Crows will eat cat or dog food (my local crows love the cat food we feed them!). If there aren’t laws against feeding stray cats, you could put a bowl on your porch with cat food and if you’re questioned, play innocent.

As an aside, if you want to identify the fledglings, look at their mouth. Baby crows have red/pink mouths while the adults have black mouths!

Yeah, fair. Difference in politicians making the policy vs people supporting those politicians. I was thinking about the supporters, but your comment was more about the politicians.

I’m so sorry you’re facing this and I hope you’re able to get through all of this and back to health.

I think it’s less Darwinism and more Just World Fallacy. If you believe in a just world, then it means anyone who’s sick did something to deserve to be sick, so culling them is getting rid of bad people. And sadly, that fits perfectly within religious dogma because if you believe God is almighty and omnipotent, then it’s easy to believe that God would keep good people healthy and only let bad people get sick; or at least if good people are sick it’s “God’s plan.”

The reason naming it is worse than Darwinism because is because the Just World view is logically consistent with their world view, making it even harder to convince them of anything else.

If they are intelligent enough to communicate and consent, sure, why not.

You’re not wrong! I think ROI would be the business side, while value is the consumer side.

In another response, someone told about a store that raised price on inexpensive mice, and they sold much more than when the price was lower.

My partner and I tried a new restaurant a couple days ago. He had fajitas, which was only something like $12. Normally, fajitas are more like $20. It was pretty good, not great, but something he’d eat again.

The cost was lower so even though the benefit (food quality) wasn’t as high as some places, the value was equal to what he gets at many other places.

But clearly value isn’t all, because next time he wants fajitas, he might decide he wants really good fajitas and go spend more. Or he might decide the cheaper ones are good enough to fill the craving and go there.

Anyway, perception is key here, and no one person can decide that for anyone else!

Thinking through how “free” things fit into the equation is actually one of the things that cemented it for me. Your example about giving tech support is so familiar, and a great example of how people don’t value free things.

Well, you can’t divide by 0; so if cost is nothing, then there’s no value.

I’ve read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini a few times because it’s a fascinating take on what persuades people at a subconscious level. Your story about mice is spot on with some principles he shares.

I think the example in the book was about a person who sold jewelry at fairs. I’m going to make up details because I don’t remember them perfectly, but it’s close: Her $10 turquoise jewelry wasn’t selling, so she told one of her workers to reduce it by 20%. There was a miscommunication and instead the price was raised to $20, and she sold out that day.

People saw it as more valuable because of the higher cost.

Humans are unfortunately easy to manipulate.

I’ve been taught:

Value = Benefits received / Costs incurred

Costs can be price, time, energy, etc.

Benefits can be a physical product, an experience, a feature, or less tangible like peace of mind or security.

If you increase price, other costs must go down OR benefits must go up; otherwise value is lost.

And yes, it’s all perception. Benefits don’t affect all customers equally, and people place different value on their time, etc.

Your comment is spot on. I have just found this equation consistently holds up.

There’s an equation for value I learned from a boss of mine. Value equals:
Benefits received / Costs incurred

Costs aren’t always monetary; your time and energy is also a cost. And benefits aren’t always tangible; it can include things like peace of mind.

In order to increase price, you have to also lower other costs OR increase benefits, otherwise you lower value.

And value is a perception, not an objective measure.

Did they change anything meaningful to you when they increased their price? If not, then their value decreased—at least for you.

But maybe they added some amazing kid safety controls at the same time as the price increase. If you don’t have kids, the value went down. But a parent who wants those features might have net neutral or even positive value perception.

Another person said it, but I’ll repeat: you don’t know.

People who provide hospice care will tell you that many people have a “good” day right before they die. After weeks or months of decline, they are suddenly lucid and communicative. Families think this is a sign of recovery, but the workers know it’s a sign of the end. The patient is normally gone the next day.

A good friend of mine died of cancer in April. He was diagnosed a bit over a year earlier, and he went through multiple windows of “you’re cancer free!” to “you probably have a month left.” And there were many days the pain was so severe that he wished he would die already.

Six months before he died, he’d tell me, “I think this is it. I don’t think my body can go on.” And then he’d keep going.

If people could tell, I think our culture and our medical systems would look very different.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Am I the only person who assumed “esteemed” was sarcastic?

If there were an equivalent to reddit gold on Lemmy, I’d give it to you. This is such a great overview and explains what I wish I had words for a decade ago when I had a conversation with a leftist friend of mine who was in her 60s, and she posed a question along the lines of, “Why can’t I have white pride?”

It was completely with good intention and not with an ounce of white supremacy. I realized it came from a place of wanting an identity or culture, to feel like she came from something. She saw others get to have a community around their ancestry and longed for something like it.

White supremacists have ruined any chance there could have been to find healthy pride in a white identity, and American history is completely mired in that. So many white people feel this loss or lack, and try to fill it with anything they can cling to. 1/32 Native, half Irish, 1/4 German; whatever, just to feel like there’s some history that ties you to who you are.

But you already said this more eloquently than I!

I think the premise is that Ebola cases are currently only in Africa, so if a US citizen catches it, that means they’re already across the Atlantic Ocean and, yes, Europe would be closer.

I did find things referencing a 4-letter “T-word” that’s derogatory for transfolx: tr*p. I wonder if that may be what tripped you up?

If it is, it’s so new that Urban Dictionary hasn’t seen it before. It’s been used to mean vagina or generically a stupid/offensive person for forever.

Are you sure you’re not mistaken? Can you provide any sources?

Based on how a lot of adults act, I’d say we don’t get enough science education either.

I started on biologics after diagnosis and they didn’t work for me. I am on a daily JAK inhibitor and a twice-daily NSAID and that has my pain controlled. The current swelling is something new, and is not painful.

The long-term prednisone use was to help me manage the pain while seeing if a biologic would work. It helped, but I still had to take ~15 mg of prednisone a day or I was in debilitating pain.

Plus it recently came out that the recommended daily values of vitamin D were based on a typo and are off by a factor of at least 10 (source).

Turmeric is questionable. A lot of early studies touting its benefits were published by the same person/group, and they had financial motivations behind it. Some has been straight debunked, and skepticism is a good stance to hold on it. Plus it’s been shown that turmeric supplements are a major source of lead, so the risk may outweigh the possible benefits.

Thankfully an RA diagnosis today is extremely different than one even 20 years ago, and I’ve only had it since the start of 2025. There are a lot of good options for meds, and there are some very promising long-term treatments on the horizon.

If actuarial tables estimate correctly, I’ll have around 40 years to live with this shit. My hope is for a cure before that happens (there has been enough advancement in autoimmune treatment even in just the last 5 years that it’s not a total pipe dream).

All that said, after spending most of 2025 with intolerable pain in my hands, I know if something prevents me from getting treatment long-term (like a societal collapse, not like pharmacy challenges), I expect I would find a way to …opt out. I was losing my mind until I found treatment that works (at least most of the time… this week is thankfully the exception now).

As for prednisone, I have extremely few side effects from it and no hyperactivity at all. I took it often from my diagnosis last May through this January. The first time was doses from 2.5–30 mg a day (normally 10–15) for most of 3 months straight. I had zero complaints while on it; however, upon stopping I was exhausted for about three days straight. Tired to the bone kind of feeling.

I ended up back on it for another 3 months, at or below 10 mg daily and I tapered more slowly, so the tiredness was much more manageable that time.

Like another commenter said, that’s a lot to expect of a pre-teen. I’m sorry you had to see that so young.