It's not the pinkest of pink collar jobs, but I work in 911 dispatch, which does skew a bit more female, and sort of evolved out of a more secretarial role which are of course more female-dominated.

Side-note, generally speaking, we do still tend to be classified as clerical positions instead of protective services like first responders, which does have an effect on what kind of benefits we receive, when we can retire, etc. there's been a few attempts to reclassify us, I believe most recently at the federal level it's being called the 911 SAVES act, so if that's something you'd support maybe talk to your senators/representatives about passing that.

I don't think there's any particular bias, at least at my center, about who gets hired, promoted, etc.

You do see some difference in how we get treated by callers and field units and such. You get the occasional caller who is a real asshole to a female dispatcher but is polite and respectful when they get a man. Also some creeps who say some really inappropriate stuff to my female coworkers.

But overall there's nothing much else that really jumps out at me as being partially interesting about working here as a man.

First big issue is that this facility has rats in the first place. That should probably be the primary focus of this article, that's totally unacceptable.

But moving beyond that.

It's insane that they're using therapy animals for this purpose. If these were two separate programs and they were using dedicated rat catching ferrets, I could get that. That's what ferrets do, and it sure beats scattering poison around. But those ferrets are also potentially being exposed to diseases and parasites and such from the rats and so they shouldn't be used as therapy animals to make sure that they're not spread to the children.

I have no experience with ferrets personally, but it also seems to me like you probably don't want the animals you're training to chase/bite/kill rodents to be the same ones you're using to soothe kids with trauma and such.

As far as children being involved in and witnessing ferrets being used for pest control, I think that's a bit of a mixed bag depending on the kids.

At the end of the day, some animals eat and kill other animals. Pretty much everyone knows that from a pretty young age, how many children's cartoon and nursery rhymes and such are about cats chasing/eating mice after all?

Now actually witnessing that can absolutely be distressing for a lot of people who aren't used to it.

But on the flip side, I do think that introducing children to that, if done properly, can often be beneficial to them, give them a better understanding of life/death, the food chain, responsibility etc.

Not that it sounds like they were doing this in an appropriate fashion. And of course if we're dealing with children with various kinds of trauma, that topic needs to be broached even more delicately.

There's of course a ton of variables at play here, and I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm by no means a graphics/performance snob and I'm mostly playing older games.

But anecdotally, there have been some cases where Linux has been a night and day difference for me.

My computer is basically 12+ years old, it's basically the same computer my wife built before we started dating crammed into a new box with a couple upgrades along the way. It has a pre-ryzen AMD processor, and a 2060, so it's definitely not technically meeting required specs for a lot of games but it's holding it's own and chugging along managing to run most of what I try to throw at it on (what I think are) acceptable settings.

I got Helldivers 2 to run on it exactly once on windows, every time after that it crashed on the loading screen when I tried to join a game no matter how I tried to get it running.

Since switching to Linux it's been playable. Not necessarily the smoothest experience, but certainly good enough for my needs.

That's probably the newest game I've tried to run, I'm cheap and tend to wait a couple years to get games on sale. All the older games I've tried to run so far have pretty much run the same as on windows as far as I can tell.

The way you described the lady. No nothing wrong with it.

If that's the actual phrasing he used, I think it was pretty weird. Not necessarily offensive, just weirdly specific in a strangely technical way. Something like "the small Asian lady" would get the point across while sounding less like you're some kind of robot or alien trying to classify her as a research specimen.

And the bit about either being from an Asian country or having Asian parents is kind of weird, for all OP knows her family might have been in the country for generations. People have a tendency to view people of Asian descent as a sort of perpetual foreigner, and that phrasing kind of feels like it's playing into that.

"East Asian" also feels needlessly specific. How likely is it that there's other women who otherwise fit the exact same description but are of, say, southeast Asian descent that OP needs to differentiate her from? I also think it's probably the kind of distinction a lot of people just won't understand. At least in the US I know I've had to explain what I'm talking about when I've talked about southeast Asia for example, a lot of people just don't think that much about geography, let alone know about the cultures and physical characteristics of people from different regions.

It just all feels like a weird way to describe someone. Personally, I wouldn't take it as rude, but it would definitely make me think that the person saying it is pretty odd and socially awkward.

I am not, on general principle, opposed to it. I do believe that there are some people who pose significant danger to others with no hope of rehabilitation, which basically leaves 2 options - locking them up forever, possibly in solitary if they're dangerous enough, or killing them, and in many cases I think the later may be more humane.

But, and I'm not going to go into all of the details because there's a lot, but I have basically no confidence in any of the systems we have in place to use that power in a fair way that can't be abused, and I'm skeptical that such a system could ever be implemented

So in actual practice I oppose it.

Let's not forget about Springfield Township (Montgomery County, PA)

Or, for that matter, Springfield Township (Bucks County, PA)

EDIT: for good measure because your link didn't play nice with some anti tracking extensions I'm using Springfield Township (Delaware County, PA)

I make no guarantee that there aren't others. I can't be bothered to look.

I mean they're cool, but they're not that cool.

They're only rad-ish.

When I took my state's required hunter safety course, one of the instructors was an older dude with grey hair and a ponytail who wouldn't look out of place at a Dead & Company concert.

To point out the importance of wearing an orange hat during small game seasons, and also to "be sure of your target and what lies beyond it" he pointed out how much that grey hair and ponytail would look a lot like a squirrel if you only caught a glimpse of it through some brush.

Not saying that's exactly what happened here, the kid doesn't look like he was the grey ponytail type, but the article shook loose that memory in my head.

EDIT: not that I'm ungrateful, but somehow this is now my highest rated comment on Lemmy, and I'm just curious why this one in particular resonated to well.

So what I'm hearing is that this moron didn't learn his lesson about fucking around with vehicles after he got hurt just a few months ago.

I remember maybe a year or so ago, overhearing some of my coworkers who seemed to genuinely believe that schools were installing litter boxes for alleged students that identify as cats.

These idiots will believe absolutely anything, and it doesn't need to be even remotely anchored to reality.

This feels like a wonderful gift, this video needs to be projected behind every speaker at the next round of protests, with an accompanying message flashing at the bottom saying "Trump posted this himself" à la South Park's "this what scientologists actually believe"

It's him literally labeling himself as a king, complete with a crown

Shitting all over America.

What possible angle could you look at this from and say "yes, that is a mature, mentally stable person who should be in charge of anything?

And since most of the media is kind of dropping the ball on this, we need to be sharing this around as something like "Trump posts AI-slop video of himself as a king shitting on America" instead of the bullshit headlines I'm seeing about it.

I find this kind of interesting after Naomi Wu (also known as SexyCyborg) recently had a run-in with the CCP and has largely gone silent online.

For anyone not familiar with her/her situation, she's a tech/maker YouTuber. She has a pretty radical look with enormous fake boobs and skimpy outfits, but she does have some genuinely interesting content. She had been calling out some security vulnerabilities that recently got some attention so that's likely why the Chinese government, in her words, clipped her wings, but she had a bit of a target painted on her back regardless because of her appearance, being a lesbian, and because her girlfriend is a Uyghur.

I work in 911 dispatch, trying to inject a bit of reason into stupid and scary situations is a big part of my job.

--

I had a call one time, they guy had been threatened by a bunch of teenagers with knives on a bus

The bus came to its stop the teens got off and so did this rocket surgeon (instead of, you know, not getting off at the same stop as a bunch of armed kids who were just threatening you)

That's about when he called and I answered.

This idiot was following them.

I told him not to, and reminded him that they have knives.

He told me it was ok because he had a knife too.

So I basically had to explain to him why that was fucking stupid.

--

Another time, I get a call from someone because there was a crazy guy with a machete out on their porch.

Her stupid fucking husband wanted to go outside to fight him. So I had to keep telling her to make him stay inside.

--

We had a domestic once, we actually got calls from both parties. One half was outside the house, the other half was inside, and they're basically standing at the front door yelling at each other.

My caller was inside. I told them to just close and lock the door and wait for the police. They did. Problem solved, right? Arguing stopped, the other party even walked away from the door after that. I get all the info I needed and hang up.

Except like 2 minutes later, I see that we're now sending EMS out to that house.

Because my stupid fucking caller opened the door to start arguing again and got pepper sprayed by the other party.

--

Those are probably the three biggest stand-outs I've had so far, but I'm really hard-pressed to think of any disturbances or domestics, that couldn't have been resolved, or at least kept from escalating if at least one party would have just walked the fuck away. Close the door, roll up your window, go into another room, step outside, walk down the block, go sit in your car, etc.

Or hell, even just sit there and ignore them.

But no, they always need to get the last word in. They can't swallow their stupid fucking pride for even one second.

And it's really disturbing that those kinds of people are making their ways into law enforcement type positions.

It's not a new phenomenon, and it's not just ICE, it's regular cops and such too.

But these aren't the kinds of people who can help solve problems. These are the kinds of people who are problems.

The actual sprayer nozzle sits towards the back of the bowl and sprays up at an angle so any dripping is going straight down into the bowl not landing on the sprayer nozzle.

It's getting fresh water, not recycling bowl water, I suppose there could be some small risk if Larry has explosive diarrhea all over the nozzle, but its probably no worse than if you have any splashback after using a regular toilet after him. Most of the models I have used also have a self-cleaning feature that will have the nozzle rinse itself (they still do need to be actually cleaned periodically of course)

There is a little bit of splashing, unless you're abnormally small and skinny though most of it is probably just going to get your butt and staying in the toilet, once in a while I'll get a couple drops on the front of the toilet seat and I'm pretty sure that's just over-spray shooting directly between my legs, not poop water splashing off of my ass

The whole article continues that

As of 2023, Williams is assigned to domestic violence cases

Yeah, sounds like a real stand-up, sensitive, emotionally-intelligent dude that I'd want handling those kinds of cases.

Call 911, tell them where it is, explain that you found a trash bag somewhere and you're concerned it has a dead body in it, don't disturb it any more than you already have

I work in 911 dispatch, from my end of things this is a very straightforward call. Verify your location, one or two short lines of notes, send a cop out to check it out.

I've taken a few calls like this, luckily it's always just been trash or at worst a dead animal.

One time the responding officer found some bones in the bag and was pretty sure they weren't human, but called out our on-call coroner to be sure who confirmed that it was just a deer or something.

Similarly I once had a call from an off-duty coroner reporting a "strong smell of decomp" from the woods near a gas station or something. I guess if anyone would know it would be them. Sent a cop out, sure enough, it was a dead deer.

It's very rare that anything like this is ever as exciting as your imagination makes you think it might be. Still, always better to call if you're unsure.

I work in 911 dispatch

During COVID we had to ask all of our callers some extra questions if they were going to be in contact with any of our units

Something along the lines of "has anyone there had or been in contact with anyone who has had flu-like symptoms recently?"

And if they did we added a note to the call indicating that.

One night I got a call from one of our off-duty officers calling in an accident he witnessed.

I get all the usual information and start asking our COVID questions

And he gets really indignant about it "why are you asking me this?" "This is stupid." Etc.

Like dude, you're one of our officers. We've been advising you about potential COVID exposures on your own calls, where do you think we were getting that information? This shit is for your benefit, not ours, I can't catch COVID from someone over the phone (the disease vectors sitting the consoles adjacent to me could be another story)

And that's pretty typical of how cops act towards us, the people they rely on to give them information they need to do their jobs, send them backup when needed, etc. blows my mind that so many of my co-workers are absolute bootlickers.

I remember seeing a comment somewhere wishing they would reboot Xena, but lamenting that they would probably make it "too woke" if they did

I don't think there's much they could do to make Xena more "woke" if they tried.

Another one I've gotten a lot of good mileage out of

I once joked to my wife that avocados need to get better prizes because I always seem to get the same one- a little wooden ball.

Now, anytime I'm in the kitchen preparing something with avocados, I'll let out an audible groan of frustration.

Which always prompts my wife to ask, usually from the other room "What's wrong?"

To which I always reply "Another wooden ball"

Always good for a groan and some eye rolls from the wife. She never seems to see it coming.

ThatsTheJoke.gif