#FB00724
Monday, July 31, 2023
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Veterinarian suicides
Suicide rates are increasing in nearly every demographic, age group and geographic area, and they are the highest they’ve been since World War II, according to federal data. While researchers have long known that doctors are more likely to die by suicide than the general population—partially due to issues like depression, anxiety and burnout—veterinarians face a set of unique stressors. Their patients can’t speak or tell them what’s wrong, much like babies can’t communicate with their doctors. But unlike pediatricians, veterinarians frequently find themselves having to euthanize a patient with a treatable injury or illness because its caretaker can’t afford the remedy, which might include costly surgeries. “You can say you’re going to be stoic and put it out of your mind and say it’s part of being a veterinarian,” says McCauley, an animal lover who has a dog and a cat in addition to his pig, “but the reality is over time, that weighs on you.”
Read article here.
#FB00731
GoComics server error
Have you received a light-hearted message like this one on GoComics yet? Let's mix and match. Collect the whole set!
#FB00729
These people don't know jack...
It's good to know that I still have a thriving community of haters. I was starting to get complacent!
The level of paranoia that something has to be or seems suggestive here is always laughable from these people. Yes, I said "these people." WTH is an internal contradiction? I need examples...and ones that make sense.
Finally! They aren't suggestive, just hopelessly disjointed and/or surreal. Thank you, Kilby person, for clarifying this.
Next, though, the comment escalates to irritated reader reactions (where exactly are these irritated reactions, on my FA page?) and then ultimately to counterattacks on my readers. Wow. Just wow. Does this mean that I'm a guerrilla cartoonist? Cool.
Do tell, Dana K. You have such amazing comics-reading skills. Do you read minds, too?
Again, with the.... I don't get why this is supposed to even be funny. Who said it was, Donny Osmond? There are plenty of comics out there that are supposed to be funny, I guess. Read those. Don't hurt yourself with FA. It's just not worth your hopeless frustration and torment.
Kilby is a piece of work. So much to say, so few worthy words to share. Amusement value? Making veiled references to oh-no stuff? The only truism here is that few teenagers probably read the comics, so, yes, that would no doubt include FA. Thanks for that demographic breakdown. You're dismissed now. You bore the heaven-forbid out of me.
Okay. So, what's the comment here?
It's cute how Kilby tries to get all polite and respectful by calling me Ms. Burritt and then proceeds to surmise that I am creating "these things" (GoComics should consider changing their name to GoTheseThings) solely for my own amusement and that I don't care in the slightest whether any person on the planet understands what I am doing.
There is so much to enjoy in that last statement. I didn't realize that I had readers all over the planet. What about other planets? That would be even better! It's imperative for everyone on the planet to understand my comics and what I am doing. It almost sounds like a comics audit of sorts, and a legal directive that I am required to make my comic understandable to comics enforcement officers like these ding-dongs.
To the substantial claque where I get my uncritical support from: Continue to "perform" for each other on my FA page.
Regarding Frog Blog (which does not allow comments), keep up your performances floridly.
#FB00728
Keep your comments coming, Kilby and others. Too bad you keep rehashing the same piffle. It's getting a little boring, frankly. Come up with some new material, please.
Goodbye, Kilby. "Frog Applause" will get along just fine without you, but I doubt you'll stay away. You seem to enjoy exhibiting your melodramatic outrage too much. Silly, wabbit. Trix™ are for kids.
Friday, July 28, 2023
Further evidence that the end is near...
Microscopic handbag “smaller than a grain of salt” has been sold for $63,750 at auction
Italian school teacher outraged after being shitcanned for missing 20 years of work
Georgia Subway restaurant slammed for ‘Our subs don’t implode’ sign
Ted Cruz weaves bizarre scenario about Biden murdering children while listening to Pat Benatar
Mom naming child Quiftopher to honor grandparents accused of ‘borderline abuse’
Man steals forklift at Lowe’s, runs over 73-year-old outside Home Depot
Janitor turns off ‘mega-freezer’ to stop incessant beeping, destroys 25 years of valuable research
Experts warn of potential health risks of peeing in the shower
Quality journalism: headline, sub-head and article are all exactly the same
Parents are panicking about kids ‘dry drowning’ days after they’ve come home from the pool
If you scroll your phone screen with your pointer finger you’re apparently ‘old and out of touch’
More than 75% of Americans had contracted Covid by the end of 2022
Walgreens opens new anti-theft store in Chicago where nearly every item is locked up
California restaurant used fake priest to get workers to confess ‘sins’
Teen girl pretended to be a boy and fooled nearsighted girl into having sex
#FB00727
What really happened to the Inuit sled dogs?
Almost 50 years have passed, but Lucien Ukaliannuk clearly remembers the day the RCMP came for his family's sled dogs.
"We went to Iglulik in a boat and let our dogs off first," Mr. Ukaliannuk said through an interpreter. "They were roaming free. The next thing we knew, they were all shot. The police purposely went out to shoot dogs, everybody's dogs. The government and the police were the law. They could do whatever they wanted."
Long a topic of both academic debate and campfire discussion, a purported RCMP policy of slaughtering Inuit sled dogs has become a volatile social issue in the North.
Inuit leaders in Ottawa and across several far-flung communities have demanded independent inquiries into what they believe was a conscious police strategy of forcibly corralling Inuit into settlements by removing a vital ingredient of their nomadic life, their sled dogs.
They believe that bureaucrats wanted to see their children in centralized communities, where it would be easier to supervise their activities and deliver education and health-care services.
Read more here.
#FB00727
I am Jesus Christ
If you wish to be added to the list above, please share your claim(s) so I can post them here. If you are merely claiming to be a younger sibling of Jesus, this list is not for you. Serious posts only, please.
#FB00725
Thursday, July 27, 2023
The U.S. Government Wants Your Dead Butterflies
Chang Che
Thu, July 27, 2023
Got any dead butterflies lying around? Consider sending them to the U.S. government.
Officials with the United States Geological Survey, an agency that conducts research on environmental risks, are asking residents in six states to mail in dead butterflies, moths and skippers to help scientists research the causes of the fluttering insects’ population decline, the agency said last week.
Residents in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas are being asked to help contribute to the establishment of the Lepidoptera Research Collection, which will be a national storehouse, based in Kansas, of butterflies, moths and other species categorized as Lepidoptera.
Contributors can see their submissions in an online registry, and the submitted specimens will be available to federal scientists for any research they hope to conduct. The scientists will test the insects for contaminants and other environmental factors.
“I knew that, when I said it out loud, there was no guarantee that it might work,” said Julie Dietze, a physical scientist at the USGS based in Kansas, who came up with the idea for the nationwide call to action.
“But what if it does work? That would be really cool because then you’ve got people really engaged in citizen science.”
The agency has received roughly 100 submissions since the pilot program kicked off in April, a modest but encouraging sum, Dietze said. She hoped it would ramp up.
Insects, the ballast of food chains and essential pollinators that help nourish entire ecosystems, are in rampant decline across the world.
That worrying trend extends to lepidopterans. The beloved monarch butterfly, an ornate, orange-winged insect that is a focus of the USGS study, is an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, an international body that monitors the status of species. Over the past 20 years, monarch butterflies’ numbers in the United States have plummeted by 90%, a decline of 900 million insects, according to scientists.
The butterflies’ precipitous drop is likely a result of multiple factors, including climate change, habitat loss and the rampant use of pesticides, said Arthur Shapiro, professor emeritus of ecology at the University of California, Davis, who has spent decades researching the decline of Lepidoptera.
One potential culprit was a group of widely used insecticides known as neonicotinoids, he said.
“In long-term monitoring,” Shapiro said butterfly declines “coincide in time with the implementation of neonicotinoids in agriculture. And the same coincidence — if that’s what it is — has been observed in the U.K. and in Europe.”
Shapiro said scientists had long studied butterflies to glean broader insights into ecological processes such as habitat loss that are of serious consequence to humans.
“They are a proverbial canary in the coal mine,” he said. “If butterflies are in trouble, it suggests a lot of things are in trouble.”
Shapiro noted that recent heat waves had probably killed many of the butterflies people would be sending in. He was supportive of “anything that sheds some light on what is actually going on” with butterflies. But he cautioned that the study would most likely shed light on insect-specific factors of population decline such as pesticides, as opposed to environmental ones such as heat waves and habitat loss.
Dietze said researchers at the USGS were expected to test the butterflies and moths for contaminants such as the herbicide glyphosate, as well as neonicotinoids. The deadline for the mail-in orders is Nov. 1, but if the program gains traction, say, among butterfly enthusiasts and high school classrooms, Dietze had hopes the agency could extend the program indefinitely, with its scope expanding to other states and insects.
The six states in the pilot program were chosen in part because they sit in the migratory pathway for the Eastern monarch butterfly, which begins east of the Rocky Mountains and ends south, after a 3,000-mile journey, in central Mexico.
Residents in the six qualifying states can put their dead butterflies and moths inside a resealable plastic bag and send them in a sealed envelope to the collection center in Lawrence, Kansas, according to the USGS flyer. Damaged butterflies or partial bits are accepted, although the specimens must be larger than 2 inches. The flyer asks residents to freeze the bugs to preserve them if they are not shipped within three days.
When Cindy Chrisler posted the USGS flyer in a Facebook group of Texas environmental volunteers in June, it garnered a group record of over 4,000 post impressions.
“That’s the highest number we’ve ever had on a post,” she said.
Chrisler, 64-year-old plant enthusiast from Georgetown, Texas, had mailed in two lunate zale moths she had found around the house and one butterfly, a gulf fritillary with a damaged wing that she had spotted in July in her garden near a patch of yellow passionflowers.
“I thought, ‘Well, here, I’m going to have something I can actually send in,’” she said.
Chrisler said she saw the USGS program as a citizen science project that could empower people “who may not be scientifically trained to do research, but can still contribute to the overall knowledge.”
The federal project also resonated with her own findings.
For three years, Chrisler has conducted butterfly surveys in Spicewood, about 50 miles northwest of Austin, as part of a citizen science project run by the Texas Butterfly Monitoring Network. When she began her surveys in July 2021, she frequently spotted the dainty sulphur — a delicate, yellow-winged butterfly native to North America, she said.
Nowadays, she hardly sees that particular species. In her survey notes in July, she recorded finding six species and a total of 40 butterflies, a “significant decline” from the 134 species and 100 butterflies she logged two years prior, she said.
c.2023 The New York Times Company
#FB00723
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
@mystertim
You don't have to pose with one of my prints to appear on Frog Blog, though. If you want to appear here, let's make arrangements to do that! Most of you know how to contact me; if you don't, leave a message on my FA page, and we'll figure something out.
I've also posted photos of gardens, flooded creeks, and woodworking projects belong to my readers. If you draw comics, let me post some. We posted all of nighthawks and StelBel's animations. Grace the Face even appeared in a couple of their animations. Click "Cleo and Company" on the right side of this blog to watch or rewatch those animations.
Let me hear from you. Send your photos. Let me know how you want to be identified, too.
#FB00721
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Shadow Rock (Max Cannon of Red Meat)
https://vimeo.com/121455875 (#1)
https://vimeo.com/121456269 (#2)
https://vimeo.com/121456555 (#3)
https://vimeo.com/121456985 (#4)
https://vimeo.com/121457203 (#5)
https://vimeo.com/121457439 (#6)
https://vimeo.com/121457505 (#7)
https://vimeo.com/121457840 (#9)
https://vimeo.com/121457960 (#10)
( I couldn't find all of the episodes. I found #6 since I first posted.)
#FB00719
Watergate salad and fizzy milk
Instant pistachio pudding, canned pineapple, and marshmallows, topped with walnuts.
#FB00717
Saturday, July 22, 2023
Filial responsibility laws
Filial responsibility laws impose a legal obligation on adult children to take care of their parents’ basic needs and medical care. Although most people are not aware of them, 30 states in the U.S. have some type of filial responsibility laws in place. The states that have such laws on the books are Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
Filial responsibility laws and their enforcement vary greatly from state to state. Eleven states have never enforced their laws, and most other states rarely enforce the laws. Currently, Pennsylvania is the only state to aggressively enforce its filial responsibility laws.
One of the main reasons why filial responsibility laws are not widely enforced is due to the fact that in the context of needs-based government programs such as Medicaid, federal law has prohibited states from considering the financial responsibility of any person other than a spouse in determining whether an applicant is eligible. However, as many local programs aimed at helping the elderly continue to struggle with insolvency, many states may consider more aggressive enforcement of their filial responsibility laws.
Twenty-one states allow lawsuits to recover financial support. Parties who are allowed to bring such a lawsuit vary state by state. In some states, only the parents themselves can file a claim. In other states, the county, state public agencies or the parent’s creditors can file the lawsuit. In 12 states, criminal penalties may be imposed upon the adult children who fail to support their parents. Three states allow both civil and criminal penalties.
In some states, children are excused from their filial responsibility if they don’t have enough income to help out, or if they were abandoned as children by the parent. However, the abandonment defense can be difficult to prove, especially if the parent had a good reason to abandon the child, like serious financial difficulties. Sometimes, children’s filial responsibility can be reduced if prior bad behavior on the part of the parent can be proven.
#FB00716
Pretty boys
I guess I was different. I never cared about these celebrity pretty boys. I frankly never understood all the screaming and hoopla for people like Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, or any of the other teen idols. I thought girls who swooned for these people were crazy, too. I guess I was too busy catching tadpoles in the creek or writing to my pen pals. (I had 26 in 18 different countries. Such a nerd I was, and still am.)
#FB00715.
Apparently, Bobby Sherman is 80 years old today.
Friday, July 21, 2023
Tony Bennett, R.I.P.
#FB00714
He almost made it to 97.
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
Taffy R.I.P.
The day after one of my oldest and best parakeet hens died, a new baby hatched. Taffy took over the mothering duties and raised nearly 30 babies in my aviary, most not her own. She was protective and attentive. She liked fresh strawberries and cilantro best. Taffy was a hopper, which meant she could not fly. People who don't want their birds to fly away, often snip off feathers that don't grow back well. Essentially, they take away a big part of their birdness. That said, I tried to give Taffy a good, uncaged life. Her partner, Xero, also a hopper, keeps hopping around looking for her. It's kind of sad.
I buried Taffy in the backyard in a flower garden where I've buried, over the years, other birds from my aviary.
Otis wasn't terribly torn up. He walked over and pecked my foot, as he often does, to let me know, "Hey, a-hole. More seeds."
If a bird could wear little cool-guy sunglasses, that would be Otis. Sky blue and cloud-white Otis.
#FB00710
Caution
The worrisome tomatoes are in fact in Pittsburgh, in The Octopus Garden:
-Randy
#FB00706
Monday, July 17, 2023
Dated interior design trends
#FB00704
Sunday, July 16, 2023
Media literacy to control hate speech
Hate speech is a threat to democracy
"Knowledge is power, and using that power to counter hate speech can help build more informed and inclusive communities.
While various institutions support this endeavor, libraries are pivotal hubs fostering critical thinking, empowering individuals and bridging societal divides.
Let's explore the role of librarians in media literacy promotion, highlighting their unique capabilities in combating hate speech and forging a more tolerant and equitable society.
We live in a world where the lines between fact and fiction are easily blurred, making it challenging for individuals to discern reliable sources of information amid the flood of media messages we encounter each day. "
Read article here.
#FB00703
Saturday, July 15, 2023
Long pepper
Historically, long pepper was used in a similar way to black pepper and was just as common. It has many of the same characteristics as black pepper, although long pepper tends to be less harsh and has more complexity, including sweet notes of cinnamon and nutmeg.
Long pepper’s sweet heat can complement many dishes in a way that black pepper simply cannot.
#FB00702
Friday, July 14, 2023
Three Pulitzer-winning cartoonists let go in one day...
Jack Ohman cannot recall another day like it, even amid decades of brutal cuts in the field of newspaper political cartooning.
On Tuesday, three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists – Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer – were all let go by McClatchy newspapers.
Read story here. (Paywall removed for this story.)
https://www.gocomics.com/jackohman
https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett
https://twitter.com/kevinsiers?lang=en
#FB00698
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Xylazine
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is warning the American public of a sharp increase in the trafficking of fentanyl mixed with xylazine. Xylazine, also known as “Tranq,” is a powerful sedative that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved for veterinary use.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” said Administrator Milgram. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 States. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”
Xylazine and fentanyl drug mixtures place users at a higher risk of suffering a fatal drug poisoning. Because xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone (Narcan) does not reverse its effects. Still, experts always recommend administering naloxone if someone might be suffering a drug poisoning. People who inject drug mixtures containing xylazine also can develop severe wounds, including necrosis—the rotting of human tissue—that may lead to amputation.
According to the CDC, 107,735 Americans died between August 2021 and August 2022 from drug poisonings, with 66 percent of those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl. The Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for the vast majority of the fentanyl that is being trafficked in communities across the United States.
FDA recently communicated to health care providers about the risks to patients exposed to xylazine in illicit drugs. A copy of that communication can be found here: FDA alerts healthcare professionals of risks to patients exposed to xylazine in illicit drugs.
https://www.dea.gov/alert/dea-reports-widespread-threat-fentanyl-mixed-xylazine
How Grace the Face got her name...
Who knew? This is news to me, too. One tends to forget after thousands of strips.
#FB00965
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Punder, Pundering
I was almost certain that I'd get flagged on GoComics if I posted this there, so here (for one time only!) I offer this to you, my beloved readers:
A punder is a type of wordplay or joke that involves the clever and often humorous use of puns, which are play on words or phrases that have multiple meanings or similar sounds but different meanings. A punder typically relies on the double entendre or the use of homophones to create a humorous effect.
Punding is compulsive performance of repetitive, mechanical tasks, such as assembling and disassembling, collecting, or sorting household objects. The term was originally coined to describe complex prolonged, purposeless, and stereotyped behavior in phenmetrazine and chronic amphetamine users, by Swedish forensic psychiatrist G. Rylander, in 1968. It was later described in Parkinson's disease, but mainly in cases of patients being treated with dopaminergic drugs. It has also been described in methamphetamine and cocaine users, as well as in some patients with gambling addictions, and hypersexuality. For example, punding may consist of activities such as collecting pebbles and lining them up as perfectly as possible; disassembling wristwatches and putting them back together again; or conducting extended monologues devoid of context. People engaging in punding find immersion in such activities comforting, even when it serves no purpose, and generally find it very frustrating to be diverted from them. They are not generally aware that there is a compulsive element, but will continue even when they have good reason to stop. Rylander describes a burglar who started punding and could not stop, even though he was suffering from an increasing apprehension of being caught. Interrupting can lead to various responses, including anger or rage, sometimes to the point of violence.
OMG. Posted on GoComics 1 minute ago. Am I fat fast or what?
#FB00964
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Gone all-out... (?)
I find it odd that people who don't seriously follow "Frog Applause," have something to say about what I think about or how I seem to treat my readers. They don't have a clue about me or how devoted I am to those of you who visit my FA page regularly, leave comments, and who exchange emails with me. I've known many of you for years... Who is this Kilby person anyway? You can't take a Garfield measuring stick and try to measure FA with it. Also, why is it assumed that any little outburst is directed toward actual readers? When I use you (second-person plural) I'm not directing my comment(s) at anyone in particular. It's not necessary to understand a comic to follow it. Maybe there's nothing to understand; how about that? I have no expectations of anyone. Each installment of FA is what it is. I make no demands of my readers. I shouldn't even bother posting clueless comments like this.
#FB00963
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp, among the most influential artists of his generation, in 1919 may have inadvertently set the standard for modern manifestations of Mona Lisa simply by adding a goatee to an existing postcard print of Leonardo's original. Duchamp pioneered the concept of readymades, which involves taking mundane objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them artistically, sometimes by simply renaming them and placing them in a gallery setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the "found object" is a Mona Lisa postcard onto which Duchamp drew a goatee in pencil and appended the title.
The title, Duchamp is said to have admitted in his later years, is a pun. The letters L-H-O-O-Q pronounced in French form the sentence Elle a chaud au cul, colloquially translating into English as "She has a hot ass."As was the case with many of his readymades, Duchamp made multiple versions of L.H.O.O.Q. in varying sizes and media throughout his career. An unmodified black and white reproduction of Mona Lisa on a playing-card, onto which Duchamp in 1965 inscribed LHOOQ rasée (LHOOQ Shaved), is among many second-generation variants referencing the original L.H.O.O.Q.
Duchamp's parody of Mona Lisa was itself parodied by Francis Picabia in 1942, annotated Tableau Dada Par Marcel Duchamp ("Dadaist Scene for Marcel Duchamp"), another example of second-generation interpretations of Mona Lisa. Salvador Dalí created his Self Portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954, referencing L.H.O.O.Q. in collaboration with Philippe Halsman, incorporating his photographs of a wild-eyed Dalí showing his handlebar moustache and a handful of coins. In 1958, Icelandic painter Erró then incorporated Dalí's version into a composition which also included a film-still from Dalí's Un Chien Andalou. Fernand Léger and René Magritte are among the numbers of Modern art masters who've adapted Mona Lisa using their own iconography.[2] None of the parodies have tarnished Mona Lisa's image; rather, they reinforce her fame.[2] Duchamp's mustached Mona Lisa embellishment continues to inspire imitation. Contemporary conceptual artist Subodh Gupta gave L.H.O.O.Q. three-dimensional form in his 2009 bronze sculpture Et tu, Duchamp? Gupta, from India, considers himself an "idol thief" and has reinterpreted a number of iconic works from European art history.
#FB00962
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Founding GoCreator Members: (8) Teresa Burritt ( Frog Applause ) GoCreator founder, organizer, member recruitment https://www.gocomics.c...
