I have to write a real post about the crazy thing that happened but I’m so behind I need to get a post out today while I’m still off work. There will be no best of posts this year, instead I’m whatever is beyond excited to tell you that with the gracious help of one of my oldest friends I’ve managed the leap to medium format digital photography. A leap I’ve been trying to make for a long long time and despite being very clever it’s been outside my reach.
I want to tell you the whole thing in a proper post because things like this just don’t happen in the world as I understand it and that’s worth thinking about some but not today.
Welcome to 2019 and the first images from my brand new Fuji GFX 50s. This year is going to be the year the real work gets started.
According to researchers, coordinated critics have mounted a “misinformation campaign designed to purposefully fabricate doubt regarding the harmful impacts of outdoor cats and stymie policies that would remove outdoor cats from the landscape.”
The conflict stems from a groundbreaking study published in 2013 by scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That study evaluated the combined impact of the tens of millions of outdoor cats in the United States. The authors found that roaming outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year and are the leading source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds in the country. Similar results have since been confirmed in Canada and Australia.
To those of you still in denial about how bad outdoor cats are to wildlife not just in your own countries but globally here’s the cold hard scientific facts stating that you are apart of a movement of uneducated critics spreading misinformation.
Here’s the link to the open-source scientific artificial as well:
but what about…. all the rats, mice etc they kill… hmmmmm
Maybe click the actual scientific research and read it before leaving a comment hmmmmm it would have saved you the embarrassment of proving the point of research. Which was that people that criticise keeping cats indoors were found to have zero actual evidence to back up their criticisms, therefore all their claims were based on nonsense or emotions.
Yikes! Think this is a good lesson in clicking links before you comment!
This study is going to cause so many ructions in the public…. buckle in, guys
You have not seen ructions in public until you’ve seen me tell a bunch of farmers to keep their barn cats indoors and encourage black snakes to take care of their Rodent probs because at least the snakes don’t spread toxoplasmosis.
Nobody does a ruction like a six foot plus dude who is secretly afraid a five foot snake will casually slither by and be all “sup”
Anyway here is my Chief Rodent Control Officer after taking a tithe of eggs which she does when there’s not enough rodents around
Yeah it’s not too hard to predict how that conversation will go:
You: You know those cats running around your property that won’t let a human touch them if their lives depended on it? You need to bring them all in the house.
Farmer: haha good one. You know they’d freak the hell out, right? Assuming that I could catch them and drag them in in the first place. And how am I supposed to control the rats if all my cats are inside?
You: Bring in a bunch of snakes and…
Farmer: haha go away now.
I love it when people assume I am not in fact a farmer myself. I’m a shepherd, with sheep. I don’t have barn cats because, among other reasons, cats spread toxoplasmosis. You know what toxo does? Probably not. You’re probably not dependent on small ruminants for any part of your livelihood.
Toxoplasmosis causes abortion in sheep and goats. Every ewe or doe who fails to lamb or kid is lost milk, lost meat, a lost replacement animal in the flock, lost cash from the sale of a new herd sire to someone else. When you have rare breed primitive sheep like I do, each lost pregnancy is also the entire breed slipping closer to the brink of disappearing.
You also appear to be unaware that there are live traps for catching the very feral barn cats - I’m SO glad someone who knows my profession, life, and attendant tools so well chimed in - we also use them to eg trap raccoons, foxes, and possums who are predating small livestock like chickens and rabbits. Incidentally, did you know cats can shed salmonella which can go on to infect your chickens? Why are you raising your own chickens for eggs and meat if you’re just going to get the same salmonella roulette you could get at the grocery store without all the goddamned work?
Chickens will also eat mice and young rats, incidentally. If you’ve got an honest to God adult rat infestation in your barn your husbandry practices are fucked up six ways from Sunday and you need to build better feed containers before you do anything else. The country isn’t the city. We do a lot more mice here.
You could of course also get yourself a nice working terrier and while you’re doing chores let the dog go to town on the rodent population.
Because if you actually have barn cats you can’t get near, they’re serving as a potential reservoir for rabies (which will pass to any mammal including you, including cattle), feline distemper, toxo, salmonella, and a host of parasites starting with coccidia and running out to various worms that don’t much care if they infect a barn cat or, yknow, a pregnant cow worth $2000.
So no, actually, that’s generally not how the conversation goes. But thanks for chiming in, city kid, assuming I was not in fact a working shepherd.
THIS. Andrea knows her stuff and I highly recommend following her here and on Twitter.
Apparently concentrated Kool-Aid can be used as a pretty effective leather dye.
I was making a drink while cutting the snaps off some new straps for my pauldrons and I got curious, so I tried it, thinking, “ok even if this works, it will just wash out.”
Nope.
It took the “dye” (undiluted) in about 3 seconds. After drying for about an hour and a half, it would not wash off in the hottest tap-water. It would not wash out after soaking for 30 minutes. It did not wash out until I BOILED it, and even then, only by a tiny bit and it gave it a weathered look that was kind of cool. Add some waterproofing and I’d wager it would survive even that.
That rich red is only one application too. Plus it smells great, lol.
So there you go, cheap, fruity smelling leather dye in all the colors Kool-Aid has to offer.
WELL THEN!
this may be important to some of my followers *and certainly not just getting reblogged because of my costuming and my boyfriends desire for leather armor*
When I was in middle school we used to use it to dye our hair. Potent stuff.
If you’re dying anything with kool-aid it’s best to use SUGAR-FREE ones otherwise the thing you’re dying might get all sticky
the flavor only packets where you are supposed add sugar are the best. they will dye any natural fiber: leather, wool, cotton, hair, flax, jute, silk and so forth. heat the dye water so it is more potent. let dry then rinse excess out in cold water. there’s a whole system to this.
Oh my god
This will prove very useful for any future cosplays I wanna do.
This works because Kool Aid is both a weak acid (usually vitamin C) and dye in the form of whatever FDA approved color is included in the packet to make it pretty. That’s mordant (acid) and dye, all in one handy packet.
If you want to break away from Kool-aid you can use vinegar and food coloring.
Rule of thumb to remember when using these on animal protein fibers like wool, silk, or your hair is that you can use heat or you can use time. If you’ve gone with vinegar and food coloring, using heat is recommended - take a blow dryer to your hair, use a crock pot to heat the dye bath for yarn - because vinegar can dissolve animal protein fibers or seriously weaken them. Kool-aid on the other hand is a pretty weak acid, so if you don’t want to break out the blow dryer or the slow cooker, just leave it on overnight.
