it represents a failstate of deeply dysfunctional societies (like the US).

Disagree. See all the people helping out hurricane victims right now. The only stories of failures I’m hearing from over there is government… Not the people. So not societies fault, but governments fault.

You know what, I can appreciate that. The difference though is that I don’t claim to be a scientist or leading expert in any of the fields I talk about. I also don’t tend to portray myself as an educator on ANY field… except for when I’m in the actual classroom teaching (which I don’t do anymore due to administration politicking, and I was in the field of IT). And when I converse online, I do it as a literal “rando on the internet”. Without my potential qualifiers in the vast majority of cases which doesn’t imply actual knowledge in anything.

This is part of my problem with him. He’s viewed as this amazing educator and scientist… That will put people off from questioning his assumptions/statements by default because as kids you’re taught to listen to teachers/educators. And he put himself in that position so I have no sympathy for it.

I have similar hangups with Bill Nye the “Science” Guy. Who’s only qualifications are Mechanical Engineer at Boeing. Yet for some reason people treat him as some amazing scientist in completely unrelated fields. When he’s not. And because he’s built that reputation and put himself adjacent to actual science for so long that nobody questions the nebulous and crazy shit that he says anymore.

Nye’s anti-nuclear stance being a prime example, flying in the face of what actual scientists have been talking about for decades (though debate-ably, now nuclear might be too late to the party to significantly help anymore. Though I think we should still be doing nuclear personally). Or claiming that he knew anything about Quantum Entanglement and through QE, time-travel because of blackholes… Also don’t forget that he was a willing spokesperson for Exxon to talk about how drilling oil is safe. Forget that it’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, and burning any oil in any form simply isn’t safe and even pushed the “clean burning” (rather than less dirty burning) fuel, which as a by-product even releases more radiation than nuclear does (going counter to his actual complaints about nuclear in a huge way).

I dunno. I’m just tired of being “educated” by people with no qualifications. And when I bring up the obviously wrong things I see… all I see is the masses in love with the characters.

I’d say you can still kiss your reflection since just about everything emits photons. Just not always in the visible spectrum.

And mirrors don’t reflect every photon on every spectrum either. Quite contrarily… many forms of glasses/plastics (and the backings layered on those materials) are completely transparent in many wavelengths.

But see this is [one of] my point exactly. If he left some caveat like that in the damn tweets (because he should understand the caveats)… People who are actually interested but don’t know might catch an on and actually try to learn the science about it. Rather than the nonsense he just tweets. People who view him as “an expert” will take it at face value… and not question it. He should be leading future scientist to actually understand and learn. Not this drivel.

Edit: [one of]… I should clarify that it wasn’t my only point. But just the one that the specific mentioned tweet should have also been doing if he really wants to be an “educator”.

The worst part is that it’s factually untrue.

Hold anything up to your mirrors and look at it from the side. The item never actually “touches” itself because the glass is in the way. The reflection is on the backing that’s behind the glass.

And even more technical (and thus where I’d imagine a scientist’s mind would actually go), let’s say you remove the glass and just have the reflective backing. The moment you touch it, no photons are transmitting because light can’t get in there to make the image, nor can that image even be observed. So all you’re doing is kissing the backing. It “looks” like it from the aspect you can observe, but I would have hoped that a self-proclaimed scientist could differentiate between reality vs what amounts to partial observation.

For someone who’s supposed to be smart… he says the dumbest fucking shit that screams “I’m smart” but in the 15-16 year old way… what I used to see on Myspace profile headlines. I wish “experts” would stick to their actual fields of expertise and shut the fuck up about everything else. It’s hard to take them seriously about their actual field when they are provably stupid in others. Especially when they put themselves out there in the public the way that he does at what seems every possible opportunity.

The one that comes to mind immediately was when he tweeted: “FYI: An airplane whose engine fails is a glider. A helicopter whose engine fails is a brick.”

Forgetting that he could have just looked up literally any resource about helicopters to know that it wasn’t true. He seems to do a lot of “thinking” rather than a lot of learning these days. It’s the same stench as the sovcit folks reek of.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=y4Nc9PvmEt0&t=1m11s

While I get the premise of this “show”… he says one thing that stuck out to me “You shouldn’t follow me if you want to learn about astrophysics” @ about 1:11 for those the timestamp in the link doesn’t work. I’ve wondered if that’s because he doesn’t want to out himself as being stupid in his own field too. Not to say that he IS stupid… but I wonder when the last time he’s actually conducted any amount of research on something has been. If that was in the 90’s… Then he needs to retire the “scientist” moniker and call himself what he currently is… an influencer, or at best “educator”… which I’m only quoting because if someone takes him as an educator then they’ll be mystified when they see him get weird shit wrong that he speaks as if he’s knowledgeable on. I also wonder how much of his research actually still stands. But I’m not the person who can discern that.

Another example tweet of his "If there were ever a species for whom sex hurt, it surely went extinct long ago.”

WHAT? THE FUCK? For a good chunk of the HUMAN population (specifically women, though to a much lesser extent even men… [frenulum tears are a thing]) sex is a painful act. The guy looked at his own experience and couldn’t for a second imagine how that’s not the case for everyone. Forget looking at any other species on the planet… even looking at our own we see that this is completely fucking wrong. Now look at other species and you’ll see shit like the praying mantis and some spiders that kills and eats the male during copulation. Cats with barbed penises. Ducks with literal corkscrew shaped penises (where females have literal mazes as a mechanism to allow rape and still have a choice in which partner will sire offspring). Look up “Antechinus” too… the males copulate until death and the details of how they die is just sad.

I haven’t been able to take this man seriously for a very long time outside of “well he’s an entertainer”.

Edit: But this is shitpost community… so I’m sure me taking this somewhat seriously in my rant will equate to downvotes. I accept it.

I’m willing to bet that very few people on Lemmy.ml are Russian.

“Facebloke”

Didn’t know that “owls, hawks, falcons, snakes, skunks, etc.” all live inside of buildings.

Adult bobcats are also 2-3 times as big as adult domestic cats.

Bobcats generally weigh between 15 and 30 pounds. Males are larger than the females. Their body length is 20 to 50 inches.
Source: https://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/Bob-cat.php?print=y

Most domestic cats should weigh about 10 pounds, though that can vary by breed and frame. A Siamese cat may weigh as few as 5 pounds, while a Maine Coon can be 25 pounds and healthy.
Source: https://www.webmd.com/pets/cats/features/healthy-weight-for-your-cat

So depending on the cat breed… virtually no difference at all. The larger of the 2 cats that we feed (shed cat, remember “feral”)… is 20-22 pounds (the smaller brother is 16-17 lbs). He is just as heavy as an average bobcat. Though admittedly less “stocky”. But my point is that they’re similar, “virtually the same” or “barely different”. I never claimed 1:1. But if they’re 99% the same… then it’s the same. Marginally larger is not sufficient argument that they’re different. Bob cats are not like mountain lions. They’re not “huge”.

Domestic cats tend to live in colonies and do in fact decimate bird populations.

Check the graph of your own source…https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380/figures/2 It shows that normal owned domestic cats are not the issue, which is exactly what the comic is pointing “fun” at. The “owner” that feeds the cat and lets them outside from time to time are nowhere near the problem. You’re context switching between “Feral” and owned and claiming that everything is bad when it’s only one category or the other. This is literal bad faith argument.

Further… No, domestic cats don’t “tend” to live in colonies. They only do so only due to food issues and will arguably NEVER create social group unless it’s required.

Feral cats (cats which live without help from man) can and will form small colonies based around available food sources. This does not inevitably happen […] However, they develop neither a social survival strategy nor a pack mentality and they continue to be solitary hunters. Thus cats are not ‘pack’ animals but have the ability to adapt to form social groups.
source: https://icatcare.org/advice/the-social-structure-of-cat-life/

Cats are wildly solitary… even domestic ones (even the ones that form prides!). There’s a reason why it’s a pain in the ass to get them to get along when you get a new kitten in the house. And even then they never really get along… More accurately just tolerating each other. The only cats I’ve ever seen truly “get along” are siblings from the same litter… And even then it looks more like a “we tolerate each other a lot” more than proactively working together as a pack/colony.

Bobcats breed less frequently (usually once, but sometimes twice a year) whereas domestic cats tend to have more than one litter a year (1.4 on average)

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news… But 1.4 is between 1 and sometimes 2 a year. No idea where you’re getting this stat from, but the way you present it… you’ve basically presented the same exact number twice, in two different ways and claimed that it’s different. If “1 to sometimes 2 times” actually means 1.2 as an average… 1.2 and 1.4 isn’t that far apart.

The thing is, you don’t get feral cats without people letting their unfixed house cats roam free.

Cool. Then this comic doesn’t apply to a very large subset of owners who do the right thing and virtually all cats that make it to any human system at all. Now you can fuck off with pushing it onto everyone which is what OP is doing in half of their posts in this thread. Especially since non-altered cats tend to do shit like spray. If that cat is EVER indoors, they’re probably fixed. That makes the comic fucking stupid. It makes the OP a jackass for targeting a group of people who aren’t the problem. And makes you an accomplice for shilling it as well by conflating the two groups of problem as if they’re the same. Domestic cats that are indoor pets are not the problem… even when they go outside. It’s the feral cats… which has nothing to do with the guy portrayed in the comic.

Where did I say that? Felis catus aka the domestic cat would not be in North America.

Domestic cats are BARELY different from Bobcats… which are indeed native. Correct without humans cats as we specifically know them wouldn’t exist. But other cats do exist. They are native.

Same can be said for mice though… mice as they exist in large cities wouldn’t exist as they are now without human interaction. Are they now invasive and non-native? We don’t tend to think of it that way. But it’s just as accurate as cats are here…

They hunt rabbits (and other rodents) and medium to large birds. Domestic cats hunt small rodents and birds, but live in much smaller areas with much higher numbers packed into that small area.

This is simply a size thing… Juvenile Bobcats act more or less exactly like domestic cats in this respect.

I don’t think anyone saying you should not let your cats outside is saying anything besides that.

And yet… OP is in the thread judging everyone for ANY cat being outside Not talking about “feral” at all and specifically goes out of their way to include ALL domestic cats period. So yes… there are people out there claiming much more than that.

Edit: Keep in mind the thread’s title is “Indoor/Outdoor Cats”… So definitionally NOT the feral cats you’re talking about.

Agreed. The “feral” (shed cats) that we take care of (and fixed)… They’ve killed all of maybe 12 animals in the past 8 years that we know of (maybe 10x that for shit they’ve killed that we didn’t know about). The correct answer is that number would be thousands of critters… but isn’t because we give them cat food that’s available to them at will. It also stops them from roaming outside of the “local” area.

The large population of cats together can do a bunch of damage. Feral cats likely do a hell of a lot damage. But claiming that letting a single cat be outside is the end of the world for the local critters is crazy.

i guess, if you enjoy being a menace to your local ecology. Then go off, king.

The guy mentions “destruction of the local mouse population” and this is your answer? So you think those mice are native? They’d exist if humans weren’t here?

They are the same issue as cats… They’re only here and only thriving because we accidentally give them too much safety/places to live/food. They would also be invasive.

In their native habitat, not in North America

So you think that mountain lions, cougars, pumas, etc… never existed in the Americas? You think that there are NO native cat populations here at all? Shit man… The bob cat I found under my trailer in my back yard must have been a figment of my imagination.

While “domestic” cats are invasive… Cats exist literally in EVERY STATE I’VE EVER LIVED IN. (New York, AZ, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.) And I’ve SEEN native cats in literally EVERY one of those states.

The actual problem here isn’t the “native-ness” of “domestic” cats… but that their population is inflated because we cater to them and create what amount to an unlimited food supply for them. “domestic” cats are barely domesticated.

Edit: And because I know it’s going to happen. No… I don’t have “indoor” cats. I do feed the “shed cats” (feral-ish). Which should actually stop them from eating wildlife… or at least stop it significantly. They are friendly with us… Not with much of anyone else. I actually don’t really agree with having animals in the house at all… I just find the premise that cats wouldn’t exist here as quite a silly concept.

Edit2: and the ones we take “care” of are fixed.

Forget for a second that your original premise is basically completely wrong… You realize how fucking massive the USA is right? Based on the smugness I have to assume you’re European. The USA is effectively the same size as your whole continent. The country is the size of your continent. Let that sink in. And unlike the Continent of Europe… Much of the middle of the continent has no notable landmarks on many maps.

Most people can absolutely give you the general area they live if you put a map of the USA in front of them. They may be off by a bit, but that’s simply a function of how massive the scale of the map is you put in front of them.

Fuck outta here.

Nah, he’s right. You have a phone. It has a camera. Video the place before you move your shit in, preferably with their manager in the video even (when they show you the unit, or start the video when they hand you keys). When they claim that shit on move out show them the footage. If they bullshit you still. Small claims is like 30-50$ in most places.

This is an easy premise. I still have the move-in and move-out pictures from previous apartments that I lived in from over a decade ago.

Some of this, I can kind of understand… However, you don’t have to be rich to understand that refundable deposits are meant to be refunded if you take care of the place.

Those 10 or so places that I mentioned while in the military… I was enlisted. I made between 20-30k… With some money for housing allowance. I wasn’t rolling in dough.

But they don’t get as much use here

You should clarify “here” a bit more. In AZ tile roofs are EVERYWHERE.

We end up replacing the underlayment more often than the actual tiles… unless the specific type of tile is no longer made and too many cracked for whatever reason.

Why are you all getting your homes inspected?

Required by many mortgage companies when you buy a house, primarily so they know that you care about paying the mortgage. If you buy a house and it turns out the foundation is completely falling apart and a wall falls down… you might just skip your mortgage and now the bank repossess a shitty house they lost money on. Also just a good thing to do overall before you purchase a house.

Edit: It’s used primarily on the buyers side of the transaction prior to the actual purchase to validate the house is in good shape… Or oftentime to identify issues with the house that can be used to negotiate on the price a bit. Eg… someone is asking for 500k on a house and you found that the corner of the roof has some water staining on it (probably needs to be looked at). You can ask the Sellers to fix it, or negotiate the price down 2-3k based on the findings of the third part inspector.

Let me help you.

I’ve never once claimed I didn’t have shitty landlords. You seem to assume a lot of shit. It’s called “due diligence”. Take pictures when you move in. Submit the shit on the maintenance requests within a couple weeks of moving in. And don’t fuck the place up in the mean time. Take pictures when you leave. This isn’t a hard process and virtually everyone has a cellphone with a camera to do it with. Boom deposit kept.

Comparing literal due diligence for moving into a rental to rape is fucking outright stupid. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I can promise you that the towns outside of military bases are almost always shitholes. I’ve had bad landlords. I’ve had one apartment complex that wouldn’t fix an exterior wall hole (that was present when we moved in). I’ve just never found myself in a position where I didn’t document something on move-in, and that they tried to claim that I did while I was living there because I didn’t keep my house like a shit-sty.

I never made a claim that I never had a bad landlord. Just that I did my due diligence on move-in and move out and have never needed to give up my deposit. In my mind, you have to fuck the place up to lose it.

Yeah. I can’t think of a single place I rented that I didn’t get my deposit back on.

Always makes me wonder what other people do to their houses to fuck them up so bad.

I only had one time where they even tried to keep the deposit (out of about 10 or so places, I was in the military, so I moved a bit). I talked to them in person for all of 5 minutes and they gave up and gave it back.