Read
· · to read
Apparently Elon Doesn’t Think He Needs To Pay Rent Because SF Is A ‘Shithole’; So Why Should We Pay For Twitter? by Mike MasnickMike Masnick (techdirt.com)
It’s no secret that Twitter isn’t paying many of its bills, including the rent for its headquarters. That was rumored last fall, but became much more clear when the landlords sued the company in January. Now a new lawsuit, filed last week by six former employees, provides a lot more details on Elon’s view of, […]
Read
· · to read
Melissa McCarthy sends pitch-perfect message to bigots who have ‘a problem with drag’ by Charlie DuncanCharlie Duncan (thepinknews.com)
The Little Mermaid star Melissa McCarthy has called attention to the “absolute lunacy” of the conservative backlash facing drag performers in the US. While she’s set to be seen as the voice-stealing, tentacle-waving, drag-inspired sea witch, Ursula, in the live adaptation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, in real life McCarthy is one of the few […]
Reply
· · to read

In reply to @ipstenu.

@ipstenu Yes. You can turn off boosts for individual users. Visit the relevant person's profile, click the three dots icon next to the Unfollow and bell icons, and there's an option there that says "Hide boosts from @[username]". And if it's my boosts driving you crazy, hiding them is nothing personal. I encourage people to do this all the time when they need uncluttered timelines.

Repost
· · to read

Seen a bunch of people sharing this one idea that the Iberian orcas are attacking sailing boats because one of them was previously “traumatised”.

I think it needs to be said that this is a fringe theory and widely regarded by lots of people studying this emergent behaviour as implausible.

For a start, orcas swim at 3 times the speed a sailboat travels at. As far as they’re concerned, they are essentially stationary objects. Secondly, orcas weigh more than sailboats, and if they wanted to sink them, they could, easily, but they aren’t doing that.

What the orcas are doing is biting rudders. The sinkings that have happened have been secondary to that: water ingress caused by damage to the rudder stock.

The leading theory is that this started as hunting practice. The Iberian orcas eat tuna, and they hunt them by biting their fins off so they can’t swim away. Sailboat rudders superficially resemble tuna fins, and so are good practice.

The behaviour started with a few young males about 3-4 years ago. It’s now spread and around 15 of them are doing it. It’s nearly all young males.

It appears that what started out as practice has now become the orca equivalent of that atsehole on TikTok walking into people’s houses: they appear to be doing it because their mates do it, and they think it’s funny.

Sadly inaction by, mostly Spanish authorities is leading to people increasingly taking things into their own hands. Sailboat owners share information on orca locations and are increasingly travelling in convoys, WWII style. Initially putting the boat into reverse on engine seemed to work, but they’ve got wise to that, and so an arms race is developing. The current technique which seems to work pretty much all the time is to throw firecrackers into the water.

There starting to move on to other types of boats too. Small fishing boats are increasingly being attacked.

This is not going to end well. Either they will finally kill someone, which will likely result in a cull, or they’re going to fuck with the wrong boat. In a few months the tuna migrate north towards Normandy. The orcas follow them. If they start attacking French fishing boats, I can’t imagine those guys taking any shit. Sail boats are pleasure craft and our response has been to try and avoid them, but that’s not going to be the case with fishing boats, and the French are not known for calm and gentle responses to things that threaten their livelihoods.

Watch this space, I guess. The hope is that this behaviour is a fad that will go out of fashion. If it doesn’t, it’s going to end up in deaths; possibly humans, definitely orcas.

—@goatsarah