Ecco the dolphin

I am a time-traveling dolphin. An entity made of giant balls gave me the ability to breathe underwater, but this ability was recently stolen from me by aliens.

Sometimes I turn into a bird.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 13th, 2024

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  • I totally love the energy of the poster in OPs image, it’s so warm and wholesome.

    That said, it’s probably true that cats (and dogs for that matter) have a variety of coat patterns because of domestication. Not only do humans choose to breed pets for their coat variations, selecting for tamer, friendlier animals actually also just introduces a variety of differences from their wild counterparts. Coat color is one of them.

    https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/197/3/795/5935921?login=false

    But the [related traits from domestication] as a whole, with its diverse array of affected morphological traits, clearly cannot be caused simply by alterations of adrenal function. What, therefore, might be the common factor? What all of these diverse traits, including the adrenals, share is that their development is closely linked to neural crest cells (NCCs). NCCs are the vertebrate-specific class of stem cells that first appear during early embryogenesis at the dorsal edge (“crest”) of the neural tube and then migrate ventrally throughout the body in both the cranium and the trunk, giving rise to the cellular precursors of many cell and tissue types and indirectly promoting the development of others (Carlson 1999; Hall 1999; Gilbert 2003; Trainor 2014).

    Edit: the adrenal gland is mentioned here because lessening the function of the “flight or flight” response appears to makes friendlier animals with better temperament for domestication. The idea is that domestic animals were selected for temperament first, and everything else is less important (why would you keep an animal that won’t stop biting you?).


  • I got a cat on a restricted diet (diabetic) and two kittens who get to eat whenever they want. However, we gotta keep the kitten’s food away from our toothless old diabetic. Meal time for the kittens happens behind a closed door.

    Constantly the kittens are meowing at the door for snacks. We let them in, they have a few bites, they stratch the door to come out, process repeats. We make jokes, “Time for second breakfast”, “time for elevensies”, and our poor old diabetic cat gets none of it. She gets carefully portioned prescription food twice a day (and an injection).

    I always wonder what she thinks. The vet says the diabetes makes her feel hungry all the time, and I believe it. We have to keep the sandwich bread in the pantry or she’ll chew through the plastic bag and have some. Or, at least, that’s what she would do when she had teeth. We still keep it away from her.

    She gets grouchy when we shoo her away from the kitten’s magic infinite food room. My socks and ankles have been gummed when she’s felt especially unhappy with the food situation.



  • I have to sign in to 2-5 programs to complete service for customers

    I use shared terminals so I have to sign out when I am done

    Each task takes about 3-4 minutes of computer work, feels like most of my time spent is typing in a 15 character password in 2-5 programs. I do this all day, 8hr shift, graveyards.

    I just change a single digit number on this password when the 90 day rotation happens. Typing it in incorrectly 3 times gets me locked out, a call to IT. I work for tips, no time for that. My work environment is distracting, noisy and stressful, so even if I wanted to use “best practices” in choosing passwords, I really shouldn’t.

    Management refuses to replace keyboards that aren’t in good repair. Several have keys that stick.

    I type in a 15-char password probably 100+ times a day.

    my phone is dead for 2fa

    Lmao skill issue




  • I do believe that in order to achieve welfare/prosperity, not all the people have to work. And I do believe that there are more important things in life than working. I’d love to be a stay at home dad, but I can’t.

    Being a stay at home dad is work. Raising children is necessary work that capitalism requires, because it requires laborers. We have engineered a system in which this work is uncompensated, and if you gender this work, it causes gendered oppression.

    I will also point out that in America we have decided that unless you have a “job”, society has decided that you pretty much don’t deserve health care. Anyone who chooses a life of domestic labor in America puts themselves in a position where they are financially dependent on their spouse and their spouse’s employment status. It doesn’t have to be this way. We have forged these chains.

    Whether doubling the workforce is a good thing - that I’d keep up for a debate.

    If we had more workers, it could be that we wouldn’t need those workers to work as long. Earlier retirement, shorter work weeks, whatever. The issue is not the size of the work force, the issue is what is chosen to be done with it.


  • Are you trying to imply doubling the available workforce is not good? Its usually a good thing. While their motivations are cynical, those leaders are doing good.

    …or are you trying to imply that keeping women out of the traditional work force (by only allowing them to work unpaid in the home in domestic servitude, labor that capital does not value) increases the value of male labor through scarcity, which would be preferred?

    Sorry that second question kind of reads as an attack. A shitty coworker of mine said that to me unironically and tried to play it off as a joke when I pushed back.



  • For what it’s worth, they have their domain back. It seems from a skim from the front page they’re just deciding how to refederate (allow list or block list, basically they are trying to decide if they will automatically federate with new instances).

    At the time of writing this comment the votes are close and allow list is winning (many commenters don’t want to federate with new instances unless they are approved).








  • The first day of his inaguration, Trump put forth an executive order that will attempt to make all federal employees Schedule F, basically, the same protections as a political appointee instead of a civil servant. This will make them basically at will employees.

    DunkinCoder is correct they are also making it really awful to work for the federal government with RTO and freezing of funding. And the hiring freeze. But it’s not the complete picture, its actually much worse.

    There will be court cases with federal employees trying to keep their jobs. I suspect they will fail, due to how the courts are republican controlled right now. The firings haven’t started yet. Expect them soon. There will be loyalty tests. There’s an email floating around asking federal employees to rat on “DEI hires”, whatever that is. Are minorities that are actually entirely qualified for their federal position a “DEI hire”? Do you get fired if you don’t pretend that they are?

    Edit - article: link


  • All federal employees have been reclassified to political employees instead of nonpartisan civil servants, meaning they are closer to at will employees.

    This has never happened before.

    All federal employees now serve at the will of the party in power. There will be loyalty tests. There will be entire departments defunded and dismantled.

    They are reviewing social media posts as we speak to decide who to keep. That’s right, that includes folks at the CDC, FDA, EPA… every paperwork jockey, no matter how minor their position, is now subject to the whims at the party in power in a way they were not before.

    All these firings will be contested. They’ll go to the courts. Say… Who owns the courts right now?

    You have no idea what is happening. The purges begin 90 days from now.