albino cave salamander with attitude

grammarmancer:

spartathesheltie:
grammarmancer:
sidneyia:
rebooglemyschnoozle:
spartathesheltie:
spartathesheltie:
look. i know we don’t judge our dogs based on whether they could survive in the wild, and that they are domesticated, and often their only purpose is companionship and they’re not generally supposed to cross miles of tundra or some crap
but can we at least agree they should survive crossing a piece of carpet
in case anyone thinks i’m over it
im not
wait, what happened?
this pekingese wasn’t able to walk the distance it needed to walk in a dog show, apparently, and needed to be carried. as a brachycephalic breed, they have a lot of health problems due to overbreeding.
Is there a source to this? I can’t find it and the dog looks like it’s walking fine.
(Also @ihatethatchick bc same question kinda) It’s in the 2017 AKC Nationals BIS finals, about 18 minutes in, I believe. The difference in gait between the pekingese and other dogs (literally any other breed) is easiest to spot in the up-close shots.
I’m sure the dog could’ve gotten around the lap if given (a lot of) time, but for the handler to be so flippant about the inefficiency of its movement and just pick the dang dog up when it’s being evaluated and it then being laughed off like nbd is… It’s not okay. The point of dog shows is, at the core, to evaluate traits and structural soundness for the purpose of furthering the breed.
Pekingese are also notorious for overheating in the show ring. This one was placed on a cooling mat for the group winner interview - and it’s not the first time I’ve seen that, but I’ve never seen it done in another breed.
The vast majority of dog breeds follow the same basic structural rules. Angles and proportions in front should match angles and proportions in rear, to keep stress and impact even. Trot should be a smooth two-beat gait, reach in front equalling drive in rear, for energy efficiency and again, balance. An unbalanced dog usually means joint and mobility issues down the line.
Pekingese are bred to be severely bowlegged in front with a light and narrow rear, specifically to make movement difficult (”Let its forelegs be bent; so that it shall not desire to wander far.”) Google “pekingese+arthritis” for a good time.
(not the best photo, but gives ya an idea of the issues i have w this breed)
Thank you so much for the explanation! You’re right, the angle and the distance of the first gif obscured it…it’s way more obvious in the second.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we bred dogs for being healthy and well formed instead of this mess?

mademoiselleclipon:

Konstantin Kofta SS18 “IMAGO

linguisticmaps:

GRAMMATICAL GENDER OR NOUN CLASS CATEGORIES - NEW VERSION
Gender categories refer here to the assignement of a gender to a noun which may be marked morphologically in several ways. It has nothing to do with expressing natural gender.
Masculine, feminine and neuter are characteristic of Indo-European languages. Many of them have lost the neuter like Romance languages (except romanian and asturian), Celtic languages, Baltic languages, and most Indo-Aryan languages. Some, like Dutch, Danish and Swedish have merged the masculin and the feminine into a common gender, making thus a distinction more similar to animate and inanimate.
Genderless languages are the most common: Turkic, Tungunsic, Sino-Tibetan, Mongolic, Koreanic, Japonic, Kartvelian, Pontic, Uralic, Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Pama-Nyungan and most australian languages, Tupi-Gê-Carib, Arawan, Arawak, Na-Dene, Eskimo-Aleut, and many others in Papua and the Americas. English and Afrikaans lost all gender marking except in pronouns (he, she, it, for example).
Several diverse classes occur in most Niger-Congo languages, some Caspian/Northeast Caucasian languages, some Khoisan languages, Jarawa and Ongan (from the Andaman Islands) and some aboriginal australian languages. They may contain animal genders, vegetal genders, genders for rocks and many other categories.
Animate and inanimate gender is common in some Amerindian families such as Algic, Uto-Aztecan, Quechuan, Aymara, Mapudungun, Iroquoian, Siouan.
Burushaski and Zande have four genders, masc., fem., animate and inanimate, and some like Polish, Czech, or the Dravidian Languages have a hierarchy of animacy and gender, including masc., fem., neuter, animate and inanimate.

gothhabiba:

the-lady-that-writes:
gothhabiba:
okay I know that we’re over Harry Potter but the fact that Hermione Granger took SO many classes in her third year that she needed to literally TIME TRAVEL to pull it all off and her teachers just, trusted her with the means to do so? icon
Yeah but why the fuck would they trust a thirteen year old with such a poweful object. As far as I know timeturners are given to every single student that picks too many classes
because she truly was That Bitch