Mystic Muse's Mostly Mildly Mediocre Random Banter #238

[HalfTangible]

See what's interesting to me is that if you asked me which animal is far more likely to hurt you, it'd probably be a dog. It's a fairly reasonable fear, whereas arachnophobia (which hasn't been given any respect at all from what I've seen but so it goes) is very quite silly.

Which is to say, don't worry I respect you, and if I post the dogs I will spoiler them and note that they are pictures of dogs.

Dogs are statistically more likely to hurt you because you're more likely to run into them and put yourself in a vulnerable position (ie by NOT immediately running to find the bug poison). That doesn't mean they're more dangerous than, say, a black widow.

[LaZodiac]

Dogs are statistically more likely to hurt you because you're more likely to run into them and put yourself in a vulnerable position (ie by NOT immediately running to find the bug poison). That doesn't mean they're more dangerous than, say, a black widow.

Generally speaking Black Widows are not actually capable of doing more then mild to severe pain, with no risk of death, in adults. Younger folk, the elderly, and those who are not in good health should be cautious though.

You're not wrong that it's just more likely to be hurt by a dog than a spider, but also spiders only attack when provoked, whereas dogs sometimes play too hard and cause injury as well. Frequency of encounters plus a higher risk of any amount of damage due to their natures.

Ultimately the answer is; treat animals with respect and you'll mostly be solid, because no animal actively hates you and wants you to die except for like maybe wasps and honestly they deserve a little violence, as a treat.

[Keltest]

Generally speaking Black Widows are not actually capable of doing more then mild to severe pain, with no risk of death, in adults. Younger folk, the elderly, and those who are not in good health should be cautious though.

You're not wrong that it's just more likely to be hurt by a dog than a spider, but also spiders only attack when provoked, whereas dogs sometimes play too hard and cause injury as well. Frequency of encounters plus a higher risk of any amount of damage due to their natures.

Ultimately the answer is; treat animals with respect and you'll mostly be solid, because no animal actively hates you and wants you to die except for like maybe wasps and honestly they deserve a little violence, as a treat.

Man, wasps are just awful. As an arachniphobe, they're as bad as spiders.

[Anonymouswizard]

because no animal actively hates you and wants you to die except for like maybe wasps and honestly they deserve a little violence, as a treat.

I take it you've never encountered swans?

But yeah, we've got nothing near the level of potential danger of a black widow here, let alone whatever Australians have to deal with. A small dog could probably hurt you more than a spider in the UK, most cats definitely will.

Heck we only have one kind of dangerous snake in the country, and even they aren't particularly dangerous. Unless they're the variety unusually high melanin.

[LaZodiac]

Man, wasps are just awful. As an arachniphobe, they're as bad as spiders.

I actually do love wasps, and so long as you're not threatening they won't hurt you.

The issue is that "threatening" is a thin line for those girls.

I take it you've never encountered swans?

But yeah, we've got nothing near the level of potential danger of a black widow here, let alone whatever Australians have to deal with. A small dog could probably hurt you more than a spider in the UK, most cats definitely will.

Heck we only have one kind of dangerous snake in the country, and even they aren't particularly dangerous. Unless they're the variety unusually high melanin.

Never personally though I am aware like most water fowl they are in fact water foul. They don't hate though, hate requires some degree of acknowledgment of your existence. Swans, geese, they don't hate you. They loathe you, in much the way any disposed tyrant of the various dinosaur ages would hate serfs who run around acting all high and mighty with their Legs and Feet and Arms and Hands and Mouths that make Words and not Honks.

[Anonymouswizard]

Never personally though I am aware like most water fowl they are in fact water foul. They don't hate though, hate requires some degree of acknowledgment of your existence. Swans, geese, they don't hate you. They loathe you, in much the way any disposed tyrant of the various dinosaur ages would hate serfs who run around acting all high and mighty with their Legs and Feet and Arms and Hands and Mouths that make Words and not Honks.

Swans loathe you with the intensity of Morgoth or your ex. It's entirely because they know they won't end up on the dinner table.

[Rater202]

That feel when you look up recipes for cheese fondue and the first thing that pops up is the Korean barbecue place the next town over.

bonus points: I was looking for "virgin fondue," as in fondue without alcohol—most use wine of some kind—and the first actual recipe listed wine as one of the ingredients.

Gotta change my cheese sauce recipe, gotta be careful with milk. I know that there are fondues that use broth as a base and broth tends to be low in sugar so I was thinking that that would be a place to start but I can't remember that recipe so I was looking for a similar one.

I'm thinking chicken broth seasoned with a little bit of red wine vinegar and some cayenne pepper as the base and then cheddar for the cheese but I'm not sure about the ratio of sauce to cheese.

[Anonymouswizard]

As somebody who has lactose intolerance I have a simple method for dealing with an inability to eat dairy. Said method is '**** that, pass me the stilton'. I also really should start making my own milkshakes, because man those are some tasty drinks.

...

I never said it was a good method. Now fetch me some brie!

[Qwertystop]

I'm told that occasional consumption of live-culture yogurt helps deal with lactose if you're intolerant.

[Liquor Box]

Swans loathe you with the intensity of Morgoth or your ex. It's entirely because they know they won't end up on the dinner table.

Swans don't just attack people unprovoked, they also attack other animals (bigger than smaller) than them. I've seen a swan give a duck a good thrashing.

Spider and dogs are such broad categories to say which is more dangerous to people. Most dogs are too small to harm anything other than a small child, some are not. Most spiders are harmless, some are not.

Statistically, it turns out bees and wasps are indeed the most dangerous non0human animal (in USA) according to this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...u-this-summer/

As someone pointed out though, that is probably heavily influenced by how many of those animals people encounter. If people handled venomous spiders as often as they handle cows, probably the spider kills would be much higher.

[halfeye]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...u-this-summer/

Cookie walled.

[Rater202]

That feel when you look up recipes for cheese fondue and the first thing that pops up is the Korean barbecue place the next town over.

bonus points: I was looking for "virgin fondue," as in fondue without alcohol—most use wine of some kind—and the first actual recipe listed wine as one of the ingredients.

Gotta change my cheese sauce recipe, gotta be careful with milk. I know that there are fondues that use broth as a base and broth tends to be low in sugar so I was thinking that that would be a place to start but I can't remember that recipe so I was looking for a similar one.

I'm thinking chicken broth seasoned with a little bit of red wine vinegar and some cayenne pepper as the base and then cheddar for the cheese but I'm not sure about the ratio of sauce to cheese.

Experiment was a failure. A horrible horrible failure. I got a slightly spicy cheese-flavored ABC-Gum and a slightly cheesy broth. Results are edible, but only just.

I feel like I wasted cheese.

However: I the broth was made from the same chickn flavor base that I used as a seasoning for the chili-cheese sauce I mde for the SuperBowl so I think I know why that didn't turn out.

[Form]

Experiment was a failure. A horrible horrible failure. I got a slightly spicy cheese-flavored ABC-Gum and a slightly cheesy broth. Results are edible, but only just.

I feel like I wasted cheese.

However: I the broth was made from the same chickn flavor base that I used as a seasoning for the chili-cheese sauce I mde for the SuperBowl so I think I know why that didn't turn out.

Alternatively, you didn't waste cheese so much as spent it acquiring valuable knowledge. A failed experiment is not necessarily useless.

[Anonymouswizard]

Alternatively, you didn't waste cheese so much as spent it acquiring valuable knowledge. A failed experiment is not necessarily useless.

As Casey & Andy taught me, any experiment that leaves a crater is a success.

Sadly I'm not allowed near reactors.

[Rater202]

My blood sugar has been 87 for the last three days in a row(I need to be between 80 and 100.)

My grandma, who was diagnosed a few days before I was, is seeing him now and when my mom took her(grandma can't drive anymore) he asked how I was doing and she got clarification on why he's impressed with my progress: I'm actually doing the bare minimum to not ****ing die.

I knew that there were a lot of people who refused to change their habits or just insisted on more meds but god damn, I don't know it was that common.

From where I'm sitting it's all him. He got me on the right meds right away and I only needed a slight dose adjustment to get from "I probably should have gone to the hospital" to "only a little above normal."

[enderlord99]

I knew that there were a lot of people who refused to change their habits or just insisted on more meds

I feel kinda called out right now

[Liquor Box]

Cookie walled.

There was a nice graphical illustration of this, but the text gave the figures as such:

Rounded to the nearest whole number, sharks killed about 1 person per year between 2001 and 2013. Same for alligators and bears, for that matter. Sharks, gators and bears combined killed half as many people as snakes (6 deaths per year) and spiders (7 deaths per year).

Non-venomous arthropods -- various ants and other terrible non-poisonous bugs -- kill 9 people each year. But these pale in comparison to the deaths caused by nature's silent, stealthy killers -- cows.

A CDC report from a few years back found that cows killed about twenty people a year in the mid-2000s. That makes cows about 20 times as lethal as sharks. These deaths aren't due to marauding packs of feral bovines terrorizing suburban neighborhoods, but rather incidents involving working with cattle on farms. As the CDC report notes, "large livestock are powerful, quick, protective of their territory and offspring, and especially unpredictable during breeding and birthing periods." Most people killed by cows are farm workers.

Going beyond cattle, dogs about kill 28 people per year, and other miscellaneous mammals, like horses, pigs, deer and the like, kill 52 (note that all of these numbers exclude deaths due to vehicle collisions with these animals, which the CDC tracks separately). But the number 1 animal killers on an annual basis are bees, wasps and hornets, responsible for 58 deaths each year -- mostly due to anaphylactic shock after a sting.

So, to put things in perspective, statistically speaking you're 28 times more likely to be killed by a dog than you are by a shark

So bees wasps and hornets are the baddies of the animal world. But that doesn't mean a bee is as dangerous as a shark.

[Keltest]

There was a nice graphical illustration of this, but the text gave the figures as such:


So bees wasps and hornets are the baddies of the animal world. But that doesn't mean a bee is as dangerous as a shark.

I disagree. A bee is substantially more dangerous than a shark on account of the fact that it wouldnt die well before being able to reach me here safely away from the coast.

[Peelee]

I disagree. A bee is substantially more dangerous than a shark on account of the fact that it wouldnt die well before being able to reach me here safely away from the coast.

That means polar bears are barely dangerous at all!

[Squire Doodad]

Are we all just ignoring the threat of cows and dogs?
To say nothing of the threat of dogs wielding handguns at public beaches

[Rater202]

One of the cats gets really pissy if my mother doesn't make the bed.

"Mommy, how am I supposed to lay down on this bed if it's not made?"

[LaZodiac]

One of the cats gets really pissy if my mother doesn't make the bed.

"Mommy, how am I supposed to lay down on this bed if it's not made?"

The inherent desire to take something pristine and twist it to your desires...

A relatable impulse to be sure.

[tyckspoon]

One of the cats gets really pissy if my mother doesn't make the bed.

"Mommy, how am I supposed to lay down on this bed if it's not made?"

One of mine -insists- on being the first one to use a freshly cleaned/refilled litter box, to the point where he stalks me when I'm working on them will jump in immediately after I leave the space.

[Rater202]

The inherent desire to take something pristine and twist it to your desires...

A relatable impulse to be sure.

She doesn't mess it up, she just lays on top of the covers.

[LaZodiac]

She doesn't mess it up, she just lays on top of the covers.

Aah, just fussy then. Sounds like a pretty typical, wonderful cat.

God I love cats.

[Liquor Box]

Are we all just ignoring the threat of cows and dogs?
To say nothing of the threat of dogs wielding handguns at public beaches

I think we are with cows. I checked the UK to see their stats, and cows are on top.

Yes, you heard us correctly. Cattle are the deadliest animal in the UK, with a body count of 4–5 every year. The Health and Safety Executive even admits that the underreporting of incidents within the agriculture industry means there could be an even greater toll attributed to these usually gentle giants.

https://petkeen.com/dangerous-animal...ct_Body_Counts

The article said bees are still dangerous though, but their murders were classified as non-direct because the death came from medical complications arising from their attack (a strained distinction it seems to me). So bees should still be killed on sight.

[LaZodiac]

So bees should still be killed on sight.

Absolutely NOT. Bee's are a vital part of the ecosystem and are in danger of dying out, which would **** up so much stuff. Including the existence of honey!

[enderlord99]

Absolutely NOT. Bee's are a vital part of the ecosystem and are in danger of dying out, which would **** up so much stuff. Including the existence of honey!

It's possible Liqourbox already knows that, but is too spiteful to care. I'm not saying that's the case, merely that it could be.

[Squire Doodad]

The article said bees are still dangerous though, but their murders were classified as non-direct because the death came from medical complications arising from their attack (a strained distinction it seems to me). So bees should still be killed on sight.

Killing bees on sight is like burning all rye because of the possibility of ergot.

[Anonymouswizard]

I mean, really the only viable solution is to wear skintight plastic over our entire bodies so the bees can't sting us. Sweat? What sweat?