jesse_the_k: My black mutt totally blissed out, on her back, paws folded (BELLA on back)

On day one, she was beautiful, and brave, and ready to cuddle. She was underweight, so her sleek black-and-brown body just fills an oval bed. Staring right at the camera with hope and trepidation, her stuffed alligator rests in front.

Click for pic )

Today was her last day.

Euthanasia, generally described )

jesse_the_k: iPod nestles in hollowed-out print book (Alt format reader)

Find in library • DRM-free audiobookBARD

As I hoped back in December, last month I found enough brain to tackle An Immense World by Ed Yong. I was convinced by [personal profile] pauraque’s extensive summary and review, and the 24 days I spent reading were a pure delight. Ed Yong is a great narrator: he fluently pronounces the Neo-Latinate species names as well as the international assortment of human researchers. He somehow manages not to giggle at his own (frequent) jokes.

He wildly succeeds at explaining the distinctive sensory worlds of many of our planet’s inhabitants. Along the way, he explores how scientists design experiments to pin down how, for example, a scallop sees or a leafhopper senses vibrations. He tells the truth that our current understanding is not necessarily the whole answer — that science means change. So much of the current state of the art began as theories mocked by the scientific establishment.

Yong is keenly aware of human as well as animal variety. When addressing the senses, he fluently acknowledges that not humans all have a standard complement—for example, his researchers are described as sighted when that’s relevant. He consciously seeks out women and non-binary researchers, as explained in his 2018 Atlantic article "I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories -- Here’s what I’ve learned, and why I did it.".

Most importantly, he’s such a good writer. He clearly loves his subject, and he plays with formal and informal registers. He provides enough detail to enthrall while lightly alternating between technical explanations and emotional delights. He organizes the books by sense, and each one almost stands alone. It helped that I gave myself permission to read for enjoyment, not trying to remember the details because there is no test. I'm looking forward to rereading it.

I do recall some stunning facts:

  • Scallops have many eyes — from a dozen to more than 200.
  • Owls have asymmetrical ears, enabling them to locate sounds both horizontally and vertically.
  • Some creatures use the Earth’s very weak electromagnetic field to navigate—but we don’t know how. The signal is so subtle that it’s not contemporaneous: the whales, birds, and turtles must travel several miles before they can know if they’re headed in the right direction.

He starts with dogs, guaranteeing sympathy from half his readership. (I was charmed by references to his own Corgi pup, Typo.) In this 350-word excerpt, he introduces the canine olfaction expert, Alexandra Horowitz, and her dog Finnegan:

Read more... )

jesse_the_k: chainmail close up (links)

[personal profile] erinptah collates amusing and horrifying examples of large language models ("AI") spewing nonsense after they steal the hard work of artists like herself:

https://erinptah.dreamwidth.org/tag/artificial+unintelligence


[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posted eighteen subtle and beautiful eclipse shots at the "share your photos" community [community profile] common_nature https://common-nature.dreamwidth.org/253608.html


[tumblr.com profile] jenroses’s Fork Theory is a most excellent complement to spoon theory

http://jenrose.com/fork-theory/

You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?

Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens.

A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.


Finally, this pro-captioned video summarizes the findings from an Hungarian research paper published last month in Cell. It supports that dogs make mental representations of human words.

stream on YouTube or … stream here )

Boros, Magyari et al. (2024) Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029

We had some snow

Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 05:30 pm
jesse_the_k: Snowflake pulses white and blue (snowflake GIF)

The warnings were dire, but so far we've only had 4-5 inches on the ground. The snow is very heavy and wet and it's barely freezing. That's good news on the street, where it rapidly melts. It's sad news in the backyard, where thick snow brought down three branches on our oldest pine tree, which blocked the street behind our house. Thank heavens for neighbors with chainsaws.

Earlier in the day, MyGuy and Bella went exploring on the bike path. It's a tunnel of white: snow covers the path itself, all the vegetation on the sides, and weighs down the branches of the trees and bushes. Since our black mutt Bella is certain there's something exciting just ahead, her leash is stretching forward into the future.

click for pic )

jesse_the_k: text: Be kinder than need be: everyone is fighting some kind of battle (Default)

Comment below and I'll ask you five questions. Drop me a link to your answers in your own journal. Offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue!

Thanks for these great questions, [personal profile] boxofdelights

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of "best friends". Do you have a best friend? Did you, as a child? What do you think about the concept?

Read more... )

Tell me about one of your best memories of WisCon.

Read more... )

Do you play games? If so, what is a game that you like?

Read more... )

Tell me about your first dog.

Read more... )

When you are stressed, how do you like to make yourself comfortable again?

Read more... )

jesse_the_k: Robot dog from old Doctor Who (k9 to the rescue)

Fifty four pounds of majestic deep brown and black muttlying in a bright spot

Click for pic )

jesse_the_k: Red leaf from a pin oak tree (pin oak leaf)

Because we have 30 trees in our city lot, we have lots of leaves in our yard. I just admire them, but MyGuy has to rake 'em for the city to compost.

Bella feels a calling to supervise this important work. The pile starts at least 8 ft wide by 20 ft long by 1 ft high. Over the space of an hour, MyGuy packs it into containers. Bella stays put as the pile recedes.

We acknowledge her leadership.

Three leafy photos with one fixed dog )

jesse_the_k: barcode version of jesse_the_k (JK OpenID barcode)

It's often been said (even by me) that the Corgi phenotype is so strong that when Corgis create mixed breed dogs, they look like "Corgis in costumes."

I'm delighted to report there's a Reddit sub devoted entirely to pictures of these costumed wonders: no matter whether the outgroup dog is a chihuahua or a husky, the dog has a long body, short legs, and a definite attitude.
https://reddit.com/r/incorgnito
No login required to admire


If you saw a cornstarch slurry in science class -- often called "oobleck" -- you've experienced a "non-Newtonian liquid." That's a substance which changes its structure based on pressure. A local industrial pump manufacturer does a lovely job explaining the varieties:
https://blog.craneengineering.net/what-are-newtonian-and-non-newtonian-fluids

I found this after rabbit-holing for a post on gluten-free gravy.
https://gluten-free.dreamwidth.org/55497.html


Nursing Clio continues to deliver accessible historical perspective on the social impacts of medicine, in this case, Black nurses during the US Vietnam war:

[Elizabeth Allen]’s motivation for joining the war effort came from the same deep well of solidarity within the Black community that produced the anti-War activism of Angela Davis and Malcolm X. Allen expanded on her ideological justification for volunteering: “It’s not for me to decide as to the rightness or the wrongness of the war, my decision was what was the best possible care I could give.”

Subscribe to [syndicated profile] nursingclio_feed


[personal profile] china_shop, who I met oh so long ago in due South fandom before Dreamwidth, came up with a rousing fannish pub-quiz style game — you can play on your next Zoom call!

https://fictional-fans.dreamwidth.org/72400.html


[personal profile] skygiants muses about the fanfic trope "forced to work together" and the optimistic hope that humans can love each other just for that.

https://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/602008.html


[community profile] fail_fandomanon is an anon community where hundreds of posts and comments appear daily. I visit the 6-year-old Dreamwidth edition maybe yearly. Its purpose and culture is mysterious to me. Here's a Fanlore attempt to describe it https://fanlore.org/wiki/Failfandom_anon

Enter [personal profile] erinptah, who must read closely to gather these non-wanky, in fact, intriguing discussions under the fail-fandomanon tag: https://erinptah.dreamwidth.org/tag/fail-fandomanon

Why Bella, Why?

Wednesday, May 6th, 2020 11:40 am
jesse_the_k: Black dog staring overhead at squirrel out of frame (BELLA expectant)

Spring has actually arrived! The maple trees are dropping green pollen all over the streets, there are teeny buds on the oaks, the tulips are in full bloom, and we're due for a freeze tonight.

Bella is delighted that the earthworms are wiggling their way into the sunshine. She likes to gnaw on them for a while and then rub the mess on her face.

How's the progress of spring in your corner of the planet? Do your pets do disgusting things?

jesse_the_k: Black dog staring overhead at squirrel out of frame (BELLA expectant)

One hundred seventy-seven days ago, Bella was in the vet ER suffering through a ton of tests. She was eventually diagnosed with primary immune mediated hemolytic anemia. She's taken several paper bags worth of meds, including cortisone and cyclosporine. We hit on hotdogs as the premier treat to get her to swallow her meds, after trying almond butter, peanut butter, and canned chicken. We tapered off the cortisone last month and today we learned her latest blood work is so good we can halve her cyclosporine.

So much good news!

  • The hair is starting to grow back on her belly. That belly is big again since she's up to 51 pounds (only four more to go).
  • She has energy and enthusiasm and she's ready for spring.
  • Almost all the warts have gone, with some dried up holdouts generating copious dandruff (of course it's also blowing-her-coat season).
  • She continues to be an excellent role model for me by conserving energy when she needs to. Now she's feeling up to visiting with dog park users (both canine and human).
  • She's digging toys out of her basket and squeaking.
  • She's doing zoomies around the living room.
jesse_the_k: text: Be kinder than need be: everyone is fighting some kind of battle (lost youth)

...seems to be on the agenda. (We're fine, Bella's getting better.) MyGuy and I are finishing up our will, designating personal representatives who get delegated to herd our health and wealth In The Event.

From [twitter.com profile] BlairBraverman's regular column in Outside magazine, pondering the grief we feel after losing a dog, and how we can imagine the next dog.

What to Do When You Lose a Dog

Dogs’ lives are short to us, but not to them. To them, their lives are the length of lives.

The burden of this, the hardship, falls on us—we outlive our best friends. But it also allows us to give them a gift. A dog can pass through puppyhood, adulthood, and old age in the company of caring humans. They can live their whole lives on earth in a cocoon of love.

Dogs exist in each moment. They are shallow in the best of ways: their life consists of the things they’re experiencing now. They want to be loved, they want attention and snacks and walks, they want gentle hands on their fur while they drift to sleep. The best thing we can do for dogs is to make their moments good. If their moments are good, then their lives are good, too.

And when we lose them?

They give us one last gift, which is that we can grieve like dogs. Moment by moment. Not by living in the past or the future, but by taking the sorrow as it comes.

jesse_the_k: Scrabble triple-value badge reading "triple nerd score" (word nerd)

ForeverStamp.com
is "a little web site designed to make your life simpler by tracking the price of a stamp by Christopher Maxwell."

Since 2007, the United States Postal Service had been selling a non-denominated stamp for first class postage. It’s labelled the forever stamp, and it insulates casual mailers from thinking about the cost to send a letter.

While the stamp doesn’t list its value, you can still use it, at its current price, to mail other items. Finding anything is challenging at the official USPS official home—this site provides a convenient alternative, as well as the stamp’s history and answers to questions you didn’t know you had.

tl;dr (Don’t stockpile more than a year’s worth.)


I just learned about USPS Dogs, a Facebook group where critter-loving postal carriers show pictures of friends (canine, feline, equine, etc) they meet on the job.

In the cut: a pair of human hands holds a small gray and white dog above a patch of snow. The dog has stubby legs, random black speckles, white-blue irises, a longer-than typical bulldog-like nose, and huge erect ears (larger than their head). I suspect it’s the result of a lively encounter between an Australian Cattle Dog and an English Bulldog.

click for pic )

jesse_the_k: Pixar's Dory, the adventurous fish with a brain injury (dain bramage)
Thanks to [personal profile] ysobel for the concept, I'm declaring Dreamwidth bankruptcy. It's not that I haven't read your posts, it's just that I'm too wiped to respond.

Bella is still alive and warty )


I listened to the first two Lord Peter Wimsey books on audio. The narrators were busy demonstrating their grasp of a range of accents, which makes for A+ soporific companionship when I'm too tired to read.

psych drugs stink )

I have absorbed almost all of [twitter.com profile] LulaVampiro's blog. Excellent -- two pieces worth reading right now )
jesse_the_k: iPod nestles in hollowed-out print book (Alt format reader)

If you need a snort-giggle, [personal profile] thefourthvine's hilarious "I Need A Sweet Potato" essay

https://littera-abactor.livejournal.com/7748.html backup

has been podficced by a conspiracy of EuroPodders

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562057

Bella Health Update

Wednesday, December 11th, 2019 05:00 pm
jesse_the_k: My black mutt totally blissed out, on her back, paws folded (BELLA on back)

Eighty days ago MyGuy carried Bella in to the vet ER. Eight days later he carried her back home with a large grocery bag of toxic drugs. She’s had three outpatient hospital visits plus two local-vet blood draws.

While the survival rate for immune mediated hemolytic anemia varies from 20% to 80%, we’re confident she’s getting excellent care and she’s showing many signs of improvement: medical details no gore )

I can’t put into words how much I appreciate your kind thoughts and well wishes.

[ETA enabled comments]

jesse_the_k: text: Be kinder than need be: everyone is fighting some kind of battle (Default)

I'm a fan, what can I say?

Iditarod Mushers Are Like Crossfitters on Ice

You have to know dogs. Know their gaits, their glances, their idiosyncrasies. When my girl Boudica picks at her dinner, it means something different than when Talese does it. When Flame looks over her shoulder, it means she’s checking on me; when Anya does the same, it means a wild animal is close by. Nothing a dog does is coincidental, no glance or skip or burp—it’s all information to be read and absorbed. The dogs trust you to recognize what they need as both individuals and extreme athletes. In the bush, for as long as it may take for outside help to arrive, you are everything to each other. You are your own doctor and veterinarian. You are coach, nutritionist, physical therapist, and athlete combined.

[twitter.com profile] BlairBraverman introduces us to the skills needed to run the Iditarod. She loves her dogs so much! This Twitter thread explores how carefully she attends to their needs, and warms the heart of this dog lover.

On our long run the other day, Boudica got tired after 30 miles and rode in the barkbox the rest of the way. The next morning, when I went out to the dog yard, she wouldn’t come out of her house. What’s up? I asked her.

https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/status/1072672668254642177

ETA: The post originally included a ThreadReaderApp link. Much jingly tail wags to [personal profile] delight for letting me know about the BraverMountain-approved wiki site, where I can get all my Bler content while avoiding Twitter.

https://wicksypedia.fandom.com/wiki/BraverMountain_Twitter_Stories

jesse_the_k: Black dog staring overhead at squirrel out of frame (BELLA expectant)
Everyone who loves a dog wants the animal, whether pet or work companion, to enjoy as many years as possible. Learning the whys behind the length and strength of dogs’ lifespans has become the impetus for the largest research data-gathering program of its kind, the Dog Aging Project.

The initiative is jointly operated by the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. It will create a national community of dogs, owners, veterinarians, researchers, and volunteers, all working together to advance knowledge about how genes, habits, and the environment influence dog aging.

Although the project has been in its preliminary stages for a while, its full-throttle launch will be announced Nov. 14 at the annual Gerontological Society of America meeting in Austin, Texas. After that date, owners can nominate their canine as a candidate on the Dog Aging Project website.

https://dogagingproject.org/
jesse_the_k: Big cheryl haworth deadlifts under Olympic Rings (cheryl wins olympic gold)
This Facebook album shows dogs fast asleep in remarkably uncomfortable positions.

It made me laugh so I hard I had to use my inhaler.

It doesn't require a Facebook login: just click on the tiny Newfie puppy asleep between her person's outstretched legs, and you'll get a horizontal scroll through (without descriptions).

https://www.facebook.com/meupequenopetoficial/photos/pcb.890999271284391/890996897951295/?type=3&theater

An especially charming example for the FB-averse )

Storms Are Passing

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 05:51 pm
jesse_the_k: text: Be kinder than need be: everyone is fighting some kind of battle (Be kinder)

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts!

Bella’s eating dinner

as well as the eighteen pills daily they sent her home with. Luckily, she loves almond butter and needs to regain weight lost over 7 days not eating. Plop a pill in a gob of almond butter and she simply thwips it down. The immunosuppressive Cyclosporin is sufficiently toxic that we have to don gloves to stuff it down her throat, and the pills themselves are huge. For these we have to pry open her jaws, jam the pill on the very back of her tongue, then stroke her throat until she swallows.

No physical damage from the crash

I was too ashamed to check in with my primary doc after the crash, even though my pain levels have stayed elevated. MyGuy finally convinced me, and I saw my doc today. He confirmed that my pain was consonant with a terrifying incident. We agreed that I got away lucky.

In convo with my therapist, I realized

  • while the driver and witnesses did shit to be helpful
  • I was capable of taking care of my own needs and therefore
  • Prevented further damage
  • Reached out for support to helpful people, like you

All good things. The final realization is one I’ve packed away in my lock box for further examination next session: the driver was in many ways acting just like my father.

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