Obligatory response that this is highly dependent upon the field and your experience. Of the four authors I contacted for copies to their paper in my tenure as a child protection caseworker, none of them even replied to me let alone gave me a copy of their paper. I don’t know if it was because of the fields (psychology and social science) or because I emailed them from my .gov.au email but this advice doesn’t always hold true.

Kinda reminds me of the story of how David X Cohen (Futurama, Disenchantment, The Simpsons) got the middle initial X when his middle name is Samuel: when he went to be registered with The Writers Guild there was already a David S Cohen, and they don’t allow two people with identical names to be registered, so he chose X because it sounds more ‘sci-fi-ish’.

This is just disgusting behaviour. No one should ever be calling for genocide, regardless of any circumstances. Also, why are all Jewish people being conflated with the Israeli government? Jews outside Israel have no power over its government, and even Israelis had to go through some five hung elections to get Netanyahu back in power, indicating that he clearly has less than 50% of the country’s support.

Now if they had been shouting “fuck Bibi” or “end the occupation” or “no more genocide against Palestine” I’d be right there with them. These idiots have no fucking clue how to garner support, so all they’re doing is giving Israel more moral high-ground. Goddamn Nazis need to learn some physical consequences.

So it looks like the frogs mentioned in this meme are microhylids, and for some further info:

Crocraft & Hambler (1989) noted that the frog seemed to benefit from living in proximity to the spider by eating the small invertebrates that were attracted to prey remains left by the spider. The frog presumably also benefits by receiving protection: small frogs like this are preyed on by snakes and large arthropods, yet on this occasion we have a frog that receives a sort of ‘protection’ from a large, formidable spider bodyguard. Hunt (1980) suggested that the spider might gain benefit from the presence of the frog: microhylids specialise on eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the microhylids might help protect the spider’s eggs.

This is also super cute behaviour:

Young spiders have sometimes been observed to grab the frogs, examine them with their mouthparts, and then release them unharmed.

Apparently the spiders’ protectiveness can also be pretty overt:

Karunarathna & Amarasinghe (2009) reported how several Poecilotheria were seen attacking individuals of Hemidactylus depressus (a gecko) after the latter tried eating the eggs of the frogs the spiders were sharing their tree holes with.

And some ideas on why this might be an example of mutualistic behaviour rather than commensalism:

…the spider seems to benefit in that the frogs eat the ants that might ordinarily attack the spider’s eggs. Due to their small size, ants are presumably difficult for the spiders to deal with, and they might be effectively helpless against them.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/tetrapod-zoology/tiny-frogs-and-giant-spiders-best-of-friends/

It’s often advantageous to prevent catastrophe before it occurs rather than clean up the mess once it happens.

Cat owner and avid environmentalist here: totally agree. I’ve always kept my cats inside for the obvious environmental reasons, but ask any vet and they’ll tell you that indoor cats lead much longer, healthier lives.

We need to start treating dogs and cats the same way - if there’s a cat around without it’s owner and it’s not leashed, it goes to the pound. $250 fee to retrieve your cat to pay for boarding and also donate to the pound that receives them. If people had to pay $250 and drive all the way to the pound to pick up their cat every time they let them out, I can tell you that outdoor cat owners will go one of two ways: they’ll either stop owning cats (big win) or they’ll keep them inside (also big win).

We (Australia) need to withhold all forms of support from Israel until a thorough investigation takes place. If we stopped funding UNRWA because of allegations from Israel (that have turned out to be specious at best) that UNRWA staff were involved in October 7, then we can stop funding the Israeli government over this. I welcome the relatively strong words from Albo here, but he should have stated that Australia is demanding a ceasefire, not just renewing calls for one. Another war crime has been committed, and we can’t keep using flowery language around this.

It’s easy to have sympathy for Palestine; it’s very difficult to have sympathy for Hamas.

Anyone cheering on Hamas is promoting crimes against humanity which is objectively abhorrent. Anyone who cares for the Palestinian people caught up in the conflict just has functioning empathy.

Honestly, while Booking.com acted shittily here, I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who buys a home and does short-term rentals. Every investment vehicle has risks, and this woman copped the short end of the stick when it came to the risk associated with her investment choice. She chose to purchase a basic human need and try to maximise her profit from it at the expense of the average person trying to buy or rent a house and, if she didn’t want the risk of this happening, she should’ve chosen a less risky investment like bonds or a term deposit.

Landlords are bad; fuckwits who own short-stay rentals are far worse. The market distortion they create hurts so many people in so many ways. Frankly, I hope she takes this as a sign she should just sell the property and move on to something else.

Fuck. I’m sad. I’m sorry to be Australian right now.

At press time, sources added that the stupid lemon meringue pie Busby was filming herself baking had a shelf life of three days at best, compared to the several years she could get by salting and drying cod.

Absolutely savage.

It’s really sad to me that Americans get put in the awful position of choosing between tipping, which supports the low wages, and taking responsibility for ensuring another human being has a living wage. It’s just such a terrible position for a consumer to be placed in, having to make ethical and moral choices about how much money to pay for goods and services.

Bisexual with an autoimmune disorder here.

I think the simplest explanation is that LGBT acceptance doesn’t cost anyone anything - in fact it’s the opposite as they no longer have to expend energy on hatred and exclusion. Nothing had to be built or spent to give equal rights to a marginalised group, just a signature on some paper. No government funds needed to be allocated to rolling out this change.

It’s much easier to stop doing something current than to start doing something new. Disability/chronic illness accommodations are extremely varied, costly, take time and money to implement, which creates a natural barrier. From an individual perspective, it costs time and energy to help support someone with a disability or chronic condition. It costs no time or energy to agree that everyone should be treated equitably.

That there is a genuine cohort of young, intelligent, technically literate people who identify as social conservatives. I have never met one in real life (at least not one that comfortably speaks about their political leanings) and if you had told me these people existed twelve years ago, I’d have called you a liar. Just goes to show how non-representative the bubbles we live in truly are.

I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

It’s been Israel’s playbook against Palestine for a very, very long time.

Sex work is work. As long as a person enters into that work wilfully and can legally consent to it, it’s functionally no different than a labourer selling their body in labour constructing a building, painting a house, or digging a trench. Denigrating sex workers serves no purpose beyond needlessly moralising the choices of consenting adults.

Context for uninitiated and vision impaired:

In the background, a man is sat atop a pile of cookies behind two other men who are seated at a table. This man is Rupert Murdoch, a former Australian and now American; the owner of a large swathe of right-wing journalistic and entertainment media whose empire has contributed to the distrust and downfall of democracy across the Anglosphere.

Pictured on the left is a dark-skinned and bearded man sat looking despondently down at the empty table in front of him. Across from him is an Anglo-Australian man who is wearing a safety helmet and hi-vis vest - a nod to the working class of Australia - with a plate and a single cookie on it. Rupert is saying to the Anglo man: “Careful mate… that foreigner wants your cookie!”

It’s a fantastic political cartoon and a great nod to the way that right-wing media and politicians have consistently convinced significant amounts of working class people to turn their frustrations at their lack of share in capital towards immigrants and foreigners as opposed to the billionaires who hoard all the wealth.

As someone who lives in a jurisdiction where every single vote I can engage in is RCV (Australia; NSW) I can honestly say that it’s so much better than FPTP. I don’t know what the perfect voting system is (frankly a subjective topic as it currently stands; please feel free to correct me with statistically valid alternatives) but RCV at the very least means that I can (and personally have) never vote for a major party as #1 and I can know for sure that my vote has never been exhausted, because I’ve never left a blank box. We also have mandatory voting, which helps to keep things sane.

In Australia, government election funding is only ever allocated to the parties based on #1 votes, so I can also confidently say I’ve never contributed to a major party’s election coffers as I’ve also never donated to any major party. I obviously support one major party over the others, as based on my preferences, but I’ll always give the election funding to a smaller party or Independent.

RCV is a wonderful step to take from FPTP. I understand that it may not be democratically perfect, and frankly no representative voting system may ever be, but it’s a far cry better than FPTP. It’s a known concept that here in Australia politicians vie to represent the ‘middle’ rather than the extremes, because the vast majority of voters aren’t overly-enthused political lunatics. We still have our issues to be sure, but I’d rather that the political class fight over the centrist majority rather than court the political extremes in order to convince people to actually vote thanks to mandatory voting.

The important part is that the protests are carrying weight with other people who care. The protests have been getting bigger and bigger, and when someone who cares about the cause but doesn’t show up sees this it gives them more imperative to show up too next time. The larger the protests get, the more likely that it will lead to a general strike, which is what will make a very big difference. Once the billionaires and centimillionaires genuinely feel like their profits are being threatened, they’ll pull the administration’s strings.