Tinks

Also highly recommend spraying your dogs thoroughly with Permethrin in addition to whatever else they're on. Permethrin is an insecticide and when ticks come into contact with it they immediately want to get away from it and will hop off as quickly as they can. My dog and I go hiking a lot and I almost never see ticks on him anymore. This applies even if you only walk your dog on paved paths - the ticks sit on the tips of leaves and grass blades waiting for something to come near.

If your religion leads you to hate, the religion and its followers are bad. The end.

Ok but um...what do we do with California?

A) Completely fucked. Likely dead within days.

B) Less fucked than most I imagine. I do a lot of hiking (multiple times a week) and carry the 10 essentials in my bag, including a water filter. Food would be the biggest issue as I typically only have one meal and some snacks in my bag. I think it's doable though.

C) I think I'd be fine. I have enough food to last for months if I ration it and the knowledge, seeds and tools to grow a pretty robust heirloom garden. I also have water filtration and backups, as well as tents for shelter, solar rechargeable batteries for light at least until the panels and batteries degrade, and hand tools to build a more robust shelter. If the contents of my whole house came though the difficulty would be feeding my dog and cat, so we'd have to quickly start working on figuring out how to get meat regularly. I'd have about 2 months of food for them, but that would go quick. I am not readily equipped for hunting so I'd have to cobble together some snares. I have Wikipedia downloaded to an old Kindle and that would probably help in that department. I think in this scenario I'd be fine until disease got me. I have emergency antibiotics in my house though so I could at least survive a couple rounds of bacterial diseases.

I don't have to defend pedophiles at all. Until our justice system stops speed running innocent people into prison and death row, there should be no death penalty for anyone, for any reason. Our justice system, if you can call it that, is a for-profit system that is not interested in actually ensuring justice is done and that only the guilty are punished. Child assaulters, and especially sexual assaulters, have no business existing in our society at all, but I refuse to condone anyone being put to death by the state unless and until we can get our shit together and have a functional justice system.

About the length of a golden retriever

I live in the US, and with the state of things I have decided to make my life more analog and disconnected this year, and for the foreseeable future. Instead of online games, I do puzzles and listen to audiobooks. Instead of doom scrolling for hours, I've decided I'm going to start backpacking. Instead of watching so much TV, I've been reading more.

All of these things are helping bring me peace. I've been pack training with my dog, which means doing longer day hikes with a heavy pack for each of us, and it's just been so nice. I'm losing weight without trying (which is a good thing as I'm overweight), I'm seeing parts of my area I've never seen, and spending fantastic quality time with my dog. This weekend we're doing a shakedown car camp to see how he does in my smaller backpacking tent and I am SO excited. In 3 weeks we go on our first backpacking trip with a friend, and I'm already dreaming of future trips. All of this is huge for us because I'm allergic to the sun (literally) and he (my dog) is very sensitive to heat, and allergic to wasps (we have to carry epipens for him) so deciding to spend time outdoors has taken a lot of consideration, determination and planning, but we're doing it. I'm so excited for the adventures we'll have, I can't even put my emotions into words.

It's all about who the most important prophet is, and anyone that disagrees is wrong and we hate them.

Religion is wild.

It's about to get absolutely stupid. Like I know everyone thinks things are bonkers now, but up until this week vendors I work with, that supply electronic equipment either partially or entirely manufactured in China, were still honoring quotes created weeks ago. This week we're being told that quotes we've had in the works for weeks or months are now likely going to be pulled and not honored, and that was BEFORE this additional increase. We're talking large spend that's likely going to be delayed indefinitely, which will almost certainly shrink the entire GDP and cause mass layoffs, and we'll be in a depression before we know it. I wish I was being hyperbolic, but I'm watching multi million dollar spends planned for the better part of a year evaporate because quotes won't be honored.

1 point - I've never sent a postcard lol

A lot of Europe is like this and I think part of the difference is social expectation with dogs. Because it's more normal for dogs to go places, and less normal to have private yards at your home for your dog to spend time in, people in Europe tend to spend more time training their dogs to be good members of society because they basically have to. If you have to walk your dog multiple times a day for potty instead of letting it into the back yard, you're probably more likely to make sure your dog is leash trained properly.

I also think the USA (and Canada to some extent as you've kind of adopted many of our values, for good or ill) are more individualistic than many European countries. In America we train our pets because WE want them trained, not because of societal expectations about dog ownership. It's truly telling when you walk a dog that is properly leash trained and get compliments about how well trained your dog is. That a dog can walk on leash without pulling is the exception, not the norm. (This happened yesterday to me, just walking around a park path.) It's depressing. American individualism insists, "I don't need to train my dog, he's perfect being the cute little terrorist that he is, and if you don't like it, that's your problem." As a result, dogs aren't allowed most places in the US because entitled dog owners are the norm, not the minority. I love dogs, and I love taking my dog places, but if I owned a business of any kind I wouldn't allow dogs because it's not worth the headache here.

Let me preface this by first saying I agree that dogs should generally not be allowed in food serving establishments because their hair goes everywhere and nobody likes eating dog hair.

With that said though, I have never once seen my dog lick his own butt. What on earth are other people's dogs doing?! The closest my dog has gotten to licking his butt is licking around his genitalia, which I grant you is unclean as well, but he's fluffy and keeps the hair between his legs clean and un-matted. But butt licking?!

Now here's where I get down voted to hell, but I have to play devil's advocate lol. I would argue that kids are a MUCH larger vector of bacteria and viruses that are of concern to the average adult human than any dog. Dogs are gross, sure, but I'll take a lick from a strange dog over a strange toddler's sticky hands on me!

We should keep dogs out of food places, but mostly cause hair and allergies - if we're going to ban beings due to their gross factor though that list should be much longer (toddlers, homeless, anyone that didn't wash their hands after using the restroom...)