• 4 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • That is the shittiest possible interpretation of the situation.

    People act like animals can just magically decide to eat new things. It doesn’t work like that. It’s the same as that stupid koala meme where people whinge about them not eating things put down in their territory.

    That’s not how it works, at all. Animals, humans included, have instincts that drive them with it comes to what is and isn’t food. And even humans can turn down things that are technically edible while starving, because they don’t know it’s edible, and we do have the ability to reason out ways to safely try unfamiliar things.



  • First and foremost, dog training is language training.

    You aren’t really teaching them to do things, you’re teaching them to understand the sounds and movements you make when you want them to do things.

    This means that regardless of anything else, you have to be consistent in both the execution of and understanding of what language you’re using.

    Example: you say sit when training with a calm voice and a little lilt at the end. But in daily life, you say sit sharply and without the hand gesture you’d been using during lessons. When that’s the case, you can’t blame the dog for not understanding automatically that you want them to do the thing you used different words for.

    Animals don’t process language the same way we do, but we can still run into problems understanding what someone else wants us to do when they say it in an unusual way. Why would a dog magically understand the difference between “sit, puppy”, “puppy, sit”, and/or “dammit, why won’t you sit?!”

    Consistency is how we learn languages as humans, and we have sections of our brain dedicated to language that are very developed compared to even our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

    The flip side of that is that you have to train yourself at the same time as the dog. You have to train yourself in the commands you want them to connect with a behavior. Make sure you learn how you’re saying things, and any secondary or tertiary signals are included.

    Example: if you want the dog to eventually know that the word sit, a hand gesture, and a tone of voice mean you want them to sit, you have to consistently use those commands. Eventually, even the dumbest dog will figure out that any of those commands mean you want their butt on the floor, but if you aren’t consistent with them, it’ll take longer.

    Remember, that dog hears your words and tone, sees your movements and posture, and reads your facial expressions. *All" of those are part of the command you’re teaching them to respond to with a specific behavior.

    That’s why a lot of trainers have a process of introducing those things in a controlled and specific way.

    And, if you deviate from the command you actually taught (like screaming word sit while making angry face, bent over and shaking a finger at them instead of the usual), don’t be mad at them for not responding to this totally new and different signal grouping with a behavior you taught them with a different combination of signals.




  • Ehhhh, I tend to think the distances are less important than the fact of the infrastructure being prohibitive to set up.

    Trains like that can’t just be dropped onto the existing rail network. I mean, even if the rails p tracks we have would allow them to operate at speed, it would be a nightmare getting them to mesh with existing rail traffic. You’d lose the high speed factor, defeating the purpose.

    So, even in individual states, where the distances are closer to what you’d see in japan, it’s not a net practical solution without some serious rejiggering.

    You could likely get some lines done anyway, like from D.C. to a few major cities on the east coast. But would there really be a benefit? Would it reduce highway traffic significantly? Would it be safer and more efficient than existing passenger rail? I genuinely have no idea, but there would be a need for that kind of thing to make it worth building out. If it’s just shifting a small fraction of city-to-city commute, I don’t know that or would be worth the massive project it would take




  • Damn. Hard call. There’s only been a few that have hit me because I don’t really have a parasocial connection to anyone to any degree worth mentioning.

    That being said, the three that made me actually cry were Vonnegut, Kris Kristofferson, and Chester Bennington.

    Chester, I was listening to the one more light album when I found out, so it hit extra hard.

    Vonnegut though, he more than any other writer made me think and want to create with words. He shaped how I view literature and think about writing. So his death hit harder than most.

    Kristofferson, it’s that I had known it was coming. He’d already been lost to a great degree, but I had been low key dreading the news because he’s so damn iconic. He’s the kind of poet I wish I could be. And his music was also damn good lol. Also, he’s symbolic of an era of music that’s disappeared, and as the last of the highwaymen have died, with only one left there’s this hole in the world that isn’t likely to be filled now that the entire music industry has fallen into disarray. It’s much harder for that kind of poet bard to exist and have their music spread now. In any genre, btw; the same difficulties exist in folk, metal, rap, etc.

    Anyway, those are the ones that made me cry as a grown-ass man. I suspect I’ll shed another tear when Willie goes, and I know I’m gonna fall apart a little when Dolly does. Luckily, the next wave of writers and musicians that I’d likely cry over are a good twenty years younger (or more) than them, so I’ll have a break after that. Likely be dead myself before most of the others would go.