southsamurai

First and foremost, dog training is language training.

You aren’t really teaching them to do things, you’re teaching them to understand the sounds and movements you make when you want them to do things.

This means that regardless of anything else, you have to be consistent in both the execution of and understanding of what language you’re using.

Example: you say sit when training with a calm voice and a little lilt at the end. But in daily life, you say sit sharply and without the hand gesture you’d been using during lessons. When that’s the case, you can’t blame the dog for not understanding automatically that you want them to do the thing you used different words for.

Animals don’t process language the same way we do, but we can still run into problems understanding what someone else wants us to do when they say it in an unusual way. Why would a dog magically understand the difference between “sit, puppy”, “puppy, sit”, and/or “dammit, why won’t you sit?!”

Consistency is how we learn languages as humans, and we have sections of our brain dedicated to language that are very developed compared to even our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

The flip side of that is that you have to train yourself at the same time as the dog. You have to train yourself in the commands you want them to connect with a behavior. Make sure you learn how you’re saying things, and any secondary or tertiary signals are included.

Example: if you want the dog to eventually know that the word sit, a hand gesture, and a tone of voice mean you want them to sit, you have to consistently use those commands. Eventually, even the dumbest dog will figure out that any of those commands mean you want their butt on the floor, but if you aren’t consistent with them, it’ll take longer.

Remember, that dog hears your words and tone, sees your movements and posture, and reads your facial expressions. *All" of those are part of the command you’re teaching them to respond to with a specific behavior.

That’s why a lot of trainers have a process of introducing those things in a controlled and specific way.

And, if you deviate from the command you actually taught (like screaming word sit while making angry face, bent over and shaking a finger at them instead of the usual), don’t be mad at them for not responding to this totally new and different signal grouping with a behavior you taught them with a different combination of signals.

Ehhhh, I tend to think the distances are less important than the fact of the infrastructure being prohibitive to set up.

Trains like that can’t just be dropped onto the existing rail network. I mean, even if the rails p tracks we have would allow them to operate at speed, it would be a nightmare getting them to mesh with existing rail traffic. You’d lose the high speed factor, defeating the purpose.

So, even in individual states, where the distances are closer to what you’d see in japan, it’s not a net practical solution without some serious rejiggering.

You could likely get some lines done anyway, like from D.C. to a few major cities on the east coast. But would there really be a benefit? Would it reduce highway traffic significantly? Would it be safer and more efficient than existing passenger rail? I genuinely have no idea, but there would be a need for that kind of thing to make it worth building out. If it’s just shifting a small fraction of city-to-city commute, I don’t know that or would be worth the massive project it would take

Dude, not the fucking thread for that

Damn. Hard call. There’s only been a few that have hit me because I don’t really have a parasocial connection to anyone to any degree worth mentioning.

That being said, the three that made me actually cry were Vonnegut, Kris Kristofferson, and Chester Bennington.

Chester, I was listening to the one more light album when I found out, so it hit extra hard.

Vonnegut though, he more than any other writer made me think and want to create with words. He shaped how I view literature and think about writing. So his death hit harder than most.

Kristofferson, it’s that I had known it was coming. He’d already been lost to a great degree, but I had been low key dreading the news because he’s so damn iconic. He’s the kind of poet I wish I could be. And his music was also damn good lol. Also, he’s symbolic of an era of music that’s disappeared, and as the last of the highwaymen have died, with only one left there’s this hole in the world that isn’t likely to be filled now that the entire music industry has fallen into disarray. It’s much harder for that kind of poet bard to exist and have their music spread now. In any genre, btw; the same difficulties exist in folk, metal, rap, etc.

Anyway, those are the ones that made me cry as a grown-ass man. I suspect I’ll shed another tear when Willie goes, and I know I’m gonna fall apart a little when Dolly does. Luckily, the next wave of writers and musicians that I’d likely cry over are a good twenty years younger (or more) than them, so I’ll have a break after that. Likely be dead myself before most of the others would go.

My opinion is that, if you ignore the judeo-christian prudishness, it comes down to two things.

First, some jealousy. It looks like easy money, and they’re having sex (in the case of porn actors), so there’s this almost subconscious anger that someone else found a trick to “get rich”. Thing is with that, the only people getting rich in porn were/are the producers. Only fans shifted that a little, but the company takes a cut like any asshole pimp would. I’ve actually heard people irl express things that lead me to believe this is a common factor.

Second is the fact that a large swath of people, even though otherwise open minded and unconcerned about sex issues, still think that the only reason one would sell their sexuality is because they can’t do better. It’s the whole thing where humans like to piss downhill. Anyone doing something that a person considers “below” them is gong to be seen as inherently flawed. That doesn’t apply only to porn, btw.

Hell, I fall prey to the trope that anyone doing porn must have some kind of trauma, if I don’t pay attention to myself. It is true that porn as it exists in this world is marginalized, and heavily staffed by sufferers of trauma. It actually is one of those jobs where people that have serious mental health problems and/or drug dependency get drawn to because it’s relatively easy to find and keep income compared to other jobs when you have those issues.

Since porn is marginalized, there is a significant portion of the on screen workers that don’t have many other options. It’s super easy for someone young, undereducated, and desperate to end up being paid to show their body or fuck. Since someone in that situation is going to get paid less doing anything else they could find, the industry is heavily weighted towards that population (partially because of the ease of finding desperate people, and mostly because the desperate are easier to exploit and abuse).

Only fans runs closer to neutral since it is based in individuals. So while abuse occurs, and there’s a lot wrong with the company, the real abuse only happens when an outside person is forcing a model or models to perform. Not that porn is free of trafficking and forced labor, but it’s less useful to do that for porn when there’s easier ways to exploit someone there.

That’s my take anyway. It’s based on casual conversations with people that object to porn in its various guises, and the rest from casual exposure to interviews and conversations with adult performers