my aunt talking about her outdoor cats: if they die a few years early because I let them out, so be it
me: -_____________________________-
“the safety of this tiny soft bastard who happens to love me is entirely under my control, but fuck that I guess”
ppl reblogging this post: “but my cats love going outside! I don’t provide any mental stimulation indoors, so they’re MISERABLE when not playing in the street – can’t you see there’s no painfully obvious solution?”
this makes me profoundly stressed cats are living things who absolutely want and should be allowed to go outside if your living situation allows it
me chucking my canary out the window: “you are a living thing who absolutely wants and should be allowed to go outside if my living situation allows it”
Me throwing open my doors: be free, dogs!! May your profound stress be eased!!!!! for my living situation allows you to do so!!!!!!!
Ah yes, let’s let this species cause mass extinctions of local birds in areas they’re not from while letting them drink antifreeze from puddles and climb into car engines and frolic with coyotes, that’ll make them happy
>mass extinction of local birds
Fucking lol
I cannot fathom why you would find it ridiculous that introducing millions of non-native, invasive predators into almost every single country when they have no natural predators just might have an impact on local animals. It is common sense, and conservationists have been telling us for years that cats are one of the leading drivers of extinction in wild birds and small fauna. On the list of predators posing the highest risk to native species, cats rank second, contributing towards the extinction of 63 separate species. You may find it funny that cute, fuzzy little cats pose a threat to wild animals, but the problems they cause for native species is well documented.
and there are ways to let your cat have outdoor access without enabling them to kill off local wildlife or contract illnesses from strays. they’re called catios. if you’re gonna have an “outdoor” cat this is honestly the only acceptable method in my book.
those are some of the higher quality ones but they are all over Pinterest and there are plenty of how-to tutorials out there. the key is high walls, an enclosed roof space, minimal chance of escape, and an easy way for the cat to travel between indoors and the catio as they please, plus all the standard enrichment they’d have with an outdoor area. it might be a bit of effort but it’s worth it.
my Old Man Cat, bless his soul, lived to almost eighteen and was fortunate enough to never contract anything – but he killed so much wildlife in his prime that I don’t doubt for a second the damage that cats can do. I can remember when he was a few months old he caught and killed a scrub jay, and when he was a few years old and we’d moved to Arizona he started to successfully hunt rabbits. I was a kid and didn’t know any better, and neither did my family. he’s very lucky that when he vanished for a week in our mountain “neighborhood” – where bears and mountain lions and foxes lived – during the winter, that he came back in one healthy, albeit skinny, piece. I know better now and I wish I’d known back then.
Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by a human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.
I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
There is a way to do this but I can’t recall how to do it. it’s something you type into the box for “other filters” or something, I don’t remember. who knows??
It’s not a great option, and I don’t know if you can sort out authors that way, but it’s better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!
Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know I’m going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because that’s a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Let’s pretend I’ve read all their fics, or that I just don’t like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:
In “Search within results” I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now I’ve decided that Crack is just not my thing, I’m sick of that, too, for heaven’s sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example, “Secret Relationship” is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words like “DubCon”.
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.
Good luck!
An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!
omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game
An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!
You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:
-“alpha/beta/omega dynamics” -”hydra trash party”
I have more advice!
Say, you’re in your random fandom- I went with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since I’ve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.
But anyway, you’re on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works! That is way too many for a casual afternoon’s browsing.
And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesn’t work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldn’t life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you don’t like)? You can!
First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):
and it’ll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:
and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:
and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:”the number you just copied”
Then hit ‘sort and filter’ annnd… magic!
The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you don’t like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.
Enjoy.
I’d just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES.
The more you know.
Pay attention to the signs. Stop making excuses for people. Stop defending their inconsiderate ways. Start taking care of you and your own needs.
Be careful who you expose your weaknesses to. I’m not saying to be so guarded you don’t open up to the ones that are close to you. I’m saying keep your eyes open. If you let someone know what hurts you, pay attention to whether they use it against you or help to strengthen it. Someone who claims to love you yet manipulates your weaknesses does NOT love you. And guess what? They never will.
In lieu of the new tumblr settings, can I make yet another plea with those of you who read fics and consume art on tumblr to please reblog them?
Fics and art will die on a creator’s dash if they aren’t reblogged. It’s never been more true than now.
If you want to keep receiving content from creators, reblog the the content. If it’s something you enjoyed? Reblog it. It’s not hard. I am going to make a point to reblog everything I read from now on. (With the proper tags of course), as well as all the art that I see on my dash.
I cannot make it simpler. Posts WILL die unless they’re reblogged. No one will see your ‘like’. Your like is a bookmark for YOU to find it later. Your reblog means the world to a creator because it means you are willing to go the little extra distance and recommend this to your followers.
Don’t let creations die on the dash of those who created them.
Reblog to save a creation.
Reblog to keep a creator creating.
Reblog, please.
Ironically, Tumblr ate my last attempt at this post, so I’ll keep it sweet:
1. It makes content creators’ day when you interact with us, especially reblog.
2. Comments and tag blathering are really, really special to me, and I look at allllll my reblogs just in case someone said something interesting in the tags.
3. It works. @dresupi reblogged something of mine and I immediately got more notes.