On toilet paper shortages and the need for a media reckoning when this is all over

On toilet paper shortages and the need for a media reckoning when this is all over

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Yesterday I wrote a post about a professor who said he felt safer in China than the US during the Coronavirus outbreak.  It should be noted that this was published by NBC.

Arfcom has a thread going about the US media carrying water for the Chinese government.  In the last few days, the media has been screaming at us that calling it the “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Wuhan Conronavirus” was xenophobic and racist.  This is apparently a Chinese Govmernet talking point because the Chinese Government wants to distance themselves from the outbreak.

This morning I see this Tweet from CNN sentient potato Brian Stelter:

This is what he said:

“We really need you all to lean into and prioritize the health and safety of the American people,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said at Saturday’s White House briefing. There’s nothing controversial about that — news outlets are empowering the public with health and safety information. But then Adams said this: “No more bickering, no more partisanship, no more criticism or finger pointing. There’ll be plenty of time for that. But we all need to hit the reset button and lean into moving forward the health and safety of the American people…”

What Adams called “bickering” and “criticism” is what most of us call accountability. Is there value in focusing on the future? Yes, but when Adams said he wants “less stories looking at what happened in the past,” I hear him saying “stop exposing the Trump administration’s failures.” There is value in all of the coverage. And government officials don’t get to decide that — readers and reporters and whistleblowers and editors do.

So Stelter admits that he is biased and projects his own anti-Trump hatred onto what the Surgeon General says.

The media would rather run with “make Trump look bad” than anything helpful to people.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store.  There was no milk, bread, and toilet paper, and hardly any eggs.

Why is this happening?

Because the media is fucking dog-shit awful to a degree that is hard to fathom.

If the media were responsible, this is what they would be covering:

The toilet paper shortage started in Australia.  Australia imports about 40% of its toilet paper from China.  This has led to panic buying under the theory that Australia will run out of toilet paper with Coronavirus shooting down Chinese exports.  Also, the domestically produced stuff is a little rough.

The United States, however, is more than self-sufficient on toilet paper and paper products in general.  About 90% of US toilet paper is produced domestically.  Most of the rest comes from Canada.

There is a reason for this.  The United States has millions of hectares of harvestable forests in the Pacific North West.  When you wipe your ass with a fluffy brand name two-ply paper, you are wiping your ass with some of the finest maple, oak, pine, and douglas fir ever cut down by American lumberjacks.

Chinese export shutdowns are not going to interrupt the toilet paper supply chain.

The is the same for food.  In 2016, 87.3% of US food consumed was produced domestically.  What we import is mostly specialty items like wines, cheeses, tropical fruits, and exotic items.  Our staples are almost entirely US grown.

More than that, many of your staple items are produced within a couple of hundred miles from where you live.  The milk I buy in Huntsville, Alabama, comes from a dairy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, all of 112 miles away.  I know, because I checked the milk code.

If you live in New York City, your milk probably comes from upstate New York.

There is no reason to horde milk or toilet paper or bread because of the Coronavirus.

BUT…

The media covered the Australian toilet paper hoarding and failed to explain any of this and people panicked and the shortages began.

Once there was a shortage of one staple (toilet paper) it caused people to horde other items and eventually, it cased a societal cascade failure.

Why?

So because of the media’s malfeasance and desire to make Trump look bad no matter what, we end up with this:

Rather than telling Americans that it’s not worth fighting each other over the last package of toilet paper in Target like its guzzoline in the wasteland, they are reporting shit like this:

Actual responsible journalist, Heather Mac Donald published an article at The New Criterion that is worth reading.

Compared to what?

So far, the United States has seen forty-one deaths from the infection. Twenty-two of those deaths occurred in one poorly run nursing home outside of Seattle, the Life Care Center. Another nine deaths occurred in the rest of Washington state, leaving ten deaths (four in California, two in Florida, and one in each of Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, and South Dakota) spread throughout the rest of the approximately 329 million residents of the United States.

By comparison, there were 38,800 traffic fatalities in the United States in 2019, the National Safety Council estimates. That represents an average of over one hundred traffic deaths every day; if the press catalogued these in as much painstaking detail as they have deaths from coronavirus, highways nationwide would be as empty as New York subways are now.

As of Monday, approximately 89 percent of Italy’s coronavirus deaths had been over the age of seventy, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sad to say, those victims were already nearing the end of their lifespans. They might have soon died from another illness. No child under the age of nine has died from the illness worldwide. In China, only one individual in the ten-to-nineteen age group has succumbed.

An example: there were 34,200 deaths in the United States during the 2018–19 influenza season, estimates the cdc.

This is outstanding reporting putting common fatalities into perspective.

If you are under the age of 70, you are statistically more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the doctor to get tested than you are of Coronavirus.

Remember that data from 2002 shows that 1.7 million people got a Health Care-Associated Infection (when you get an infection going to the hospital because you are surrounded by other sick people) and almost 99,000 people died from those infections.

That is what killed my dad.  His cancer was in remission from the chemo, but that made him immunocompromised, not to mention that he was a 62-year-old diabetic.  He went to the hospital, got pneumonia, turned septic and died.

It seems much more likely that an elderly patient going to the hospital with Conronavirus will die from a staph or strep or MRSA infection they picked up in the waiting room than of the virus itself.

Italy and Spain are on quarantine and lockdown.

In 2003, 15,000 Europeans died of heat-related illnesses from a heatwave.  France suffered almost 1,500 deaths due to heat from a two-week heatwave in 2019.  Most of those who died were over 75-years-old.

It seems that the leading underlying cause of untimely death in Europe is being elderly.

But that reporting does not generate panic clicks, cause people to sit in front of the TV for hours waiting for updates, or make Trump look bad, so the major networks won’t run it.

When the dust settles and we figure out just how much damage was done to our economy and the fabric of our society because of media malfeasance during the Coronavirus outbreak, I think there will be hell to pay.

 

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March 15, 2020 at 03:40PM

Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice

Suddenly working at home? We’ve done it for 22 years—and have advice

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One work-from-home suggestion: snacks, supplies, a pet, and dolls. You should consider upgrading to a more ergonomic work station (better chair, better keyboard). Replacing the dolls, on the other hand, is not an option, as far as we're concerned. (Unless you swap in <EM>Babylon 5</em> toys, we guess.)
Enlarge /

One work-from-home suggestion: snacks, supplies, a pet, and dolls. You should consider upgrading to a more ergonomic work station (better chair, better keyboard). Replacing the dolls, on the other hand, is not an option, as far as we’re concerned. (Unless you swap in

Babylon 5

toys, we guess.)

Aurich Lawson / Getty

No matter where you live or work, the novel coronavirus means you’ve probably begun exploring the option of working from home instead of a centralized office. (In many cases, “option” is a gentle way of putting it.) Here at Ars Technica, our staffers have seen their phones and messaging apps blow up with countless versions of the following: “How the heck do you pull off this whole work-from-home thing?”

We’re in a position to know. Ars Technica has operated as a remote workforce since it was founded in 1998, decentralized and connected entirely by Internet-fueled collaboration. If this is news to you, fear not: Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson wrote a massive February explainer about how our site functions this way. That feature is one part of a recent remote-work series, and its other entries have focused largely on the business feasibility of the practice.

But that conversation’s tenor is shifting rapidly in the face of coronavirus, and you might be more interested in a broader set of impressions and tips. Thus, we’re here to offer ways big and small to improve your remote workplace experience, based on our staff’s years of doing it successfully. These range from brief to lengthy, and they include suggestions that may seem obvious or silly to some, but sometimes in the course of working from home, the little stuff adds up in a big way.

Above all else, we’re here for you. Expect more coverage about the work-from-home transition from Ars Technica in the weeks to come, and hit us up if you start feeling a bit insane. Even when you work from home, take it from us: you’re not alone.

Doctor’s orders: Jay Timmer, Ph.D., Senior Science Editor

Your office needs to have a view. Trees, birds, open sky—just something you find appealing so that when you raise your head from your screen to clear your mind, there’s something there that you want to see.

Have an exercise and activity routine. Many studies have shown that simply getting up and moving a bit is incredibly positive for your health. When you can set up your office with everything you need and don’t have to get up and find co-workers or go out for food, it’s easy to just go completely sedentary. Establish a routine to avoid that.

Have a default activity for when you need a break from work—something you shift to easily, without having to spend the time thinking about what you want to do. One of the big problems for me is that I usually need a break when i’m already feeling drained and not thinking clearly, so the last thing I want is to have to start an internal debate about what I want to do.

Location, location, location: Timothy Lee, Senior Tech Policy Reporter

Have a physically separate workspace—ideally a separate office or at least a desk that’s dedicated to work. Put it as far as possible from the kitchen, laundry room, TV, and other sources of domestic distraction. You want to take regular breaks throughout the day, but it should take a bit of time and effort to get there so you’re not constantly tempted to distract yourself with snacks, chores, or whatever.

It’s Slack, not slacking: Lee Hutchinson, Senior Technology Editor

In my experience, what helps more than anything to have coworkers who are also virtual. At a past job I held a role for a year or so where I was the only remote teammate in a large Bellevue, Washington-based administration team. On the upside, this meant I could work from home at need; I had access to a physical office in my city, but I was just as remote from my team there as at home. On the downside, it meant that I missed out on a huge amount of communication. Everyone was in the office, catching each other in the hall for informal communication, sticking their heads over cube walls to ask quick questions or hash out ideas verbally, BSing around the coffee pot, and all the other normal office things one does. Unless someone specifically called my desk phone or hit me up in an instant message or email, I was more or less isolated.

Working at Ars with a fully remote team means the majority of our interaction occurs within Slack, including the informal goof-off stuff that’s so important for building shared experiences and reinforcing team cohesion. The “time-wasting” aspects of Slack that might make it a questionable fit for teams using it to supplement a physical office are important when that’s (more or less) the only socialization you get with coworkers.

So I guess that’s a long way of saying that at least some kind of human contact is a must. Everybody’s got days whene they need to be head-down on a project and don’t want to be bothered, of course, but having someone in a similar situation as you, with whom you can share a dumb link or have a quick laugh over a shared joke, is absolutely vital to mental health.

Shelter in its many forms: Jennifer Ouellette, Senior Writer

I have spent much of my career working from home long before I joined Ars, and I absolutely agree it makes a huge difference having everyone working remotely. It’s the same kind of bonding via shared experience that takes place in a physical office, only virtually. When it was just me, I still found ways to build online communities, e.g., through a group of science-writer friends (including Dr. Timmer). We started out with an email list, then graduated to a Slack channel (which I visit far less frequently these days because I’m spending all my time on the Ars Slack—it meets the same need).

I honestly have never really struggled with working from home. It suits my temperament more than your standard office setting, and I’ve always been good at establishing my own daily routine and structure. But I noticed early on that without some regular social interaction in meatspace, it was way too easy to get lost in my own head and get a bit “tweaky.” Case in point: my spouse, Sean, was on a speaking tour in Australia for two weeks last month, and I made sure to schedule some time with friends a couple of times a week until he returned: meeting a fellow writer for tea and carbs, for instance, having a girls’ brunch and movie outing, or stopping by our local animal shelter to pet some rescues and help out for an hour or so. (We adopted our two cats from there, so I feel invested. 😊)

This is a cat.

Jennifer Ouellette

Speaking of which: pets are a great outlet for short breaks during the day. I like looking up from the keyboard to see a napping kitty curled up on my Time Capsule or wanting to play fetch or get a few scratches.

I have always, like John, staked out time for regular workouts during the day, just to get me out of the house and away from my desk for a couple of hours. It’s also great for mind/body balance: working out gives my brain a rest so I can come back to work refreshed, ready to pound through any tough story or fit of writer’s block/brain fog that might have been plaguing me earlier. I can also often multitask during workouts by watching films or TV series that I might review, further countering those couch-potato tendencies. If you can review work documents or watch necessary video content while moving, that’s an option with or without a home treadmill; just watch your phone-glancing step if you take it outside. Which I suggest. While it’s better to physically leave the house for workouts, we do have the NordicTrack equivalent of a Peloton for those days when it’s just not feasible (say, a voluntary self-quarantine during a pandemic).

geeky

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

March 15, 2020 at 09:37AM

Study Finds High Demand for Go and AR/VR Programmers, While Python Remains Favorite Language

Study Finds High Demand for Go and AR/VR Programmers, While Python Remains Favorite Language

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The tech jobs marketplace at Hired.com crunched their data on more than 400,000 interview requests and job offers over the last year to produce their annual "State of Software Engineers" report. Among its surprising insights: software engineers with more than 10 years of experience get 20% fewere interview requests than engineers with 4 to 10 years of experience. Other insights:
Demand for AR/VR talent is up by 1400%, mirroring blockchain’s 517% demand growth last year… In large U.S. tech hubs AR/VR engineer salaries range from $135k – $150k… 46% of software engineers rank AR/VR as one of the top 3 technologies they’d like to learn in 2020… If you work in AR/VR, you may want to move to San Francisco, where they pay $150k/year on average. The next-highest growth in demand came for "gaming engineers" and "computer vision engineers" — with both positions seeing a 146% increase in demand over 2018. The next-highest demand growth was for "search engineers" (increasing 137%) and for "machine learning engineers" (increasing 89%). Demand for "blockchain engineers" increased by just 9%. But they also report that demand for frontend and backend engineers "grew steadily by 17%, which shows that all companies — not just Silicon Valley tech giants — are evolving into being tech companies…"
The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company. Whether the company is Bank of America, Alaska Airlines, Sainsbury’s, or Tesla, investment in top software engineering talent isn’t a future ambition, it’s a matter of survival. And the #1 most-desired coding skill was Go (for the second year in a row), "garnering an average of 9.2 interview requests for every Go-skilled candidate…" But there may be a larger trend.
All told, the number of interview requests across all languages remained nearly constant year-over-year, with only minor fluctuations in average requests, and zero change in how each language ranked against others. This could suggest that supply for these skills has not yet caught up with demand… According to Robert Half, 67% of IT managers plan to expand their teams in areas such as security, cloud computing and business intelligence, but 89% reported challenges in recruiting that talent. Those challenges in hiring are even greater for roles related to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Their analysis concludes the most in-demand programming languages are Go, Scala, Ruby, TypeScript, Kotlin, Objective C, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, Java, HTML, and then Python — though Python, JavaScript, and Java are engineers’ favorite coding languages, "largely because of their useful and well-maintained libraries and packages…" "Ruby, PHP and Objective C are ranked the least favorite (and least fun) languages for software engineers."


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

geeky

via Slashdot https://slashdot.org/

March 14, 2020 at 09:50PM

Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC – Review

Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC – Review

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Kershaw Static
Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)– Oregon-based Kershaw Knives (and sister company Zero Tolerance) have a prodigious release rate, to say the least.  I try to spread the reviews out, but it turns out in doing so sometimes I’m so busy using a knife, I forget to write it up!  Such is the case with Kershaw’s Static, a pocket cleaver.  This is a knife I like a lot, but has one flaw keeping it from being a knife I love.  Let’s find out what makes the Static tick.

Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC

Kershaw Static
Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC

Tech Specs:

  • KVT ball-bearing opening for quick, easy opening with flipper
  • Blade Style: Cleaver
  • Lock Type: Frame lock
  • Pocketclip: Reversible deep-carry (right/left, tip-up)
  • Hardware: Steel screws, steel backspacer
  • Blade Length 2.9 in. (7.4 cm)
  • Blade Steel 8Cr13MoV
  • Blade Finish/Coating: Satin finish
  • Closed Length 3.9 in. (9.8 cm)
  • Handle Material: Stainless steel
  • Handle Finish/Coating: Gray PVD coating
  • Handle Thickness: 0.39 in. (10.1 mm)
  • Overall Length: 6.75 in. (17.1 cm)
  • Weight: 4 oz. (113.4 g)
  • Warranty: Limited Lifetime Warranty

Given the Static’s composition of a stainless steel 8Cr13MoV blade and a stainless handle, I’m hearing “durable, durable” in my head.  By that I mean resistant to the elements, and requires little care or maintenance  The only real downside to the choice of 8Cr13MoV for the blade, is that it loses its edge a bit quicker than higher grade steels.  8Cr13MoV compensates for this by taking an edge with ease.  Sharpening the static is no chore at all.  A quick special mention to the texturing along the base of the knife’s spine!  Great traction for when you use your thumb to really bear down while cutting.

Kershaw has often used KVT ball bearings for their blades to spin open on, and to good effect.  Just a little resistance to start with, then the Static slides open with ease.  Similarly, the usual Kershaw frame lock makes a return appearance here, and is simply reliable.  It locks open every time, and unlocks easily enough.  While I would appreciate a little texturing on the grip face of the frame lock, it’s not a real necessity here.

Kershaw Static
Solid lockup

Between the stainless steel construction (outdoors!) and the cleaver blade shape (kitchen!), the Kershaw Static seems most at home being used in a campsite cookset.  While I’ve used it as an EDC blade, (and it performs very well in usual daily tasks), it really feels in its natural element cutting through a thick slab of meat that’s getting ready to be dropped into the hot cast iron pan.

Kershaw Static
Meat, cast iron, Static. nice trio!

So what’s my problem with the Kershaw Static?  It’s inexpensive, easy to sharpen and made from some pretty corrosion-resistant stuff.  It even checks the usual boxes with good design, a solid framelock and oil-slick ball bearings.  My only issue is that the Static is a little to short for my hands.  Now, my mitts aren’t giant, nor are they little carney hands.  I’m left wanting just a little more handle here, maybe .5″-1″.  I know that even if I found my Goldilocks solution, that would leave others out in the cold.  I just feel that the Static would be better suited a touch longer, still shorter than many other pocket folders out there!

With all that said, the Kershaw Static is to me a really good value for what you’re getting.  Good design and rugged construction combine with the very reasonable price point to bring a good knife to your collection, whether it’s for EDC or the campsite.  MSRP on the Kershaw Static is $59.99, while the street price is around $36.  If you like the cleaver shape and are interested in checking the Static out, I think it will be worth your time.


About Rex Nanorum

Jens Hammer

Rex Nanorum is an Alaskan Expatriate living in Oregon with his wife and kids. Growing up on commercial fishing vessels, he found his next adventure with the 2nd Bn, 75th Ranger Regt. After 5 tours to Afghanistan and Iraq, he adventured about the west coast becoming a commercial fisheries and salvage SCUBA diver, rated helicopter pilot instructor (CFII) and personal trainer, before becoming a gear reviewer and writer.”

-Jens “Rex Nanorum” Hammer

@Rexnanorum

 

The post Kershaw Static Cleaver Pocket Knife EDC – Review appeared first on AmmoLand.com.

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March 13, 2020 at 04:06PM

YouTuber Builds the World’s Most Powerful Handheld Laser Pointer and It Can Instantly Melt Glass

YouTuber Builds the World’s Most Powerful Handheld Laser Pointer and It Can Instantly Melt Glass

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The handheld laser pointers you can buy at office supplies stores are legally required to be no powerful than 0.005-watts, and most fall well below that threshold so they’re relatively safe to use. With that as a reference, you have a better understanding of just how terrifying this 100-watt handheld laser pointer really is.

The last time we checked in on Drake Anthony, who’s best known ‘round YouTube parts as Styropyro, he was demonstrating his latest toy: a professional (and extremely sketchy) laser tattoo remover he found on eBay that maxed out at around 30 million watts. However, unlike a laser pointer, the tattoo remover’s beam could only be triggered in pulses just 10 billionths of a second long.

For his latest creation, Drake got his hands on an engineering sample of a blue laser diode array. The diodes are designed to be used individually in devices like laser-based projectors for large movie theaters, so, pushing safety aside for a few hours, Drake turned an old microwave radar gun into a handheld housing that allows all 20 of the blue laser diodes to be fired simultaneously with over 100-watts of power.

Battery life is limited to roughly seven minutes, but that’s not much of an issue as it takes less than a second for the laser pointer to instantly set paper bags and wooden two-by-fours aflame, and that’s with the 20 beams all firing in parallel. Drake further upgrades his laser pointer with a lens on the front that focuses all 20 beams into a single concentrated point. Glass melts at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and with the beam focused Drake’s laser pointer starts to melt a glass bottle just seconds after it’s been turned on.

If you’re inspired to build one of your own at home: Don’t! Drake is well versed in not only the technology and physics of lasers, but he’s also familiar with the extreme safety risks involved with custom creations like this. At 100-watts, it’s 200 times more powerful than the rating of an already dangerous Class-4 laser. Safety glasses with an extremely high optical density are a must—as is having a fire extinguisher close at hand every time this thing is powered up.

geeky,Tech

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

March 13, 2020 at 05:17PM

Getting started with Amazon S3 storage in Laravel

Getting started with Amazon S3 storage in Laravel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ0gi9YHuek

I love using Amazon’s S3 storage in a few apps. However as a newcomer to AWS services, it was still a bit confusing to get set up.

programming

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March 13, 2020 at 09:03AM

You Can Download and 3D Print NASA’s Multi-Tool, and Other Space-Related Stuff, for Free

You Can Download and 3D Print NASA’s Multi-Tool, and Other Space-Related Stuff, for Free

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Special thanks to Core77 reader Richard Chritz: After reading "Smithsonian Makes Images, 3D Scans and CAD Files from Archive Free to Download," he tipped us off that NASA has done the same.

The NASA 3D Resources website has posted hundreds of 3D models, images, textures and visualizations that you can download for free. As far as models, they’ve got everything from astronaut gloves and spacesuits to satellites and spacecraft:

There’s also a Printable section where you can download .stl files for 3D printing (though some of them are fresh conversions that may require tweaking). In that section we found the Cassini probe, the Curiosity Rover, the Hubble Space Telescope, and even the first object designed on Earth, and e-mailed to space for manufacture: A wrench that was 3D printed on the ISS.

The coolest thing we found in the 3D Printing section was the Multi-Purpose Precision Maintenance Tool:

"The Multi-Purpose Precision Maintenance Tool has a number of important tools which allow an astronaut to complete tasks with comfort and ease. The different sized drives at the top allows the user to attach sockets. In the center are wrenches of varying sizes, allowing fewer wrenches to be carried to the job site. On the left is a precision measuring tool along with wire gauges and a single edged wire stripper. In the center is an outline for Velcro to be applied allowing an easy storage around the station. A circular hole in the bottom center allows for a clip to be used as well. On the right, and ergonomic grip is built into the tool with ridges for better grasp, lastly a pry bar is built into the ergonomic grip for ease of access."

Check it all out here.

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March 12, 2020 at 09:44AM

Make Your Apps Faster With Turbolinks

Make Your Apps Faster With Turbolinks

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In this video, we’ll apply the “server fetched partials” concept to entire page loads using Turbolinks. By adding one line of code, we’ll make a server-side Laravel app feel like an SPA.

View the source code for this episode on GitHub.

Published on Mar 12th, 2020.

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March 12, 2020 at 02:18PM

Cats don’t roam far, but they do lots of killing

Cats don’t roam far, but they do lots of killing

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A black cat with yellow eyes glares at the camera, with a white background (cats killing wildlife concept)

House cats’ hunting can have big effects on local animal populations, researchers report.

That’s because they kill more wildlife, in a given area, than similar-sized wild predators, according to a new study.

This effect is mostly concentrated relatively close to a pet cat’s home, since most of their movement was a 100-meter (328-foot) radius of their homes, usually encompassing a few of their neighborhood’s yards on either side.

Researchers collaborated with scientists and citizen scientists from six countries to collect GPS cat-tracking data and prey-capture reports from 925 pet cats, with most coming from the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Listen to Roland Kays explain his findings in this podcast:

Download the transcript of the podcast here.

Cats killing local wildlife

“Since they are fed cat food, pets kill fewer prey per day than wild predators, but their home ranges were so small that this effect on local prey ends up getting really concentrated,” says lead author Roland Kays, research associate professor and director of the Biodiversity & Earth Observation Lab at the Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

“Add to this the unnaturally high density of pet cats in some areas, and the risk to bird and small mammal population gets even worse. We found that house cats have a two- to 10-time larger impact on wildlife than wild predators—a striking effect,” he says.

The researchers focused on the ecological impact of house cats—as opposed to feral cats—and enlisted hundreds of pet owners to track their cats to see where they went and report on the number of dead critters they brought home. Inexpensive GPS tracking devices measured distances traveled by these house cats, which spent their days both indoors and outdoors.

“We knew cats were killing lots of animals—some estimates show that cats in North America kill from 10 to 30 billion wildlife animals per year—but we didn’t know the area in which that was happening, or how this compared with what we see in nature,” Kays says.

The researchers calculated the amount of prey killed per year by house cats and divided the number by the area in which the cats hunted. Some adjustments were made to the prey count as cats don’t necessarily bring all their kills home.

The study showed that house cats killed an average of 14.2 to 38.9 prey per 100 acres, or hectare, per year.

Close to home

The study also showed that cats do much of their damage to wildlife in disturbed habitats, like housing developments.

“Because the negative impact of cats is so local, we create a situation in which the positive aspects of wildlife, be they the songs of birds or the beneficial effects of lizards on pests, are least common where we would appreciate them most,” says coauthor Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.

“Humans find joy in biodiversity, but we have, by letting cats go outdoors, unwittingly engineered a world in which such joys are ever harder to experience.”

The study appears in Animal Conservation. Additional coauthors are from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, NC State, Dartmouth College, East Carolina University, SciStarter, University of Exeter, Victoria University of Wellington, and the University of South Australia.

Source: NC State

The post Cats don’t roam far, but they do lots of killing appeared first on Futurity.

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March 12, 2020 at 08:56AM

The Best Ant Killer

The Best Ant Killer

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The Best Ant Killer

If you try to kill household ants the wrong way, you can actually split apart the colony—and make the problem worse. That won’t happen with Terro T300 Liquid Ant Baits, a favorite among homeowners because it’s simple to use, it’s widely available, and its effective, slow-acting poison targets and eliminates the entire colony.

technology

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March 11, 2020 at 04:37PM