Unconstructive complaints & grievances

That’s because the Pitt Bull already got the other hens and the bunnies. Rooster outlived them for years

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There’s always Facebook for that :joy:

Technically, he has four cats, three dogs and who knows what else in his house. The bunnies and chickens were the outdoor pets, and the Pitt the only dog big enough or young enough to go after the outdoor pets during his off-leash training. The neighbor swore it was a hawk that did it, but I’ve had Pitt Bulls, and I’ve seen how they go for the head/throat, where I’ve never seen a hawk decapitate a huge rooster. Plus, I was witness to the other attacks that left the rooster bloody, spur-less and lastly, blind in one eye. I used to hate the chickens because of the damage they’d do to my garden. But once the rooster was the last…man?..standing and adopted me, I loved when he’d garden with me. He was lazy and made me dig up the worms, but he was awesome. Kids hated him, but that’s because he didn’t like them near me. He was a jealous protector

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Wow even in the first world, people who have no business rearing animals in the first place, ignorantly blame raptors for their own complete lack of responsibility and/or alcoholism/drug addictions.

Reddit and Twitter both still exist, and (unless everyone with a conscience divests from the platform, immediately.) Twitter will soon descend to unprecedented depths of filth and bigotry, again.

What was “the wild west” is now essentially the hellscape from Mad Max Thunderdome.

I think what sometimes requires moderation here, pales in comparison with the purely-contrarian toxic waste thrown back and forth from angsty 12-15 year old boys on Twitter, Reddit and Youtube comments, as they say “owning the libs” or in reality abusively harassing strangers for entertainment.

While the open landscape of the open app may be abused occasionally, I don’t think the forum has ever reached anything near comparison. The worst I usually get is folks posting animals their friends or relatives have recently shot or poached, and for whatever reason they’re brag sharing it to iNaturalist or Facebook.

However, I must say,
I really do appreciate the lack of pro-eugenics/population control discussion(s) on the iNaturalist forum!

Funny how nature enthusiasts can have a way of just leaning in that direction sometimes, not going to name any names, but a certain bird forum comes to mind.

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My unconstructive complaint and/or grievance is that this Forum eats into my personal time that I could be using to do other things like yard work, home projects, etc. I’ve never been inclined to go down the rabbit hole of social media ( I don’t do FB, Twitter, etc.) but given that the topics discussed here are often too interesting to ignore, I can’t not pay attention. So I’ve got a problem with you people and now you’ve heard about it.

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Bigger grievance…my rooster buddy is now dead. My coffee buddy is gone. Decapitated. Neighbor claims a hawk is to blame. I buried my buddy in the back yard :sob:

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Noooo!!!

Rest in peace little guy.

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Eh just let it go wild. You’ll have more species then to observe, ID, and spend more time on iNat and the forum for :)

Then you’ll end up in hot water like me https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/city-ordinances-and-hoa-rules/35257/

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Here’s my unconstructive grievance: Most people are interested in things I find deadly dull (e.g., TV, movies, celebrities, spectator sports, wine, cars, fashion, etc.) and not interested in the things I’m fascinated by (biodiversity, animal behavior, population ecology, evolutionary biology, improvisational carpentry, riling up children, mouth-trumpet, inventing new ways to do things wrong, seared brussels sprouts, speculative xenobiology, naps, etc.). There should be a much lower proportion of outwardly normal people in this world.

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I think there’s worse ways you could spend/waste your time :]

For example, for at least the past few years I have elected to spend way entirely too much time daily, weekly, and yearly reading what amounts to little more than halfhearted trauma-porn on The Guardian, a complete and total waste of my time.

I’d really love to get back the time I’ve wasted reading what amounts to essentially the measurement of a garbage fire over the last 8 years or so.

And while we’re complaining unconstructively… gee, it’d sure be nice if I met someone now and then who cared about the environment enough to do more than just talk about it on social media.

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Looking at dichotomous keys for Artemisia, Cryptantha, or pick your favorite, a few changes should me made:

  1. Remove steps that require digging up the plant.
  2. Remove steps that require a ruler.
  3. Remove steps that require a microscope.
  4. All steps should only need what’s visible in photos.
  5. All steps should work with low quality photos too.
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I think we are going to need an audio file posted for this one.

“ speculative xenobiology”, I thought you meant something like the ecology of Pandora’s flora and fauna in James Cameron’s ~Atavar~ .

Those requirements seem to leave us with very simple keys.

1a … Cryptantha
1b … Cryptantha

(Once you know them, at least in my part of the world, they’re mostly easy enough to recognize on sight—but there’s a reason all the keys use nutlet features—otherwise you get muddled attempts to characterize unquantifiable aspects of gestalt. Are the sepals really think, or just kind of thick? Are the trichomes kind of irritating, or downright evil?)

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I see you’ve correctly identified my comment as unconstructive… of course the keys are developed in such a way as to definitively get to the correct species, subspecies, etc. but it would just be nice if certain genre, like the aforementioned Cryptantha, were easy enough to identify without resorting to such extreme measures as seed/nutlet collection.

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So your unconstructive grievance is that nature makes ID of some species difficult to impossible?

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Yes, difficult if key steps are followed and impossible in some cases if there’s just the photo.

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When there’re certainly something else different between the two, but scientists just look at genitals and think that’s good enough, so we never find to know if there’s more to it (it can’t be that two species are 100 similar, but genitals).

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