Western US here. I’m in an urban area where a lot of the farmland that turned into housing in the mid-1900s didn’t become modern subdivisions, so we still have sections of the city where people have enough land to keep their own horse, plus stables on the outskirts. Haven’t seen a horse in downtown in a while, but still see them on side roads, on the walking path along the river, and a lot in the hiking trails that run north of the city, which are basically an extension of the town at this point. When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there was a bar in the farm town about 6mi outside the city that had a hitching post out front and the cowboys still rode there to drink.

If there are going to be multiple humans in the dog’s life giving commands and setting boundaries, make sure everyone is on the same page about what those commands and boundaries are. Everyone uses the same word for the same command, everyone has the same boundaries.

Single word command. It’s “sit” and the dog sits, not “sitsitsitsit”. They read body language as much as they listen to your vocalizations, and posture is more important in their own dog to dog language. Use your body to your advantage. You shouldn’t intimidate your dog but posture with calm confidence that projects control of the situation. This works great for shy/fearful dogs who appreciate someone they trust making decisions for them about whether or not to panic, as well as with headstrong dogs who are debating whether or not they actually have to comply.

Reward compliance swiftly, under 3 seconds. “Sit”, dog sits, “good” + treat. As the response becomes normalized you can begin to wean out the treat and just say “good”. In the mid treat intermittently, then eventually just as an occasional reward. In high stress or temptation scenarios you can jackpot good obedience. For example, if your dog loves to bolt after squirrels but sits and waits patiently for the squirrel to run by, reward the hell out of that.

Dogs and humans are both keyed to pattern recognition. Some behavior issues can arise due to humans being creatures of habit. If you leave for work the same time every morning, after filling your travel mug, grabbing your keys off the table- they’ll know those signs mean “you’re leaving”. If you have an anxious dog those will cue the anxiety to start. Sometimes correcting that requires intervention, and is case by case, but know that your dog is always watching and your idiosyncratic behaviors become triggers whether you want them to or not.

Dog parks are shit for early socialization, whether it’s a puppy or a rescue. You have no idea how well behaved the other dogs are going to be nor how decent of a person they have. Try and find local puppy or established pack play groups to ease your dog into it. If a dog park is your only option, go without your dog at different times to see what the people/dogs are like (a lot of folks go the same time every day), then avoid the times where the dude with the unneutered beast that terrorizes everyone while dad vicariously lives out his dominance fantasy of “he’s just an alpha” isn’t there.

Even the best socialized dogs deliver corrections to one another in a manner that can look harsh to humans. But that’s their language, we choose not to use force/harshness. It is acceptable for them to do so when they do it correctly because dogs “speak” two languages, dog/dog and dog/human. A proper harsh correction from one dog to another should come after the dog being pushed uses body language to set a boundary, continues to be pushed, and sets a hard boundary swiftly but does not escalate or pursue after the other dog has disengaged. If you get a puppy, being able to socialize with confident older dogs who recognize “puppy” but will define their limits with appropriate force is great. You will often see that a puppy who gets “told” they went to far will take the correction, sulk, then seek approval from the dog that corrected them, and a well balanced older dog will reward the toned down behavior by playing with them when their energy is right.

Training is not programming. It’s never a one-and-done, “I taught you to sit at 6mo and that’s good enough for the next 15yrs”. It is a perpetual process throughout their lives, both maintenance of the trained behavior and adjusting to performing it in every new circumstance. It’s not difficult to master “sit/stay” when you’re in the comfort of your home, but that doesn’t mean it’ll automatically work as well when they’re over-stimulated by people/dogs/smells in the pet store.

Finally- you’re the human, use your brain. We should always strive to give our dogs the best life and set training/socialization goals, but we can recognize when they’ve hit their limit. Dogs have their own individual personalities, quirks, and varying levels of drive/intelligence. With rescues you might not know what trauma or bad conditioning they’ve had, and some can leave scars where managing their environment rather than training it out of them is the solution. Not every dog enjoys the pack play of daycare or a dog park, or a house full of screaming 10yos for a birthday party. Don’t give up before you try and work through issues, but at some point if you can see that your dog has reached it’s limit, then you as the human make the call about what situations to put your dog in and which to avoid.

Food, ferrier, routine healthcare, housing. Your biggest cost is housing, and the cost of that varies wildly by how fancy you want to get with it. I went with the low-mid end of decent amenities, similar to dog boarding. The horse has protection from elements, a bit of human interaction, space to be outside. I did not include insurance. However, ime, horse vets can be drastically less expensive than small animal vets for similar procedures. I have always gotten the impression this is because dog/cat healthcare is a much bigger industry and like human healthcare it jacks up the price because it can. I also didn’t include tack, but that’s also one of those things where the cost is dependent on how fancy one wants to get with it.

Bad Religion, Propaghandi, Dropkick Murphys, Good Riddance, Thought Riot, Regan Youth, Crass, T.S.O.L., MDC, The Nerve Agents, Earth Crisis, Dead Kennedys, NOFX, Body Count, Pussy Riot, Death By Stereo, and Cattle Decapitation are all social-politically outspoken punk/hXc/metal bands that have plenty of songs that would fit your list.

Dropkick, Billy Bragg, Tom Morello, Eyes of Salt, and the Boss all have anti-ICE specific songs out recently.

You can get a decent older, nothing fancy, riding horse for ~$3k and pay about $11k/yr for upkeep, significantly less if you’ve got space for them. Plus, ride the same route to and from the bar and they’ll memorize it- your own personal designated driver who like tips in apples!

About 25yrs ago we had a flurry of these types invade. So we pulled some strings, got permission, and started having local bands play the main spot where they wanted to preach during the busy part of the day. Drown them out. The best was our local death metal band where the guitarist dressed up like a priest in a gimp mask and the singer wore a prison jumpsuit and nylons over his face. They condemned it but left. Also, mid-day death metal in the center of campus is something to behold.

Gimme wolves devouring the sun and moon, drunk warriors with sword and spear, screaming Valkyries, a boat made from the nails of dead men hauling the forces of the underworld to the battleground, a venom spewing world serpent, a god-killer wolf, and a fire demon that just burns it all down in the end. Nobody apocalypses like the vikings.

Hey now, those are our material wealth and assets. However, my share apperaently getting lost in the mail along with my Soros protest check 😕

As a circumcised man, who was once a teenage boy, I’m surprised that generation after generation of men who’d also been circumcised teenage boys never acknowledged “ya know, this doesn’t do a goddamn thing to keep’em from beatin’ their dicks”. But science and logic has never been religion’s strong suit.

Our problems of a wealthy minority and a bigoted majority are intertwined. Wealth provides access to power, media/narrative control, and legal shielding. Some of the wealthy might actually be bigots themselves, others might personally not give a fuck but if that’s the ticket to power, they’ll punch it. Eliminating them is a part of the solution, but it’s not a “cut the head off the snake” solution. Americans with only two dimes to rub together would give them to the dirty rich demagogue who tries to fill the void you made eliminating the filthy ones, so long as the candidate promised more of the same hate. And all the while, that hater is spreading their bile in the communities actual people live in. How many of our mass shooters, vehicular crowd killers, and murderous cops were filthy rich? Both are a threat, but eliminating one does not doom the other.

They’re going to accuse you of that anyway so might as well take a few with ya on the way out. If we can all set a minimum of 3:1 them/us before we’re ghosted, we might be able to clear the field a bit and give our grandchildren a chance at building something better. 10:1 you get a plaque, 50:1 a statue, 100+:1 and they’ll mention you in text books.

You red-y for lucky number 69? Those to earn your wings.

Feelings of helplessness and victimization combined with low levels of education as well as black and white thinking. A lot of Americans want the “system” to not be what it is, but they’ll look to strongman types to make the world what they want rather do it for themselves, alone or collectively. Conservatives want to have their enemies either run out of the country, locked up, or shoved back into the closet so they don’t have to know it exists- they went for Trump. They’re also greedy and seem to assume that anything that benefits someone else or society was taken from them. Boomers grew up on Cold War propaganda, the idea that communism was the anti-America, so they fight hard against anything remotely social (plus add in some bigotry that socialism would benefit the folks they hate). But on the flip side, many on the left have come to idolize the authoritarian left method because it forces the change they want and that old propaganda of “communism is anti-American” has the reverse effect; it’s embraced because they’re reactionary.

It’s all more rabid each way online, the right just managed to find their figurehead around which to build a cult of personality first. The left now in-fights because it’s a three way battle between the old guard Democrats who want to go back to business as usual, the reactionaries seeking their golden goose, and the rest who don’t want to go back to what it was or rewrite the MAGA playbook but with “our guy” in charge.

Did one of the soldier angels get his head blown off, only for it be replaced with the crown of the statue of liberty?

Less and less. As a thrift shop junkie it’s always interesting to watch how long it takes consumer trends to fizzle and the shelves fill with the must-haves of yesterday year. Currently it’s Baby Yoda, Squishmallows, and MAGA/Trump gear.

Haven’t caught one for arguing for environmentalism for the sake of the environment over environmental policies designed solely to mitigate the negative affects for human populations, just get called a “misanthropic fascist” and “ecoterrorist”. The anthropocentrism of so many so called “leftists” is shocking. These kids grew up without Captain Planet and Ferngully and it shows. I bet they don’t even cut their soda can rings up ‘cus “fuck them turtles”.

Whatever one picks up raw-dogging a futon must be significantly worse than your run of the mill STDs.

I had a feeling it was, it makes the most sense. An endless supply of organic compounds just speed running the cycle. Sometimes though the mushrooms are just straight out of the bins, not replication. Rinse before your eat.