Wait wait you can't just drop that off and not elaborate. What do you mean is there a mafia presence in Wales?? Please spill, what things did you notice??
Okay so bearing in mind that I have ADHD and Chronic Terrible Observational Skills:
I am in Cardiff
For a concert I am attending solo
Doors open at 5
4:15 ish I go ‘hmm I should eat something’
Cardiff is - unsurprisingly, being tiny and yet home to FOUR concert venues - Very Busy
Find McDonald’s
McDonald’s is very full. I recall my last concert related McDick’s experience, and promptly bounce
Directly across the street
Is an Italian restaurant
It looks closed but fuckit maybe I can beg for like. Bread or some shit
Go over
Am immediately pounced upon by the hitherto unnoticed chain-smoking woman hanging out by the door mostly hidden by a potted ficus(?)
“I was wondering if you were open and if-” “yes yes we are open what would you like?” (strongish Italian accent)
Inside restaurant is Deserted
Explain that I’m sort of in a rush, am assured it’s fine
Order chicken milanese which is generally a pasta dish with a breaded chicken component
Am led to seat nearish the front and promptly provided with a pint of coke in a glass tankard
Am then provided with a front row seat to an absolutely incomprehensible series of people entering and exiting (and in one case walking directly into) the door to what I can only presume is the kitchen
Starting with the guy who had been sitting at a table chain-smoking over a pile of papers
I counted at least three people exiting at least twice without actually entering in between
Am finally brought food
It is a breaded, butterflied chicken breast approximately the size of my face and a small pile of pasta approximately the size of my fist
It is all delicious
Chain-smoking papers man reappears, now wearing a chef’s apron labcoat thing
Go up to pay, chain-smoking ficus lady is now having a very loud argument in a language I did not recognise but was not Italian Welsh English French russian Gaelic or Spanish
She sees me, says, and I quote 'ah little girl lost, one moment’ and promptly hangs up
I am 27 and only nominally female
I am not remotely lost
She charges me for the pint of coke but not the food
I try to point out that she hasn’t charged me for the food
'do you want to pay for the food?’
’…. Not if I don’t have to?’
'good’
I leave. The door is now full of half a dozen very tall very Italian men and one absolutely adorable cocker spaniel
I ask if I can pet the dog (I have my priorities straight okay)
I am allowed to pet the dog. The dog and I are now best friends
The dog lead holder asks me in extremely accented but impeccably correct English if I had enjoyed the food
'yeah it was great!’
Everyone laughs a bit
I smile and pet the dog and realise I’m now late for the concert and hurry off
I see a post on Tumblr about mob fronts and several connections are made in my brain all at once
Everyone I've mentioned this to has gone 'was the food really good?' as a like initial litmus test for front-likelihood so I'm glad to see we're all on the same page here
Y’all in the American SW and west Mexico better check the national hurricane center and your weather for this weekend and next week.
Hurricane Hilary is about to make landfall and that whole desert area is supposed to get a years worth of rain or more. Death Valley is supposed to get twice the annual rainfall. Severe winds, massive flooding, and landslides are all strong possibilities.
This is gonna get ugly. Please spread the word. This is a majorly anomalous event and people may be unaware of the threat headed their way.
Flash floods are definitely gonna kill people, so here’s your regularly scheduled PSA:
Desert soil does not absorb a significant amount of water. It reaches maximum saturation very very quickly, and all the rest of the water rushes downhill. Even if you can’t tell that the ground is not perfectly flat, the water can. And it will move. Quickly. No, faster than that. Nope, still faster. If you try to cross moving floodwater, you will get swept downstream and probably die.
Do not try to wade in/cross flood water that is any deeper than the thickness of the sole of an average athletic shoe, no I am not kidding, the water will get deeper literally while you’re standing in it.
This goes for cars, too. I’ve seen entire vehicles getting swept downstream in flash floods because the driver thought they could cross the “puddle” and Found Out.
Do you know what the weathers called when it’s like winter, and the snow is kind of glowing and everything is just light out? But it’s cloudy and snowing???
I almost asked myself how the hell it took me so long to finish TOTK before remembering the time I got sidetracked for well over an hour putting dead fish where they shouldn’t be and photographing them, which is one of the many unhinged things this game just lets you do
Seeing people shoot raptors in other countries is fucking wild to me because we have a whole system of super strict laws governing how you can handle an individual FEATHER off of an eagle, and it doesn't have to even be a dead eagle. One can molt and you can find it on the ground and if you're caught with it the warden will fuck your entire life. What do you mean people are out there shooting them to protect a fucking pheasant. A pheasant??? That thing I have to avoid running over approximately 459 times any time I leave a major highway???
My good friend @prismaticate has asked a very good question here, and while I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to explain it and would love some input from more qualified sources, my SUPER simplified understanding of why the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its numerous modern revisions and addendums have clauses about this included is this:
-It’s basically impossible to tell a feather that’s been picked up off the ground from one that’s been taken from a poached bird
-This used to be a MAJOR problem when bird-feather hats and the like were in high demand back in the day, because several bird species on the edge of extinction kept getting poached in spite of the new laws protecting them since people would just say they “found” any feathers from protected species used in the stuff they were selling, and you couldn’t prove otherwise unless you literally caught them in the act of poaching
-This eventually got SO bad that they had to just make it illegal to have the feathers at all, with certain exceptions made for members of different indigenous groups, or authorized organizations that display them as part of efforts to educate the public about the species they belong to
@zooophagous is this a reasonable rundown? Was there anything I missed/any better sources you might recommend to learn more about this? I know it’s probably far more nuanced than that, but this was kind of the explanation I’d always seen floating around. 😅
That's pretty much the gist of it! Eagles and eagle feathers have more laws on top of that because of their sacred uses in certain indigenous practices, how they relate to legal falconry, and because eagles at one time were highly endangered while at the same time being a national symbol. Where a cop or a game warden may shrug and look the other way if you, say, illegally picked up a chickadee feather from your bird feeder, if they see a real eagle feather they will notice and will be VERY interested in where it came from.
Not long ago here someone was arrested and charged for violating these laws because they tried to sell a plains feather bonnet at a pawn shop, claiming they had "found it while exploring an abandoned house."
The clerk suspected it was real eagle, the warden confirmed it was, and because those feathers are so tightly tracked they were able to locate the family of the previous owners who said the item had been stolen some time ago.
If nobody knows you have it, obviously you can get away with it. But if they see it, or God forbid you try to SELL it, the hammer will fall.
Im surprised every time people think it's a crazy sounding law, it is genuinely one of the only things preventing a lot of native birds from extinction or any asshole could kill as many as they want and just say they found them on the ground
Did you guys know the “Sickos” artist made a Sicko thats a WGA screenwriter on strike (said comic artist is a The Onion satirist comic artist and his name is Stan Kelly)
[Image Description: A digital sketch of Cloud asleep at the Chocobo Farm. He lies on the ground with his back against one chocobo whose head is curled around near his lap, and he rests his left hand atop its beak. A second chocobo sits with its head resting on the back of the first. A third chocobo stands leaning down to nibble at Cloud’s hair. Behind them, Aeris leans on the fence. She is looking over her shoulder with an amused smile and pointing down at Cloud as Tifa comes up behind her. /end ID]
i need you all to understand how insane im going rn over linear b
so this is the letter for the sound 'mu'
and these are the ideograms for cows
thousands and thousands of years ago people whos language and culture we barely understand modeled their symbols for cows on their symbol for 'mu'. because cow go moo
Horrible fact of the day: Chevron just released a new boat fuel that WILL give you cancer.
Not "might", not "could", WILL. It has a cancer ratio of 1:1, as in, in a group of 10 people, ALL 10 would contract CANCER.
The EPA's safety limit is 1:1,000,000 as in 1 in a million people get cancer.
The EPA approved it anyways. I am not joking. The EPA approved a boat fuel that has a near 100% chance of giving someone cancer. It has such a good chance of giving someone cancer that if you DIDN'T get cancer YOU WOULD BE AN OUTLIER.
ALT
