Glad you liked it! I’m always up for encouraging you all to learn about your animal neighbors.

This one focuses on Fawn.

This one is about Freeze in humans and animals. Skip the abstract and the rest isn’t too bad to read. This one is a lot more technical but has good charts.

After that, if you want more, just searching “fight flight freeze” will give you a ton. The “fawn” gets called a few different things so leaving it off might get you more results and you can add “human” or “animal” if you want specific things for those categories.

I hadn’t seen fawn on there before either. I looked up fight/flight/freeze and saw I was out of date myself. 😔

Now we know!

I volunteer with wild animals, so I purposely do a lot of things animals may or may not like that most people won’t normally do.

Very few animals will want to hurt you. Animals will do very little they don’t have to do. This comes down to 2 main things: calories are precious, and there is no medical care. If you aren’t food or pose a potential threat, they want nothing to do with you. Wasting calories and getting injuries makes it harder to get a next meal.

The classic fight/flight response has evolved into something more along the lines of fight/flight/freeze/fawn. Animals aren’t dumb, and in almost every way their muscles and abilities are better than yours, so there are multiple options they have, and they will pick what they think is best.

They also have unique personalities, and won’t all react the same. I have more scary squirrels at work than I do raptors.

It is also common to have small songbirds drive off hawks or owls, and the raptors just move on instead of fighting because the energy required and the potential for injury to fight isn’t worth it. If you’re messing with a nest, they may go after you, they may not.

Animals get dangerous when you take away some of their options, like the classic cornered animal. If you take away the option to flee, why wouldn’t they think you’re there to hurt them, and they will hurt you to protect themselves. Most will make noise to scare you so you go away or back off and give them an opening. If you get your hands on them and you are calm, they will often wait to see what you’re going to do.

Learning how animals react to things and seeing how unique their personalities/risk tolerances are is one of my favorite parts of working with them. People act like animals are generic NPCs, but they’ve got unique minds that are the results of their collected experiences, just like ours.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Heinlein

The Mote in God’s Eye - Niven / Pournelle

Solaris - Lem

Fire Upon the Deep - Vinge

Flowers for Algernon - Keyes

Diamond Age - Stephenson

Startide Rising - Brin

The Demolished Man - Bester

Have Space Suit - Will travel - Heinlein

Out of the Silent Planet - CS Lewis

Uplift War - Brin

Getting involved in activities has really helped me see there are a ton of folks out there still doing amazing and positive things.

I’ve started playing music with other people again and we’ve played 2 small public shows and some events where we just play for each other and everyone has been very supportive and we have a great time.

I also volunteered at the wild animal rescue this year, and it’s hard to choose if the people or animals are more amazing. Well, the people are much friendlier than the animals, but seeing the things they can come back from really can feel like witnessing miracles sometimes.

But that’s twice a week I get to hang out with people that help me grows, support me being a better and more rounded person, and we forget about outside troubles and put everything into a positive activity together. It’s been a major help this year.

As someone who doesn’t like being in the spotlight, switching from guitar to bass was very liberating

I’ve been learning piano the last 3 years, and now I’m either solo or at least more front and center and dealing with that has been as challenging as learning the instrument.

Still playing with others I feel is the most fun thing about any instrument. I think I learn more and learn faster doing it as a group, and it’s just a lot of fun making music with people.

I really like a lot of Megadeth’s Hidden Treasures since they don’t pop up randomly so much I’ve never gotten tired of them.

Angry Again, 99 Ways to Die, Breakpoint, Go to Hell, Diadems. All great stuff.

Once I found the plethora of good but >$10 pens, I had a lot of fun. The Precise V5 is one of my fav, and at the job I had where people would frequently need to borrow my pen, that received steady unprompted compliments.

If one is only going to have one pen, any model of Jetstream ballpoint is a nice cheap upgrade you won’t be too upset to lose.

I love brewery wash for my water bottle! Soap or bleach always seemed to give me a funny taste or order. It may have been in my head, but I didn’t like it and it led me to cleaning it less often.

Decided to hit it with StarSan one time it got icky and cleaned it right up with no taste or smell.

I try to run it through the dishwasher more often, but if I put something odd in the bottle or it sat out for a long time, now I StarSan it.

From looking up more usage, as it isn’t a word I often hear, it seems by nature to be neutral, but context can direct it to be more positive or negative.

If I heard someone say it in conversation, it would put a lot of emphasis on the tone of the conversation to take the meaning. I’d imagine it being used more sarcastically, as it sounds like a fancy word for someone with shallow knowledge of a subject.

“John won’t shut up about that trendy new art exhibit.”

“Oh yeah, he’s a real dilettante all of a sudden!” 😒

John had never shown interest in art before, but now that he saw it and either liked it or pretended to like it to show off his “higher appreciation of culture” than his friends now he keeps talking about it even though he doesn’t know anything about art.

I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to use in a positive manner, but being dismissive feels more likely. If someone used it that way I’d feel I was potentially missing out on a joke at first.

I think you nailed this one. Poser was my first thought, but a poser is someone who fakes an interest to fit in. Dilettante has that gatekeeping aspect to it, which seems important to OP’s description.

Probably 70% home, 25% takeaway, and 5% eating out.

Takeaway and going out used to be switched, but the gf’s been pulling a lot of OT at the hospital this year, so it’s hard for us to get together most days, and sometimes she doesn’t know when she’ll get home so it’s easier for her to grab something for herself or us on the way home.

I prefer cooking at home because it’s cheaper, potentially healthier, and I hate all the trash generated from takeout, but it’s hard for me to meal plan when our schedules are so off from each other.

We do still make all our breakfasts and lunches, so it’s mainly just dinner that’s the question.

You’ve got the idea!

Them being compliant is a defensive behavior called freezing. If they get hurt fighting you, they won’t be able to escape, so they’re waiting to see what you are going to do before they decide if fighting is worth the risk.

I started working at a wild animal rehab this year. I’ve fed a few hundred squirrels, dozens of song birds, some really cool raptors, and a good handful of mammals.

I consider my time with them positive, but they really don’t want much to do with us. I just released an owl this weekend and it bit me multiple times as I was trying to let it go. That’s the attitude it takes for it to survive, so getting a positive attitude back is typically not an outcome I should, or realistically want to see.

The person being hostile in this thread is going pretty extreme. We shouldn’t be touching or feeding animals directly, but many do need indirect human presence to survive. They evolved with us to an extent, and they take advantage of our food storage and waste and some of the molding of the environment that we do by creating fields and farmland.

Most animal injuries I see are from cars, pets, manmade structures, and cutting down trees animals live in. What people are feeding the birds is likely a very small portion of their diet, as they eat pretty constantly. Keep your bird and squirrel stations clean and provide shelter from predators and you likely aren’t hurting anything in the grand scheme of things. A loose dog or cat is way worse IMO.

I’m not going to tell you your methodology is wrong, you give a perfectly valid reason for doing what you do.

I don’t so much as avoid them, I will still often check what they are saying, but I look at what they’re saying to other people. If I know someone is trolly or has a pretty shitty bias, if I see them misrepresenting things, it offers me a way to maybe offer a contrary opinion to those they’re talking to, or I can see they may be the wrong person to talk to about ethical/moral things but may still be good for getting answers to technical questions from.

There’s people here I just won’t engage with at all just as in the real world, but just like in life there’s people I know to just avoid certain topics or opinions with but they’re still ok people or can be helpful in the right context.

Now, both online and in real life, if I encounter one of those people who swears everyone is always starting shit with them for no reason, often it becomes obvious that there is a reason why they have so many problems with other people, and usually they are the common denominator. Not always, but I’d say the majority of the time. And especially someone proud of telling strangers that they have a big list of people they don’t like or want to waste their time on, it makes me wonder why. That’s why it’s a red flag. You can tell me that’s who you are, and I don’t have to decide that second to avoid you, but I’m certainly going to feel you out a bit more than I would someone else that decides to give me a friendlier first impression. That’s me looking out for me, just as your methodology does for you.

I just see myself as someone who gives strangers the benefit of the doubt to start with, and that is yours to mess up. Some people don’t trust strangers and they have to earn that initial trust first. I don’t know you or your story so I won’t hold that against you, but I do feel that tells me something about you. You have to actively work on it for me to outright distrust you, but at the same time, don’t think of my trust and friendliness as naivete. I’m paying attention very closely, I’m just letting you show me who you are rather than forming my own assumptions.

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I avoid most controversial comment threads since I’m not here for drama. I do have a few people I put user tags on if I see them have consistent bad takes or if they treat other people poorly so I can avoid interacting with them. There hasn’t been any need for me to actually block anyone.

This isn’t directed at you personally, but these threads pop up from time to time, and for how few people are active commenters here, to have 100 blocks and the need to share that feels like something of a red flag to me. I don’t think I’ve blocked more than a dozen people in about 30 years of being online.

Add bitwarden and that’s what I have on all my browsers. Skip ads, skip passwords, skip paywalls — it’s like the internet of old!

Appreciate the concern. The air fryer has all but eliminated my home frying. I always hated throwing out the oil, but I know it’s not great to keep around, so I was never big into frying at home.