Furry avatars of doom

Progess?
 

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uk 75 said:
Progess?
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Absolutely! People train dogs to do what they want them to do. Cats train people to do what they want them to do. I am just waiting for a truly competent sci-fi author to fully uncover and document the underlying dynamics. There is a reason why there has never been a movie called "The Dog from Outer Space"...
 
riggerrob said:
Cats are really Martian spies in furry suits, sent here to observe us humans.
I served a cat for 16 years.
I still miss that fur ball. Sniff!
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Cats are really nobody's servants, stooges, or spies, they are simply the master race of the universe. The only reason they never deigned to develop anything even remotely similar to opposable thumbs is that they long since were successfully able to domesticate humans.
 
Rhinocrates said:
Sadly, the human experimenters died from their injuries shortly after they landed. They were posthumously awarded medals of valor. The cats were fine.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9XtK6R1QAk
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You know, the idea of taking cats into a zero-g environment makes sense to me. When we set out to colonize space, we're going to take our pets with us; best to start figuring out how that's going to work. But those jackholes wouldn't leave the cats alone to figure things out... the moment a cat came close to grabbing hold of the wall or floor, some idiot would push or kick it away. That's just *mean.*

View: https://twitter.com/UnwantedBlog/status/1602708346670387203
 
The extermination of cats in the thirteenth century could cause the spread of the plague in Europe

Some say that the persecution of cats in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is a myth, but in every myth there is some truth. From that time survive superstitions that associate it with the devil and bad luck.

In June 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued a papal decree or bula called: Vox in Rama. The bula was issued by the pope in response to reports of blasphemy episodes being celebrated in Germany. The person responsible for bringing that alarming news to the Pope was Konrad von Marburg, the Grand Inquisitor of the German Empire.

Copies of the Papal decree and letters were sent to Emperor Frederick II, King Henry (VII) of Germany, Archbishop Siegfried III of Mainz, Bishop Conrad II of Hildesheim and the preacher Konrad von Marburg himself. In these letters the pope begs them to collaborate with Konrad in his fight to eradicate satanic cults and heretics.



In "Vox in Rama," the pontiff describes in detail the pagan rituals held before the same demon, revered as a dark figure half cat and half man. In these rituals, following Konrad's reports, homosexual contacts, worship of the statue of a cat that would come to life are described.


That bula would go down in history, for an involuntary factor. Gregory IX never condemns cats in his decree, only detailing those rites, which had the cat as an element of the ritual. However, its long-term effect was devastating for feline life in 13th and 14th century Europe. The view of the cat in European society at large was transformed, and it was associated with the devil. To this day witches are always associated with black cats in popular culture, or are considered as carriers of bad luck, if you cross paths with them.

The persecution of cats happened throughout the Europe of the 13th century, many towns and cities were depopulated of felines. And then came collateral damage that can make you understand why the plague, which had taken years to spread through Asia, only took a few months to infect almost the entire European population. Many scholars consider that this factor, the extermination of cats, was what fertilized the proliferation of rats, especially black ones, which at the same time that they multiplied, without natural enemies, were spreading fleas infected with the bacterium Yersinia pestis.


This bacterium is commonly present in flea populations carried by rodents. It spread across the Mediterranean from Central Asia transported, safely, rats and fleas, on merchant ships bringing species from Asia.

The plague had broken into Europe, and with it death. No one knew how and why people became infected, filling the cities and towns with sick people who had buboes or skin tumors, and within a few days these patients died.

Many European religious fanatics blamed groups alien to their traditions such as Jews or Gypsies, accused them of poisoning water, of bringing evil by displeasing God with their pagan religious practices, as well as persecuting beggars, lepers and anyone who did not follow Christian norms. The different one was before their eyes the initiator of the plague, and many massacres were committed against such groups. Others blamed the animals, and turned their gaze to cats, formerly worshipped as gods by pagan peoples, and associated with the devil by the hoax Vox in Rama. Thus the surviving cats of the extermination of the 13th century were again chased and burned, on many occasions.

Many believe that these acts of hysteria were what condemned Europeans to the long epidemic of bubonic plague. On the one hand, they murdered or sent into exile many Jews who were doctors, and could eventually study the phenomenon that spread the plague; As they eliminated the predator of the source of contagion, the cat, which kept the rodent population under control. These were multiplying and with them their fleas, which would explain why the bubonic plague hit Europe so strongly. According to some historians, it killed 2/3 of the European population, while in other places where the plague also ravaged it, such as India, Egypt, or the Middle East, the statistics of deaths and infected were never so high.
 

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Justo Miranda said:
The extermination of cats in the thirteenth century ...
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Something of minor note: all of those artistic depictions of cats are *awful.* The descendants of the artists who populated the Roman Empire with fantastic sculptures and portraits had lost the ability to create art better than grade schoolers can do. Civilization had collapsed, taking with it the ability to create good art. Europe at the time was essentially a post-apocalyptic story, much like the Native Americans after smallpox and such wiped out their cultures.

Of course, the collapse of art might also be a leading indicator of a society on the edge of oblivion...

View: https://twitter.com/AmericanaAesth/status/1594094169319841792
 
Orionblamblam said:
Justo Miranda said:
The extermination of cats in the thirteenth century ...
Click to expand...
Something of minor note: all of those artistic depictions of cats are *awful.* The descendants of the artists who populated the Roman Empire with fantastic sculptures and portraits had lost the ability to create art better than grade schoolers can do. Civilization had collapsed, taking with it the ability to create good art. Europe at the time was essentially a post-apocalyptic story, much like the Native Americans after smallpox and such wiped out their cultures.

Of course, the collapse of art might also be a leading indicator of a society on the edge of oblivion...

View: https://twitter.com/AmericanaAesth/status/1594094169319841792
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The first victim of any dictatorship is freedom, the second the truth, the third history and the fourth art. In all ages and societies there have been excellent artists, but they are usually intelligent people who prefer to remain undetected during the dark ages. At the time of the Inquisition this type of official propaganda illustrations would be drawn by guys who had not been smart enough to disappear when the censors commissioned the works.
 
Justo Miranda said:
The first victim of any dictatorship is freedom, the second the truth, the third history and the fourth art. In all ages and societies there have been excellent artists, but they are usually intelligent people who prefer to remain undetected during the dark ages.
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Art, like any activity, is something that requires a lot of practice for even the highly talented to become highly skilled. If you live in a society that grants artists the opportunity (and *demand*) for years of training, you get artists who are damned good. If you live in a society where just feeding yourself is a dubious prospect... ya got better things to do than art. And so the art you get is no better than the art you get in a society where the artists demand the perks of being Famous Artists but also demand to get them without doing the work required.

Getting almost back on topic, pets are something that become dubious when civilization goes down. Cats and dogs are clearly on Team Human, though... they are fundamentally useful on a purely practical level. Cats are fur coated razor blades with minds made for murder... and what they like to murder are vermin. When civilization fails, we might not have time or energy for purse puppies or koi fish, but we'd be monumentally stupid to not do everything possible to keep cats around.

Another benefit of cats: there are those humans who like to harm them. If you find someone harming a cat, you...

know that that someone needs to be fed into the woodchipper, turned into mulch and sprinkled into the compost pile. They don't stop with cats, and society is better off finding and removing such types early.
 
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Orionblamblam said:
You know, the idea of taking cats into a zero-g environment makes sense to me. When we set out to colonize space, we're going to take our pets with us; best to start figuring out how that's going to work.
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We've taken cats to virtually every continent and island.* It's amazing that a wild dry climate animal with virtually no further adaptation has found an ecological niche - the human lap - that enables it to thrive almost anywhere. Polydactyly is not uncommon, so if we become extinct, they're not far off having opposable thumbs (my brother has a Maine Coon with extra toes and she's not far off opening cans for herself).

Personally, I don't want to go anywhere there aren't cats.

*Yes, even Antarctica (sadly it did not end well):

Mrs Chippy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
 
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Or... (No longer online, but I think you can order it as a book, which I encourage you to do.)
 

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Rhinocrates said:
We've taken cats to virtually every continent and island.* It's amazing that a wild dry climate animal with virtually no further adaptation has found an ecological niche - the human lap - that enables it to thrive almost anywhere.
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Note that *we* were evolved to be an equatorial savanna-dweller, and here we are living in places as diverse as Arabia and Polynesia and Siberia and Sweden and Tierra Del Fuego, places as hostile as Antarctica and Low Earth Orbit and Detroit. We, like them, are "adorable:" we have almost no natural weapons, yet we merrily hunt other species to extinction for fun.

We look at cats, a species not particularly close to us evolutionarily, and see kindred spirits.


Rhinocrates said:
Polydactyly is not uncommon, so if we become extinct, they're not far off having opposable thumbs (my brother has a Maine Coon with extra toes and she's not far off opening cans for herself).
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdA_fLC7WIQ
 
The posts above reflect the reality of history though to be biologically accurate the words humans and we should be replaced by cats and they.
We have been fortunate that cats have found us so useful.
 
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The artist's name is Jeff de Boer, not Midjourney. Source: National Geographic.
 

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Justo Miranda said:
Orionblamblam said:
Justo Miranda said:
The extermination of cats in the thirteenth century ...
Click to expand...
Something of minor note: all of those artistic depictions of cats are *awful.* The descendants of the artists who populated the Roman Empire with fantastic sculptures and portraits had lost the ability to create art better than grade schoolers can do. Civilization had collapsed, taking with it the ability to create good art. Europe at the time was essentially a post-apocalyptic story, much like the Native Americans after smallpox and such wiped out their cultures.

Of course, the collapse of art might also be a leading indicator of a society on the edge of oblivion...

View: https://twitter.com/AmericanaAesth/status/1594094169319841792
Click to expand...
The first victim of any dictatorship is freedom, the second the truth, the third history and the fourth art. In all ages and societies there have been excellent artists, but they are usually intelligent people who prefer to remain undetected during the dark ages. At the time of the Inquisition this type of official propaganda illustrations would be drawn by guys who had not been smart enough to disappear when the censors commissioned the works.
Click to expand...
The order of operations may be optional, in that censorship -- frequently publicly supported-- simultaneously restricts access to the truth and suppresses freedom of speech. Alas, we're seeing some of this among mainstream politicians in some of the mature, vs nascent, democracies. You also missed some major steps: promotion of violence by pro-dictatorship politicians and politicization of military and police services. The poster child for this is the anti-democratic forces bent on destroying the Weimar Republic, but they're hardly unique.

As to plague, massive death tolls from plague and other epidemics were not unique to Europe. I also wonder if "hatred of cats caused the Black Death" meme is both simplistic and a severe exaggeration of the problem; general standards of hygiene were very low and the antipathy to learning, especially chivalric cultures, where the people in charge were frequently illiterate.
 
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1635yankee said:
I also wonder if "hatred of cats caused the Black Death" meme is both simplistic and a severe exaggeration of the problem;
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IIRC, the campaign against cats occurred after the Black Death was well underway. It was just one more Stupid Thing to add to the list of Stupid Things that made the plague worse.
 
Orionblamblam said:
1635yankee said:
I also wonder if "hatred of cats caused the Black Death" meme is both simplistic and a severe exaggeration of the problem;
Click to expand...

IIRC, the campaign against cats occurred after the Black Death was well underway. It was just one more Stupid Thing to add to the list of Stupid Things that made the plague worse.
Click to expand...

Ah but we did kinda* learn, the perils of wiping out the cat population;- Warning Aviation content;- Operation Cat Drop;-

Operation Cat Drop - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Operation Cat Drop - MOD

Parachuting cats into Borneo? Operation Cat Drop shows how tipping points in populations can have large impacts.
mod.org.au

In the 1960’s a Cat parachute regiment recruited, equipped, sent to war against the nasty old rats.

Holy moly, did I just type that?

* well it was all started by excessive use of DDT
 
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1635yankee said:
Justo Miranda said:
Orionblamblam said:
Justo Miranda said:
The extermination of cats in the thirteenth century ...
Click to expand...
Something of minor note: all of those artistic depictions of cats are *awful.* The descendants of the artists who populated the Roman Empire with fantastic sculptures and portraits had lost the ability to create art better than grade schoolers can do. Civilization had collapsed, taking with it the ability to create good art. Europe at the time was essentially a post-apocalyptic story, much like the Native Americans after smallpox and such wiped out their cultures.

Of course, the collapse of art might also be a leading indicator of a society on the edge of oblivion...

View: https://twitter.com/AmericanaAesth/status/1594094169319841792
Click to expand...
The first victim of any dictatorship is freedom, the second the truth, the third history and the fourth art. In all ages and societies there have been excellent artists, but they are usually intelligent people who prefer to remain undetected during the dark ages. At the time of the Inquisition this type of official propaganda illustrations would be drawn by guys who had not been smart enough to disappear when the censors commissioned the works.
Click to expand...
The order of operations may be optional, in that censorship -- frequently publicly supported-- simultaneously restricts access to the truth and suppresses freedom of speech. Alas, we're seeing some of this among mainstream politicians in some of the mature, vs nascent, democracies. You also missed some major steps: promotion of violence by pro-dictatorship politicians and politicization of military and police services. The poster child for this is the anti-democratic forces bent on destroying the Weimar Republic, but they're hardly unique.

As to plague, massive death tolls from plague and other epidemics were not unique to Europe. I also wonder if "hatred of cats caused the Black Death" meme is both simplistic and a severe exaggeration of the problem; general standards of hygiene were very low and the antipathy to learning, especially chivalric cultures, where the people in charge were frequently illiterate.
Click to expand...
To appreciate freedom it is necessary to live before a dictatorship, otherwise it would be difficult to find people willing to fight on the beach of Marathon.

The persecution of cats during the Middle Ages is only one phase of the Catholic Church's long struggle to eliminate its competitors. The main rivals during the early phases of Christianity in Rome were the cult of the Eastern god Mithras and the Egyptian religions.

Especially the cult of Isis was very popular among Roman women because the goddess was depicted embracing the child Osiris.

When the idea force was recycled by the Catholics and ignorance spread throughout Europe as the Roman roads disappeared due to lack of maintenance, there were still many remains of the Egyptian religions to exterminate, doctors, alchemists, magicians ... And they all used to have cats.
 
Zoo Tycoon said:
Orionblamblam said:
1635yankee said:
I also wonder if "hatred of cats caused the Black Death" meme is both simplistic and a severe exaggeration of the problem;
Click to expand...

IIRC, the campaign against cats occurred after the Black Death was well underway. It was just one more Stupid Thing to add to the list of Stupid Things that made the plague worse.
Click to expand...

Ah but we did kinda* learn, the perils of wiping out the cat population;- Warning Aviation content;- Operation Cat Drop;-

Operation Cat Drop - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Operation Cat Drop - MOD

Parachuting cats into Borneo? Operation Cat Drop shows how tipping points in populations can have large impacts.
mod.org.au

In the 1960’s a Cat parachute regiment recruited, equipped, sent to war against the nasty old rats.

Holy moly, did I just type that?

* well it was all started by excessive use of DDT
Click to expand...
CAT STEELE
 

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