Fondots

My dog is very aggressive/reactive to other dogs.

We got her when she was just a few weeks shy of a year old, from a family friend who rescued her from some random guy on Facebook who basically said "someone come take this dog or I'm gonna put her down"

I don't know much about that first guy except that he was obviously a piece of shit. He was also at least pretty neglectful, she has a pretty low maintenance coat, occasional brushing is about all she needs, but apparently she was filthy and her fur was even a little matted when they rescued her. I also suspect he was kind of abusive, because for a while she was kind of afraid of people holding broomsticks, fishing rods, etc. and I can't think of any good reason for that except that he hit her with something.

Again, she was still a puppy, less than a year old.

So needless to say she probably didn't get any kind of socialization with him.

The people we got her from kind of suspect that he got her as payment for a drug deal or something along those lines.

She's a very high-energy and intelligent breed (a malinois, she's actually pretty lazy for her breed, but that still makes her more energetic than just about any other dog I've ever met) very driven, incredibly mouthy (we've long since trained it out of her, but I can tell that she still sometimes wants to bite me in a playful way)

The people we got her from are very nice, but already had 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a couple cats, not a very big house, and no experience with this sort of high-energy breed, and I am certain that she was an absolute terror.

But things went pretty much fine for a while, she got along with their dogs and even their cats, they thought about keeping her for themselves

But then she started getting into fights with their one other dog. She was getting into sort of her adolescent phase, pushing boundaries, trying to assert dominance, and probably just being a crazy little crackhead.

So she ended up getting bitten pretty badly by their other dog (and maybe kind of deserved it)

And since then she just hasn't been good with other dogs. We've gotten her to a point where she can more-or-less ignore a couple familiar dogs around the neighborhood, but I doubt she'll ever be at a point where she'll ever be friendly with other dogs.

She's been bitten, she doesn't want to get bitten again, and her breed is pretty much all-fight no-flight (as in fleeing, watch a couple videos of military/police malinois jumping out of helicopters and shit and you'll see they clearly don't have a problem with flying, and their jumping game is probably about as close to flight as any dog can manage on their own,) so in her mind the way to stay safe is basically to go on the offensive and get the other dogs before they can get her.

Better early socialization and more experienced owners who knew how to manage her energy and instincts better in that first year or so of her life probably would have made a huge difference for her.

It also doesn't help that she was a covid puppy, not easy to get proper socialization when your humans are stuck quarantining at home.

She loves people though, she rolls over for belly rubs from just about anyone, cuddles right up next to me in bed, and while she does get a bit uncomfortable in bigger crowds, she always wants to at least be near where the people are. I remember taking her on a camping trip with a few friends, some she knew, others she didn't, and she wasn't sure what to make of all of these people hanging out in the same place, so she didn't really insert herself into the group, but she definitely sat nearby watching us, and anytime someone broke off to go to the bathroom, get something from their tent, grab a drink, etc. she was right there with them

I have one idiot coworker who supported Trump (I'm unclear if she actually voted for him, in the past she's been proud that she's never voted, like I said, idiot) largely because of something he said during the campaign about lowering costs for IVF

She doesn't have kids, as far as I know doesn't want them.

She was in some kind of poly relationship, is going through a divorce, is wiccan, we work in the public sector (county level so kind of insulated from DOGE type bullshit, but not that insulated because of course we get a butt load of federal funds) and has a few health issues.

It's like she's aiming to be the poster girl for getting her face eaten by leopards.

It looks pretty damn good to me, but I have a small rant about tomahawk steaks in general.

I get that they're a premium cut of meat, they're a big fat slap of ribeye, but they're also a novelty cut, the big ol' handle of bone hanging off of it doesn't really serve any purpose except being big and showy. The tomahawk steak is kind of all about ridiculous excess.

And I'm not knocking that, I love goofy, showy, ostentatious, kitschy shit. I'd even say that it's kind of my thing.

And I think when you serve one like this, take it off the bone, slice it up, and serve it on a plate, that kind of removes some of the fun factor.

I have a friend of a friend who is kind of ridiculously wealthy and likes to throw very elaborate parties. One such occasion was a "viking feast" (the historical accuracy of this is dubious at best) where the only foods served are meats and bread, no plates, the only utensils allowed are knives and your hands.

There was a lot of meat. A whole lamb roasted over the fire, a whole massive salmon, many chickens, probably more than I'm forgetting, but most relevant to this, enough tomahawk steaks for everyone who wanted one to have their own.

And that I think is the environment where the tomahawk steak really shines. It's the perfect "walking around" steak, it's got a big fucking handle of bone built into it. It's like the turkey leg you're almost required to get at the Renaissance faire on steroids.

It's staying true to it being a high-end steak, this was a special event, not something that happens every year and we're celebrating, but it's also leaning into the sheer novelty of the steak. It's goofy and it's supposed to be, and it's not trying to pretend otherwise.

As an aside, another friend and I managed to wrangle a standing invitation to return to this when he throws one (it occurs when the local team plays the Vikings in the playoffs) because we're both burly bearded dudes with no interest in football, so we pretty much stood outside by the fire all night drinking from horns we brought ourselves, and host was stoked to have "actual vikings" there.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I kind of think of myself as "prepper light" I keep a small stockpile of food and supplies around, have at least general plans for most emergencies that might arise, like I live close to a nuclear plant so I know the evacuation route I'm supposed to take from my home if something ever happens there, what radio station is going to have information, etc. I know what I'm doing if we lose power for an extended period of time, etc.

But I'm not devoting a significant amount of my time to it. A few minutes or hours here or there, a little casual research, the occasional "roughing it" camping trip for fun and practice

But most importantly, I have friends. I'm a pretty all-around capable guy, but there's a lot of gaps in my knowledge. When it comes to fixing cars, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, more advanced construction, plumbing, gardening, etc. I'm kind of clueless. But I have friends who are really good at those things. If shit ever really hits the fan in whatever sort of "end of the world as we know it" sort of scenario you might be imagining, none of us are going to cut it long-term by ourselves, but with all of our various skills put together we might just stand a chance.

And also I like those people, I want to make sure they make it through it with me.

It's called a Melodica

US

My situation is a little fucked up because I work 12 hour shifts, but PTO is based around 8 hour days because that's what most employees here work and they haven't made any special exemptions for us. These numbers are going to be based around 8 hour days because I don't feel like doing the math

Vacation time- 10 days for new hires, and you get 5 additional days at 5, 13, and 19 years, so assuming I stick around for 19+ years I'll have 25 days. You can carry over up to 15 unused days to the next year

5 personal days, no carryover

Sick days accrue at 1 day per month, so essentially 12, with unlimited carryover,

1 personal holiday

Certain things like perfect attendance, coming in for overtime, etc. can earn you "flex time" which actually is usually awarded in 12 hour increments.

I'm kind of bad at using my PTO. My schedule is kind of wonky and I work less days overall than most people and tend to just slot most of my vacation plans into that. If I plan things right I also only need to take 2 days off to get a whole week, and every other weekend I have a 3 day weekend. I don't tend to take a lot of elaborate vacations, 3 day or less trips are kind of my norm. Every couple years I'll do something a bit more elaborate and take a week or more, but more often my PTO tends to get used for other things besides going on vacation. I have a week coming up that I took off to paint some rooms in my house for example.

It's not literally meth, but it is an amphetamine (in fact, literally amphetamine, it's one of the two enantiomers of amphetamine, and the more potent of the two at that)

So same class of drugs, produces the same kind of effects to different degrees. You can kind of think of it in the same way that opium, morphine, heroin, and fentanyl are all in the same family of drugs, fentanyl is of course way more potent than opium, but at its core is still doing essentially the same thing.

And for what it's worth, meth is also an ADHD medication, sold under the brand name Desoxyn, not super commonly prescribed but it is used for that purpose.

And since I've already touched on this concept- meth also exists in 2 enantiomers, Desoxyn and the street drug are dextro-methamphetamine, and levo-methamphetamine is sold over-the-counter in some places to treat stuffy noses as a "Vicks Vapor Inhaler." Chiral chemicals like that can be weird, sometimes they can be almost entirely interchangeable, other times they can have completely different effects or mildly different potencies.

I mean, welcome to the world. Sometimes concepts are complicated and require more than a simple dictionary-style definition to fully understand. Otherwise there'd be no use for classes and textbooks and you could learn everything you need to know from a dictionary.

And I did provide some pretty short definitions right at the beginning, the rest is examples and me sort of musing on the terms for further clarification for those who need/want it.

Elsewhere in the comments I think you used the term "misogynist homicide." If for some reason that term sits better with you, by all means use it, I'd say they're synonymous, and all of my explanation applies just as much to that term. Language evolves and new words are coined every day, if we can come up with a neat one-word name for something as opposed to clunky 2+ word phrases I'm generally a fan of that.

Also, I think a critical reading of my comment might show you that I also have some misgivings about how we use the term, because like I repeatedly said, it can be damn hard to properly sort out the killers motivations. I think some people are too fast to slap the label on any instance where a woman is killed, especially by a man, and while it's probably likely that the label is appropriate in the majority of those cases, I don't think it's necessarily a useful term to use unless you can clearly explain the misogynistic motivations behind it.

Domestic violence is violence that occurs between people who have a domestic relationship- family members, roommates, romantic/sexual partners, etc. It may or may not rise to the level of murder.

Femicide is killing a woman due to her gender, and there may or may not be a domestic relationship between the killer and the victim.

There's going to be a lot of overlap and grey areas between the two. Many femicides are domestics, but not all, and not all domestics result in femicide

To provide some examples

1. Sort of your "classic" domestic abuse situation- man beats his wife. Domestic abuse, not a femicide because he's not killing her.

1.5 He beats her to death. Domestic, and this may ruffle some feathers, but I'm going to say only probably a femicide. I'm sure I'm going to end up saying something like this a lot in this comment and expand on it as I go, but you kind of have to examine the killers thoughts and motivations, and they may not always be totally clear. In probably the vast majority of these kinds of situations you'd probably find there's sort of an underlying attitude of "I'm the man, she's the woman, so I can do whatever I want to her" to one degree or another which would make it a pretty cut-and-dry femicide, but I think there's also cases where he might be just as violent and abusive to other people regardless of gender given the opportunity, which muddies the waters and makes it a little harder to call a femicide, if he was just as likely to kill a man under similar circumstances I don't know if it necessarily warrants slapping the "femicide" label on it, but it sure as hell looks like one on the surface. I suspect that most places collecting and studying data on this kind of thing would just go ahead and call it a femicide and I'm not going to blame them for that, I don't think there's any feasible way to really examine each individual incident with the kind of attention you'd need to properly sort it out, and even if you could, in the end given the sorts of cultural imbalances between men and women that exist, you'd probably end up with the conclusion that the basically all of them do in fact qualify as femicide to some degree and the rest are just kind of a rounding error.

2. Religious extremists kill a woman they see out on the street because (take your pick, she wasn't dressed "appropriately," didn't have a male guardian with her, she dared to have a job or education, etc.) That's a femicide, but not a domestic because there was no relationship between them.

As an aside, there was a conscious decision on my part in that example to use the gender-neutral "they" in that example. You probably pictured male murderers, I did as well, but on further reflection I think it would be perfectly fair to still call it a femicide even if the perpetrators were women. The victim is still being targeted because she's a woman who's not behaving the way they think a woman should.

3. Woman kills her husband. Domestic, murder, not a femicide because the victim was a man.

4. (Here's where shit really starts getting murky.) Man kills his wife because she was having an affair with another man. Again it's a domestic, it's a murder, and its maybe/probably a femicide. It's a bit harder to nail down the motivation here. There could be a lot of underlying psychological, cultural, interpersonal, etc. baggage here. Did the man kill her just because she was cheating, or does he have, for example, some sort of underlying expectations that because she's the female partner she's supposed to be loyal and subservient to him. I don't know that there's an easy way to untangle that, and many men may not even really be consciously aware of those sorts of biases they have in the back of their minds. If hypothetically the man way gay/bit/pan/etc. would he have murdered a male partner in the same sort of situation?

5. Wife kills her husband's mistress. Murder. Kind of a domestic, maybe stretching it a bit because unless he was cheating on her with her sister or something there's not really a direct domestic relationship between the two women, but there is still an indirect link between them through the husband. Femicide? Again, maybe, for pretty much the same reasons as #4, lots of potential baggage there that would need to be unpacked.

5½. Man kills his cheating wife AND/OR wife's mistress ~(wife was cheating on him with another woman.)~ Murder✓ Domestic? See above. Femicide? Maybe, again see above, but there's also potentially an added aspect of "she cheated on me with another woman?" That, in his mind, adds extra insult to just the fact that she was cheating on him, would he have been so quick to jump to Murder if she had cheated on him with a man?

5¾? Woman kills her wife AND/OR her wife's mistress. Murder- yes. Domestic - see above. Femicide - again see above, probably not a femicide, I think in this one since we're dealing with a lesbian relationship we've kind of reached a point where we'd kind of expect a lot of "traditional" ideas about gender roles and such to be thrown out the window which would sort of take the concept of femicide off the table, but in practice that shit is really deeply ingrained in a lot of people and hard for them to shake entirely. There can still be some lingering notions that "a woman should be faithful to their partner" that they wouldn't apply equally to men, and so you could make a solid argument for it qualifying as femicide.

6. Man rapes and kills woman jogging alone in the park. Murder? Yes. Domestic? No, no relationship between them. Femicide? Almost certainly yes. I'm sure there could be some edge cases of a rapist lurking in the bushes who would be happy to target the next person who came jogging down the trail regardless of their gender, but far more often they probably specifically were preying on women.

7. Man kills woman in a carjacking. Murder? Yes. Domestic? No. Femicide? Maybe. This could be a situation where they literally just carjacked the first person in a vehicle they come across, so not a femicide, it could have just as easily been a man. Or it could be a case where they specifically targeted a woman because they perceived her as being weaker, easier to victimize, less able to defend herself, etc. which I think would make a compelling argument to call it a femicide.

That's not meant to be an all-inclusive list by any means of course.

And there's a lot of complicating factors we could go into that I'll be honest, I don't feel like digging into too deep right now and I may hit the character limit if I tried to. Like how trans and nonbinary people fit into the equation, to give a short example a transphobic person kills a trans man who they "see" as a woman, you might say that they had "femicidal intent" or something to that effect, even though the victim was a man, and if they killed a trans woman, their motivations might not have been femicidal, and in their own minds they wouldn't think they committed femicide, but to the rest of us they committed femicide anyway.

FWIW, if you haven't already, it may be worth giving the packaging of your "regular" bacon and such a good looking-over

I haven't done an exhaustive survey, it's just something I tend to notice because like I said, I dabble in cured meats as a hobby, but at least around me a lot of bacon, hot dogs, etc. across the whole spectrum from bottom of the barrel store brands up to the fancy high-end name brands are touting that they're "uncured," and even if they don't outright say that as a selling point they're only listing celery powder and natural flavors in the ingredients and no sodium nitrite/nitrate

It's not all brands by a longshot, but it's a lot of them.

Not trying to push any kind of cured meat agenda, just kind of giving you something else to look out for, maybe it will give you a few more options or help you discover some other things you should avoid.

I don't know about that, I was on Reddit for a few years before 2015 and /r/conspiracy always came across a little crazy to me. The specific brand of crazy fluctuated a bit over the years, and they definitely got worse at hiding it over time, but even when I first joined it seemed like you didn't have to scratch the surface very deep to find some really weird and concerning shit.

I've always been a conspiracy theory enjoyer, never really bought into any of them (besides a few pretty mainstream ones, but who doesn't have a favorite Kennedy assassination theory?) So that was probably one of the first subreddits I checked out, I don't think I ever bothered commenting on anything there, everything there pretty much immediately gave me the sense that "oh no, these people are actually crazy and maybe even kind of dangerous"