. These are people who would be reckless behind the wheel of any car, but who are statistically correlated with a particular type of one. But you still mark the red Camaro as more expensive to insure regardless of who buys it because it’s statistically correlated with a higher degree of accidents.
No one is ascribing any casual links here.
The causal link is implied. When someone says “Pitbulls and certain other dog breeds do not just have a bad reputation because people irrationally fear/hate them, they actually do pose a greater risk,” this is another way of saying that a particular breed of dog is innately more dangerous than another. Not that it has the potential to be more dangerous, but objectively is. The only logical deduction from this statement is that there must be something about the animal’s breed that makes it this way. It’s literally the exact same logic used by people who cite FBI crime statistics in order to paint specific entire ethnic groups as innately “more criminal” than another ethnic group.
These are multibillion dollar companies (actually they insure trillions in assets) whose whole job is to be very very good at assessing risk. You thinking you know better is peak Dunning-Krueger.
Question: Does his company factor FBI crime stats into it too? Why not? “Despite being 12% of the population black people commit 50% of crime” and suddenly now since it’s optically bad to charge black people higher rates “causation only equals correlation when we can’t be called racist for it?”
That shit don’t sit right with me tbh.
And what about German Shepherds that have bit 11 secret service agents? Secretly pits? Hating pits but not other large breeds is frankly silly imo (unless you hate black people too because the only important thing ever is statistics). At least hate Chows too, since they’re arguably more aggressive, and German Shepherds, Presas, Boxers, Rotts, etc. Shit at the very least German Shepherds were the Nazis dogs and they’re the ones the cops use now, and they’re “not” “bred to attack” over pits? Come off it.
“If a big corporation says something is one way, it must be so. They have a lot of money, after all.” Your argument is peak “Argument to Authority.” I guess it’s a good thing those insurance companies like AIG were able to effectively assess their degree of risk exposure in the housing markets in 2008 and avoid collapsing when the housing market imploded. Oh, wait…
OMFG there is no evil conspiracy by USAA and every other insurance company against pitbulls JFC. Pitbulls are just statistically much more dangerous than other animals.
They’re statistically correlated with incidents of mauling. Nobody is denying the statistical correlation. But there is a difference between observing a statistical correlation between breed and maulings and asserting a causal relationship. My argument is that the assertion that “pit-bulls are innately, biologically predisposed towards violence against people and other animals” is not supported by meaningful evidence. If you are arguing that they are, then you’re gonna have to convince me with more than “insurance companies say they are.”
Quick thought experiment - magically replace every pitbull in the world with a chihuahua instead. Do the number of maulings go up or down?
Okay, I’m trying to understand your argument here. Are you saying that pitbulls are being racially profiled and that information from other dogs aren’t being collected or that bites of the same severity by other dogs aren’t being correctly gathered or are bring suppressed? And, if so, what are the factors that should be taken into account when discussing dog bites or dog aggression?
The other user who responded to you, @evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world, does a good job of analyzing the core idea here. To quote Benjamin Disraeli, there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics. Black people are no more “innately inclined towards criminality” than a pit-bull is innately inclined towards mauling people. Where people of color have been historically over policed, profiled by the criminal justice system, and generally set up to have a higher rate of criminal statistics than other ethnic groups, pit-bulls face similar statistical problems. Bite statistics are often self-reported by people who either witnessed a dog attack or who were themselves victims of one. Identifying a dog’s breed by sight, especially for mixed breed dogs, is nearly impossible, and more error prone than accurate. And for a pound, any “big dog with a blocky head” immediately gets labeled as a pit-bull, even if it has literally no pit-bull DNA. These dogs are routinely adopted by people who explicitly train a dog to be mean to people, as opposed to socializing them. The fact that they also have this reputation as guard dogs or attack dogs exacerbates their reputation.
I already suggested this in another comment, but you can easily apply a thought experiment here. Magically replace all white people with black people with the same upbringing: does crime go up, down, or basically stay the same? Magically replace all pitbulls with chihuahuas with the same upbringing: do maulings go up, down, or basically stay the same?
Couldn’t tell the cops if the mugger was white or black? Pretty understandable. Couldn’t tell the cops if the dog that bit you was a chihuahua or a pitbull? Really?
Any “big dog with a blocky head” should be banned from breeding or sale, and nobody who agrees with that statement cares about DNA. It is a matter of public safety and it doesn’t matter that humans are the real problem, because humans are notoriously hard to control. The pitbulls and similar breeds we have today deserve all the love and comfort we can give them now, but they shouldn’t be bred into the future because there is no legitimate reason to own one except for its potential for violence and flatulence-scapegoating.
Couldn’t tell the cops if the dog that bit you was a chihuahua or a pitbull? Really?
Because those are the two dog breeds that exist. Pitbull and Chihuahua. There are no others.
I think the reason they are making that comparison is that there are a lot of other factors that feed into the final numbers. Crime stats aren’t a final determination of the inherent criminality of different groups of people. Things like poverty, arrest rates, and conviction rates all skew the numbers.
With pit bulls, people often get them because they want a dog that’s “tough” and they essentially train (or don’t train) them to be bad dogs. The dog itself isn’t at fault.
Anyone who’s been around a lot of dogs will tell you that small dogs are more bitey. The fact that a pit bull is stronger and can do more damage is also not the dogs fault.
Anyone whos been around a lot of dogs will tell you that small dogs are more bitey.
There you go, thats exactly the point. But they aren’t killing any babies. Pitbulls were bred for fighting. People have Tigers and Lions as pets too. Is that also justified?
The fact that a pit bull is stronger and can do more damage is also not the dogs fault.
Of course it’s not the dog’s fault. It is just an animal. It’s the breeders’ and the owners’ fault. Nobody is advocating for euthanasing Pitbulls. Maybe just get a Golden Retriever if you’re just looking for a pet next time.
What do you think happens to all the unadopted pitbulls, pizza parties every Friday? Nope, it’s euthanasia.
Nobody is advocating for euthanasing Pitbulls.
There are a shitload of people who advocate for completely destroying this breed of dog.
Yes, the breed should be distroyed. But not the poor living animals. We should simply stop breeding more of them. Pitbulls are a freak of nature created for the amusement of humans.
I mean, dog breeding is in general terribly inhumane. All dogs should ideally be mutts. They’d certainly all be healthier and have a better quality of life.
The real difference is pitbulls bite to kill, most other dogs dont. Any dog can get triggered, but certain breeds like bullies and dogos, ridgbacks, they bite to kill. It is as instinctual as a pointer pointing or a sheep dog herding.
Just watch a lot of footage of a shepard attacking a human vs a pitbull. The shepard generally goes for the arm or leg and the bully drags you down so it can go for the face and neck.
Heck, one time when I was driving a bully charged my van! I was doing 50km and he charged out, and bashed into my door! I didnt stop, and it didnt seem hurt it just went after the car behind me…
Speaking out against direct intervention in [current war]
Speaking out in favor of past interventions in [previous decade’s wars]“Chemicals” in food. Literally every substance, every food and people are composed of them. The common usage has bastardized the meaning and latched on to the naturalistic fallacy. Snake venom is natural. Cyanide is natural. Arsenic and Uranium are natural. Botulinum toxin is natural. Something being naturally occurring does not automatically make it good for you just as something being made in a lab does not equate to being bad for you.
I really liked this post by Hank Green regarding “natural remedies”.
tl;dw The chemicals used in chemotherapy are naturally occurring, and science uses what we know works. So when people say “you should use natural remedies”, what they really mean is, you should use something:
- we don’t know whether it works
- we know doesn’t work
- we know is actively harmful
And the first two categories aren’t necessarily bad, an Epsom salt bath can feel really nice, but don’t think it’s a replacement for proper medical science.
My least favorite is “it’s processed”
I can count the ingredients on my hands, and the “processing” is like 4 steps max.
“Unga bunga me invent new process for food. It called cooking. Make less parasites in meat. Very good.”
“Cooking bad, garg. We no want processed food.”
A guy at a deli counter slicing cold cuts and assembling them into a sandwich is “processed food”. Using the term as a health concern marker is meaningless.
Even Kraft Singles, the posterchild of “processed food”, famously disallowed to legally call itself “cheese” on its packaging, what is it made of? What hellish process hath humanity wrought? Cheddar cheese, sodium citrate (a mundane variety of salt), and water. That’s it.
It’s not forbidden from being called “cheese” because it’s a bastard concoction of mad scientist chemicals that approximate cheese to ruse consumers. It’s simply cheese, literally watered down to the point that you can’t call it cheese anymore.
All that the sodium citrate is doing in this situation is acting as a binder that helps the cheese solids hold on to the water. This action is what gives many dishes, sauces, and the like their smooth, creamy texture. But use the word for that – “emulsifier” – and suddenly people think you’re trying to poison them, because that’s a scary chemical word.
Why does this product exist? Because it offers a unique melty texture that people appreciate in certain contexts. It’s a niche product with a niche function. Treat it like one.
I haven’t run into anyone who considers emulsifier a scary chemical word. Most people I know with any baking skill know what the word means and use egg yolks for that purpose all the time.
Cooking is processing food.
On one hand I agree with you, the way “chemicals” are used in everyday speech differs from the text book definition.
On the other hand, if we take our heads out of our asses and stop the "well actually"s I kinda have to agree with being against “chemicals” in food. Arsenic is naturally occurring, sure, but at what concentration? Radioactive uranium is a naturally occurring element, but I would hardly call nuclear fallout something natural.
Same thing with people thinking that organic food is healthier. Organic food might be good for the environment, but not necessarily the climate or your health.
I worked in produce as a quality inspector for a couple years. Organic generally just means lower quality for higher price. No one is regulating it as far as I know, they can just skip pesticides, do everything else the same and charge more for the same product that actually cost them less to produce. We refered to it as a hillarious scam when the boss wasnt around.
Doesn’t it cost more to produce because you lose more crops to pests?
No, thats just the bullshit they use to justify it.
Anything not looking good enough gets sent to a secondary outlet and is sold as is with no organic labels. The stuff that is a grade below that gets juiced ( dont drink fruit juice that you didnt make yourself if you can help it…). They are not losing a single pennie, they are making out like thieves
That depends on where you live though. Here in Denmark, as an example, we have a certificate called “Statskontrolleret økologisk” which basically translates to “Government-certified organic”. There are specific guidelines and rules that need to be followed, to be allowed to use this seal on your product.
We have a similar system in the US. The US department of agriculture has a stamp they put on food that has strict criteria for what goes in it
Organic has less pesticides. Which is probably healthier no? I mostly buy non organic, but always get organic for certain foods like strawberries and oats since they tend to have so much pesticides used on them.
Not necessarily less pesticides, but “natural” pesticides. In my opinion, organic food is probably either equivalent or better than not-organic, but I don’t think there’s much scientific consensus.
People tend to think “organic” means that a food item is free from the ills of industrial agriculture, but it really doesn’t. It’s the same thing with people directing hate at GMO’s: most complaints people have about them are really complaints that apply to industrial ag whether GMO or not.
Organic has less pesticides.
Less pesticides also means more bacteria and more bug poop. There is a reason why they use pesticides, after all.
Even if there are trace amounts of pesticides left, you can just wash the produce, which you should always do anyway. Same reason you wash the organic produce to get rid of bug stuff…
The trace amounts of bug poop or pesticides really makes no difference when it comes to your health.
I feel like that’s one of those things where the conversational use of chemicals and scientific use has drifted apart
There’s plenty of examples but the only one I can think of is evolution, like In every terrible sci-fi movie ever using evolution to describe the individual evil monster gaining some change
Anyways 100% agree with you tho
AI. In the real world, AI is any computer process that can make decisions as if it were smart. Expert systems, genetic algorithms, hell even fuzzy logic. A smart lightbulb is artificially smart. Artificially intelligent.
In movies and bad tech blogs, AI means a sapient machine and that’s why LLMs aren’t actually AI.
The word theory is another one.
I find myself thinking this a lot. Someone goes; “and that’s my theory about…” And I’m like; that’s not a theory, that’s a hypothesis…
But that’s just a theory, a gaaaame theory
Matpat is a fascist piece of shit.
Like how some creationists try to dispell evolution by saying that it’s only a theory.
I just say “so is gravity”
Idk if that helps your point as it’s simultaneously one of the most studied and least understood things in physics. Although I doubt a creationist could mount that argument.
I love when they compare food labels from two countries but don’t notice the ingredients are the same just described in different words or with different levels of verbosity based on the local regulations.
Have you heard about the chemical dihydrogen monoxide?! It’s 100% fatal! Too much causes death, too little, death! Massively addictive.
If you are not worried about the chemicals in your food, your long term health would like to have a word with you.
Being overweight or obese, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, prolonged sitting, loneliness will all kill you way faster than all those “chemicals” in your food that you are so terrified of but no one really cares about any of that because its much harder to lose that extra 30 pounds and break up sitting every once in a while with light exercise than it is to act like a picky 5 year old and eat nothing but organic food satisfied by the false notion that you did something of consequence for your health.
Water is a chemical. Salt is a chemical. Everything is a chemical.
Absolutely, but not at all chemicals are the same as you know. Some are harmless and some are not.
Not just your food, even the water. It’s full of H2O.
Israel
If you hate jews - it’s nice to concentrate them in the limited area just in case. If you love them - it’s great that they live in the same land as 5000 years before.
Britain has been supporting the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” since 1917 (Balfour Declaration). Why after 107 years so many people want to play on the side of Ottoman imperialism and oppress indigenous jewish people?
If a few millions of alive jews was a real problem for the 460 millions of arabs (and 1.8 billion of muslims), the Final Solution to the Jewish Question would be already reached.
Ok, you don’t need much to hate brown people with strange religion, understandable. But it’s really hard to make proper genocide. Even the Germans killed only 6 millions of jews, I don’t believe that Hamas with its corruption will manage to kill even 1 million. So all remaining 9 millions will come to your country and will infinitely ask for help.
The best action would be to accommodate all the Palestinian people that want to come to your country. They will ramp up fertility, number of mosques and Allah possibly will not send you, infidels to hell.
The love for arabs shuld be productive. If the West help Hamas to make Palestine “From the river to the sea”, it will destroy the only democracy in the middle east. But if the West accommodates all faithful muslims, they’ll definitely forgive infidel’s sins and become liberals
Dispassionate takes on controversial issues.
There’s always atleast two sides to each story and more often than not the truth is somewhere in the middle. If you think something is clear-cut you’re almost guranteed to be mistaken and misinformed and many of your dearest beliefs are totally wrong.
Dispassionate? Could there be a better word? I think I know and agree with what your saying but I don’t think that’s the correct word.
There is, of course, a relevant xkcd - it’s yesterday’s https://xkcd.com/2898/
I’ve taken to letting people know my opinion that if they are omicient they are wasting their talent arguing about piddly topics with subjectives like myself
I think social media, particularly Twitter, has bred this. Twitter is designed in a way that makes it impossible to have an actual structured debate and instead encourages short and unambiguous statements which cannot possibly accurately encapsulate an issue
Yes, social media has destroyed nuance. Recognizing that a person can understand a position without believing that position is also gone. And people are often performing for likes and “ratio” and discussing in bad faith and being intentionally obtuse in the hopes of getting more attention.
encourages short and unambiguous statements which cannot possibly accurately encapsulate an issue
Conservatives in a nutshell. (I’ll add the /s here for anyone not getting the joke that I’m doing the exact thing we’re talking about)
I needed that /s, lol.
Because isn’t that literally what conservatives do? Pick wedge issues then make quick soundbites about “common sense” “solutions” that align with simple black & white thinking and conservative values?
Libertarians
Socialists
But even more so libertarian socialists
I’ve just using that label because it was just a guerenteed fight starter instead of clarifying anything
Clowns. I never found them entertaining, but they just want to entertain kids and people at circuses.
Male abuse/SA victims. It’s already not taken seriously enough when it happens to women, but when it happens to a guy they get put down even more and are more often laughed off, sometimes even by people who’d take it seriously if the sexes were swapped.
MSG
The idea of using public transportation. It’s something for “them” (the poor), not for “me” (rich). Changes significantly from country to country, I suppose, but it’s a prevalent thought here.
