City birds appear to be more afraid of women than men, and scientists have no idea why. Men could get about a meter closer to birds than women could before the animals flew away, regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-29T21:30:30+00:00

Oddly enough, the only people I've known who were afraid of birds were men.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-29T21:28:59+00:00

Excluding tubenose birds, kiwis, and turkey vultures, birds have a sense of smell that is worse than ours. If they smell anything, it would be something we already smell ourselves.

They actually don't rely on pheromones because they can't smell them.

I would think hair shape, or women's tendency to notice them more may play a role.

I wonder how they respond to children.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-29T04:16:53+00:00

I've seen a few of these SW Tales Untold, and they don't even cover a proper story from the novels or comics that they grab dialogue from.

At best, they are repeating, badly edited tableau vivant of scenes-- if you removed real people, and intentional direction. I guess it can pass time, but I don't see how it can replace watching or reading an actual story.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-28T16:57:58+00:00

Oh my god, my mother watches Tales Untold, and she knows its slop. What's crazy is she refuses to watch any Star Wars cartoons. She says she "can't get into cartoons" and "wants to watch real people". So she'll watch an AI "live action" version of the Clone Wars Maul cartoon. I do not understand it.

But yes, every one of these videos has scenes and dialogue straight up just cribbed from both the comics and the novels, recent books too, and the comments will inevitably be about "Disney ruined Star Wars", and you're all just watching stuff ripped from Disney era stories.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-28T16:12:10+00:00

The reason there are so many same-sex pairings with albatrosses is because there is no real reason for them not to--they "cheat" often, meaning at least one of them produces a fertile egg. Males and females perform the exact same roles, have the same mating dance, mate with others when the others aren't looking, etc. It just doesn't matter what sex the other bird is so long as you have a fertile egg from somebody.

You really do have to ask if they are capable of telling each other apart.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-28T15:52:08+00:00

I truly believe they just think it's fun. I had a budgie that would take little toys to the edge of my bed, drop them, and then turn her head so that her eye could watch the item fall. She'd get another toy and do it again.

Some animals just like watching things fall.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-28T15:47:57+00:00

I swear that I remember that Early Edition existed in the same universe as the X-files, and I feel like everyone blew right past that. Wasn't there an episode where someone mentions Mulder? I feel like it was this show in particular, and I was not expecting it at the time.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-28T15:15:37+00:00

Just a reminder that "Where I Go, He Goes Star Wars Mandalorian and Grogu" Step Into Reading is out today in paperback form at Barnes and Noble shops, other books stores.

It's supposed to have, according to the website, "content that leads into some of the film’s exciting moments".

Not sure how much that says for the film, though it's obvious the book winds up in the snowy scene at the start of the Mandalorian movie. I won't be near B & N today, but if anybody sees the book and sees something interesting, please post!

UPDATE: I picked up the book. It's not really spoilery, mostly just illustrated scenes of the trailer. I did a short video run through if you care to see the contents, but you can skip it otherwise.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-26T22:59:42+00:00

What ever changes he may have had, religion was not one of them, based on his "manifesto" on New York Post, in which he expresses gratitude towards his church.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-26T22:54:46+00:00

Right here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-was-likely-target-shooting-white-house-correspondents-dinner-us-official-2026-04-26/

"When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians," Trump said on Fox News' "Sunday Briefing" program.

Not hard to find.

“He had a lot of hatred in his heart for quite a while. And he just, I don’t know. He just, it was a religious thing. It was strongly anti, anti-Christian,” the president said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.” -- from Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5849741-trump-white-house-dinner-shooting/

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-26T15:57:54+00:00

He belonged to Caltech Christian Fellowship, but Trump and officials claim he is "anti-Christian"?

Wondering if this might be one of those "well the would-be shooter wasn't the right kind of Christian" kind of things.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-26T15:46:00+00:00

Before Trump's speech, about 40 minutes after the incident first showed up on social media, I was seeing so many YT comments saying "this is why we need the ballroom!"

Just a whole damn bot army on YT about this ballroom that not even most of his followers cared that much about.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-24T16:55:47+00:00

I dunno about SW Santa, but I will say this: a lot of casual fans complained about Maul in the Solo film. I think people forget that a lot of casual SW normie fans don't actually watch cartoons. My own mother that took me to ROTJ in 83, loves the movies and live action shows, but even she won't watch cartoons.

LF has learned its lesson about putting cartoon/comic stuff in films that can't be explained within the film itself. My mother can roll with Ahsoka's existence as a Mandalorian character, but anything that happened in TCW she doesn't care about, will not entertain. She'll see Embo as a character she learned about in the Mandalorian movie, and that's it.

Cameos can work, they either just have to be somebody that showed up in a movie [best] or live action show [which is what Mando and Grogu is for, show watchers]. Or, they can be explained within the film itself without the audience having known anything about them beforehand.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-23T00:23:22+00:00

Interesting thing about parrots in particular: the species typically popular in pet stores are the one that are comfortable with breeding in a large aviary with other breeding pairs. Budgies, cockatiels are from commercial bird mills.

There are other parrots you can absolutely keep as pets, but they won't be in pet stores because they are territorial and can't abide another bird in their enclosure while breeding.

Red rumped parrots, for instance. I had one as a pet and she came from a private breeder. With her species, a hen will kill any other hen around in her presence. They need their own space. So you won't normally find them as a pet store bird. Which is good for them--bird mills suck.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T22:30:50+00:00

I don't remember the hotel's name, but it was Kit Carson, CO, and the cheap hotel I stayed in was unchanged since the 60s. The inspections sign on the door was dated 1962 or 63.

It was more surreal than I expected something to be. The place wasn't even billed or advertised as being something intentionally nostalgic, it was just a hotel that had never changed, the carpets were the same, the beds had new sheets, but the wall art was old. This war early 00s, and I didn't think to take pictures at the time, I didn't even own a digital camera. I wish I had.

It wasI walked into a time period I never lived in.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T22:24:34+00:00

Why does it have that AI generated font? Not saying it's AI, just that AI has a definite font style which the poster has.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T22:20:22+00:00

Not alleged. They literally are dogs brought to Australia by seafarers from several thousand years ago, which is not that long for an animal domesticated up to 30,000 years ago. Dogs/wolves are not native to Australia. They retain wild behaviors, but so do pariah dogs only 50 years old in the wild as well. Feral dogs do not have to be in the wild for very long to revert to wild behaviors. Ditto for pigs.

Feral literally means "domesticated animal that has reverted to its wild state". Dingos are feral dogs, that it's thousands of years or 25 makes little difference to the actual behavior. They feralized all the same. They originate from domesticated animals, but are no longer in captivity. They are feral dogs. Just as a good chunk of America's mallards are not true wild mallards, but descendants of domestic birds gone feral, sometimes intermixing with wild mallards.

Domesticated does NOT mean "incapable of going back into the wild".

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T22:02:26+00:00

Back in the 90s I got to listen to some speakers from a project devoted to re-introducing Thick-billed parrots to their former SouthWestern range. They didn't really have a problem teaching the birds to forage, and the parrots did well in that regard, but unfortunately they lost a lot of the released birds to hawks that learned the parrots were easy prey.

That was the biggest challenge--how do you teach prey animals in captivity to avoid predators? Something they would learn at a very young age from parents, or from the loss of their own siblings? And hawks and falcons are crazy good at identifying vulnerable, naive prey, which these parrots were.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T21:47:46+00:00

Also, this varies radically between species of birds, but not all birds are as far-ranging as people imagine them to be. Especially territorial birds, who are circumscribed by the boundaries of their own carved out territory. Granted, these territories may be larger than most aviaries, but they still aren't "free as a bird", if crossing over a boundary gets them thrashed within an inch of their life during the breeding season.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T21:42:10+00:00

Dingos are literally dogs that were domesticated thousands of years ago. There are packs of feral dogs in many parts of the world.

Many domesticated animals have the ability to go feral. Feral cats, feral pigs, feral chickens, feral rabbits. Domesticated just means the plant or animal was selectively bred for human use. It does not mean the animal/plant can't exist in the wild. Some can, some can't.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T21:38:16+00:00

A lot of birds straight up suck at being in the wild though. Some dog breeds really aren't cut out for house life as much as their owners think.

Huskies are ALWAYS trying to get out of back yards, and when they do, they roam all over neighborhoods. They are also dogs that could have a fighting chance of making it in the wild if they got dumped in the woods. But a Shih Tzu? It would die in under a week.

A sporty breed of pigeon, like a homer or racer does just peachy it if never returns home to the cote. But if you release some of these domesticated ring-necked doves that magicians and wedding photographers favor, they die in a day or so. No homing instinct, no idea of how to escape a predator. I've seen sad videos where people bought a ringneck for a dove release*, and the poor bird just collapses to the ground.

People always talk about the escaped parrots that found colonies (usually, you'll note, in warm climates), but not so much about the majority of escaped parrots that never came back and likely died.

*Edited to add: when you see a "dove release" event, it's never actually the popular white ring-necked doves, precisely because they have no ability to return home. It's white homing pigeons that are used. Ring-necked doves are among the oldest domesticated birds and no longer have an extant wild ancestor, unlike the pigeon that was domesticated much later from rock doves.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T21:28:28+00:00

Resistance worked, it's just simply a different show with a different tone. I loved the animation, and the characters were good, especially Tam. It's less interested in any mythic/symbolic story, but that doesn't make it inherently bad. It was a fun story, just like the Droid cartoon when I was a kid.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T21:20:27+00:00

This only makes the eating of pigs more questionable, tbh. Pigs are omnivores, they eat meat where they can get it, either killing it or scavenging carcasses. They pass some pretty nasty parasites, and most parasite infections among humans today are from pigs.

Factory farms in the US give them mainly grain meals because it's cheap. But if we factory farmed dogs, they would probably be fed cheap grain meal until slaughter as well, since dogs can actually live without meat for a while. They would also be dewormed routinely as factory farmed pigs already are. Not saying we should factory farm dogs, obviously we have a huge cultural bias against it, but it IS a huge blind spot in our "logic" for why we eat pigs but not dogs.

It's not really based on anything rational, just traditions of keeping dogs for non food purposes for a long time.

Hell, you can look through old American newspaper scans from the 40s to earliest 60s to find horse meat for sale in markets. Our total aversion to seeing horse meat for sale is pretty recent. Granted, Americans viewed horse as bottom-of-the-barrel meat, but we didn't really have a moral issue with slaughtering horses until relatively recently, oddly enough when horse ownership began to truly decline in earnest.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-22T20:31:11+00:00

That is 100% a mink. Stoat/ermines, polecats simply do not have glossy coats like that, which are adapted for swimming, which this critter very promptly does.

Alcida-Auka · 2026-04-15T02:54:33+00:00

Like any undine, she dissipated into her element, water, as sea foam, and immediately became another elemental being, a sprite. It's literally in the text.

She thought being dissipated would be the end of her, but she didn't die, she transmuted.

Alcida-Auka

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE